Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(32)

Free to be herself. Whoever Daisy Vanreid was.

Strike that, she reminded herself again. Whoever Daisy Trent was. For she was married now. Daisy Vanreid had become the Duchess of Trent. Like it or not. Disappointing wedding night or no. They were bound forever. She would make do with the devil she had chosen rather than the devil she knew.

“Honesty,” he said slowly, as if it were a menace. “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve been entirely honest with me, wife?”

No. She had not. She thought of Bridget. Thought of flirtations and meaningless kisses, all unwanted, enacted in a desperate ploy to escape the fate her father had chosen for her. Should they matter now when they never had? Somehow, everything she’d ever done returned to her conscience in that moment, mocking her. Her foolish betrothal, Padraig, young love that hadn’t been love at all.

“You are not the only man I contemplated entrapping in marriage,” she confessed, for she still wasn’t certain she ought to confide in him about her sister. “I kissed other men, as you know. I played the role of the flirt. I’ll not make excuses for my actions, save to say that I did everything I could to escape the fate consigned me.” She had said as much before, though not with such candor.

A growl tore from him, and then his hands were cupping her face, forcing her to gaze upon only him. As if her eyes would ever venture anywhere else. He was all she saw. All she wanted to see.

Forever.

“There are no others,” he told her ruthlessly, his hands hot and demanding upon her, “from this moment forward. The mere mentioning of them makes me want to tear them limb from limb.”

She wished his touch didn’t feel quite so delicious upon her. “Is that what bothers you, then? Is that why you left without word and drowned yourself in drink?”

His mouth hardened. “Nonsense. I know a great deal about you, Daisy. Far more than you think, I’d wager, and yet here I stand.”

He had been watching her, hadn’t he? How many times had their gazes snared? On how many occasions had he cleverly toppled a vase or trod on a creaking floorboard at just the right moment to keep her from ruin? There had been Wilford, and how many others?

An emotion, thick and dark and indefinable—something resembling suspicion—unfurled within her. “Why were you watching me? I had always assumed it was because you were interested in me yourself. That wasn’t why, though, was it?”

It had never occurred to her until now that he’d been the cause of each interruption that had spared her ruining. Like a protector. Or something else. Something troubling. Something very troubling indeed.

He met her gaze now, unflinching. “I watched you because I wanted you for myself.” His thumb traced the corner of her mouth. “You were correct in your assumption. So you see, my dear? I am not angry with you for entrapping me as I am the one who entrapped you. It was my guilty conscience that sent me from you last evening, and my guilty conscience that kept me away.”

“Your guilty conscience,” she repeated, for it was difficult indeed to make sense of anything when his thumb worshipped the bow of her upper lip, lingering with a delicate caress that made her heart race into a steady gallop. He thought he had entrapped her?

“Yes.” His gaze was fastened upon her mouth now, hungry and bright. But a hint of frown lingered between his dark brows. “My guilty conscience. Just when I thought I hadn’t one.”

His admission struck her, and she couldn’t help but feel it was the most candid he’d been since she met him. It only lasted for a flash, and then the practiced seducer had returned. His thumb followed the seam of her lips, once, twice.

She kissed the fleshy pad, allowed her tongue to dart out against his skin for a taste. Salty and delicious and Sebastian. She wanted more. But she also wanted a conversation. Some idea of who they were and where they were headed.

“It would seem, then, that neither of us ought to bear the weight of a guilty conscience any longer,” she observed, allowing herself to touch him for the first time since their awkward interview had begun. Her hands slid inside his coat, across the silk of his waistcoat, the firm, muscled flesh rippling beneath his layers of civility. He felt, in a word, divine.

So good that she couldn’t keep herself from slipping the whole way around his taut abdomen until she reached his back. Here, he was rigid. Warmth blazed from him. She pressed her palms to the hollow just above his hips. Forced them higher, gliding along muscle and bone, the starch in his bearing, absorbing him, learning him, marking him as hers.

Such freedom, the ability to touch him as she wished. To admire the solid masculinity of him, so different from her soft curves. She was lush where he was spare, and he was strong and strapping where she was small. What a delectable dichotomy was man and woman.

It had never occurred to her before this moment how incredibly perfect it was, how she fit to him and he to her. But now, she felt it, and it was… incredible. His breathing went harsh, matching hers. His mouth was very near. She tried not to stare at those perfectly chiseled lips in longing. Tried not to want him.

But she failed miserably.

“Daisy.” One word—her name—torn from him. He sounded as if he were in pain.

Perhaps he was. His beautiful face was all rigid lines when she wrenched her eyes from his mouth. She didn’t know what to say in this moment of intense possibility, desire humming in the air like a current. Her mind raced, tangling itself in knots, and all she could think was it was wrong to feel such sweeping emotion for a man she scarcely knew.