“Even on me, apparently.” One of his dark chocolate brows winged up, and Phee immediately saw parallels to how his father had attempted to control and stifle him.
“The rules I proposed weren’t meant to control you but to free me.” Passion without commitment. Freedom from worry about the future. How long had it been since she’d felt free? At the Pembry ball, she’d craved a taste of liberty from what should be done, if only for one night. Knowing full well that Kit would return to his life in the city and she would remain in the country, she’d wanted a moment of passion. And only with him.
He frowned as if he didn’t understand.
“I’m not Miss Booth. I wasn’t looking for a clumsy ruination, only to catch you in marriage afterward.”
He pursed his lips, then dropped his gaze to the pavement and flicked the edges of his coat back to place a hand on each hip. Energy rippled off him as he clenched his jaw. A single step brought him so close his thighs brushed her skirt. One more and he eased her back into the alcove in front of Ruthven Publishing, pinning her between the office door and the heat of his body.
“All your planning, all your lists and rules leave no room for possibility. What of the unexpected?” The gruffness in his voice set off gooseflesh on her arms. He bowed his dark head, grazed his mouth across hers, then traced her tingling lips with the pad of his thumb. “Darling Phee, what if I’ve changed? What if I wish to be caught?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“A few words on the lure of scoundrels, rakes, and rogues. Ladies, we may acknowledge their attractions but must not fall. They will take all we have—body, heart, and peace of mind—and offer nothing more than transitory pleasure in return. As seductive as such men may be, avoid their inducements at all costs.”
—MISS GILROY’S GUIDELINES FOR YOUNG LADIES
Timing determines whether a performance crashes or soars. It was the least of the lessons Kit had learned after four years in the theater. On the page and stage, he understood timing like the back of his hand. But when it came to matters of the heart, apparently he didn’t know a blasted thing.
He’d chosen the wrong moment to confess his feelings to Phee. Or perhaps he’d been too oblique. The impulses she sparked in him were still a tumultuous jumble. Perhaps they always would be. He could live with that.
Long, awful minutes passed after his declaration, and she stood immobile, staring at him with a dumbstruck gaze.
“What I meant to say . . . ” Was precisely what he’d bloody said. Good God, the woman had him aching day and night. Had she missed the hunger in his eyes? Or failed to taste his need for her in every kiss? “You must know how much I want you.”
“Do you?” Ophelia had never been coy, never played the coquette. The wariness in her tone tore at his heart. Four years of absence had taught her to distrust, to doubt what they’d both known with fervent certainty before he’d gone. How could he blame her for losing whatever confidence she ever had in him?
“Let me show you how much.” Reaching for her, he pressed her hand to his chest. Beyond her warmth and smooth, soft skin, he felt his heart thrashing between them. “Feel that? If I pressed my hand to your body, wouldn’t I discover the same frantic beat?”
She caught the swell of her lower lip between her teeth, and he longed to soothe the spot with his tongue.
“I could provide other proof of my desire too, but not here with Adamson in view.”
With a little shake of awareness, she looked toward the Ruthven offices and then scanned each end of Somerset Row. When she nudged his chest, Kit retreated and allowed her to step away, fighting the urge to haul her back against his body.
She strode away, as if she planned to escape without another word. Less than a block up the pavement, she turned back.
“May I have time to think?” Cheeks flushed, shoulders squared, Phee looked at his cheek, his nose, anywhere but his eyes. She waved a hand in his direction, sweeping up and down his body to encompass every inch from head to toe. “You make rational contemplation difficult.”
So did she. Generally speaking, Kit was a proponent of thinking, but lately all his thoughts were jasmine-scented, wrapped ’round with strands of auburn hair, and ridiculously optimistic. That was all Ophelia’s doing.
“Can you manage thinking and enjoying yourself at the same time?”
“Yes, of course.” She puckered her brow as if reconsidering her hasty answer. After years of knowing Phee, Kit wondered if what she needed most was a holiday from worry. He’d been responsible for his sisters’ future and his father’s business for only a month. She’d been bearing the load of running a household, tutoring other people’s children, and caring for Juliet years longer.
