This Wicked Gift Read Online Free PDF Page A

was a tiny hole in the index finger. Her fingers seemed
impossibly slender.
    “Very well,” she said. “I agree.”
    He hadn’t really believed it would happen.
He had passed last night, after he’d retrieved her brother’s note of promise,
in a delirium of dazzled lust. But up until this moment, he’d expected her to
walk away, snatched from him like all his other dreams. She removed her second
glove, as slowly as she’d taken off the first, and aligned the two precisely
before setting them atop her cloak. He swallowed. When she slid the pins from
her hair, letting that coiled mass of cinnamon spill down her back, he realized
he was really going to have her. Somehow, this impossible plan had worked.
    If he were a gentleman, he’d stop now and
send her on her way.
    She turned her back to him—not, he
realized, to hide her face. No, Lavinia didn’t shrink from him. Instead, she
lifted the mass of her hair so that he could unlace her dress.
    The gesture gave him a perfect view of the
back of her neck. It was slim and long. He could make out the delicate swells
of her spine. Up until this point, nothing truly untoward had happened, except
in William’s   mind. But once he
touched her—once he unlaced that gown—it would be too late for them both. If he
had any strength of character at all, he’d leave her untouched. But all his
strength had turned into pounding blood, thundering through his veins. And if
he had any will at all, it was directed toward this—this moment of heaven,
stolen from the angel who had haunted his dreams for a year.
    He would never find forgiveness if he took
her, but then he’d been damned for a decade. All he would ever know of paradise
was Lavinia. And so he laid his hands on her waist and claimed his damnation.
    She was warm against his palms, and oh, it
had been so long since he touched another human being. He leaned in and kissed
the back of her neck. She tasted of lemon soap. His arms wrapped around her,
drawing her against his body. She nestled against his erection, and by God, she
did what he’d asked. She didn’t flinch. Instead, she sighed and leaned back
into his arms, as if she enjoyed the feel of his touch.
    “Miss Spencer,” he murmured in her ear.
    “You’d better call me Lavinia.”
    His fingers found the ties of her dress
and unraveled them carefully. Then he slid the dress off her shoulders. Long
muslin sleeves fell away to reveal creamy shoulders, milk-white arms. When the
gown hit the floor, she turned in his arms. She was wearing nothing but stays
and a chemise. Her skin was warm against his hands and she arched up toward
him. Her lips parted. Her eyes   shone
at him, as if he were her lover instead of the man who’d forced her into this.
She’d looked at him that way, just last night in the library. Surely, then, she
hadn’t meant to invite a kiss.
    He was not such a fool as to turn down
that invitation twice. He kissed her, hard, savoring the feel of her lips
against his. She tasted as sweet as a glass of water after a hard day’s labor,
felt as welcome as sunshine in the darkness of winter. He pulled her into his
embrace roughly. She twitched in surprise when his tongue touched her lips, but
she opened her mouth with an eagerness that made up for any apparent
inexperience.
    He had to remind himself that she’d not
chosen this, that he’d ordered her not to flinch from his advances. It was not
real, the way she nestled in his arms. It was not real, the way her hands
pressed against his back, pulling his thighs against hers. It was not real, the
way she opened up to him. It was all a fraud, obtained through coercion.
    He was impoverished enough that he’d take
her caresses anyway.
    She pulled away from him, but only to
unlace her stays. As she lifted her arms above her head, a stray shaft of light
came through the window and illuminated the outline of her legs through her
chemise. She let her stays drop to the ground. She didn’t look up—no