by Carrie Lofty
“It’s been . . .” She dropped her gaze. “It’s been such a long time since we waltzed.”
“It has.”
Memories of the Saunders’ long-ago gala layered over them—not like the quartet’s sweet melody, but as a discordant screech. Yet despite Miles’s fear that a brick wall would thrust between them once more, Viv’s smile turned rueful. “Shall we try to rewrite history, then?”
“Just a new chapter, my dear.”
With more haste than he would’ve admired in another man—but damn it all, he didn’t want Viv to change her mind—Miles led her to the dance floor. He encircled her body and pulled her near, his fingers possessively splayed between her shoulder blades. And they waltzed.
Moving in time to the music was natural and familiar. Their bodies found a place of unison, rising and falling, spinning and twirling. He led and she followed, which was fact enough to leave him more excited than the dance. Color and light spilled like paint along his peripheral vision. Conversation and music layered over the pulse in his ears.
“You’re smiling,” she said.
“That sounded like a question.”
“One can never be certain with us.”
“That has been our wont, hasn’t it? Blasted unpredictable.”
A frown creased between her flaxen brows. “I suppose it can’t be helped. We bring out the worst in one another.”
“Funny.” He pulled her closer. “I was just thinking that we bring out the best.”
She appeared a little dazed, a little shy. Miles wanted to crawl into her thoughts and live there until he could interpret her mysterious reserve. What would he find? Did she feel anything for him at all? More likely he was a monumental fool, the likes of which the British aristocracy had yet to survive.
They finished the dance and started straight into another. He was reluctant to let the moment escape. Still, some matters simply outshone all others. Apparently dread and an uncomfortable tickle of jealousy were, at present, stronger than desire.
“Tell me now, Viv. What happened?”
“He kissed me.”
Miles stubbed his toe, then tightened his grip on Viv’s upper body to keep from taking them both down. To her credit, she kept the rhythm and yanked him back into step.
“Saving your renowned subtlety for more worthy peers?” he asked through clenched teeth.
“Best to say such a thing bluntly.”
“I might beg to differ.”
He gulped a mouthful of hot air, tasting a hint of ozone from the electrical lamps. The room seemed jaundiced then, bathed in that unnatural yellow light. Or maybe the idea of Elden’s tongue pressing into his wife’s mouth put him in mind of disease. Miles certainly felt capable of retching.
“Did you enjoy it, then?”
“No! Of course not.”
“There is no ‘of course’ about it, Viv. We’re back to that measure of unpredictability. I can no more judge your appreciation of Elden’s sexual advances than I could predict whether you’ll accept my proposition.”
“Which . . . proposition?”
“As to where you’ll sleep tonight.”
Soldiers prepared for incoming cannon fire with less anxiety than Miles as he awaited her reply. He pushed at Viv because she could push him to the point of ruin. He’d been close once, so very close—and he hadn’t loved her then. With no trust and no faith, they had no future. Those were the stakes.
“Yes,” she said simply. “I would like to sleep with you tonight.”
Miles stopped dancing. It was either that or take an irrevocable tumble the next time she lobbed another verbal volley. He avoided swirling couples and walked her off the floor.
They wound up tucked behind the ostentatious staircase. “Well, this is nicely reminiscent,” he said dryly. “Now, explain. Everything Elden did.”
“For some reason, he doesn’t want the brokerage to sell carbons. When I told him I wouldn’t be intimidated, he kissed me. It wasn’t . . .” She made a sour face and crossed her arms over her stomach. “It wasn’t one of passion. He means to intimidate us.”
Miles closed his eyes as red dyed his vision. “By threatening you? Viv, I’ll have him arrested.”
He remembered the wagon master he’d fought there on the Cape Town docks, and the Boer raiders who’d attacked the stagecoaches. Would that dealing with a human snake like Elden were so easy, so physically satisfying. Nothing short of garroting the man would completely quell the steaming rage in Miles’s veins. But no. He may as well have been back in London, tangled by the polite conventions of money and politics.
