“Oh.” Emma bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I assumed you did.”
The other woman tilted her head. “Did you? Whatever gave you that impression?”
Bloody hell. This was why one should never make assumptions about another woman’s business. “You—” her voice lowered to a whisper — “go out at night. All the time.”
Alexandra didn’t look at all offended. If anything, she was only more amused. Her teeth flashed in a grin. “And?”
“And . . .” Emma was at a loss for words. “If you’re not meeting anyone, then where do you go?”
“I’ll never tell.” Alexandra winked and opened her book again. “The mask is in the trunk in my closet, and the dress you’ll want is at the back. The red velvet. Wear it without a corset, like the other.”
Emma rose, uncertain and more than a little confused by how easily her friend changed the subject. If not a lover, what kept Alexandra out until the early hours of morning? Emma could have asked, but all ladies had a right to their own secrets. After all, Emma had no right to judge Alexandra; her own had the potential to destroy their friendship.
It’s one more night. She need never know.
You want too much, Emma thought to herself as she headed for the door. Always too much.
She paused when Alexandra called her name. “Yes?”
She heard the smile in her friend’s voice. “If I recall correctly, the buttons up the back of the dress are very delicate. So easily ripped. If you return it in a less than ideal condition, I’ll understand.”
Emma laughed to herself all the way up the stairs. She rounded the corner into the family wing and collided, quite literally, with the source of her nightly torment.
James's hands were on her shoulders to steady her. Emma could barely breathe when he touched her.
“Easy,” James said.
His voice was polite, casual, but she recalled the way he whispered in her ear when he took her. I could fuck you every second of every day, he’d said when he’d made love to her again. He’d spoken in a rich, low murmur, almost like a purr.
Emma had felt it all the way down her spine. And when he touched her—
“Miss Dumont.” He interrupted her thoughts. “Are you quite all right? You look rather ill.”
When she looked up at him, his expression was one of polite concern. As if she were . . .
Emma almost sighed. As if she were a sister.
She knew, of course, that he wouldn’t recognize her. She had made certain of it. She wore her hair differently as Selene: loose, rather than wound in a chignon. And her dress had been that of a lady’s, not the plain, modest wardrobe of a servant.
And yet . . she wanted him to put his arms around her. To peel her clothes off and take her against the wall, right there.
Right now.
“Yes, I’m quite well.” She forced a smile. “Just overly warm. It’s been so warm today. I’ve noticed. Have you?”
Oh, do shut up.
James raised an eyebrow. “It’s raining.”
“Oh.” She glanced at the window across the hall. The weather took that precise moment to begin storming. Bugger, bugger, bugger. “Of course it is,” she sighed.
Sod everything.
He stepped back and regarded her more closely. “Are you certain you’re all right?”
“I’m not sure. Does embarrassment count as an illness?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then I’m perfectly fine.” She leaned forward. “My lord, could we pretend the last two minutes never happened?”
Now he looked amused, and his lips curved into a smile, and Emma was struck again by how lovely it was. Even more so without his face obscured by the mask.
“That depends. If I pretend it never happened, do I still run into you? Or do you change course and avoid me all together?”
She had kissed those lips. She had grazed her teeth down the side of that neck and licked his pulse and marked him with her bite. If she were to push aside the collar of his shirt, would it still be there? Would he still wear the impression of her on his skin, a memory imprinted there for him to remember in private? Or would it have healed over, as if she had not existed at all?
Emma swallowed hard and stepped back. “Which would you prefer?” Her voice had dropped a pitch.
James noticed. Now when he looked at her, it was if he were trying to place her.
He must have realized he was staring, because he shook his head. “I’m sorry, what were we discussing?”
Now his words sounded as intimate as if they were in a bedchamber. Emma considered he might be thinking of her — at least, the version of her behind the mask, brazen and seductive.
“Forgetting, ironically enough,” she said, knowing she must sound a bit breathless. “I think the first option is the best choice.”
His eyes met hers. “The first option?”
She smiled. It wasn't like her smile behind the mask, but one just as powerful. “It’s the one where I see you, and I smile as I pass, and I bid you a lovely night.”
English was unwieldy. It didn’t flow off the tongue the way French did, as if it were created to seduce. But Emma Dumont was her mother’s daughter, and she could make any language sound beguiling.
She felt him staring after her as she walked down the hall.
Chapter 9
James’s breath caught when he opened the bedchamber door at the Masquerade and saw Selene. She stood at the table beside the bed, pouring two glasses of wine from the provided decanter.
The dress she wore was crimson, and cut low enough to display the long, pale line of her throat, the tops of her breasts. Her loose, dark hair gleamed in the light from the fire blazing in the hearth.
Siren, she was. More myth than real.
Seeing her should have been like the first drink after a desert trek. But James felt like he was about to drown in her, in this. He should have cared about how he felt himself pulled forward, unable to resist. Losing control and falling down, down, down into this dream they shared.
