Chapter 11 #3
Oberlin was the concern now. He’d sought out Isobel immediately after quitting the table; he was crowding her, touching her sleeve with too much familiarity. She had a brittle smile fixed on her face, shaking her head at something Oberlin asked and shrugging her arm to dislodge his hand.
He quickly excused himself from the table, moving behind Isobel. He banded one arm across her midsection. “This beauty has come with me tonight,” he said lazily, “as I’ve informed you once before.”
Annoyance—and something darker?—flashed across Oberlin’s face.
He stroked a hand down Isobel’s hip, keeping his eyes on Oberlin. “You do not wish to desert me for M. Oberlin, do you, chérie?”
“Non.” She leaned backwards into him. “You are all I want, mon amour.”
Oberlin accepted a glass of wine from a passing waiter.
“That is my misfortune, then. Perhaps on some other night I will have the superior luck over your friend at the table.” He drank deeply, eyes raking Isobel.
“In other endeavors as well.” With another hard look, he finished the wine, slamming the empty glass onto a table before exiting the salon.
More than one person looked on with blatant curiosity. The tense interaction as finale to their gameplay had attracted interest.
“We are observed,” he murmured, mouth nearly against Isobel’s ear. Her hair brushed his cheek as she acknowledged his words.
He pitched his voice to carry. “Come, chérie, let us find a place to sit a moment so that I may celebrate my wins.”
“How glad I am you have stopped at last with the cards.” Her own voice was clear. “Although I am course delighted that you have had such success tonight, mon amour.”
On a vacated couch that commanded a good view of the room, he tumbled Isobel sideways onto his lap. She caught him entirely off guard when she resettled herself facing him, twitching aside enough of her skirts to come astride his thighs.
She tilted her face down towards his, hands resting on his shoulders. “I confess I was quite lonely without you, mon coeur.” The smoke of her voice curled around him.
He traced her spine through sarcenet and on up above the low back neckline, her bare skin beneath his ungloved hands smoother than the silk of her gown. Around her face, hair was sliding free of its pins, faintly citrus and floral.
Detachment was slipping from his grasp, with cream fabric pooled across his lap and only the fine wool of his trousers separating his cock from the warmth between her legs. He grazed a thumb lightly over one nipple, pebbled beneath her gown.
Her breath came out on a rush, so close it gusted against his cheek. She leaned into him.
He’d accomplished what he’d intended with Fournier at the card table. He had another objective now.
But not in here, and not for show.
Isobel found herself abruptly displaced from Nathaniel’s lap.
He stood, hand extended to her. “Walk with me.”
He clearly had a destination in mind, moving briskly out of the brightly lit salon, her arm through his.
He led her onto the terrace overlooking the boulevards.
Between ornate pillars, the terrace was open to the chill night air.
Quinquet lamps in sconces lit each column, but there were still many pockets of shadow to be found.
Nathaniel steered her to one such space between columns, setting her back against the wall, darkness pooling around them exquisite as velvet.
She laid her palms flat and looked up at him.
He set his hands on the wall to either side of her head, and she knew, oh, she knew, why he’d brought her out here. Cold stone bit through her thin sarcenet gown, but she barely noticed it with the fever rising on her skin.
He took his time about it, kissing her. She gave herself over to it. The rise and fall of his rib cage beneath her hands matched her own uneven breath.
He touched her nowhere with his hands except once, briefly, catching her chin but only to tilt it, deepening how their lips clung and slid. The juxtaposition of his restraint in touching her and the utter command of his mouth was devastatingly erotic.
She couldn’t have said how long it went on.
Endless. Not nearly long enough. Some noise, laughter or something else, eventually penetrated the little world in the shadows.
It recalled her to the terrace slowly, like surfacing from a dream.
Still with hands on the wall, Nathaniel lowered his head beside her ear.
“That,” he said so low she barely caught the words, “is what should have been, earlier.”
Yes. A surrender purely to desire, unalloyed by frustration or ire.
The outside world intruded: the voices of other people strolling on the terrace. étienne Baudelaire, a laughing woman on his arm, glanced briefly their way. His attention was all for the woman clinging to him, but he’d evidently relayed some sort of nonverbal communication to Nathaniel.
“It is time to take our leave.” Nathaniel pushed off the wall. “We will meet Baudelaire below.”
Her hair was disheveled. She attempted to twist pieces of it back into place.
“Allow me.” With gentle fingers Nathaniel smoothed it, repositioning errant pins.
Almost, she might have imagined his lips brushing the back of her neck.