“Hyde Park,” he said as the notion popped into his head.
“Pardon?”
“You promised me a boat ride on the Serpentine.”
“I don’t recall promising you anything.” Despite her scolding governess tone, a flicker of interest lit her gaze.
“Come, Phee. Spare an hour—just you and me doing precisely as we please—and then we’ll go back to dealing with duty and expectations.” He lifted an arm to escort her.
She leaned forward a fraction. He thought surely she’d agree. Then it all came crashing down.
“No, I cannot.” Her eyes shuttered at the same moment her mouth tightened into a determined line. “I came to London with a purpose, and I mustn’t get distracted. There are other publishers I wished to see.”
“Let me guess. You have a list.”
“If you’re going to tease me—”
“I love your lists. I love . . . ” You. Her glower and tapping foot indicated this was the wrong time to confess it. “I adore your desire to cram more usefulness into a day than I accomplish in a month. I admire your determination to do what must be done while the rest of us are busy giving in to rogue impulses.”
“Not everyone. You are given to more impulses than any man I’ve ever known.” She bit her lip, flooding the plump curve of flesh with color. The rush of pink to her cheeks darkened her freckles. He wondered which of his impulses was playing in her mind. “You’re probably having some impulse now,” she accused.
“Oh, I am.” And her imperious school mistress tone and scathing glare only made his body respond in ways that would turn her heated blush into an inferno.
“Well?” She encouraged with the wave of her hand. “Tell me.”
“No, I mustn’t.” Kit frowned. He wasn’t in the habit of denial, and the words felt odd on his tongue. Like lines from a play he hadn’t committed to memory. “I wouldn’t wish to shock you.” Keeping a smile from his lips after that line took utmost effort.
Phee’s turquoise eyes rounded with curiosity. “I’m not some fragile miss, you know.” She wagged a finger in the air. “Have you forgotten that I wrote a shocking book?” Without letting him answer, she seemed to recall another fact on her side and added, “My father once wrote an essay in support of Godwin’s notions of free love.”
“Did he indeed?” Bollocks to that. Kit had no interest whatsoever in free love. Once he made Ophelia his own, he planned to be greedy. There would be no sharing. And he would never give her a moment’s doubt about his commitment. Ever.
“Go on,” she pressed. “Shock me. Tell me your impulse.”
Just one? He possessed none of her tutoring experience, but he wanted to teach her everything he knew. “Impulses come on like a starburst, love. One spark lights another until they all explode inside.” The thought of touching her, pleasuring her, set off tremors of impatience in his belly. Kit licked his lips and tried to remember they were on a city street in broad daylight. He cared nothing for propriety, but for Ophelia’s sake he had to find a way to refrain from ravishing her in front of London’s publishing establishments. “I suppose there is a logic at play, for those who like order.”
She narrowed an eye dubiously. “And what is the logic of your current impulse?”
“Pink.” Now it was
his turn to bite his lip and try to stem images of laying Ophelia out on her back, stripping her bare, licking—
“I don’t understand.” But she looked intrigued. He half expected her to pull out one of her bits of paper and take notes.
“The carnation flush of your mouth, the wet pink of your tongue.” He was speaking nonsense. Kit wasn’t even certain his brain was receiving any blood from his thrashing heart. He was all body now, a mountain of eager flesh. His want for her was years deep, a long desperate hunger. He moved closer, drinking in her scent. “Shall I continue?”
“Yes.” The sharp nod of her head and slight parting of her lips told him she wanted more.
“When you bite your lip.” He stared at her mouth. “Blood stains your flesh the sweetest pink. I want to kiss that color. My impulse is to follow that color, to watch it rush down your neck, under all those damnable buttons, to the tips of your breasts. To trace it with my lips. But that wouldn’t be enough, love. I am determined to seek out every pink part of you, to kiss and taste and worship every spot.”
