Chapter Thirty-Three #2
This discreet door ushered in guests who sought a turn with one or more of the skilled house wenches or rooms for discreet
assignations with lovers. It was, Hugh noted with mounting distress, nearly the same color that painted Viola’s lips.
Excitement and curiosity lit her eyes at the sight of it, and Hugh was once again torn between pleasure and despair at her usual fearless disregard for her well-being.
She had already been made to suffer so many of life’s cruel contours; he was loath to expose her to yet another tawdry slice of Linden’s darkness.
In a world of coal, Viola was a diamond.
She deserved palaces, not temples of sin.
As if to prove his point, silky tendrils of sensual rose and jasmine incense, along with pipe and cigar smoke, escaped through
the frame of the door like a smoking gateway to hell and not merely a gambling den.
Viola’s nose wrinkled beneath her mask, her brow furrowing.
“What is it?” he asked, desperate for any excuse to send her straight back to Foxcourt House in the hack.
She shook her head, and the same hope slid away. “Nothing.”
Breathing in the smoke and damp night air, Hugh raised his hand to knock. The door creaked open, revealing a surly night porter
in the hell’s signature gray uniform. “Tonight’s invite only.”
Hugh held out the invitation Tommy had copied, bringing an easy smile to his face. The porter took it from him with obvious
suspicion, raising a monocle to his eye as he turned the card over. The glass of the eyepiece turned iridescent in the dim
street lantern light.
Fairy glass, as he’d suspected. Hugh’s hand tightened on his jacket lapel. He was banking on any list of names that corresponded
to the invitation number being at the front entrance.
The guard inspected it. “Using the wrong entrance if yer here for the fancy t’-do.”
“Thought we might start the night off with a different sort of fun,” Hugh told him genially, lowering his voice as if to bring
the porter into his confidence. “Relaxes a man before he starts tossing dice.”
“Aye,” the porter said, his gaze shifting between them.
A lance of blistering heat pierced Hugh’s chest as the man’s glassy eyes fell on Viola, who had, damn her, spread her cloak
once more and slowly, slowly, brought her gloved hand down over her collarbone, trailing it toward . . .
“What’s a handsome gent like you doing guarding the door?” she asked, huskily. “Shouldn’t they have you on the floor, with
all the other temptations?”
That same furious heat spilled through him, until Hugh had to fight the humiliatingly primitive urge to haul her closer to
his side. She is playing a part, as are you, you fool.
The porter grinned, flashing brown teeth as he opened the door fully. “Come see me later if yer toff bores ye, yeah?”
His gamble had paid off, but it no longer felt like the victory it was as Viola sauntered past him.
She tossed Hugh a luring glance, trailing a hand over the porter’s shoulder.
Then, like a figment of his darkest, most debauched dreams, she disappeared through the veil of incense smoke into the hall’s looming darkness.
And, like the dog he was, Hugh gave chase.
Viola slowed her strides to absorb the newly revealed world around her. Greystone was a man with luxurious, unrestrained taste
and a voracious appetite for art, and that was reflected even in the most hidden parts of the hell. The walls here were covered
in dark silk and depictions of lovers unsuitable for anything other than a private collection.
Viola slowed before a towering portrait of Venia, naked among the roses, her golden hair falling over her shoulder in much
the same way as that of the young woman gazing up at her.
Watching her, Hugh felt his hunger sharpen acutely, its fangs lengthening.
“His office and apartments are upstairs,” he said, keeping his voice low.
Viola seemed to startle awake from a dream, looking back at him through that mask, identical to his own. Her eyes were feverishly
bright as she nodded, her tongue darting out to lick at her bottom lip.
The linen of Hugh’s shirt rasped against his skin like sand as he moved—stalked—toward her. His entire body came alive to
every sensation, as if his nerves were scattered cinders. The cool smoke stroked his face. The shift of his cloak against
his shoulders, the tightening of his breeches with each long stride, nearly sent him into a state of mindless bliss.
Hugh’s eyes fell on her silky gloves, and his mind could think of nothing else but how they would feel against his face. His
chest. His aching cock.
The air itself bloomed sweeter in his lungs, until his mind swam with it. It swamped his every thought, desire carving away
the rest of the world until only they existed in it.
