Beside Her #2
“He’ll come around,” he said instead, gentling his voice. “You know Dash. Broody as hell when he doesn’t get what he wants, drinks like an idiot, and resents anyone who attempts to call him out for his peccadillos.”
That drew the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth.
Not a smile. But Gideon would take it.
“He is not as lost as he looks,” he added, and Gideon hoped it was true. “He is only… being Dash.”
Beatrice looked up then.
For the first time since they had entered the room, she truly met his eyes.
And God help him, Gideon would have done anything in that moment to remove the sadness from hers.
“Perhaps,” he said more carefully, “if the two of us speak with him together…”
She nodded. “Yes. Perhaps.”
But that troubled look remained in her eyes.
Gideon wouldn’t try to fool himself. Not all of that sadness was because of her brother. He was responsible for a good deal of it.
She looked down at her hands again.
“I missed you,” she said at last.
“I haven’t gone anywhere,” he reminded her quietly. But he knew what she meant.
He had been in every ballroom. Every supper room. Every overcrowded salon where she turned her sharp little chin away from him and pretended not to notice his presence.
And it had been torment.
The self-inflicted kind.
Because Gideon had committed the cardinal sin of telling Beatrice Beckman what she could and could not do.
Perhaps he had lost the right, but still, he couldn’t help but notice the smooth skin on her wrists above her gloves, the way the sunlight turned the loose strands near her temples to a blazing silk…
His fingers brushed the inside of her wrist. “I missed you too.”
She did not pull away.
Her fingers lay cool within his for one suspended moment, and then his thumb moved slowly over the back of her glove.
And when her breath caught, it was that tiny sound that ruined him.
Gideon turned toward her. “Beatrice.”
She came into his arms with a soft gasp, one hand landing against his chest, the other still caught in his.
And the way her body fit against his—perfect, familiar—should have been impossible.
It wasn’t.
She tasted of tea and peppermint, and beneath that, simply Beatrice. Strong but yielding, and unsteady in the most devastating way.
Her lips parted on a breath, and he took the invitation with a low growl.
She answered him.
God, she answered him.
Her fingers curled into his coat as though she had been every bit as starved for this as he had. That realization lit through him like fire taking to dry kindling.
Gideon shifted, drawing her more fully against him, and somehow they were no longer sitting properly at all. Beatrice had tilted backward along the sofa cushions. Gideon was bracing one hand beside her shoulder so he would not crush her beneath his weight.
But he wanted to.
Christ, he wanted to feel all of her beneath him.
He had one knee between her legs over the barrier of her skirts. His other thigh to the outside of hers. Still, it was not enough.
They were on a sofa. In her brother’s drawing room. In the middle of the afternoon.
He knew all of that.
And still, when she arched slightly beneath him, his body reacted with humiliating speed, hardening with such force that he had to drag his mouth from hers to draw in a ragged breath.
It didn’t help.
Beatrice’s lips were flushed. Her hair had loosened near one ear. Her chest rose and fell against his.
The sight of her like that—kissed, mussed, wanting—did not scatter Gideon’s thoughts.
It brought them to a single, devastating point.
Her.
When he lowered his mouth to her jaw, she made a small sound.
Not quite his name. Not quite a plea.
Gideon followed the graceful line of her throat, tasting the warmth of her skin where her pulse fluttered beneath his lips.
“God help me,” he murmured against her skin.
Her fingers tightened at the back of his neck.
“I know I should not.” His mouth moved lower, barely brushing the edge of her bodice. “Why the devil can’t I resist you?”
Her breath trembled.
He lifted his head just enough to see her eyes.
“I will,” he said, rougher now. “If you want me to.”
“No,” she whispered.
Gideon went utterly still.
“No?”
“Don’t resist me, Gideon.” Her voice shook, but her gaze held his. “Never resist me. Please.”
His control nearly broke on the word please.
He swallowed hard and then, pulling on all his control, he asked, “What don’t you want me to resist?”
For one breathless moment, she said nothing at all.
Then, with honesty that devastated him, she lifted one hand and touched his mouth with her fingertips.
“My mouth.”
Catching her fingers, he pressed a kiss to the gloved tips. “That, I have already failed to resist.”
“Fail again.”
Christ.
The kiss was deeper this time. Slower. With all the hunger he’d been staving for days. She arched off the sofa, and made a sound in his mouth that turned the blood in his veins molten.
“What else?” he asked.
The question was barely more than a rasp.
Her lashes fluttered.
“My throat.”
He obeyed.
There was no other word for it.
He lowered his mouth to the curve beneath her jaw. When he went lower, her head tipped back into the cushions, offering him more.
“What else, Beatrice?”
Her hands moved restlessly over his shoulders.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.” He kissed the hollow above her collarbone. “Tell me.”
She caught his hand and slid it from her waist to the outer curve of her hip.
“Here,” she whispered.
Barely a sound at all.
Gideon’s palm traveled over the layered fall of her skirts, down along the line of her thigh.
And he felt her.
Not merely the warmth of her body, nor the shape of her under the muslin, but the strength hidden there. The firm, athletic line of a woman who climbed, fought, practiced, refused to resign herself to rest. There was muscle beneath all that softness. Control beneath the tremble.
Christ.
He knew, of course, that she was strong. He had seen her move. Seen the quick precision of her body. But knowing it was one thing.
Feeling it beneath his hand was another entirely.
The firm line of her thigh. The taut, living readiness of her.
Not delicate. Not fragile.
Keeping his eyes locked with hers, Gideon gathered the hem of her skirts inch by inch, watching for any hint that she was uncomfortable.
There was none.