Mayhem and the Marquess by Win Hollows

Author:Win Hollows [Hollows, Win]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Evernight Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Ivy didn’t want to open the letter that had arrived for her that morning.

She wanted to lie about in bed all day thinking about what Ash had done to her the night before. The way he’d kissed her, held her, whispered things that made her want to float away and sink through the floor in embarrassment at the same time.

And his hands…

She pressed her face into her pillow to hold in the sound that was equal parts bemoaning and celebration.

It shouldn’t have been allowed. With a few flicks of his talented fingers, he had formed her into a state in which she would have let him do anything at all to her.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out why women wanted the man like cats after cream. He was positively gifted at manipulating the female form, at least from what she could tell in her limited experience.

A thought occurred to her. Maybe he was terrible at it, and she just didn’t know it because she had nothing to compare him to.

She snorted, pushing her hair from her eyes and resituating the covers around her shoulders.

Not likely. Every time they had been in public, she had noticed women trying to gain his attention, and the things that were said about him in the clusters of women along ballroom edges was confirmation of his abilities.

Who was she to think she could resist such a man when he wanted her?

And he did seem to want her. It wasn’t fathomable that he would desire her, of all people. She wasn’t alluring or knowledgeable or even just respectable. But every time they were near one another, a fire seemed to build till it burst into flames that neither of them could control.

Yet she had to resist him. There was no future with someone like him. He had explained that to her clearly on more than one occasion. She didn’t understand his reasons, but he seemed adamant about them, nonetheless.

That was what she couldn’t figure out. One moment, he was carefree and excited with her, and the next, a heaviness came over him, and he shut down to everyone around him. Something he had said repeated in her mind.

“…until the madness finally comes for me,” he’d said.

What did that mean? His mind was sharp as a tack, and she’d never seen him act like a candidate for Bedlam. He did say he got megrims, but that was a common enough ailment and didn’t signify a mental illness.

No matter what it was that troubled him so deeply, he had convinced himself that he needed to bear the burden alone. If he was determined to go through life having superficial interactions with women, she wouldn’t allow her heart to be a casualty of that decision. She knew herself too well to think she could continue to play with fire and not be burned. Every kiss, every caress that meant nothing to him would singe her soul until it was black with bitterness.

Besides that, she had her own demons to contend with.

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