Floating relief infused her muscles though her heart pounded in her chest and her body thrummed with anticipation. After a time and by careful degrees, Griffin pulled away. When he stood over her, he placed his palm in the center of her chest.
“Beautiful,” he told her, again, splaying his fingers wide, his thumb a faint presence beneath her breast. “Now.” The atmosphere charged between them. “Come for me.”
She arced off the table like a bolt of lightning passing between storm clouds. Riding the current as fast and far as her trembling limbs would allow, Lillian continued to tease at her tender, throbbing clit. Finally, her muscles spent, she pressed her layered palms to the space between her thighs, absorbing the rolling aftershocks.
She opened her eyes to find him watching her, his expression thoughtful. He cupped her shoulders with his large, warm hands, urging her to sit. He put one arm beneath her knees. The other encircled her back.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking you to bed.”
She looped her arms around his neck as he lifted her. He carried her out of the room and up the stairs to her bedroom as if she were no more burden than a child. Lowering her to her feet, he turned down the bed, keeping her cinched to his side. Then he scooped her up once more before easing her between the sheets.
She looked at him in surprise as he pulled the covers over her and then went up on an elbow to grasp his hand before he could pull away.
“Where are you going?”
“I can’t stay with you.”
“What do you mean—‘can’t?’” Unease had her angling her head.
He tangled his fingers with hers. “The second I laid eyes on you…actually, before I even saw you,” he said cryptically, his smile wistful. “I wanted you. It was lust in its purest form, simple and straightforward. But after my behavior at dinner tonight, I can’t deny it anymore. Things are anything but straightforward between us.” She opened her mouth, wanting to contradict him, but he silenced her with a shake of his head. “Sleeping with you isn’t going to be enough for me.”
“What more do you want?”
“I want to know you. I want to know why you married those men, the nature of your relationship with my father, why the hell you’re here with me. In short, the very things you’ve told me in no uncertain terms you will not discuss with me. So here we are,” he finished, sounding defeated and dropping his gaze.
For several seconds, she stared at the top of his head, letting his words sink into her post-orgasm, alcohol-hazed brain. Clarity came with an upsurge of anger. She snatched her hand from his, earning his bewildered regard. She fixed him with a cold stare.
“Get out.”
As if she hadn’t spoken, he leaned forward and kissed her chastely on the forehead. “Good-night, Lillian.”
And then he was gone. She collapsed into the pillows—her arms flung wide—feeling like the unfortunate woman in “The Nightmare” by Fuseli after the incubus had finished with her. Her primitive needs crudely satisfied, but her darkest passions cruelly unfulfilled.
Chapter 14
Ephie sat at the head of the dining room table, her back to the doorway. Propped on elbows, she bent over a neatly folded square of newsprint, worrying her lip with the eraser of the mechanical pencil she held in her hand. The fingers of her free hand curved around a large mug, her thumb stroking the handle absently. A quick scan determined she was alone.
“Where is she?”
She startled at Griffin’s gruff inquiry, twisting round to face him. “Holy hell! You scared the crap out of me!”
“Sorry,” he muttered, running agitated fingers through his hair. “I didn’t mean—”
“What did you want?” she asked over his subdued apology.
“I wanted to know where Lillian is.”
“Oh. She left first thing this morning.” As if it settled the matter, Ephie turned back to her crossword puzzle.
Despite the evasive answer, Griffin decided he needed caffeine before engaging in battle. He stalked to the coffee service on the sideboard. While he poured, he noted all evidence from the previous evening’s activities had been erased, including the tray of decanted alcohol where Lillian’s stiletto had been abandoned. He wondered what the staff member who had taken it away had thought about finding his employer’s shoe in such an unlikely place. Unbidden, it occurred to him it might not be such an uncommon occurrence to find Lillian’s clothing in unusual places. The hideous notion blackened his already dark mood. His cup in a punishing grip, he moved to settle into the chair adjacent to Ephie’s.
He attempted a civil, “Good morning.”
Tipping her head to the side, she fixed him with an appraising stare.
“Rough night?”
“You could say that.” He considered the steam rising from the pitch-black elixir in his cup, willing the tension out of his shoulders.
“How was the dinner party?”
“Fine,” he told her.
It was as good a word as any to describe the cluster-fuck last night had turned out to be. Besides, he didn’t have any interest in rehashing the events of the previous evening. There was just one thing he was interested in—Lillian’s whereabouts.
“So, where did your boss run off to so early?” he asked evenly.
With a resigned sigh, Ephie put her pencil down. He noted the precise placement: centered diagonally, the sharp metal tip pointing at him, the eraser angling toward the opposite corner. She sat back in her chair, her mug cradled in both hands.
“I really don’t know.”
“I really don’t believe you,” he countered, bringing his cup to his mouth and taking a fortifying gulp.
“So, now I’m a liar. You’re a real shit, sometimes, you know that?”
“More often than not, actually.”
She pulled a face at his sarcastic answer to her sarcastic question. For a second, he thought she might take it to the extreme and go so far as to stick her tongue out at him. Instead, she took a deep breath, looking down at her hands.
