It just wasn’t something he cared to partake of. Not toward others, and certainly not toward himself.
If she hadn’t asked him…If she hadn’t looked up with those huge, bottomless eyes and whispered, “Kiss me,” he would never have done it. It was a piss-poor excuse and he knew it, but there was some consolation in the knowledge that he had not initiated the encounter.
Some, but not much. For all his sins, he wasn’t that much of a liar.
“I’m sorry I asked,” she said stiffly.
He felt like a heel. “I didn’t have to comply,” he responded, but not nearly as graciously as he ought.
“Clearly I’m irresistible,” she muttered.
He shot her a sharp look. Because she was. She had the body of a goddess and the smile of a siren. Even now, it was taking every ounce of his will not to throw himself at her. Knock her to the ground. Kiss her again…and again…
He shuddered. This wasnot good.
“You should go,” she said.
He managed to sweep his arm forward in a gentlemanly motion. “After you.”
Her eyes widened. “I’m not going back there first.”
“Do you really think I’m going to go in there and leave you alone on the heath?”
She planted her hands on her hips. “Youkissed me without knowing my name.”
“You did the same,” he sniped back.
Her mouth opened into an indignant gasp, and Sebastian felt an alarming satisfaction at having bested her. Which was further unsettling. He adored a good verbal interplay, but it was a dance, for God’s sake, not a bloodycompetition .
For an endless moment they stared each other down, and Sebastian wasn’t sure whether he was waiting
for her to blurt out her name or demand that he reveal his.
He rather suspected she was wondering the same thing.
But she said nothing, just glowered at him.
“Contrary to my recent behavior,” he finally said, because one of them had to act in a mature fashion, and he rather suspected it ought to be he, “I am a gentleman. And as such, I cannot in good conscience abandon you to the wilderness.”
Her brows rose, and she glanced this way and that. “You call this the wilderness?”
He started to wonder just what it was about this girl that had made him so crazy. Because by God, she could be annoying when she set her mind to it.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, with enough urbane sophistication to make him feel a bit more like himself. “Clearly I misspoke.” He smiled at her, blandly.
“What if that couple is still…” Her words trailed off as she waved her hand at the side lawn.
Sebastian let out an aggravated breath. If he were alone—which was what he should have been—he’d have toddled back onto the lawn with a cheerful, “Coming through! Anyone who is not with a person to whom they have a legal obligation, kindly make yourself scarce!”
It would have been delicious. And precisely what society expected of him.
But impossible with an unmarried lady in tow.
“They are almost certainly gone,” he said, even as he approached the opening in the hedge and peered out. Turning back, he added, “And if not, they don’t want to be seen any more than you do. Put your head down and barrel through.”
“You seem to have a great deal of experience with such things,” she stated.
“A great deal.” Well, he did.
“I see.” Her jaw went stiff, and he suspected that if he were closer he could hear her teeth grinding together. “How fortunate I must be,” she said. “I’m being taught by a master.”
“Lucky you.”
“Are you always this horrid with women?”
“Almost never,” he said without thinking.
Her lips parted, and he felt like kicking himself. She hid it well—clearly, she was a young woman of quick emotional reflexes—but before her surprise turned to indignation, he saw a flash of unadulterated hurt.
“What I meant,” he began, not quite fighting the urge to groan, “is that when I…No. Whenyou …”
She looked at him expectantly. He had no idea what to say. And he realized, as he stood there like an idiot, that there were at least ten reasons why this was a wholly unacceptable scenario.
One:He had no idea what to say. This might seem repetitive, except thatTwo: He always knew what to say, andThree: especially with women.
Which led rather conveniently toFour: A happy by-product of his glibness wasFive: he’d never insulted a woman in his life, not unless she truly deserved it, whichSix: this woman didn’t. Which meant thatSeven: He needed to apologize andEight: He had no idea how to do so.
A facility with apologies would depend upon a propensity to behave in a manner requiring them. Which he did not. It was one of the few things in his life of which he was inordinately proud.
