In Bed With the Devil(59)
He’d covered her mouth with a blistering kiss before he’d thought it through. He could tell himself that he was bored with the dinner, bored with the conversation, but the reality was that it was driving him mad to watch her sip wine, to gaze at her slender throat and shoulders, to see her smiling at Bill when Luke wanted her to smile at him.
As he swept his tongue through her mouth, he knew it was wrong, but he wanted her, wanted her in a way he’d never desired Frannie. He wanted Catherine rough, he wanted her tenderly. He never thought of taking Frannie to his bed. He thought of marrying her, he thought of having her as his wife, but carnal images of them together never filled his mind. With Catherine, he saw a kaleidoscope of their contorted naked bodies.
Tonight he could feel the need rising in him, felt it rising in her as she rose up on her toes and wound her arms around his neck, her fingers scraping into his hair. Her teeth grazed his bottom lip, tugged—
He groaned, considered the location of the nearest settee—
Shoving him, she scrambled back into the shadows of the draperies. “My God,” she rasped. “Your betrothed is down the hallway—”
“She’s not my betrothed yet, and I have doubts that she’ll ever be. Do you think if I asked her tonight that she’d say yes? Have you convinced her that she can handle being a countess? She doesn’t even want to be the hostess over a bloody dinner!”
He swung away from her, didn’t want to see that he’d frightened her. Frightened Catherine who’d faced a ruffian with a knife.
He plowed his fingers through his hair. “My apologies. My behavior was abhorrent. I don’t know what got into me. It won’t happen again.”
He heard a hesitant footstep, then another. Feeling the touch of a hand on his shoulder, he stiffened. He wanted to spin around and take her in his arms again.
“Frannie told me you’ve never kissed her.”
“I don’t think of her that way.”
“You don’t think about kissing her?”
“She’s not a carnal creature.”
“You are.”
He moved away from her, before he proved her point. “Yes, well, I’m quite capable of restraining myself when the situation warrants.”
“And I don’t warrant restraint?”
He faced her. “I want to marry Frannie, but I think of you day and night. I’m sitting at that bloody dinner table wondering about the taste of you with wine upon your tongue. And when you vent your fury at me all you do is make me want you more. But it is only lust, Catherine. It is only the physical. I am with you every night. It stands to reason that my body would react to your nearness. It has grown accustomed to it.”
It didn’t help matters at all that the scent of her lingered in his bed.
“Do you ever do anything with Frannie?” she asked.
The change in subject seemed abrupt, strange, but he was grateful to turn attention away from his acting badly. “What do you mean?”
“Do you ever take her to the theater or the park or boating? Do you know her outside of Dodger’s?”
“Well, yes, of course.”
“What’s something you’ve done together?”
“When we were children—”
“Not when you were children. Recently. Since you’ve been adults.”
He considered her question. Everything always seemed to involve Dodger’s. And before that Feagan.
“I can’t remember the last time we did anything.”
“You should do something together, don’t you think?”
It was embarrassing to admit that he’d never done anything with a lady that wasn’t questionable. “What would you suggest?”
“Have you been to the Great Exhibition?”
He could hardly fathom that she was speaking to him with enthusiasm about an outing with Frannie, as though he’d never kissed Catherine. He realized that she was putting up a wall. After all, she was the daughter of a duke, a woman with noble blood. And they both knew nothing about him was noble.
Frannie was the woman he’d marry. He needed to concentrate on winning her over.
“I’ve not been,” he told Catherine.
“Neither have I. They say Queen Victoria has gone five times already. Can you imagine? I’m hoping to go tomorrow. Perhaps you could take Frannie there sometime. It would be a nice outing.”
“I’ll consider it.”
She nodded, her tongue darting out to lick her lip the way it did after she drank wine. He wondered if she was tasting him. She cleared her throat. “We should probably return to our guests.”
“Probably.” Only he didn’t want to. Dinners were tedious.