The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,14

her forehead. It was leagues away from the chill in his words. She leaned in, letting herself be seduced by what she knew lurked beneath all their feints and insults…

Then he whispered in her ear. “I am in the market for a mistress, though. And I’d take you whether you are married or not.”

She snapped her head back. How did she keep fooling herself into thinking that he wasn’t utterly ruthless?

“If you’ve come to find a mistress, you’re in the wrong room.”

He clucked his tongue, as though correcting a headstrong pupil. “I’m in the only room I want to be in. And I will have you, Ellie — depend upon it.”

And then, as his lips descended on hers, she realized he intended to prove it.

* * *

When he had first kissed Ellie, twelve years earlier, she had tasted of berries. They had been picking blackberries together in the hot August sun, far from the lax guardianship of Ellie’s governess and the nearby country cottage where Nick’s mother was in the final throes of her last illness. Ellie had taken her gloves off, heedless of freckles and thorns, and her fingers were stained purple with juice. She laughed at one of his jests, and her lips were purple, too. She freed her glorious red hair from her hat, and strands of it whipped around her face.

He had reached out to smooth the hair away from her mouth. Something in her blue eyes, the hopeful tilt to her smile, urged him forward before his better self could dissuade him. He was gentle, so gentle, not wanting to hurt her, feeling like he’d somehow stumbled across a princess who had been waiting for him to rescue her. She’d grown up alone, left in the countryside by her uncaring father, and Nick wanted to be the one who showed her happiness. She tasted of berries, of innocence, and as her hands clasped hesitantly around his neck, he had lost himself.

Tonight, in the house he owned but she inhabited, she had the fierceness of a queen, not the hesitating dreaminess of a cloistered princess. He had thought he could do this coldly, emotionlessly, cruelly — as cruelly as she had destroyed him. But there never should have been cruelty between them.

He claimed her mouth. This time, her lips were pale and her mouth tasted of whisky. He’d never tasted alcohol on her before, but the intoxicant somehow fit the woman she’d become. There was no innocence between them anymore.

He couldn’t be gentle, and he refused to be kind — but he had just enough control to keep from throwing her to the floor and taking her like a beast. All he wanted, all he could handle, was a kiss. A single taste of her, before he remembered why he had lost her.

Before he put his long-dormant plan into action and ruined her happiness as comprehensively as she had ruined his.

He wrapped his arm around her back and crushed her against his chest. She whimpered against his mouth. The sound almost brought him to his senses. But then her mouth parted, and the dim corner of his brain that could still think knew that whimper for what it was.

She wanted him in spite of herself.

That knowledge was dangerous, adding the barest trace of triumph to his growing need. Ellie might not love him, but he could still make her want him.

Her hands came up around him. She was no longer a tentative girl. She knew what she wanted, and she made it clear in the way she pulled him down to her, in the way she opened her mouth and welcomed his plunging tongue. Her fingers were rough, digging into his scalp as she anchored herself in his hair. Her arms dragged his shoulders down, adding sweet pressure to the need he already felt for her.

He hadn’t thought he cared whether she wanted him — for his plans, it was almost better if she didn’t. But as she flared to life around him, his own desire exploded. How had he thought that a kiss could be enough? They would both be bruised in the morning if he didn’t pull back, but that dark need for her urged him on. He’d never wanted to mark a woman before, but he needed every man in the house to take one look at her and know that she was his.

The warning bells started up at that thought, but he ignored them. He could never keep her without wondering if