She put her hand over his. He offered her his trademark rogue’s smile. She understood now exactly what that smile signified. It was a personal promise of long, sweaty nights and no quarter given.
Her grip tightened over his by no conscious volition. If he loved her . . . then what couldn’t she do? What couldn’t the world show to her? What wasn’t possible?
“I am bored out of my skull,” he said. “Do you think we’ve put sufficient time into this purgatory?”
“We promised we would not leave until the twins did,” she reminded him.
His head tipped slightly. A new gleam entered his eye. “Would not leave the house,” he said.
Beneath her palm, his skin was hot, his fingers strong. The possibility in his suggestive smile made her pulse quicken. “Alex, we can’t . . .”
“Come,” he said, turning her toward the door. In her ear, he breathed, “Be a little wicked, Miss Maudsley.”
Here, indeed, was wickedness: she realized, as she followed him out of the ballroom and down the hall, that she had been dreaming of this while she’d wandered, lost, through the house. She knew exactly where they should go. She stepped ahead to lead him and he followed close on her heels, not speaking, nudging her when she paused, nipping at her ear and muddying her doubts when the curious glance of some masked passerby made her courage falter.
She stopped by the baize door, now standing shut, through which she had spied the open linen closet. Turning back to Alex on a great breath, she said, “I think this might work. Just inside, there’s a—”
He took her under the arms and put his mouth to hers as he backed her through the door. Some distant, rational part of her listened for the thump that spelled the door’s closure; the rest of her wits were already scattered beneath the driving pressure of his kiss. They had not kissed with this intent since Milan. There had been no opportunity. In the days since, she had started to wonder if the wildness and freedom she’d felt in his arms had been the product of an overfevered imagination, the wishful thinking of a woman afraid of slipping back into deadly, dulling comforts.
But she had not imagined it. His lips on hers made every part of her come alive. She pressed herself into him for more of it, then let him push her back against the wall, breathing encouragements into his mouth, urging him on to greater ferocity. Her nails caught in his shirt, beneath his shoulder blades, digging into the density of his muscle, daring it to try to resist her. His mouth slipped down her neck, teeth scraping, testing; he bit the place where her throat joined her shoulders, as if to hold her in place, when she wanted to be nowhere else.
She tasted his chin, his jaw, the skin which had been rough with stubble in Milan, now so smooth from the wick of a sharp-edged blade. His palm covered her breast, lifting it clear of her corset as he sucked the skin at the base of her throat, just inside the lacy neckline of the silver tissue gown she wore. She hoped he marked her. She wished he could make her somehow indelibly his; that they were still children so they could cut their fingers and mingle their blood and know this meant something. She longed for some transformation more lasting than that wrought by the law and his name, some visceral change he might effect in her so that anyone on the street with one glance would know she was his.
The fabric of her gown was so thin that she could feel the chafing of his thumb, now, the slight, sweet abrasion of his nail across her nipple, as though she were naked, and he, too. Flesh to flesh, pressing into each other, every doubt in her melting. I want this. God above, she wanted to be his.
His mouth closed over her nipple through the fabric, sucking strongly. It pulled a hot, sweet current from low in her belly; she ran her hands up and down his broad back, restless, impatient, ready to jump from her skin if he did not take her now. This was mad, insane. A servant could come along at any moment.
The thought cleared her brain a little. She had no desire to kowtow to convention any longer, but decency was a noble concept all the same.
She groped blindly along the wall behind her. The door was there somewhere, she knew it. Her fingers closed on nothing. “Wait,” she panted.
“No,” he said, and bit down lightly on her nipple, startling a low, hot sound from her throat.
“Someone—Alex, someone could come. We should . . . stop.”
He lifted her by her bottom, pinning her between his body and the wall. “Yes,” he agreed in her ear. “Someone could come.”
A hot, dark thrill ran through her. She understood, all at once, that games had a place in this matter, too. But . . . a strand of fear intruded, constricting her ardor. “Alex—” She wasn’t ready for such things. Not yet. “Please,” she whispered.