by Anne Mallory
“So that we can begin in earnest. Without all these diversions, entertaining as they are.”
“Begin what?”
“Our torrid affair.”
She let out a shaky breath. “I’m not having a torrid affair with you.”
One finger slipped up, missing the curve of the eight, and brushed the slit in the fabric. She would have jolted had she had anywhere to go. As it was, the action simply pressed her to him and slightly up, and she felt the touch of a bare finger pad against her. Butterfly light and crashingly strong. She exhaled suddenly and lost the ability to inhale.
He, however, did not pause in his exploration. His roving hand continued the pattern of eight, but now with a higher curve, brushing intimately against her on every other curl. Her midsection tightened in waves, undulating as if he were a horse cantering beneath her.
The fingers of his left hand wove into the hair at her nape and tugged—not harshly, but not lightly either. “I assure you,” he whispered into her ear, still in full possession of the advantage even in their current position. “It will be extremely torrid.”
Her fingers dug into his shoulders, her head tilted back to the stars, eyes closed. She wanted to be embraced by the shadows. To do something completely foolhardy and impetuous. Something that allowed her to fly.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t have an affair.”
“I assure you, it is quite simple.”
“I’m not married.”
“That makes it much easier, don’t you think? No witless husband getting in the way.”
“It’s not possible.”
“I assure you, it is quite possible. Or did you think Ganling’s daughter impregnated herself out of wedlock last season? And the Usters? Quick marriage there, no?”
She tried to push away, but he held her fast. “You give every reason not to indulge in such foolishness,” she said, a little bitterly.
He pulled her back down firmly upon his thigh, stilling her once more at the heated contact. “Foolishness is what gets those into that situation. I think I can safely keep you from that end. There are ways.”
His cheek drew along hers, his body dragged against hers, clasped to his as it again was. The fingers of one hand stroked the back of her neck and the other curved around her backside and drew down the side of her thigh. She didn’t know what was worse, the way he knew how to get a response from her or the way her traitorous body was rushing ahead to give it to him before he even asked. “Besides, the benefits will outweigh the risks, the gamble, I assure you.”
His hand, the lift of his hips, elevated her once again and pulled her fully against him, seated upon him. She felt the entirely male part of him reach toward her, pressing against her, making the feelings spike almost painfully. Awareness, panic, reckless excitement, fear.
“Tell me, Charlotte,” he whispered, his lips caressing her cheek, almost brushing hers, his eyes pinning her suddenly, even through the shadows. “Who are you thinking about now?”
She breathed heavily, eyes fiercely connected. Firm thoughts about any suitors or marriage plans and plots were nonexistent. Simply hazy mist in the hedges. He was offering her relief.
To sate these new, reckless urges.
Not something simple, though, no matter what his beguiling words promised. She didn’t think anything with him could be defined as such.
Who was she thinking about? For the past few weeks there had been only one person continuously on her mind.
“You.”
He hummed a little something, his fingers caressing her neck, his eyes not leaving hers. “You admit the most delicious things.”
“My lips tend to disobey when you are near,” she whispered, giving additional credence to the words.
“Mmmm . . . one of my favorite aspects, I’ll admit.” His other hand came up to touch her chin, then his thumb ran over her lower lip. “I noticed your lush mouth immediately. Hard not to with such a composed and opinionated opponent. The way your lips come together and part. You shield your eyes, but your emotions still show in the way you expel each succulent breath. And when you press your tongue against the roof of your mouth in anger, trying to keep the emotion from your face, the sides of your throat clench just so, making me wonder how you would look with your tongue wrapped tightly around me.”
Stunned and feeling emotionally drunk, she felt his thumb slowly pull across her lower lip, his bare finger running along it fully.
“I notice a lot of things that you probably wish I didn’t. But more than anything, I see the cage wrapped around you.” He closed the small gap, nose and lips brushing against hers, over and back again. “Why did you come here, Charlotte?” he asked once more.
“I read your note,” she whispered.
“And?”
She didn’t respond, pride not letting her.
“A man asking to meet you in the gardens, in the dark.” His lips brushed her cheek. “Wouldn’t that send a proper lady running the other way?”
“I wanted to come.” It was nearly yanked from her, like the coating of her pride.
He leaned back with a soothing shush on his lips as he traced hers with his thumb. “I know. I know. Let me set you free, Charlotte.”
She had no idea what “setting her free” would mean. But a wild yearning rose from the cavity inside her. A loosening of anxiety. Something that promised relief. Something about this man, about that night in his rooms, had cast a spell. A purely selfish desire to feel again the relaxation and relief that he directly inspired. That she could see herself as something more if she allowed him in.
All of which was utter nonsense, of course, the rational part of her mind scoffed. And she would firmly tell him so. After all, if there was a cage, she was the animal and he the hunter. Would she find the exit only to jump witlessly into his snare?
“Yes,” her lips whispered, betraying her again.
“Good.”
And every thought to the contrary fled as his mouth touched hers.
Consuming.
