14. The Duchess of Braxton #3
Her back hit the wall, and his body pressed against hers.
He was hard everywhere, and she was growing hotter.
He parted her legs with his knee and lifted against her center.
She gasped, tearing away from the kiss, not that it stopped.
He continued without her, scattering kisses in a scalding line down her throat, all the way to her cleavage where he dipped his tongue between her breasts.
Why was so little of his skin open to her perusal?
Everywhere she stroked, covered with silk or linen—shoulders, biceps, ribs, and abdomen.
The long, hard line of back and the taut muscle of his rear.
She smoothed her hands down his legs, his thighs like marble and something… tugged at the back of her mind.
What mind?
His thighs were marble, and what if kissing was vengeance? Fascinating idea, that.
His lips found hers again, and she almost lost every thought, just like she lost every breath, but then she remembered.
“You always put the potion bottle in your pocket.”
He kissed her cheek, her nose, the corner of her lip.
“Bran.” She pushed him a little to gain his attention. “Where is the potion bottle? You pocket it to slip into my pocket, and there is nothing in your pockets. Those breeches are as tight on you as a second skin.”
He cursed.
And she understood. “There was no potion, was there?”
“I don’t need a potion to beg for a kiss, Guin.
” His hand smoothed up her bare shoulder, up her neck to her jaw.
He tilted her head back, and his eyes, oh they were still glittering suns, hotter than before.
“I don’t need a potion to be damn near mad with lust for you.
” He bent and pressed his lips hot against her ear. “To part a man from his head for you.”
Words like that were potent potions and could make even the hardest hearts unfurl like spring blooms, new and tender.
“You lied,” she breathed. “Again.”
“And you have not single-handedly killed a room full of peers. I think it was a useful diversion.” He dipped in for another kiss, and she ducked out from under him.
“I’m choosing not to be angry with you.” She was tired of being angry. And tired of being as frustratingly aroused as he was every damn day. She opened the door and stepped into the hall and right into a gentleman hurrying down it.
“Apologies,” he said, righting her, grinning. When he saw her face, the grin died swiftly. “You’re her.” As affable as he’d seemed a few seconds earlier, he was all malice now, his lips a sneering slash across his face before he shot his hand out and wrapped it around her throat.
Shocked momentarily, he managed to slam her against the wall. The fairy orbs bobbling there shook.
Holding onto her breath and her consciousness, though black dots swam before her eyes, Guin grasped his forearms and brought her knee up into his groin.
He released her immediately and hit the ground in a wailing puddle.
Bran stepped out of the shadows and put his boot over the man’s neck. “You enjoy hurting women?”
The man clutched at Bran’s foot, clawed up his ankle, his face mottled, gasping red.
Another man came out of the room where they’d congregated and spotted them immediately. “Release Lord Maryville now!”
“This is tiring,” Bran said.
“They’re not even a challenge.” Guin stepped over the man on the floor—Maryville presumably—and started toward the other.
But Bran beat her. He seemed to move down the hallway with the flicker of the fairy orbs, a faint blur before he stood in front of the second man, a knife at his neck.
“You will go to the ballroom, and you will stay there until after Lord Morington’s announcement.
Then you will consider very carefully any violence you intend to commit against this woman. ”
The man’s eyes shot to Guin, and she gave him a little curtsy.
When the other man grasped her ankle, she shook him off with one swift jerk and stood beside Bran. “This truly does grow tiresome. I’d like to go home.”
Bran pointed his knife toward the ballroom before returning it to its holster. “Go.”
The man helped his friend to his feet then scrambled in the appointed direction.
“Ready?” Bran asked her, straightening his cuffs.
“Your glamour’s half on.”
“Fucking Jupiter.” He sounded adorably irritated.
She couldn’t help a smile, a little laugh, as she put him right beneath a fairy light. Braxton’s golden mien washed over Bran’s face, across his body, and the shift didn’t hurt quite as much as it usually did. “All better.”
He took her arm, and they approached the ballroom together. On the other side of the door, the violins roared.
Morington waited with impatience in the toe-tap of his shoe. “There you are. It’s time.”
And five minutes after that, beneath a shower of falling stars (but no giant potion bottles, thank Gaia), the ton—with half astonished, half outraged faces—knew Lady Guinevere was the Duchess of Braxton.
And as the glamoured falling stars surrounded Guin, the streaks of their tails felt like the bars of a golden cage.