Free For Love's Sake by Leonora De Vere

it. “So does that mean you’ll come tomorrow as well?”
    “Are you inviting me?”
    She looked up into his eyes and said, “Yes, I believe I am.”
    Her tender words, as well as the heady wine, had a profound effect on Christopher as they stood in that dark alley at the back of the Dry Goods Store. Before he even realized what he was doing, his fingers were at her cheeks, stroking the soft skin of her face.
    Laurel did not protest. She suddenly longed to feel his hands on her body and his lips on her flesh in a way that she had never longed to be touched before. Then, before she knew what she was doing, Laurel pressed herself against him, feeling the rush of his breath in his chest.
    Christopher took her face in his hands, pulling it up to his mouth as his lips descended upon hers. The kiss was hard and desperate, fueled by months of pent up longing for the taste of a woman. He pressed his back up against the damp brick wall, drawing her to him. Her hands ran up his chest, then his neck, entangling themselves in the waves of thick auburn hair at his temples.
    She molded her lips against his mouth, longing to absorb him into her very soul. He was like no man she had ever known before, and Laurel found him intoxicating. Why she had not felt this way earlier, why she had not seen these things in him until that very moment, she did not know. It could have been the wine, but something told her that it probably wasn’t.
    “Will you come upstairs?” she asked, pulling his hand in that direction.
    Wordlessly, Christopher followed. As Laurel struggled to unlock the door, he nuzzled and nipped at the back of her neck, relishing in the way it flustered her. When she managed to let them in her apartment, they barely made it past the door.
    He pressed her up against a small cupboard, his hands fumbling with the clasps at her garters, his fingers grazing the tender flesh of her thighs as he pulled her stockings down her slender legs.
    “I should tell you...I’ve never…” Laurel stuttered. “I mean, I’m a…a…”
    Christopher stopped immediately. He had not counted on this. In all reality, he despised dealing with innocent girls and the trouble they would no doubt cause him in the long run. He went against his better judgment, deciding to be blunt with her instead of dropping her altogether.
    “Miss Graham, I think you should know something. I neither respect you or your virginity. I do not look at it as a precious gift for you to bestow upon me, and it’s only after you have come to that understanding that we can continue.”
    Laurel had never been so insulted in her life. Here she was, with her legs practically wrapped around his waist! She had been begging him to take her – hardly meaning to offend the man by offering up her ‘precious’ virginity!
    “Get out,” she said, pulling her skirts down.
    Instead of being angered by her refusal, Christopher bowed and showed himself to the door. It was best that she send him away if she could not agree to his terms. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her, or to leave her feeling misused.

CHAPTER TWELVE

    The weight of a fitful, restless night pressed upon her chest as Laurel lay in her narrow metal bed. A thousand times, she had replayed the scene over and over again in her mind, reliving every painful moment until she could bear it no longer. God! She had brought him into her house. He had seen her shabby apartment, her sparse furnishings. Wherever he was at that moment, ‘His Lordship’ was probably laughing at her impoverished situation.
    If he was not mocking her living arrangement, he was surely sneering at the way she behaved the night before. Laurel had thrown herself at him; shamed herself. She wanted to believe that it was the alcohol, but in her heart, she knew that the sexual tension between the two of them had been building for some time.
    “How can I ever show my face around him again?” she asked the cat curled up at her feet.
    He only yawned in