Free The Millionaire Rogue by Jessica Peterson Page B

his chest. The impulse—it was nearly impossible to resist. He hadn’t expected her to be so willing, so curious, so passionate.
    If he didn’t stop soon, he knew he’d devour her whole. And while he knew the adventurer in her would very much like to be devoured, the debutante had a reputation to protect, and a certain sort of gentleman to marry.
    With one last, lingering stroke of his tongue, he pressed his lips, hard, to hers. And then he pulled away.
    For several beats they stood, foreheads touching, his hands still on her face as they gasped for air. Her breath was hot on his face; he slid his last finger down to her throat and felt the ecstatic screaming of her pulse. Her skin was scalding. An invitation for his lips to finish what his hands had started.
    He did not want to let her go.
    The rain began to fall in earnest, fat, insistent drops that fell straight from a low sky. It was a summer rain, and yet not quite. Not yet. The water was calm but cold.
    Not yet.
    He slid a wet ribbon of hair from her brow. “You are as a nymph, Sophia. So lovely. So tempting.”
    Hope dropped his hands from her face. He shut his eyes against the shouting of his blood to kiss her, touch her, take her, and stepped back, releasing the tension between their bodies.
    â€œI am writing her memoirs.”
    Hope’s eyes flew open at the sound of Sophia’s voice. Through the rain he could see the gleam of her eyes, her breast rising and falling as she caught her breath.
    Out of all the things she could’ve said, Hope was certainly not expecting her to say
that
.
    â€œYou’re a writer?”
    Sophia shrugged. “I am no Lord Byron—”
    â€œThank heaven for that.”
    â€œBut when I was young, I lived in books. They were an escape.” She looked down at her hands. “An escape from my family, the chaos of our house. It wasn’t long before I began to write. Stories at first, small things, always in secret. I wrote about romance, adventure, pirates of course. When I was seventeen, my governess discovered one of my pirate melodramas I’d foolishly hidden beneath my pillow. Imagine my shock when, rather than rapping my knuckles with her stick, she asked me to pen her memoirs.”
    Hope blinked as understanding dawned on him. “Your governess wasn’t—”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œNot that Miss Entwhistle, surely—”
    â€œYes.
That
Miss Entwhistle.”
    â€œDear God. I remember those memoirs caused quite the stir that year.” Hope tugged a hand through his curls. “Surely your pirate melodramas were less, er,
explicit
than Miss Entwhistle’s tales.”
    â€œNot really, no.”
    Forget his curls. Hope gave his cravat a ruthless tug and cleared his throat. “Well, then. How did you come to work for La Reinette?”
    â€œMiss Entwhistle wrote me some weeks ago, said a friend of hers sought a writer for her memoirs. I had every intention of refusing, I did. But from the moment we met, La Reinette enthralled me. I couldn’t say no. The stories she tells! Sometimes I feel
I
ought to be paying
her
.”
    Thomas furrowed his brow, swiping back his curls with his hand. La Reinette was his friend and, a decade ago, more than that; she was enthralling, yes, all too aware of the hypnotic power of her beauty.
    â€œDoes she mean to publish these memoirs?”
    Sophia pushed back her sodden hood. “You know how popular memoirs are these days. The more scandalous, the better.”
    Thomas stepped forward. He hooked his thumb beneath her chin and lifted her face. Her eyes met his.
    â€œTake care, Sophia. La Reinette may be glamorous, but she resides in a world much different from your own.”
    Sophia grinned. “If I’m old enough to make my debut, then certainly I’m old enough to look after myself, Thomas.”
    â€œI hope you recognize the irony of that statement.”
    â€œPlease.” She placed her