by Lydia Joyce
"No," he murmured, his expression softening. "I suppose not."
He stood and skirted the table, stopping in front of her. Victoria held herself stiffly, tilting her head up the necessary two inches to meet his gaze directly. The lines across his forehead and the grooves down his cheeks were thrown into shadow, making him look older than his years. Older, and sadder, and she realized with a shock that some of the sadness seemed to be for her.
She felt like she had been taken up and shaken. Being dismissed, manipulated, taken for granted, even admired or desired—all those things she was comfortable with; all those things were almost impersonal reactions to the way she chose to present herself to the world. But there was nothing impersonal in Raeburn's gaze now. It seemed to bore straight through her, into the most secret corners of her heart, and far, far worse, it seemed to ache for what it found there. Never had she felt so exposed, and never again did she want to—much less in front of the haughty duke.
Raeburn reached for her, grasping her by the elbows, but she jerked back and turned her head away.
"I do not need nor deserve anyone's pity," she rasped. "Least of all yours."
Raeburn wrapped an arm around her waist tightly enough that she'd have to fight to break free. She didn't, for he captured her chin in his other hand and tilted her head to face him fully, and the intensity of his expression sent a bolt of pain through her that robbed her of her ability to resist. If there had been even a hint of mockery or censure or condescension, she could have tossed her head and pulled away with a cold laugh. But there was only the same sadness, and she found she had no defenses against it. Awareness of him trickled involuntarily through every inch of her body, more poignant than uncomplicated carnality, burning her and weakening her at once.
"Look at me and tell me you do not need it," he said tensely. "Not pity. I think of you too highly to offer that. Sympathy, kindness, compassion—tell me you don't need those."
"I can't," Victoria whispered, the words dragged from her. Why couldn't she lie to this man, as she had to so many others? Why couldn't she just turn away? Maybe she had seen too much, felt too much of him that day through the house he was building. Whatever it was, she could not find it in herself to shut him out. "But still I do not deserve them."
A painful, lopsided smile flitted across his face. "Heaven preserve us from our just desserts."
He lowered his head, and realizing what he was planning to do, Victoria jerked hers away.
"Kiss me, dammit," he growled, catching the back of her head in one broad hand.
Victoria tried to shake her head even as he held it fast. She felt like her mind had been scraped raw, her walls undermined while she had been watching the gates. She could not stand to be touched now, not while she was still reeling.
"Give me a minute—half a minute!" she moaned. Time enough to rebuild the holes in her defenses and mount another guard. But her pleas were smothered as their lips met.
Her breath caught and was snatched away by Raeburn's mouth on hers, and with it went her resistance. The dark heat in her midsection erupted through her like molten silver, searing every nerve and dissolving every bone until she seemed to pour through her own lips in pure sensation. Raeburn's tongue pressed against her teeth, and she welcomed it in, thrilling with sheer sensation. The rhythm of his mouth, of her body in his arms, of her hands twisted in his waistcoat pulsed with her heartbeat in her ears. She tried to retreat into the bliss of it, to forget everything but the feel of flesh on flesh, but every touch and every taste kept her rooted in the moment—and rooted in the knowledge that it was not just a man but Raeburn, shadowy and dangerous Raeburn, who held her. The kiss, his touch, her need—they were mind-brandingly euphoric, but even as she burned his taste into her memory, her euphoria was mixed with the bitterness of despair and, even deeper, the taint of desperation and soul-clanging emptiness.
A sound tore from her throat at their separation, half moan, half sob. For a moment, she just stood, too shaken by the rush of sensation to move, fighting down emotions that had lain quiescent for so long she had almost forgotten them. The quiet despair of habitual loneliness: that she was used to, that she could conquer. But not so this much more personal pain and the knowledge that she was here—and there, across the bridge of air and breath, was Raeburn, offering an ephemeral surcease she'd be mad to accept.
"Don't do that again," she finally said. Her voice was perfectly collected and rock steady. She wished she could say the same for herself.
