Her Wicked Proposal novel Chapter 12

Cedric cocked his head while he waited in the parlor, listening to the sound of Anne's laughter. It was light yet slightly husky, a laugh better heard in bed after her lover had pleasured her until she was limp and sated.

Cedric smiled. Soon I will be that man. The kiss he'd given her today had been unplanned, but no less satisfying. She shouldn't have bitten him. For some reason that had made him as hard as a marble statue, and it had taken all his strength to keep from throwing her onto the settee and showing her how much he liked to bite back. She wouldn't have fought him for very long, but she was still too resistant to him. She would have used his actions to paint him the villain.

It was better to wait, to seduce slowly. Being both parent and brother to his two sisters, he'd been exposed to the secrets of the feminine mind enough to know how Anne would react. Women were intelligent creatures, and they had to be courted and seduced properly to be won over and not merely subjugated.

Cedric ran a hand through his hair, enveloping himself in the brief memory of that last kiss. Her skin felt as smooth as satin, her hair soft as silk and her mouth-God the taste!-sweet, wet and unbelievably hot. He hoped that she would eventually put that mouth on other places, preferably below his waist. Sensation during lovemaking had intensified after losing his sight, and the thought of Anne's hot mouth around him there... An irrepressible grin twisted his lips at the thought.

Each kiss he took from her was rich in the promise of passion yet to come. He would woo her with whispered words, sensual caresses and drugging kisses until she was no longer able to resist him. He wanted her to beg for him, to need him as desperately as he needed her.

He had once thrived on his sexual conquests, and he'd had his share of mistresses over the years, but Anne was different. Winning her seemed a different level of achievement altogether. But it was going to be so much harder to win her over when he couldn't even see her. It was a challenge, but one he was willing to rise to.

He could track her without his sight. The scent of wild orchids left an impression in the air like the invisible essence of a fairy queen. And the sounds... His imagination dined on the whisper of her skirts on the carpets until it was as sweet to hear as a lover's gasp of pleasure, creating a vision in his mind of her raising those skirts just for him and baring milky smooth thighs virgin to his touch.

God, I've been too long without a woman, he thought glumly and shifted on the settee as his groin tightened and his trousers stretched.

Instead he focused on how he was going to murder Ashton for leaving him here. He'd make that blond-haired fiend pay. Ashton was supposed to protect him and guide him, not abandon him in a house with unfamiliar terrain. It had taken him weeks to learn the lay of his own house, count all the steps and memorize the floor plans and furniture arrangements.

What sort of man am I? Portia had been right. He was as helpless as a babe. A man no longer. The truth of that was just as emotionally crippling as his blindness was physically. He'd wanted to die.

It was a thought he'd never spoken aloud to anyone and hadn't acted upon because too many people he loved would be hurt by such a coward's way out. Yet it didn't change his feelings, or the sense of desperation and helplessness that made him wish to end everything, the pain, the shame, all of it.

Until Anne. She had come to him, hiding her plea for marriage to him behind that cool bravado she'd always had. Her bravery had been the deciding factor for him. If she was willing to give married life a try, then so was he.

Besides, how hard could marriage be?