Chapter Twenty
The carriage may have been constructed of white satin and blond wood, but with the gas lamp dimmed the interior looked dark and sinister and any number of other things.
Langston stretched on his side, watched where the light swayed toward the goddess on the opposite chair, wishing it were even dimmer, and tried to halt the ache in his chest that seemed to be doubling the closer they got to the future.
She seemed to want the quiet. That was all right with him.
He didn’t feel up to conversing lightly or falsely, or with anything other than the burn that was making his shoulders hurt, too.
He probably would have been better off not knowing this beautiful Highland lass named Lisle.
She was so full of life, it was impossible to be close to her and not have some of it transfer over. It was what he feared most.
Those who experienced life had to suffer through the bad, too.
That was the only way you knew how good the good felt.
He blinked rapidly at moisture God was cursing him with, and shuddered through a breath she’d never be able to detect.
He was very good at what he did. He acted.
He played falsely. He cheated. That was what he did.
Then, she said his name, surprising him, and changing everything.
“Aye?” he answered after a moment.
“This ball…was na’ what I expected.”
“You go to many balls a-fore?” he asked.
“Nae,” she replied.
“What did you expect?”
“I doona’ ken, for certain. I thought it would be gayer. There would be more laughter, more wine, more music…more false-sounding words. You know, like the girls used to describe to me.”
“Girls?”
“At the finishing school. There was a lass from Paris. She told tales that would scald your ears.”
“That’s highly doubtful,” Langston replied.
She made a sound that could be amusement. He could turn up the lamp to be certain, but he didn’t want to see amusement. It jarred against what he was feeling.
“Then there was a girl from Germany. I forget where, exactly. There, everything is so strict, a woman does na’ even get to meet her husband until they’re wed.”
“There’s naught wrong with that plan that I can tell.”
“They were appalled, but also envious and a bit impressed that I had the run of the moors, I was welcome in any croft, and I could play with any of the lads I wanted to, anytime I wanted to.”
“Nae wonder you were sent to this finishing school. You were a veritable hoyden.”
“I turned out well enough,” she answered.
Langston sucked in a breath on that one. He didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t know where she was going with her conversation. That was another thing that intrigued him about her. She surprised him, daily…hourly.
“You doona’ agree?” she asked.
“I—uh…”
She giggled at his response. His arms twitched at the sound. He wondered why, if everything horrible happened to her, she still had such joy within her. That was the part that drew him, singed him, and was probably going to destroy him.
“You doona’ have to answer. I ken what your answer is just fine.”
“What do you ken?” he asked.
“This dress. This presentation. You did it on purpose. You used this body that you call a weapon to your advantage, to divert attention. You did very well with it, too. I was impressed.”
Langston swallowed. “As I’ve already made mention, you’re a very quick pupil.”
“Doona’ do it ever again,” she said.
That had him sharpening his eyes on where she sat, or rather, where she was reclining, since she’d decided to lie across the seat, and use the blond wood for a backrest.
“I’m having a bit of difficulty following your conversation, my dear. It must be the quantity of wine I consumed. What is it you’re referring to again?” he asked.
“You dinna’ drink much, Langston.”
“Enough,” he replied.
“Enough to open some more negotiations with me?” she asked.
“What are we negotiating for this time?” he asked.
“Me. In your bed. Open. Willing…” Her voice lowered to a husky note that went right to his groin. “…wanton,” she finished.
The reaction was immediate and constant, and started a throb of activity where he least wanted it.
Langston looked down at himself in surprise.
He still had plans for the night. He had MacDonalds to sway.
He had eighteen more groomsmen to select and prepare, since he already had the nine poor souls they’d stolen from beneath Barton’s nose.
He had to get the opiate started that would put Barton’s English-bred servants into a drug-induced stupor, to render them men who looked very like MacDonald captives, who’d had their will broken.
He had Saladin to bid good-bye to. He wasn’t looking forward to any of it, and he certainly hadn’t time for what she was doing—whatever that was.
“Do you know how?” he asked, tossing his own mental card onto her table.
