Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pausing on the top step of the orphanage’s porch, Adrian offered his arm to Valerie.
She beamed up at him and weaved her arm through his, not hesitating at all.
She was in high spirits, a beautiful flush of happy pink in her cheeks, her eyes gleaming with the fires of victory…
and perhaps a touch of sadness that she had to leave those boys.
No doubt they had made her feel closer to the siblings she had left behind.
“If I live to be one hundred years old, I shall never forget that horrified look upon that man’s face,” she chirped merrily. “I must thank you, Your Grace. You were right to insist on coming with us; that would not have gone nearly so well if I had been by myself.”
There had never been any question in Adrian’s mind that he would accompany Valerie and the boys, but perhaps she thought he might have changed his mind after the farewell party.
He had planned to stay longer at that gathering, but between his waning self-control around Valerie and the obvious discomfort of the staff, he had thought it best if he made himself scarce.
“I cannot abide rudeness,” he said, leading her down the steps to the waiting carriage.
“Is your own the exception?” she replied in a teasing tone, giving his arm a light squeeze.
He glanced down at her. “I am not rude.”
“You were when we first met,” she pointed out, chuckling.
“If you had encountered the sly vixens that I have over the years, you would understand that my… intolerance was justified,” he said flatly, while his gaze flitted to her plump, bitten-red lips. “You are the first to come to my door with no agenda. You were, at least.”
She smacked him playfully on the arm, surprising him. “I have no agenda, Your Grace! I am merely making the most of my situation. You are the one enabling it.”
“Adrian,” he said thickly, her proximity a maddening thing.
“Pardon?”
He bent his head toward her. “My name. Use it.”
For we are beyond ‘Your Grace’ and ‘Miss Wightman.’ And he was beyond pretending that he did not want to kiss her, though he knew he could not.
What had happened in the library could never happen again because, the next time it did, he would not be able to resist wanting more.
He would not be able to resist wanting all of her.
“Very well. Adrian,” she whispered back, “you are the one enabling my whims. If you had refused me, I would not be organizing a party. I would be in my guest chambers, cursing that my carriage ran into trouble near your castle, cursing that I did not follow the driver those five miles into town.”
He eyed her intently. “Do you regret knocking upon my door?”
“How could I?” she replied, her breath catching. “Although, there are, perhaps, some things that I would change.”
A low growl rumbled in the back of his throat, a groan of torment. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?” She blinked, her face the very picture of innocence.
“Stop tempting me,” he replied, as they reached the carriage door.
He was having enough trouble holding himself back without her saying such teasing things.
“Adrian, I would not know how to tempt you, even if I tried,” she insisted, though her sly half-smile suggested otherwise.
He opened the carriage door, and as she stepped up, he caught her around the waist and pulled her against him; her back to his chest. The side of the doorway blocked his action from anyone who might be spying, but he could not enter that carriage unless she knew what she was doing to him. Rather, what he wanted to do to her.
“Just your presence is a temptation,” he whispered, close to her ear.
“When I am near you, I cannot help it: I want to taste my name on your lips as you cry out in pleasure; I want to taste the desire between your thighs, and know that I am the cause; I want to ease my fingers inside you, since I cannot take you fully, since I cannot cross that line. But I will imagine it all the same, no matter how it torments me.”
Valerie gasped, a rousing sound that spurred him on toward the edge of madness.
You have already crossed that line, a stern voice chided in his mind, prompting him to release his grip on her. You will be lucky if she does not ask to leave at once.
But as Valerie stepped further into the carriage and sat down, she turned a sultry gaze back toward him, her voice breathy as she said, “I would not mind that.” She paused, her bosom rising and falling heavily. “No, I do not think I would mind that at all.”
As Adrian’s mind thrummed with possibility, his desire soaring to feverish heights, he entered the carriage and called up to the driver to set off. At the snap of the reins, he closed the door behind him, sealing the world off from what he was about to do in this private, protected little bubble.
When did I get so bold? What has he done to me?
Valerie struggled to breathe evenly as Adrian sat down opposite, wondering if her brazenness had somehow displeased him. It had not sounded like he wished to put distance between them, yet there he was, as far as it was possible to be inside such a small space.
“You have vexed me since the moment you arrived,” he said, as he began to shuffle off his greatcoat. “I knew when I first set eyes on you that you would be trouble.”
Valerie cleared her dry throat. “Well, I did not exactly prove that I could follow rules. I was asked to stay in one place, and I did not.”
