Chapter 12
She hated being here. She wanted to crawl beneath the floor.
It was all the worse because she realized she might be attempting this course of action too late. It seemed he wearied of her at last. He hadn’t come near her last night. Had he slept here with someone else who didn’t mind that sometimes he slept elsewhere?
Was he perhaps expecting that someone now?
“Yes?” he inquired politely.
“May I…enter this sacred domain?” Skylar asked, wincing as she realized that her query had been half flirtatious and half very dry.
He stepped back mockingly. “Do come in. Indeed. I am stunned by the honor of your visit.”
Skylar walked nervously past him, crossing her arms over her chest, then allowing them to fall as she realized it was a defensive gesture, hardly seductive.
She forced a smile onto her lips, turning to survey the room as she did so.
She extended a hand toward the connecting doorway to the library. “What a wonderful place.”
“I’d give you a tour, but it’s evident you’ve taken one on your own.”
“I never actually took a tour,” she said pleasantly.
“What do you want, Skylar?”
She grated her teeth together beneath her smile. Hating him. This was sheer misery to begin with, but he was making it immeasurably harder.
“I just heard this evening from Megan that you are planning to leave in the morning.”
“I am.”
Skylar stood at the foot of his bed, curling her fingers around the bedpost. “You hadn’t said anything to me,” she said very softly.
He studied her for a moment.
Then her heart leapt as he took a few steps toward her. Coming around behind her, he lifted the heavy fall of her hair, placing his lips against her nape, then her shoulder. His breath was warm against her ear as he murmured, “You were concerned. You would have noticed that I was gone.”
“Obviously, I would have noticed,” she murmured.
He lingered behind her. She couldn’t see his face.
Her pulse raced, and she prayed that she was doing the right thing.
Her pride seemed to be suffering an almost mortal blow, but she couldn’t let that matter at the moment.
She had to get her hands on some money. And it was true that he was leaving.
She’d have to endure one wretched night of giving away everything, but then he’d be gone.
And she’d have days in which she could prepare for the next battle.
He moved away from her, striding toward the brandy decanter on a side table near his wardrobe. “May I pour you a drink?”
“Were you going to have one?” she asked in what she hoped was a soft and seductive tone.
“Now that you’ve chosen to honor me with this visit, of course.”
Despite her best efforts, she spoke before she thought. “You’re not honored in the least. If you’d wanted to see me, you’d have done so.”
He glanced her way briefly as he poured an inch of brandy into each of two snifters. “Perhaps,” he agreed, bringing the brandy to her. “But it’s quite different to have you here.”
She accepted the snifter from him and felt his gaze so intently that for a moment, her eyes fell. She could not meet his. She took a sip of the brandy, then tossed back her head and swallowed it all. It nearly choked her. It was wonderful. It warrmed every part of her body.
“So,” he murmured, still very close. “You’re concerned that I’m leaving. Why?”
The abrupt question startled her. “I…”
“I mean, frankly, you came this great distance, into the wilderness, land barely known to whites until a little more than a year ago, assuming you’d be on your own, taking charge. Staking claim,” he said politely. “You’re suddenly afraid?”
“No, I’m…” She pushed away from the bedpost, easing a small distance away from him.
She set her brandy glass down, running her fingers idly over the handsome crystal carafe that held the brandy.
“Perhaps I hadn’t realized quite how hostile the territory can be.
The army forts are much farther away than I had imagined. ”
“There’s a company of men who were sent to keep the peace around Gold Town, which isn’t that far from here.”
“That, of course, is reassuring. It’s just that when you’re gone…”
“Yes?”
She hadn’t heard him move. He was behind her again.
He set his own brandy glass down. She realized he had barely taken a sip from it.
He took the carafe from her fingers and poured more brandy into her snifter, raising it before her.
She took it from his fingers, turning away, lowering her head. “Well, it’s quite unnerving.”
“How so?”
“I understand you will be going into hostile territory.” She gulped down the brandy and once again a flood of warmth and conviction filled her.
“And you’re concerned?” he inquired. Once again, he was behind her. The glass was plucked from her hands. She felt his hands on her shoulders.
“Well…naturally.”
He turned her around, lifting her chin. “But you said you would gladly see me slain and scalped by my own kind or any other.”
She wanted to lower her chin. He wasn’t going to allow it.
“We all say things in anger,” she murmured.
She saw a slight smile upon his lips. Skylar exhaled and was afraid for a second that she wouldn’t be able to catch her breath again. He seemed even more formidable than usual this evening. Taller, his body more tense.
“So you actually are concerned.”
“Yes.”
“But surely I am a hostile myself in your eyes.”
“Your charade when we met was cruel,” she told him, forcing the words to be a reproachful whisper and nothing more.
“But it wasn’t really a charade. You quickly saw all that I am.”
“Perhaps that’s true,” she murmured. She lifted a hand in a helpless gesture. “I just…I was surprised that you would leave without saying a word. I didn’t want you to leave with—with so much hostility between us.”
“Ah!” he murmured. He was behind her again, his fingers on her shoulders moving lightly beneath the straps of her silk gown. His husky whisper was warm against her ear. “Then could it be that you missed me last night?”
One of the straps fell from her shoulder.
He pressed his lips against her bare flesh.
She closed her eyes, stunned by the sensations that such a simple touch could create within her.
Something hot and powerful seemed to race through her body.
She gritted her teeth together very hard.
In all the times that she had fought the arousal his touch created, she had never felt quite so swiftly inundated with desire.
Tonight, when it mattered most that she take the greatest care…
“I…” It was difficult to speak. She had come here to seduce him.
To tantalize him, elicit promises from him.
But his arms had slipped around her from behind.
The searing brush of his mouth moved against her shoulder.
His right hand stroked down her side, over her ribs, cupped her breast through the silk, his thumb and forefinger rubbing her nipple erotically through the thin fabric. She began to ache, burn, long…
For more.
“Did you…miss me?” he whispered against her flesh.
“I…”
She had to remember why she had come. “Yes, I did. I will miss you. Must you…go?”
For a moment, he stopped caressing her.
“Yes, I must,” he told her.
“If you must leave me…”
“Yes?”
“Would you please make arrangements so that I can be more independent from the household?”
There was silence, just his touch, then a murmur.
“Ummm…”
He agreed, did he?
He shifted the other strap of the gown from her shoulder, pressing his lips once more where his fingers had been.
She was vaguely aware of the sultry feel of the silk as it slid down over her breasts and her hips to the floor.
Both of his hands were upon her breasts, encircling them, palming them, the touch almost unbearably erotic.