Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
She laughed, harsh and thin. “First, you upended your reputation. Then you defended me. You looked at me as if I were worth defending. You told a room full of men whose opinions mean something in Parliament that my thoughts mattered more than their comfort.” Her fingers dug into the wood. “It was intolerable.”
“I suppose that’s one way to describe gratitude,” he said dryly.
She spun. “Don’t you see? I have done nothing but mock you for years. I have turned my words into weapons against everything you stand for. I have done things that would make you want to never speak to me again, and yet you—”
Her voice broke. She swallowed.
“You’ve made me feel,” she whispered, “like I am not wrong for being who I am.”
His face changed.
The control didn’t vanish; Nicholas never lost it entirely. But something in his expression warmed and darkened and sharpened at once, as if she’d reached past his armor without meaning to.
He stood.
“Bea,” he said softly.
She backed up a step. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t come over here and say something kind to me,” she said a little desperately. “I don’t deserve it.”
He crossed the room.
She retreated until her back hit the wall beside the mantel.
He stopped a breath away, not touching her.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because I am trying to think,” she said, hating the tremor in her voice. “And I cannot think when you…when you look at me like that.”
“Like what?” he murmured.
“Like you’ve already decided,” she said. “About me. About us. About…everything.”
His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth, then returned to her eyes.
“No,” he said quietly, “I haven’t decided anything.” His voice roughened. “Except that I want you.”
Heat surged through her so abruptly she nearly swayed.
“This is exactly what I mean,” she said weakly.
“Do you want me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said before she could stop herself.
His breath caught. “Say it again.”
“I—” She clamped her lips together.
His mouth curved, slow and wicked. “You want me,” he said softly, as if testing the words. “You, Lady Beatrix Winslow, terror of Tory salons, scourge of suitors, voluntary wallflower. You want me.”
“Don’t be smug,” she said, but it came out more like a plea than a rebuke.
He lifted one hand. She felt it coming before he did it. The anticipation crawled over her skin.
His knuckles brushed her cheek.
Barely.
She shivered.
“I won’t touch you,” he said, “unless you ask me to.”
Liar, she almost said, because he was already touching her, his fingers tracing a featherlight path along her jaw. But she knew what he meant. He would not kiss her, would not close that last charged space, unless she closed it first.
It should have been a mercy.
It was torture.
“Why do you make everything so difficult?” she whispered.
“I don’t,” he said. “You do. You came here determined to bare your soul, and now you’re hiding from it.” His thumb stroked the edge of her lower lip. “You’re shaking, and you’re furious, and you want me regardless. That is not my fault, sweetheart.”
The endearment undid something in her.
“I am trying to tell you the truth,” she said. “I am trying. But all I can think about is—”
She broke off.
His eyes burned. “All you can think about is what it felt like last night,” he said roughly. “In that carriage. With my mouth on your—”
“Stop,” she gasped.
He stopped.
But his hand stayed on her face.
“Bea,” he said, voice low and strained, “if you want a saint, you have chosen poorly.”
“I don’t want a saint,” she blurted.
“Oh?” His mouth tilted. “What do you want?”
“You,” she said. The word came from somewhere low and unguarded inside her. “Just you. The infuriating, arrogant, overconfident man who drove me mad and then somehow—” She swallowed. “Somehow made me feel safe.”
His hand trembled against her skin.
“Say it again,” he whispered.
She met his eyes, heart pounding so hard she felt it in her throat.
“I feel safe with you,” she said.
That did it.
Whatever thin tether of restraint he’d been clinging to snapped. He closed the remaining distance and claimed her lips.
It was not a gentle, grateful little brush of mouths. It was deep and immediate and hungry, as if he’d been waiting for her permission for far too long.
Her back hit the wall harder as his body pressed against hers, solid and hot and entirely too welcome. Her hands found his shoulders, fingers clutching at the fine weave of his shirt as his mouth moved over hers in slow, devastating strokes.
This was a mistake. She knew it. Somewhere in the fogged corners of her mind, reason waved a frantic little flag and whispered, Tell him. Tell him now. Before it’s too late.
She opened her mouth to speak.
He took the movement as an invitation and deepened the kiss.
Words disappeared under the onslaught of sensation. His tongue stroked against hers, coaxing, teasing, turning her bones to liquid. The hand cupping her cheek slid back into her hair, gentle but insistent, angling her head, holding her as if he’d never let her go.
She made a small sound against his mouth. He swallowed it with a soft groan of his own.
“Wait,” she managed between kisses. “Nicholas, I have to—”
“Later,” he breathed, mouth against the corner of hers. “You can tell me everything later.”
“I meant to tell you now.” She gasped as he trailed kisses along her jaw.
“Yes,” he said. “You also meant to not kiss me. We are both failing miserably.”
His teeth grazed the base of her throat where her pulse hammered, and her protest melted into a helpless shudder. His hands slid down from her face to her shoulders, then lower, palms spanning her ribs through the layers of her bodice.
