Surrender to Me (The Derrings #4)(56)

“Please, Griffin,” she murmured, all coolness and ice. “Don’t try to make this more than it can be.” She motioned around them. “We’ve reached civilization now. We cannot continue as we were. You know that.”

He glared at her, wanting to deny her words, to tell her he didn’t know anything of the sort.

She continued. “I’m sure you intend to stay for a while and acquaint yourself with your family. Can you arrange for an escort to take me as far as Edinburgh?”

He stared at her for an astonished moment, the dignified angle of her chin, the firm set of her lips, and knew she was serious. She meant to go, to leave him. And why not? She spoke the truth.

He could send her on her way under the care of escorts, confident in her safety. That had been his motive for helping her in the first place. Nothing demanded he keep her with him now. Still, his mind searched, seeking a reason. To not accept that the time had come for them to part ways. To let her burrow back into her privileged shell and return to her life among the echelons of High Society. No doubt she would remarry a proper aristocrat like herself who would bank the fires Griffin knew existed within her, hungry to be lit.

“No,” he heard himself declaring in an intractable voice. “I would not entrust you to someone else’s care. I said I would see you as far as Edinburgh and I will. I’m a man of my word. You were seen leaving Bertram’s room. You’re still a likely suspect in his death. For all we know, they’re still scouring the countryside for you.” A sound reason, completely justifiable, to keep her with him a bit longer.

Her smooth brow wrinkled. “A man of your word.” Her lip curling back over her teeth. Angry splotches broke out over her smooth complexion. “How singular.”

“I’m aware that such a man is unfamiliar to you,” he shot back, calling himself a bastard when she recoiled.

And just like that, he knew.

As much as she drove him mad with her inconsistencies, fire in his arms one moment, the ice-cold duchess the next—he wanted her. More than he had wanted any other woman. Even if keeping her a while longer meant everyone at Balfurin would continue to see her as his mistress. He would challenge anyone, his newfound family included, who treated her shabbily again. Because he could not give her up. Not yet. Perhaps never.

“I’m certain you’re being overzealous in your concern. I don’t think it necessary—”

“Nonetheless, this is the way it shall be. You will depart when I do. I, and no other, will see you safely onto that train.” He dropped onto the large tester bed, bouncing on it a bit as though pleased at its spring. “Until then you shall remain with me, under my protection.”

And in my bed.

She watched him warily as he stripped off his jacket and vest. “And how long before you decide to depart? You’ve only just met your grandfathers.”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, removing his boots.

“Am I to be your prisoner, then?” Further color spotted her fair cheeks, breasts rising enticingly against her gown. “I have a life waiting in London.”

“And it shall continue to wait.” He leaned back on his elbows, eyeing the length of her, wondering when precisely he had come to find waifish blondes with demon dark eyes so appealing. He had never favored women of her coloring before. Hell, he had never favored women of her prickly temperament.

Her lips compressed into a hard line, those eyes sparkling like chips of coal. With a disgusted snort, she began to pace, her hands folded tightly before her as she moved. Stopping abruptly, she expelled a great breath and faced him again.

“I’ll not remain here as a toy to serve your needs during your stay, if that’s what you have in mind. No doubt there is some willing girl about for that. One with proven breeding potential.” She added this last bit with a decidedly cruel twist to her lovely mouth.

He rose in one fluid motion, catching her around the waist and pulling her down to the bed with him, determined to thaw her, to recover the sweet, responsive creature he had enjoyed before his grandfathers discovered them and brought them to Balfurin.

“Don’t behave as though you want nothing to do with me. We both know the truth.”

She struggled in his arms. “The truth?” she sneered. “And what would that be?”

He coiled his arm tighter about her waist and brought his other hand down on her breast, cupping the firm mound. Her nipple sprang to attention against his palm, pebble-hard. The heat of her flesh burned through the fabric of her gown, singeing him, firing his blood, turning him rock hard in an instant.

She stilled, her breast rising and falling fast against his touch, her heartbeat a speeding drum alongside his palm.

“That you want me—this—every bit as much as I do.” He rubbed his palm over her breast in a fierce motion, imagining the blushing crest of her nipple in his mind, pretty and velvety as rose petals.

“I know what you want,” he growled, moving to knead the other breast. Small mewls of desire escaped her mouth, each tiny sound twisting him tight as a bow string ready to snap.

Her eyes gleamed darkly, lids falling low as she thrust herself up into his hand.

“I know,” he repeated, his voice thick and unrecognizable to his ears as his thumb traced her nipple in feverish circles, drawing widely over the tip before closing in, squeezing and rolling the nub between two fingers, “what your body craves.”