One Dangerous Desire (Accidental Heirs)

by Christy Carlyle

  “You’re the second person to say that to me this morning.” His rough voice matched his scowl as he took in her paint-splotched fingers and smock besmeared with a mishmash of colors. “I guess I have a bad habit of not waiting for an invitation.”

  All the etiquette her mother drilled in over the years made May itch to clasp her dirty hands behind her back, but she resisted. She’d never hidden her love for art from him.

  “If you’ll wait in the drawing room, I’m sure we can convince Mrs. Campbell to bring us tea.” May glanced at the housekeeper, who offered her a wary nod before starting back toward the kitchen. Mrs. Campbell frowned on gentleman callers when May’s father was not at home. “I’ll just go and clean up a bit.”

  “Why? I like you as you are.”

  “Perspiring and covered in paint?”

  “Yes.”

  It wasn’t the grandest compliment she’d ever received. Perhaps he hadn’t intended it as a compliment at all. But it felt like one. May had heard enough false praise and fawning to last a lifetime, but none of it sent warmth rushing through her like Rex’s unadorned approval.

  “Very well.” She started toward the drawing room door.

  “Why not the room you came from? Won’t you show me what you’re working on?”

  “It’s not finished.” And it’s dreadful. Oils were never going to be her medium, she feared, despite how much the bold, vibrant colors appealed to her.

  “Let me see. Please.” He’d never pleaded with her for anything. In fact, he often left the word off in conversation, when others knew to add it as a polite nicety.

  “As long as you don’t judge too harshly.” She tried for a light, teasing tone, but he watched her so intently, her voice wobbled instead. “Just this way.”

  She retreated into the parlor, aware of how closely he followed behind. The edge of his trouser leg brushed the back of her skirt. Today, his scent was more woodsy than spice but not a jot less appealing.

  He moved to stand before her easel, leaning in closer than most did to appraise art. “You’re dreaming of the English countryside and an elaborate estate, I see.”

  No compliment there regarding her artistic efforts. Not that she’d expected one. Effusive praise had never been his way.

  “That house isn’t a dream. It’s in Berkshire. I visited just last year, and I’ll have you know it’s quite charmingly dilapidated.” The piece, if she managed to finish it, depicted Hartwell, the country estate of a viscount she’d come to England to meet and marry. In the end, Viscount Grimsby had given his heart to a lovely suffragette bookseller. May had attended their wedding the previous year and the painting was to be a gift for Lord and Lady Grimsby.

  “I recognize the estate. I’m acquainted with the man who owns it.”

  “Are you?” May couldn’t imagine the two men in the same room. Lord Grimsby always struck her as painfully restrained, while Rex, despite his fashionable attire, exuded a kind of untamed magnetism.

  “Lord Grimsby invested in a factory and housing project I own in Berkshire.” He made the admission in a low monotone, as if speaking of his commercial success unnerved him.

  “My goodness. I had no idea your business interests were so diverse.” It seemed he’d been very busy in the years since they’d parted.

  After turning away from the painting, he stalked toward her, drawing almost as close as he had to inspect her artwork. She thought he might touch her, kiss her. He vibrated with some barely leashed emotion. But he didn’t reach for her, and a moment later he’d swept all the tautness from his face. He wore that arrogant, practiced look he’d given her in Ashworth’s drawing room the day they’d met again after years apart.

  “I learned from men like your father. He never relied on Sedgwick’s profit alone to earn his keep.”

  “Yes, I know.” And thank goodness for it. After his initial gloom-and-doom predictions, Mr. Graves recently assured her that despite the uncertain future of their storefronts in Chicago and New York, investment income could keep her father comfortably solvent for years—provided he stopped squandering money on chorus girls and losing at gaming tables. “He’s not here, in case you were hoping he’d join us for tea.” She grinned nervously, both to cover concern for father and to ease the tension that seemed to hang between them like a thundercloud.

