“Did you go upstairs? Did you see anything you liked? Did you do anything in one of those rooms? Let someone put his hands on this very ripe body of yours? Would you like that? To be touched, stroked? Your breasts were made to be caressed, tasted—”
“N-No,” she choked.
He blinked.
Bloody, bloody hell. He stepped back quickly and dragged a hand through his hair. Perhaps he had imbibed too freely tonight. That, or Arlington’s fist to his face had done more damage than he originally thought and shook his brain loose.
She blinked those wide doe eyes up at him. They looked almost black in the near-dark, glowing with an emotion he had never seen from her.
He opened his mouth to say something. An apology for acting like a rutting beast. Nothing seemed adequate. He’d just spoken to Will’s little sister as though she were some vulgar minx he met at a sordid pub. To say nothing of his actions. He’d just ground his cock against her like she was a seasoned whore. This on the heels of Will and Max telling him he needed to behave more circumspectly. He really was a bastard.
Without a word, he turned and fled, descending the stairs with his cock throbbing. When he reached the bottom floor, he was tempted to look up, to see if she watched him, as he felt she did, or if that notion was just in his head.
He resisted. Keeping his eyes trained straight ahead, he opened the door and stepped out into the night.
Aurelia leaned over the railing and watched Max depart the house as if the hounds of hell were after him. She had done that. To him. She had sent the rogue running for once . . . and it was not because of her barbed tongue. It was because of her. He had left because of what swelled between them. The heat . . . the desire that even now still pumped between her legs.
For a moment there, pressed against the wall, she had thought he might kiss her. Finally, she would have a kiss other than the one Archibald Lewis forced upon her. She would know a kiss that did not taste of fish. She would be kissed properly. If nothing else could be said of Max, she felt certain it was this. He would know how to go about pleasing a woman.
She returned dazedly to her bedchamber, not recalling precisely how she got there. Somehow her feet moved, one step after another, until she was tucked back beneath her sheets, her hand pressed to the curve of her breast where her heart pounded like an incessant hammer.
The night had been eventful. Her hand slid to her throat where her pulse hiccupped a mad staccato as she recalled Max’s body so close to hers. What would he have done if she closed that space? If she had kissed him? She’d witnessed all manner of illicit activity in the private rooms at Sodom. She had seen kissing and more. Her cheeks caught fire. Much more.
She was no ignorant girl. Images of those people coupling had stayed with her, filling her mind with fantasies when she was alone in her bed at night and aching. Her imaginary partner had always been a phantom man. Vague and faceless. But in this moment, tonight, he possessed a face. He was Max. A breath shuddered out of her.
She had no misconceptions of what Max was. She wasn’t romanticizing him. She’d seen him in the greenhouse, trysting with the maid. She knew of his innumerable exploits after she, however inadvertently, christened him Cockless Camden.
They know what to do with their mouths . . .
A breath shuddered past her lips. He was a rogue who lived for pleasure. And his body had felt so good against her. Hard and strong. Her hand swept over her breast, fondled it, finding the nipple and giving it a squeeze, imagining it was Max’s fingers. A small whimper escaped her.
And then reality crashed down around her. This was Camden. He would never cross that line with her. No, not with Will’s little sister.
Sighing, she rolled onto her side. She had made up her mind tonight to find a husband and save herself from a lifetime of obscurity in Scotland with Aunt Daphne and her horde of pillows every shape, size, and color.