“How what?”
“To be wanton,” he replied.
In answer, she reached up and twisted the knob on their gas lamp, making more wick rise from the oil, grab the light, and consequently shed more illumination throughout the coach cabin.
“Do you doubt me?” she asked softly.
“Aye,” he replied, and licked his lips.
She was sliding down, onto her back on the white satin cushion, parting her legs slightly, arching her back, and everything on him was jumping at the sight.
Then she did more, rolling onto her side to face him, and then she swiveled onto her knees, leaning out over the coach floor, and raising her upper torso in an arc of motion, that was forcing the dress he’d designed to nearly give up the effort of holding in her breasts.
Langston had never seen such a vivid display, and his entire body was tormenting him with it. He had to clench the padded satin cushion beneath him to keep from reaching for her.
She stayed in that back-cracking, poised position, with every inhalation sending parts of her closer to exposure, for long enough that he was in danger of losing his sanity.
Then, she pulled back, slid onto her haunches, with bunches of that blue-dyed fabric about her knees, and regarded him with an unreadable expression.
“Now…do we have an understanding?” she asked.
“Of what?” he croaked it out.
“That I ken very well what wanton is…and what it is na’.”
“Aye,” he answered, and licked his lips again, and he watched how a tremor ran through her as he did so.
“And that it’s a very good thing to have.”
“Aye,” he replied again.
“And…that you’ll negotiate with anything to have it.”
Langston opened his mouth to say aye, but that was what she was looking for, and his mind decided to come back from wherever it had been hiding, in order to assist him with this. “That depends…on what it is,” he replied finally.
He watched as she went on her knees again, and slid first one of those little puffed effects at the tops of her sleeves down to her upper arm, and then the other. That was making the front part of her bodice stretch and pull and define, and Langston really was going crazy.
“Let’s redefine what we’re negotiating again,” she whispered, and then she rolled her shoulders, pressing first one nipple against the fabric, and then the other, making him push the padding into a solid block of crushed feathers with the pressure of his fists on it.
“Wanton…passion…”
“Oh, my God,” he murmured.
“And what you’ll do to have it.”
“Oh, my God,” he repeated.
“Say it,” she requested.
“What?”
She was leaning out over the chasm of the coach bottom again, only this time there wasn’t much holding her in place at all. Langston was howling inside; he didn’t know what the outer Langston looked like.
“That you’ll give anything…for it.”
This time it was a howl that came out first, although he had his teeth clenched to keep it from being too loud. “That…depends. On what. It is.” He repeated it, in blocks of words that were all his body would let him have.
“You are na’ a very quick learner, cherie,” she whispered, and reached up to push the fabric down and away from herself, exposing…everything.
Langston launched himself, gathered her into his arms, ball gown and all, found one of her breasts, and had it in his mouth before anything on him had time to say no.
Lisle screamed with the only portion of her that wasn’t flying about the coach cabin, zinging this way and that with flashes of ache and weakness, and moisture and excruciating heat.
Langston pulled her tighter, his mouth a thing of sensation and fire and eroticism, and he wouldn’t unlatch from where he suckled no matter how she tried for that very thing.
He was too big. He was too powerful. He was too strong. Lisle settled finally with running her fingers through that black hair, pulling it loose from the queue, and then she was offering herself up to him, moving him to the breast he’d been neglecting.
“Oh…dearest…sweet…heaven.”
He was murmuring more of the words, and she had to hold him in place in order to make certain he knew she wasn’t interested in words, only action.
Lisle had never felt what she was now, and he was taking all the weightiness and enlarged feeling she’d been tormenting herself with, the longer he stayed on his side of the coach and just watched her, and turning it into a version of mist and clouds, rain and heat.
Langston trailed his mouth to her throat, his hands moving from where he’d had her pinioned at the waist, up to cup the flesh where he’d just been, and the motion of his thumbs was just as arousing, just as torturous, and just as hot.
“Love,” she said, just before he moved his head. His lips captured hers, stopping anything else from being said, and made everything disappear in a spin of smoke-gray fog with fire at its core.