Chapter Four #2
The sweet spring air was an instant relief for them both. It was as if they’d stepped back from a hearth that had been stoked too high. Grey hadn’t realized how the lower half of his cheeks had begun to burn from the heat until they were kissed by the jasmine-scented air.
He turned to his companion and hoped to see her improved, but she only continued fanning herself.
“Here, give that to me and take this,” he ordered gently, swapping her fan out for the cup of punch.
“It probably isn’t that refreshing, given how sweet the stuff is, but it’ll burn a great deal less than wine or champagne.
” There was nothing graceful about his movements, but he continued fanning her face as she drank; he figured moving a greater volume of air was more important than maintaining decorum.
He watched the narrow column of her throat; the pearl choker necklace she wore bobbed a bit as she drank greedily.
She panted slightly when she was finished and pressed her hand to her abdomen in the gesture of a woman whose corset was a tad too tight and needed to remember how to breathe properly.
Absently, Grey took her cup and set it in the pot of a nearby plant.
“Any better?” he asked, though he feared he knew the answer.
She made a gesture with her fingers to indicate that it had helped only a little.
“Blast,” Grey spat. What she really needed was to get out of that corset, but that wasn’t possible at the moment.
It said something quite deep that he cared more about the well-being of this unnamed woman than he did the thought of undressing her.
Perhaps if she sat down to alleviate the weight of her garments?
He glanced around only to find the patio empty of furniture.
Turning his attention to the garden below, he scanned the shadows and saw the answer.
A trio of stone benches was set in alcoves carved into shrubbery.
He might have missed them had a cloud not coasted past the moon at that precise moment.
“You should sit.” He was about to ask if she could descend the four steps to the garden and cross to the benches, but that would take too long.
Without wasting another moment, Grey stooped and swooped the woman into his arms. It took some doing with all the layers of her skirts and petticoats and oversized bustle, but he managed after only a slight bobble.
“What are you—?” she gasped.
“Finding you a place to sit so your legs don’t give out.
I’d hate to see your fancy dress ruined by a head wound.
” He traversed the patio, bounded down the steps, and reached the benches.
Once there, however, he realized he did not wish to set her down.
He did not want to experience the emptiness of his arms once she was gone.
It was painful, but he forced himself to lower her to the bench and dropped down beside her.
He couldn’t resist keeping a steadying arm around her waist as she tilted her head back to the sky, closed her eyes, and breathed.
Soon, Grey found himself matching the rhythm of her inhalations and the measured exhalations.
Remembering he still held her fan, he fumbled it open once more and began to wave it toward the back of her neck.
The silver glow of moonlight filtering through the surrounding bushes revealed a single lock of dark hair peeking out from beneath the edge of her white wig. Fascinating.
She emitted a small moan of relief, and it struck Grey like a punch to the groin. Never in his life had he been hit by such sudden, overwhelming lust that it nearly doubled him over.
This woman…
“Are you—” He broke off and had to clear his throat. “Are you feeling at all improved?”
“Yes,” she sighed, and the smile she gave him was nothing short of glorious. “Thank you.”
“Happy to be your champion knight.”
“I assure you, I am not a woman who normally requires rescuing.”
“Somehow, I believe that.” And he did. Despite the situation they’d just narrowly escaped, nothing about this woman said she was a “fainting miss”.
She had a legitimate reason to become overheated, and he hadn’t minded in the least being able to come to her rescue.
If it meant he could hold her, he would do it over and over again.
“I fear your opportunities to act the knight are slim.” Her straight, white teeth glinted with her cheeky grin.
“I suspect you are conniving enough to manufacture a few should you desire to be rescued again.”
“Is that a compliment or an insult?”
“Oh, a compliment.” Grey leaned in and he was greeted by her fresh, sweet scent. She smelled so bloody good. “Most definitely a compliment.”
Was it his imagination, or did she lean in as well? Did her eyes just flit to his mouth?
Yes.
She just did it again.
And the pink tip of her tongue darted out to moisten her lips.
Grey narrowly prevented a groan from slipping free.
What was it about her that reduced him to an untested youth?
He was a man with experience—a rake by some of Society’s standards, by God!
—and far from a man who should have been reduced to needing to shift his position to disguise the growing crisis in his tight-fitting dress breeches.
And the woman hadn’t even touched him! He hadn’t even kissed her! What was he coming to?
“I should return inside before I am missed,” she said, though her dreamy tone told him she didn’t wish to in the slightest. She seemed quite content to exist with him in the shadows.
“Do you wish to return to that crush?”
She shook her head slowly, her lips parting slightly. “Do you?”
“Not if you are not in there with me,” Grey replied honestly.
The catch in her breath was easily one of the most erotic sounds to ever grace his ears. How could something so simple make him as hard as granite? It was everything he could do not to press his palm against his throbbing groin to staunch his steadily rising lust.
No.
To call what this woman made him feel simply lust would be a vast injustice.
There were many things about her he found arousing, but most of those things were also to be admired and appreciated.
He enjoyed her wit and her grace. He wanted to bathe in her humor and her candor.
Everything about her was beautiful, and she made him feel things Grey hadn’t known were possible.
To desire a woman was one thing, but to want her was another, entirely.
There was something so unique about her, and yet, also something wholly familiar.
Being with her was like returning to a place he’d been only once before as a child and hadn’t realized how much his soul had longed for it.
He wasn’t a man prone to crafting prose or fanciful daydreams, but that was honestly the closest he could come to describing how this woman made him feel.
It was absurd to believe he’d ever known this woman and not have experienced the instantaneous need to claim her, so what was it about her that called to him?
What was it about her that made Grey lose all sense and disregard caution? The sum of all her parts, that’s what.
His papillon leaned in, her eyes shadowed by night and her damnable mask, making Grey’s heart pound even more forcefully.
Would she be the one to kiss him? It should have mattered to him more that he wasn’t the one to make the first move, but he supposed it all came out in the wash; either way, he’d finally have the opportunity to feel those lips, to taste them.
He nearly closed the minute gap remaining between them when she froze.
Sluggishly, he registered that she was examining his features.
He wondered if she could see the small silvery scar on his jaw from a fall he’d taken while learning to ride as a boy.
Could she see the tiny chip in the corner of one of his front teeth from a bout of fisticuffs at Eton?
Would she end the night right there and leave him desperate with longing?
“I must know you from somewhere,” she marveled, gazing into his half-hidden face.
“You cannot.”
“You sound so certain,” she said with a light laugh.
“I am.”
“And why is that?”
“Because then I would know you…and there is no possibility that I would have ever overlooked you.”
Her full mouth tilted in a smile. “I was thinking the same thing.” She cocked her head thoughtfully. “But then there is something about you…”
He leaned in so close their noses grazed one another. “I was thinking the same thing,” he mimicked her words, his voice low and intimate the heartbeat before he finally kissed her.