“No need for anything so dramatic,” she said. “He promised we’d be sorry, but nothing more specific. In the meantime, don’t you think we should discover the real reason he’s so against our new business model? The idea his dislikes are based on its lack of prestige doesn’t ring true.”
Her eyes twitched to take in every nuance of his expression. He’d never quite felt so much like an exotic beast. No matter the tidal pool of nausea swirling in his gut, he appreciated one plain fact: she cared what he thought.
“Yes, of course.” Miles, however, needed other answers. “When you described this . . . encounter, you seemed disappointed. Why?”
“I admire that entrepreneurial spirit—the ability to rise above one’s birth. Perhaps because that’s what I admired about my father. But they are nothing alike beyond their rise to fortune.” She shaped her lush lips into those of a prim spinster. “I most certainly did not enjoy it.”
“Good.”
“Good? That’s all you have to say?”
He stalked nearer. Viv retreated one step, then two, until she pressed against the back of the staircase. A rush of memory overwhelmed Miles, mingling with a possessive turmoil that left him shaking and light-headed. They had a history with staircases.
“What more would you care to hear? That I want to remove the man’s heart for violating you?” He slid his hands down along either side of her breasts, his thumbs flicking over the nipples hidden by layers of red silk and lace. Her lips parted. “Or that the idea of your mouth touching another man’s turns my stomach hard and hot as a lit coal?” When his hands reached her waist, he pressed his groin against hers—not so much an expression of lust but a claiming of territory. “Or perhaps that I refuse, absolutely refuse to share you with anyone else?”
She swallowed. Any minute now, the past and present would collide in her mind.
“You’re being very generous with me.”
He blinked. “What was that?”
Viv offered a lopsided smile—a new one he’d never seen before. He quite liked it, although the way it twisted his heart was probably more dangerous than being caught making love behind a staircase.
“You haven’t mentioned how you’ve kept your word ever since we arrived,” she said. “And you have yet to say ‘I told you so’ regarding Mr. Elden’s intentions.”
Miles let out a heavy sigh. He bracketed her face in his hands and kissed her softly. “I told you so,” he whispered.
Her hands tightened on his biceps. She made a little pleading noise in the back of her throat. If they didn’t leave in the next three minutes, he’d crawl under her crinolines and smile as history repeated itself.
But Viv wouldn’t allow that. Not again. She had the poise of an angel—something he’d been too stubborn and conceited to recognize before. And that majesty was as much a part of her as her wit, her flawless skin, and the green and gold in her eyes. The passion she was capable of rendering was as valuable as her burgeoning trust. He was responsible for protecting it, not flailing at her dignity until she succumbed.
With an effort that left him more dazed than their waltz, Miles stepped away from his wife. His blood fizzed and popped. His ears rang as the distant quartet’s melodies turned muddy. His body demanded release, but he refused.
“Miles?”
Her hands were molded flat against the costly white marble, as if bracing against a fierce
wind. But the only storm was inside his wife. The animal flare of her nostrils and the tight tendons along her throat revealed her blustering turmoil.
Miles waited. He would have all of her or nothing. That had been his gamble from the very start. Only now did he understand that fully.
She stood away from the wall and laced the fingers of one hand through his. Heat and promise and fear mingled in her decadent gaze. But no matter the challenge, she’d always been a brave woman.
“Miles, take me home.”
Viv sat next to Miles in their enclosed coach. Their knees touched. She could move away—anything to put an end to the seductive closeness they’d discovered. But she didn’t want to see it end. No matter what tattered ghosts remained come morning, they would be naked, loving, sleeping entwined tonight. There was only darkness inside the coach, but Viv saw the next few hours so clearly.
Then why wasn’t she frightened? The jittering feel in her limbs wasn’t fear. It was delicious anticipation.
