The Earl of Christmas Past (A Goode Girls Romance Book 5) by Kerrigan Byrne

Author:Kerrigan Byrne [Byrne, Kerrigan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

John leaned back and let his admission crash into the space between them, overflowing it with heady, carnal, unspoken reveries. His. Hers. All amalgamating into one frustrated frequency of need.

All the chaos of the common room had gone quiet, no doubt Bess had kicked everyone to their beds. In this abandoned corner of the structure, he and the comely Miss Latimer might have believed they were the only two people in the whole of the Highlands.

John watched her intently as she stared—or rather—glared at him. Unblinking. Her chest rose and fell beneath the high-necked blouse as she very distinctly did not allow herself to look down.

She’d have found the answer to her question if she had, straining against the placket of his trousers.

However, after what he’d just discovered about her, he realized he might have been too forward. Might have overwhelmed a woman who’d only just been harangued by undesirables.

He closed his eyes and stepped back, allowing her space. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Squirming with shame and regret, she instantly buried her face in her hands. “No. That is—the fault is mine. I asked you the vulgar question. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”

“I order you to stop feeling shame,” he said with a stern frown.

She looked up at him askance. “You can’t command emotions, that’s not how they work.”

“I can and I will,” he shot back, looking to goad her past her mortification. “I insist the blame for our—indelicate interaction be placed on my shoulders. I’ve forever been a man too plain of speech. Too blunt and coarse and forbidding. It made for a successful Lieutenant Colonel, a mediocre nobleman, and well… ripe shit at relationships.”

The tremulous tilt at the corner of her mouth told him his candor was working. “Which relationships?” she queried, her relentless curiosity returning. “With women, you mean?”

“’Twas doubtless why I remained a bachelor at five and thirty. I assumed one took a wife like one took a hill in combat. It was all strategy and espionage, if not an all-out battle. I was built to win, not woo, and I frightened many a maidenly noble lady into the arms of some gentler, more civilized man.”

She wrinkled her nose at that rather adorably. He wasn’t certain how to interpret the expression, but that didn’t stop him from continuing, if only to put conversational space between their previous fraught interaction.

He marched around her, exploring the space of his chamber with his hands clasped behind him. He did his best not to prowl like the predator he was. To draw his tense shoulders away from his ears. “My social ineptitude reached past the fairer sex to anyone, really. My parents. My brother, James. Even after everything, he came to claim my remains all those years ago. Or perhaps he only returned for the ring, and taking my benighted bones back to the de Lohr crypts was an afterthought, though I couldn’t say I’d blame him.”

“The ring?” She grasped onto the one subject he’d only mentioned as an afterthought.

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