Chapter 10 #2
“And why should that concern me?” She set the tray on a shelf with a jarring rattle and turned to face him—then lost whatever she’d meant to say next. He was too close. Near enough that she could see the flecks of silver in his grey eyes. “I need to get back to work. If you’ll excuse me.”
“You felt it.” His tone dropped low, almost hoarse. “At the lake. When I held you.”
Heat flooded her face and throat. “I don’t know what you are talking about.” She smoothed the front of her apron with fingers that would not stop shaking.
“Liar.” The word came out almost gentle, which made it worse.
He stepped fully into the room, and the door swung half-closed behind him.
Sandalwood and rain—that was what he smelled of, and the storeroom was too small to escape it.
“You felt what you do to me. What you have always done to me. And it terrifies you because your body told the same story mine did.”
“That was —” She broke off, her mouth working around a word she couldn’t find, the memory of his hardness against her hip burning through every sensible thought she’d built in the three days since.
“My body saying what my pride won’t let me.” He closed the distance between them by another half-step, his boots scraping the worn stone floor. “And I am done pretending otherwise.”
“Stop.” The word cracked down the middle as it left her. She stepped backward until her spine met the sturdy wooden shelf, jars clinking softly behind her.
“I have tried.” His ashen eyes burned into hers with a raw, agonizing honesty. “Two weeks of staying away. Two weeks of telling myself I don’t care about you.”
“But you don’t care about me. Why should you?” She lifted her chin, fury finally eclipsing her fear. “Your words, my lord. Nothing of consequence. That’s what you called me to your friends.”
He flinched like she’d struck him across the scar. “I was trying to protect you,” he said, reaching out to grip the edge of a shelf near her head, effectively pinning her in place.
“From what?” Her eyes flicked briefly to his white-knuckled grip on the wood before snapping back to his face.
“From me.” He stepped closer, so close she could feel the heat radiating from his chest. “From what the ton would say if they thought I was interested. Your reputation would be destroyed by their gossip.”
“So you destroyed it yourself instead.” She held on to the shelf to steady her shaking frame. “You made me feel like dirt beneath your boots. All to protect me. How very noble of you, my lord.”
“I apologize.” He stepped closer until he was looming over her, the individual stitches in his silk waistcoat coming into sharp focus as he crowded her space. “I know what I did. I have hated myself for it every day since.”
“Good.” She tried to slide along the shelf to escape his shadow, but he tracked her movement, caging her with his body without yet making contact.
“Does he make you feel like this?” He searched her eyes, his words dropping to a rough, gravelly rasp. “Your Edmund.”
“Like what?” She breathed, her pulse skidding wildly as she pressed her spine against the wood.
“Like you are burning.” He braced one hand on the shelf beside her head, his arm creating a barrier she couldn’t pass. “Like you cannot breathe. Like you’d rather fight than walk away.”
“Edmund is kind.” She spat the words, her eyes flashing with defiance. “He is gentle. He would never behave with such insolence. He would never...”
“He would never set you on fire.” Dominic finished for her, his focus dropping to her mouth with a hunger he didn’t bother hiding. “He would never make you feel alive.”
“I don’t want to feel alive.” The words tore out of her, ragged and desperate. She shoved at his shoulders, her palms meeting the unyielding wall of his chest. “I want to feel safe. I want peace. I want...”
“You want what you cannot have with him.” He crowded her against the shelf, the soft flour sacks yielding at her back while his body remained hard and hot against her. “You want someone who sees the fire beneath all that armor. Someone who is not afraid of it.”
“You know nothing about what I want.” She turned her face away, her breath coming in short, jagged gasps.
“I know you haven’t stopped thinking about me either.” His mouth hovered just above hers, his warmth ghosting over her skin. “I know because I see it in your eyes, in the way you look away.”
“You are delusional.” She whispered the insult, though she didn’t pull back.
“Am I?” His breath brushed her lips, teasing the sensitive skin. “Then why is your pulse racing? Why are your hands shaking? Why do you look at me like you cannot decide whether to run or—”
“Or what?” She lifted her chin, refusing to cower even as her knees threatened to fail her.
“Or this.” The words were a mere vibration against her mouth.
He kissed her.
She should have pushed him away. She should have screamed or brought her knee up hard.
Instead, as his mouth moved over hers with a hot, demanding hunger, her resolve shattered.
His hand fisted in her hair, tilting her head back to deepen the contact, pressing her into the shelf until she felt every rigid line of him through her muslin dress.
She kissed him back.
Her hands fisted in his wool coat, dragging him closer. Her mouth opened under his, hungry and furious, while he let out a low, desperate groan that vibrated through her very bones. His hands found her waist, pulling her against him until there was no space left.
A flour sack tumbled from the shelf beside her head, bursting softly and coating the floor in white dust. Neither of them noticed.
His hands slid down her sides, gripping her hips to lift her onto the edge of the shelf.
More sacks shifted and fell as she wrapped her legs around his waist. He stepped between them, the rigid length of him straining against his breeches as he pressed into her.
His hand found her ankle beneath her skirts, sliding up her calf and over her knee with agonizing slowness.
She should stop him. Should shove him away, slap his face, remind him who he was and who she was.
His fingers traced along her inner thigh, and every logical thought in her head turned to smoke. “Tell me to stop.” His breath was scorching against her ear. “Say the word and I shall walk out that door.”
She said nothing. She simply tilted her pelvis toward him, opening wider.
“Nell.” His expression was wrecked as he pulled back just enough to look at her, his chest heaving. “I need you to say it. Yes or no.”
“Yes.” The word ripped out of her. “God help me. Yes.”
