Chapter 12 #2
She didn’t promptly place her hand in his or say the expected, “I would be delighted.” Instead, silvery-blue eyes gazed up at him from behind brass spectacles, her head slightly tilted.
The ground beneath his feet went shaky. In these five years of having attended many a ball, he’d never once been refused a dance.
Hadn’t even considered the possibility. Ladies were only too thrilled to dance with the dashing Liam Cassidy, if for no other reason than to share a giggly gossip with their friends and sisters later.
But Lady Saskia wasn’t like any other lady.
She was her own person with her own ideas about life.
She would make up her own mind, and the possibility existed that she might say no.
Surely, she should say no, for the feeling rioting through him—the want…the need…to touch her—shared a kinship with madness.
Then she placed her silk-gloved hand in his and stepped forward. It wasn’t only relief that pulsed through him as he led her onto the dancing floor and set his other hand properly above her waist, but another feeling, too—a greater, fiercer feeling—that twined alongside it…
Determination.
He wasn’t sure where this determination would lead, but he understood fundamentally the dance wasn’t the goal.
The dance was only the beginning.
He swept her into the one-two-three of the waltz and whirled her across gleaming mahogany, air beneath their feet for all he knew, with such ease did they mirror each other’s steps in the ebb and flow of the dance.
He should’ve predicted this—that, of course, Lady Saskia would be a natural dancing partner.
They’d made it halfway across the ballroom when he realized he must say something. He cleared his throat. “Are you enjoying the night?”
“I am.”
“You’re an exceedingly graceful dancer.”
Exceedingly graceful?
“I’ve had a few lessons.”
“Ah.”
It was a perfectly suitable conversation. A conversation he’d had a hundred times on a hundred dancing floors.
And that was the problem.
Frustration roared through him.
This perfectly suitable conversation wasn’t the conversation he wanted to have.
Yes, it was the correct conversation for the social setting, but it wasn’t the correct conversation for…them.
He and this woman had shared secrets.
They’d shared a room.
They’d shared a kiss.
And here he was, asking her, “Lucky for the duke and duchess the morning’s stormy weather cleared up by the afternoon.”
A single eyebrow subtly lifted, as if she knew this for socially acceptable conversation, but couldn’t understand why in the blazes he was subjecting her to it.
Well, she wasn’t the only one.
What happened to that feeling of urgency…of immediacy?
It yet rioted through him…scorched through his veins…and he was discussing the weather?
And it further occurred to him that the lift of Lady Saskia’s right eyebrow might not only signal confusion.
It might signal disappointment.
She would harbor her own expectations of what it would be like to be in his arms—and he was disappointing her.
Sometimes the universe delivered exactly what one needed at the precise moment one needed it, and at this precise moment the universe delivered an open door.
A literal open door to allow cooling night air into the ballroom.
And when the universe provided an open door, one would be remiss not to waltz straight through it.
Which, Saskia in his arms, Liam did.
Though the air was cooler out on the terrace, Liam burned with intention as he led them beyond the ballroom’s arc of golden light, until their feet found grass and the only illumination came from the mellow moon high in the sky.
A light breeze carried the music, but out here in the furthest reaches of the duke’s garden, it was the music of night that forwarded itself—the chirruping of crickets…
spring-green leaves soughing through the canopy above…
the rasp of breath in his lungs…and hers.
Beneath the wide canopy of an English oak, her hand still in his, she pulled them to a stop. He turned and met her searching gaze. “Why are we outside?”
A fair question.
“I’ve been giving some thought to secrets and rules.” They weren’t the words he’d expected to say, but they were better words than he’d spoken in the ballroom.
“Have you now?”
“We have a few of each between us now, don’t we?”
“We do.”
They spoke with voices lowered. These words wouldn’t catch on the air and carry beyond them.
“One rule, in particular, has been turning over in my mind.”
“Oh?” she asked, a breathless exhalation, really.
“The no-kissing rule.”
Her head tipped to the side. “I would think it a rather straightforward rule.”
“One could easily be fooled into thinking so,” he allowed. “But…”
“But?”
He released her hand and lightly grazed his knuckles across her cheek. “What are our parameters for a kiss?”
“Parameters?”
He nodded. This was serious business, in its way—and also fun. “The parameters remain ill-defined. You work with words all day, Saskia, surely you can see the lack of definition.”
“I’m…” Her brow crinkled. “I’m not sure I can.”
“Shall I illustrate my point?”
The air went still. Her eyes searched his. He was asking for permission beyond the simple surface of his words. He was also asking for something more—trust. And though urgency and immediacy fired through his veins, he could act on nothing without her permission or her trust.
The tip of her tongue swiped across her bottom lip. “In the interest of clarity between us, I believe you must.” Her voice wavered with a most gratifying tremble.
The hand not caressing her cheek slid along the indent of her waist, and he angled so his mouth nearly met her ear.
“For example, does it count as a kiss if I press my mouth here.” A subtle shift forward and his lips were touching her earlobe, the skin soft and downy, and she was exhaling a light sigh.
“Or,” he uttered, his breath grazing across delicate skin, producing a spray of goosebumps up her arm, surely tightening her nipples into peaks, “here.” His mouth trailed down her neck, and this time it was a trembly groan that accompanied her sigh.
But she wasn’t the only one affected. The blood rushed hot through his veins.
His cock gone hard as iron, demanding he push farther… “Or…”
His mouth drifted lower…his hand tugged her bodice…
and there was a plump breast revealed through her gossamer chemise…
and a peaked pink nipple straining against muslin…
leaving his mouth no choice but to test this parameter, too.
He sucked the taut bud into his mouth, one hand cupping her breast, the other clutching on her waist, steadying her as she gasped and emitted a tiny, feminine, “Oh.”
He should stop.
He needed to stop.
Or he would go lower… He would press his lips to every inch of her until he had her cunny in his mouth and she was screaming her pleasure toward the stars above.
But she hadn’t given him her permission for that.
She hadn’t given him permission to transform her from innocent to experienced.
With the suddenness one ripped a bandage off a wound, he removed his mouth from her breast and took a large step back, separating from her completely.
Panting, they stared at each other with new eyes.
He reached out and touched her one final time—to adjust her bodice to its rightful position… above her pretty plump breasts.
“Is that the matter clear between us?” he had the presence of mind to ask.
Though a breathless laugh escaped her, her silvery-blue eyes remained serious. “I’m not sure. I reserve the right to seek further clarification in the future.”
A laugh of his own startled from him.
No small measure of relief in that laugh.
Lest he forget, this woman was Lady Viveca’s sister. They might just be cut from the same daring cloth.
He had but one more question to ask… “Will you be attending the Derby?”
Perhaps.
That had been her answer when he’d last asked the question.
And he hadn’t liked that answer.
“Yes.”
“Then until next week.”
No small amount of triumph pulsing through him, he offered a slight bow, pivoted on his heel, and made his way from the duke’s garden through a side gate.
He hadn’t come to the duke’s ball merely to see Saskia, or talk to her, or dance with her, or even to touch her.
He’d come here with a single intention.
An intention to turn her perhaps into a yes.
And he had.
But that wasn’t all, was it?
He’d wanted to hold a match to her…to see if she would ignite into flame.
And, oh, how she had.