  Finally, inch by inch, the tightness around his lips eased and a smirk crept across his face. One corner of his mouth tilted up, hinting at the crease in his cheek she knew would emerge if he truly let himself smile. “What a shame. It’s time your father and I put the past aside.”

  May laughed, a nervous titter at first and then a deep, freeing chortle. Just the kind of laugh Mama would have rapped her knuckles for when she was a girl.

  Surely, he was joking.

  Yet he wasn’t. He was glowering at her.

  “You’re serious?” She swallowed her last waning chuckle when one dark eyebrow arched high on his forehead, as if he was offended that she found his comment amusing.

  “Of course. Six years is long enough.”

  A strange tickling sensation started in her chest, a little seedling of hope burrowing into her heart. When he spoke to her father this time, he wouldn’t be a penniless shop clerk. Rex Leighton was a man of substance. A man her father couldn’t dismiss as he had Reginald Cross. But why did he wish to speak to him at all?

  Mrs. Campbell’s arrival with a tray of refreshments gave May an excuse to ignore the fluttering under her breastbone and busy herself with serving tea. Rex watched her hands, taking care not to meet her eyes, as she performed the familiar ritual. Then, after she poured fragrant Oolong into his cup and offered it to him, he stared at the steaming liquid a moment before awkwardly taking the delicate porcelain in hand.

  “Not much of a tea drinker, Mr. Leighton?”

  He finally looked at her directly, kicking that tickle in her chest from frolic to frenzy. He narrowed his eyes as he took a tentative sip. “You know I prefer coffee, Miss Sedgwick.”

  “Still? You’ve been in England so long, I would have thought you’d adopted their love for tea over that muddy brew you liked back in New York.”

  “Never. I’ll take my muddy brew every day of the week, thank you very much.”

  Mercy, she’d missed this. Sitting with him. Talking with him. Having him near. It was far too easy. One smirk and that teasing tone in his voice, and he had her on the precipice, ready to tumble into any adventure he proposed.

  Well, almost ready. Apart from the one question that tattooed in her mind, nagging at her like Mrs. Campbell’s chastising glances. Could she trust him again? With her future, with her heart. Her romantic musings might have nothing at all to do with why he’d called at their townhouse.

  “Why have you come?”

  “I didn’t intend to.”

  And . . . she was a fool. The dancing energy in her chest diminished, and the little seedling of hope shriveled up and slid down, just like her shoulders. When her corset began to press in under her arms, she straightened up to correct her unladylike slump.

  He slammed his teacup on the table between them, and it clattered noisily against its saucer. “What I meant to say is that I found myself at your front door, and I gave in to the desire to see you. No reason. Nothing rational about it.”

  “Against your will, then? This rogue desire to see me finally beat out your better judgment?” Sarcasm had never been her strong suit. She hadn’t mastered the right tone.

  “I fight it every day,” he said in such a raspy whisper that she leaned in to catch it. “The desire to see you.”

  May gulped the sip of tea she’d intended to take. She spluttered as the liquid seared a trail to her belly, firing her body until it was as hot as her cheeks.

  “I’ve been in London for many months, Mr. Leighton. Your desire can’t be so formidable.”

  He shifted on the settee across from her so that his leg pressed against her skirts.

  “I assure you, it is.”
>
  She wanted a bit of cool water, a snowflake, perhaps an iceberg to ease the heat coursing through her. Drinking more tea wouldn’t help, but she did it anyway, in a desperate attempt to deflect the intensity of his gaze and the effect of his admission.

  “Perhaps it was a burning desire to make amends with my father that brought you here today.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, he winced. Apparently, he still hadn’t reconciled himself to the prospect.

  “I called on Ashworth this morning.” He watched her, searching her face as if he might find some answer there, though he hadn’t asked a question. “He conveyed an interesting bit of news.”

  “Did he?” May felt as if she was being quizzed and had failed to study for the examination. “You have business dealings with him, don’t you? Was it to do with your hotel?”

  “Partly.” He nodded but added nothing more, as if he needed her to fill the silence.

