A Season of Seduction by Jennifer Haymore Read Free Book Online Page B

shoulder. “I am not innocent, Jack, but then again, I suppose I am in some matters. Such encounters are very new to me. Before this night, the only man who had seen my bare chest was my husband. In the dark. I didn’t quite understand it until now, but by removing my clothes, you render me vulnerable. I dislike being vulnerable… but…” She struggled for the right words. “In a primal, most frightening way, I wish to be vulnerable to you.”
“It’s all right.” His fingers trailed down her back, to the place where her dress had fallen to her hips. She sank into his embrace, soothed by his touch. “I am not the kind of man who would take advantage of a lady and then spurn her. Whatever might happen between us, know that I will take every precaution to protect you, both in body and in spirit.”
It was a pretty speech. Outwardly, she knew that, and she also knew that a man would say almost anything to entice a woman into bed. But the quiet vehemence in his voice did much to allay her fears.
“I want you, Becky. From the moment I saw you, I wanted to bed you.”
She almost laughed. She had thought herself utterly debauched for thinking the exact same thing about him.
“But those feelings do not scratch the surface of all there is to this night. There is so much more.”
It was true that she felt that way, but he was a man. What more could there be to him? She tilted her head to look at him quizzically. “Really?”
He smoothed a thumb over her lower lip, pressing gently. “You’re beautiful, you must know that. You stand apart from the other ladies of the ton .”
Her shoulders tightened. Talk of her looks always made her uncomfortable. She’d never truly felt a resident in her own skin. She often stared at herself in the looking glass and all she could see was a frightened, lonely woman, old beyond her years. A woman who’d made tragic, terrible mistakes, and nearly destroyed every person she’d ever loved in doing so.
“You don’t like to be told of your beauty.” It wasn’t a question. He laughed softly, but there was bitterness in the sound. “Neither do I.”
She remained silent.
“That’s what it is, don’t you see? I feel a connection to you that I never have with another person. I feel innately that there is something that binds us, something beyond carnal attraction.”
His words placated her even as alarm bells screeched in her head. He was too serious. He was speaking of a more intimate connection than lust.
“Neither of us can know what the future will hold, but I have no intention of leaving you defenseless, no matter the circumstance.”
She pressed a hand to his chest. “Noble Jack.”
After a tense pause, he said in a low voice, “Never make the mistake of thinking me noble.”
He made no sense. He went on about his honorable intentions—well, as honorable as intentions could be in such circumstances—and then said he wasn’t noble. She narrowed her eyes. “Then you’ve been lying to me.”
“No.”
“You tell me how noble you are, in so many words, and then say to me that you don’t possess the trait. How can that be?”
“Some things are simple. My desire to have you, and to please you while I have you. My desire to keep you safe from harm. Other aspects of me are more complicated and certainly less noble.”
She nodded, and again awareness of her body pressed against his warm skin flooded through her. She sighed in contentment.
“You have taken me too far,” he said quietly. “Every second I am not inside you my suffering increases.”
“You don’t look like you’re suffering.”
Reaching behind him, he grasped her hand and pressed it between them, pushing it down over the hard ridge of his erection. “You’ve teased me, ever since that first night we were alone. Now, it happens when I am with you, and when we are separated I can’t stop thinking about you.” He gave her a disgruntled look. “This tends to become highly uncomfortable for a man after a