Waltzing with him, wrapped in his firm, skilled hold, had been her every secret fantasy made true. She should have been appalled at her behavior, when her pelvis fitted so snugly against his, but she’d only wanted more.
Viv pressed gloved palms against her flaming cheeks. He didn’t say anything as he took one of her hands in his. Slowly but without hesitation, he turned her wrist upward and began unfastening the tiny row of buttons.
“Miles,” she breathed.
“Shhh. Close your eyes.”
But she couldn’t. The white leather of her gloves glowed faintly, while Miles’ss agile fingers offered a dark contrast. The buttons undone, he peeled back the oppressive leather and exposed her skin—first one wrist, then the other. Soon. Soon he would do the same to her dress and her underclothes.
But not soon enough.
She yanked back her hands and stripped off the gloves. The leather dropped into the darkness around their ankles. She shifted on the bench until she could face her husband, this man who ignited her from the inside out. With her fingers naked and trembling, she brushed her knuckles along both of his cheeks. His lips moved, but she couldn’t hear what he whispered. She leaned nearer, the crinkle of her silk gown sounding inordinately loud.
“What did you say?”
A hint of moonlight shimmered over his eyes, like the watery reflection of a lake. The volatility she felt was staring back at her. “Kiss me,” he whispered.
“Is that what you said?”
“Nearly.”
Viv cupped the sides of his face. “Tell me.”
“I said, please.” He turned his face and kissed one palm.
She shivered. “No, you didn’t.”
“I said, I want you.”
Miles eased her backward until her shoulders braced against the side of the coach. The scent of him, all peppery soap and sun and starch, sped her pulse. But he didn’t touch her. Needing that connection, Viv slid her fingers into his hair and tugged. He winced, then grinned.
“Try again,” she said against his lips.
“I said, Vivie, I can’t breathe. Don’t you know that, my darling? I can never breathe when we’re together.”
“Neither can I.”
He pressed a chaste kiss on the end of her nose. His hands fit perfectly into the curve of her waist, then journeyed around to find her backside. Strong fingers fought past the layers until he could squeeze flesh, pulling her thighs apart. Viv gasped. The insistent thrust of his erection nudged against her belly.
“I said, are you scared?”
“Terrified,” she said.
“But you’re still here. You haven’t pushed me away. Why?”
Her face glowed hot. The skin between her legs was hotter still, so slick and ready. “That was our agreement, wasn’t it?”
He flinched. “This is just obligation, then?” Although he kept his tone light, his fingers radiated tension into her thighs and buttocks. He breathed with short, shallow breaths through his nose. “I see. If that’s how it must be . . .”
“Miles, kiss me properly.”
“No,” he whispered. “Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m tired of chasing you. It does in a man’s pride, you see. Pulls it to shreds.”
His pelvis flexed. With slow, maddening strokes, he mimicked entering and withdrawing, rubbing his swollen shaft against her hot center. Her drawers were damp. Wet cotton rubbed against that sensitive skin. Viv was strung between agony and white-hot pleasure. She breathed his name and matched his rhythm. Her hips tipped up with his every grinding push, meeting him, inviting him. The friction teased and stretched and sparked, so near to what her body craved. So very near—but so frustrating that she pounced.
She kissed him. Hard. Teeth and lips and tongues jammed together as she took out her frustrations on his firm, luscious mouth. Miles grunted. He tightened his hold on her backside and rubbed his smooth cheeks against hers as they fought for a better angle. He tasted just right, her husband, this man she wanted more with each hot inhale. He was the passion she had never known with anyone else. He was promises kept.
Only when her head thumped against the wall of the coach did they part. Viv panted. Miles’ss hands still held her lower body in the most exquisite cage of raw need and beautiful brawn. They regarded each other, still and suspended, with only the noise of wheels along the gravel and their own rough breathing to color the silence.
Miles swallowed. “Do you want to know what I said? Truly?”
“Yes.”
