Chapter 18 #2
Fear prickled the back of his neck. He would leave nothing to chance.
“I’ll need the name of the coffeehouse and the time you’re meeting her.
Use my carriage.” The creak of the boards on the landing had him glancing at the chamber door.
“I should go before Charlotte lets her butler off the leash. You’ll send the details to Mivart’s Hotel? ”
Every instinct said to forbid it.
But she’d not be kept in a cage.
“You’ll know exactly when and where I’m meeting her.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth. He couldn’t leave without kissing her again. Not when every moment might be their last.
He cradled her throat and swept his thumb over her lower lip. There was no need to ask permission. She met him halfway, their mouths colliding in a soft, breathless blur of heat and desperation.
He kissed her as though committing the feel of her to memory, so deep it drowned every thought in his head.
“Get dressed,” he said, his body so hard it pained him. “Come with me to the hotel.”
Her palms flattened against his chest, fingers curling in the fabric as though she might pull him back for another kiss. “One moment,” she breathed. “Let me speak to Charlotte.”
The room felt wrong without her. Last night he’d sat in his throne-like chair at Shadowmere, lust and laughter filling the house, and felt nothing but the absence of one woman.
His woman.
She loved him. She’d said so. And still he couldn’t believe it. After years spent wielding power, he had no defence against something he couldn’t control. Love was a door left unlocked. Happiness a thing that could be taken. He’d not survive another decade kneeling at a graveside.
Perhaps when Templeton had confessed and Harland’s killer was caught, he might have faith. When the past was buried, he might think to the future. For now, these moments with her were all he had.
Daphne returned and closed the door gently behind her, as if she feared waking the house. Her smile confirmed they were leaving.
Beneath the glow of the lamp, he could see the flare of her hips through the thin cotton nightgown. He’d seen the swell of her breasts but not their fullness, not the rosy peaks grazing the material now.
The desire to peel it off her was almost unbearable.
“You’ll come to Mivart’s?” he asked.
“Charlotte thinks I shouldn’t be seen entering a hotel.”
Sod Charlotte.
“We stayed at the Carroway and spent the night at Mrs Flavell’s.” A place no more respectable than a bordello.
She closed the gap between them. “Charlotte said you can stay the night here.” Slipping her hands beneath his coat, she pushed it off his shoulders.
“In the guest room?”
“In bed with me.”
She watched him. Heat flared in eyes everyone said were made of stone. Lips used to giving harsh commands softened. His shoulders had loosened, his rigid stance of authority gone. And lower still, the line of his trousers left little doubt what her invitation had done.
“Should I ask what Charlotte wants in return?”
“Only if you want to spoil the moment.” Her fingers moved down his waistcoat, working the buttons free though she wanted to tear it open. “I believe she intends to call in the favour at a later date.”
“Of course she does.”
“Too high a price to pay for a night with me?” She pulled his shirt from his trousers, setting her palms to the firm plane of muscle beneath.
He hissed through his teeth. “You know the answer.”
“Perhaps I’d like to hear you say it.” She drew her fingers over the fall of his trousers, heat pooling low as she traced the hard length of him.
He closed his eyes against the slow stroke of her hand. “God, Daphne, I’d sell my soul for one taste of you.”
“I suspect you’ll have more than one taste tonight.”
His eyes opened, dark with a hunger he made no attempt to hide. “Like a true housemaid, you know how to stoke a man’s fire.”
“I only care about yours.”
“I’m burning for you, love.”
“Then we’d best get you out of these clothes.”
She pushed the waistcoat from his shoulders and drew his shirt over his head, breathing him in as she did. Soap and cedar, and something warmer that belonged only to him.
The pull was instinctive.
Her lips brushed his chest, then drifted higher to the line of his throat, tasting his skin, feeling the steady beat of his pulse beneath her mouth.
His hand closed in her hair with rough possession, tipping her face back. He kissed her wildly, as though every moment of waiting had led to this.
A groan rumbled in his throat, as urgent as her need for him.
There was nothing as magnificent as this man when he forgot to be invincible, when he lowered his guard and let her in.
He broke first on a ragged breath. “I’m so hard for you.” His fingers grazed her breasts as he reached for the sleeves of her nightgown. “I need to see you, every damn inch.” He stilled. “No. You take it off for me.”
It was a plea, not a command, and she was learning to tell the difference. Perhaps that’s why she found the courage to step back and draw the gown slowly up her thighs.
His tongue skimmed his lower lip, a dangerous grin forming. “Not the angel now. I think you like punishing me.”
“Who knew I could have you at my mercy?” She raised the material up past her hips, relishing his sharp intake of breath.
“I knew. I knew the second I held you in my arms.” His gaze lingered where she ached. “Take it off. Torture me a little more.”
“Always in a hurry, Mr Hawke.”
“You drive a man to distraction, Miss Harland.”