"And why not?" His tone was as sober as his face.
She pressed her lips together. "Because I bargained with my body, no more."
"I can take nothing else that you do not freely give me." His hands slid down her back, finding the buttons at her waist and undoing them quickly. He slipped his hand in the gap, and with two tugs, the first of her petticoats loosened. A moment later, her crinoline slipped from her hips to pool at her feet.
"Must those always go first?" she asked, seeking vainly to recapture the lightness of two minutes before.
Raeburn raised an eyebrow but answered her anyway. "They are always the most in the way." His hands slid down to encircle her rear, and he half pulled, half lifted her against him. His expression remained intent and grave, and she knew she had not succeeded in redirecting his thoughts, wherever his hands might be roving.
She tried archness next. "I am standing on my crinoline."
Raeburn didn't even dignify that attempt with a remark, merely lifting her off her feet and swinging her in a half circle. He did not set her down immediately but held her against his body for a long moment, inscrutable hazel eyes searching her face. Victoria was acutely aware of the flexed muscles of the arm she had grabbed when he picked her up, of the hard planes of his chest against her other arm, trapped between them. She felt power in his solid frame, and angry energy, wound just beneath his skin. And desire, too—desire for her. It was in his darkened eyes, his tensed jaw, the hardness of his arousal against her leg. Victoria's breath quickened, a hot flush starting in her midsection and spreading to the surface of her body, where it crawled across her skin and left it tingling. She tilted her head back, inviting his mouth to descend on hers, but he shook his head and let her slide the inch to the floor.
"Soon."
The word was so full of promise that it sent a shiver through her. An arm around her waist, Raeburn guided her to the table.
"Sit."
Victoria hesitated for only a moment before sinking down on her pillow beside the table. Instead of taking his place opposite her, Raeburn dropped a second cushion right beside it, shrugged off his waistcoat, and sank onto it. His expression was closed, the furrowed planes of his face unreadable. Whatever he was thinking, Victoria had the conviction that he wasn't finished with their conversation, and the thought of his pursuing it left her full of dread and something like relief. But that last emotion was doubly troubling in its own right.
"The crumble is getting cold," she pointed out nonsensically, more to say something than for any real concern about it.
Raeburn covered the dish and pushed it to the end of the table closest to the stove. "It will be fine for a while yet." He gripped her chin gently between forefinger and thumb, and she thought for a moment that he was going to kiss her again, but he only turned her face away from him. A moment later, she felt his hands in her hair, hunting for the pins that held it in place.
She felt the whorl of hair against the back of her head begin to loosen, and then it slid down across her shoulders. Goose pimples crept across her scalp as Raeburn combed his fingers through it, stopping when his hand caught on a pin he had missed.
"And so I banish the spinster and free the maid," he murmured. She could feel him encircle her loose tresses with a single broad hand and hold them suspended from his fist.
"I am no maid."
"A debauched maid, then. A woman of pleasure, who has shrugged off the confines of ordinary existence to grab at the rich, sweet fruit of life."
His fist loosened, and he pulled it softly down the length of her hair.
"Cliches from you? I would have thought you above that." She put as much tartness as she could muster into her voice.
"Sometimes cliches exist because their accuracy is so useful." He grasped her hips and pulled her backward toward him. She came, allowing him to guide her until her back was against his chest, his legs on either side of her. Sitting, she was much shorter man he, and when he coaxed her chin back, the back of her head rested in the hollow of his shoulder. He shifted slightly, so that her face was angled toward his and she could see his expression. "Much better," he confirmed after a moment of critical examination. "You could be naked, but until that hair is let down, you might as well have kept every scrap and stitch of your armor on."
Armor? What armor? Victoria had felt stripped bare long before Raeburn had loosened the first button of her dress. All it took was a look from those eyes, a few words from those lips, and she was reeling, defenseless… But she said none of those things; they were far too great a confession.