“If you truly don’t want this, tell me now,” he said against her skin. “Say it now.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I…can’t.”
“Good,” he said, voice rough.
He kissed her again, and that was the end of coherent intention.
He did not pounce or drag or manhandle. He kissed her until her knees weakened and her hands slid from his shoulders to his chest to keep herself upright; he kissed her until the world narrowed to the heat of his mouth, the scent of him, the delicious friction of his body against hers.
At some point, her fingers found the knot of his cravat. It was already loosening, but she still tugged at it, desperate for more skin. The knot gave under her fingers; the linen slithered away. She slipped her hand beneath, palm flattening against his throat.
He sucked in a breath.
“Bea,” he rasped. “If you touch me like that, I’m going to forget every single noble impulse I’ve ever had.”
“You’re suggesting you’ve had any,” she whispered.
His laugh was strangled. “Fair point.”
She dragged her hand down over the hard curve of his collarbone, the smooth line of his chest under his shirt. He felt like heat and strength and recklessness.
His own hands found her waist, fingers splaying, thumbs sweeping over the curve of her stays. He pressed closer, guiding her away from the wall, across the room with unsteady steps. She didn’t know where they were going until the back of her calves hit something padded.
The settee.
He broke the kiss long enough to look into her eyes.
“Last chance,” he said roughly. “To tell me to stop.”
Her lungs dragged in air. Her heart hammered. Her body ached.
“Nicholas,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Please,” she said.
He made a sound that was half curse, half prayer, and lowered her onto the settee.
The room blurred.
His mouth was on hers again, then on her throat, then lower, the edge of her bodice suddenly far too high and far too tight. His hands explored the nipped-in line of her waist, the flare of her hips. She felt him everywhere, the heat of him imprinting her through every layer of fabric.
She tried again, once, to remember the speech she’d rehearsed. I’m B. Adroit, and I—
But his palm slid, bold and sure, over the top of her thigh, fingers curving around to the back of her leg, catching up a handful of muslin. The whisper of her skirts rising swallowed the thought whole.
“Nicholas,” she gasped, hips jerking.
“Come upstairs,” he whispered against her throat.
Her eyes flew open. “Upstairs?”
“Yes.” His gaze burned into hers. “Because if I keep you in this drawing room, I’m going to do something unforgivable on this very respectable furniture.”
Her heart thudded. “Upstairs is your bedchamber.”
“Quite astute,” he said.
“My reputation—”
“Already in tatters the moment you stepped into my house alone,” he said quietly. “I am not pretending coming to my bedchamber will make it worse.”
She sucked in her breath, trembling—not only with want, but with the sharp edge of why she’d come here in the first place.
To tell him. To be honest, as she’d promised herself she would be.
And if she went upstairs…if she crossed that threshold…she would be choosing something else first. Something that could not be unsaid. Something she could never pretend had been an accident.
Her conscience clawed at her. Tell him now. Tell him before you let him touch you again. Before you make this—make him—a refuge.
But another voice, stubborn and very much her own, rose up beneath the fear.
This is my life, it said. My choice.
Her father had been choosing for her for years. Society had been choosing for her. Even B. Adroit—brave as that secret life was—had been a version of herself she could only inhabit in shadows.
Tonight, for once, she wanted to choose something in the light.
Not because she was weak.
Not because Nicholas was irresistible—though he was.
But because she was tired of living like every decision must be a sacrifice offered to other people’s expectations.
And because—damn him—Nicholas always looked at her as if she mattered.
If she confessed now, she risked losing that in an instant. Losing him—his respect, his protection, his regard—before she even knew what it felt like to have it.
And if she was going to blow up her life, she wanted it to be on her terms.
Nicholas didn’t move. Didn’t press. He simply waited, breath hot at her throat, his hands stilling as though he was holding himself back by sheer will.
“Bea,” he said, almost smiling, though his eyes were still dark and serious. “I will walk you out that door right now if you want me to. We can pretend we had tea in this drawing room and try to mitigate the damage. Or…”
“Or?” she whispered.
He held out his hand. “Or you can come upstairs,” he said. “And tell me whatever it is that is gnawing at you…after.”
After.
After she’d let herself want him without apology. After she’d taken one selfish thing for herself. After she’d proven—to him and to herself—that she wasn’t being cornered into this.
She stared at his hand.
The fork in the road jabbed her beneath her ribs. The safe path, where she clung to principle like armor…or the dangerous one, where she admitted that desire could be a choice too.
Her mother would call it a scandal.
Her father would call it unforgivable.
Society would call it ruin.
Bea called it something else entirely.
Revolt.
She lifted her chin, steadying her breath, and made herself look at Nicholas—really look—so he would know she understood exactly what she was doing.
So he would know she was not being carried, not being convinced.
She’d made her decision, and she was walking.
She placed her hand in his. “Upstairs.”