“I said, come to me.” He eased a lock of hair off her forehead and followed it to her ear. Such tenderness. God, he was impossible. “Because I wasn’t lying, Viv. I don’t want to beg or bargain anymore. If you want me tonight, you must come to me. Come to stay.”
He sat up and resumed his seat. With a swift hand down either sleeve, he smoothed his evening suit back into place. Only the way he shifted slightly on the bench gave away his body’s discomfort. Was he still hard? If she slid her palm up his thigh, would he open his knees for her, invite her as she had?
The thought made Viv shake. Her mouth felt cottony and her tongue swollen.
But worse than the unspent passion whirling through her muscles, glimmering just beneath her skin, she considered his words. She’d always assumed that only her pride was at stake, as he wiggled and wormed past her defenses. She’d never considered that her rejections might affect him the same way.
And dear God, she’d left him. Twice.
Miles wanted her. She’d come to rely on that fact. But one day, after one rejection too many . . . what if he no longer did?
With a jolt the coach came to a stop. Miles jerked the handle and swung the door outward, not waiting for Adam. He jumped down to the ground.
She bent at the waist and grabbed her gloves, then went about slowly tugging them back into place. But the fire in her blood refused to ease. She finally accepted his hand. Her knees wobbled as she stood on solid ground. The light of an external lamp lit his face from one side, exaggerating every plane and ridge in strong shadow. Adam flicked the reins and drove the coach back toward the stable, leaving Viv alone with her husband.
Husband.
Not lover. Not master. Not any of her mother’s faceless customers.
“Why does this have to be so difficult, Viv?”
Because you don’t know me.
He didn’t know the terror and the hunger. He didn’t know the putrid smells and the sound of abused mattress ropes, or the screams of the mad and the damned, all clutched behind iron bars. He didn’t know and he never would.
With desperation layered atop desire, she looped her arms around his neck. She kissed him again—hard, hot, questing. She held on, eyes closed tightly, her tongue memorizing the taste of him as if for the last time.
Twenty-two
Miles stood on the walkway and kissed his wife. But despite the wicked, needful fire in his gut and the ache of his impatient erection, he didn’t devour h
er.
She devoured him.
Such a gratifying reward, one he tried to savor. So he kissed Viv, but with the restraint he’d never known he could muster. Her tongue invaded and his retreated. Her hands grabbed at his hair and his shoulders, while his remained fixed at her lower back. He was being worshipped by a stubborn, mysterious slip of a woman and he didn’t want to miss a single sensation.
Viv angled her head to kiss more deeply, stoking the flame of his need. He would let her determine the pace—for the sake of his pride, yes, but also to let her discover how shattering it could be to lead, to demand, to take. He needed a partner in all things, even in his greed.
His own eagerness could wait while he soaked up hers.
That amusing noise of frustration returned as she pulled away. “Why are you doing this?”
“Simply awaiting orders, my lady.”
“Orders?”
“Your sexual demands. I will obey your wishes, but I will not anticipate them.” A thick strand of golden hair had unfurled. He tugged it, then let the curl spring back against her cheek. She looked wild and delicious. He breathed her rich rosewater scent and spoke against her temple. “Trust, Vivie. I’m yours for the taking. I promise. Tonight, you decide everything.”
Her gaze fastened on his mouth, as if the sight of his lower lip had become more fascinating than a hundred perfect gems. “Very well. Your bedroom. Now.”
She tugged his hand, practically dragging him toward the house. He followed her across the threshold and up the stairs, watching the swish and sway of her bustle. The magnificent red gown had likely made her the envy of every woman at the ball, and the object of every man’s desire. But the lush creation had served its purpose. He wanted her free of it. Soon.
No, her pace.
Bloody hell, he was a madman.
Down the corridor, she opened the door to Miles’s bedchamber and shoved him gently inside. The click as it closed sounded like a promise. Safe there, tucked together away from the rest of mankind, she laid her hand flat against his chest, right over his heart. That light, warm pressure accentuated how quickly it beat.