The Redemption of a Rogue, стр. 25

“We could see how we suit while you are staying here,” he suggested. “I’ve had mistresses before.”

“Yes. Louisa,” she said, her tone unreadable.

He ducked his head. “That would be another issue we need to address. Louisa wanted…she wanted something more than I could give. Perhaps it isn’t something I’m capable of giving. And I never want to hurt someone like that again, I’ve seen the consequences.”

“Love,” Imogen said softly. “She fell in love with you.”

He nodded. “Or she convinced herself she did. She wanted me to love her back. And while I was very fond of her, I considered her a great friend…it wasn’t enough. She was hurt. She left. And the rest is…well, we’re here. And she’s gone.”

Imogen reached up, cupping his cheek. God, how he wanted to lean into her fingers, to drown in this comfort she gently offered. Somehow he managed to keep himself still.

“I won’t fall in love with you,” she whispered.

His brow wrinkled at her certainty, and he found himself a little annoyed by the lack of emotion in that declaration. Why, he couldn’t say. Her statement was exactly what he wanted. What he needed. If they were to have an affair, it had to be one that excluded the heart.

“If we try something and you don’t like it, you need to tell me,” he insisted. “If I want you and you aren’t in the mood, you need to tell me. Sex should be something we revel in and celebrate and enjoy equally. Will you promise me?”

“You really are entirely unexpected,” she said with a little laugh, he thought almost more to herself than to him. “But yes. I promise you I will only do what I like and I will only do it when I wish to. Are those all your terms, Mr. Fitzhugh?”

She extended a hand as if to shake on it, and he stifled a smile. Her cheekiness was so wildly attractive. He was pleased she was becoming comfortable enough, overcoming the terror of what she’d gone through enough, to show it.

He took her hand and raised it to his lips, kissing her knuckles before he traced one with the tip of his tongue. “All my terms. So we are agreed then.”

“Are we lovers?” she asked, and looked genuinely confused.

“When we’re lovers, I hope you’ll be very certain of that fact.”

She tilted her head, staring at him so intently that he caught his breath.

“What?”

“You are very handsome, Oscar. Really uncommonly handsome. It’s distracting.”

He blinked. He’d certainly been called handsome before, cooed over by women in bed or ones that he wanted to get there. But there was something different about this declaration of his supposed beauty. Something that made him turn away, back to his desk.

“I would like nothing more than to seal our agreement in a far more pleasurable way than with a mere handshake, but I wonder if you have some questions for me about your situation.”

“Because you’ve been avoiding me, you mean,” she teased gently as she followed him to the desk and blushed as he righted the items that had skidded across it while he pleasured her there.

“Yes,” he said, lifting his gaze to hers. “Because of that.”

“Have you determined any course of action that might allow me to not hide out for the rest of my life?”

He tried not to reveal his reaction to that question. She was being playful, perhaps to ease her fears, but the suggestion was a real one. It was entirely possible she would have to leave the city, leave her identity behind and anyone associated with it. It wasn’t the solution he wanted for her, but there it was.

“I’ve been working on background on the players,” he said. “Roddenbury was once a member of my club, so my partner Will White is collecting some information on his presence there. I’ve been working on the woman you mentioned, Maggie Monroe. I hadn’t heard her name before in association with the Cat’s Companion, so I’m trying to figure out where she fits into this mess.”

“What will you do once you have the information you need?” she asked.

He clenched his teeth, because that was a more complicated issue. “Why don’t we cross that bridge when we come to it?” he said.

She leaned across his desk, placing her hands flat on the top. “Oscar.”

He met her stare, saw her fear and her questions. “I’m trying to figure that out, too,” he admitted. “The guard is notoriously bad at what it does. And since we’re talking about an earl in the mix of all this, it’s also entirely corrupt.”

She bent her head. “They won’t care about the murder. Or about me,” she said.

“But I do,” he said, reaching out to trace the line of her jaw until she looked up at him with a shiver. “I promise you, Imogen, we’re going to work this out.”

She smiled at him, but it wasn’t that bright sunshine expression he’d come to crave in the short time he’d been exposed to it. This was false, tight, meant to appease him.

“I know you’ll try.” She turned away and paced across the room to the fire. She stood there, silent, her shoulders rolled slightly forward in a position of defeat. Of exhaustion. Of fear.

He wanted so much to relieve it all. And since the answers he had couldn’t do it, he had to do something else instead.

“Come to my bed,” he said softly.

She pivoted toward him, her lips parting at his directness. “Oscar—”

“I can’t solve the problems of the world tonight,” he said as he crossed the room to her in slow, steady steps. “I can’t promise you how this story will end. But I can ease the fear for a few hours, Imogen. I can give you pleasure. I can make you come until you’re weak. Come to my bed.”

He extended a hand, trying hard not to flex it with excitement as he waited for her to take it. She stared at it a