He should have cared.
He didn't.
He only wanted to undress her, to drive into her. Over and over again, until he forgot about dreams and drowning and everything else.
Until he forgot even himself.
When James shut the door, she looked up and smiled a sinner’s smile. It made him instantly hard.
“Bonsoir,” Selene murmured. Her dark eyes were mischievous behind her mask. “Would you like some wine?”
James didn’t answer. He was beyond speaking as he approached her, only needing to touch her, stroke her, disrobe her.
She shivered as he neared, and he saw the rapid rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. She wanted him just as badly.
When he took the glass of wine from her to set back on the table, their fingers brushed. That one touch was all it took.
Their lips crashed together and their kiss was hard, devouring. It was a brush of tongues, the harsh, yet pleasurable scratch of teeth. They grasped at each other with trembling hands, unfastening clothes as they reintroduced their bodies. Became acquainted once more with the taste and feel of each other.
Selene had him naked as quickly as before, and James’s cock jutted up between them, hard and ready.
James reached for the buttons at the back of Selene’s dress, fingers fumbling.
He let out a curse. “Don’t tell me you wore this on purpose. Are you trying to drive me mad?”
Her chuckle was low in his ear. “A few extra moments. You poor thing.”
He slid his tongue across her collarbone and whispered, “A few moments is the difference between these buttons and my mouth between your thighs, licking your sweet cunny.”
“Rip it off.” She sounded urgent now. “Right up the back. Rip. It. Off.”
That drew laughter from James. She was full of surprises, his dream lover. “As my lady commands.”
The rip of fabric seemed to echo in the quiet room. Buttons sc
attered across the floor. The dress fell, pooling around Selene’s feet.
James murmured something incoherent at the sight of her. It might have been beautiful. It might have been exquisite. It might have been any combination of words that failed to properly articulate how the firelight caressed her skin. How she stood there without an ounce of shyness as he worshipped her with his eyes, almost hesitant to touch her.
But he did; he couldn’t help it. His fingertips drifted down her arm, crossing to her breast, where his thumb brushed her nipple.
The sound she made — one of such helpless need — almost brought James to his knees.
He pulled Selene in close, until their skin touched. It took every ounce of control not to lift her into his arms and enter her right then. But he had to know. He had to know she thought of him the last seven days, too. If she had imagined his features on other men, his voice, his smile, the way he had projected her onto Miss Dumont.
Poor Miss Dumont, who would be horrified to know her employer had pictured her naked, speaking naughty French words in Selene’s voice.
“Did you think of me at all?” he murmured, tracing the shell of her ear with his lips. “You certainly crossed my mind once or twice.”
“Only once or twice?”
A great deal more. “You?”
He felt her smile against his shoulder. “Once or twice.”
“Was it during the day or night?”
When she didn’t answer, he slid his fingertips down her spine as if he could coax the answer out of her. She shuddered.
“Night.” Selene sighed when he picked her up and set her down on the bed, the sheets warm from the fire. “Always night.”
Chapter 10
“Tell me what you imagined when you thought of me in the dark,” James said. His voice — the beauty of French on his tongue, so charmingly accented — had such an effect on her. As if it stroked her in the most intimate of places, and yet since he had lain her down on the bed, he hadn’t touched her once. “Were we here at the Masquerade?”
Emma shook her head. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t say the things she had thought of in her most private moments when she touched herself and pretended it was him. It was never enough.
“Then where?” His fingertips brushed her shoulder once — the barest hint of a touch. As if to say, Tell me or I’ll keep my distance.
She was powerless against his voice, against the dark, against the freedom anonymity afforded her. She wanted to tell him everything, every secret, as long as she kept her name to herself.
“In my home —” Not your home; nothing is yours. It’s all his — “there is a library. During my free time, I go there often to read; sometimes I sit at the window and watch the rain fall into the garden. When I imagine us, we’re there in the window seat, and the weather is allowed in.”
Emma thought she heard his breathing quicken. Then his lips were at her ear. “Tell me everything,” he whispered. “Show me how you touched yourself.”
“I’m so deep into one of my mythology books that I don’t notice you come in. Not until you take the book from me and set it aside.” Emma’s fingertips brushed over her collarbone and she shut her eyes. “At first I’m hesitant as you begin unbuttoning my dress—”
“Why are you hesitant?”
His voice reminded her that he was watching as she slid her hand between her breasts, imagining him undoing buttons there.
“Anyone could hear,” she said. “Anyone could come in. You don’t seem to mind, even when I’m naked and you begin disrobing yourself.” Emma flicked a thumb across her nipple. “You touch me here, first. So slow. The wind has picked up outside, and the rain mists us both. I lick the water off your skin.” Her hand slid down her stomach. “Then you touch me here.” Her fingertips were between her legs now. She thought she heard his breath catch. “And you discover how wet I am. How wet I always am around you.”
“Always?”
