Page 88 of All For You

He arched an eyebrow over glimmering eyes. “We’ll see.”

His confidence was so deep, a thought about his experience with other women intruded, and I was suddenly gripped by a deep, gouging crisis of confidence.

The bedroom was in silk and wool calm neutrals, and I wondered stupidly about Sophia, even though I knew the room had been designed by him and Tabitha.

“What are you thinking?” he said, pushing my hair off my face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m wondering if you and she were in this room together.”

“You’re the only woman who’s been in here. I moved rooms. This used to be my study, but the view was wasted because I needed the curtains drawn for my screens.”

“Seriously? You haven’t had any women here?” Hard to believe. I could imagine women throwing themselves at him all the time.

“Not here.”

My crisis of confidence then softened to shyness. “You mentioned the curtains. Shall we shut them?”

He looked me full in the eye, and what I saw there was a raw longing exposed like a live wire that hummed loudly under my skin.

“We could if you want,” he said. “I’d love to see you against the view, though, where you belong.”

I was glad I’d waited the week for this moment, because it felt like more now.

Assured, I glanced again to take more pleasure in the soft surroundings. He truly did have a stack of romance books on his bedstand. Ha. My stomach flipped. They were allmybooks. Despite how much I enjoyed him being wrapped around me, I couldn’t help but unravel myself to take a better look.

“You have, what?” I asked, running my finger down the spines. “Tenof my books stacked up. And what’s this?” I peered closer at some pages with handwriting on them. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have looked.”

Except it seemed as if he’d been making notes, but some words leaped out at me that made me blush. It still happened even though I was a romance writer. My own writing made me blush sometimes.

He kicked his shoe on the carpet bashfully. “Something I was inspired to write. But yes, feel free to go ahead and read it aloud.”

“He pulled her shirt off…” I read, and Darcy’s cheeks pinked slightly.

I read further on silently, making his foray into romance writing easier to process.

Her blue-stockinged beauty only made him feel more crazed with lust, his head filled with bees, his breeches tight. That perplexed little line she got between her brows when she was reading her medical tomes set his blood on fire. The way she impatiently tucked her errant curl behind an ear.

Errant.What a good word. Cute. He was actually great at this. Oh shit, he was getting dirtier.

He prowled up behind her in the library as she perched on the ladder, about to lift out a book on…men’s anatomy. “We could swap places on the ladder,” he growled out. “I’d be happy for you to examine the real deal.”

Her full examination and running commentary followed. I could feel myself blushing hard, an ache blooming in my lowerbelly. Oh jeez, Darcy. This was way past me—he was going five peppers. “Holy shit.”

“Hmm?” He crossed his arms and leaned toward me innocently.

“Darcy Wainwright. I’m shocked. Nice boys don’t write like this.”

He took the papers from my hand and dropped them. They fluttered to the floor as he pulled me into his arms. “Yes, they fucking do,” he rasped out.

“What did the rest say?” I challenged him.

“I haven’t exactly memorized those pages, but I’ll tell you the gist…”

He put his lips to my ear, and his breath buzzed hot, making me squirm. He ran his hands down my sides as he described how she then climbed up the ladder, and he ducked under her skirts andruinedher. I could feel my body tingle, ache, and heat until I was a full throbbing bundle of nerves.

“And then they lived happily ever after,” he said with a chaste kiss on my cheek.

“Oh God.” I was weak in the knees, and my bones had turned to jelly. “He grunts at me all weekend at the inn. And then we’re alone, and he has so much to say.”