  “Tell me about your hotel. Emily mentioned your plans, but I’d rather hear them from you.”

  The question set him in motion. He shot up from the settee and began pacing the rug in front of the fireplace. “What would you like to know?”

  May frowned. Something was amiss. In her experience, men who developed their own businesses were happy for any excuse to discuss their ventures. Back in New York, her father had famously put a dinner guest to sleep by prattling on about his plans to expand Sedgwick’s offerings.

  “Why a hotel?”

  Rex swept a hand along the edge of the elaborately carved Italian marble fireplace mantel. “So I can live like this. Or better.”

  “Surely your townhouse in Berkeley Square is every bit as luxurious.”

  “It’s not mine.” He barked the words loud enough to make his abandoned teacup rattle. “I want something of my own. And not some rambling pile in the country.” He nudged his chin toward her portrait of Hartwell. “If I am to live in a house of a hundred rooms, I want them filled. With light and life, and earning me money at the same time.” When he turned toward her, his blue-gold eyes had darkened to stormy gray. “Do you remember the Hoffman Hotel? My mother and I often walked past it. She tried for a job there as a cleaning lady. They turned her away because of her cough. She dreamed of making that grand hotel our home. Now I want a place of my own just like it.”

  The bereft quality in his voice hit May like a blow to the center of her chest. Right where all that pleasure had bloomed a moment before. “You should have that. You deserve a place you can call home.” She stood to approach him, but his gust of laughter held her in place.

  “We don’t get what we deserve in this life.” She’d never heard such bitterness in his tone. Worse was the way he looked at her, as if she was still that naive girl he’d known back in New York. His eyes held the same hollowness that Devenham’s had when he told her they’d each marry for practical reasons, rather than following their hearts.

  Rex stepped forward and reached for her hands. “You still believe in happy endings, don’t you?”

  Only with you. She had only ever truly imagined her happy ending as one that included him. “Does that make me a fool?”

  “No.” He reached up to skim the backs of his fingers across her cheek. His hand trembled as he caressed her. “It makes you who you are. You’ve always been full of light, May. Good and kind and led by your heart.” As he spoke, he slid his hand down to press his heated palm to the bare skin above her square-necked gown. “What a gift to hope as you do.” He no longer trembled, but May had begun to shiver, not from cold but him. Rex was warm and so tantalizingly near, and she’d never wanted to be less good in her life.

  Good girl. Spoiled girl. Rich girl. All the names they called her—her mother, her social-climbing friends, even the newspapers that reported every measure and misstep of million-dollar heiresses. She wasn’t a girl anymore, and being good had never gotten her anywhere. Pressing up onto her toes, she slid an arm around his neck, buried her fingers in his thick hair, and urged him down. Breathless with need, she only managed, “Kiss me.”

  And he did, lowering his head just enough to slide his lips against hers, as if he’d tease her. But she was done with teasing and playing at flirtation in claustrophobic drawing rooms. In that moment she knew with utter clarity what she wanted, who she wanted, and how she wanted him to touch her. She pressed up taller, leaning into him until he reached an arm around to brace her. She didn’t wait to be kissed. Opening to him, touching her tongue to the seam of his lips, she felt him melt against her. Then he took control, using his hand to angle her head just so, using his arm to press her firmly into the hard, sheltering length of his body.

  He stepped her back toward the settee and edged her onto the slippery damask. As soon as she sat, he dropped to his knees before her, gripping her hips and tugging so that he was between her legs, pressed into the tangle of her skirts.

  “Please.” She’d never felt such need, such a desperate, aching craving in her life.

  He kissed her again, but she wanted more. She started on his clothes, on his fashionable sapphire waistcoat and the buttons of his snow white shirt below. When she slid a finger inside, the muscles of his chest quivered, the warmth of his skin sending a wave of lust straight to her center.

  “Tell me what you want, love. I’ll give you anything. Everything.”

  “You,” she breathed against his mouth. “Just you.”