“Listen.” She lifted her head, regarding him earnestly. “She’s a private person. Unless there’s a particular reason for me to know, she generally doesn’t inform me of her activities. She doesn’t have to—it’s none of my goddamn business, just like it’s none of yours.”
He had no retort for the painfully accurate statement, so he drained his cup and then pushed his chair back with his knees as he rose to his feet. “I need a refill.” He held his hand out to her. “How about you?”
She slapped her mug into his palm, her forced smile so sweet it set his teeth on edge. “Thank you.”
“How do you take it?” he asked over his shoulder as he crossed the room.
“Cream, one sugar.”
He filled her cup, jealous of her more substantial mug, and then followed her instructions. After stirring the contents, he returned to the table.
“You’re right.” He carefully placed the hot ceramic into her expectant hands. “I shouldn’t have put this on you.” Sitting down, he dipped his head, muttering, “I should be talking to her,” before draining half his cup. He looked at Ephie. “When’s she due back?”
Mid-sip, she considered him over the rim of her mug. She swallowed while she put the cup down on the tabletop.
“Tomorrow,” she told him quietly.
The tremor in his hand made it difficult for him to get his cup to the table without sloshing coffee over the sides.
Last night, Lillian finally admitted she wanted him. When he’d refused to sleep with her, she’d been enraged. And the entire time she had known she would be leaving this morning to spend the weekend with another man, most likely husband number four. He shouldn’t be surprised, but he was. He shouldn’t feel betrayed, but he did. And he sure as hell shouldn’t be so goddamn crushed. He couldn’t avoid the truth any longer.
Unimaginative and cliché, Griffin had fallen in love with his father’s widow.
“I’m sorry.” Ephie’s hus
hed condolence pulled him back from the edge of the morass the revelation had opened.
“Yeah.” He stood abruptly. “Me too.”
And then he left the room, fervently wishing he’d never entered in the first place.
Chapter 15
In the darkest corner of the bedroom, he sat.
Waiting…as he had been for more than forty-eight hours while the woman he’d fallen in love with visited with her next husband. The reality of it had pounded into him with every passing second until he found himself in her room chain smoking and drinking his way through the bottle of scotch tucked next to the back leg of the wingback chair where he sat. He reached for the highball glass he’d set on the floor, swirling its contents, the clink of ice a comfort in the unrelenting silence. He took a healthy swig before returning the tumbler to its place, extending his arm to trace the rim absently with his middle finger.
He should have taken her at the start. It wouldn’t have changed how he came to feel about her, but it would have clarified things. As it was, all the goddamn foreplay had muddied the issue. He’d been so distracted by her mystery and his heated physical reaction to it, he hadn’t considered what was happening to him emotionally. It wasn’t until yesterday during his brief conversation with Ephie he’d understood what had bloomed in the rarified atmosphere of their sultry entanglement.
He thought he knew enough about Lillian to know she hadn’t been herself, either. The willful lying, self-deception, and denied desire seemed wildly out of character. She might not be able to see it, but he sure as hell could, especially after the enormous amount of time he’d had to consider it.
As soon as she got back, they were going to have an extremely brief conventional conversation during which he planned to lay everything out for her. Someone as committed to honesty as Lillian claimed to be couldn’t possibly miss the truth of it. Afterward, they could continue their discourse long into the night, but in Lillian’s vernacular, the one she best understood and respected.
He took a thoughtful drag from the cigarette loosely wedged between his pointer and middle finger. Lit by an eerie red glow, his image appeared in the mirror over the dresser on the opposite side of the room. The shadowed figure reflected how he felt, like a denizen of hell.
The hushed rhythm of footsteps in the hall had him hastily lowering his hand, dropping his burning cigarette out of view. After the interminable wait, suddenly, she was there silhouetted in the doorway. She paused. Tobacco smoke hung heavily in the air, exposing him. She said nothing, though, moving into the room without turning on the light. He settled farther into his seat, playing along with her feigned ignorance, content to delay the impending confrontation.
The sight of her, bathed in the silvery moonlight shafting through the room’s two sets of French doors, was a balm to his blistered psyche. She stood before the long dresser, removing the pins from her up-do. A wave of midnight black cascaded down the center of her back making him itch to tangle it in his fists. He shifted quietly as she removed her earrings and necklace. After placing the items into the jewelry chest at the side of the dresser, she bent to one side then the other, slipping off her shoes.
She padded across the carpeting to the bathroom, flipping on the switch before entering. Briefly washed in a cone of light, Griffin watched as Lillian reached back to pull the door partially closed behind her. Again obscured by shadow, he let out a long, slow breath, his head lolling back, and his eyelids slipping low.
The muted sounds of her nightly routine hummed around him: rushing water, quiet splashing, the swish of terry cloth over wood, a muffled sigh, bare feet moving over tile, and the low thuds of opening and closing doors and drawers. The pop of a bottle top punctuated the gentle chorus, making Griffin’s eyes jerk open.
A delicate scent wafted over him—her scent. He turned toward it, filling his lungs. The distinct whisper of skin on skin provoked an image of Lillian’s palms, slick with lotion, moving over her body. His erection became urgent.
