‘Alaric.’ The word was barely audible. Whether from the pulse pounding in her ears or because she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, she didn’t know.
‘That’s better.’ His voice was rough as his lips moved against her hair. ‘I like it when you say my name.’
With one final turn he spun them off the dance floor. Before Tamsin could catch her breath he’d shoved aside a hanging tapestry and hustled her through a door into a narrow passage. A few steps on and another arched door opened on their left. They were through it and in a dimly lit chamber before Tamsin could get her bearings.
A key scraped in the lock, loud as the thrum of her heartbeat. Then she felt a solid wall behind her and Alaric’s powerful body trapping her against it.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ It was meant to sound outraged. Instead Tamsin’s voice was uneven, weak with the force of conflicting emotions.
She should abhor this forced intimacy, the press of his body. Yet a secret thrill of pleasure ripped through her.
‘Getting you to myself.’ Alaric cupped her face in warm palms and lifted her chin so she looked deep into eyes the colour of a stormy night sky. ‘I spoiled your evening. I didn’t mean to.’
He leaned forward, touching his forehead to hers, hands tunnelling her hair, sending threads of shivery sensation down her spine and across her shoulders. Suddenly it wasn’t him holding her prisoner, but her body’s response.
‘Why?’ she croaked, her mouth too dry for speech. How had they come to this?
She should move but she made no resistance as he caressed her scalp and rubbed his nose against hers.
Where was her anger? A deep shuddering sigh rose and she strove to stifle it.
‘Because I was jealous.’ Shock slammed into her. Yet she felt the words as well as heard them as his lips caressed her eyelids. He really had said it. ‘From the moment you appeared tonight I wanted you with me. Only me.’
This couldn’t be. Tamsin shook her head, or tried to. He held her so close she couldn’t move.
‘I don’t understand.’ She hated her shaky tone but she was at a loss. ‘You avoided me most of the night.’
‘Displacement activity. I either spent the evening glued to you, or I kept my distance, acting the polite host. There was no happy medium. In the circumstances I thought my self-control admirable.’
His hands moved, slid down her throat and spread across her bare shoulders. Something about his powerful hands touching her so tenderly made her breath catch. His palms circled back to her throat, warming her skin and making her pulse race.
‘Every time I saw you smiling at a dance partner I wanted it to be me you smiled at. No one else. Do you have any idea how gorgeous you are tonight?’
He couldn’t be serious!
She couldn’t think logically when he caressed her like that. She needed to think, to understand.
‘Please. Alaric, I…’
‘Yes, let me please you. Like this?’
His hands dropped, skimming the silk of her bodice, down the sides of her breasts, till her nipples tightened and the breath seared from her lungs.
Logic didn’t matter when his mouth was a mere inch away. She craved him with every fibre of her yearning, untried body. As if this were what she’d secretly waited for. Without volition she raised her face, hungry beyond rational thought for his passion.
His mouth hovered, a breath away from hers.
‘I promised I wouldn’t.’ His husky voice stroked like suede, dragging at her senses. ‘So ask me to kiss you, Tamsin.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
ALARIC’S heart slammed against his ribs as he awaited her response. Every nerve, every sinew strained at the need for control.
Part of him was furious that somehow, without him knowing how, she’d cracked the wall he’d built around himself. The wall he’d reinforced the day he’d learnt the need to keep his affairs short and uncomplicated by emotion.
Surely he knew the dangers of reckless affairs!
But this was different.
More than dalliance to hold other women at bay. Far more than a ruse to keep an eye on someone who might, though it surely wasn’t possible, be in league with those wanting to undermine the government.
This was an urgent, blood deep hunger.
Somewhere in the ballroom he’d crossed an unseen boundary.
Had it been when he bundled her from the room in full view of scandalised eyes? Or when he’d hauled her close in contravention of every protocol, staking his unmistakeable claim on her? No, it had been earlier. When he’d read the shattered hurt dulling her eyes and known himself the cause. His pain then had been as sharp as any physical wound.
He’d never felt this intensely about a woman.