37. Jungle Cats in Carriages #2
All around Cypress and Torren, ball goers were leading their partners around in the same dance, though no one dipped quite as low as they.
“Well, for one,” Torren started, then spun Cypress around quickly enough to make her see stars behind her lids.
“I don’t know what it means when you look at me like that,” he finished, just as he halted her spins, and crushed her to his chest.
Cypress stared at him with wide eyes, her chest rising and falling faster and faster, her hands fisted tight in his silken shirt.
She swallowed and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Torren cracked a grin, but only said, “Sure you don’t, Lass,” and then they were on the move once more.
They danced and twirled around the ballroom, and for one single moment, Cypress forgot all about the mission, infiltrating the towers, and the betrayal.
All of it
Cypress forgot it all for one single moment, dancing with the Prince– no King of the Wylds.
The music crescendoed, and Torren lifted Cypress with his hands at her waist while he spun in a circle. Laughter tumbled from her lips as he led them through the final steps of the dance.
Cypress had never seen his face so… relaxed. Happy.
When the music stopped, both of them were breathing heavily as the crowd applauded for the extremely talented musicians.
The pause in the music was only momentary though.
Just long enough for brief applause and then the musicians struck up another lively song.
Torren didn’t even ask this time, he simply grabbed Cypress’s hand and spun her into place for another dance.
“We should make our exit in the middle of this one,” Cypress said when their chests were pressed together for a moment.
Torren spun her away, then sharply back into his chest. “Where should I lead us to?”
“The south corridor is the closest entryway to the servant passages,” Cypress whispered, though she was sure no one could hear their conversation over the music and clacking of heeled shoes.
Torren nodded and continued the steps of the dance. Rather than in an erratic path, he now led them toward where Cypress instructed.
Slowly, they made their way through the mass of dancing bodies, subtly dancing toward the south corridor. No one paid the pair any heed as they slipped from the dancefloor.
“Don’t react, Lass,” Torren warned before he pulled her close. His hands coasted down her back to her backside, face a mere hairsbreadth from hers.
“What–what are you doing?” Cypress whispered as he took a step, then another until her back was pressed against the cold stone wall.
“We wouldn’t want to raise suspicion…” Torren began and slipped one of his thick thighs between her own. “So we need to appear as if we are merely lovers wishing to sneak away for a little while.”
His voice had taken on this low rasp that set her nerves alight and made her skin pebble beneath his touch.
“I don’t think anyone has noticed us,” Cypress began, but threaded her hands into the back of his dark, silky hair.
“I think you’re wrong, Lass. Someone watched us come through that archway and is waiting to see what we will do,” Torren said, and lowered his mouth to the space beneath her ear along her jawline.
Cypress barely managed to keep the loud, keening moan locked behind her teeth. As it was, she arched into the contact with a gasp, her eyes fluttering closed as Torren kissed and sucked his way down the length of her neck.
Cypress let herself revel in the feel of his lips on her skin for only a moment before she cracked her eyes back open and peered down the dim corridor through her lashes. Sure enough, a uniformed man stood at the edge of the archway. The set of his shoulders gave him away.
“Keep going,” Cypress whispered. “I’ll tell you when he’s gone.”
“Put on a bit of a show, eh, Lass? You need to make it believable.”
“No one would come to my aid even if I was screaming, I don’t think-”
“Let me hear you, Cypress,” Torren ordered against her skin as he slowly lifted the hem of her skirts.
Then, his lips resealed against her throat, and this time, Cypress let the moan rip free.
“There you go,” Torren crooned, and his hands disappeared under the skirts of Cypress’s dress and hooked behind her thighs to lift her.
Then, Torren kissed her, fully on the lips.
Cypress hungrily returned the kiss. Her hands slipped under the silken shirt to revel in the feel of his skin under her fingertips.
Torren ground his hips into hers as they kissed, her spine fully against the wall.
The kiss broke, and Cypress let out a sigh of content when Torren nipped along her collarbone, and an unmistakable thick bulge in the front of his pants pressed hard against her center.
Cypress wanted to reach between them and stroke it, to see if she could coax pleasure from him as easily as he had her.
For one maddening moment, Cypress considered telling Torren the guard was still standing at the archway, that they needed to go further–all the way– in order to be convincing.
A peek through her lashes revealed that the guard was gone, though, so Cypress relaxed her thighs where they’d clenched around his waist and smoothed his hair back in place. “He’s gone,” she whispered, though her chest still heaved, and her center ached for him.
Torren lifted his face from her neck, lips red and puffy. But, he merely lowered her gently back to her feet, storm grey eyes locked onto hers. Without a word, Torren straightened her mask, which had gone askew in the frenzy.
“Shall we?” she asked and smoothed his shirt where she’d wrinkled it.
“After you, Duchess,” Torren said in that low rasp.
She had half a mind to press him back against the wall and ravish him herself.
Instead, she spun on her heel and quietly marched through another adjoining arch. Cypress counted the golden candelabras set on the wall until they reached the fourth. Then, she grabbed the smallest of the arched candle holders and rotated it counterclockwise.
Slowly, the stone wall shifted, the sound of stone grinding against itself filling the space.
Cypress felt as if her heart was in her throat while they waited for the stone to move enough in order to reveal a dim passage.
Once it was fully opened, she grabbed a small candle lamp from a ledge and lit it using the flames of those in the corridor.
Wordlessly, Torren did the same, and then they slipped into the passage, the door grinding closed after them.