Willow had never before been kissed. She had also never been alone in an empty room with a man or shared a reclining piece of furniture with anyone. Despite all this, she’d known. The moment before he’d kissed her, she had known he would do it.
How? Instinct? Suppressed yearning? She had seen the wild, unfocused look in his eyes, and his gaze darted repeatedly to her mouth.
And then she was hauled up against him, and he paused a fraction of a second, their breath mingling, eyes locking, and he brushed his mouth across her lips once, twice, and then he’d sealed them together.
As realizations went, knowing he would kiss her was not actionable as much as it was a great saver of time. It cut out debilitating shock and useless disbelief. The kiss was real. His arm was locked around her, he put a rough hand on her cheek. She watched his face until it was too close to see, and her hands went to his chest, receiving him, feeling the warm solidness beneath the wool of his coat. She heard herself make the smallest noise of anticipation, and he moaned.
The only real surprise had been how much she had wanted it. Well, she wanted—if not precisely it then something that eventually led to it. And after it began, “it” was definitely what she wanted.
When his mouth closed over hers, and she shut her eyes, the swirl of sensations affirmed everything she had suspected for two days. Yes, his body was muscled and rock hard; yes, he smelled masculine and woodsy and like him; and yes, she felt the kiss everywhere—her lips, the tips of her fingers, her knees.
And finally—yes, it felt like nothing she’d ever experienced. Kissing was soft and hard at the same time, wet but not too wet, a maelstrom of sensation but also a little like floating in the pond on a calm day.
“My God, Willow, forgive me,” he said, breathing hard against her skin. “There is no excuse for it. I never behave like this, honestly.”
He had rather pounced, she thought. But she’d been ready, so ready. Too ready? She couldn’t say. Later, she would recreate every breathtaking moment in her mind and make some ruling, perhaps, about right or wrong. Then again, maybe she would not. Maybe she would simply enjoy the memory.
“Pull the advertisements from London,” he breathed, pressing kisses along her jaw, her cheek, her eye.
“What?” she gasped, reaching for the return of his lips.
“The advertisement. Your appeal to strange men. The promise of money. You must stop.” He seized her mouth.
This again? She kissed him back, trying to savor and think at the same time.
“It’s foolhardy and reckless, and you put yourself in danger,” he said on a breath between kisses.
He sounded so . . . agonized, she idly thought. Was he—? Did he—?
The flicker of an idea illuminated the haze in her brain, and she broke away from the kiss.
“Marry me,” she said.
He was breathing hard. He stared down at her. “Oh God.”
“You repeatedly implore me to pull the advertisement. You’ve said you are desperate for the money.”
“I’ve said I’m not that desperate.”
“Aren’t you?” She was breathing hard.
“No,” he said, but the conviction sounded forced. His hands loosened on her body.
She would not beg him; she wouldn’t even ask him again, but she could not resist adding, “It’s only pride that prevents you.”
“Yes,” he said, and his face took on a pained expression, “and thank God I have a scrap of it left.” His arms slid away, and he took a step back. “In case you weren’t aware, everything just became ten times more complicated.” He touched a finger to his lips and turned away.
“It was always complicated.”
He exhaled sharply and grabbed the back of his head with both hands. “What have I done?” he asked. He turned back to her and said. “I came here to tell you good-bye.”
“Which you’ve done, several times.”
“Yes, but I’ve not actually gone, have I?” He looked around, as if searching for something. “No, I have not. I’ve done the opposite—worse than the opposite.” He glanced at her and began to pace. “Laugh if you will, but my actions, as inexcusable as they have been, are but a fraction of what most strange men will do if you carry on in this manner. You’re . . . you’re utterly unsupervised here.” He walked to the first window and followed the curved line of paned glass, like a fish circling a bowl.
She turned to watch him. “That may well be, but I want no supervision.” He opened his mouth to retort, but she cut him off. “And not for the freedom to cavort around London with lovers. Freedom to work. I don’t require supervision. I’m not a child.”
“Of this, I am well aware.” He shot her a heated look, his gaze roaming from her body. Her belly flipped, and she felt an unaccustomed stab of desire. Willow blinked and raised her chin.
