Chapter 7 #3
The arrangement did not take. I want to unmake every careful inch. Pull the pins from her hair. Open the zipper and let the dress fall from her shoulders. Strip the pink from her mouth with mine. The diamonds first.
Her fingers close around the clasp, fidgeting.
“Leave it on.”
She stops, but she doesn’t remove her hand from the clasp.
I move my hand over hers and her pulse beats hard against my palm as she stares up at me.
I get it. A bare throat would be a fuck you to Montgomery.
But I want her out of this house. Acting out could jeopardize everything, and I will not allow it.
“We have a goal,” I say. “We’re going to achieve it. Tonight, we wear the costumes.” I point to the collar. “We’re not rocking the boat.”
Her thumb presses the catch beneath my palm. “You’re keeping things from me.”
“Yes. For your own good.”
“Is that for you to decide?” Her mouth curves. “I have plenty of daddies, don’t you think?”
“I don’t want to be your dad, Bianca.” I lean closer, keeping her hand pinned beneath mine. “But I will put you over my knee.”
Her pulse jumps. She moves closer instead of pulling away.
Blue silk meets my shirtfront. She walks two fingers up my lapel, her nail barely dragging over the cloth, and her scent unfurls until the alcove feels saturated with it.
“Or,” she says, wickedly conversational, “you could mess it all up.”
“Bianca.”
“You could.”
Her mouth hovers at my jaw. The smallest distance from my skin. Her breath lands above the collar locked around my throat. I desperately want to feel the press of her lips.
“Wreck my hair. Ruin my lipstick.” Her fingers reach my bow tie. “Shove this ridiculously expensive dress up around my waist and fuck me against the wall until I don’t look like his anything anymore. You could make sure everyone knows who I really belong to.”
She leans back enough to meet my eyes. There is nothing obedient in her face now. Nothing daughterly.
“And he’d know,” she says. “The second I entered the room, he’d know exactly what you did to his masterpiece.” Her smile gains an edge sharp enough to open skin. “Tell me you don’t want that.”
A tremor travels through my arms, my jaw, the entire structure of me in one clean fault line. Because I do want it. I want it with a violence I can taste.
“Dammit, Bianca.”
The words come out low, anguished. I catch her hip hard enough to pull a gasp from her and bury my face in the fragrant silk of her hair. Even now, careful not to disturb a single pin.
“Yes. Is that what you needed? Yes.” My grip tightens. “Every second since you turned that corner.”
She shivers against me. Her scent spikes so sweet it hurts my teeth. For one unending moment, neither of us moves.
“Which is why you will not ask me again,” I say into her hair. “Because if you do, I will take you up on it. He’ll punish one of them, and you and I will have to stand there and watch.”
The heat leaves her body all at once and she slumps against me.
“I hate that you’re right.”
She swoops down to pick up the heels she dropped on the floor.
“Give them to me.”
“I can do it.”
“Bianca.” I hold out my hand and wait.
Her gaze drops to my palm. Then she lays the straps across it.
I lower myself to one knee.
“Weller—”
“Hold my good shoulder.”
Her hand settles there, tentative for half a second, then firm. I take her foot. Her ankle fits my palm as if the dimensions were chosen for me, skin warm. The first shoe slides into place. I fasten the narrow buckle.
I bend and press my mouth to the inside of her ankle.
Her breath catches, and I can’t resist.
I kiss the curve of her calf. The dress whispers over my knuckles when I gather it, slowly, only far enough. My mouth follows her leg upward. Calf. Knee. The pale scars crossing it.
I linger there.
Then higher, along the inside of her thigh, where four small punctures interrupt the smooth tan. I press a kiss over them before continuing upward, and her fingers bite into my good shoulder hard enough to bruise through the jacket.
“You said—” Her voice catches and frays. “You said we couldn’t.”
“I said I wouldn’t ruin you.”
I press one open-mouthed, unhurried kiss over the lace between her thighs.
The sound she makes will haunt me for the rest of my life.
The lace is damp against my lips. Every lesson I have learned about discipline, every wall I built inside myself, is reduced to the single act of stopping there.
I look up the length of her. Her chest rises too fast beneath the blue silk. Her eyes are dark, her lips parted, her lipstick miraculously and tragically perfect.
“You walk into that room knowing you are ours.”
“You,” she breathes, “are the worst man I’ve ever met.”
I lower the silk and smooth it flat with both palms. The second shoe follows. Buckle. Ankle. One final kiss to the fine bone beneath her skin.
I stand and offer her my arm. She takes it with a ferocious grip. Her legs are not entirely steady, and the look she gives me promises retribution in meticulous detail.
When we return to the others, Owen scents the air and his head snaps toward us.
“Let’s get this over with, shall we?”