She marveled at how the tension in her shoulders faded beneath the pressure of his fingers, as if she had been waiting for him to ease it away. “Someone will know,” she whispered. “Someone will come to the door.”
He chuckled, and the sound seemed blunted by the darkness, as if it had been caught up into it and swallowed into nothingness. Even the murmur of the crowd outside was muffled by the thick curtain shielding them. “If someone does,” he said into the soft hair at the nape of her neck, “they will assume only that we have left the box.” His lips touched her shoulder, just at the edge of her sleeve, and she shivered convulsively.
She had closed her eyes between the first touch of his lips and the last, and she hadn’t even realized it, because the darkness overwhelmed her just as he did. Smothered in its depths, their sins would be hidden from the prying eyes of the world. The prying eyes—and ears—of the people just feet away.
Her eyes popped open, for all the good that did her. “There—there could be people just next door.” She seized on the thought, mortified by the idea that their neighbors in the box beside theirs would know what had transpired within the duke’s box.
“There could be,” he acknowledged as his fingers slipped beneath the sleeves of her gown, which had somehow grown loose. “You shall have to be quiet. That is, if you don’t wish to be caught.”
Of course she didn’t want to be caught! She opened her mouth to tell him so, but her sleeves slipped off of her shoulders, and her gown gaped in front, and she realized by the draft that swept across her bare back that he had been unfastening the buttons of her gown. She hadn’t even felt it.
With one hand she pressed the velvet cloth to her chest, grateful at last for the cover of darkness that spared her his gaze. “Are you undressing me?” Her voice came out a scandalized squeak, and she shrank away from him, whirling until her back—her bare back—touched the wood-paneled wall beside the door.
“Just a bit,” he said, as blithely as if she had made an innocuous comment on the weather. “No corset, Jilly?” He had stepped closer. The dark had heightened her other senses, and she felt the warmth of his body, smelled the spicy scent of his shaving soap. She could swear she heard him smile. She felt a change in the air, heard his palm land against the wall on the right side of her head.
“I don’t like them,” she whispered, almost defensively, though why she should be defending herself to him she didn’t know.
“You don’t need them, more like,” he said, and his free hand cupped her side, traveled down her ribcage to her hip, hugging the indent of her waist as he did.
She opened her mouth to upbraid him, lifting her chin toward where she imagined his face to be. A mistake—the second he heard her draw in a lungful of air, his head descended, and his mouth blanketed hers. She made a sound, a startled little whimper. She told herself she didn’t pull away because her back was to the wall, and there was nowhere for her to move. But his hand came to her chin to nudge her face to a better angle, and she let him do it. She let him.
He tasted like champagne, and she grew as lightheaded as if she’d swilled a whole bottle of it. If she hadn’t felt the sturdiness of the wall at her back she might well have swayed on her feet. Instead she reached out blindly, snagged handfuls of his coat, gripping it in her fists. And he laughed, the utter bastard—he broke away from her to laugh at her discomfiture. But he let the clutch of her fingers draw him closer, and she felt him press against her, trapping her between him and the wall. It hadn’t been what she’d intended, but at least she felt certain she wouldn’t tumble straight off her feet with his chest crushing her breasts.
His breath skated across her temple, and his hand slipped inside the back of her gown, searing her skin. He’d removed his gloves at some point, and the feel of his hand beneath her gown made her tremble at the intimacy of it.
The back of her head hit the wall, and she managed to whisper, “You can’t do this.”
But he could. And he was. And his fingers curved over her bottom and dragged her up and against him, and something inside her went hot and liquid, as if a pool of molten metal had settled in her stomach.
“Darling Jilly,” he rasped in her ear, “do you truly want me to stop?” His fingers were possessive, sliding over her bottom like he owned her. Despite the proprietary nature of his caresses, despite the cloud of passion that had descended upon her, she felt certain that if she confirmed it, he would release her. All it would take was one word, and he would step back, and do up her buttons, and she could recover her scattered senses. Just one word. She could say it. She could make her lips form it, force it out from between her teeth.
