Chapter 6 #2
They whirled about the room, faster and faster, her feet barely touching the ground. And before he knew what was happening, she let out a gasp.
“My goodness,” she declared, “you do like to turn about.”
He frowned, cursing himself. He’d been too overtaken by the music and her skill. He’d swept her too fast. “Have I made you dizzy?”
“Terribly so,” she said. “Will you find me somewhere to rest?”
He led her off the floor quite quickly, still kicking himself.
“A little breath of fresh air, I think,” she said, and he took her out into the hall without catching a single gaze, because everyone was too full of the merriment of Christmas to notice a young man and a young lady slipping out into the dark hall.
Yes, all the Briarwoods and their guests were far too enamored with each other to notice such a thing.
But he did not want her to think that he was stealing her away for a kiss, and so he found the brightest lit room he could.
She looked about her and said, “Tsk, tsk, you are failing, sir, in your role.”
“And what role is that?”
“As a rake and a seducer.”
“A rake and a seducer?” he drawled.
She laughed. “Surely, you are. I know you tried to say you were not earlier, but you’re a young man of the ton.”
“Is that what you were hoping for?” he queried, and he knew she was indeed staying for the twelve days. She’d made her decisions. And she’d also decided that he was a temptation worth trying.
He was damned glad. And he was going to stop at nothing to show her the pleasure to be had in his arms. Pleasure that she could get nowhere else.
She eyed him carefully. “When a young lady asks to be taken out into the hall by a gentleman, well, there is the possibility that she is hoping for…”
“What?” he asked. He wanted to hear her say it. He took her hand in his and studied her gloved fingers for a moment before he stroked his thumb along the soft spot of her wrist.
She looked up, paused, then laughed.
He shook his head, uncertain at her mirth, transfixed by what was to happen next between them. “What is it?”
“That,” she whispered, still looking up.
He let his gaze trail upward, and he bit back a gasp. A gasp of delight and wonder.
For it was as if his family…was always maneuvering people towards love and affection.
“Mistletoe,” she murmured, leaning in towards him ever so slightly.
He leaned in too, tilting his head down towards hers, drinking in her scent. “Do you believe in silly traditions like that?”
“How can one ignore the traditions of Christmas?” she breathed.
His breath caught in his throat. She’d said she didn’t like Christmas. But she did like him. Slowly, he lifted his free hand and stroked his gloved fingers along her cheek. “You’re something else, aren’t you?”
“Whatever can you mean?” she teased, arching a dark brow as she gazed up at him through her thick sooty lashes.
“You’re very good at it.”
“What?” she asked.
“Maneuvering people.”
She hesitated for a moment as if she was deciding whether to share something honest, something true, with him.
And then she licked her lips and rushed, “I was told a very long time ago that the only power a lady really has is in her ability to maneuver gentlemen and make them do what she wants without them knowing it.”
“But you’ve just confessed it to me,” he said.
Her eyes sparkled, even as she tilted her face into his touch, as if she had been starving for it. As if he was water in a barren desert and she had been going for days, her thirst unquenched. “Yes, because you’re the first gentleman ever to notice that I was doing it.”
He let out a playful sigh, but he was lost. Lost to her and the way she so needed his touch, and how she could barely admit it to herself. “How very disappointing about the male species.”
She stepped towards him, the toes of her slippers brushing his evening shoes. “They’re very easy to read.”
“Am I?” he asked, stroking his fingers from her cheek to the curve of her throat. A throat he longed to kiss.
“You’re cleverer than most,” she admitted. “But, yes.”
“Then what is it that I want?” he said.
She tilted her head back and slipped her hands to his shoulders. “You want what the mistletoe wants.”
“And what does it want?” he breathed.
“For us to kiss.”
With mistletoe hanging over her head, glistening under the candlelight and firelight in the intimate, warm room, Seraphine had every justification for this kiss, and she was going to use it.
Mistletoe was the most marvelous of inventions, in her opinion, giving young ladies the chance to buck propriety and give way to carnal desires.
It was what he wanted, and she wanted to give him what he wanted. She wanted to feel his warm approval. She wanted to feel him admiring her, and she wanted to feel the passion that she invoked in him when his mouth took hers.
So, she did not hesitate or try to hold back. She wanted to think of nothing but this kiss. To forget all the rules, all the palaces, all the things she was supposed to do.
All she wanted was to be the best at this kiss. She never wanted him to forget her or this moment.
Seraphine threw herself into it. For in all her life, she’d never ever allowed herself to feel so much, let alone such passion.
She held onto him, just as she had seen in the great operas and plays. Somehow, she would be good at this. She did not know what she was doing, but she’d always been good at everything that she did, and surely this would be no different.
With each touch of his lips to hers, her thoughts dimmed, and she could not think. She could not dictate to herself what should be done, and everything that she had potentially calculated to please him vanished. Instead, she was left to follow his lead, and she was happy.
The feel of his evening coat underneath her hands was strangely delicious. She slid her fingers up to his hair, enjoying the touch of his dark locks.
His lips teased hers and parted them. Laertes’s tongue slipped inside her mouth, caressing her own tongue. The way he stroked her and she him, until their bodies were doing their own sensual dance, she could scarcely breathe.
She felt powerful in his arms and yet completely taken care of.
Her skin tingled with life, and she wanted to forget that she herself even existed. All she hungered for was to experience the sensation and feeling of this.
His hands began to slide up and down her back, caressing through the thin fabric of her gown, and when he kneaded her bottom, oh, how glorious she felt!
Much to her shock, she found that he was eager for this, for her, for the secrets of her body.
His breath came in short takes.
“I want more,” he growled. “I want all of you. But that cannot be. Not now. I must dream of you rather than have you now. But know this, I will dream of having you every night. And you sleeping in this house will only heat my dreams.”
Those words stoked a flame in her, so hot, so intense that she wanted to throw everything away. But the rules that had guided her for all her life snatched her back.
He was right, of course. It wasn’t possible for him to have her here. But she was not ready to lose him. To lose him to dreams of her.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered. “Not yet. We can stop in a moment.”
His eyes flared with appreciation, and he nodded.
His hand slipped to her hip, then slowly descended to the V of her thighs, teasing over her dress. Then his hand went to work at her skirts, sliding them ever upward.
Slowly, he backed her towards the bookcase. It pressed into her. It was awkward at first, but then she leaned against the leather-bound tomes, drinking of the scent of the books as he knelt and lifted her gown upward.
He caressed his fingers over her upper thighs.
Startled, she started to reach out to stop him, but she could not. When would she have a chance like this again? Her life was destined to be so cold and unkind, lived for other’s approval and not her own. And so she allowed herself to have this.
His fingers slid into the folds of her sex, stroking and finding the spot that caused her head to drop back and her body to tighten.
Oh! Heavens! It felt so perfect. So blissful. He was perfect.
She wanted to throw everything away and choose him in that moment. He gazed up at her through dark lashes as he continued to stroke and tease her folds, taking her near her peak under his tutelage. Then her legs shook. Her body tightened and rippled.
Once the pleasure of it lifted her to a place she had never known existed, and she began to drift back to herself, Laertes lowered her gown.
He stood. “Perhaps I will have to go into the woods and find more mistletoe.”
She bit her lower lip, thinking that if he did, she was lost forever.