Seventeen

“Let me escort you back to your room so you can rest.”
“What?” she asked, confused. “But—”
“Your body may be ready, and we can both tell. But... it is mostly different with the mind. You have to be sure. You have to decide.”
But she wasn’t even thinking that. He kissed her like he wanted to make love right now. In fact, even as he scowled, he was almost gasping. His heart raced inside his chest, and she could see the mad pulsing on the pulse point at the base of his neck. She didn’t know why he still insisted they shouldn’t do it tonight.
Why was he fighting her so?
She was about to pull back when his arms held her tighter. “I have found you to be an exceptionally intelligent woman, Adalene Duvre. And you have not been awakened by any man until now, because you have been careful in the past. We can’t just set those aside. If given the chance, I know you would want to make a choice about something as important to you as your virginity. And I want you to be sure you really want this, and not just because you have been led to do it by circumstances. Come on.” And he helped her get up from the big couch where they sat.
“But you have a right to my first night,” she protested as they walked out of the parlor to the empty hallways. “I have a responsibility to give myself to you as befitting a wife to her husband,” she countered stubbornly.
“You need not sleep with me, Adalene, if it is how you prefer it.”
“But I do prefer it!” she protested. “How many times will I have to say it? You kissed me like you wanted me and touched me like a man wanting to bed a woman. You let me experience sexual release twice now. Were they not to get me ready for the task?”
He laughed a little and it sounded so intimate it made her heart ache. “Not to get you ready. I did it because I wanted you to know it can be good and not just a task. And, yes, because I am a selfish man and cannot help it. You have such beautiful, luscious, sweet lips here... and here.” His fingers traced her mouth and then lay on her lap, nearest to where her womanhood was hidden under her gown. He looked down at her lips again, as if he really could not help it, but he looked frustrated.
As she felt.
Frustrated at that moment, it felt like she had fallen for him. She wasn’t sure. She had never felt like this before. But according to everything she had heard about falling in love,
it did feel like it.
But she could be mistaken. What did she really know?
She pushed away and withdrew, and closed her eyes.
He wanted her to become his mistress. That could save her from Louis Didier.
But what about when he marries a wife he’d chosen? What would become of her then? Could she go back to her family? No. Her mother would take her back, but the neighbors would forever look at her as a dirty woman. And her father would be helpless about it again and would drink. Her brothers would worry about her. Her little nieces and nephews would hear the gossip while they grew up.
And her heart would be broken.
She felt confused.
A month ago, she was looking at a life of a spinster, but she wasn’t this miserable because she at least had her books and her simple farm life.
And then she was torn from that into a whirlwind of emotions when she learned her father had finally found her a husband, only to experience the most horrifying moment of her life after she realized what kind of a man she was going to marry.
The Baron’s arrival gifted her that most precious moment a romantic girl only ever wanted—to meet and be rescued by a hero. He did save her. He was her knight-in-shining armor.
And he remained that, as he refused to take her to bed and ravish her unless she was sure it was what she wanted. He was a gentleman.
He was frustration itself.
“You need to think, ma bichette,” Fabian finally said. He stopped walking and she did, too. And he faced her.
“What is there to think about?” she pleaded. “You will take me tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. I would rather you did not treat me with such respect, Fabian, because it will only make me more miserable when I return to my true husband.” And even if she agreed to be his mistress, she still would not want him to treat her with such kindness. Her heart would ache more when she finally left.
“Is that what you really want?” he asked, his eyes boring into her face after they stopped outside her bedchamber's door.
“Yes,” she replied without preamble. It was what she really wanted. “I don’t want any illusions, Fabian.”
“The servants will be here in a few moments to assist you, Adalene,” he said, slowly, as if he was adjusting thoughts inside his head as he continued to watch her. “I will be back when you are ready. You will still have the chance to change your mind when I return. I will not hold it against you, ma bichette.”
She smiled at him as bravely as she could. “Tonight, you have given me the chance to decline, like I’m a free woman. Thank you, Fabian. That is more than I can have from any man of your stature. And I will take it as a gift.”
He raised his hand and caressed her cheek with his fingertips. There was disappointment in those coppery eyes as he looked at her. “You must know that you will always be safe in my household and respected in my bed. Whatever you decide in the morrow, Adalene, my offer still stands. I will pay your bride token to your husband should you choose to accept my offer. But tonight... tonight, I will willingly perform my duty as your husband on your first night.”
He bowed a little and walked away.
She stood there and watched until he entered a door at the end of the corridor. He paused, and she hastily entered her room. He might turn and would see her and see that she was crying.
Whatever happened tonight, she knew she wouldn’t know how to survive her days without him.
She was already calm when the chambermaids arrived to help her undress and bathe. A white, sheer nightgown lay on the bed and she wore that as they took care of the other one. Then they tended to the candles while she sat on the bed as another one of them brushed her hair. She was in deep thinking and was so quiet that she hardly noticed them when they left.
When he returned, he found her lying on the bed, waiting for him. He wore a soft, white shirt and simple black breeches held by strings.
“Ma bichette?” he asked in a husky and hopeful tone.
“I didn’t change my mind,” she replied softly.
She watched. He smiled and started to take his clothes off.
In just a few seconds, he stood there naked, his bronzed skin perfect even as scars dotted him, the contours of his body wonderfully sculptured. There was nothing false about the width of his shoulders, or the masculinity of a broad chest whose smoothness was marred by some healed scars. There was power in the girth of his muscled thighs. And his manhood, standing erect and hard and very male, remained as beautiful as its owner.
She had to gulp as her throat suddenly dried up.
He did not speak when he knelt on the bed to reach for her. He lied down beside her, but she did not lie with him as was expected, and instead rose to sit beside him, near where his cock jutted erect and angry between his muscled thighs. Her eyes eagerly explored him, and he let her as if they were in a waiting game. She watched as his cock got harder and seemed redder before her very eyes. She knew that she was looking at a lovely specimen of a man. Even the scars on his skin told of his maleness. She wanted to know the stories behind those, she decided. But later.
She couldn’t help but sigh when her eyes reached his face. “You are so beautiful,” she whispered.
“What do you think of doing while you are seeing what you’re seeing?”
“Things I would want to do to you... and what you would do to me...” she replied, breathless.
“Yes.”
“Well... I want to kiss you.”
“I’d like you to do that.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere you want.”