Chapter Twenty Two
Elliot’s hands were trembling. A pronounced shakiness that he could not quell even with the disciplined flex of his fingers. Was it possible that she…felt something for him? Something beyond the fondness of youth, something past the affection they had always held for one another?
Or was it only simple curiosity which had compelled her answer? Patience, her mother had advised, and still his heart couldn’t help but leap into the fervent hope that somehow, someway, he had touched hers. “Katie—”
“But there’s no couch,” she whispered fretfully, a frown creasing itself between her brows. “There are a few chairs, I think, but—” A fractious sigh. “They’re too near the door.” He felt the stiffening of her back beneath his palm. “How long have we been here?” she asked.
“Five minutes, perhaps a little more.” That rigid set to her spine relaxed at the stroke of his hand.
“Don’t worry. There’s at least three more sets left, and your mother doesn’t expect you back any time soon.
” Not after she’d seen for herself the crowd within the retiring room.
“So long as you haven’t promised a dance to anyone else—”
“I haven’t.” Kate gave an awkward shrug. “Two of them are waltzes.”
“I’ll take the last, then, and you can step on my feet for it if it pleases you.” He collected one of her hands in his, gratified when she grasped it back. “Come,” he said. “Got to find a suitable surface.”
Kate trailed along in his wake like a sleepwalker. “I couldn’t step on your feet in public,” she said in a muted voice. “It wouldn’t be proper.”
“Katie,” he said gently, on a shred of a laugh. “I hardly think now is the correct time to be quibbling over propriety.” There. The sill of the mullioned windows stretched across the wall. It was a good height, sturdy-looking. Perfect.
An incredulous giggle trickled out of her throat. “You’re right,” she said. “Of course you’re right. I’m just—nervous.” Her fingers squeezed his. “You’ll have to make allowances. I’ve only read the one book.”
“You’ll have to make allowances for me,” he said. “I’ve read lots of books, but I’ve never done this before.” Elliot released her hand to place his hands on her shoulders. “Sit here,” he said, directing her toward the window sill and pressing her down. “Comfortable?”
“I don’t know that comfortable is the right word,” she said, and blew out a great breath, looking faintly dazed, as if she had only just realized what she had agreed to.
She blinked in the low light, eyes soft and heavy-lidded, and her hands fell into her lap, fisting in the fabric of her skirts.
The moonlight streaming through the window at her back framed her in a halo of silvery light, complementing the shimmer of her gown.
That dark gaze followed him as he crouched before her, settling onto his knees.
She stifled a gasp as his fingers slipped beneath her skirts and found her ankles, easing them apart.
Fragile silk stockings encased her warm skin, smooth and luxurious to the touch.
There was the rustle of her skirts as she shuddered, and he traced the tremor up past the bands of her garters to the bare skin of her inner thigh.
“You’ll tell me,” he said, “if you want me to stop.”
“Yes,” she said, though the word had carried a breathless, airy sort of quality. She twitched as his fingers eased higher. “That’s a bit…ticklish.” Another twitch as his fingers brushed the coarse curls between her thighs. “Oh,” she breathed on a tremulous sigh, her voice low and dreamy.
Yes. He’d dreamed of this, but the fantasy hadn’t been a patch on the reality.
It couldn’t have captured the dewy heat of her soft skin, the revealing dampness of the private flesh hidden beneath the cluster of curls.
He could never have imagined the escalation of her breaths into quick little pants, the tremble of her arm as she lifted one hand from her lap to brace herself against the frame of the window as if she might topple straight over without the support of it.
A reflexive squeeze of her thighs as his fingers stroked deeper; a token resistance at best, and one that vanished altogether as he found the entrance to her body and breached it in a slow, deliberate plunge.
Her head fell back against the window, the solid thunk rattling the panes. “Oh,” she murmured.
“You’ll tell me if—”
“Don’t stop.” She stretched out her free hand, stroked his hair. Her lashes fluttered, descending over her dark eyes in a slow, dreamy sweep. “Please don’t stop.”
Elation swelled in his chest. He could have lived upon those absent little strokes of her fingertips for the rest of his life. Proof positive that he could please her.
Her back arched with an abbreviated gasp as his thumb brushed the bead of her clitoris, likely with less finesse than someone of more experience—but that didn’t seem to matter a great deal to Kate.
She swallowed back a low moan as she wilted into the sensation, utterly unable to disguise the strength of her response.
Probably he could make her come like this, even without a wealth of experience to his credit. Already he thought he was learning to read her sighs, her shivers. The way her fingers fisted in his hair. She guided him without conscious thought, with each little sound, each tiny motion.
But it wasn’t what he’d promised her.
“Kate,” he said, and watched a flush creep up her throat as he gave another wicked swirl of his thumb, another leisurely thrust of his fingers. “I need you to hold your skirts for me.”
Her head lifted, lashes drifting up slowly over drowsy, glazed eyes. “My skirts?” she repeated, her voice thick and throaty.
“Yes. Gather them up about your hips.” The delicate silk would wrinkle, but there were worse things than that. Not learning what she tasted like, what she felt like beneath his tongue. What sounds she made when she came, how she looked in the throes of passion.
Whole civilizations might have crumbled to dust in the time it took for her to stir herself, to wrest enough strength into her lax fingers to slowly gather her skirts, pulling up layers of smooth silk and frilly underthings.
