Sylvia Day - [Georgian 01] by Ask For It Read Free Book Online Page A

curved around the knob. “My brother is at home.”
    “Good for him.” He crossed the broad expanse of Aubusson rug in a few strides and lifted her bare fingertips to his lips. Her skin felt exquisite, the scent of her arousing. His tongue darted out to lick between her fingers and he watched as her pupils widened and the irises darkened. Marcus brought her hand to his heart and held it there. “Now that your mourning is over, do you intend to return to your own residence?”
    Her gaze narrowed. “That would ease matters for you, wouldn’t it?”
    “Certainly breakfast in bed and afternoon trysts would be facilitated by a more private arrangement,” he replied easily.
    Yanking her hand from his grip, Elizabeth turned her back to him. Marcus bit back his smile.
    “Considering your obvious distaste for me,” she muttered, “I cannot understand why you desire to become intimate.”
    “Physical proximity does not necessitate intimacy.”
    Her shoulders stiffened beneath the fall of her dark hair. “Ah yes,” she sneered. “You have proven that fact again and again, have you not?”
    Flicking an imaginary piece of lint from his ruffled cuffs, Marcus walked to the settee and adjusted his coat before sitting. He refused to show his irritation at the censure he heard in her tone. Guilt was something he didn’t require, he felt it often enough on his own. “I became what you once accused me of being. What would you have had me do, love? Go mad thinking of you? Longing for you?”
    He sighed dramatically, hoping to goad her into facing him. It was a simple pleasure, gazing upon her features, but after four years it was a delight he needed as much as air. “I am truly not surprised to learn that, given the choice, you would have denied me what little solace I could find, cruel-hearted creature that you are.”
    Elizabeth spun about, revealing cheeks stained bright with color. “You blame me ?”
    “Who else is there to blame?” He opened his snuff box and took a small pinch. “It should have been you in my arms all these years. Instead, every time I bedded another woman I hoped she would be the one to make me forget you. But they never did. Not one.” He snapped the lid shut.
    Her nostrils flared on a swiftly indrawn breath.
    “Often I would turn down the lamps and close my eyes. I would pretend it was you beneath me, you with whom I shared sexual congress.”
    “Damn you.” Her hands clenched into tiny fists. “Why did you have to become just like my father?”
    “You would have me be a monk?”
    “Better that than a libertine!”
    “While you sated another man’s needs and suffered not at all?” He strove to appear calm and unaffected while every fiber of his being stood tense and expectant. “Did you think of me, Elizabeth, in your marriage bed? Were you ever haunted by dreams of me? Did you ever wish it were my body covering yours, filling yours? My sweat coating your skin?”
    She stood frozen in place for a long moment, and then suddenly her lush mouth curved in a come-hither smile that made his gut clench. He’d known when the butler allowed him entry that Elizabeth was no longer willing to hide or run. He’d girded himself inwardly for a fight. A sexual assault, however, had never crossed his mind. Would he never understand her?
    “Would you like me to tell you about my marriage bed, Marcus?” she purred. “Would you like to hear the many ways Hawthorne took me? What he liked best, what he craved? Hmmm? Or would you prefer to hear how I like it? How I prefer to be taken?”
    Elizabeth strolled toward him with a deliberate sway to her hips that made his mouth dry. In all of his dealings with her she’d never been the sexual aggressor. He was profoundly disturbed at how it aroused him, especially considering the last four years had been spent indulging in liaisons instigated by his lovers and not the reverse.
    It didn’t help that his reluctant passion was engaged by her words and the images