Chapter 9

L ivian didn’t press him. Though curious, she appeared content with Latimer sharing—or not sharing—whatever parts of himself he did.

Ah.

At last, Latimer discovered for himself the sincerity of his unlikely partner for the night. More comfortable sharing parts of herself than he’d ever known a person could be, Livian, proved with her openness she wasn’t the threat he’d begun to take her for.

And the ease with which he’d already revealed far more than he ought, proved dangerous in its own right.

Latimer pushed his chair back and stood.

Livian craned her neck to look at him.

Such confusion and disappointment mingled in those mesmerizing, aquamarine pools he found himself besieged by an all-powerful yearning to remain.

Which is precisely why you have to get the hell away from innocent Miss Livian Lovelace, as quick as possible.

“It’s late,” he said quietly; that reminder more for himself than the innocent beauty before him.

“Yes.” Reluctantly, she stood.

Proving to be a coward for the first time in his life, Latimer avoided her gaze.

Heading around the table, he reached for her bags, just as she meant to pick them up.

“What—?”

“I can carry them,” he said, curiously noting the tattered valises with their old, wood, handles.

“With everything I shared about myself this night, Lachlan, I trust you can see I’m more than capable of fetching my own things?”

The amusement in her voice brought his focus back to her.

Giving him a pointed look, Livian stretched both hands out, and crooked her fingers.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it, sweetheart,” he drawled. “You’re the one whose insisting on calling me a gentleman, and, as such, I’m kinda feeling compelled to do the gentlemanly thing.”

Livian laughed; her musical, lyrical, mirth, scaring the everlasting hell out of him with how bloody good it sounded and made him feel.

“Very well, good sir,” she said through his tumult. The enchantress sank into a flourishing curtsy. “I will permit you to carry my belongings.”

Wrestling for equanimity, Latimer offered an equally flourishing bow he’d seen enough priggish lords deliver to other gents in his clubs.

He and Livian laughed at the ridiculousness of it, and just like that, he found himself restored to an even plane.

After she’d collected the key and her worn book, they headed above stairs. When they reached the door that’d led to this curious night, Livian unlocked the panel.

They lingered on the threshold.

Latimer cleared his throat. “I should set these inside and fetch my belongings, if that is all right?”

“Yes! Please. Of course.” Her words came fast. “I trust if you’d intended me harm, when we were strangers and not friends would have been the time to do so. Please .”

He faintly registered the click as she closed that door.

Friends…

As he hurried to return Livian’s bags, that particular word rolled around his mind.

How bloody trusting. It was a wonder the world hadn’t eaten her whole and feasted on her delicate remains.

As for Latimer? He didn’t have a friend. He’d thought he did in his former partners. He couldn’t have been more wrong. If those three hadn’t been true friends, then no one would be.

While he packed up his stuff, he felt Livian following his each and every move.

When he’d finished, he took one last glance about; his gaze came to rest on the bed where he’d roused Livian from her soundly snoring sleep. That charged meeting could’ve been a year, hell, a lifetime ago, for how much that’d happened, and all they’d shared, and not the mere hours it’d been.

This night had been one of insanity—one where time had stood still, and he’d let his guard down, and the reality facing him at the end of his travels, were forgotten.

“You can stay…”

That was surely why Latimer even now heard that shy, softly spoken offer from Miss Livian Lovelace.

He swung his gaze over to her. His head knew her offer pure, but that didn’t stop his body from instantly responding to the idea of bedding her.

“Not in the same bed,” she blurted, her heart-shaped cheeks bathed in their customary pink blush. She pointed past him. “That is, there’s blankets and extra pillows, and you can sleep there.”

Latimer followed her point over to the hearth.

“Or I can sleep there,” she stammered, her color deepening. “After all, it was your room first.”

Every last purely primal, savagely male, urged him to stay…and do far more.

He grunted. Of all the times to discover he had more morals than he’d ever believed himself capable of.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, darlin’.”

“Why?”

She looked at him with unblinking innocence.

