The Madness of Viscount Atherbourne (Rescued from Ruin, Book One) by Elisa Braden Read Free Book Online Page A

it deliberately to get under her skin did not
prevent her shiver of pleasure. “We … we haven’t time for games, my
lord.”
    “Who said I was playing?”
    Her breathing grew faster. His eyes were so
beautiful—a dark, stormy gray, lighter toward the center with black
rings around the irises. She finally knew the color of his eyes.
That seemed important, somehow.
    Shaking her head to dispel the sudden fog of
sensual awareness, she swallowed hard and said, “I am asking why
marriage to you would be better than other alternatives, Lord
Atherbourne. I am not without options, you know.”
    “Oh, yes. Your options. Banishment to the
Continent or America, perhaps? An isolated life as a country
spinster? Was that what you dreamed of as a girl when you imagined
your future?”
    “You know very well it was not,” she
snapped.
    He sat forward, leaning toward her with his
hands on his thighs, all traces of indolence gone as the full
intensity of his personality came to the fore. “And what about
being the Marchioness of Stickley, hmm? Did you imagine yourself
the wife of a man who could not even be bothered to kiss you
properly?”
    “Leave Lord Stickley out of this.”
    “Very well. You asked what being my wife
would entail. The answer is much the same as what being Stickley’s
wife would have entailed. Except that, as my wife, you will
never for one moment doubt that I want you.”
    Shocked by his declaration, she felt herself
panting, the air sawing in and out at an embarrassing rate. But she
could not hear it over her pounding heart, the sound as loud in her
ears as the ocean on a rocky shore. “You w-want me?” she asked
faintly.
    Ignoring her response, he continued, “I would
never choose to spend time hunting or regaling the gents at
Boodle’s about my hounds when I could spend it making love to my
new wife.”
    “Oh, that’s not … you … making … oh.”
    “Furthermore, should you marry me, you would
never again be vulnerable to the kind of scandal you were caught up
in several nights ago.”
    Her hands, moist and shaking, tightened where
they rested on the arms of the chair. “I believe we’ve already
established that this would help lessen the scandal.”
    He grinned. “Oh, but that is not why it would
never happen again. As your husband, it would be my duty to see you
so well pleasured that no other man could possibly have anything to
offer you. Therefore, you would not be lured into any illicit
rendezvous or stolen moments of passion. Except with me, of
course.”
    Flustered and breathless, she rose and paced
across the carpet to a spot between a settee and a low,
marble-topped table. He is a devil, she thought. A devil
with the face of an angel. And I am a fool—worse, utterly mad—to
fall prey to his intoxicating words. Because she did not simply
feel drawn to him, this conductor of her destruction. She longed for him, yearned for the right to trace his lips with
her bare fingers, to stroke his injured cheek, to feel his tongue
slide wickedly inside her mouth, the way it had before.
    Turning to face him, she was startled to find
him no more than a foot away. He was so tall, he fairly loomed over
her, close enough to touch. Breathe, Victoria. Despite the
inner admonition, it took her a moment to respond to his litany of
contrasts between what marriage to Lord Stickley would have been
and what it would mean to be Lady Atherbourne. His bride.
“And if I were caught with another man, my lord?” she asked,
not because she thought it a real possibility, but simply to see
what he would say.
    He didn’t appear to like the question. Not at
all. His face grew hard and shuttered, his smile fading, his lips
settling into a grim line. “I think it best not to contemplate what
I would do in that instance.”
    For a moment, her entire being paused,
waiting for the answer to her next question. “Would … would you
hurt me?”
    His response was immediate and emphatic: “No.
Never.”
    She believed him.