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Authors: Beverley Kendall
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him from pushing it quietly open and peering inside to soak in the sight of his son , for Alex was certain Nicholas was asleep on the other side.
But he could only permit his imprudence to lead him so far astray and Alex could not be selfish and risk waking him. Now that he knew of Nicholas’s existence, they had a lifetime at their disposal to become properly acquainted in the manner of fathers and sons.
Alex turned from the door and soundlessly entered the narrowed hall of the servants’ sleeping quarters and then proceeded down the stairs to the ground floor.
Five minutes later, he was riding down the narrow trail in the rear of the house that led to his property miles down the road. The night was cool, the air the kind one welcomed when drawing a breath.
She had cried his name in her sleep. God, he wished he’d never heard it. The sound had shocked him, and his heart had skipped a beat. For a moment, he’d been taken back to that time before she’d left him. He’d loved her mindlessly then, but his feelings had left him vulnerable, blind and weak. And what had he gotten for opening himself so completely? Abandoned and betrayed.
When he saw the light of his residence up in the distance, Alex spurred Shalais into a gallop with the slight pressure of his knees on his flanks. The greater distance he put between them, the better. He could already see—feel—the effect she had on him.
His mistake had been in kissing her, touching her. His mouth tightened grimly while his pulse reacted like a fickle lover, quickening at the memory. For the last two years, he’d prided himself on his control. She hadn’t been in town for a day and he was instantly taken back to the one time in his life he’d ever gone mad over a woman.
One woman and his one big mistake. An ache started in his chest.
These past five years women had come and gone from his life without eliciting even a fraction of what Charlotte did with so little effort. Which made her dangerous in a way he resented deeply.
I should not have kissed her.
But there she’d sat, her fisted hands clutching her cover tight against her breasts, her mouth parted looking too rosy, her bottom lip shiny from the constant swipe of her tongue.
He’d kissed her to prove to himself she meant nothing to him. That after all these years, he felt nothing for her. Not even lust in its most basic form. Bloody hell, he hadn’t expected her to kiss him back. Not to open up as she’d done.
The ache in his chest drifted lower until it inconveniently settled between his thighs. Alex squelched the memory of the kiss. He couldn’t afford to dwell there.
What he’d learned tonight was that his feelings for her were complex as well as wholly unwanted and patently unfair. He did not like her. No, he wasn’t that addled in the brain. But there still existed a physical attraction for her that frankly shamed him. After all she’d done, he simply could not believe his body had let him down. Hadn’t God given man superior brains for precisely that purpose? Men were not animals, led about like a show horse by their cocks.
It would have been more merciful if she’d simply betrayed and abandoned him. Instead, she’d impaled his heart on the head of a very sharp pike…then wrenched it from his body because cleaving it nearly in two hadn’t wreaked quite enough damage.
The air felt colder now and the night sky was relieved of complete darkness by the light of the quarter moon. Pulling up on the reins as they neared the stables, Alex brought Shalais to a sedate walk.
He’d let his heart and body rule him when he’d courted her, made love to her, gotten on his knee and asked her to marry him. He wouldn’t ever be that naïve again. In all his future dealings with Charlotte Rutherford, they would play by his rules and currently the only thing he wanted from her was his son.
Chapter Five
“Did you not sleep well last night? Was the bed not to your liking?”
But he could only permit his imprudence to lead him so far astray and Alex could not be selfish and risk waking him. Now that he knew of Nicholas’s existence, they had a lifetime at their disposal to become properly acquainted in the manner of fathers and sons.
Alex turned from the door and soundlessly entered the narrowed hall of the servants’ sleeping quarters and then proceeded down the stairs to the ground floor.
Five minutes later, he was riding down the narrow trail in the rear of the house that led to his property miles down the road. The night was cool, the air the kind one welcomed when drawing a breath.
She had cried his name in her sleep. God, he wished he’d never heard it. The sound had shocked him, and his heart had skipped a beat. For a moment, he’d been taken back to that time before she’d left him. He’d loved her mindlessly then, but his feelings had left him vulnerable, blind and weak. And what had he gotten for opening himself so completely? Abandoned and betrayed.
When he saw the light of his residence up in the distance, Alex spurred Shalais into a gallop with the slight pressure of his knees on his flanks. The greater distance he put between them, the better. He could already see—feel—the effect she had on him.
His mistake had been in kissing her, touching her. His mouth tightened grimly while his pulse reacted like a fickle lover, quickening at the memory. For the last two years, he’d prided himself on his control. She hadn’t been in town for a day and he was instantly taken back to the one time in his life he’d ever gone mad over a woman.
One woman and his one big mistake. An ache started in his chest.
These past five years women had come and gone from his life without eliciting even a fraction of what Charlotte did with so little effort. Which made her dangerous in a way he resented deeply.
I should not have kissed her.
But there she’d sat, her fisted hands clutching her cover tight against her breasts, her mouth parted looking too rosy, her bottom lip shiny from the constant swipe of her tongue.
He’d kissed her to prove to himself she meant nothing to him. That after all these years, he felt nothing for her. Not even lust in its most basic form. Bloody hell, he hadn’t expected her to kiss him back. Not to open up as she’d done.
The ache in his chest drifted lower until it inconveniently settled between his thighs. Alex squelched the memory of the kiss. He couldn’t afford to dwell there.
What he’d learned tonight was that his feelings for her were complex as well as wholly unwanted and patently unfair. He did not like her. No, he wasn’t that addled in the brain. But there still existed a physical attraction for her that frankly shamed him. After all she’d done, he simply could not believe his body had let him down. Hadn’t God given man superior brains for precisely that purpose? Men were not animals, led about like a show horse by their cocks.
It would have been more merciful if she’d simply betrayed and abandoned him. Instead, she’d impaled his heart on the head of a very sharp pike…then wrenched it from his body because cleaving it nearly in two hadn’t wreaked quite enough damage.
The air felt colder now and the night sky was relieved of complete darkness by the light of the quarter moon. Pulling up on the reins as they neared the stables, Alex brought Shalais to a sedate walk.
He’d let his heart and body rule him when he’d courted her, made love to her, gotten on his knee and asked her to marry him. He wouldn’t ever be that naïve again. In all his future dealings with Charlotte Rutherford, they would play by his rules and currently the only thing he wanted from her was his son.
Chapter Five
“Did you not sleep well last night? Was the bed not to your liking?”
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