Capturing Cora Read Online Free Page B

timing was ill-conceived.” His voice quavered a little as he spoke. “I ought to have waited until we were alone, but you’re damned near impossible to pry from your group. Oh, Cora. I never intended to be disingenuous, but rather romantic. I love you. Why shouldn’t I declare it before everyone else?”
    Cora squinted at him, her thoughts in tumult. He sounded so serious. If only she could see him clearly enough to tell if he still sported that playful pout.
    And if he didn’t?
    Then maybe she didn’t want to see… Gosh, he must think her the most ungrateful, appalling romp for refusing him like that. She pushed again at his torso. “Please, Bran, let me out.”
    “Cora.” Rather than moving aside, he crowded her. The taut muscles of his thigh pressed tight to her skirts, so that heat radiated all through her lower limbs. An inferno lit deep in her womb when he leaned closer still and touched her. His fingertips traced the line of her jaw, and his thumb nudged up her chin so that their gazes met.
    Bran’s eyes gleamed just above hers, onyx dark in the pitiful light. “Don’t run. Please don’t turn me down a second time in one day. Cora, I love you. I’m an appalling fool for not realizing it earlier. What am I saying? I’ve known it forever, but I didn’t want to deprive you of your Season and your coming out ball.”
    “Oh, Bran, as if any of that ever mattered.”
    He swept his thumb upwards and gently brushed across her parted lips. Cora’s pulse began a flighty dance. She hung on his every word. Sweet heavens, was he about to kiss her? She parted her lips, willing him forward, to take what she so desperately wanted to give, while at the same time, her fingers clawed so that her nails dug into her palms. She ought to be strong and remain aloof. Only, she so much wanted his love it was impossible not to strain towards him.
    Bran’s warm breath mingled with hers. Their lips lay no more than a finger’s breadth apart. “I want you, Cora Reeve. I want to do wicked things to you that will make more than this faint heat colour your cheeks. I want to push your legs apart, get down on my knees and whisper that proposal you laughed off into your quim, and maybe once I’ve made you sob with bliss, you’ll finally take me seriously.”
    Her lower part seemed immediately awash with heat, so too did her cheeks, for what he'd suggested wasn't at all polite. No true gentleman would ever have spoken like that, but Bran had never treated her like a piece of china. He’s shared enough ribald jokes with her to know she wouldn’t faint just because he’d been lewd.
    “I’ve spoken to your father. He took me seriously.”
    “He did? You have?”
    “Aye.”
    “Why didn’t you say so earlier? I’d have known then. I wouldn’t have doubted.”
    “It didn’t seem very romantic to bend down and say that I’d spoken to your father first. It seemed presumptuous, nor did I wish to imply that by speaking to him first I considered you somehow irrelevant, when you’re so very, very far from being that.”
    The buttery slur of Bran’s words wrought havoc with her self-restraint. Heavens, if he didn’t kiss her soon, she would take the matter out of his hands.
    “I want you, Cora. Say yes, because I’m so sorry, but I have—” He touched her cheek. Then one hand slipped into her hair. The other rested against her bodice. “—I simply have to kiss you.”
    He pressed his tongue between her lips and wakened desires she couldn’t put names to, not even images. She clung to him, dizzied by all she was feeling, and in turn he held her back, crushing her body to his. Bran’s kiss bore no resemblance to the chaste, powdery and familial brushes of affection she’d been accustomed to. Arousal flooded her body. The rush of blood in her ears drowned out everything else.
    A slow tingle rolled down Cora’s throat and into her breasts, so that her nipples ached and chafed against the inside of her stays.
    She