Chapter Fourteen #3
There it was—the flicker of desire, before it was grasped tight and thrust down.
She wanted him.
She was also looking at him warily. “How you feel about me?”
“I like you. A great deal,” Michael said, underselling his affections utterly as he stepped toward her. “And I rather think you like me too.”
“That’s rather presumptuous of you.”
“Is it?” And he had taken her hand and pulled her upright and into his arms, and she did not fight him—and she did not, because she loved him.
Love, or something close to it.
Phylis’s breathing was short and she stared up into his eyes. “You think you know me.”
“I know I like everything I know about you,” countered Michael, trying desperately not to allow his manhood to stiffen too much. “I know you are beautiful, and clever, and every moment I’m with you, I feel more alive than in every other moment in my life combined—”
“Michael—”
“And I know that when you’re with me, you feel…different.” Michael swallowed, his throat somehow dry as he saw the heat burn Phylis’s cheeks. “You know that things are different with me, different than they have been with any other man.”
“Michael, please—”
“I dare you,” he whispered. “I dare you to deny it.”
A fiery curl of Phylis’s hair had escaped one of her pins, but she did not bother to push it behind her ear as she stared up at him, seemingly unable to break the connection.
Because she knew. He was certain, she knew that what they had…
it was more than love, more than mere affection.
Were they not similar in desiring something more than the world could offer them?
Him a gentleman, longing for adventure, her a sea captain, longing for respectability.
Was it not clear that in a way, they…they belonged together?
“Michael,” Phylis murmured.
His pulse skipped a beat. “Yes?”
“When you say ‘any other man’…”
What on earth was this about? “Yes?”
For some reason, Phylis was flushing. “I haven’t… I mean, I just use the name ‘Mrs.’ Seaton for…for protection.”
Half of Michael’s mind stopped working while the other half started cheering. “You’re not—”
“I am not a widow,” said Phylis simply, holding her head high. “I am Miss Seaton when not Captain Seaton. Which is never.”
“You mean you’ve never…?”
She swallowed thickly. “I’ve never lain with a man, if that’s what you mean. Not that women like me are held to the same standards of the women in your circle, I just…never wanted to before. Never needed to.”
Michael swallowed. Why this should matter, he did not know, but to think… Damn, to think that he might have been the first man in the world to give her pleasure…
Phylis licked her lips. “You… You know I’m leaving.”
“We’re both leaving. One day soon, I’ll board a ship and I’ll be immigrating.”
“No, I… I’m leaving. Leaving London. In four days.”
Michael’s heart didn’t skip a beat—it stopped. For seconds that felt like hours, it refused to pulse. When it finally started again there was a sharp panging in his chest. “‘In four days’?”
Phylis nodded, refusing to meet his gaze now. “Yes, I—well, I have a contract in Amsterdam. I cannot refuse to go. The European season of my business, it’s starting now and this contract, it was signed before I met you—on the very day I met you, in fact, but I cannot go back on my word. I can’t.”
He nodded, trying desperately to take it in.
She was leaving. She was actually leaving, and not for a short run up to Hull or a quick drop down to Brighton and back.
She was leaving, and she would not be coming back for months.
“I’m sorry.”
Michael blinked, and saw the pain in her eyes, and wanted to kiss it all away. “Don’t say that. It’s your life.”
“It’s a life I would wish altered.” Phylis exhaled quietly, finally lifting her gaze to meet his own. “In… In one single aspect.”
The kiss was passionate, and desperate, and Michael could have clung to her for the rest of his life and he would still have been unsatisfied.
Phylis whimpered in the kiss, her hands swiftly moving to his neck to pull him closer, and he did everything he could not to allow his hands to cup her buttocks, but damn it all, he was human.
When the kiss finally ended, and he hated that it did, it was to see a wistful look in Phylis’s expression.
“I’m going to miss you,” she said softly.
And that was when Michael knew that if he suggested it, she would agree.
It was only once, after all. And she would be gone, no expectations, no need to change their lives.
She would go on sailing. He would sail away and immigrate.
But they would have this moment.
“Phylis,” Michael said quietly.
She nodded, biting her lip as though holding back words she knew she could never say.
Michael inhaled slowly. “Phylis, I’m going to seduce you now.”
The only response he received was a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, I’m going to seduce you. I’m going to ravish you, and give you pleasure, and then…then we’ll always have this to remember,” Michael said softly, desperately hoping that she would agree to his ridiculous and outrageous—
“Good,” Phylis said lightly. “Shall I lock the door?”