Chapter 10 #2
“You will be noticed.” His mouth was beside her ear. “If challenged, the man I am outside these rooms, Beaumont, won’t scruple to lay public claim to what is his—mine—alone.” He set his mouth, open, to the vulnerable spot where her neck and shoulder met.
Sensation skittered through her body at the edge of his teeth against her skin. She tracked his hand’s unhurried path sliding up her rib cage.
“You could yet walk away from this,” he murmured.
His knuckles, just brushing the underside of one breast. His thighs, hard against her bottom. His thighs . . . and his cock. Anger lit his eyes, but oh, it was not only that, not nearly.
A wicked heat thrilled through her blood: Whatever else his motives, he desired her. She met his eyes. “I will not.”
His hand slipped higher, up over her breast. His palm passed lightly over her nipple, barely skimming it through the silk, just enough to sensitize it. His breath was hot on her neck.
The mirror showed a living tableau, a man half in shadow behind a woman, manifest intent in his eyes and hands. The reflection amplified every sensation: the wet heat of his mouth and the press of his teeth on her neck, abrading the tender flesh just short of marking it, stealing her breath.
She strove for stillness, but her body wanted to arch into his touch.
A single tremor betrayed her, pressed against him as she was.
Her eyes found his in the mirror again, and he smiled as though he’d been waiting for just that.
The full curve of his mouth owed to something darker and far more complex than amusement, but it transformed his face to nothing short of stunning.
Another wave of heat coursed through her.
His lips touched the sensitized spot where he’d rasped the side of her neck, soothing it, and then he closed his teeth gently on her nape. Claiming her.
A noise escaped her. Not protest. Sexual need.
Unfair, that you should have the upper hand in this, not when you desire me in truth.
The thought freed her abruptly from passivity. She twisted in his arms to face him and ran her hands hard across his ribs to splay on his back and then lower still, hauling him hard against her. His audacity gave her permission to return in kind. His body revealed its secrets even as hers did.
“I suppose an experienced lover would not stand there witless.” Her voice was not her own as she leaned into him.
She tasted the salt of his skin, the hint of soap where he had yet to lace his shirt or wind a neckcloth.
Something inside her was combusting; she let it burn wild.
She grazed her teeth along the hollow of his throat, plunging both hands into his hair to hold him in place.
His breath left him as she found his mouth with hers, greedy now.
He answered, his arms closing around her back to crush her against him.
The kiss became a battle of lips and tongues that spun rapidly beyond reason, each of them trying to wrest supremacy from the other in an open-mouthed clash of wills.
She welcomed the rawness of it, the anger and the hunger both. She was fully awake for the first time in months, no longer numb, colorless, emotionless.
She measured with her hands on his rear the slide of muscle as he shifted his hips forward. His cock, hard, nudged insistently against the softness of her thigh. A tremor passed the length of his body.
He ceased moving, although he did not release her, nor did she step away.
The room was quiet, save for their breathing. Muffled sounds filtered in from the street below: a cart passing, someone singing off pitch, a dog barking distantly. From the floor below came the faint murmur of voices.
Her heart’s every beat thudded in her chest, echoing in her head. She spoke, forcing a coolness to her voice that she in no way felt. “Are you satisfied now that I can withstand any degree of performative dissolution?” Thank God her voice did not shake.
The pulse leapt visibly in Nathaniel’s throat. “Are you?” Roughly, just beside her ear: “Not everything is pretense. You would do well to remember that.”
His meaning was unmistakable as he shifted his hips leisurely once, twice, again.
An aching pulse wanted an answer. It was equal parts deep-seated instinct and deliberation, fitting the juncture of her legs against him.
“And so it is not.” As unhurried as he had been, she hooked an ankle along his so that his cock settled precisely where it was meant to be.
It gratified her, the way his breath hitched before the moment broke.
He stepped away from her, and she moved to a window, arms folded about her middle. Despite her attempt at conveying indifference, she was trembling now, no longer caught up in pure response.
Glass clinked behind her, followed by the slosh of liquid. She stared unseeing out the window until Nathaniel came into her peripheral vision. She turned her head; he held out a tumbler with two fingers’ worth of a brown spirit.
“Armagnac,” he said succinctly. He crossed back to the bottle and poured himself the same quantity, drinking it down in one long swallow. She followed suit, breathing through the harsh burn in nose and throat.
Nathaniel ran a hand through his hair, still disordered from her own fingers, mussing it further.
Too much tension freighted the air between them for her to hold his gaze. She touched the empty glass to her forehead, welcome coolness against her burning skin.
He lifted his own glass slightly in question. She nodded, and he took hers, pouring again, closer to half full this time. Their fingers brushed as she accepted her glass, and even that slight contact sent a jolt skittering up her arm. She covered her discomfiture with a sip of liquor.
He raked a hand through his hair again and then seemed to catch that he was doing it, lowering his hand to his side. He exhaled. Was he also thinking of those last moments before they broke apart, when some elemental truth of their physical attraction had fully revealed itself?
“Do I owe you an apology?” he asked, finally breaking the heavy silence.
The growing warmth in her veins was bracing; she had nearly stopped trembling. Still, she took another sip before answering. “I gave you carte blanche.” No, that was not honest enough for the circumstances. “I was willing. In all ways. You would know it, had I not been.”
He nodded curtly and finished his Armagnac before crossing to the mirror.