Page 63 of Impetuous

He pulled off onto the side of the road and stopped beneath a stand of trees. He turned to face her.

“Then why did you? Why did you trust the rumors over what you knew of me?”

“It was what Aunt Ardis told me. She said that everyone said you were a rake, a libertine. That you had even set up a house for your illegitimate children. I told her that it was absurd, but then, when we got to Haverly House, you and Lady Neville started talking about Silverwood, and I realized that there really was a house of children. And—and your mother called them ‘your children.’”

Philip groaned. “She didn’t mean that they were really my children. It was just an expression.”

“I realize that now. But I didn’t then. All I could think was that Aunt Ardis was right—that you really did have a house filled with your by-blows.”

“And that I had the audacity to set them up a few miles down the road from my mother and grandmother. How could you believe I would do that? How could you think that I have been spending my adult life procreating? Spreading my seed throughout England like a rutting bull, with no regard to consequences!”

“I didn’t see how not to believe it!” Cassandra retorted. “The evidence was there right under my nose. The house that Aunt Ardis had told me about. Your mother and Georgette calling them your children. What else was I supposed to think?”

“You could have come to me.” Anger burned brightly in his eyes. “You could have asked me if it was true.”

“I still wouldn’t have known the truth. If you were the sort of man who went about seducing and abandoning young ladies, why would you have hesitated to lie about it?”

“Why do you insist on my seducing young ladies? Even bastard children don’t necessarily mean I callously picked young innocents to dally with.”

“But that is what the rumors said. That is what Aunt Ardis told me—and if they were right about the house for bastard children, then it would imply that they were right about everything else. Aunt Ardis pointed out that it is more likely the young and innocent who get trapped with a baby. She said an older woman, an experienced, professional sort of woman, would know how to avoid it.” Cassandra blushed, but she looked up squarely into his eyes. “Besides, I knew, you see, how expert you were at the art of seduction. I—you—well, I had experienced your kisses.” Her voice faltered, but she pressed on. “I knew that you were a man of great passion, that you knew how to make a woman, uh…” She cleared her throat, her face aflame with embarrassment. “I knew that you had been seducing me.”

“I wasn’t!” he exclaimed. “I mean— Well, it wasn’t purposeful. It wasn’t calculated.” His voice dropped huskily. “I simply wanted you.”

Heat flooded Cassandra at his words, so raw and simple. She let out a shaky breath.

“I didn’t try to lure you into anything. I simply could not keep my hands off you.” His gaze flickered down over her body; then he looked back up at her face, eyes bright with lust. “I still can’t, God help me.”

He leaned forward then, his hand coming up to the back of her neck, and bent to kiss her.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HER MOUTH OPENED naturally to him, and her hands came up to cup his face. The very feel of his skin beneath her fingertips made her tremble: the warmth, the texture, the underlying hardness of his cheekbones and jaw. There was nothing else except this moment, this kiss, his arms around her. Their lips clung together, tongues intertwining fervently.

He broke off their kiss only to pick her up and lift her onto his lap, his arm going around her back to support her, and then his mouth found hers again. His free hand roamed her body, caressing her breasts through her clothes and moving down her stomach and over her hips and legs, then gliding back up to cup her breast. Cassandra’s skin was fiery everywhere he touched her, and she arched up against his hand, moaning, as he repeated the caresses. He groaned deep in his throat at her unconscious gesture of passion, and his lips dug harder into hers. Cassandra felt as though he might swallow her whole, as if her body were no longer her own but a wild thing that responded only to him. Strangely, the feeling was not frightening, but exciting, as if she were entering a world she had never known.

He unbuttoned her bodice, his fingers clumsy with haste and desire, and slipped his hand beneath the cloth, delving down beneath bodice and chemise to caress the soft orb of her breast. He pulled his mouth away, raining kisses across her face to her ear. Gently he took her earlobe between his teeth and began to worry it, and at the same moment his finger and thumb teased at her nipple. Desire slammed down through Cassandra and exploded in her abdomen. He continued to play with her nipple, rubbing and gently squeezing and pulling, until it was a hard, tight bud, and with every movement, moisture pooled hotly between her legs. Cassandra moved her hips unconsciously; she could hear her own panting breath, fast and loud.

“Cassandra…” he breathed, kissing his way down her soft white throat. His lips were searing, and his breath tickled her flesh, setting still more sensations spinning through her. She could feel the hardness of his masculinity pressing against her bottom, pulsing with desire. A hot ache grew between her legs, threatening to overwhelm her, and she squeezed her legs tightly together to try to ease it.

In answer, his hand went beneath her skirts and up her leg, gliding over her thigh, nothing between their flesh but the thin cotton of her undergarments. Then, shockingly, his hand was between her legs, pressing against the hot center of her ache. She knew he could feel the wetness and the heat of her, and it embarrassed her, but the shame was swept away under the intense pleasure of his touch. It was exactly what she had been inchoately longing for, and she whimpered at the fiery sensation.

His mouth continued its journey down her chest, and he nuzzled aside the bodice and chemise. His mouth fastened on her nipple. Cassandra drew a startled breath, amazed that the pleasure she was feeling could intensify. He suckled her nipple, surrounding it with heat and wetness, every pull of his mouth sizzling as if along a cord straight down into her abdomen. At the same time his hand pressed against the gate of her femininity, stroking in time to the pull of his mouth, and Cassandra trembled under the double force of delight. She was adrift and confused, wanting him to go on forever, yet feeling as if she might explode and fly apart as the pleasure escalated.

Her hands caressed his back and shoulders, and she realized that she wanted very much to feel his bare flesh beneath her hands, to touch him as he had touched her, to explore his neck and chest with her mouth. Her hand went to the nape of his neck, caressing the skin there, and he jerked and groaned at her touch. She breathed his name.

The horse whinnied and stamped its feet, moving restively, and Philip and Cassandra froze, the world around them suddenly intruding on their passion.

“Oh, God,” Philip groaned, laying his head against her chest and drawing in deep breaths. Reluctantly he drew his hand away from her legs and straightened. His eyes were ferally blazing, his face flushed and slack with desire. “Anyone could see us.”

He glanced around them at the road and the meadow beyond. “Christ, what was I thinking?” He let out a short laugh. “Obviously I was not thinking at all.”

Cassandra sat up shakily, sliding off his lap and back onto the seat beside him. Her face flamed with embarrassment as she thought of how exposed they had been to the passing world, and she began to button up her bodice with trembling fingers. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

“No,” he answered hoarsely. “’Twas not your fault. It was mine. Here I was, taking you to task for thinking me a seducer, and then I fall on you like a ravening animal.” He sighed and ran his hands over his face, hard, as if he could wipe out the passion still raging within him. “I seem to have no control around you.”

“I am the same with you,” Cassandra admitted honestly, and her words sent a fresh wave of heat through Philip.

“Lord, Cassandra.” He let out a shaky little laugh. “How do you expect a man to exercise willpower when you say things like that?”