If he told her the truth, she’d have launched another feisty attack his way.

“Sweetheart, you’re going to be married.” As am I…

Both of those realities sent tension whipping through him.

The latter mattered a whole lot less. He and the duchess knew precisely the cold, emotionless arrangement they were entering into. But that some other fellow, a fancy lord, at that, would be the one to initiate the delectable, enthusiastic Livian Lovelace to sex left an acrid sting upon his tongue.

“You must think me forward,” she whispered, mistaking the reason for his tense silence. Livian’s face fell, and it was like she’d plucked the sun from the heavens and left the whole world dark. “Forgive m—”

“It’s fine,” he said, gruffly. “Do not beat yourself up, darlin’. It was…is…a generous offer. Nothing improper about it.” Just one that, if accepted, could lead to all manner of improper things.

“You know that isn’t true,” she whispered.

Christ, she truly still didn’t realize how much he admired her for carrying herself different than the ladies whose company he was heading to after this interlude.

Livian’s features froze. “ You’re married.”

“No!” Not yet… “I know you and I are more practical than bothered by propriety, Livian,” he said. “We both know what it is to be without a roof or food, and that’s what compelled you.”

“And yet,” her voice dripped with self-abasement, “you were the one to not only recognize the impropriety of my offer and decline, whereas I thought nothing of—”

“I’ll stay,” he cut her off.

Livian’s mouth remained open from the rest of her unfinished sentence.

Latimer locked his gaze on hers. “Before I do, though, sweetheart, there’s something you need to know.” He crossed over to the uncharacteristically silenced, wide-eyed minx.

Latimer didn’t mince words. “You called me a friend, but I’m not that, Livian,” he said bluntly. “I’m just a hot-blooded man who, in our short time together, has had way too many thoughts about all the things I’d like to do to you and with you.”

Near as he was to her, he caught the slight intake of her breath.

He placed his lips close to her ear and whispered, “If you’re extending that generous offer,” he growled, nipping lightly at the satiny soft shell, “then you should know, I’m not a friend sleeping in the corner, but a real man who’d love nothing more than to have you in my arms.”

He waited for her impressive rush of fury and inventive curses ordering his contemptible arse from her sight.

“Oh.”

As such, her breathy exhalation and riveted gaze sent the fire in him burning several degrees hotter.

“Y-Yes,” she said weakly. “Well, I b-believe with your latest display of honesty, I only trust you all the more, Lachlan.”

He edged back a fraction and ran his heated stare over her flushed face. “That’s the conclusion you reached, love?”

Livian nodded.

How trusting and how utterly wild how potent that aphrodisiac was.

His gaze slipped to her lush mouth, and in a flash, he painted a thousand pictures in his mind of all the things he wanted to do with her cupid’s bow lips; all the ways he wanted to feast upon them.

His desire soared—as did his erection.

Not for the first time, he found himself starting to understand the madness that’d compelled his former partners.

“What is it?” she whispered, breathless.

She didn’t know the danger she found herself in.

Latimer shot his right hand out, and gripped her hip hard, eliciting a short, convulsive, gasp. “I’m thinking if you don’t head over to your bed this instant, I’m going to kiss you until there isn’t a breath left in your body, darlin’.”

To emphasize just how much, he sank his fingers more deeply into her soft flesh.

Livian, instead of running as she ought, or ordering him gone, bit her lower lip. Her lashes fluttered.

“I…I’ve never been kissed,” she confessed, that susurration, a tremor of vulnerability in her voice, barely louder than the rustle of leaves in a quiet wind.

I’ve never been kissed.

Latimer’s pulse filled his ears. “Never?”

She gave her head an unsteady shake. “N-No.”

Her un-kissed state would end the moment she reached whatever destination she was headed to, and whichever lord who’d claim her as his wife.

A red curtain of rage descended over Latimer’s vision; a primal possessiveness to be the first to claim this unsullied, spirited, clever, beauty, consumed him.

“Don’t say you weren’t warned,” he said, roughly.

