Chapter Three #2
Could one be both in and out of one’s body? Perhaps she’d lost her power of speech because she’d never been alone with a man besides Asquith, and her godmother’s son had never left her silenced.
Silenced. And angry. And hot. And curious.
“You’ve nothing to fear from me,” he reassured her.
She felt his whisper like a feather against her flesh—tingling, light, sweet. She swallowed roughly. “I beg to differ.”
He cocked his head as if she were something of an enigma. Eliza was used to odd expressions, to people who felt that she and her twin’s identical faces gave them the right to openly study them, looking for some subtle way to tell them apart.
His gaze was different. Even though she knew that between the shadows and the veil, he could discern very little, his gaze sought to penetrate her outer shell and look straight into her soul, as if, just by looking, he could peel back layers and uncover secrets she had not known she possessed.
He’d fail, of course.
But the sensation imparted by his undivided attention was, well, thrilling.
Every precept she’d been taught warned her to run, even as every newly blooming, ravenous instinct begged her to stay.
Need—raw, ravenous need—rasped within his breath. He hungered, she held the fruit. Heady, this power. She’d never have guessed such power existed.
The power to bring this feral to his knees. The power to change everything.
“We are here for the same reason,” he said. “Aren’t we?”
“No.” She managed to shake her head. “We are not.”
“Is it me you object to? Or the arrangement?”
Not him, her heart answered. She frowned. Well, yes, him!
She objected to him…Redver. She objected to Harbury. She adamantly objected to all of their kind…at least in theory.
But when a man stood in front of you with his shirt agape, radiating heat and want and looking at you as if you were spring’s first strawberry, hatred, she discovered, could meld with something equally as strong and just as potentially explosive.
Attraction, full-bodied. And something more…the whisper of promise, of potential.
She raised her eyes to his.
His faint smile returned. “I propose a test. A kiss.”
“A kiss,” she echoed.
A kiss was a bad idea. A terrible one.
But her heart was pitter-pattering away as if she had been sprinting. And all that power beckoned. She was feeling rather reckless. And dizzy.
Perhaps that was why she grabbed a fistful of his shirt and demanded, “One kiss. And first, you cover your eyes.”
He didn’t immediately answer. Then, with a saucy grin, he released her hand.
“Didn’t think I’d comply, did you?” He plucked his discarded cravat from his arm. “You’ll find I can be very accommodating.” He tied the strip of fabric tight behind his head. “Will this do?”
“Yes.”
His eyes were completely covered, leaving visible only the tip of his nose and his lips. Those lips. Those lips that left a tiny, dry patch at the back of her throat.
With her free hand, she raised her veil.
“Step closer,” he urged, even smoother and warmer.
She did, tightening her hold on his shirt.
Another bad idea.
Even though their bodies weren’t quite touching, his masculine heat was both a snare and a promise. He trailed his palms up her arms before gently taking her face into his hands. She felt wanted. Needed.
“I can’t see you,” he reassured.
It didn’t matter. What he couldn’t see, he made up for with touch. And his hands were as eloquent and precise as a Shakespearian sonnet.
“Thick.” He lost his fingers in her hair. “And wavy, I think, were I to remove the pins. How long? Here?” He placed his hand between her shoulder blades.
“Longer,” she rasped.
He moved his palm to her waist. “Here?”
“There.” The word was a sigh.
He drew her body against his, and all at once she was steaming.
“Just a kiss,” she murmured.
He kept one hand firmly around her waist as, with the other, he cupped the back of her neck. She closed her eyes. And then, those pillowed lips met hers, all sensation.
Initial shock gave way to something pliant.
Unconsciously, she molded her body against his. As he parted her lips and deepened the kiss, she feared that if she opened her eyes, she’d see blue arcs flashing between them. Magic, pure and simple. The quickening of life itself.
“Blackbird.” His voice was red-coal hot with desire.
This was the power she’d sensed.