But this brought him back toNine: He had no idea what to say, andTen: Something about this girl had turned him absolutely stupid.
Stupid.
How did the rest of humanity endure it, this awkward silence in the face of a woman? Sebastian found it intolerable.
“You asked me to kiss you,” he said. It wasn’t the first thing that came to mind, but it was the second.
From her gasp—which he suspected was large enough to change the tides—he had a feeling he should have waited for the seventh, at least.
“Are you accusing me of—” She cut herself off, her lips clamping together in an angry, frustrated line. “Well, whatever it is…that…you’re accusing me…” And then, just when he thought she’d given up, she finished with, “of.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” he said. “I’m merely pointing out that you wanted a kiss, and I obliged and…”
And what? Whatwas he pointing out? And where had his mind gone? He couldn’t think a complete sentence, much less speak one.
“I could have taken advantage of you,” he said stiffly. Good God, he sounded like a stick.
“Are you saying you didn’t?”
Could shepossibly be that innocent? He leaned down, his eyes boring into hers. “You have no idea how many ways Ididn’t take advantage of you,” he told her. “How many ways I could have done. How many—”
“What?” she snapped. “What?”
He held his tongue, or perhaps more accurately, bit the damned thing off. There was no way he was going to tell her how many ways he’dwanted to take advantage of her.
Her. Miss No Name.
It was better that way, certainly.
“Oh for the love of God,” he heard himself say. “What the devil is your name?”
“I can see that you’re most eager to know it,” she snipped.
“Yourname ,” he bit off.
“Before you tell me yours?”
He exhaled, a long frustrated whoosh of air, then raked his hand over his scalp. “Was it my imagination, or did we have a perfectly civil conversation not ten minutes earlier?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he didn’t let her. “No, no,” he continued, perhaps a little too grandly, “it was quite more than civil. I might even dare to call it pleasant.”
Her eyes softened, not to the point where he might have considered her malleable—oh very well, not evenclose to that, but they softened nonetheless.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to kiss me,” she said.
But he noticed that she did not apologize for it. And he noticed that he was very glad that she did not.
“Surely you understand,” she continued quietly, “that it is much more important that I learn your identity than the other way around.”
He looked down at her hands. They weren’t balled, or fisted, or frozen into claws. Hands always gave people away. They tensed, or they shook, or they clutched at each other as if they might—through some sort of impossible witchcraft—save themselves from whatever dark fate awaited them.
This girl was holding the fabric of her skirt. Tightly. She was nervous. Still, she was holding herself with remarkable dignity. And Sebastian knew that she spoke the truth. There was nothing she could do that would ruin him, while he, through one loose or false word, could destroy her forever. It was not the first time he’d been inordinately glad not to have been born female, but it was the first time he’d been presented with such clear proof that men truly did have it easier.
“My name is Sebastian Grey,” he said, dipping his head toward her in a respectful bow. “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss—”
But he couldn’t possibly have gone on, because she gasped, then blanched, then looked positively ill.
“I assure you,” he said, not certain whether the sharp note in his voice was amusement or irritation, “that my reputation is not as black as that.”
“I shouldn’t be here with you,” she said frantically.
“That, we already knew.”
“Sebastian Grey. Oh dear God,Sebastian Grey .”
He watched with some interest. Some annoyance, too, but that was to be expected. Really, he wasn’t as
bad as allthat . “I assure you,” he said, starting to feel a bit put out by the number of times he was needing to begin his sentences in such a fashion, “I have no intention of allowing your reputation to be destroyed through your association with me.”
“No, of course not,” she said, then ruined the whole thing with a panicked burst of laughter. “You wouldn’t want to do that. Sebastian Grey.” She looked up at the sky, and he half expected her to shake her fist at the gods. “Sebastian Grey,” she said.Again .
“Do I take this to mean you’ve been warned about me?”
“Oh yes,” came her too-fast reply. And then she snapped back to attention, looking him directly in the eye. “I have to go. Now.”
“As you might recall I’ve been telling you,” he murmured.
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