“Yet you made love to me without removing my chemise.” She’d wondered why, but a lack of experience had left her guessing. “Perhaps I’ll insist you leave your trousers on tonight.”
He palmed himself over the fall. “That could be a problem. I’m about to split a seam.”
“Well. We wouldn’t want you to leave in a state of dishabille.”
She drew the nightgown over her head and let it fall.
For a moment, he merely looked at her, his throat working, his eyes wide amid the amber glow, the heat of his gaze scorching her skin.
“You don’t know what you do to me.” His fingers worked the buttons on his trousers, his eyes never leaving her. “Having you as I wanted in the cottage would have ruined me.”
“I ruined you on Lord Templeton’s dance floor.”
He smiled and her heart constricted. “You’re not wrong. You’re the first and only woman to have me begging.”
“Lie on the bed. Let me hear you beg some more.”
When had she learnt to be so bold?
He pulled off his shoes, pushed his trousers down past his lean hips and stepped out of them. He was larger than she remembered. And strangely beautiful with it.
“You mean to own me, love?” He drew his hand down his rigid length, a sensual hum in his throat as he looked at her.
“I learned a thing or two from my first Masque.” Her confidence wavered. “Though you may have to guide me.”
“I’d do anything for you. But you know that.”
“I had an inkling when I saw you at the ball tonight.” She felt a flutter in her chest as she pictured him on the terrace. “But one can never be sure.”
“You should have had an inkling when I gave you the key to the cottage.” He pulled back the bedsheets and settled on the mattress. “What do you plan to do with me?”
Love you.
Ease every painful memory.
She climbed on top of him, straddling his broad thighs. “My father refused to pay for riding lessons. This will be my first.”
“Lucky me, though I suspect you’ll be an expert.”
“There’s only one way to know.”
She reached between them, closing her hand around his hot flesh and guiding him to her entrance. Their gazes locked as he eased inside her an inch, then a little more, stretching her, filling her slowly.
Their breath left them in a rush.
The hunger in his eyes sharpened, but there was something else there, something softer reserved only for her.
“God.” His gaze moved over her face, the slope of her shoulders, lower still. “Everything about you is so damned divine.”
His hand closed over her breast, his thumb grazing the peak, and she felt the answering pull of it low where they were joined. She closed her eyes against the feel of him buried deep.
When she moved, tentatively at first, his hands tightened on her hips.
She learnt the rhythm the way she learnt most things: by feel, by instinct, by reading his face for what undid him.
His thumb found the place that made her gasp, circling with the same unhurried patience he brought to everything that mattered. He meant to make her come before anything else.
“Don’t stop, Dominic.”
He thrust upwards as he stroked and worked her.
“Daphne.”
The sound of her name, rough-edged and almost broken, tipped her over. She shuddered, her fingers clutching his shoulders, the pleasure cresting and breaking across her in a long, helpless wave.
“You’re mine now.” He rolled her beneath him in one smooth movement, his voice dropping to a growl. “And I mean to take you hard.”
He was true to his word.
He gripped her bottom, angling her hips so he could drive deeper, filling her completely with each stroke. She wrapped her thighs around him and held on, her fingers pressing into the hard muscle of his back.
His mouth found her ear. “You’re mine. Say it.”
“I’m yours.” She pressed her lips to his jaw, his throat, whatever she could reach. “Only yours.”
He groaned against her neck and drove deeper still, as though he meant to make good on every word.
She locked her thighs tighter around him. Whatever awaited them—the past, the danger, the ghosts neither had buried—nothing would part them again.
“God, Daphne.” His breath fractured, his rhythm losing its careful edge. “You undo me completely.”
She felt him shudder, felt the moment his control broke. He withdrew, his release spilling hot against her thigh as he buried his face in her hair, her name on his lips like the last word of a prayer.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
“Tell me you want another lesson,” he panted.
She held him, tracing lines on his back, loving the weight of him. “You’re wrong. I’m a novice, and may need a dozen a week.”
“Only a dozen?”
He rolled onto his back and settled beside her, drawing her against him, her back to his chest, his arm heavy and warm across her waist. Outside, London was nothing but the distant clatter of hooves and a drunken lout singing.
His fingers found hers and stilled.
He’d noticed the ring.
He brought her hand closer, turning it gently in the lamplight. She had slipped it on when she went to speak to Charlotte.
“My mother would have loved you.” His thumb moved over the peridot. “But I won’t ask you to wear her ring. It’s a symbol of my devotion. The one thing I cherished … before you.”
She couldn’t speak for a moment.
Of all the things he had given her, that was the greatest.
“I want to wear it. What’s dear to you is dear to me now.”
He pressed his lips to her hair. “I love you.”
She smiled, nestling closer. “I love you too.”
She had his ring on her finger and his heart in her hands.
Happiness was surely within their grasp.
Yet a sudden chill crept across her skin.
Outside in the dark, a killer was still breathing.