When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,147
his breath still coming in shallow gasps. He seized her wrist with his other hand. “No.”
Adeline froze. Her heart stuttered. “No?”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t.” She was dimly aware she was repeating him like a half-wit, but honestly, what the hell was happening here? There was pain and regret in his voice, but Adeline didn’t understand why.
“I won’t,” he said hoarsely.
“You won’t what?” Adeline tried to sit up, but he wouldn’t let her. Instead he crawled into the bed beside her, pulling her against him so that her back was pressed to his chest. His arm was like a steel band over her waist, his erection still hard against her buttocks.
She arched against that hardness, wanting this man with every fiber in her body. Wanting to feel him move inside her, wanted to watch as she took him apart as he had her. “King—”
“I won’t fuck you simply because I’m weak. Because that would make me no better than the man who tries to obliterate his regrets and woes in women or gin.”
“That’s not at all what this—”
“You deserve better, Adeline. A man so much better than I.” His voice was raw, yet he kept his arm tightly around her.
She tried to turn but he wouldn’t let her. “Let me decide who—”
“Don’t. Please.”
Adeline exhaled and closed her eyes in frustration. “You’re not—”
“Who taught you how to fight?” he whispered raggedly.
“What?”
“Will you tell me who taught you how to fight?”
Adeline shifted her head on the pillow. She didn’t fully understand what was going through King’s mind, but she understood that, at this moment, this man needed something different. Something far more intimate than just her touch.
“My father.” She found his hand with hers, covering it gently. He didn’t pull away. “Who taught you about art?”
He drew in a sharp breath. “That’s not how this works.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
His fingers grasped hers, and she could almost hear the war being waged in his head. “Yes,” he finally said, making Adeline’s heart expand with something that was almost as painful as it was tender.
“Good. Because I don’t want to leave. Who taught you about art?”
He might have chuckled, though it came out as more of a muffled groan. “Very well. Art was Evan’s passion even from a very young age. He taught me what he knew. The combined galleries and palaces of Italy taught me the rest.”
“You’ve been?”
“Many times. I highly recommend the Uffizi if you have not had the opportunity to experience it.”
“I have not. But I’d like to.”
“Then I’ll take you there one day,” he said in Italian.
Adeline didn’t react. She hadn’t spoken Italian in years, but she understood what he had said, and she wasn’t sure if it was his unexpected mastery of the language or the vow he made that had her heart skipping.
And it was far too easy to desperately want to believe that such a journey might one day be possible.
He cleared his throat. “Your family was titled,” he rushed on, switching back to English.
“What makes you think that?” She let him change the subject.
“Your speech suggests an education that extends far beyond what a common pickpocket working the Paris cabarets might have expected.”
“As does yours.”
“I never worked the Paris cabarets,” he said. “And aside from your speech, your skill with that rapier suggests that your teacher was also very skilled. Thus, I can only conclude that your father was trained by the best. And the best is expensive. And exclusive. I’m not sure it was your father who taught you to fight with that knife, however. No gentleman learns that.”
“Mon Dieu, all that from a single alley skirmish.” This time, she spoke in French.
“Tell me if I’m right,” he replied in the same language.
Adeline twisted and turned to face him, propping herself up on her elbow. He gazed up at her, one hand behind his head, the other resting easily on her hip. He looked rumpled and devastating and as unguarded as she had ever seen him. Her stomach did a slow flip through a storm of butterflies, and a soft warmth flooded through her. She looked away from his face, afraid that if she didn’t, she would give in to the impulse to kiss him again.
She reached for his hand at her waist, her fingers tracing the thick band of scar tissue. “Yes,” she said. “My parents were the Comte and Comtesse de Chadonnet. In the absence of a son and anything that resembled a conventional upbringing, my father taught me about rapiers and politics,