Chapter Fourteen
As he dipped his wings and soared in widening circles, Qavox felt the small body curled into his back begin to violently shake.
“Are you well, princess?” he asked, knowing she’d be able to hear him even over the whistling wind.
He craned his head backward on its long neck and gave a snort of astonishment, sparks flying from his nostrils.
She was laughing! The princess’s face was aglow with excitement.
“I am well, indeed!” she cried in return. “I am flying!”
—The Dragon and the Blue Star by Analise Crewe
The two ladies chattered on about ribbons and dress trimmings, making the shopgirl fetch dozens of samples.
Miss Crewe rested her head back against Dex’s chest. His hand still covered her mouth. He held her by the waist, her generously curved bum soft against his thighs and his . . .
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop holding her. The risk of discovery was too great. He had to stay like this, his body responding to a female body pressed against his. He shifted his hips but there was nowhere to go. Surely she could feel his arousal.
She squirmed a little, moving against him, and it was all he could do to suppress the groan of pleasure that threatened to escape his lips.
So small and soft in his arms, locked together behind the silk-covered screen while the two ladies chattered on about ribbons and dress trimmings only inches away from them.
He’d seen the way she stared at him back at the club when he’d been shirtless.
No doubt she’d been cataloging his physique to write a description for her novel, but the sight of her gaze roaming his body, lips slightly parted and cheeks flushed, had been devastating to his self-control.
He had felt her gaze like soft fingertips running over his skin.
She’d wanted him in that moment. He’d seen the physical signs. She’d approved of his body, ignored his scars; she’d looked at him with hunger in her eyes. And damn it, he wanted her, too.
Wanted to turn her, lift her hands and place them against the wall. Learn the curve of her cheek with his palm, test the weight of her hair, see if those curls would tangle around his fingers like vines and trap him forever.
He wanted to breathe in her scent, like wildflowers heavy with morning dew, flowers greedily soaking up the sun, opening further. Slip the thin shift down her shoulders, slowly, slowly, revealing the delicate collarbone, the hollow at the base of her throat, the pulse that beat there.
He wanted to kiss the back of her neck while he learned the sweet curves of her breasts.
Breathe against her skin, waiting, drawing out the moment, until she arched her back and urged him to continue his exploration.
He wanted to kiss, learn, taste every inch of her.
Wanted to apply himself like perfume to the insides of her wrists, the soft hidden skin behind her ears.
Rip the thin silk shift until she was naked for him. The flush spreading along her cheeks, down her neck, over her breasts. He wanted to outfit her with his hands, his body, his lips. That’s all the covering she needed.
Rip his clothes off, too. Slide his hands between her legs, nudge her thighs apart . . .
Fuck. Why weren’t those ladies leaving? This was intolerable. This dangerous attraction between them. The way she sighed and nestled closer, so trustingly. How could she know that he was having the most bestial of fantasies? Rending the thin shift, taking her from behind, up against the wall.
His breathing ragged, he fought for control.
Why had he visited the dressmaker’s? He hadn’t needed to return the fan, he’d wanted to see her again, see her in clouds of tissue-thin silk. He’d gotten more than he’d imagined. Pressed up against her behind the screen.
This desire was inappropriate, forbidden. The urge to ravish was in direct opposition to his promise to protect. He stamped it out, cold water on the fire. He couldn’t want her. He shouldn’t want her. She was his duty. Not his desire.
But what was it about her that destroyed him so utterly?
The bravery she’d shown as she fought him off in the alleyway, thinking he meant to purchase her.
The layer of scar tissue she had over her heart because the life of ease and love she’d known had been stripped away so harshly and she’d had to grow up, to fend for herself, a lamb among wolves.
The conversation they’d had in the stables. How she missed her father so keenly. Orphaned and alone in this world, longing to belong, to publish her writing so that an audience would give her the approbation and love she craved.
There was that survivor’s instinct in her, that wound that she covered over. He recognized a wounded soul when he saw one. And he didn’t only want to clothe her in silks and velvets and furs, and place jewels at her throat and her ears. He didn’t only want to make her life safe and comfortable.
There was something so much more selfish and so much more perilous to this desire. He wanted her. Full stop. He wanted to take her, kiss her, ravage her. He wanted to taste her and make her his.
The challenge in her eyes, the current between them, like threads of silk. Pull one and the whole thing unraveled. And she would have a permanent mark through the fabric of her life. One more sin to confess to, one more grave error in judgment.
Ward. She was his ward.
Under his protection.
He could never act on this desire.
Ana’s breathing was erratic beneath his palm. She twisted her neck, attempting to see his face, but he moved his chin. His body was tense behind her, ready to spring. To escape her? To pull her closer. That’s what she wanted. She wanted his hands on her. All over her.
The sight of him boxing. The violence barely contained by the gentlemanly rules of the sport. His hands were so huge, so powerful. He held her around the waist with one strong arm. What if . . . what if those hands covered her breasts?
Thinking about it made her breasts tingle and her nipples stiffen to aching points.
A restlessness made her shift against him, push her bottom against his .