Neither of them was prone to speechlessness. They were both writers, after all. Yet somehow he’d managed to stun her into silence twice in the span of twenty minutes.
That pink mouth he’d waxed rhapsodic about trembled before she lifted her chin and rasped out, “Let’s take that boat ride.”
He smiled in victory, though most of his body hadn’t yet given up on imagining much more pleasurable ways to pass a Tuesday afternoon.
“Careful.” Kit steadied her with a firm grip, and Phee took a seat in the boat’s stern. A cool breeze chased across the Serpentine’s surface, riffling her hair, but she was still burning inside. She hadn’t stood near a raging fireplace, but she felt as if she had, and she was melting deep in the center of her need. In the place where impulses flourished. After so many years of denial, Kit stoked her longing to life with a few delicious words.
Could he feel her trembling?
He’d remained unusually silent during their ride to the park in a cramped hansom cab. Even when their cabman took a corner at breakneck speed, and she’d reached out to steady herself, pressing her palm against the taut, thick muscle of his thigh.
He had to seduce her, or she him. Her desire for the man was beginning to blot out every other thought.
As Kit balanced his tall frame on the bench in the center of the boat and took the oars, he offered a benign grin that made her doubt his acting abilities.
“When will you be returning to your work in the theater?” Because he would, and reminding herself of the fact was the best way forestall the twinge in her heart each time he looked at her, the way her body flared to life every time he touched her.
“Keen to be rid of me, are you?”
“No.” Phee swallowed against the urge to say more, to confess that she’d always wished for him to stay. But that wasn’t the way of things. People left. Loving someone didn’t mean one ought to cling if he wished to soar.
“I’ve decided not to sell my father’s publishing interests after all.” He held his grin, but his gaze turned serious. “We have a mind to overthrow the old ways.”
“We?” She couldn’t imagine Mr. Adamson joining any sort of revolution, unless it was against Kit.
“My sisters and I. There will be legal knots to unravel, but I intend to give Sophia and Clary an equal share of Ruthven’s.”
“That’s an excellent idea.” Phee considered the benefits of Sophia’s need for order and Clarissa’s tendency toward ornamentation. Between the three of them, they could bring extraordinary talents to any enterprise.
Kit assessed her, tipping his head. “I thought you’d approve.”
“More than approve. I think it’s wonderful.” Precisely the kind of opportunity she wished she could offer her own sister. Or at the very least a stable home and tuition to fund the university education their father had urged Juliet to seek. “But what of your theater work? Your plays?”
Rather than answer, he shrugged out of his coat, gripped the oars, and pushed toward her. Leaning back, he sliced the wooden blades into the water, pulling the small boat into motion with ease. Only his buttons struggled, straining to hold onto their stitched line of fabric as his muscles worked. Pushing toward her, pulling back, gaze fixed on hers, he cut through the water until they neared the center of the lake.
“You’ll understand our intentions for Ruthven’s better than anyone.” The exertion of rowing added a breathless quality to his deep voice. “We wish to look forward to the new century, to adapt my father’s books and publish fiction. Selling more is the chief goal.”
“Will you publish your plays?”
He pursed his mouth as if contemplating the notion. “Perhaps.” Water sluiced from the oars when he lifted them from the lake and leaned toward her, balancing his elbows on his knees. “You could assist our enterprise by allowing us to publish Miss Gilroy’s Guidelines.”
“Printing my book won’t improve your fortunes. Have you forgotten that Wellbeck’s was inundated with letters denouncing Guidelines?”
“I recall him parting with enough copies to outsell The Ruthven Rules for a while. A few letters won’t deter me, Ophelia.”
“You approve of young women taking charge of their fates, then?” At her teasing tone, his eyes lit in shades of gold and honey. Flecks of green too, rich emerald like the depths of Dunstan’s pond. She needed to tease him more often.
“Come.” Lifting a hand between them, he beckoned, “I’ll demonstrate how much I approve.”
