Free The Risqué Resolution by Jillian Eaton

want.”
    “And that is?”
    She sat up straighter, reached behind
her, and began to pluck at the stays on her dress. Her gaze steady on James,
she allowed the tiniest, most cat like of smiles to curve her lips before she
whispered, “You. I want you.”
    Her gown slithered down to her waist.
James’ eyes darkened with lust. He swallowed hard, his adams apple jerking in his throat. She felt an
answering pull somewhere deep inside. A pull of need and desire she’d never
felt before. Wordlessly he held out his arm. Lily fell into his embrace, and
they both were lost.
          
     
    Lily was a virgin.
    No, James corrected himself roughly, Lily had been a virgin.
    Now, courtesy of him, she was
not. 
    The evidence was there on one plump
ivory thigh, a stain of crimson where there should have been only pale,
flawless cream. The evidence had also been there during their lovemaking. A
tightening of her mouth when he first pushed into her. A flicker of pain he had
mistaken for pleasure. A cry he took for a moan. So many signs… and yet he’d
still taken her on the floor like some rutting beast, deflowering her with all
the finesse of a wild animal.
    Disgusted with himself, James rolled
away and sat up to face the fire as he fumbled with his clothes. The flames had
all but sputtered out, casting the room in shadow and allowing a chill to creep
into the air. He felt Lily stir behind him.
    They dressed in silence. He found one
of her stockings by the edge of the hearth and pushed it silently towards her.
She pulled his shirt from beneath the winged chair and held it out, not meeting
his gaze when he took it from her. It wasn’t until James was attempting to
button his shirt that he made a sound. It began as a low growl of frustration
as he clumsily attempted to secure the buttons with one hand and ended with a
snarl that was more befitting a wolf than a man.
    “Let me,” Lily said softly.
    He turned from the fire to face her,
rising up on his knees, still attempting to shove the buttons into place. “I do
not need your help.”
    “Yes,” she said, and this time she
lifted her eyes to meet his, “you do.”
    Staring into those shimmering pools of
amethyst James felt a deep sense of shame descend upon him. Shame that he could
not do a thing so simple as button his own shirt. Shame that he had taken
Lily’s innocence. Shame that he was no longer the man he had once been. It
filled him with anger, all that shame, and he reacted the only way he knew how:
with deliberate cruelty.
    “This is your entire bloody fault, you
know.”
    Lily’s eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly ,
but her voice remained calm. “It is my fault you cannot button your shirt?”
    Another growl, this one more ferocious
than the last. “If it were not for you and that damn dog I wouldn’t even be here! And I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t…” But he could not form
the words. He surged to his feet. Lily followed suit, albeit with an elegant
grace he could not help but admire despite his anger. She’d donned her
undergarments, but her dress must have been too difficult to put on by herself
for it was still draped over the back of a chair. Her hair was loose and tangled, the dark curls spilling over her shoulders like a
stream of black ink.
    “Please leave Mr. Betram out of this. He did nothing wrong. Now if you would hold still, I can help you
with your—”
    “I DON’T NEED YOUR DAMN HELP!” He
kicked out at a small end table, striking one of the slender legs. It cracked in
half and the table, unsteady to begin with, crashed to the floor. Lily crossed
her arms.
    “Well I suppose that is one way to get
firewood.”
    James spun away from her to brace his
arm across the mantle of the hearth. His chest rose and fell with the force of
his breaths, even as a flicker of confusion gave him pause. Why wasn’t Lily
running from him in horror? Any other woman he knew would have fled screaming
by now, snow storm or no. He’d taken her virginity on the