Emma should take care about revealing details, even minor ones like this. But it was dark and her hand was between her thighs as she stroked herself, and she was unbothered.
“Yes,” she said. “When you look at me, I want you. I’m ready every time. In my dreams, you enter me slowly.” Emma slid a finger inside herself, unable to suppress the moan that escaped her lips. “Again and again. So slowly that I urge you to go faster — reminding you again that someone might walk in — but you kiss away my protests.”
She heard a sound from James, something deep in his throat as he watched her work her finger in and out.
“How do I control myself with such a request? How do I resist?” He sounded far away, as if in another room.
“The point isn’t to resist; it’s to tease. Drive into me until you’re no longer kissing away my protests, but my words as I plead for you.” Emma added another finger, stroking. The release was building and building. “I leave no question about what I want.”
“What do you want?” From the catch in James’s words, Emma knew he was touching himself, too. The sheets rustled as he stroked himself. His breath quickened.
“For you to fuck me—” Another finger, faster — “so hard that I forget my words. And you do, once I’ve begged for it. You press your palm to my mouth so no one will hear me when I cry out your name. You are rough and I love it—”
Emma gasped when James shoved her hand away and came down on top of her. He slammed into her, as hard as she imagined.
“Yes.” She sounded breathless. “God yes.”
“Say my name.” Was that his voice, that ragged French that was more animal than human? “Say it.”
“James.” His name was a prayer. “James.”
His name was a confession. It scorched her throat and held every secret she had hidden away. For years, she had imagined him doing exactly this: fucking her until the only thing she was capable of remembering was his name.
She screamed it to the ceiling as she climaxed.
James did, too. Only the name he repeated, laughing as he came, wasn’t hers. It was as much a lie as claiming his library was her own.
Chapter 11
As their breathing came down, James began to notice that even with Selene right beside him, she never felt real. As if, at any moment, she would disappear.
You lost control again, he thought to himself.
He’d directed her into bed, ordered her to tell him her dreams. And then, when she touched herself and described her thoughts . . .
He’d needed to be inside her.
It was that simple.
How did he stop this? How did he lose the illusion of her? How did he treat her as if she were real? Someone he could leave when the time came and never think of her again?
He would get to know her better. Give this intimacy time to grow stale. Once the allure of anonymity wore off — when she was a dream made flesh — it would be easier to find control again. Where they went from there didn’t matter, as long as his mind was his own once more. As long as he was able to sleep and no longer dream of her.
Selene stirred and moved to rise from the bed. “Thank you,” she told him. “Again.”
James reached for her. “Stay. Stay with me.”
Her expression was unreadable through the mask. “For how long?”
Until morning. Longer.
James shook those dangerous thoughts from his head. “Until you’re forced to leave.”
She stared at him so long that he thought she would say no. Then, slowly, Selene slid beneath the sheets again, and pressed her naked body to his side.
“All right.”
James exhaled, hoping she didn’t notice his relief. His fingertips stroked her shoulder and she seemed to curl into him, seeking his touch.
“When you were describing your dream,” he said, “you mentioned reading a mythology book. Is that where you chose your name?”
“Yes.”
A part of him wished she’d given her real name, just as he had. Instead, as if she reached into
his mind and read his thoughts, she had given him the name of a goddess. In any other instance, that would have been off-putting. Had she called herself Aphrodite, he might have laughed at such a outlandish reference.
But she didn’t choose a deity known for beauty or lust; she chose Selene.
“Why the moon goddess?” he asked.
She was tracing her fingertips across his skin, drawing lines with her touch. “She fell in love with Endymion from afar. But he was mortal, and he chose to sleep for eternity rather than die. So even when Selene had Endymion forever, there was a part of him that was always lost to her. I understood that — wanting something I could never have.”
“Something?” James hated that sudden tight feeling in his chest. “Or someone?”
“Someone,” she said quietly, and that word struck him like an arrow.
She’s not yours. She doesn’t belong to you, and she never did. You both came here for the same reason, and she offered no illusions to the contrary.
“Is that why you came to the Masquerade?” He had to know. “To find a distraction from your someone?”
If she heard the tightness in his voice, she didn’t let on. “No.” She sighed. “I came to indulge in my worst quality in the hope that, one day, it will fade and spare me a great deal of heartache.”
“What quality is that?”
Selene looked up at him then, a small smile playing on her lips. “Someone was a product of a defect I’ve had for a very long time, James. My problem is that I want too much.”
James loved the sound of his name on her tongue. When she had screamed it during climax, that had been what took him over the edge. Now, when she said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, it made him smile back.
He rolled on top of her and braced himself on his elbows. She smelled of lavender and rain, and James knew he would always associate those things with her now.
“What if I like that you want too much?” he whispered, dipping his head to press his lips to her throat.
“Men always love an insatiable woman until they can’t keep up. Then they claim she’s demanding.”
A Touch Wicked (Private Arrangements) Page 4