Wicked Becomes You(44)
“Remove your hand.”
She started violently at the sound of Alex’s voice. But Mr. Barrington did not look away from her. “Mr. de Grey,” he said lightly. Mr. de Grey? “Did my men not make it clear to you? I am in Paris for pleasure. I have no interest in discussing business.”
“Fair enough,” Alex replied calmly. “However, if you do not remove your hand, we’ll soon be discussing how you might reattach it to your wrist.”
“Oh?” Mr. Barrington released her with a curious little smile. He stepped backward and brushed down his jacket, then slid his hands into his pockets. “Prior claim, is it?”
Alex stepped between them, a tall, broad-shouldered bulwark, but the hard look he gave her seemed less than reassuring. “Yes,” he said curtly. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
Mr. Barrington nodded agreeably. “And you, Miss Goodrick—are you in accord with this claim? I confess, I was thinking to propose that we take a tour of Montmartre in the moonlight. But if you bid me, I will abandon that hope.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Montmartre. Was there any other word better able to kindle the imagination? Here she was, in the epicenter of everything scandalous in Paris! Who would not wish for a tour?
Alex took her elbow and delivered a slight, prompting squeeze. A quick glance upward revealed him to be scowling in the very brotherly manner he professed not to own. She did so love a white knight who abandoned her, then acted very ill-tempered upon discovering that she’d found other pursuits to occupy herself.
“Answer him,” he said softly.
She gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look. “But what shall I say, monsieur? After all, it isn’t as if I can claim to have had any long acquaintance with”—glancing toward Mr. Barrington, she delicately cleared her throat—“Mr. de Grey.”
“Oh, not any long acquaintance,” Alex said, “but certainly a thorough one.” His hand slid around her waist and curved firmly over her hip, turning her toward him. She jerked upright from surprise, and he pressed his mouth to hers.
His lips took hers softly, suggestively. They clung, teasing her mouth to open to him.
He was kissing her in front of Mr. Barrington.
He broke away, delivering a soft, hot kiss to the side of her neck, dragging his mouth up to her ear on a hot breath. His teeth closed gently on her lobe. “Behave,” he whispered.
As he withdrew, he gave her a smile. Such a smile—amused, playful, thoroughly wicked. She had never seen it before. This was the smile he gave the women he seduced.
It knocked all possible responses straight from her mind.
Only one certainty remained: she was most definitely not going to behave. The results of that were far more boring.
“I suppose,” she said on a sigh to Mr. Barrington, “that I will admit to some knowledge of Mr. de Grey, now that he reminds me of it. But his attentions are so inconstant, he can hardly blame me for forgetting.”
Mr. Barrington’s face cleared. He gave her a sunny smile of perfect understanding. “I am hard-pressed to imagine any man so foolish as to neglect you, Miss Goodrick.”
Alex’s warm palm cupped her neck, his fingertips dragging lightly down her nape. “Oh, she isn’t neglected,” he murmured, and the roughness in his voice, combined with his touch, sent a small, involuntary shiver over her skin. “She simply likes to complain.”
Mr. Barrington locked eyes with Alex. “In a soprano?” he asked. “Or a mezzo, would you say?”
Alex’s hand paused. She divined that as a sign of his confusion. He had no idea she sang. It was a talent inherited from her mother, and one that Mama had never encouraged. “Neither,” she said.
“A contralto?” Mr. Barrington looked delighted, although it was to Alex that he directed his smile. “Oh, really, Miss Goodrick, now I must hear you sing.”
Alex matched the smile with one of his own. “Must,” he repeated evenly. “That can be a dangerous word, I find.”
The brief, fraught silence that followed unnerved Gwen. “I have lately been on tour in the Americas,” she said, attempting to restore the atmosphere to a lighter mood. “I meant to give my voice a rest, but perhaps, as a token of friendship . . .”
Alex laughed softly. She slanted him a glance, and his eyes met hers, warm, dancing. “Concluded in San Francisco, didn’t it?” he asked. “Your tour, I mean.”
His collusion briefly threw her off. She regained her smile. “Of course not,” she said warmly. “The cards and drink are rotting your mind, poor man. Absinthe and roulette,” she confided to Mr. Barrington. “Terrible plagues. He is thinking of two years ago, when I was crowned Queen of the Barbary Coast. But this season, I went no further than Chicago. Earthquakes do not agree with me.”