With that, Latimer buried her mouth under his. He kissed her fully, deeply, and without restraint or apology.

Livian’s slender, gently curved body, went motionless; and then with a little sigh, she melted against him.

The feel of her sweet surrender threatened to drive him mad with lust. The innocent, trusting way she surrendered to Latimer, however, terrified the everlasting hell out of him.

“Like I said, sweetheart,” he rasped harshly, against her lips, “I’m no gentleman. I don’t kiss like one and I certainly don’t fuck like one.”

To bring home his point, Latimer filled his palms with her lush buttocks.

Instead of the expected revulsion, Livian whimpered and bucked her hips into him—or, she attempted to.

Latimer kept a punishing hold on her, denying her and her hungry body the freedom to writhe as it so desperately needed to.

“Lachlan,” she begged.

He rewarded her pleadings by slacking his hold enough that she could rock her supple hips, but still kept her wanting.

Her needy body squirmed, as she thrust wildly and desperately at the air.

All the while, he slanted his mouth over hers, again and again.

Livian, timid and uncertain, struggled to meet his potent demand, and instead of being turned off, his hungering for this intrepid woman only grew in bounds.

Finding a prurient pleasure in being the first to taste of Livian Lovelace, he gentled his kiss; he took his time, teaching her and alternately, letting her learn from him.

And God, how she did; each small lesson he’d just imparted, she put into practice. This time, as he slanted his mouth over hers, she kissed him in return.

Latimer massaged her buttocks. “Scared yet, darlin’?” he panted.

“Stunned,” she whispered, between each meeting of their lips. “I never knew a kiss could be like this.”

It wasn’t like this. Not ever before.

A mere kiss had never moved him, the way this woman’s did now. He’d let himself deal with that terrifying thought later. Now, not even God himself could make Latimer surrender this moment.

Climbing up on tiptoes, Livian wrapped her arms about his neck, squirming and fighting his hard grip, until she’d managed to press her body against his, and she at last got what she craved.

She rocked her hips wildly and frantically; this time, her desperate gyrations brought her body flush with his aching cock.

So beautifully uninhibited, Latimer found his unflagging—until now—self-control flagging.

A lust-filled groan built deep inside him.

Livian instantly stopped. Her cheeks were bright red from their embrace and a glossy sheen to her skin.

Indecision clouded her desire-filled eyes. “Did I do something wrong?”

Strained, pained laughter, rumbled past his lips. “Livian, when it comes to making love, there’s not a thing you could do wrong.”

That held true for her, and her alone.

She brightened like he’d just delivered the prettiest compliment, closed her eyes, and leaned up, and in, asking with her body for him to continue.

He tensed.

And fuck it all, with the slight break in their embrace, reality reared its head.

Letting a stream of black curses silently fly, he edged Livian out of his arms and took a step away.

Her impossibly long lashes fluttered wildly, and when she managed to fully open them and look at Latimer, confusion filled their expressive depths.

Latimer grunted. “If I don’t stop now, darlin’, the only way this ends is with me between your legs, and my cock buried deep inside you.”

If he were a better man, a respectable one, maybe he could have couched his vulgar language. But she belonged so far outside his league, he didn’t even bother to try.

Livian trembled; her lips formed a soft moue. “O-Oh.”

As anticipated, shock and gentle embarrassment met his crudeness.

Latimer went, fetched his things, and headed for the door.

She called out softly after him. “Where are you going?”

He stopped in his tracks and cast a questioning glance over his shoulder.

“You were going to stay.”

Had it not been for the nervous way she fisted her skirts and the uncertainty in her eyes and voice, he’d have believed hers an invitation of a different sort—of one he really, really wanted it to be.

Latimer managed a smile. “I think, given the recent turn of events, you’d have a change of heart, darlin’.”

She shook her head. “No. It’s…fine. You are welcome to stay.”

Run and fast.

Staying here could only lead to further complications, and the last thing he could afford in his life was more complications.

And yet, he slowly nodded, and prepared to settle in, knowing he couldn’t help himself from making that very worst, terrible, mistake.