Bared to the Viscount (The Rites of May Book 1) by Lara Archer Read Free Book Online Page A

it.”
    “Please, Mary, I don’t care what other people—”
    “Lord Parkhurst,” she insisted. “This morning was an aberration, for both of us. But I don’t regret it any more than Lady Ellerby regretted her affairs, and I’m not ashamed. It was something I needed, just once in my life, and you were kind enough to give it to me. But now it’s done. I won’t have it lead to any suffering.”
    “ Suffering ? Good Lord, is that how you see it? Being married to me?”
    Before she could say another word, he’d advanced on her again, wrapping an arm around her waist, spinning her to face him, and pushing her back against the cupboard.
    His hips pressed to hers.
    “Is this suffering?” he asked, and slipped his other hand inside her bodice, fitting his fingers around her breast.
    Bright arcs of sensation shot out from where he touched her, radiating throughout her body, sending little starbursts everywhere. Her eyes squeezed shut. She only realized she’d been holding a teacup when it fell from her grip and shattered on the slate.
    He ignored the crash.
    His hand lifted her breast so the nipple peeked above the cloth, and he fitted his mouth where his palm had been. He suckled her as he’d done that morning, and the sensation sent a throb between her legs.
    And he wasn’t stopping. His hands both went behind her and began tugging at the laces of her dress, even as his mouth continued drawing at her breast. Soon he had the top of her dress loosened enough to draw it down from her shoulders, baring her halfway down her rib cage. With hands and lips and tongue he pleasured her, moving from one nipple to the other, hungrily.
    She leaned back against the cupboard, boneless, molten. She wanted to sink to the floor with him, broken china or no. The only good she could imagine in this world would be for him to lift her skirts and touch her down there as well, and undo his trousers and sink himself inside of her.
    He was groaning now, his breathing grown frantic, and his hands reached down to grasp the fabric of her skirt. It would be so easy, so easy to surrender everything to him. To let him give himself to her, right here, right now, forever.
    But it wasn’t what he wanted—not really. He was a man. He could take his pleasure with any woman, her as well as another, once he put his hands on her. But so much more was at stake here.
    He thought he had to marry her. And he was a viscount, for pity’s sake. He needed a fashionable wife, a lovely creature who could run an aristocratic house and charm earls and waltz with dukes and host dinners for the Prince Regent himself. Not a little country mouse with a pale mouth and flat chest and no city manners.
    She couldn’t let him ruin his whole life over a few minutes’ animal indiscretion.
    Gathering all her strength, she pushed him away, hard.
    He looked startled, half in his trance again, confusion on his face.
    When he tried to move toward her again, she held out one hand to block him. She yanked her bodice back to a reasonable degree of modesty and drew herself up straight. The next question would be painful, for both of them, but he had to understand the point she was trying to make. “Do you love me?”
    Now he was flustered. “Mary….”
    She thought about the Miss Lawtons, with all their graces and physical charms. They were women designed to attract men’s love. She herself most certainly was not. “Listen to me,” she said. “There’s only one thing that matters here. Before this morning, before we went up on that hill, did you have the slightest thought in your head about asking me to marry you?”
    Every muscle in his face seemed to tighten. He nearly spoke, then stopped himself. The only possible answer was no , and they both knew it. “But we did go up on that hill!” he insisted.
    “ Before that happened, John. Did you have the slightest thought of choosing me for a wife? Be honest with me.”
    He stiffened his posture, pure gentleman and officer.