“I’m leaving,” he announced, resuming his prowl, “and I won’t be back. I believe we’ve said all available words on the matter.” When he came to the glass-paned terrace door, he stopped and tested the knob. The door yawned open to the cool morning. He remained where he stood and slammed it shut.
She watched his struggle. He’d said no in so many different ways she’d lost count.
He went on, “Marrying a stranger for dowry money is utterly out of the question.” He embarked on another lap of the room. He was a tiger in a cage.
Willow said, “Perhaps you should reconvene with your partners to gauge their current feeling on the matter.”
“You’ve selective hearing,” he said. “Or perhaps you think I’m coming ’round.”
“What I think,” she said, gathering her nerve, “is that you do not not like me.”
He stopped walking. He was behind her now.
“Is that what you think?” he whispered.
She turned to watch him close the distance, two long strides. Willow did not fall back. Moth wings rioted in her belly.
“Yes,” she whispered, looking up at him, “it is.”
She saw conflict in his eyes, a struggle, and then he swept her to him again. “That is an understatement,” he said and dropped his head.
***
Cassin could not keep his hands off this woman, and it made no bloody sense. He had never lacked self-control, not ever; it was one of his most steadfast qualities, along with making prudent choices and distrusting people he’d only known for one bloody day.
She was archly beautiful, of course; that was indisputable—and not beautiful in a way that suggested, “Oh, look, a pretty girl.” She was beautiful in the way that stopped him dead and caused his eyes to blur, focus, and blur again, momentarily blotting out all thought. She was markedly, distinctly unlike anything he’d seen before. She was also clever and an irresistible balance of self-assured and uncertain. She thought very little of brokering her own businesslike marriage, but at the same time, she also doubted her own significant appeal to all of mankind.
Very significant. So significant, in fact, that the impulse must touch pounded in his head. Prudent choices and self-control suddenly mattered far less when he’d found himself lying supine beside her (yet absolutely not touching her, not even a little) on that damned piece of velvet furniture while she described pink petals and brush strokes and soft buds and verdant bloody creeping tendrils. The rasp of her raw, cracking voice dragged over his skin and snagged on parts that had never before been stirred by the sound of a woman’s voice. On and on she spoke while he quietly fell apart. The damned mural had been his only salvation, and he stared straight up—stared unblinking until his eyes watered—because it kept him from gazing into the open earnestness of her face.
But now they were up, and he had watched every feature as she’d soberly informed him how displeasing and not tempting she was, how she was routinely viewed as distasteful by men, and he could not, in good conscience, not contradict her.
The more she’d proclaimed her lack of desirability, the more he’d found himself consumed with the need to prove her wrong. Her color had risen, her coiffure had drooped to her shoulders, her breath had quickened, and—God help him—everything about her expression and her words had said, Prove me wrong.
And so he had. Immediately, stridently, with actions rather than words. It killed two birds with one stone, illustrating his own decidedly male attraction to her in no uncertain terms, and finally, blessedly, sating his need to taste her. Just once. Before he left.
Except it hadn’t. He hadn’t been sated; instead, he had somehow been stoked, his desire multiplied—nay, it soared. The first kiss demanded the second. Her innocence awakened some previously unknown urge to possess. Their upright embrace felt insufficient, and the chaise behind them beckoned. More, more, more—he could barely recall the self-contained man he’d been when he’d arrived in Surrey, occupied with nothing more than making enough money to save his lands and family.
Thank God some ingrained, honor-bound restraint kept him from toppling down and taking her with him. Two passionate embraces would have to do; a final crescendo before he said good-bye, finally and forever.
But he could not seem to say good-bye. He kissed her mouth, he dragged his lips across her cheek and kissed her temple, he breathed the scent of her hair. Now her mouth again, and he dipped his head and kissed the crook of her neck. “You’re taking down the advertisements,” he growled when he grazed her ear.
Willow stiffened in his arms.
Cassin swore in his head. He had no right, of course, and (of course) she would not listen. She sucked in a breath and pulled back. Her resistance was an icy splash of water, but he was still loath to let her go. Letting go her go felt like giving up the one frivolous thing he’d allowed himself in years of prudence and planning. Cannot I be permitted this one thing, just for a moment more?
But then of course he did release her, and he took a painful step back. He forced his brain to churn back to functionality. He swallowed hard and ran a shaky hand through his hair.
