The Sins of a Few by Sarah Ballance Page A

butterflies across her belly. His touch crept higher still until her breasts beaded and ached beneath her chemise. His big hand caressed and cupped the weight of one, his fingers finding purchase on its center with a deft ability that left her moaning in his arms.
    Her body raged, moving at will against his. He was hard, obviously so with the strain against his breeches, and he growled into her mouth when she brushed him with her fingertips. Delighted that she could make him react in such a way, she grabbed him with more intent and nearly sent him to the ground on buckled knees.
    He chose to bring her down with him…to the bed.
    Her body burned in ways she didn’t know it could, and she ached inside and out for his roughened touch. As he crawled over her, his lips and hands hungry, the yearning grew until she did not know her own skin. Need flooded her, leaving her spinning in its ruddy aftermath. She could do nothing but clutch him with fingers that strained with the effort, her reward a brush of hot breath against her ear as he voiced his pleasure.
    But this man was not deserving of pleasure—not at her hand. She knew what he had said. She knew what he had accused .
    She knew she was more.
    A deep, shaky breath gave her courage.
    “Nathanial.”
    Blue eyes, piercing in the intensity, immediately met her gaze. The only sounds were those of their breaths and that of her heartbeat thundering in her chest. She wondered if he heard it, then why he had to look at her in such a way. Nathanial Abbot was a strong man—a man who had stood up to his father and crossed the ocean to make his own way in life. He was a man of his own mind.
    He was not a man who should look as if he had found the world in her arms.
    Her heart fell. Shattered. But she would find her way through the shards, for it mattered not how he looked at her now, but how he addressed her in that frank moment when anger revealed what his heart held. How could she give herself to a man who could say such things? A man who had left without worry for who he’d left behind? A man who thought himself better than each and every one of them?
    She swallowed. “Wait.”
    The order was useless, for he had already stilled in his ministrations.
    “You cannot accuse me of indiscretions,” she said, “then purport to use me for your own.”
    He searched her face, drawing her into a sea of endless blue. “If you are truthful, I will know when we join. And this is not a mere indiscretion, but a sworn act between two who are to marry. But you are free to decline me. I demand only that you offer freely.”
    “I offer freely of myself to no man, least of all myself to you in marriage.”
    The weak protest only made him smile.
    “I find your stubborn streak most endearing. Such spirit is frowned upon among the upper crust.”
    The idea of baring herself to him snapped her to her senses. “Stop,” she said.
    He stilled, and his gaze landed expectantly upon her.
    She shook so thoroughly inside she could not imagine why she did not rattle the bed, but it mattered not. Her decision must be firm. “I do not wish to become the latest of your conquests. Release me.”
    He immediately rolled away from her, then lay there, his chest rising and falling with the swift cadence of his breath. Nathanial Abbot, in her bed. Every propriety broken, but nothing so broken as she. She had tasted this man. She had felt the weight of his need and known the intimacy of his touch. He wanted her, and she him, and there was no greater truth than that single desire that existed between them. Giving in to her desires would be so easy…
    She quickly ended her crossways glance. Her body screamed frustration at the sudden loss of him, but she would not relent. It mattered not how was gentle his touch, or how much she desired it. His words suggested he thought her without honor, so he was the last one deserving of it. His presumption that she would marry him only served to show his true nature. He was a