Free Forever a Lord by Delilah Marvelle Page B

resembled a panther gazing upon its prey. Then, suddenly, he edged back. “I really have to go.”
    She tried not to panic. What if he didn’t take the offer? What if she had scared him away with all her stupid talk of doctors and death? “We should take tea sometime. Here at the house. Next week in the afternoon? Yes?”
    He kept staring. “I’m not looking to be domesticated.”
    “Oh. I… Well…tea is very informal. As long as I have a chaperone it would be very respectable. You and I can get to know each other and be friends.”
    “Friends?” His gaze traced her eyes to her lips and back to her eyes again. “You’re a woman.”
    Her cheeks grew hot. “Men and women can be friends.”
    “Men and women aren’t meant to be friends. Trust me in this. Good night… Imogene. ” He turned and strode for the entrance door and opened it. Glancing back at her one last time, he stepped into the darkness beyond, closing the door behind him with a thud.
    Imogene hurried to the closed door and lingered, wishing he would come back. Everything about him was so beautifully raw and real. She didn’t realize a man could make a woman’s toes curl in her own slippers.
    It was divine. He was divine.
    Setting both hands on the door, she pretended for a breath it was him. Her pulse thrummed against the carved wood as she traced her fingertips against it. She smiled dreamily. Together, they would take that quarter of a million and rule the world.
    She paused. Wait. She had just let him walk out the door without any guarantee. Scrambling to open the door, she threw it back and ran out into the night after the man she knew was going to change her life.

CHAPTER SIX
    When Greek meets Greek, then’s the tug of war.
    —P. Egan, Boxiana (1823)
    N ATHANIEL PRAYED FOR inner strength. He’d never met a woman who had actually made him want to do more than rip clothes off. Attraction to a woman was one thing. He’d had plenty of those since he was sixteen. But this fierce need to dig his two hands into each and every breath she took was beyond anything he’d ever known or touched.
    Raking back his rain-dampened hair in disbelief, he trudged down the gravel path. How he had managed to escape her and that house without giving in to what he really wanted to do was beyond his own understanding.
    The darting steps of slippers urgently running after him in the darkness made Nathaniel turn. His breath hitched as Imogene’s curvaceous figure, draped in that hand-bitingly clinging wet fabric, bustled toward him.
    Despite the darkness, the row of glass lanterns hanging off the iron railing lit just enough to illuminate the seductive bounce of those well-outlined breasts as she jogged toward him.
    He stiffened—everywhere. The woman clearly didn’t realize how much he could see.
    She alighted before him, primly threw her long blond braid over her slim shoulder and glanced up, that quiet, oval face, flushed cheeks and those stunning bright hazel eyes meeting his gaze. “I couldn’t let you go quite yet. Not until you promise me you will take my brother’s offer.”
    He fisted both hands, fighting the two opposing voices raging in his head. One told him to go. And the other one told him to rake his hands down every inch of her wet robe before stripping it off. He couldn’t decide which voice he should listen to and had been mindlessly arguing with both ever since he first saw her. “Not to disappoint you, tea cake, but I’m going to need a few days to think about the offer. I’ve got people to talk to.” Mainly Matthew. He hadn’t been informing the poor bastard of much these days.
    Her blond brows flickered as her voice dipped in concern. “Do you need a better offer?” She leaned in closer, bringing that lavish, crisp scent of lilies. “Was the money not generous enough?”
    He drew in a ragged breath, wishing she wouldn’t lean in so damn close. Because all he could think about was the same thing he’d been thinking about when