. . that must be his . . . she’d seen the male member illustrated in medical texts consumed in her all-encompassing reading sprees, but it had always looked somewhat silly and inconsequential. Nothing like this.
Hard and long, pressed against her lower back. His fingers spread over her navel, and the tingling sensation spread from her belly to between her legs. She wanted to sink back against him. Be surrounded by him, surrender to him. What if he turned her around, lowered his lips to hers?
She twisted around until her breasts met the solid planes of his chest. She stared at his lips, the sensual curve of the upper lip. The glowering look in his eyes, the grip of his hand on her waist.
“Your Grace . . .” she whispered. I want you to give me my first kiss.
His face closer now. Lips nearly touching . . .
Silence. Only their breathing. Only this dimly lit space, this world unto them.
“Yes?”
“The . . . ladies are gone, I believe.”
He immediately released his hold on her waist and without another word, left her alone behind the screen. Not a moment too soon. She heard the dressmaker greet the duke, and then she was behind the screen, arms filled with delicate silk and lace.
“Your guardian is waiting for you. Here.” She lifted Ana’s arms and then slipped the gown over her head. “Ah, it is perfect.” She made some final adjustments, smoothing the gown over Ana’s breasts and hips and tying the sash at the back. She led Ana out from behind the screen by the hand.
“What say you, Your Grace?”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. A faint sheen of sweat on his brow. That dark hair falling like sin into his eyes.
“She looks well enough.” His words were so nonchalant but his eyes told her another story. They lingered on her face, her body. Was he back behind the screen? Imagining the same thing she’d so fervently desired?
“Does not the color of the sash bring out the green of her eyes?” asked the dressmaker.
“It does.” He cleared his throat. “I should be going, before Aunt Glynis returns.”
“Stay a moment,” Ana said. “Why not choose a new waistcoat?”
“Perhaps one to match your ward’s sash?” the dressmaker asked.
“Absolutely not.”
“This would look well on you,” Ana said, fingering a bolt of light blue silk with a silvery sheen. “You’re always wearing plain, severe clothing. Why not introduce a small sliver of frivolity?”
“I’ll leave the frivolous colors to the pretty ladies.”
“Your Grace,” she said archly. “Was that a compliment?”
“You’re a pretty girl, and you know it.”
She didn’t know it. She knew that men had wanted her. Had wanted to own her. She hadn’t seen this in their eyes. This tortured reverence. This longing. And she wondered if he could read the same thing in her eyes.
There was a moment where they simply stood, staring into each other’s eyes. The dressmaker busied herself with something at the counter.
“Warburton, I didn’t think to find you here.” Aunt Glynis cast a suspicious glance at them.
He abruptly stepped backward, putting distance between them. “I was returning Miss Crewe’s fan, which she left at the club.”
“You have blood on your collar. You’re not fit to be seen in public.”
He bowed. “Then I will leave you, ladies.”
Back at her desk, writing by the light of a lamp because the house was dark and silent, Ana attempted to describe the scene she’d witnessed at the club.
Lord Fortescue and Sir Falconer, stripped to the waist, pummeling each other with their fists.
Bareknuckle boxing was an acceptable sport for gentlemen to indulge in but there didn’t seem to be anything gentlemanly about it.
What Ana had witnessed had been raw, primal.
Frightening. And she’d hurled herself forward, unheeding of her own safety, to catch the duke as he staggered and fell.
What had possessed her? She’d been worried he might have been seriously injured, that was all.
That wasn’t all.
The entire day had been most confusing. First the sight of him shirtless, shaking her to the core, sparking the most carnal of thoughts.
And then the tenderness he’d shown to Odysseus and to her in the stables.
How was she meant to reconcile the two? The rare glimpse into his mind, his heart, had destabilized her far more than his body pinning her to the ground.
Was he a good, kind man beneath that harsh, forbidding exterior?
And then there had been the dressing room.
She was all aflutter, confusingly attracted to the man she’d thought of as an obstacle to her happiness.
She wasn’t doing any writing. She chose a fresh sheet of paper and dipped her pen in ink.
Dearest Papa, she wrote. I’m to attend my very first ball tomorrow!
How I wish you were here to present me in society.
The man you’ve chosen for my guardian sets my mind into a whirl, I hardly know whether I’m coming or going.
He’s infuriating, off-putting, arrogant, and domineering.
And yet, at the same time, I sense that he cares about me.
And not only because of the promise he made you on the battlefield.
Oh, Papa. I wish I could have your wise counsel.
Would she dance with the duke at the ball? She pictured them whirling around a dance floor, his expression stern, his huge arms holding her tightly so that she couldn’t breathe properly . . .
She set down her pen and folded the paper. There was nowhere to mail this letter.
And no one to talk to about her confusing feelings regarding her by turns hot-and-cold guardian.
She was alone.
Lady Claridge had been her confidante, as well as her mentor. She’d expected to have more time with the woman who’d become a motherly figure in her life. Finishing her final Clovercote novel was a tribute to her memory.
Attending the ball would help Ana achieve that goal. It wasn’t to be a romantic occasion.
She would be observing the ton, nothing more.