Free A Most Demanding Mistress (Fashionably Impure Book 2) by Natasha Blackthorne Page A

His gaze was full of tenderness. Openness.
    “We fell in love very quickly,” he said.
    She tipped her cup and drank deeper,
attempting to hide. It was one thing to discuss love in the heat of the moment.
It was an entirely different thing to speak of it so cold bloodily.
    Especially after a night like the one just
past.
    She had faced her deepest fears in loving a
nobleman and also had her own failings lain open where she couldn’t deny them.
She could hate a man for that. Yet, there was no denying that she loved Adrian.
    Madly.
    Deeply.
    “I did not expect to ever fall in love like
this,” he continued.
    “Like this?” she asked, her throat still
stinging from the long gulp of slightly-too-hot tea, her voice still shaky with
her conflicting emotions.
    He made a gesture with his palm up. “So
passionately, so mindlessly.” He smiled, just a little. “So recklessly.”
    Recklessly.
    Memories of herself, crying and railing her
anger and fear at him the night before played with in her mind, vivid and
disturbing. Her heart pounded jarringly in response.
    Last night. God. No wonder he had sought
solace in brandy.
    With a trembling hand, she lowered her cup.
“We do bring out a reckless side in each other.”
    “We do indeed.” He laughed softly and reached
out to caress her hand with his fingertips. “A sweet, yet bitter, recklessness.
I never expected love would be so piquant.” He paused again. “At least not for
me.”
    She had known that love could be this way.
But she had thought herself too cold, incapable of loving any man. She had
thought that Winterton had ruined her in that way. But her tongue had not been
oiled by strong drink, as Adrian’s so obviously had been, and she found it hard
to speak deeply about such a topic.
    Or did it have something to do with him
being older, having fathered sons and lost a wife? Maybe he was more
comfortable with his emotions because he had not been able to run and hide from
them as she had.
    The thought made her reconsider herself in
comparison with Adrian, but before she could come to any deeper conclusions, he
began speaking again.
    “I married Jane knowing she was only my
friend. But I did expect us to learn to love each other.” He paused for a
moment, his smile becoming more self-mocking. “A rational, sane love.”
    Something in that self-recriminating glance
made her put her teacup down on the tray. She immediately leaned closer to him
and reached to touch his hand.
    He didn’t seem to notice, his eyes now
distant.
    “Despite all my expectations, our early
marriage was…” He paused to take a deep breath. “Jane and I remained friends
but that bond became progressively strained. She found the marriage bed…
difficult.” A flash of pain crossed his face. “She said it was too awkward to
bed with a friend. Once she had given me my two sons, she changed the lock on
her bedchamber door and she bade me to find my pleasures where I would.” His
look turned grim, hard. “Elsewhere.”
    “Oh Adrian!” The lump forming in her throat
made her voice a little hoarse and she squeezed his hand more firmly. Love and
sympathy for him filled her and made tears prick at her eyes.
    She could feel his pain, his rejection as
clearly as though they were her own.
    Weakness?
    Maybe.
    She couldn’t help it. She was too attuned to
his every mood.
    “Jane and I failed to make a connection as
lovers because we had been friends too long.” He paused for a moment. “I don’t
want you and me to make the opposite mistake. You don’t trust me because we
have fallen in love so quickly. We became lovers before we knew each other as
friends. I don’t want to fail with you as I did with my wife.”
    She studied his darkly handsome, if rather
brooding visage, and her eyes caressed his elegant, leanly muscled body,
displayed to such perfection in his well-tailored clothes. Painful longing
swept through her. Longing to feel his touch, to taste his kiss, to hear his
soft, somewhat