Power…but also surrender. Again and again, their mouths came together in a burning battle of wills. Take, or be taken. Consume, or be consumed.
Was desire always this way between a man and a woman?
Or was this indecency specific to him?
She couldn’t imagine every couple cavorted in such a fashion. And then all thought was driven from her head as his lips parted and he deepened the kiss.
The more she softened, the more blade-like he became. Soon, his pillowy lips grew harder and more demanding. And then he touched a spot just beneath her ear, prompting an animal sound she hadn’t known she could make.
Perhaps she’d been wrong. Perhaps this was take and be taken.
No. Never.
She unclenched his shirt, and, seeking to dominate yet again, she threaded her fingers into his mass of curls.
His plunder paused. “Yes,” he sighed. “Like me, you crave raw passion.”
Like him? She’d become him.
Chest against chest, his desperate hunger thrummed in every beat of his heart. As he had, she trailed her fingers down his nape, only she made sure he felt the light bite of her nails.
He moaned against her lips.
Smiling triumphantly, she cradled his head against her shoulder. He nuzzled her neck, and her spirit soared.
Every sensation was so strange, so new.
He was hard all over, and yet his hair slid between her thumb and forefinger, as silky as any one of her sisters’.
Good God. Her sisters!
She made a sound of distress and dropped her hands.
He cupped her cheek. “I presume I passed?”
Her brow furrowed, as much in confusion about his question as in confusion about, well, everything. How had she come to be here?
How could anything that had happened this night even be real?
“Well?” he prompted, his thumb tracing a line of heat along her jaw. “Will I do for your assignation tonight, my lady?”
The use of the honorific brought her fully back to her senses.
“You are—as your accent implies—a lady, aren’t you?
Lady certainly did not apply to Miss Elizabeth Wainwright, even if she was the daughter of a squire and had, on her mother’s side, once boasted an earl for a grandfather before the title passed to a distant line.
“Wrong.” She struggled to break away. “This is all wrong.”
His grip only tightened.
“Let me go! Lord Redver, please let me go!”
He released her so quickly that she stumbled into the bedpost.
“What kind of game are you playing?” he demanded, his fingers already working at the knot behind his head.
“No game.” She grabbed “her” hat and coat and fished out the key from her pocket. “Truly, I—I am not here…I’m not here for the reasons you seem to think I am here.”
He frowned.
Taking advantage of his momentary hesitation, she darted toward the door. Behind her, she heard an unknown, pithy, word with sharp consonants. That word, she would remember!
Then came a swish of fabric…probably him removing his blindfold…
She slammed the door behind her, and then hurriedly turned the key in the lock. Tearing down the hallway in the direction she came, she collided with a beautiful, young woman.
“Please,” she gasped. “Take me to Mrs. Dove-Lyon.”
The large man she’d seen outside the club also appeared. His gaze moved between Eliza to the woman in whose arms she was shaking.
“Is something amiss, Hermia?” the man asked.
A hysterical hiccup escaped Eliza’s throat.
Yes, something was amiss.
Everything was amiss. The world had turned upside down. Tonight, one arrogant, feckless young peer had ruined her family. She’d fled into the night with twin vows to save her sisters and destroy that man.
Instead, she’d kissed his closest confidant.
Worse still, she wanted to kiss him again. She wanted to hear him groan with need. She wanted the thrill of being in his arms. And the furious part of her wanted to make him beg. In fact, if certain she’d get away with it, she’d ruin herself to see him on his knees.
There were consequences to male arrogance. Real consequences. And men were rarely the ones to suffer the worst of those consequences.
Redver could, on demand, have his needs met by some blindfolded anonymous woman for whom he chose a ridiculous name. Harbury could shrug and say he required a distraction and merely be sent home. Both, while a single, involuntary dance had caused the ruin of five, now-orphaned young ladies.
She’d felt the power between them and knew, if given the change, she could turn the tables.