Chapter 14
S ilas found himself holding his breath as Arabella stared up at him, her gorgeous face soft in half-light and half-shadow. He couldn’t read her expression, she had schooled it a moment ago, but before she had he’d seen surprise and a little pain in it.
What that meant for her answer to his question, he didn’t know.
“What are you saying, Silas?” she asked at last, tone even. “That you don’t want to keep doing this?”
The words pierced him like a sword passing easily through cheap armor. “I want to,” he said immediately. “But I fear it’s unfair.”
Now there was a flicker of emotion. She released his hand and walked back to the terrace wall where he’d first found her after he stepped out. She looked toward the garden a moment and then she faced him again. Rare vulnerability lined her features.
“My life isn’t about making choices,” she said, barely loud enough for the words to carry.
“I pick a man, yes. I negotiate for terms of an arrangement that will be best for me. I suppose that seems like choice to many. But the fact is that once I’m his, I must do what will keep him happy.
To be what will make him happy. I don’t choose what opera we go to or what we eat.
I put my clothing on, yes, but I don’t really pick the color, I pick what he’ll be most attracted to.
I laugh at his jokes, even if they’re not funny.
I believe in whatever politics he holds true, even if I hate every part of them.
I become his doll and I put a great deal of myself away in the process. ”
Silas winced at that description. “That sounds deeply frustrating.”
“It is sometimes,” she admitted. Then she drew a shaky breath.
“But I want to make something clear. Since you reappeared in London, since we connected, I haven’t had to do that.
I chose you, Silas. And I didn’t try to water myself down or fluff myself up for your pleasure.
I was just…me. Christ, you even saw me with my hair rolled. ”
“I’m not sure that was your choice,” he said with a chuckle. But the humor of that moment didn’t reduce the weight of the rest. The absolute power of her saying she had chosen him.
“You were what I wanted all those years ago at Vauxhall Garden,” she continued. “And it turns out you’re what I still want. So please don’t take that from me out of some misguided attempt to protect me. That would be selfish.”
It felt like someone had given him wings and now he could soar to dizzying heights. Or like Arabella had reached into his chest and placed a gentle hand around his throbbing heart. He could see that the honesty, the vulnerability shook her. She was trembling as she looked up at him.
He knew how to ease her, of course. And how to celebrate this unexpected admission that rocked him to his very core.
“So you’re using me then,” he said, and made sure the teasing was very obvious in his tone.
Her gaze lit up and she smiled. “I suppose I am. There’s a shift. Usually it’s you lot that use me.”
He shifted as he thought of the night he’d come to her, pained from his encounter with his siblings and he had used her.
Pinned her to her carpet and poured all this desire and pain into her quaking body until it was all dulled.
That had mattered, even if they’d pretended it away since.
He wanted to do something that mattered as much to her.
“Would you like to do that tonight, Arabella?” he asked.
There was a fraction of a moment where her breath caught and her pupils dilated in the lamplight.
He felt the longing coming off of her in waves.
Desire, yes, of course there was desire there.
But there was also something deeper. Something more powerful that called to a matching sensation he tried to ignore and pretend away and close off so that it couldn’t hurt him.
But it was there, hovering between them like some beautiful mirage that he feared would vanish if he tried to move toward it.
She began to back into the darkened corner of the terrace, away from the doors and the windows that allowed those in the ballroom to see outside.
He followed without hesitation and when they reached the darkness he crowded into her space, caged her in with a hand on either side of her head against the outer wall of the house and leaned down to kiss her.
The touch of lips was explosive, just as it always was. It could be a day or an hour without her and he would crave her like he’d been starved. He wasn’t even surprised by the intensity of feeling anymore, it was almost like an old friend.
She wound her arms around his neck and lifted into him, making the ache in him even sharper and more powerful.
“You said you have to do things for them, be things for them,” he murmured against her mouth. “Play for their amusement.”
She drew back a little, her gaze barely glittering in the impossible dimness of the night. “Yes.”
