Chapter 22
“Tell me all your secrets,” he murmured close to her ear. His voice curled around the loose tendrils of her hair, shaking something free within her.”
Adelaide
Noelle wasn’t dreaming. It had been four days since visiting the Dowager Viscountess; and tonight, the handsome lord was standing below her balcony window looking like some fantasy a school girl would conjure up.
His hair was inartfully coiffed, his body well adorned in a blue velvet jacket and tight breeches that showed off his muscled legs.
He had his hands at his hips as he looked up at her, the motion left his jacket straining over his taut arms and shoulders.
“What are you doing at my window, my lord?” She called down, not caring about being heard in a house this large at this late hour of night.
“I was invited to go out with your brothers, and I declined,” he answered, making to climb up.
Surely he couldn't possibly intend-oh, but he did.
She covered her eyes. She heard an awful lot of rustling and male grunts and cursing.
When she reopened her eyes, he had fallen on the ground.
He was somehow even more attractive with a scratch at his cheek and ivy in his hair.
“Step back, I’m trying again,” He called from the ground, looking up at her. She couldn’t watch.
Suddenly he was vaulting the stone wall with fierce determination, grunting as he pulled and heaved his way up.
The sounds he made climbing his way up to her did strange, lustful things to her insides.
And there he was, standing in front of her, fending off an attack from a vine of ivy.
Long, green, leafy strands were twined in his hair and wrapped around his leg as he stood shaking dirt and dust from his hands.
“This is your room?” He asked, looking at the wall paper printed with horses…horse printed curtains and equine statues…equine embroidery on the bed pillows and equine carvings on the canopy’s wooden bed posts. The laugh that escaped him was infectious. “It’s so…equine.”
“My grandmother’s handiwork. I’m lucky to have a room of my own in town at all. You should see Olivia’s, she got the feline room.”
“I’ll just avert my eyes and won’t look a gift horse in the mouth, then.”
As the two of them laughed, she reached for his arm. He never missed an opportunity to make her laugh, that was one thing she’d always appreciated about Fitz. He had said before that she was serious; perhaps she liked that she laughed more with him than she did with anyone else.
He turned and hit his shin on a tall knick knack, a 3 foot tall painted porcelain horse, and made a small groan of pain.
Tonight alone, he’d fended off her brothers, suffered a fall, climbed an Ivy-covered trellis, scaled a balcony, and now was rewarded with an attack from a painted equine statue.
She looked at him as though she expected him to say to her at any moment, “you’re not worth any of this.” He didn’t.
He stood before her, taking both her hands in his, pulling her to him, letting go of her hands to wrap those magnificent arms around her.
He rested his head atop her own.When he nestled her against his broad shoulder, she felt his chest expand as he breathed deep several times.
She paced her own breathing with his. His lips near her ear, he smelled of leaves, of horses, and wine.
Of course she had to go and interrupt the moment by picking at threads.
“Why did you turn down my brothers’ invitation?”
“Two reasons,” he said against the top of her head, “To impress the Earl, make him think I’m a new man.”
She gave a teasing little laugh. “You’re not in the least.”
He tightened his arm about her waist and looked down into her eyes. “Am I not?” His voice was ragged, provoking an answer from her.
“Let me see,” she stood on her tip toes and brought his mouth to hers where it belonged, flicking her tongue over his. His mouth was lush and hot and perfect against her own as she tasted him like some feast from Mount Olympus. Her tongue slid over the hollows and vacancies of his mouth, his teeth.
“You taste the same to me. Still delicious,” she said against his lips. She felt brazen, she wasn’t usually a rapt conversationalist and spent hours afterward mentally kicking herself for her every choice of words; but this, him, talking and not talking with him, it came naturally. Almost…easy.
“Mmm,” His voice was a low rumble against her skin that coursed over her with ripples of pleasure, “That’s the second reason I declined an invitation to an evening carousing.”
“To kiss me?”
“To be alone with you,” He said the word like some worthy endeavor, something dear he was willing to risk life and limb for. In his own rakish way, he had.
Fitz took her face in his hands, returning her lips to his mouth. He drank and sipped from her like
she was the source of some life-giving substance. His hands roamed down to her shoulders, tightening against her breast.
She placed her hand on his and clasped it against her. “I want you here,” she whispered, her voice as undone as her countenance, her self control.
“Are you sure?“ he said, placing a little nip on her neck.
She groaned her encouragement.
“Because I heard that Sir Edward came to call on you.”
Abruptly, she pulled away from him to pull her wrapper about her and cross her arms. He immediately let out a low curse and tried to pull her back to him with a hand at her waist; but she took a step backward.
“Are you jealous?” she arched a brow, her arms still folded defensively.
He let out a snort. “Of him? Hardly.”
“Perhaps you should be reminded I do have options other than you,” she said the words casually; but he did not take them so.
He stepped impossibly close, staring down at her lips, lining up her hips until they were flush with his even through layers of fabric.
She could feel the insinuation of him against her.
What she did to him. How good the two of them would be together.
“What do you mean, Princess?” He seemed unable to contain the urgency in his voice.
“What if I’m looking for someone people see me with and don’t assume he’s a fortune hunter because… why else would he be with me?”
He moved her hair back from her face and put all of his gentle concern into his voice. “It’s my fault… If I wasn’t so…unscholarly…so unserious…maybe they’d see that I can’t take my eyes; or my hands, for that matter, off of you because you’re as brilliant as you are beautiful.”
