Page 65 of A Story of Love

“Not by much.” He lifted his hips slightly and her eyelids fluttered when he grazed her in exactly the right place. Or the wrong place—unless she wanted to lose her few remaining wits.

“Stop trying to pull away, Lorelei.”

Her body became pliant at his command, an involuntary physical response that was infuriating and one she should immediately take steps to root out. Lori squared her shoulders, scowled, and said, “Stop barking orders. You already said that you did not—”

“Shut up, Lorelei,” he murmured, and then claimed her mouth with a kiss so enticing and commanding there was no possible way Lori could have resisted, even if she’d wanted to.

He released her an indeterminate time later, and she was foolishly pleased to see he was breathing every bit as hard as she was. “There is one more thing that needs—”

“Shut up, Fast.” Lori indulged in a brief, smug smirk as she used his own words against him. “You needn’t say it. I already know what thing you mean.” After all, she’d heard it before from Dorian, hadn’t she? True, Dorian had waited to share the brutal truth with her until after he had taken her maidenhead.

Lori supposed she should look on the bright side. Lord Severn, for all his rakish ways, was at least not promising to love her forever as a way to lure her into bed.

“What thing do you think I mean?” he asked, his brow creased.

Lori no longer recalled the exact phrases Dorian had used to shatter her innocence and transform her from an openhearted, trusting girl into a scarred, cynical woman, but she would never forget the gist of his cruel words. And she never ever wanted to hear the same sentiment—either unexpurgated or dressed up in pretty language—from another man’s lips as long as she lived.

She met Severn’s questioning gaze with a blasé smile she was far from feeling. “I know that you want the same thing I do.”

“And what is that?”

“A few hours of mutual pleasure and nothing else.”

He blinked. “Er, that’s all I want?”

Lori gave a derisive snort. “That is all any man wants from a woman like me.” He opened his mouth, but she went on before he could offer up some weak demurral and irritate her. “Don’t worry, my lord. You needn’t fear that I am on the catch for a husband. I don’t believe in marriage.”

“I think you might have mentioned that once before.” He stared at her, his expression…odd and unreadable.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“What am I looking like?”

“Like a stunned carp.”

He laughed. “No! Was I?”

Lori shrugged away both his strange expression and playful banter and said, “I understand what we are about here, my lord. We are from two distinct social classes and this”—she gestured from his body to hers— “is the only sort of association there can ever be between us. I may be inexperienced, but I am not a fool. Nor am I such a ninny that I need you to look out for my honor. I am the only one who gets to determine when and with whom I share my body. I give you my word that I have no expectations of you beyond tonight.” She paused for emphasis, and then said, “Understood?”

He hesitated, and said, “I understand you.”

Lori ignored the pang of disappointment she felt at his quick, easy acceptance—as if she had wanted him to argue and insist that he wanted something more…meaningful from her.

She was such a romantic fool.

Lori thrust aside her disappointment and said, “And there is one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“I do not want to fall pregnant.” Lori hadn’t considered that possibility when she’d been with Dorian seven years ago and it had just been sheer dumb luck that she had not conceived.

His mouth pulled up on one side and he lifted a hand and cupped her jaw on the unscraped side of her face, his warm palm oddly reassuring. “I promise I won’t make you pregnant,” he said, lightly caressing her cheek with his thumb.

She scowled. “How can you promise something like that?”

“Because I don’t have to put my cock inside you to give us both a great deal of pleasure,” he said, the heat in his eyes palpable.

Lori’s heart skipped at his confident, vulgar, and enticing claim and she opened her mouth so she could draw in more air.