His fingers found the slit in her drawers, discovering the slick, aching heat of her. She bit down on her own hand to keep from crying out, her eyes fluttering shut.
“So wet.” A dark growl escaped him as his fingers slid through her folds. “Is this for me?”
She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t think. His thumb circled the bundle of nerves at her center, and her whole body jerked in his arms.
“Answer me.” He pressed harder, rubbing slow, maddening circles. “Is this for me, Nell? Or do you get like this for your kind, gentle Edmund?”
“I hate you.” She whimpered, her hips rocking instinctively against his hand. “I hate you so much.”
“I know.” He slid a finger inside her, and her back arched off the shelf. “But you are going to come for me anyway.”
He worked her with devastating skill. One finger became two, stretching her and crooking forward, yet his thumb kept up its relentless rhythm, driving her higher and higher.
“Look at me.” He gripped her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. “I want to see your face when you shatter.”
She couldn’t look away. His eyes held hers with a predatory intensity; and her whole body wound tighter, a coil of tension nearing its breaking point.
“That’s it.” His features darkened with a primal focus. “Let go. Give it to me.”
She shattered. Her teeth sank into her fist to muffle her scream, her body clenching around his fingers in wave after wave of release.
He worked her through the climax, slowing his strokes and drawing out every last tremor until she finally collapsed against his shoulder, boneless and gasping for air.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Her forehead remained pressed against his shoulder, her breath hot through his linen shirt, but then, he withdrew slowly, and she shuddered at the sudden, hollow loss of him.
He raised his hand to his mouth, his eyes burning into hers, and licked his fingers clean.
“Sweet.” The word was a rasp, ruined by the friction of the moment. “Even sweeter than I imagined.”
A wire pulled taut inside her and gave. She grabbed the lapels of his coat with both fists and dragged his mouth down to hers. She kissed him hard, tasting herself on his tongue. Dominic groaned into her mouth, his hands gripping her hips to pull her flush against his frame.
She bit his lip. It was a hard, vicious snap that drew the metallic taste of copper into her mouth.
He jerked back with a sharp hiss of pain. Blood welled on his lower lip before dripping down his chin—and she stared at him, her breathing ragged, every breath tearing out of her. The taste of him sat heavy on her tongue.
“Don’t come here again.” The words shook, yet she fixed him with a steady, freezing glare. “Ever.”
He touched his lip, looking at the blood on his fingertips before shifting his regard back to her.
She looked magnificent amidst the chaos of fallen flour sacks, wrecked and furious.
He smiled. It was a slow, dangerous expression, his teeth stained pink.
“I’m afraid I can’t promise that, Mrs. Ashford. ”
He inclined his head in a small, formal gesture, a gentleman acknowledging a lady in a drawing room, and walked out of the storeroom. She heard his heavy footsteps cross the shop floor. She heard the front door open and the bell chime one final time as it closed.
He was gone.
She sat on the shelf, surrounded by the ruins of her work, her thighs still trembling and the ghost of his blood on her tongue.
The front door banged open. Nell flinched, her heart beating faster.
She stumbled out of the storeroom on legs that felt like water, smoothing her skirts with frantic hands.
Daphne stood in the kitchen doorway, her face flushed pink from the autumn wind and her delivery basket swinging empty on her arm.
Her eyes swept over Nell, noting the disheveled hair, the high colour in her cheeks, and the swollen curve of her lips.
“I just passed Lord Westmore in the street.” Daphne said with piercing curiosity. “His lip was bleeding quite profusely.”
Nell said nothing. She moved to the worktable and gripped the edge until her knuckles turned white, needing the solid wood to keep from collapsing.
“He was smiling.” Daphne set down her basket and moved closer, her eyes narrowing into slits. “Bleeding and smiling like a cat who had caught a particularly fat mouse. What happened, Nell?”
Nell looked at her friend, seeing the question burning there. She couldn’t give the answer. Not to Daphne. Not to anyone.
“I don’t know.” She heard the words fall from her lips, and the lie soured in her mouth. “I don’t know what I did.”
But she did know. She knew exactly what she’d done.
Dominic made it halfway down the lane before he tasted blood.
He stopped, pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. It came away red. He stared at it, then pulled his handkerchief from his coat and scrubbed his chin clean. The cut on his lip he could do nothing about—swollen and visible, a brand she’d left on him with her teeth.
He couldn’t walk through the village square like this.
Not with her shop sitting at the end of the street and every tongue in Cresswell ready to wag.
One whisper that the viscount had stumbled out of Nell Ashford’s storeroom with blood on his face, and the damage would fall on her.
Never on him. Men like him collected scandal like dust on a coat sleeve. Nell would lose everything.
He cut down the alley between the smithy and the saddler’s, taking the back lane toward the churchyard. His collar turned up, his stride quick.
But beneath the caution, his blood still roared.
He could still feel her. The way she’d shattered around his fingers, biting into her own fist to keep quiet. The way she’d grabbed his collar and kissed him like she meant to wreck him—then done exactly that with her teeth.
Don’t come here again. Ever.
He smiled against the sting of his split lip.
She could bar the door. She could spit fire and threats and tell him to keep his distance until her voice gave out. It wouldn’t change what he’d felt—her body arching into his touch, not away from it. Her mouth opening under his, hungry and furious and honest in a way her words refused to be.
He would not be careless with her name. He would not parade through the village or let the gossips sharpen their knives on her reputation. She had children, a livelihood, a standing in this place that one reckless moment could gut.
But he was done pretending he didn’t want her.
He touched his lip again, the pain bright and grounding. She’d marked him, and he intended to earn every scar that followed.