“But you will obey me now,” he replied: it was not a question.
Wide-eyed as he slowly removed his tailcoat, Valerie nodded without thinking. Powerful muscle strained the seams of his shirt, the buttons of his waistcoat begging to be relieved of their duty.
She watched, transfixed, as he slowly untied his cravat and undid the top buttons of his shirt to reveal a triangle of bare skin. A slight nick of a scar slanted across his collarbone, her lips suddenly compelled by the desire to kiss that old wound.
With that longing in her mind, she moved along the squabs, needing to be nearer to him.
“No,” he commanded, his dusky blue eyes flashing a warning. “Stay exactly where you are.”
She stopped immediately, her hands gripping the edge of the squabs as a delicious frustration bristled through her. The frisson of anticipation. Indeed, she was beginning to learn that there was a beauty in not knowing what might happen next.
Although, he had already told her what he wanted to do to her, so she could not pretend she was entirely unaware of what she had invited.
Her breaths became soft gasps as she sat there, watching him undo the buttons of his waistcoat. How she wished that she was the one undressing him, but she had a feeling that that was the point, stirring her up into a glorious madness by not letting her touch.
But she could look, and was looking, her gaze wandering downward to the part of him that remained a mystery. His tight, Brummel-style trousers left almost nothing to the imagination, her stomach tightening with desire as she noted the astonishing bulge of his arousal.
How can I have such an effect on him? Indeed, how can it be that he has such an effect on me? All she had to do was observe him removing a few garments, and she was panting as if she were back on the chaise-longue in the library with his tongue between her thighs.
Just then, he pushed off from his side of the squabs and sank to his knees in front of her. His hands braced on either side of her, those beautiful blue eyes searching her face for a moment, as if to be certain this was what she wanted.
“I mean to kiss you now,” he said in a sultry voice. “Then, I mean to pleasure you until you cannot help but scream my name, and I do not care who hears.”
He leaned forward, so tall that even kneeling, he had to bend his head a little. She met his slow, sensual kiss with a sigh that seemed to shake her entire body, as if it had finally been given what it had craved, certain of satisfaction.
She reached for him, meaning to hold his face as she kissed him.
As she did, he caught her by the wrists and raised her arms above her head, pressing her hands back against the carriage wall.
The movement brought him closer, his kiss hotter and hungrier as he leaned into her, denying her the gratification of being able to touch him.
But the grip of his hands around hers, holding them against the wall, was a thrill all its own: the rough friction of his callused palms against the soft skin of hers; the way he slid his fingers between hers, intertwining; the sway of his body, moving to the rhythm of his kiss, her legs instinctively parting for him to allow him closer still.
Indeed, she almost clenched her thighs against the sides of his hips, for that was the only way she could touch him. What her hands could not do to help satisfy her titillating frustrations, her legs had no choice but to improvise, to savor some of that sweet friction.
“Would you rather touch me or see me as I tease you, until you cannot bear it?” he purred, breathless as he pulled back for a moment.
Flushed with heat and eager for more, Valerie shook her head, breathing hard. “I want both.”
“You cannot have both,” he replied, smirking.
“I must,” she pleaded, straining forward to kiss him again.
He permitted the light graze of his lips on hers before pulling back once more and releasing his hold upon her hands. With a look in his eyes that made her heart pound, he reached back and picked up his cravat.
“I could deny you both,” he said silkily, “but I would hate for you to think, after all this, that I am as cruel as they say. Now, stay still.”
She could not help but obey him as the silk cravat brushed her skin, Adrian drawing the fabric over the swell of her bosom, caressing it across her chest and up the column of her throat, her head tilting back as a delicious shiver ran through her.
He leaned in to trace a kiss where the cravat had touched, his lips grazing the curve of her neck until he reached her mouth… where he stopped, half an inch from her lips, tormenting her with the promise of his mouth on hers.
Kiss me. Oh, kiss me.
A dark laugh rumbled from his chest until she became almost certain that he was a mind reader.
But he did not kiss her. Instead, he brought the cravat over her eyes, his thumbs stroking her cheeks as he curved the ends of the fabric around her head.
She gasped as he tied a firm knot, and she was left without one of her five senses. Shapes and shadows filtered through the dark green silk, nothing more.
“Now, be a good girl,” Adrian growled, close to her ear, his warm breath tickling her skin, “and let me see how many times, how many ways, I can make you call my name before we reach home.”