And Elliot could only wait with bated breath, striving to paint this portrait of her into his mind to preserve forever.
Like the phantom images left behind after a clap of lightning, this was what he wished to see behind his lids when he closed his eyes—Kate, so soft and rumpled and lovely, her smooth thighs bared beneath the tumbled fabric of her skirts.
One hand outstretched to him again in silent assent, that look of hunger and longing in her dark eyes as she ran her fingers through his hair.
At the first touch of his tongue, her back bowed and her hand clenched in his hair. She made a soft, keening sound—not loud, not yet, but unmistakably erotic. Unquestionably the sort of noise that could only have been made by a woman in the grips of passion.
Dangerous. “Katie,” he murmured, reluctant even to pull himself away from her enough to speak, “you really do have to keep quiet.”
“Tell me that again,” Kate managed through the rapid pant of her breaths, “when you have got someone’s head between your—” The words fell away into a contemplative silence, and with some effort she lifted her head from where it had fallen back against the window panes. “Do women do this to men?”
Don’t laugh. Don’t you dare laugh. Not now, goddamn it. Somehow, through sheer dint of will, Elliot managed to keep his voice scrupulously bland and even. “I am going to lend you so many books,” he said as he lowered his head once again.
Kate writhed in encroaching bliss, dragged back under at the resurgence of sensation, retaining only enough presence of mind to clap one hand over her mouth when another sensual sound slipped free. Her breath sawed through her fingers in hot, frantic puffs.
He could feel the tension gathering in her, the muscles of her thighs pulling taut and tight, the fierce tremors as they strained.
Her shaking fingers caught at his shoulder, clamping hard as her body jerked in helpless little spasms. She came on his tongue, his fingers—he could feel the lush, rhythmic contractions pulse around them, striving to hold him closer, deeper.
She might’ve cried out, if not for the press of her fingers over her mouth, smothering the sound before it could tear through the library and beyond.
At last those final few twitches faded, and she wilted back against the cool glass of the window, spent and replete. Even that dangling curl which so often bothered her could not shake her from the blissful lethargy that had caught her up within it. Her eyes closed on a sweet little sigh.
Elliot smoothed her rumpled skirts back down over her legs, shaking out the wrinkles that had formed from the clench of her hands as best he could. “Are you terribly shocked?”
Faintly, distantly, as if her mind had gone wandering off a thousand miles away, she said, “I think I might have died.”
Elliot swiped one hand across his mouth in a vain effort to quell the grin that wanted to spread across his face.
Probably she hadn’t intended it as flattery, per se, but that was how he intended to take it, nonetheless.
His lips twitched as he climbed to his feet once more.
“Can you stand?” he asked as he reached for her hand.
“Must I?” The sullen question was accompanied by the slash of her finely-arched brows in her otherwise serene face. She gave a vague, lazy wave with her free hand, like she might bat away an annoying insect that had shown the poor grace to disturb her peace.
“You must, I’m afraid. We will be missed eventually.
” Elliot clasped her fingers in his, though hers remained pliant and limp.
“There are only so many sets left, you’ll recall.
And you promised one to me.” A strong tug, and she came sailing out of her seat, wobbling precariously upon legs that didn’t want to support her.
He anchored her with an arm about her waist, helping her to find her stability once more. “All right, there?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so.” Still there was an overwhelmed inflection to her voice. Her fingers, perched lightly upon his shoulders, tightened. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “How long has it been?”
Probably not so long as she imagined, but then he suspected that the time—and every other thought that she had once held in her head—had gotten away from her. “There is still time to collect yourself,” he said.
Kate’s eyes widened in alarm. “Collect myself? Do I look so wretched as all that?”
“No! God, no.” She was beautiful. She had always been beautiful to him, but especially now, with her cheeks still flushed and that glow of satisfaction still clinging to her face.
With her lips slightly swollen, her eyes warm and soft with that lingering glaze of pleasure.
“Your skirt is a little wrinkled, but nothing that couldn’t be explained away by the crush.
” But she did not have the cool, pristine look with which she had arrived.
“A few moments more,” he said soothingly, as he slid his hand down her spine.
He relished the sigh of relief that she gave in response, the way she tucked her head against his shoulder as if it had been the most natural thing in the world.
It was so easy, so satisfying to turn his head and brush his lips against her hair.
A sense of peace washed over him, and he breathed out a sigh of contentment.
And he thought—she had to feel it, too, at least a little.
That gentle, absent rub of her cheek against his shoulder, the way she leaned into him with utter trust. “Kate,” he said softly against her ear. “We have to talk about this.”
Her fingers curled into his shoulders, nails prickling even through the wool of his coat. “Now?”
God, no. There simply wasn’t time. “Soon,” he said.
Very soon. There was a conversation long overdue between them.
He could not go on hiding his heart from her any longer.
But now was certainly not an opportune moment for it; not when the time they had left could be measured in mere minutes, not when there was still the possibility of discovery that would remove all choice from her hands.
“I’ll exit first, as no one is likely to take much note of me.
You’ll give it a count of one hundred, and then come out yourself. ”
“Why not me first?” she asked, her voice small, uncertain, anxious.
“Because you’re not meant to go anywhere other than the retiring room unescorted. If you were to be caught leaving library, and I happened to be discovered in here with you”—a light chuckle as he stroked the nape of her neck—“I’d have to marry you.”
And then, rapidly, everything went to hell.