“No.” That was surely some other woman’s voice. She couldn’t even recognize it as hers; it was breathless and plaintive, not at all the sort of sound she would ever let cross her lips. “No, don’t stop. Please.”
But it was her voice, and her hands curling into his hair as he brought his lips back down to hers. It was her, lifting up onto her toes to meet him, her heart fluttering in her chest at the strange sensations he evoked within her.
Until he had touched her, until he had kissed her, she hadn’t realized just how much she had felt like a decoration—a pretty, pleasant object to be trotted out and perhaps perform on command. She hadn’t been a flesh and blood woman in years; she had convinced herself that she could be satisfied with a thriving social life, that she was unplagued by emotion, by any sort of baser human impulses. And she had been right, for the most part. Until he had knocked her off her shelf.
She didn’t want to marry him. She had no intention of making a second horrible mistake. She was certainly not going to fall in love with him. But she adored the way he made her feel. She enjoyed feeling desirable, and kissing was worlds away better than champagne.
All too soon he was drawing away, carefully disentangling himself from her grasping hands, and she murmured her disapproval, frustrated that he resisted her efforts to draw him back.
“That’s enough,” he said, and his voice was rough, almost irritable. “That’s enough—there’s hardly going to be time left to do up your buttons.” With brisk, efficient hands he peeled her off the wall and turned her around, his fingers effortlessly finding the small buttons even in the darkness, popping them back into their loops and sliding her sleeves back up her arms properly.
The wave of sound outside the box crashed over her, and she started as she realized that she had quite forgotten where they were. In public. Separated from hundreds of other people, many of them her peers, by only a damask curtain.
He had not forgotten. He had somehow judged the time, broke away from her with enough of it left to make her once again presentable. How was it that he could do that, when she yet shivered with the aftereffects of his kisses? Suspicion settled heavily in her mind, the wariness of a woman who had been betrayed by an inconstant suitor once before and had no desire to suffer the same thing again.
He framed her face with his hands—gloved once again—and bent to kiss her again, sweeping the suspicion from her mind with the slow stroke of his tongue. And as he slid the lock open once more, he murmured in her ear, “Don’t fret. There’s four acts left.”
Chapter Thirteen
By the time the second act finished, Jilly’s tension was palpable, and yet James was uncertain whether or not her good sense had taken hold of her once again. He shifted in his seat, uncomfortably aware of the tightness of his breeches—a tightness that had not alleviated at all since he had held Jilly in his arms. He found he could not concentrate on the production. His attention was reserved only for Jilly’s beautiful face in profile, the pursing of her kiss-bruised lips, the delicate flush that had yet to fade from her cheeks.
If Lord and Lady Ravenhurst had noticed anything amiss when they had returned, they had tactfully said nothing—and he comforted himself that had Jilly wished to escape him, she would have requested to leave the theatre before the play had resumed. But she had not. She had said nothing to her
friend, except a mumbled greeting, hiding her mouth behind her glass of champagne. As Lady Ravenhurst stood once more, ostensibly to seek out some friends she had missed during the last interlude, Lord Ravenhurst climbed to his feet, his gaze traveling between Jilly and James speculatively.
“Adagio,” he said.
James waved a hand. “Done.”
With a short nod, Ravenhurst seized his wife’s hand. “Come, Nora—I think I saw Lord and Lady Appleby.” And he dragged his wife after him.
“Did you—did you just give him another horse?” Jilly asked, her brows arching into her hairline.
“Yes.” He lifted the champagne flute from her fingers, setting it aside on the table. “I’m buying privacy—it was a worthy sacrifice.”
“With a horse.” She looked mildly offended, a moue of displeasure settling on her lips. He longed to sear it away beneath his. He settled for clasping her hands in his and lifting her to her feet, tugging her once again behind the curtain into the cover of darkness.