“Then why don’t I play for yours?” he whispered, and lowered to his knees before her, dragging his mouth on the path he had to take to do so.
She gripped her hands into his hair with a gasp and he watched her look around as he began to inch her skirts up bit by bit.
“Silas,” she whispered, then whimpered as he brushed his lips against her stocking-clad knee. God, even through silk, she was impossibly sweet.
“Yes?” he whispered, even as he dragged his tongue up the inside of her thigh and pushed her gown higher. He could almost scent her desire now, feel the tremble of her.
“Anyone could come around the corner,” she gasped. “Anyone could see.”
He smiled up at her as he handed her the bunched skirt of her dress to get it out of his way. “Let them. Let them watch you shatter around my tongue. Or better yet, listen to them dance and drone on about whatever foolishness pleases them while you scratch at the walls as you come.”
“Fuck,” she breathed, that one word so sweet a surrender.
He smiled as she widened her stance, granting him further access to her body.
He took it, stoking her soft flesh with his palms and fingers, then brushing her bare sex with his thumbs.
He peeled her open and she jolted, one hand coming back to his hair.
He paused, wondering if she’d push him away or pull him in.
She hesitated, perhaps debating that decision herself, then she tugged him closer.
Permission fully granted, he licked her length once, then twice.
The taste of her was maddening, sweet and earthy and rich with desire.
He swept his tongue over the tender flesh, just playing for a moment.
Not too long, though. Game or not, he doubted she’d like being tormented for too long out in the open.
Later he could do more. Later he could torment and torture and play until she was screeching and twisting.
For now, he wanted to make her come in a shocking, heated, instant burst. So he focused his attention on her clitoris.
He smoothed the sheath aside, exposing the slickness of it beneath.
When he just darted his tongue across her, she bucked against him.
A demand for more. For now, he obeyed that command. This was for her, after all.
He swirled his tongue over her again and again, increasing the pressure and setting the rhythm as she began to ride his mouth in earnest. He matched her, stroking and stroking as her wetness increased, as her moans grew louder and joined the sound of the party around the corner of the terrace.
People came outside as he licked her. He heard the door open and voices become clearer. They were talking about the roads, something so benign, and she removed her hand from his hair and covered her mouth so they wouldn’t hear her.
He began to suck, strong and steady, and the muffled sound of her drove him on, pulling him toward the inevitable moment when she would fall and he would revel in the clench of her, the burst of her, the waves of her.
She gasped out his name on a harsh whisper and did just that. He pinned her hips against the wall with both hands and sucked harder, drawing out her orgasm, forcing her to ride every single gorgeous ripple of it as she wriggled against him, breath sharp and body trembling.
Only when she went weak, leaning against him for support, did he lift his head from between her legs.
She widened her stance a little more, giving him a place to push into, to take her.
It was a temptation, the idea that he could have her in the fading glow of her pleasure, still feel the shutter of her release massage his cock until he spent between them.
Instead he rose up, smoothing her skirt back down and straightening her carefully before he leaned in and let her taste herself on his lips.
“This was for you, Arabella,” he whispered. “Just for you.”
She stared up at him and then cleared her throat. “Well, what if I want that for me?” she asked, cupping him through his trousers and sending shockwaves of pleasure up his cock from her touch.
“You can have it later,” he said. “If you’re very good. Now why don’t we go back in and enjoy the rest of the party?”
He offered his arm with all the politeness and propriety his father had tried to scream into him over the years and she took it. The intruders on the terrace had gone back inside while she writhed in pleasure, so they weren’t seen as they stepped back into the fuller light.
She looked up at him and snorted out a laugh. “Oh dear, I’ve mussed you,” she said, and then reached up to smooth his hair back into place. “Not perfect, but I doubt anyone will notice.”
“You’ll notice,” he said. “And you’ll know why.” He stepped forward and opened the terrace door. “After you, Miss Comerford.”
She shook her head as she re-entered the ballroom. He moved her directly onto the dance floor and as the orchestra began to play a waltz, he drew her to his chest and spun her into the crowd of dancers.