Chapter 19
“Mae,” said Roland, once he could get enough moisture into his mouth to speak. “Either put that away …”
She looked up at him, clearly still stunned by the bolt of watery silk slinking through her fingers like liquid gold. “What?”
“Or put it on,” he finished, the words grating hoarsely out of his throat.
She immediately colored, exhaling a little puff of scandalized air as the fabric slipped fully away from her grip and back into the box. “I couldn’t,” she whispered, fumbling for the lid. “Not here.”
“I will take you anywhere you want,” he assured her, watching with no small bereavement as the lid was smashed and jiggled back into place. “Anywhere.”
She cleared her throat, a nervous giggle escaping it as she shoved the box under the table like it had shouted obscenities at her, and shook her head.
She looked at the empty space between their plates for a few moments, blinking in wonder, and touched her lips.
“She did tell me not to open it in mixed company,” she said, perhaps only to herself.
He was certain that usually, he would have had a quip to respond with, but just now all he could look at was the glow of her skin in the candlelight and the way the shadows caressed the shape of her throat and chest as she breathed.
Not here, she’d said.
Perhaps this was the wrong venue.
He wasn’t sure he cared.
“Dishes or desks?” she asked him, suddenly very brisk and upright, grasping at her wine and knocking back what remained in the glass. “I prefer dishes, if it matters.”
He watched her as she stood and ran her hands down her dress, as though wiping away flecks of imaginary grime, and scanning the table with her eyes. She walked around to his side and reached for his plate, which was still half full of food.
“Mae,” he said again, reaching gently for her wrist. “Sit down.”
She blinked a few times, as though he’d interrupted something that had already gotten too far into its process to be abandoned, and looked down at her encircled wrist with a frown. “But I was …”
“Sit down,” he said again, tugging her closer. He pushed his chair back, allowing space enough between himself and the table for her as he pulled her into it. “Here. With me.”
She raised her gaze to his face, still looking a bit like a startled doe.
It made him feel oddly warm. Oddly soft.
“You are still hungry?” she asked, soft and breathy.
He nodded, stroking his other hand along the line of her waist, and urged her forward, pulling her gently toward where he sat in the high-backed classroom chair. “Oh, yes.”
“Roland,” she murmured, but did not resist as he shifted himself backward and continued to tug her along, until she had no choice but to climb into his lap or resist momentum entirely.
She folded into it, her hands bracing against his chest as he pulled her onto his body like she had always belonged there. Her skirt flared out around them as she settled her weight onto him.
He released her wrist and traced the pads of his fingers up the bare flesh of her forearm, into the crook of her elbow.
She shivered. She steadied herself. She met his eye.
He mirrored her breath as she slid the flats of her hands over the planes of his chest and over his shoulders, her eyes half hooded as their noses brushed at the tips.
“Not here,” she said again, so softly it barely constituted a whisper, just words made of breath.
“Not here,” he agreed, and claimed her mouth anyway, desperate to remember the taste of her while the curves of her hips filled his hands.
It was a delicious torment having her astride him like this, bearing down against the ache of his want and knowing he could not satisfy it.
He sighed into the kiss, wrapping his fingers around the lush swell of her backside and pulling her against his arousal, if only so she could ache with him.
She moaned into his mouth, clenching her thighs around his hips in answer. “Not here,” she whispered again, slick and hot against his mouth as his fingers dug into her flesh. “Roland.”
He made a sound in answer, affirmation by way of something animal. “I know,” he said in the breaths between tasting her. “I know.”
“I’ve never,” she managed, pausing to whimper as his hands traveled up the column of her spine, spanning around her waist to trail over the tantalizing preview of flesh that swelled above her neckline. “I’ve never been with a man.”
He chuckled against her mouth before he could stop himself, despite the fire raging through his skin.
It made her pull back and narrow her eyes at him. “I haven’t,” she said, breathy with fire. “Why do you think I have?”
“I don’t,” he answered, refusing to cease in his touching her. “It is only that you have penetrated me already. Twice, in fact. Once with a needle and the other with that soldering stick. I believe we’ve crossed many thresholds of intimacy beyond the standard of coupling.”
“Hm,” she said, tilting her head to consider it so that the candlelight flashed off her dark curls with a glint of stark white.
She nodded, as though she accepted this, and moved her hands from his shoulders up to his jaw, stroking at the line of bone there.
“It is called a cautery,” she whispered, as though she was telling him something filthy. “Not a solder.”
“Oh, indeed?” He laughed again and pulled her back down, catching her smiling mouth with his own and moving his hips in answer of her tease to return as good as he got.
She gasped prettily, arching her back as he dipped his thumbs below the lacy border of her bodice.
He nipped at her bottom lip, kissing along the line of her chin and down her throat as he stroked at her breasts through the layers of stiff, practical fabric.
