by Calia Read
“All right, all right. Let’s allow Miss Pleasonton some breathing room,” Serene says with a clap of her hands.
The men break apart for Serene, and I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. Serene tells the bachelors it was a pleasure having them at Belgrave. I give my good-byes, and as they walk away, some of the tension leaves my body.
Serene silently stands beside me for several moments before she asks, “How do you feel?”
“Overwhelmed,” I confess.
“I want to tell you that you shouldn’t be. But that would be a lie because things are about to get remarkably interesting,” she says with a mischievous grin.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Rainey
That night, sleep doesn’t come easily. I toss and turn, dreaming about the one person who causes me to act as mad as a March hare. I think of our conversation today and the heated looks he gave me during the picnic.
With a groan of frustration, I sit up and punch my pillow, pretending it’s Livingston. If we didn’t kiss, perhaps none of the uncomfortable tension would exist between us.
It’s then I hear a loud noise at my window. Suddenly alert, I stare at the window and see a dark shadow. The lock wiggles. Frantically, I look around my room for something to use as a weapon. I only have my curling iron at my vanity table to use as a makeshift weapon.
Jumping out of bed, I snatch the iron, clutching it as though I’m getting ready to hit a baseball. My eyes never waver from the window. Hinges creak as the windows move upward. Someone clutches the window frame. Their body dips in. I take quiet, tentative steps toward them. Whoever is breaking in is just as quiet as I am but is dedicated to the task. They don’t see me sneaking up on them.
Too bad. That works in my favor.
My God has one of the bachelors lost their mind and is trying to get inside my room? That’s the only possible explanation. Never did I think this would happen. My grip tightens on the iron as my heart rate quickens.
The large frame is still hidden by the shadows, but there’s no mistaking it’s a male. I lift the iron, ready to take a swing, when the intruder speaks. “Rainey, put the weapon down.”
In an instant, I recognize the voice. Slowly, I lower my weapon and squint as though that will help me see better. With the window open, the streetlamps outside bring a weak glow into my room. “Livingston?” I hiss.
“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?”
“I didn’t know.” I scramble to my nightstand and turn on my lamp. A dim glow illuminates the room and reveals Livingston standing there with the same clothes he wore during the picnic. He seems larger in my room. The planes and angles of his face and wide shoulders are more pronounced. His male vitality is impossible to ignore. “I don’t have guests waltzin’ into my room in the middle of the night.”
Livingston snorts. “It’s hardly the middle of the night.” I watch him pull out his pocket watch. “It’s a quarter till one.”
“That’s the middle of the night for me,” I reply.
“For me, it’s the beginnin’.” He grins and then looks me over. “Were you gonna shoot me again?”
I look at the curling iron and walk to my vanity. “Quite possibly.”
That is a fabrication on my part. I don’t have arrows laying around my room. My last one was left at Livingston’s. I hope it’s still embedded in the armoire, and he looks at it every single morning and thinks of me. I hope he’s reminded I will never conform to what the world expects of me.
“Find a better weapon.”
“Find a better entrance,” I point out and place the iron on the vanity with a solid thwack.
A corner of Livingston’s mouth curls up.
“Now what did you need that couldn’t possibly wait until mornin’ time?” I cross my arms over my chest. I’m not fully awake and prepared for Livingston’s presence. That’s why my heart races the way it does. Nothing else.
Livingston doesn’t answer and instead walks around my room. Growing up, he saw my room in passing when the door was open. I would try to avoid that, though, and the second I heard his voice, I would jump up from whatever I was doing and shut my bedroom door because I didn’t put it past him to pull any shenanigans.
My bedroom has changed, and Livingston notices. He peruses my rows of books stopping to read the titles on a few spines before he continues. He looks over his shoulder at me. “People have libraries, you know.”
“I understand that, but I prefer to have my bookshelves nearby.”
“Why?”
“Because bookshelves are a journey for your eyes. To remember the places you’ve experienced, the characters you’ve encountered. The laughter and heartache each writer has given you is incalculable.” I lift a shoulder, suddenly feeling foolish for my fanciful explanation. “I could stare at my bookshelves all day.”
Livingston smirks, his eyes dancing with amusement. He turns his attention back to the shelves and continues to peruse at a leisurely pace as though my room was a bookstore and he was a paying customer. I know the second he spots The Shepherd of the Hills on the shelf by the way the corner of his mouth curls up. Did he presume I wouldn’t keep the book? I’m far more nostalgic than anyone would think.
Livingston hasn’t spotted the picture from the day he came home on my vanity, but if he continues to thoroughly look around the room, he will.
I clear my throat. “Again, to what do I owe this unexpected, late-night, and very much inappropriate visit?”
Turning toward me, he sweeps his eyes up and down, deliberately resting on the collar of my nightgown. All of my nightgowns are modest, but he makes me feel as though I’m wearing nothing. Beneath this, I’m not.
His eyes lift to mine. Sharp and hot. “I wanted to speak with you about the picnic.”
“What about it? Do you take issue with the final five bachelors?”
“I’ve taken issue with all of the bachelors,” Livingston says without missing a beat. “No, I wanted to talk about your conversation with Taylor. I believe in positive affirmations?” he says, doing his best imitation of my voice.