As the sound without faded once again to a dull roar and he crowded her back against the wall, her nails prickled his shoulders even through the thick wool of his coat. She drew a breath and said, “Wait. I don’t want—I don’t want you to unbutton my dress.”
“Oh?” He scraped his jaw across her cheek, heard her breath catch in her throat. “May I ask why?”
She took a breath and then paused as his lips touched her temple, coasting down and across her cheek. When she forged ahead at last, it was with a sort of desperation, as if she had to get the words out before she could forget what she had meant to say. “If anyone should see—if you don’t do the buttons back up properly…”
She would be properly compromised. And she didn’t want that. At least, not yet. And a forced marriage would be the ruin of all of his plans.
“Don’t you trust me even a little?” he asked.
“No,” she said promptly. “You bought me with a horse.”
“You should be flattered,” he said. “Adagio cost me nearly a thousand pounds.” He relished the small gasp she gave as he eased his hands behind her, curving them over the small of her back. He wished he had lit the candles on the sconces; he would have given anything to see her expression. She seemed to vacillate between curiosity and horror, as if she had shocked herself with her easy capitulation.
“A thousand pounds?” Her voice was appalled—with just a sliver of amusement threaded through it. “For fifteen minutes?”
“Thirteen, now.” He bussed his lips across her cheek, eased closer, drew her onto her toes with just a bit of pressure at her perfect, uncorseted waist. But her breath escaped in nervous puffs, and her fingers yet clenched on his shoulders.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” she murmured, as if to herself. “This is how ladies are ruined.”
She was thinking too much—he would lose any progress he had made if he could not ease her out of her encroaching panic. “You won’t be ruined,” he said, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “I won’t let you be ruined. The Ravenhursts won’t let you be ruined.”
A soft flutter of laughter. “Robert sold me for a horse,” she said.
“Only,” he said, “because he knew you were willing.” He lifted a hand to stroke away the wayward curl that irrepressibly bobbed before her eyes. He couldn’t see it, but he had known it was there. It was always there, taunting him, a tiny bit of wildness in a woman otherwise too self-controlled, too rigid. She kept herself on too tight a rein, unwilling to allow for the possibility of passion.
“He didn’t,” she said, her voice half-mortified.
“Of course he did,” he countered. “If you weren’t, you would have made some excuse to leave as soon as they returned to the box. But you didn’t.” His hand cupped the nape of her neck, drew her closer to press a kiss to the corner of her lips, finding that exquisite place unerringly even in the near-overwhelming darkness. “You didn’t. You stayed. For this.”
She made a startled sound in her throat, but her lips parted beneath the pressure of his without hesitation, and her head tilted to find the perfect angle. He wanted to slide his fingers into her hair, loose the magnificent weight of it to fall over her shoulders, catch up handfuls of it and crush the silky locks between his fingers. But that was madness—he didn’t want her ruined. At least not yet.
Ten minutes. It wasn’t enough time, not nearly enough. She was a gently-bred lady, and even if he managed to tap into all the repressed passion that simmered beneath her carefully-cultivated surface, he might very well frighten her off in the doing of it.
But her fingers sank into his hair, and she drew back just enough to nip at his lower lip, eliciting a groan from him. No, he wouldn’t frighten her off—she wasn’t some timid little girl, fresh from the school room. She was a woman, with a woman’s desires, even if she had never been tempted to act on them. He could tempt her to act on them.
Seven minutes. He was going to risk it. Not as a calculated attempt at seduction, but because she was here, she was in his arms, and he might never get another opportunity. Because he wanted her, and he wanted her to know it. And he wanted to make her want him.
His hands clasped her waist, lifting her even as he insinuated his knee between her legs. Her hands, which had been sifting so gently through his hair, at once caught great handfuls of it instead. Her lips broke from his with a gasp of alarm, and he floundered for a way to keep her from surfacing from the sensual spell he’d woven around her.
