Chapter Seven
Where an unexpected gift alters everything.
His future wife stumbled into his office the night before their wedding, looking so bloody beautiful Dom’s knees nearly buckled.
He hadn’t seen Louisa since a tea hosted by his sister-in-law two days earlier, and even then he’d barely restrained himself from dragging her into the nearest linen closet.
Now she stood before him with her dazzling hair loose about her shoulders, her gown ragged—singed at the hem, a hole burned through one sleeve—as though it had barely survived a detonation.
She was a likeness from his dreams. The emerald ring he’d given her, chosen because it reminded him of her eyes, glimmered as she flexed her fingers.
She had clearly raced to him, tousled and breathless, the worn fabric pulling taut across the ripe swell of her breasts as she fought for air. Heat shot through him, desire a living thing, until a flicker of fear cut sharp and cold.
What if she’d come to say she’d changed her mind?
He steadied himself on the scarred oak desk before rising.
Beyond his office stretched the cavernous main room, lantern light casting long shadows over towering stacks of crates, the faint scent of pitch and iron from the day’s work lingering in the air.
Even at this late hour the building felt alive, which he loved.
Halting in place, Louisa’s eyes widened. “It’s remarkable,” she murmured, wonder edging her voice. “From the street it looks ready to fall in on itself, but inside it’s a cathedral.”
“I agree, it’s a most unusual space.” Stalling for time, Dom gave a short shrug, his gaze following hers.
Truly, what was she doing here? “Tobias Streeter, a cunning young man in our employ, has more ideas than we know what to do with. The place wouldn’t run half so well without him, so we tolerate his modifications.
His latest is to paint the beams a rather startling shade of crimson. ”
“That would be something,” she said, her eyes lifting to the soaring ceiling.
“I’m afraid to ask, but I feel I must. You didn’t come to Shoreditch alone, did you?”
With a shrewd smile, she stepped closer, halting when her hip struck the desk. Her scent—something floral, perhaps posies—drifted past, curling around him like an invisible snare.
Dom didn’t move, wasn’t going to touch her if she was here to reject him. He had a small shred of self-respect where this untamed chit was concerned. And if his cock was as stiff as those beams Streeter wanted to decorate, she didn’t need to know it.
“Your brother brought me. He’s in his carriage out back. I thought to find you at his terrace, but he said you keep late working hours, too many of them.” Louisa tossed a glance at the clock sitting haphazardly on a crate. “We have ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes for what?”
Instead of answering right away, she considered him with an intensity that sent a prickle of discomfiture dancing along his spine.
He moved to banish it by smoothing his hand down his shirt (unbuttoned to mid-chest) and over his hair (uncut because she hadn’t wanted it trimmed before the ceremony).
He rocked back on his heels, not wanting her to see—not yet, because it seemed one of life’s little intimacies—that he preferred to work in bare feet.
As though she hadn’t already unraveled him enough, she leaned in, fingertip skating along his jaw. Heat pooled low, a knot of hunger and anticipation that bordered on pain. The clock ticked, each second mocking him: kiss her or perish.
He braced his fists on the desk to keep from following the chant in his head. “Lou.”
“I had to talk to you, it couldn’t wait.
” Her smile tilting, Louisa recorded his bafflement with amusement, her jade eyes glittering in the lamplight.
He’d have to be careful, or she’d realize not only the things he wanted to share and the things he didn’t.
Of all his foibles, letting others see his tells hadn’t been one of them—until now.
For a long moment, breathless and bright, she searched his face for revelations he didn’t have the courage to voice.
“Why did you do it, Dominic?” she finally whispered, the question nearly lost to their shared captivation.
“Why give me control over part of my dowry? No man marries to make such an offer. My father told me this evening, and paired with the notation about my continuing chemistry endeavors, he’s convinced I’ll ride roughshod over you.
Some fearsome spouse your intended is, were his exact words. ”
Ah, Dominic thought with a liberating jolt, it should have fucking terrified him.
“Instinct told me to return what’s yours.
My best decisions come from the gut,” he said, torn between the urge to tell her everything and the stronger need to keep a part of himself hidden.
“I’ve personally made enough in the past year to live comfortably.
However, what I lost for the viscountcy requires a portion of your funds, but not all.
I’ll eventually double what I’ve taken. I’m skilled at commerce, I’ve come to find. ”
Glancing down, he dragged his shoulder across his chin, this last piece one he’d been thinking about a lot. “Or save your portion for our children, placed in trusts, it’s up to you.”