Touching him was a mistake; moving closer was folly. The worst part was that being near Kit was the only place Phee wished to be.
“You’ll need to stand.” He tugged her up, but she gripped the edge of the boat.
“What if I tip us both out?”
“Trust me.” Scooting to the edge of the boat’s center bench, Kit made just enough room for her to sit beside him on the narrow slat. He tugged again and urged her over. “Turn your back to me. I’ve got you.” With one hand on her waist and the other on her hip, he eased Phee down, sliding her body against his until they were hip to hip, thigh to thigh, shoulders brushing with every breath. He kept an arm around her waist, driving her mad with his scent and heat.
“Here, you take this one. I’ll manage the other.”
She took the oar in both hands and slapped it into the water.
“Wait, love.” Kit turned to face her, his breath stirring loose hairs against her neck. “We have to work together. Build a rhythm. Like this.”
Phee mimicked his movements, leaning forward and pulling back when he did, their bodies melded together, side by side. The water was surprisingly heavy, the effort greater than she anticipated. When she gasped on one hard pull, Kit turned his gaze to hers. This close she couldn’t hide how he affected her. Whatever walls she’d constructed, they were dust now, and she only wanted his mouth on hers, his body this near but without the rustling layers of clothing between them.
“Do you think I’ll succeed?” he asked on a husky whisper.
At seducing her? Oh yes. But the longer she drowned in his gaze, something beyond desire brightened his eyes. A vulnerability she hadn’t seen since they were children. He spoke of filling his father’s role, of making a choice he’d been avoiding for years.
“I do.” Phee had no doubt Ruthven’s old ways would yield to Kit’s intelligence and tenacity.
“Despite my having no notion how to be a publisher?” Despite taking on a role his father had been attempting to force on him for years. She wondered what had caused his change of heart.
“You’ll have your sisters to advise you. And Mr. Adamson, who I suspect has an opinion on every topic.”
He chuckled at that. Pressed as close as they were, she felt the sound reverberating through his body.
“You could advise me too.” He leaned in, his mouth one short dip of his head away from hers.
“Me?”
“You’ve managed your own tuto
ring endeavor.” He gripped the oars, and Phee followed his lead. They pushed against the water and set the boat in motion toward the far edge of the lake.
“I instruct schoolgirls, most of whom only aspire to marry well.”
“And you? Do you aspire to marry well?” Lightning swift, he slid an arm around her back, skimmed his lips across her cheek. Holding his breath, he waited for her answer.
“I vowed not to speak of marriage with you.” Such a prudent, logical rule when she’d conceived her plan. But now, with the hard-muscled heat of him so near, she couldn’t gather her wits enough to recall whether she’d intended to free him or protect her own heart.
“Yes.” He released the word in a single breath against her cheek. “Seduction is what you want, isn’t it?”
Phee marveled at how Kit’s deep voice made a solution she’d thought so practical sound so brazen. But of course, he possessed years of practice being brazen.
She was the novice. He was a rogue with a scandalous reputation.
“How many women have you seduced?”
He blinked, then again. While he numbered his conquests, Phee counted the constellation of beauty marks on his face—one left of his nose, another higher on the right, a triangle cluster above his left brow. She noted twelve unique marks that decorated his slopes and angles, and still he remained silent.
“That many?” she teased, failing utterly to muster a smirk or lighthearted tone. She feared her voice quavered like her insides.
Finally, he turned to her. “Do you truly expect me to recall any of them when you consume every thought? When you’re here, warm and soft and smelling so damn good.” Reaching down, he clasped the top of her boot. He slid his fingers up, burrowing under her skirt and two layers of petticoats. “To be honest . . . ” He claimed the flesh of her leg, just above the edge of her boot, cradling her in his heated grip. Sensation ribboned higher, pulsing low in her belly and at her core. Wickedly, brazenly, that’s where she craved his touch. “I can think of nothing but freeing you from every stitch of clothing. Loving you as I should have done years ago.”
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