He knew he was taking liberties far beyond what he should with a woman like this, an educated woman, a woman known by his people, respected by them.
He just couldn’t stop himself.
“God, you are exquisite,” he groaned into her throat. He knew he had to stop soon or he wouldn’t at all.
Not here, she had said.
What fool had agreed to that?
It would be so easy to tug that bodice down, to bare her to him, to taste her here in this darkened room. His body flared at the thought of it, his hands flexing on her delicate ribs.
He could slide his fingers under this skirt. He suspected she would let him. He could feel the way she responded to being touched this way, the way she burned for it too.
With a rumble of pained willpower, he pulled back, tilting his head up to gaze at her, dazed and bleary through his lashes. “Not here,” he repeated back to her, raspy and gone with want.
She was panting, her own dark lashes flickering over those lovely brown eyes. A speckled blush the shade of cinnamon rode over her cheeks and along the bridge of her nose. He cupped her cheek and traced the line of it with his thumb.
She turned her face into his palm and closed her eyes, flattening her hands over his heart, as though feeling his pulse begin to slow might do the same for her.
For a moment, they just breathed. For a moment, they tried to remember themselves.
“Desks,” he said, inspiring her eyes to open again and blink into focus on his. “I hate dishes.”
She looked incredulous for a moment before releasing a short, embarrassed huff of memory. “Oh,” she said with a shake of her head. “Right.”
He couldn’t fight the grin that grew as he watched her, watched the play of bashfulness and wry amusement on her beautiful face. He could watch her, he thought, for the rest of his life.
“And then I will see you safely home,” he said with a resigned sigh, giving his thumb one more pass over her cheek and stroking the back of his fingers along the curve of her neck.
“My home?” she said with a raise of her brows. “And here I thought you’d propose a different change of venue entirely.”
He shrugged, shaking his head. “I feel that would be a poor tactical choice,” he said regretfully. “Your grandfather knows we are having dinner. If you don’t come home, I imagine he will find some creative, doctoral way to kill me.”
“He might,” she said, flashing him a wicked little smile. “Or he’ll just have my grandmother chuck something heavy at your head. She has excellent aim.”
“Oh, I have heard,” he assured her. “But do rest assured, if I could spirit you back to my flat tonight, you would already be there and intimately familiar with the scent of my bed.”
Her smile faded just a touch, that color rising again over the bridge of her nose. “You are a wicked man, Mr. Reed.”
He leaned forward to kiss her one more time, soft and indulgent. “Mae,” he said seriously. “Do not call me Mr. Reed.”
“You are a wicked man, Roland,” she corrected, tittering as she heaved a sigh and leaned back, looking for purchase to climb back onto steady ground. “But I expect you know that.”
“I know everything,” he reminded her.
“And if you were to spirit me back to this flat of yours,” she said, her dimples flashing at the groan he released when she lifted herself back onto the support of only her own legs, “where would it be? Where is this mysterious nest that not even Mr. Beck knows how to find?”
He watched her for a moment, old impulses flickering against his ribs with all the fury of broken butterfly wings. “Soho,” he said. “Only a few blocks from your own home.”
Her eyes widened, surprise clear on her face. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t think you were going to answer me.”
“Just now, I will answer anything,” he told her, leaning back against the stiff wooden beams of the classroom chair. “What other secrets would you have of me?”
“The time and location of the next opportunity to question you as such, if you please,” she replied, trying not to gape at him in shock. “I haven’t prepared a list.”
He gave her a quick, wolfish grin. “Too bad,” he said. “This is your chance.”
She frowned. “Does the offer extend until the end of the night? Perhaps I will come up with something while I wash the dishes.”
“Who can say?” he said with a shrug. “Whims are funny things. But if you ever want to crack my veneer again, I shall tell you how to do it.”
“Oh?” she said, pausing with her fingers on the edge of a plate. “How?”
He nodded down to the box hiding under the table and then looked back up at her with a quick lick of his lips. “Wear that, and I’ll confess to every crime I’ve ever committed.”
“Is that so?” she said, watching the progress of his tongue. “You know those things go under my clothes. I could be wearing them just now and you would never know.”
“Mae,” he replied darkly. “I would know.”
“Hm,” she said, a little thinly. “I suppose we will see if that is true someday soon.”
“Oh? Do not issue challenges you are not prepared to meet,” he warned. “I will know.”
“And then you will confess anything I wish to know?” she clarified, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. “Is that the agreement?”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” he replied, scratching at his chin. “You know I meant seeing you in only those things, of course, no matter how you try to wriggle around it. But I will agree to your terms if you consider, even privately, the inevitability of mine. And Mae, I will know.”
She smiled, backing two steps away from the table, her arms laden with plates, silver, and empty glasses. “Roland,” she said before turning on her heel to run away. “I hope that you do.”