your brother. I persuaded him to let me help teach you instead of him. Do you wish to hear why?”
“Not particularly,” she said with a sniff.
“Because you’d already made me want to know you better, with your teasing and tart remarks and impudence.” And later, her sympathy for his feelings. “How could I not be intrigued by a woman with so many talents?”
She uttered a self-mocking laugh. “What talents? The ability to train dogs? I daresay you have twenty such men in your employ. And I’ve already shown that I’m woefully inexperienced in social etiquette.”
“Anyone can learn such niceties.” He bent his head to kiss her ear, then her cheek, reveling in the stuttering breath that escaped her. God, she made him harder than stone. How could she not see that his desire for her was genuine? “But your other talents are part of your character. Like your loyalty to family, your deft ability to manage tradesmen, and your knowledge of how an estate works. You’ve kept this household going ever since our family came here and without antagonizing any of them. Given the fractious nature of my relations, that’s quite a feat.”
As she softened against him, he gave in to the urge to cover one of her breasts with his hand. He rubbed it, then lowered his other hand to rub her between her thighs.
When she moaned, he caressed her more eagerly through her clothes. If only he could strip them from her, urge her onto that bench, and seduce her like the heedless rakehell some thought him to be. “I desire you with a maddening intensity.”
She laid her hand over his as if to move it aside, but instead urged him to stroke harder, her body undulating against him. “If you desire me . . . it’s only because you wish . . . to make me your . . . mistress.”
“God forbid.”
She pivoted in his arms to glare at him. “So I’m not even good enough for that.”
He caught her head in his hands. “You’re too good, more like. You deserve better than ruination.”
“How can you say that when you can’t even bring yourself to offer marriage?”
The pain in her voice tore through him. “Won’t bring myself. There’s a profound difference. It’s a choice I’m making because . . . because . . .”
“Of Joshua,” she whispered, her expression shadowed.
“That has naught to do with it. I just know I can’t be the husband you want and need. No matter how much I might wish to.”
Temper flared in her wide, soulful eyes. “Then why do you keep touching and kissing me, knowing it will come to naught? I can see only one reason—you’re hoping to get me to betray my bro—”
“It’s because I can’t keep my hands off you, damn it!” he cried, then cursed himself for admitting so much. “Do you think I’m proud of that? I assure you I am not. I’m known for my self-control. It’s the reason the gossips spin tales about me—because they’re hoping to see me squirm.”
Bending his face to hers, he murmured, “Yet each time you and I are together, I want . . . I need . . . I have to have . . .” He took her mouth in a hard, hungry kiss before pulling back. “You. With me.”
At his words, Beatrice felt a flutter in her chest, then despaired at her susceptibility. How could the man so easily melt her bones? She wanted his mouth on hers again, his hands stroking her, she wanted . . .
The same things he wanted, apparently. If she dared believe him.
He continued in a hard rasp, “And it has nothing to do with your brother or Sheridan’s theories about murder.” He slid a hand down the front of her, skimming her breast, then her ribs, then her hips before snaking it behind her derriere to tug her against him so she could feel the arousal in his trousers. “It has only to do with you and me. How much we desire each other.” Brushing her lips with his, he murmured, “How much we desire this, as unwise as it is.”
This time when he kissed her, he took no quarter, drowning her in a need as forceful as a wave pounding the shore. His tongue claimed every inch of her mouth even as his hands roamed and stroked and explored.
She grabbed at his shoulders, then his neck, going up on tiptoe to drug him with her own kisses. She didn’t care