Raeburn bent toward her slowly, deliberately, so that anticipation formed a hard knot in her center before his breath warmed her cheek, before his lips brushed against hers so delicately there was hardly any feeling of contact at all. But even mat butterfly-touch was enough to snatch her breath and send dizziness spiraling through her, and when his kiss deepened, Victoria had the sensation that the world was falling away, leaving nothing but their two bodies, hanging impossibly in a void.
When he pulled back, she opened her eyes to find him watching her intently, a line of concentration between his brows. Without looking away, he bent to the side and gripped the edge of her skirt, tugging it upward to expose the scarlet-clad length of her leg. He glanced down to where the lace-bunched garters encircled her calves just below the knee. Despite the gravity in his eyes, a small smile pulled at his lips.
"They are truly horrible."
"But the corset is worse," she said. "I shouldn't have been so cross, otherwise."
Raeburn dipped his head, nuzzling against her neck even as his hand climbed higher on her thigh. "I shan't give you your old corset back. No, your great and terrible breastplate is mine for a while longer. But tomorrow—no more crimson stockings and garters. Will that mollify you?"
"It will go some way in that direction, yes."
She caught her breath as his questing hand found the slit in her pantaloons. He slipped it through and rested his calloused palm against the upper curve of her thigh, his fingers curling around it, impossibly rough against her heated skin. She shivered as he rubbed his thumb across her soft flesh, a twisting wetness blossoming between her legs as she involuntarily tilted her hips toward his hand.
"Not yet," Raeburn murmured, his lips against her neck. She groaned in protest, but he only tugged lightly on her earlobe with his teeth. He kissed a line down from the base of her ear to the neckline of her dress, each caress leaving her skin burning in its wake. Below, his hand slid across the joint of her thigh to cup her curls in its warmth.
Need tightened hard within her, demanding release, demanding satisfaction. Victoria pushed her hips against his palm, gripping his knees and leaning back into the crook of his arm, but he only kept his hand resting lightly where it was. She shrugged her neck away from the onslaught of his kisses and reached to pull his mouth up to meet hers.
"Now," she whispered into its sweetness.
He took her mouth, but his hand did not move. She pressed her hips harder toward it, but still he let her push him away.
"Why?" she asked against his lips, unable to keep a note of pleading from her voice.
He took her lower lip between his teeth and tugged it gently before speaking. But when he did answer, it was with a question of his own. "Do you want me?"
"Yes," she moaned without hesitation.
"No. I didn't ask if you wanted this. I asked if you wanted me."
Even with every sense burning, every fiber straining for release, Victoria stilled. "Why should you care?" she blurted, but Raeburn merely returned her gaze, expression unchanged. "I made no promises of wanting you. I hardly know you, and you ask me if I want you?" What right did he have to demand anything other than sheer organic enthusiasm?
"Yes."
"I—" Her automatic denial died unsaid. She shook her head. "I… don't know." And that was the truth. Her mind was torn between delight and dread, between hunger for connection and desire for the wool-wrapped protection of isolation where nothing could ever enter, where no one could ever hurt her again. But her body had no such qualms. It was raging with need.
"I shouldn't care," Raeburn confessed. "I have no right to care. And yet, I need to know." He kissed the sensitive place under her ear, and she shuddered delicately even as she sought to find an answer for him.
"I would not have agreed to the bargain if I did not find the idea of you giving me this at least palatable. I need not remind you that what I bargained with was my body."
"Is that the only reassurance I will get?" he asked into the hollow of her throat, his bream sending tingles across her skin.
Victoria swallowed. "It's the only reassurance I have to give."
