Her Errant Earl by Scarlett Scott Page A

lightskirt get in the way of that.”
    Good heavens. She felt suddenly faint. “You love me?”
    “I’ve begun to suspect that’s the odd sensation I’ve been
feeling of late.” He gave her a self-deprecating grin. “You’re in my thoughts
night and day. I can’t imagine my life without you in it. Will you marry me, my
darling?”
    She laughed, grateful for the reemergence of his infallible
sense of humor in this weighty moment. “We’re already married.”
    “Are we indeed?” He caught her about the waist, pulling her
against him. “How fortuitous, for now I am free to ravish you.”
    Passion simmered to life within her. She threw her arms
around his neck, gazing up into his stormy eyes. “Promise me you mean what you
say, Pembroke. I couldn’t bear it if you left me again.”
    He feathered a light kiss over her mouth. “I promise. I love
you, and I assure you that you’re quite stuck with me now.”
    She kissed him back with all the ardor that was suddenly
threatening to overtake her. He moaned, his large, knowing hands slipping down
to cup her bottom and press her to his rigid arousal. She sighed, opening for
his tongue’s possessive thrust into her mouth. She could only follow her heart
where it led her now, and she wanted Pembroke more than she wanted to breathe.
There was no more room for practical thought.
    Only feel. His words once more returned to her, and
they held more allure than ever before. Perhaps he was leading her astray, but
the path to ruin had never felt so glorious.
    She reached between them to pull at the belt at his waist,
wanting him naked. She needed to erase all memories of the awful Lady
Strathmore. Never again would she let another person come between them, she
vowed to herself. Never again.
    He broke their kiss, straightening to look down at her, his
expression slack with passion. “Slow down, my dear. I want to make love to you
this night.”
    “Yes,” she whispered, need pulsing through her to her core.
“Please, Pembroke.”
    “William,” he reminded her. “I find I’m ordinarily
‘Pembroke’ when you’re vexed with me.”
    “William.” She pulled open the belt and pushed the dressing
gown down over his broad shoulders until he stood magnificent and nude before
her. “I love you. I think I always have.”
    “You’re wearing far too much fabric, my dear,” he growled,
and whisked her robe away in a blink. He took her into his arms, carrying her
across the masculine chamber to his bed.
    As he laid her upon it, she reached up to frame his
beautiful face between her palms. The slight abrasion of his whiskers was
delicious upon her hypersensitive skin. How dear he was to her, impossible
though it seemed. Not so very long ago, she’d been a miserable, abandoned wife.
No longer.
    He fused their mouths in a searing, open-mouthed kiss as he
joined her on the bed. Warm, wet heat pooled between her thighs. He brushed a
tantalizing caress over her breasts, his thumbs toying with her hard nipples.
She arched into him, sucking his tongue into her mouth, unable to get enough.
He broke away to suckle the peak of her breast. His fingers went unerringly to
the aching bud of her sex, working it back and forth until she was nearly mad.
    “Mmm,” he murmured, tonguing the taut nipple of her other
breast as he gazed up at her. “I adore the way your body responds to me, my
love.”
    He slid a finger inside her then. She eagerly opened her
legs wider, thrusting her hips into his delicious rhythm. Another finger joined
the first. She moaned, her fingers sifting through his silken hair as he
tortured her responsive breasts with his mouth.
    “I want you desperate for me,” he whispered, his voice a
deep, rumbling seduction all its own.
    Dear heavens, she was, but he had rendered her incapable of
speaking. She moaned again as he kissed a path down over the curve of her
belly. He buried his face between her legs. When he sucked upon the nub of her
sex with ever-increasing