She would be angry again, and perhaps that was best, although he could not, in that moment, reason why.
“I will not take down the advertisements,” she said. “As I believe you well know. I could not have been more thorough about my reasons why.”
Cassin gritted his teeth. This should not matter to him; this could not matter.
Why, then, did it seem like all that mattered?
“You will invite other men to come here?” he asked. “You will marry a strange man to get what you want?”
“I will get what I want,” she corrected. “I will get my friends what they want. How it happens interests me less than that it actually occurs.”
Cassin nodded grimly and looked around. One part of his brain, the rational and responsible part, bade him to bolt for the door, to simply flee. Run away like a coward. A responsible, self-preserving coward.
Another part, a part he rarely invoked and barely recognized, asked him, What’s the worst that could happen?
And then, If I refuse, what is the worst that could happen to her?
He squinted out the windows into the hazy garden, wet and autumnal, resplendent in every dripping shade of orange, gold, and purple. Had he actually kissed her twice in a room that allowed unobstructed views from every direction, inside and out? He harrumphed. Was it any surprise he now considered the unthinkable?
He glanced at her. She’d crossed her hands over her chest. Her breathing came fast and labored. Her lips were swollen and red.
I did that, he thought, illogically, possessively. Me.
When he looked into her blue-green eyes, she raised an eyebrow. Now, he thought, she will slap me. God knew he deserved it. He held his breath. She sucked in a breath and . . . giggled.
He glared. “Don’t.” He pointed to her, daring her to laugh again.
Another giggle. Something in Cassin’s chest floated—the breath in his lungs? His heart?
He would’ve laughed, too, if he hadn’t felt so much like howling. He’d come to Surrey for the financing to save his family, and instead, he had . . . he was . . .
Instead, his priorities were in such a bloody shambles he could barely recognize himself.
“We’ve crushed your pin,” she said softly, gesturing to the cockade on his lapel.
He glared at the whorl of ribbon pinned to his jacket. “Yes,” he said.
“I noticed it yesterday. It’s striking, lovely, really. Is it significant?”
He pulled the crushed cockade from the wool of his jacket with stiff, jerky movements. “It is a cockade. Most noblemen from the north of England wear some version on their lapels or hats. It represents the white rose of Yorkshire. It is not beyond repair. My sisters will see to it if I send it home. I have others.” He shoved the whorl of white ribbon into his pocket.
“It is important to you,” she asked, “your home, your family?”
He took a deep breath. “More than I can say.”
“Let me help you save them.”
Let me save you from yourself, he thought, and suddenly a question formed in his brain: What is one more person to save?
In all honesty? When added to the scores of tenant miners who unwittingly would have buried themselves alive if he had not intervened?
What was one woman, who he also happened to find wildly attractive and who was trying to force £60,000 in his pocket?
In hindsight, the question was short-sighted and flimsy and barely thought through. But it was enough. It gave him an excuse to say yes. For once, he said yes to what he really, truly wanted at that one moment in time.
“So this is good-bye?” she asked. She touched a tentative hand to her lips. He nearly choked on a fresh wave of desire.
“I’ll do it,” he said. The words came out low and fast.
She took a step toward him. “Stop.”
“Do not challenge me, Willow,” he said. “You have no idea how difficult it is to go against my own better judgment.”
Her face lit up with a bright smile. She took another step toward him and then paused, uncertain. She slapped her hands over her face, as if she’d just opened a Christmas surprise. Her excitement was palpable; behind her hands, she made small noises of delight.
He wanted to go to her, wanted it more, perhaps, than he had wanted her all morning, but saying the words out loud froze him in a sort of what-have-I-done ramification shock. He needed to think, not launch himself at her. She embodied the opposite of thought. She was impulse.
Go, commanded the self-preserving voice in the back of his head. You’ve said it; you’ve done the precise thing you came here not to do; now go. Go before . . .
Simply, go.
He felt around behind him and grabbed the knob on the glass door. Not looking away from her, he shoved it open. The first fat, wet raindrops of a storm slapped him in the face, and he ducked his head and hurried down the steps. Stomping through the thick ivy of the garden, he cursed himself, his partners, the bloody island in the Caribbean, and every collapsing coal mine in Yorkshire.
By sheer force of will, he did not look back