Sighing softly, she laid her hand on his chest, squarely over his beating heart. “You are a fascinating contradiction, Mr. Beckett.”
“Don’t let curiosity rule just yet,” he murmured, the world narrowing to the whisper of their breaths and the frantic pulse ringing in his ears.
“What if,” she murmured, her eyes glowing.
“Go home, Lou, before I do something barbaric. You’re a temptation I’m not certain I can refuse.”
She glanced at the clock, then traced a fingertip along the edge of his desk, close enough to make him restless.
“I have two minutes left to give you my wedding gift. A secret I neglected to share. I’d kept it to preserve my pride, but that seemed pointless after I discovered what you’d done for me.
I wanted to thank you, in my own way, before the ceremony.
So there’d be nothing standing between us. ”
Dom’s mind ignited with images of her thanking him in her own way by sinking to her knees and—
As if she sensed his fantasy, Louisa coyly licked her lips.
His soon-to-be wife had the lushest mouth he’d ever seen, the upper lip fuller than the lower, singular in his experience.
He ached for the day she would explore every inch of him, the thought alone enough to undo him.
And this was hardly the moment to recall his dreams of her hair—ginger and auburn, streaked with honey—spilled across his sheets, his skin.
Fearless, Louisa came around the desk, advancing until she stood before him.
The faint hint of sulfur and peonies drifted from her, the opposing fragrances enchanting.
The sudden flash of her smile had him helplessly sliding a hand around her waist and anchoring her to him.
“I didn’t want to leave a doubt in your mind about how this came to be, Dominic. Or that I wanted it to.”
He understood nothing except the impulse—not far from the addictive need he’d once felt for cards—to kiss all reason from her. “I don’t know what—”
“I chose you.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, baffled.
“I asked Mrs. Dove-Lyon to add you to the list of potential suitors.” Louisa laughed softly and dipped her head, touching her brow to his chest in a gesture so sweet it might have belonged to the girl in the bookstore. “Actually, you were the only man I added. The others were her idea.”
His mind spun with the notion: she had wanted to marry him all along. “But this isn’t—” Love, he nearly blurted, before biting the word back. The start of it, maybe, for what else did you call it when a woman filled your head every bloody hour of the day?
In response, her wounded green gaze found his. “I know what this is, Dominic. You don’t have to remind me.”
He didn’t let himself think, just caught her face in his hands and kissed her hard enough to erase thought, hard enough to brand them. Louisa melted into him with a moan that went straight through him, her fingers curling into his shirt, her lips parting until there were no barriers between them.
The taste of her—warm, sweet, faintly floral—was everything he’d been starved for.
Dom dragged her closer, his palms sliding down to grip her hips, and in one rough motion he lifted her onto the desk.
Papers scattered, the clock wobbled, and still he couldn’t stop, his mouth moving over hers with the hunger of a man too long denied.
She clutched at his shoulders as he stepped between her legs, skirt riding higher, and for one dangerous heartbeat he thought of laying her across the scarred oak and taking what they both burned for.
Her thighs clamped around his waist, her breath ragged.
“Dominic,” she whispered, hips rising, her need as clear in her body as in her voice.
Her fingers fisted in his hair, urging, ready to take every ounce of him if he’d only allow it.
“I’ve dreamed of touching you like this. It’s why I didn’t want you to cut it.”
Fuck. He tore his mouth away, fighting the wildness clawing through him. No one had ever said anything more erotic to him. “Not here, Lou. Not like this. Just this once, let me do things the right way. And I swear I’ll never deny you again.”
“One more,” she whispered, lips brushing his ear, her voice both plea and promise. She was inexperienced but wicked, and he was weak. “I’m curious. Five minutes, and I’ll go.”
Curious. The word made his breath catch; he exhaled hard against her brow. She had him, because there were few people in this world he longed to please more than he longed to please her.
“Stay here,” he said, already striding for the door. “The last thing we need is Griff barging in. I’ll tell him we’re discussing a vital detail for the ceremony.” A lie, of course. Dom knew exactly what he meant to do to Louisa when he came back, and he’d wager Griff suspected the same.
Bargaining with himself, he decided to tell his brother he needed ten minutes.
A quick release—hers—and she’d float home on a wave of bliss. Dom, perversely, wanted to wait until his wedding night to claim his own. At the door, he glanced back to catch her swift smile, satisfaction at winning this encounter.
Damn it all, she owned him, and she knew it.
Refusing to fight a losing battle, he surrendered, every inch of him branded hers.