The smoke drifted idly between them, swirling around her shadowed figure, hugging her swaying hips as she followed the curve
of the hallway. The scent drew out a slow, drugging heat from the center of his chest as he followed a step behind her. He
heard her breath hitch, as if she, too, had felt what this had become.
A hunt. A chase.
The first door appeared at her left, the candle on the sconce extinguished. Occupied. The next as well. The sounds of lovemaking sighed through the lilting song of a distant quartet, of clinking glasses, merriment. Moans. Reverent pleas. Flesh on flesh . . .
The gentle whisking of her dress against her legs, the rattle of the beads, the catch of her breath, that trail of perfume—every
one of his senses heightened to absorb her into him.
Viola slowed once more as she stepped into a pool of flickering candlelight. Above her, the painted constellations on the
coved ceiling danced with unnatural light, the silver paint turning the moody silk iridescent. She had never looked more like
a fairy to him than she did as she turned, her body lined with that same pearlescent light, to meet his gaze. Her red lips
parted on her panting breath, begging to be claimed.
Consenting, at last, to be caught.
Her body trembled with the same need that racked his own. A bolt of lust cleaved him as her hand skimmed down the front of
her chest again, down over the thin fabric barely containing her straining breasts, exactly as he had imagined himself doing.
She shuddered at the sensation, and he lost the last piece of his rational mind.
Hugh could not remember why he had ever denied himself. None of it mattered now. Nothing mattered but having her, loving her,
driving himself deep into her body until his yearning soul met hers.
He could not say if he crossed that distance or she, only that one moment they were apart, and the next, whole.
Hugh kissed her with the hunger of a starving man, the sensation of her soft lips sending a rush of euphoric pleasure rippling
through his body. Everywhere she touched seared him to his bones, the sensations so heady, so very intense, he disappeared
into them, became them.
He ripped away his gloves, needing to touch the soft skin of her face, to bury his fingers in that tousled hair. She opened
her lips on a gasp, her tongue seeking the stroke of his with such innocent ardor it set his blood on fire.
Desperate, undone, the last grip he’d had on his control burned away as Viola’s hands slid beneath his cloak, skimming over
the ridges of his stomach, along the edge of his breeches.
His lips trailed over her cheeks, her jaw, her throat, and she shivered at each touch, murmuring little pleas that drew a
growl from his throat—“yes,” “please,” “Hugh.”
Without realizing it, he had walked them toward the nearest door, where a candle still burned. She reached back blindly for
the handle, as if she couldn’t stand to tear her mouth away from his ravening kisses.
Inside the dark chamber, he spun her back against the door, pressing her to it, giving her writhing body the friction it was seeking.
Her head fell back as she urged her own hips forward.
Her little hands ripped at the clasp of his cloak until it fluttered to the ground.
His stomach tightened, jumping as she skimmed her hands over it.
God, he wanted to do the same to her, to touch her, to know her, everywhere.
Closer, came his desperate thought, need to get closer.
He lifted her onto the small chest of drawers beside the door, the new angle allowing him to kiss her deeper still. And then
he had what he’d so badly wanted, the gorgeous reality of it beyond imagining. He tugged at her bodice, wild and aching for
her, freeing her breasts.
Viola moaned, shaking as his lips descended to the soft skin of her throat, his tongue skimming along the hollows, teasing
the hard points of her nipples with his fingers until, finally, he replaced them with his worshipping mouth.
She arched into the touch with a cry, and it was the most beautiful, shattering thing he’d ever seen. Her pale skin flushed,
her heavy-lidded gaze overcome with the same wonder and desire he felt. He wanted her, craved her, and that desire was gentle
and shocking and demanding and hopeful beyond any hope he’d ever allowed himself.
One of her hot hands tightened at the nape of his neck as the other finally found his cock. Hugh nearly spent then, his vision
flashing white with a complete, obliterating lust as she clawed open the buttons of his fall and her gloved hand closed around
his length.
Hugh’s heart thundered throughout his entire body, frantic with need, as if she could disappear at any moment, vanish into
the incense smoke slipping beneath the door from the hallway.
He gripped her hand, holding her there, showing her how to please him, breaking their kiss only to rest his cheek against
hers. His groan was an accusation, a plea: This is what you’ve done to me, this is how I need you.
And when her clever hand had the way of it, the pressure, the long, delicious stroke, he drew her skirt and petticoat up over her legs as if revealing art, over her stockings, her garters, and the soft, sensitive
skin of her thighs.