Her eyelids fluttered a moment as she ingested his words; but she continued her tirade, “That’s exactly my point. Maybe I should be with someone…less of a Rake. Or someone with more substance and more talents than simply being adorable.”
The words came out with more biting force than she had intended, but she couldn’t take them back.
Fitz didn’t flinch, it was almost like he was used to being insulted, and had merely folded it into himself or placed it on a pile with the others he’d endured. “I have many talents you don’t even know about.”
“Enlighten me then, Fitz.” She raised her head in challenge as she backed away toward one of those hideous horse covered walls. Her eyes narrowed beneath her saucily perched spectacles and her jaw tightened.
“You know those silly games at the fair? I’m ridiculously adept at those.”
She laughed as he sipped at her earlobe. The feeling of Fitz being jealous, of Fitz fighting to capture her attention was giddying.
“Anything else?”
“Dancing,” he trailed a finger down the space between her breasts.
Her eyelids fluttered and she took a moment to compose herself as her breath hitched at his touch.
The warmth of his familiar hands in an unfamiliar place, it wasn’t enough.
She wanted more of his hands in more unfamiliar places, becoming more familiar moment by all consuming moment, touch by splendid touch.
“You have me there; but I have firsthand knowledge of that one already.”
He listed off his talents while planting kisses on the backs of her hands, the inside of her wrist, trailing up her arms.“Horseback riding. Playing cards. Pugilism. Giving speeches. Lawn games. Sport of a..different sort. ”
“That’s an impressive list,” she added, spellbound as he grabbed her wrist and draped her arm about his neck.
He pinned her against that wall, eyeing a table of fruit next to them on her bedside table.
One of his knees parted hers, his hips canting against her as she clutched at the fine lawn of his shirt.
“You probably don't care very much for such unscholarly pursuits. This one I think you’ll like,” he grabbed a cherry from the bowl, and threw it in the air, catching it with his mouth.
Noelle’s eyebrows raised, her eyes widening, her pulse quickening as Fitz crushed the cherry in his mouth.
She was fixated by the movements of his square stubbled jaw, until he pulled out the stem.
“There, I’ve tied it into a knot. Bet Sir Edward can’t do that. Impressed?”
She chuckled again. “What am I meant to be impressed by, exactly?” Her words may have been unenthusiastic; but the heavy rise and fall of her chest, her affectionate smile betrayed her. He looked down at her like he could devour her again and again and never be satiated.
“Would you like a personalized demonstration of one of the many things I can do with my tongue?”
She ducked and moved away from him just as his lips lingered over hers. “Fitz-” she breathed as he pulled her to him, placing her hand over his heaving chest.
“Noelle-” her name, soft as air, on his talented lips.
One of his fingers slipped the shoulder of her night dress down, and then the other.
He pulled at the ribbon tying the front of her nightgown until it dissolved in his hands, opening her dress and revealing her to him.
One hand pushed up her breast until it was even fuller, like a ripe apricot with the same softness.
She pulled his mouth closer with a swift movement.
Heeding her admonishment, he placed the orb in his mouth, teasing and licking in soft, rhythmic circles.
He moved his attention to the other side, but not before blowing softly on her nipple until it stiffened under the weight of his attention.
Her hands dug through his hair, to his scalp, one of her legs wrapping around him.
So close to her chest, he could surely feel the heated, furious pacing of her heart.
He gave his mouth to her in strokes that thieved her breath and her composure, and offered her pleasure in return.
He paused to look up at her, “Shall I continue my demonstration?”
She turned her head as though a stack of papers caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.
“Read my work. Tell me your honest opinion. Then you have my undivided attention for all your demonstrations.”
Dear god, she’d almost given in to him entirely. The strings of her composure, the ties that bound her to ambitions, could surely not be as easily undone as the ones holding together her nightdress.
“You’re serious,” he said, toying with the little ties at the front of her night gown.
She snatched them from his hand and tied them in a fluid motion, as she did so, she explained.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want more than just physical chemistry. I want a partnership, my lord.”
He flinched at her use of his title and not his name. “Am I not partner enough for you? Now?” He leaned his head so close his breath was her air, “I’ve made you wet for me, I can feel it.”
Her eyelids fluttered against his cheek impatiently like butterfly wings. Her resolve weakened against his gaze, but held. “We could be so much more to each other than bed partners.”
He pulled away and swore again, hanging his head. His hands bracketed his hips as he looked at her undone. “Is that all you think I want from you?”
She shifted on her feet, biting her lip; but made no reply.
He took her face between both of his large hands in answer.
“Noelle, I’ll prove to you that you’re much more to me than a lover. I've had those. I could get another one,” the look she gave him told him that was not the right thing to have said, so he tried again.
“Sometimes I believe that I’m adept with words; but then you humble me until I feel I must be either the stupidest man alive, or somehow quite brilliant for wanting to keep this incredible woman for my own that everyone somehow seems to overlook.
I realize now I was only ever full of empty words and emptier promises. You deserve so much better than that. I’ll try again. This, me, you,” he gestured between them, pulling her close, “It’s something different I can’t altogether explain. Add to that,
I already told you my hands are tied and I must marry. I also already told you I want to be a husband to you, to build something with you. And so I’ll show you.”