“James,” she whispered fiercely, her hands releasing his hair to settle on his shoulders in an effort to steady herself, as he’d managed to lift her clear off the ground, pinning her to the wall by her skirts. Her thighs squeezed around his knee as if to repel it, but her hips shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t know how to handle him, how to escape the pressure of his knee between her legs, and couldn’t seem to stop herself from moving restlessly. “James, you cannot—”
“Yes,” he said, “I can.” He caught her hips in his hands, rocked her against him, and heard the swift, indrawn breath she gave.
Five minutes.
“James,” she said again, but it was softer this time. Her fingers kneaded his shoulders, no longer clutching desperately at him. She was weakening.
He sought out her ear, rasped his jaw along it and felt her shudder. “I’ve thought of doing this all evening,” he said. “Ever since I discovered you weren’t wearing a corset.” He laughed, a harsh, grating sound that made her shiver in reaction. “No; that’s a lie—since the very moment you climbed into the carriage and I saw that row of buttons up your back. All I could think of was how long it would take to undo them.”
“You shouldn’t say such things.” Her voice was husky, strained. “It’s wicked. It must be.”
He nipped her earlobe, felt her hands clench and her hips jerk. “Then be wicked with me. Just for these last few minutes. And then, if you like, you may claim a headache and the Ravenhursts will no doubt see you safely home.” He moved his knee against her in a slow roll that made her back arch, made her make a low, sultry sound of desire deep in her throat. “Or stay—stay and be just a bit more wicked.”
“More wicked?” She sounded rocked to her core, as if she couldn’t believe what he was suggesting. “How much more wicked is there?”
Two minutes.
“More than I could possibly explain to you now. More than could be accomplished in a theatre box. For tonight, only a bit more. You’ll be shocked, but you’re a lady. You were always going to be shocked.” Another slow thrust, seducing her with bits of pleasure, luring her in like a fish to a baited hook. He needed her desirous—and then he needed her disappointed. Aroused and unsatisfied. Whatever it took to keep her here for another act, for another interlude. For another feverish few minutes of passion. “But I promise you, you’ll enjoy it.”
She pitched forward on the next thrust, her breathing ragged as she braced herself against his chest. Her curls tickled his chin as she struggled t
o right herself, to push herself back upright with arms that trembled against the effort. He could feel the fight in her, the internal war she waged between her need and her good sense. And he exulted in the sweet, lost sound she made as he moved again, angled her against him with his hands on her hips, precisely where he knew she ached the most.
“You can’t unbutton my dress,” she said, and he rather thought she had made an effort to sound severe, as if she had drawn a line in the sand.
“Agreed,” he said, and tipped her chin up for one last hungry kiss before he would have to release her before the Ravenhursts returned.
And really, he didn’t need to unbutton her dress. Not when slipping beneath her skirts would be so much more fun.
∞∞∞
Sleep was impossible. Jilly was exhausted in a way that she had never been before, a bone-deep tired that had suggested that she had only to fall into bed and she would succumb to sleep immediately, but that certainly hadn’t happened.
It was the darkness. It wound around her like a promise, cradling her in its depths the same way James had cradled her in his arms. The soft linen sheets around her ought to have been comforting, but they only abraded her over-sensitized skin.
She should never have stayed through the play. She should have pleaded a headache, made her excuses, and begged Nora and Robert to take her home in a hired hack. Instead she had courted ruination purely to assuage her curiosity…and succumbed to the temptation to savor a few wild minutes of hedonistic pleasure. It had been glorious and reckless and thrilling.
It had been agonizing.
She rolled onto her stomach and buried her face in her pillow, muffling her groan in the downy softness of it. He had been toying with her, the arrogant ass. He had taken advantage of her inexperience, exploited her ignorance, only to torment her. And he had enjoyed it. That much had been obvious, from the silky laugh he had buried in the curve of her throat as she had writhed beneath the strokes of his clever fingers.
His Favorite Mistake Page 10