  “You’ve always had me, May.” His hands traced the curves of her legs, tickling up her calves, firm fingers pressing into the flesh of her thighs as he lifted layers of petticoats and the thick fabric of her gown. He kissed her—long, breathless kisses—and explored her with his tongue. He pushed the fabric of her drawers aside and touched her where she craved him most, the center of all that need spiraling out to every part of her body.

  Breaking their kiss, he pulled back to watch her face as his fingers explored her, stroked her brazenly where she’d rarely even dared to touch herself. She moaned when he crested a certain spot, raw and sensitive, and apparently the apex of all the pleasure in the universe.

  May turned her head away. She couldn’t look at him as she lost every bit of control, as she sprawled like a wanton on the parlor sofa while he touched her as no man had ever touched her before.

  “Look at me, love.” He’d never let her get away with hiding, from him or from herself.

  She looked back at him. His tourmaline gaze wasn’t stormy anymore but clear, bright, burning from within. She was burning too, heat and sensation pushing her, pulling her, until she felt she’d come apart.

  As if he sensed she was there, just at the edge, he whispered, “Trust me, May.”

  She burst apart, sparks igniting along her skin, her body vibrating against him as pleasure washed over her, through her. Again, and again. She gripped his shoulder, pulling at the hair near his neck, trying not to scream, trying not to lose herself—and failing completely.

  He reached up to stroke her back, pressed his mouth against her ear. “I’ve got you, love.”

  “I do,” May rasped, her throat suddenly raw, as if the scream she’d held back had somehow escaped. “I do trust you.”

  After settling her skirts around her legs, Rex pressed her back against the sofa. Her body still felt boneless, melted, and she tilted, half leaning onto a pillow in the corner.

  The pillow shifted as a fearsome squawk pierced the air. An orange and white blur darted off the sofa, across the room, and into the darkened space beneath a curio cabinet.

  “What the hell was that?”

  May bit the corner of her lip, reached out to stroke his arm, and grinned. “Do you remember that kitten we found near Washington Square Park?”

  “I told you to leave it.”

  “I did. But then I went back. I couldn’t abandon her to fend for herself.” They’d spotted the little furry thing on a walk through the park. May had spent a sleepless night worrying over the kitten before returning the next day to claim her.

  Rex ran
a hand through his hair. With his other, he still gripped her possessively around the waist. “And you brought the cat all the way to London?”

  “Father did when he sailed over. How could I leave her all alone in the New York house?”

  Pursing his mouth as he stared at her, his eyes flickered with amusement. “Well, let’s meet her.”

  May looked toward curio. “Duchess. Come out and meet Rex.”

  “Duchess?” All the mirth faded from his gaze as he pulled his hand from her body. “You named her Duchess?”

  “Yes.” May stood and bent down next to the curio to scoop the cat from underneath. It was the only way she’d get the persnickety creature out. Gathering Duchess gently, she cradled the dusty, frowning feline and turned so Rex could see her. “She’s rather imperious, so it suits her.”

  He got to his feet and looked down to button his shirt and waistcoat. “Does it suit you?”

  Head bent, his voice muffled, May wasn’t certain she’d heard him. “Pardon?”

  “Duchess. Countess. A title.” He snapped his gaze up, those glowing eyes of his boring into hers. “Does it suit you?” Two long strides brought his body close, an inch from hers, yet he didn’t touch her as she wanted him to do. And he didn’t spare a glance for the cat. “Do you want a title, May?”

  “Not particularly, no.” It seemed such an odd thing to say, quite the opposite of what everyone expected of her. Enough to send her mother into apoplexy if she’d still been alive. It was a truth she’d always known but had never allowed herself to speak aloud.

  He gripped her upper arms, and Duchess’s tail began a series of furious flicks as she glared at him. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

  There was nothing soft in his gaze now, none of the heat of those glorious moments when he’d touched her. May pulled away from him and settled the cat back in her corner of the settee, rubbing a hand over Duchess’s sleek head a few times before stepping toward Rex again.