Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

" B ut you…or rather, in this case, we , have done nothing wrong," Lord Frontershire continued speaking. "We are both trapped in here together and…"

"And even if we protest and try to explain the misunderstanding, no good can come of this." She waved her hand at the closed door. "We are stuck here, and all we can do is pray a forgiving soul finds out and sets us free."

"You pray," Lord Frontershire said as he stepped away from the door. "I will occupy my time in a different way."

Lady Olivia was wholly disconcerted. She was still fretting over the situation with her mother, but she was also interested in what Lord Frontershire meant to do until they were rescued from this precarious situation.

She watched him wander to the bookshelf, pluck a volume from the lot, then carry it with him to the large desk that sat prominently placed near the back of the room. Lord Frontershire parted the curtains behind the desk, allowing moonlight to spill into the library, then, he circled back around the desk and perched on the edge of it, swinging his legs leisurely.

"While you join me, my lady?"

"Join you?" She stepped away from the door and sauntered slowly toward the desk. "But what do you intend to do?"

"Read, of course," he said, holding up the book and waggling it gently. "I do believe this is the book you dropped the other day… Gulliver's Travels ." He looked at her invitingly. "Shall we read it together?"

"I…I do not know," Olivia said slowly as she crept closer to him. "I only picked it from the shelf because it was something new, a book I had never ventured to read before. But now, I am not sure if I should like it."

His eyebrows shot up high on his forehead, and Lord Frontershire placed the book on the desk next to his thigh. "Shall we do something you might find more pleasurable?"

"Such as?" Olivia was surprised by her own daring. She knew right well what Lord Frontershire meant. She cursed herself for playing right into his hand, but that did not stop her from taking another step closer to him.

"What would you like to do, Lady Olivia?" he said in a low, husky growl. "You name it, and I shall deliver."

"We could try reading the book," Olivia whispered as she stood very close to him, so near that she was able to reach out and trace her fingertip along the spine of the book itself. "Or…"

"Or I could kiss you," he suggested in a voice that was hardly audible.

She turned her head slowly and met his eyes. She could see a fire burning in those bright orbs, tempting her fiendishly to say the words and allow him to possess her. "Do you wish to seduce me, my lord?"

He barked a quiet laugh. "As I said before, if I wanted to have you, Lady Olivia, I should not waste my time or yours with these games. I would simply make you mine."

"No one has ever spoken to me in such a manner before," she breathed.

"I imagine not," he returned, leaning closer to her but not touching his mouth to her skin. His lips hovered next to her ear, and her body quivered with anticipation. "Even in the sauciest novels you have ever perused, I imagine the gentlemen did not address the ladies thusly." She shook her head, feeling the softness of his lips as they grazed her earlobe. He continued speaking, "If you will permit it, Lady Olivia, I will show you all the things you never even dreamed possible."

In a trembling voice, she whispered, "Do you want to show me all those things, Lord Frontershire? Do you want to…"

"It is not a matter of wanting, my lady," he whispered as his tongue flicked out and caressed her earlobe. "I need to have you. My body cries out for you, and I cannot rest until I hear you scream my name."

"John," she breathed.

He buried his head in her neck, laying his lips against the softest part of her throat, then he sucked hard.

"Ah!" she gasped. "John!"

"Louder," he growled before lowering his head once more and leaving a hot trail of kisses from her earlobe all the way down to the neckline of her exquisite silk gown. He used his teeth to pull the dress lower, and as he nuzzled his lips directly in the crevice created by her bosoms, Olivia tipped her head back, relishing the way he alternately used the rough side of his tongue and the smooth coolness of his lips to tantalize her.

She wanted to taste those same lips, to feel them on her own, so she pleaded, "John, please. Kiss me."

"With pleasure." And just as he was wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing the entire length of their bodies together?—

Olivia heard someone shout.