The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,137

herself. “You like abject misery.” Then she did smirk. “You’re welcome.”

His face darkened, but it was the only indication that she’d touched a chord buried deep beneath his polished veneer. His lips continued to smile. His head cocked to one side, as if studying a fascinating specimen. Her.

“That’s true,” he allowed. “My poet’s heart is built for pining. That hardly means I haven’t felt every hour we’ve been apart. Every minute you’ve been,” he began his advance again, “hiding from me.”

Oh, devil take this man. “Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you?” She craned her neck when he came close enough to tower over her. Her pulse quickened. She kept her arms firmly crossed under her breasts, more to keep herself from reaching for him than to protect herself against him. Even if she hadn’t missed him—and she hadn’t; she’d been perfectly content setting up the pages of her happily ever after—she did desire him. If he tried to kiss her …

He must have seen it in her eyes. He closed the distance between their heights and took her lips in an all too-familiar kiss.

She hadn’t missed him. But she’d never forgotten this. Her toes curled in her shoes. Oh, my. She tasted him on her lips and breathed in the warm, lemon scent of him, feeling her girlish fantasies spiraling in her belly like butterflies. But she didn’t reach for him even though her urge to do so nearly overpowered her. If he’d come just for this, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of her asking for it.

As long as he was here, though, dressed in his London finery, handsome as an archangel and drawing his tongue along her lips in slow promise, well—she was hardly going to stop him.

His massive frame closed in on her. His hands cupped her small shoulders through her prim gray gown. He used his body and his hands to coerce her back four steps until her shoulders bumped against the door. She moaned. He wanted her. He desired her. He’d come all this way just to kiss her again.

A little voice in her head—the one that should have been screaming at the top of her lungs that this was wrong—instead stood and clapped. By Zeus, she’d learned a thing or two since she was just a girl. She deserved a standing ovation for this, her masterful seduction of London’s most notorious rake.

If she stopped to think about it, she’d wonder why. She didn’t want to stop. Not when he was exploring her mouth like a thirsty man took a drink. Satisfaction spread through her. Somehow, without lifting a finger, she’d brought him to her again. He kissed her like he would never get enough of her.

If he wanted her to break his heart again, well, then… She was an obliging sort of woman.

His hands moved down her shoulders. His fingers and thumbs encircled her wrists, brushing against the bottom of her bosom as they did, and he gently pried her arms from their protective shield. He let his thumbs caress her palms just a moment before his hands were back on her, feeling her ribs and waist through her corset and eliciting tiny whimpers of need from her.

One benefit of seducing London’s most notorious rake was that he knew exactly how to make it worth her while.

His lips left hers. She tilted her head to the side and allowed him to trail hot kisses along her neck. “Miss Lancester,” he said between ticklish nibbles, “tell me you missed me, too.”

“Uhm-mm,” she hummed in the negative, looking down at his curly blond locks. As he continued to kiss her neck and breathe hotly against the fichu covering her collarbone, the side of his face looked like an oil painting. His eyes were half-closed. His face, perfectly oval. Slight stubble glinted in the afternoon sun pouring through her window. If he’d been any other man, she would have melted into a puddle at his feet, he was so beautifully handsome.

She wanted him at her feet.

He looped his arms under hers and without warning, lifted her under her shoulders and swept her to the desk. Papers slid from the polished mahogany and whisked to the floor. He paused to relocate her inkpot to a nearby bookshelf. In those two seconds, she had her chance to stop him from ravishing her.

Those seconds passed without incident and then he was back, covering her with his heavy body, dropping kisses along her cheek and slanting his warm, delicious