Chapter 9 #2
Giovanni’s stomach was churning at the thought.
It was his worst nightmare. He couldn’t believe he had let this happen.
He had made a promise to himself and he had broken it in the worst possible way.
He listened carefully, with bated breath, as the floorboards outside the office creaked rhythmically with footsteps moving away from it.
The relief was so astonishing that he felt his knees weaken underneath him.
He pulled away from Beatrice and grabbed hold of the bookcase to steady himself.
“Oh God,” he gasped, closing his eyes against the sudden relief, his hands shaking. “God in heaven!”
“It’s nothing, Gio,” Beatrice pushed herself up on her elbows and pulled the skirt of her gown back down, covering her stockings and pulling the bust of her dress back into place.
Each moment was like a snag in his mind.
Blue stockings peeping under a gorgeous gown.
A glimpse of white stays cradling her bosom.
He could feel his desire pulsing through him, still, the firmness of his body straining achingly against his trousers, despite his fear.
“It’s just a servant walking past,” Beatrice said, her voice remarkably calm, as if she frequently shared illicit intimacies with a gentleman in her brother’s office. In one moment he felt both enraged by her serenity and aroused by it.
Stop it, he cursed himself. Stop it!
Unable to reconcile his feelings, he reached for his most familiar emotion. Anger.
“It is not nothing,” Giovanni glared at her, running his fingers through his hair. “Look at you.”
“What?” Beatrice looked down at herself, nonplussed. “Did my gown tear?”
“No, thank God,” Giovanni said, watching Beatrice climb off the desk, brushing her gown with insistent movements.
Giovanni’s eyes followed her fingers, remembering and imagining what each part of her body felt like.
He remembered the impossibly soft skin of her thighs, her tiny waist, the pertness of her breasts inside her gown.
He felt like each detail would be burned into his brain forever. No, you shouldn’t have done this!
“Then what is the matter?” Beatrice asked, bending down to pick up some items that had been brushed onto the floor by their passionate embrace.
“What is the matter?” Giovanni repeated furiously, irritated by her sanguine approach. “You look so - you look?—”
He couldn’t finish his sentence. She looked ravishing.
She always did, but even more so in this slightly dishevelled state, with her curls mussed and her dress rumpled, her skin flushed pink on her breasts and her lips cherry red from fevered kisses.
She looked completely irresistible to him, like a woman who desired nothing more than to be taken across the table right then and there.
He had been so close to it. It frightened him how close it had been.
“God, if your brother were to see you now,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes painfully.
What if no sound had been made outside the door? What if he hadn’t stopped? Would he have taken her? Would he been able to control himself? It hardly bore thinking about. There was something about Beatrice, about her passion and pliancy that made him lose all reason.
“What if he should?” Beatrice asked quietly. Giovanni opened his eyes to stare at her, wondering if she could possibly be serious. She must know how Silas would react to such behavior.
“I would be a dead man,” Giovanni said flatly. “And I would not blame him.”
Beatrice looked up at him with those dark, alluring eyes that reminded him so much of caves, forests, and hidden places of mystery.
“Perhaps he would understand,” she said quietly. “If we explained. About us.”
Giovanni gritted his teeth against the joy hidden in her words.
Us. She thinks there is an us. His heart rejoiced to hear it, hope fluttering its tender wings at the implications of her words.
She thought of him, too. She must do. Yet part of him wanted to scream at her for her naiveté.
She was standing in profile now, carefully trying to re-tie her hair ribbon.
Despite knowing that the worst thing he could do at this moment was to touch her, he couldn’t help himself.
“Let me,” he murmured, taking the ribbon out of her hands.
She looked at him curiously for a moment, as if, absurdly, it required more trust to allow him to perform this simple task than it had done to press her body feverishly against his.
She relented, carefully holding back the piece of hair that needed tying.
“There is no ‘us,’” he said quietly. “There can never be an ‘us,’ Beatrice, surely you must know that.”
Beatrice had brushed the rest of her hair over her shoulder, revealing the perfect, creamy sweep of her neck. Giovanni swallowed hard, resisting the urge to press his lips there.
“It doesn’t feel like that.” She had stiffened at his words but did not turn around to face him, standing perfectly still as he tied her hair for her. “It feels like… something.”
Giovanni’s heart lurched at her words, but he forced his triumph down. It was empty triumph if he let her ruin herself for him. No matter what he felt, no matter how deeply connected to her he was, he would never let that happen.
“How you feel is barely important,” Giovanni swallowed and tried to stop his hands from shaking. How was it suddenly so hard to tie one simple ribbon?
“Barely important? How I feel is nothing to you?”