An echoing snap delivered the room into twilight. She stood less than a dozen feet away, her face turned to the side. She reached up behind her neck with one arm, sweeping the glossy, fall of her hair over one shoulder, the length wrapping her wrist like a serpent. Turning her head, she looked directly at him. With her customary, unhurried elegance, she crossed the room, halting between the splay of his legs.
Without a word, she turned her back to him. Griffin took in the graceful line of her neck, the enticing arch of her back, the sensual swell of her ass. It wasn’t until she bumped the edge of the chair with the backs of her knees that he understood what she wanted from him. Placing his cigarette between his lips, he leaned forward. With great deliberation, he unzipped her dress enjoying the slow reveal of her beautiful skin. When he was done, he leaned back. He took a long drag from the cigarette before replacing it with the drink he’d taken up in his other. He watched her over the rim.
With an effortless shrug, the dress landed in a silken puddle around her feet. She turned to face him. A slow grin curved his lips at the sight of her in demi bra and boy cut panties. The all over lace of the set left little to the imagination and were no more what he’d had in mind when he’d order her to dress “properly” than anything else she’d worn for him, but he wouldn’t be sharing his objection. If he had his way, she’d always wear underwear, only occasionally less and very rarely more.
Did he see her like this? The hideous thought pierced his sensual haze. An image of Lillian dressed in a barely there bra and thong and wearing stilettos, making a circuit in a finely furnished drawing room. Her aged fiancé watched avidly from the settee where he lounged, a fringed afghan over his lap.
Griffin finished his drink in two audible gulps and then dropped in his cigarette, hot ash hissing against ice. Keeping his eyes on her, he placed the glass on the floor and rose to his feet, grasping her by the shoulders.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I would hope it would be obvious, darling.”
“Don’t!” He flung her from him as if she were something foul.
She stumbled backward, sitting hard on the edge of the bed. Striking a woman was well beyond him but, God help him, he wanted to hurt her—wanted her to feel the pain the careless endearment had dealt him.
He paced furiously, trying to alleviate the sting. Glancing at her, he noticed she watched him with a mixed expression of concern and anxiety. Curious, he stopped in front of her to look into her eyes. There, he saw confusion.
He tried to consider her perspective. He had been waiting for her in her room. She had known he was there from the beginning, the bedtime routine done for his benefit, a production, a practiced seduction. It must have seemed to her, in her absence, he’d decided sleeping with her would be enough. The reasoned discussion he’d imagined for them became an absurdity. They weren’t even speaking the same language. Taking a shuddering breath, he moved close to her, his fists propped on the mattress on either side of her hips.
“Did you sleep with him?”
It was the one question he knew she’d never answer. As expected, she pressed her lips into a thin line, the golden shards in her eyes glinting with sharp anger.
“Good-night, Lillian.”
Straightening, he turned away, but she halted him with a light touch to his wrist.
“Griffin.” His name on her lips was a torment. “I do want you.” He heard her moving behind him, the faint drop of bits and pieces touching down on the carpeting somewhere to his right, the mattress shifting beneath her weight. “Are you certain it is not enough?”
He squeezed his eyes shut against the image of what he knew he would find if he turned. Lillian laid out for him like a carnal last meal for a dying man. Appropriate, because if he gave in to her he surely would be condemned.
“Griffin, please.”
Reluctantly, he faced her.
She had laid down, her bared body a stunning composition of shadows and reflected moonlight. Overwhelm
ed, he sought her eyes. The open invitation he saw there had him reconsidering. She was his father’s widow for Christ’s sake. What more did he think they could have? Did he really think things could end with the two of them riding off into the goddamn sunset?
He drank in her parted lips, flushed cheeks, and the elegant arc of her neck before returning his gaze to hers, wanting to be sure he had her full attention. She watched him intently beneath eyelids made heavy from arousal. He resumed his unrestricted observation, taking in the rapid rise and fall of her chest, his regard enough to draw her nipples to tight points and turn the dusty rose of her areolas to a deep plum. The olive skin of her abdomen quivered with anticipation as he skimmed over it in search of her nether regions.
Her knees slightly bent, her legs presented a dizzying intersection of graceful curves and angling lines. Placing his fingertips in the valley where the two limbs met, he traced their length from her ankles to the meticulously trimmed tuft of hair gracing her sex. And like tripping a spring latch, her thighs gently opened.
An unnatural silence descended. Sexual tension pulled his spine taut and a sudden rush of blood to his groin made him sway slightly. Clenching his jaw against his body’s clawing hunger, he stared hard at the glistening folds of Lillian’s most intimate flesh, willing her to feel it. At the subtle shift of her hips, power whipped through him.
He sought her gaze, but she had closed her eyes. As he watched, she drew her arms overhead, her breasts begging to be tasted. Her mouth opened on an eager groan. Each action and sound beckoned him like a siren urging a sailor toward the rocks.
“Look at me.”
When she did as he asked, instead of liquid desire he only saw cold determination. Lillian wanted to sleep with him, all right, but for all the wrong reasons.
With a muttered curse, Griffin turned and left the room.
Chapter 16
Lillian stood beside Griffin’s bed searching for courage.
Gilding Lillian Page 10