The Lady By His Side(67)
So it had to be there, and her moment was now.
It was time for her to put her stamp on the relationship she was determined they would have.
And regardless of whatever plans he might have made to the contrary, as witnessed by the fact he hadn’t come to her room, she knew perfectly well that if she issued a challenge, he wouldn’t—simply didn’t have it in him to—refuse to engage.
Turning back to the door, she carefully eased it shut. No sense waking the tiger too early.
She stood staring at the panel—this was her moment of no return.
She drew in a breath, swung around, and determinedly walked to the bed.
She halted beside it, blinking as she saw he was definitely not asleep.
Blinking as her eyes drank in the sight of his bare chest, displayed in its muscled glory given he was lying with his hands behind his head, and the sheet lay across his waist.
It had been a decade and more since she’d last seen his chest bare, and the image she retained from then was very, very different to what lay before her now.
What lay before her now made her senses sing.
Made her mouth water.
Several more seconds elapsed before she finally dragged her gaze up to his face.
And despite the dim light, met a look that was one step away from a glare.
“What the devil are you doing here?”
His voice was low, his tone aggressive, his diction clipped and forceful.
Had she harbored any doubt that he held a definite view as to how their relationship should evolve—specifically, under his direction—those words would have eradicated it.
She took her time studying him, then opened her eyes wide. “With all your years of experience, after that kiss in the conservatory, I would have thought you would know.”
Her inner wildness had well and truly taken over; even to her ears, her voice sounded sultry, converting the simple words into a blatant provocation.
She saw tendons in his arms shift as his hands fisted in response, but his lips had set in a hard line, and, stubborn to the last, he didn’t move. “I decided,” she continued, her tone a conversational purr, “that it was time we dealt with this—with what’s grown between you and me.”
“Undoubtedly.” Sebastian seized on her words like a drowning man. “But is this the best venue for a rational discussion?” With her standing by his bed, gilded by moonlight, her hair cascading over her shoulders, her curves wrapped in a pearl-pink silk robe—with, he fervently prayed, a nightgown beneath—she was a sight designed expressly to addle his wits. Rational discussion was already far beyond him.
It was all he could do to keep himself locked in position in the bed. His inner self was scrabbling to break free of his reins and seize her. And…
Thrusting such thoroughly unhelpful thoughts aside, he fought to keep his eyes glued to her face and ignore the impulses pummeling him.
Her fine brows arched. Although her expression conveyed taunting amusement of a distinctly feminine flavor, he sensed something else in her shadowed eyes, in the steadiness of her gaze—a quality of steely determination, again with a definitely feminine feel that, he realized, he associated with her. Like a hallmark.
A hallmark that declared her backbone was of the same tempered steel as her mother’s. As his mother’s, his sister’s. And all their ilk.
He was a nobleman, but she was his equal.
That last scale fell from his eyes as she quietly replied, “Who said anything about discussion—rational or otherwise?”
And he knew from her tone this was one battle he wasn’t going to win.
He made one last desperate bid for the reins. “Antonia—”
Smoothly, with a determination that was all the more impactful because of her gracefulness, she drew the sash at her waist undone, and the sides of her silken robe gaped.
He broke off with a damned-near-audible gasp as he saw his prayer for a nightgown had been rejected.
Beneath the robe lay long, delicately curved limbs, perfectly rounded shoulders, breasts that promised to fill his hands, and hips that formed a perfect cradle that was—at least as his primitive mind saw it—shaped specifically for him, all sheathed in skin one shade away from alabaster white; the moonlight struck, caressed, and turned that skin exquisitely pearlescent.
He felt as if he’d swallowed his tongue. He certainly couldn’t find it.
His mouth had dried—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been struck speechless at the sight of a woman’s body.
He had a sneaking suspicion he never had been—not until now.
She took his silence as acquiescence—as surrender, which it was. She shrugged off the robe, letting it slide with a sibilant susurration down her delectably long limbs to pool about her slender feet.