Something far darker and hotter than she had anticipated. It burned. From the inside out. Like a mythical bird erupting, destroying, and beginning anew. She fought against the consumption, pushing back, gripping his shoulders and kissing him back, wanting to force him to feel it too. And he was pleased. She didn’t have to see him to know it—couldn’t see him, as her eyes had closed on their own, more stars in the backs of her eyelids than could possibly exist in the sky.
She could feel his pleasure.
In the way his fingers alternated between almost gentle caresses and decidedly forceful possession. In the way he brought their bodies even closer together—a feat she hadn’t thought possible—rock hardness rubbing through their clothes. In the way he anticipated everywhere that she burned and his hands, his lips, his tongue, his teeth, soothed and inflamed more.
His lips trailed hungrily down her throat, her collarbone, her chest, catching the edge of a partially bared breast—her unconscious arch and their movements baring it farther.
She wanted to complete the need. The need that burned deep within her.
“Behind the bench is a lovely little spot where no one might spot us,” he said. She gasped as he unearthed the tip of her breast from beneath the fabric. “And, what is a torrid little affair without some grass stains?”
His low laugh and words, brought her head suddenly back up, and she saw his teeth catch the moonlight in a somewhat feral gesture. “Give the ton a right shock. Perfect Charlotte caught with her skirts above her head.” He nipped her skin at her jerking reaction to his words, his hand traveling south. “Perfectly delicious.”
The words unnerved her, and he knew it. She could read it in his face. He most often said things designed to make her melt, but occasionally, as his previous remarks served, he injected comments designed to put her on edge.
“The thought of simply overwhelming you here”—his fingers somehow worked beneath the layers as if the fabric had ceased to
exist—“and giving you what you need”—the hand around the back of her neck forced her to meet his eyes, lips parted, as one finger dipped inside, slowly crooking, with her unable to look away, unable to breathe—“finally taking what I want”—he stroked her and she felt as if the humidity of summer had come early and was everywhere, inside and out—“is consuming.”
She felt consumed already. Whatever he was doing to her was making her body respond in sluggish, writhing ways.
He brushed something inside her, and she let out a strangled breath. And she could see everything in his heated ice blue eyes suddenly so close to hers. The satisfaction. The hunger. The possession. “Leave your window open tonight,” he whispered against her lips.
And his lips took hers, in an oddly gentle brush, a fleeting touch, before he whipped her around, her dress flying out into a circle. She found herself sitting alone on the bench, the stone warmer than it had been before, but still a shock to her system after being pressed against his heat. The embers still sparked.
She heard the footsteps only a second before Miranda and Downing rounded the corner.
She frantically reached for the bodice of her dress, but everything was in place. And Roman Merrick was nowhere to be seen.
A fiercely wild anger took hold of her as her body tried to gain back its cold equilibrium.
“Charlotte?”
“I am back here,” she called, thankful for the dark path and the shadows. Thankful for the cool calmness that she could use as a mask. That she could drape over her shoulders, over her emotions to stop them from consuming her. For the anger seemed to be directed against him for leaving her like this, and the thought terrified her that she might have preferred that he finish what he’d started, even with certain discovery.
“Oh, thank goodness. When you weren’t at the statue, I thought perhaps you had decided to leave us. Are you ready to return?”
She couldn’t see Miranda’s face yet, but she could hear the happiness in her voice, the gratitude that Charlotte had let them have a moment alone, the apology that they had caused her to feel the need to do so. Guilt joined the flurry of emotion within Charlotte, but she was already drowned in the frenzy.
An affair.
A relationship that wasn’t under the constant threat of a single night of payment. Nor just the teasing edge of fingers in the brush.
“Yes.” The word barely emerged. Return? In what state? But he had taken great care to stroke the hair only at her nape—an area she had pinned with an ornate bauble of paste. She quickly detached and reattached the pin, smoothing up the hair beneath as she did so.
She pressed a hand to her chest, willing it to cool, hoping the skin there didn’t appear as inflamed as it felt. “I was thinking maybe we should walk to the lake before we head back. See if the others found trouble,” she said.
An affair.
Something more permanent. Still taking place in the dark of night, in the shadows, but having a different set of rules and consequences.
She could hear Downing mutter something less than kind about his brother’s intelligence. The pair came closer, in range for them to finally see her.
“Excellent idea!” Miranda said.
Charlotte thought so. It would be a good five-minute walk in the night, after all. Plenty of time for her skin to cool before she pitched herself into the depths of the liquid for her stupidity. Or figured out a way to drown her erstwhile companion for starting their actions and leaving her heaving on stone.
An affair.
Something that bound him to her, and her to him, for a period of time. Something heady and euphoric. Something that was both in and out of her control.
She wanted him. Needed the feelings he produced. Craved them like a starving woman searching for food.
She pulled her lips into her mouth, running her tongue across them as she stood, the taste of him all over them. Experiencing excitement and terror at the swirling thoughts inside of her. Not wishing to think too much about how she was more like her reckless father than she wished.
Chapter 13
Roman paced outside, the wet grass squishing beneath his boots. All of the windows were dark.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” One-eyed Bill muttered.
