An English Lord's Love Affair

Chapter 14.5.2. Wounded Indignation

   Benedic didn't know what to say. He might have ravished her body, but in the end she had conquered his heart.

   Charlotte finally broke the silence, lifting her head from his shoulder. Her hair was damp around her face. Her blue eyes pierced him, and he wanted her all over again. He was already hard.

   "When will I see you again?"

   "I don't know. Not soon enough for me."

   She attempted to sit up, tousled, sexy, her temper flaring. "How am I supposed to know if you are in trouble or even alive?"

   "It might be better if you don't."

   "Benedic." She pushed his arm away. He saw the pulse beating at the base of her throat. She was breathtaking, his, her body flushed with his taking. "I think you're right. You are dead, you fiend. You don't have one decent feeling left inside you, and what we just did doesn't count."

   "I tried to warn you." His heart was thundering in his chest, in his ears, in his temples. "I should never have come here tonight, Charlotte. I had no desire to cause you so much distress."

   "It's a little late for that, isn't it?" She whispered in a wry voice. "You should have fallen into someone else's window." She pulled the coverlet up to her chin chin as if suddenly conscious of her nudity, of how far they had gone. It hadn't been enough for him. He wanted to take her in every way a man could take a woman.

   "I wish this could be different," he said. "We'll just have to do our best."

   "Charlotte." She was angry and upset, and he couldn't blame her. His life was in shambles. He was a threat to everything she was.

   "Don't worry about me, Benedic," she said tartly. "My trunk and undergarments are always at your disposal. You can wear my petticoats whenever you please."

   Her wounded indignation struck him as both unfair and well deserved at once. There wasn't time to soothe her feelings as much as he might like to, or to convince her of what she meant to him. He took one last look at her before he slid off the bed. He couldn't be sure, but he thought there might be tears in her eyes. God help him if she started to cry. He'd weaken, and be back in bed with her until the morning.

   "Don't get out of bed, Charlotte."

   "Not even to push you out the window?"

   He bent to kiss her. At least her humor had returned, although it might have been flattering to remember her heartbroken and naked on the bed where they'd made love. "Try to go to sleep," he said gently.

   "Go to—"

   He escaped into the closet, pausing to pat Ares on the head before he braced himself for his exit. The dog barely moved except to follow his movements with liquid brown eyes that seemed to accuse him. "Jesus," he said, "even my own damned dog has turned against me."

   He climbed onto the windowsill, felt the night breeze on his warm face and throat. If Charlotte had sense, she would bar this window behind him so that he would not be able to able to return until he could offer her a proper future. Or chop down the tree that gave him access to her room. He couldn't stay away from her.

   He hooked his leg across the sill and around the nearest branch. As perverse as it seemed, his sexual encounter with her had energized him, restored his vitality. He was boiling with frustration for more of her, but his spirits felt better than they had since his stabbing. The inner strength he needed to confront his opponent was back in spades. He could channel all his physical needs now into revenge. How he handled his heart was an entirely different matter.