“What is wrong with positive affirmations?”
“Nothin’. But you wouldn’t recognize positive if it was directly in front of you. Now negative is a different conversation.”
I grin. “Good. Because I’m about to give you a handful of them.”
“There she is,” Livingston murmurs and takes a step closer.
Today didn’t go quite as planned. I wasn’t on my best behavior. My temper reared its ugly head, I spoke out of turn, and thought about Livingston and our kiss more times than I can count. I don’t mind that Livingston is deliberately goading me. I want to spar with someone. That my adversary is the very person I can’t stop thinking about makes it all the better.
“There she is? I’ve gone nowhere. But you certainly did when I wanted to discuss our kiss.”
Livingston spreads his arms wide. “Well, here I am now.”
“How convenient for you. What if I didn’t want to discuss it anymore?”
“How convenient for you,” he retorts with a half-smirk.
“I wanted to make certain that the kiss wouldn’t affect our friendship.”
“It won’t,” Livingston answers at once. “The kiss was a spur-of-the-moment thing and won’t happen again.”
Rapidly, I nod. I should be relieved, right? It’s in both of our best interest that the kiss was a one-time mistake. So why do I feel disappointed? “Good, good.”
Livingston quirks a brow. “Is that all you wish to discuss?”
“Yes.”
No. I had many, many questions I wished to talk over with him. But the sooner he left the room, the better.
The two of us are silent. Livingston rocks back on his heels, then lifts his gaze to mine. “But it certainly was memorable, wasn’t it?”
It was all I could think about. “It was good,” I reply.
Livingston’s eyes widen and then immediately narrow. “Good?
Just good?”
“Contrary to what you might believe, I don’t make it a habit of kissin’ the bachelors. My area of expertise doesn’t lie in the art of kissin’.”
“Whether experienced or not is irrelevant. A memorable kiss is felt and never forced.”
I didn’t need him to tell me that. I felt every inch of that kiss in the ballroom from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes and all the way to my soul. But I shrug a shoulder. “If you say so.”
“You truly believe it was simply good?”
The sharpness of Livingston’s words has me raising both brows. “Are you upset? I didn’t say it was bad. I just—”
Abruptly, my words are cut off as Livingston lunges for me. His hands curl around my upper arms. He stares at me with a baffled expression in his eyes, and before I can ask what’s wrong, his lips meet mine.
The kiss is urgent and picks up where the last left off.
He has been thinking about this, too.
I make a sound from the back of my throat. Something close to approval. My fingers curl around his biceps.
His tongue sweeps into my mouth, and his grip on me tightens the way it did in the ballroom.
The two of us walk backward. I feel the footboard touch the back of my legs but only for a moment. I leave my frustration from today on the floor as my body travels up the bed. Livingston’s lips never leave mine as he follows. When my head touches the pillows, my lips part, giving Livingston the entrance he’s been seeking. He groans. It’s a sound that vibrates through me and brings me a shiver of warmth. His lower body sinks into me, and I feel the hard length of him against my thigh. My fingers curl around his bicep.
My hands remain at my sides; I’m afraid to touch him. I’m afraid that once I start, I will not stop. My emotions are already frazzled tonight. If our first kiss has shown us anything, it’s that the two of us cannot be trusted alone.
I find the strength to push back, my palm resting against Livingston’s chest. His eyes are half-mast as he gives me a dazed expression. I try to take a deep breath, but I can feel him, all of him, against my leg. I’ve never been this close to a man before, but I’m not scared.
Because every rapid beat of my heart moves in tandem with three simple words: you are alive. You are alive.
I search for that in everything I do. In order to survive, pain makes you numb to the world. But the glorious, heart-racing awareness and excitement coursing through me is unlike anything else. I can feel every touch and the abrasion of our clothing every time our entwined limbs move. The clean scent of him wraps around me, making me hold him tighter until it becomes too much.
“What are we precisely doin’?” I breathe.
“Well, days ago, we kissed. And then Serene interrupted, so we stopped. And now I am resumin’ the kiss to show you it was more than just good. Si je puis?”
This is my chance to say no. This is my chance to tell him he needs to leave and that I’m not one of his many paramours. I do none of that, though. Instead, I curl my hands around his shirt, pulling him closer.
“May I resume?” he asks against my lips.
With my eyes closed, I nod.
In the privacy of my room, where no one can find us, Livingston gives me everything. I taste war on his lips and pain on his tongue. I’m no match for him, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to heal him. I’ve always craved a challenge.
His hands move to the buttons of my nightgown. The first button is open as my eyes flash open.
He looks at me from beneath his lashes, his hazel eyes nearly glowing. “Do you want me to stop?”
I don’t answer. Instead, my eyes rove over his face. In the dim lighting, it’s hard to see every perfect detail of him.
“Rainey?” he urges.
My eyes meet his. For once, he looks uncertain of himself and desperate for my answer. “No,” I say.
“Are you positive?” One button slides free, then another. “Because I’ll only say this once. A kiss is a kiss, but a touch can break you.”