What was he doing?
“Of course I do.” He stopped and sent a charming grin the man’s way. Bill grimaced but looked mollified. When he had first met Bill, that grin would never have worked, but he had spent a lot of time honing it, and Bill had been properly reformed and enlightened since. Always useful to have people who thought you walked on water.
Andreas liked to knock him into the dark depths often enough.
“You are sure that is her window?”
“Saw her through it earlier before she drew the drapes.” But Bill looked shifty.
“One-eye, I swear if you have me entering some nitwit maid’s quarters, I’ll skin you alive.”
“No, it’s hers,” he said quickly.
Roman watched him silently, making Bill shift nervously, until Roman was satisfied it was the truth. Obviously, someone else had grabbed the man’s attention. Probably a maid who liked to pose in open windows, hoping to provide a show.
“Fine. Thank you. Go home and get some sleep for once.”
Bill scratched his neck. “Well, you see . . .”
Roman narrowed his eyes, and Bill scratched more vigorously.
“What with all of the dealings . . . it’s just that . . . well, and the irons . . . and the fire pits . . . and the trouble . . . and this particular consolidation . . .”
Roman motioned with his hand, trying to encourage him to speak faster. He was fond of the man, but his patience was limited at the moment, as close as he was.
“Well, it’s a lot of things, yes?” Bill finished, hope and dread in his expression.
“Things that happen every day.” She was twenty paces away, waiting to be stripped behind those drapes, and Bill wanted to talk.
“Well, not quite at this rate of expectancy.” Bill nodded encouragingly, in a way that said he was hoping that if he could get Roman to think rationally, he wouldn’t have to keep speaking. “Usually we are more circumspect.”
Roman gave him another large, charming smile. Anything to get him to leave. “And these past few weeks we’ve been quick.” He patted the man on the shoulder. “Now go home.”
Bill shifted. “Well . . . quick . . . yes. . . .”
“Quick. Yes.” When Bill stayed where he was, Roman dropped the smile and narrowed his eyes again. “Things are moving quickly. And One-eye, I’m not in the mood for discussion,” he warned.
“Right. Well, see . . .” He rubbed his neck again. “Well, see . . . Merrick said. . . .”
Knowledge and rage collided together. Bill suddenly looked quite alarmed, hands held in front of him. “Now, Boss—”
“Andreas told you to watch after me?”
“Now, Boss, it’s not like that—”
“Do I look twelve, stupid, and virginal?”
“No, it’s not like that, but with Cornelius stirring up trouble—”
“If you don’t leave right now,” Roman kept his voice low, for once not trying to cover the roughness in the syllables, “I will not be responsible for the trouble that happens to either of you.”
Bill backed away slowly. “Uh, I’ll . . . I’ll be at the tavern around the corner.” The man beat a hasty retreat before Roman could answer.
Roman kept his eyes narrowed as the shadows sucked in the form of the larger man. He took a deep breath when he was sure Bill was gone, and pushed away the darker emotions that whispered that Roman was not thinking straight, that his actions in the past weeks entitled all of those around him to be wary.
But he’d deal with that later. The twist of fate and press of circumstances demanded his attention now.
He turned back to his inspection of the house, more specifically the one window he was most interested in, letting the thought of her push away tho
ughts of anything else.
The shadowed drape shuddered as if someone had momentarily touched it.
A slow smile curved, pleasure sliding through him as it always did when he thought of her, and he darted through the shadows of the yard and reached for the first branch of the tree, a tree situated perfectly in line with her sill. Like some fate had deliberately planted the gnarled thing there just for his future use.
He swung himself up easily, ascending each branch in turn until he reached the desired one. He crouched low, eyes already well accustomed to the dark, automatically looking for the easiest way in.
A dark swatch at the bottom started a coil curling within him.
The window was cracked.
Beautiful. She had not only left the window unbolted but cracked as well. God, he was going to enjoy this.
His fingers curled under the wooden pane and lifted, sliding it up slowly enough so that he could feel the notches where the wood might stick. Soundlessly raising it.
He reached forward and drew the drape aside with one hand. A snap sounded. Like the cock of a gun. He tensed, knife sliding easily into his other palm.
Then a pinpoint of light flared, enough for him to see the flint in her hand, the candle on the table. Dressed only in a thin nightgown, her hair plaited down her back.
The knife disappeared back into his sleeve, and he smiled as he slipped easily inside.
“Good evening, Charlotte,” he murmured, voice as smooth as he had practiced for all of these years. Never quite ridding himself of the echo of the streets, but that was fine. He watched the slight shiver rake her. There was use in that too.
She looked beautiful, standing in the faint golden light. Not so much from the way her physical features melded perfectly together but in the way she was looking at him, her body positioning—half of her leaning toward him, the other half tight and anxious. Wanting and unsure.
He walked a few quick steps toward her before he slowed and stopped, deliberately gazing around the room. What was wrong with him? It was as if he were twelve and virginal. Eager and stupid.
He made a show of coolly inspecting her space, a loose smile on his face, kicking himself.