He sighed but raised his head to recapture her lips, and below he found her opening and plunged a finger into her even as he invaded her mouth with his tongue. She gasped and shuddered as expectation unwound all at once, then began to move with the rhythm of his hand and tongue as they stroked inside her. A new, deeper heat coiled in her midsection, winding tighter and tighter as Raeburn pressed on, pulling her with him. She felt every individual hair of his chin rasp against her cheek, every muscle fiber in the arm that cradled her suddenly boneless neck, every nuance of his personal odor, as darkly seductive as the man himself. The knot grew tighter, harder, until she feared she would break. Raeburn held her there for a long moment, at the peak of impossibility, before shifting his rhythm and sending her soaring, plunging over the edge as the fire seared through every nerve in her body, wave after wave. She arched hard against the constriction of her corset and threw her head back, a roar filling her ears until she could hardly hear her own choked cry over it.
Finally, the wave receded, leaving her weak and hollow in its wake. Raeburn slowed, stopped, and then just held her against him for a long moment. Still panting, Victoria closed her eyes and let her head loll in the crook of his arm. It felt good, traitorously good just to lean against someone. Not Raeburn, she told herself firmly.
Someone, anyone—a warm, faceless body that would allow her to abandon her straight-backed self-reliance for just the space of a few breaths and drift…
But soon, too soon, Raeburn stood and urged her to her feet, and reality came crashing back with all its doubts and fears. What had she been thinking when she signed that contract? she asked herself as he reached around her and began unbuttoning the back of her dress.
What had she been thinking then, and what was she doing here now?
* * *
Chapter Nine
The last button loosened, and Byron tugged the dress over her head, tossing it aside to crumple in a silken puddle across one of the divans. He bent to take her mouth with his again, but he saw a flash of color out of the corner of his eye and looked down, which was enough to make him freeze as if he'd been slapped.
"Oh."
"What?" Victoria followed his gaze downward. "Oh," she echoed.
The corset—Byron's mind shuddered away from calling it Victoria's corset—was bared in all its horrible glory, from the red-and-black-striped satin to the hideously extravagant lace ruches at the neckline.
"Now I understand why you were so distraught," Byron murmured, hiding his amusement.
"I wasn't distraught. I was angry."
He returned his gaze to her face. Her expression was tinged with humor but still drawn around her eyes and mouth as it had been all night, and he sensed a tightness in her body that made him uneasy. "And now?" He found himself putting a more meaningful tw
ist to the question than it warranted.
"And now I can regard the mistake with perfect equanimity, for I believe that your delicate sensibilities are far more offended by it than mine ever could be." She gave him a strained smile.
He traced the neckline of the corset, the swells of her breasts warm beneath his finger. She took a shaky breath, her eyes closing to slits at his touch, but still the harsh tension that hummed in every line of her body did not loosen. What was wrong? Surely she expected no more questions—nor did she have the look of a woman with something still to hide. She seemed to be wound up in dreadful anticipation, waiting for a reaction from him. But of what kind?
"My delicate sensibilities might be offended by the packaging, but never the gift." He lowered his head to follow with his mouth the line his finger had just drawn, trying to coax the tightness out of her.
"So I'm a gift now, am I?" Victoria asked unsteadily.
He looked up sharply, stung by her sudden causticity. What had happened between their kiss in the Unicorn Room and this moment to cause that distance in her? "Better than calling you a payment, I should think."
That brought her out of her strange mood in a hurry. Her pale eyes flared, and she opened her mouth—to deliver a scathing reply, he was sure—but her look sharpened and she closed it without emitting a word.
"Nothing to say?" he asked softly.
She frowned. "You have given me nothing worthy of response."
That was the Victoria he had come to know, he thought with some relief. "Well, then," he countered, trying to lighten the tone, "I'll have to find something that is."
And before she could ask what he meant, he dipped his head to her throat and slipped his arms under her, deftly loosening the corset lacings as his lips caressed their way up her neck to her mouth.
Soon, the busk was unhooked, and then Byron pushed the straps from her shoulders and left the corset where it fell.
Damn, but she was irresistible like that, with her hair tumbled down past her shoulders and her chemise hanging from her frame, concealing yet hinting at a curve of a breast, the darker circle of a nipple, the hollow at her waist. And her expression, expectant with a hint of vulnerability behind her guarded eyes.