I stretch beneath him, languishing in his words. I love the shiver of anticipation they give me even when I know they shouldn’t. “You can’t break me.”
It’s not a challenge but a mere fact. I won’t let him break me. I won’t be like all the other ladies who fall for him.
Livingston still doesn’t seem convinced. “I won’t be the man standin’ on the front porch waitin’ for you,” he warns. Perhaps, this is his final attempt to dissuade me.
But after each kiss we have, I crave another and then another. I want them to last longer than the last. And now I have a new thought: what else can he show me?
“Oh, Livingston, I won’t be the woman askin’ you to stay.”
My reply causes a groan to tear from his throat. My reply is as good as yes.
You’re playing a dangerous game.
Livingston presses himself closer as he slants his head at an angle. My fingers curl around the back of his neck and drag through his hair.
My need for Livingston is so incredibly strong that I suck in a sharp breath and hold him tighter. He holds me back just as tight.
For a moment, I give it full control of my body, and with my eyes still closed, my hands drift to the buttons of his shirt. One by one, they give way when my hands slip through the opening to touch his chest. Livingston’s lips move down my neck. I wait for his mouth to replace his hands, but it never does. It continues to build, and I grow wetter between my legs and move restlessly.
I’m never at a lack for words. But for once, I don’t know how to articulate what I want. I just desperately need to assuage this growing desire. It’s growing inside me, trying to find a way out with every touch of Livingston’s.
Then his hands slip from my breast. His fingers hook around the hem of my nightgown and drag the material up my legs. A shiver rocks through me as my bare legs are exposed. My breath catches in my throat when his palms drift down, and his fingers trailing behind, making goose bumps appears on my skin.
When he doesn’t come into contact with the material of my undergarments, he pulls back, a questioning look in his gaze.
“I refuse to have anythin’ diggin’ against my flesh when I sleep,” I say with defiance.
He stares down at me with a glazed look in his eye. “T’es la mienne. Mon beau sauvage.”
I’ve never been looked at and held in such a way, but Livingston is making me want to. Again, again, and again. With my hands curled around the lapels of his collar, I pull him down to me and kiss him.
His hands wrap around my waist, and his palms boldly cup my buttocks. He presses me flush against him, and while his tongue slides into my mouth, I feel his cock press against me. Over and over, he repeats the act until I move with him.
He rips himself away, his chest rapidly moving up and down. He looks like a man on the brink of losing all control. “More?”
Breathless, I nod. Livingston looms over me with one palm on the mattress, next to my shoulder, and the other hand curled possessively around my knee. His eyes slowly rove my body.
He slowly slides a finger inside me. My fingers grasp the material of his shirt so tightly it wraps around my knuckles. I gasp and lift my hips.
Pressure fills me, but it isn’t unpleasant. Far from it.
His strokes are slow, almost teasing. Gradually, they become faster, and the tension grows. And as the heat builds in me, I move against his hand. A second finger sweeps against my curls and parts my lips. I’m so sensitive that I grip his shoulders, and I’m certain I’ll leave marks.
“You’re so wet, Raina.”
His bold words send a shot of pleasure through me. I hold him tighter.
“Please,” I whisper.
This is Livingston’s area of expertise. I have no control, and we both know it. I have to follow and trust him the entire time.
His fingers are proficient and fast as he leans down to whisper into my ear. “Allez-vous crier mon nom quand vous viendrez?”
; The sultry sound of his words mixes with the feel of his fingers, and all the heat and tension that’s been building inside me becomes unbearable. My heels dig into the bed, and my back arches.
Before I cry out, I have enough sense to crash my lips against Livingston’s as I spasm around his finger. I feel nothing but molten heat rush throughout me. It’s slow-moving, but it finds a way to reach every limb until I feel paralyzed. He swallows my screams and swallows his name as his fingers continue to expertly move in and out of me.
My feet drop heavily to the bed like weights, but my body continues to shudder. Gradually, the shudders abate, and I feel Livingston’s finger slip out of me. The warmth of his body moves off me. I’m in such a daze and so coated with sweat I don’t argue. He lays right beside me, his arm touching mine.
“My God,” he pants.
Staring up at the ceiling, I can only nod. I’m not entirely certain what just happened, but similar to the first kiss Livingston gave me, I want it to happen again. My body feels pliant and relaxed. I couldn’t move even if there was a fire.
For several minutes, the two of us lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to gather our breaths. I roll to my side, my nightgown still in disarray. Even though the tremors have subsided, my heart won’t stop its furious pounding. I feel lightheaded and disoriented and don’t try to fight the smile pulling at my lips as I look at Livingston.
I don’t tell him to leave, or that this was a mistake and he should never come here again. Rather, I place a hand on his chest, lean in, and reveal what’s in my heart. “Come back tomorrow night.”
Livingston rears back an inch, and his eyes widen. He sits up, resting his weight on his elbows. There’s a pregnant silence between us before Livingston replies, his voice gruff. “Excuse me?”
“Come back tomorrow night,” I whisper.
The weight of my words settle around the two of us. Livingston doesn’t answer for several seconds, and when he does, there’s a lot of guffawing on his part. “I think you’ve gone delirious!” he says on a laugh.