The Rogue and I by Eva Devon Read Free Book Online Page A

hypnotic.
    She absolutely had to stare transfixed at the way his lips touched the glass, then how the muscles in his throat worked as he swallowed. Despite herself, she shivered ever so slightly. She couldn’t help it. She could still remember kissing his throat. Biting the tendons ever so teasingly and then working her way down to his beautifully hard chest.
    His neck, and what she could see of his muscled torso, was even more beautiful now that it had lost its last touches of boyishness. There was no mistake. Garret Hart was a man now, with a man’s power.
    “You, sir, are scandalous,” she hissed, but it wasn’t quite as condemning as she meant her hiss to be. If she were honest with herself, there was something breathy about her own voice. An invitation, urging him to drag her straight into scandal, no looking back.
    She glanced around the hall, nervous that her uncle might suddenly pop out from a shadow.
    “You are surprised madam?” He tilted his head to the side. Another hypnotic gesture which sent his black hair caressing his perfectly chiseled cheekbones. “I recall when you, too, knew a fair bit of scandal.”
    “That was before,” she said quickly, her voice a bare murmur because, with all her breathiness, her breath had now utterly escaped her. It was all she could do not to let her heart beat madly away, foolish as it was. It was as though his body was sending out some secret question to hers and her traitorous flesh knew exactly what answer she should give.
    “You sin no more?” He eyed her up and down, taking in her prim, white gown. “Pity.”
    “No, I do not,” she bit out, trying not to feel as if he’d somehow found her wanting. She didn’t want to be pitied by such a man as him. Specifically not him.
    He arched a dark brow, then took another swallow of the brandy, oh so slowly licking an errant drop from the rim of the glass. “How terribly sad.”
    It was more earth shattering than the day she had first met him and she had beckoned him to steal their first passionate kiss. For now, as a woman, a woman that he had helped to make, she knew exactly what his tongue could do upon another surface than glass.
    She opened her mouth to set him down, sure that she could lacerate him. But her wit seemed stymied by that one small gesture of his tongue.
    Abruptly, she closed her mouth. A deeply unpleasant thought rattled through her lust addled brain. Good God, did he pity her? “What exactly do you mean by that?”
    He shrugged, his muscles rippling beneath his thin, white shirt. “You used to have an unbridled love for life. It seems you have abandoned that.”
    She lifted her chin. “I have learned the errors of my youth.”
    Those errors had been forced upon her one by one. Making her pay for thinking that she could reach as high as a duke’s son for love. What she had done in the wake of their love affair did not bear remembering.
    He laughed softly, a whiskey and honey sound. “I am one of those errors, of course.”
    “Yes,” she said, her own voice dropping to a soft hum. Lord, this was dangerous territory. The last thing she wished was to discuss their tattered history (her own nearly tattered reputation) in her uncle’s hall.
    “Well,” he shrugged, “if it reassures you, you were one of mine.”
    His words hit her with surprising pain. How could he say such a thing? “Well and good that you’re rid of me, then.”
    A soft sound that might have been a blunted laugh issued from his skilled mouth. “Oh, I’ve never been quite rid of you, my dearest Miss Harriet. Who could?” He took another drink, this one nearly draining it to the dregs. His eyes pierced her, hard and wanting. “A woman like you.”
    A woman like her?
    “I don’t want to hear it,” she snapped. Harshly. She didn’t. The pain was coming back right along with the searing edge of the memory of their shared pleasure. It was not a memory she wished to be impaled upon again.
    Yes. All she had to do was remember