Not Quite a Lady (The Dressmakers 4)

The warmth spread, and prickling sensations with it, swarming over her skin and under it and pooling in the pit of her belly. One moment. This moment. This happiness. To want and know she was wanted in return.

She remembered the tenderness he’d shown her and she gave it back, tracing the planes and angles of his face with her mouth. Her senses became vibrantly aware of a world of masculinity: the tickle of his neckcloth against her cheek, the light wool under her hands, and the male scents of starch and soap, the light fragrance of herbs, all mixed with the potent scent of his skin. She swam in sensations, touch and taste and smell. She was no longer drowning, except in pleasure. It was as though she’d slipped into a crystalline pool in some exotic place, far, far away from the world. The darkness of her mind now was pleasurable, not fearful. It was a summer darkness, lit with stars and a glowing moon.

She let her hands rove the way his did. She dragged her hands down over his chest and slipped them inside his coat, and let her fingers trace the sinuous lines of embroidery on his waistcoat. She was searching now, for the man under the fine cloth, and her hands moved on to the back of the waistcoat, where it gathered, then down lower still, to the edge of his waistband. She slid her fingers under it, to the fine, thin fabric—the only barrier between her hands and the skin of his back.

He made a sound as she splayed her fingers over the thin cloth, discovering the shape of his spine and the shift of muscle and the warmth of his skin. So alive, so strong, so beautiful. And she wanted him.

Now. This small lifetime, this moment.

She tugged at the shirt but there was too much of it and she grew impatient. She moved her hand to find his trouser buttons and found him instead, the most masculine part of him, large and warm and pulsing under the palm of her hand.

She held her hand there, her heart racing, with fear and excitement. She held her hand there while need built, low in her belly, throbbing, aching.

He made a growling sound and set his hand over hers. He held her so for a moment, then drew their hands away.

Still holding her hand, he said something but his voice was so thick, so deep, that her mind—or the morass that used to be her mind—couldn’t make it out.

“What?” she said, in a voice that seemed to belong to someone else.

“We have to stop,” he said. “Now.”

She didn’t understand. Her body ached, craving his. He was warm, and his body was big and hard and powerful. She wanted him. That was all she understood.

“Why?” she said.

He made another sound, a growl or a groan, she couldn’t be sure.

“What?” she said.

“If we don’t stop now,” he said slowly, “something will happen almost immediately.” A pause. “Then you will have to marry me.” Another pause. “I do not believe this is what you wish to do.”

The word marry was like a bucketful of cold water dashed in her face.

She came out of her mad paradise with a start, pulled her hand from his, and backed away from him.

“Oh, no,” she said. She didn’t recognize her own voice. It was low and thick, a stranger’s voice. She looked at her hands, her wicked hands. She looked up at him, into the golden eyes. They were so dark now, watching her. “What am I doing? How could I?”

“That,” he said, “was what I was about to ask you.”

Chapter 9

Lady Charlotte turned away from Darius in a rustle of muslin and fluttering ruffles. She looked about her, at the horses, at the windows, the paving. At last she seemed to collect herself. He watched her shoulders settle, her spine straighten, and her chin go up.

“I was trying to distract you,” she said.

“It worked,” Darius said. In all his life, no one had ever distracted him as fully as she did.

Lack of practice, he told himself. Except for the brief time when he was an innocent, more or less, he’d had almost nothing to do with innocents.

No, that explanation wasn’t satisfactory.

Practice or not, he was no longer a boy. He ought not to feel so shaky as he did now, like one recovering from a fever. The taste of her shouldn’t linger like this. He shouldn’t be so conscious of her scent. He shouldn’t feel the imprint of her body on his, and his hands shouldn’t tingle as they did.

Above all, he shouldn’t feel as though there were more, far more to this than a torrid embrace.

What he felt for her was supposed to be lust, plain and simple. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. It never felt like this. He ought to know.

He spent most of his waking life desiring this woman and, after he’d had her, the next woman, and the next. Lust was reasonable and rational. It was the natural instinct of the male to copulate. This was the foundation, was it not, of the animal behavior he studied. Everything in Nature must reproduce itself. For the most part, the male of the species seemed to devote the greatest amount of time and energy to the business.

This wasn’t reasonable and rational.

This was complicated. Aggravating.

Yet why should this surprise him? She was, after all, the most irritating woman he’d ever met. The irritation started with her being unwed and thus unavailable and went on to her capricious personality.

“You should not have kissed me,” he said. And definitely not like that. “For any reason.”

“I know that,” she said impatiently. “It was…an impulse.”

“Don’t do it again,” he said.

“Not likely,” she said, brushing at her skirts with the same energy maids devoted to beating rugs, though he saw not a speck of straw or dust on the fine cloth.

“Your dress is perfectly clean,” he said. “Or are you brushing off the contamination? If so, you’re working on the wrong place. I never touched your skirts.”

“They touched your legs,” she said.

“You put your hand on my trouser front,” he said. “You don’t see me brushing it in that deranged manner.”

“It is not deranged!”

“What is it, then?”

“I am keeping my hands busy because I want to slap you.”

“That is patently unfair,” he said. “You started it.”

“You always say I start it,” she said.

“I don’t always say it,” he said. “Only when you do start it.” He paused, trying to put a name to what he’d felt—apart from surprise—when she grasped his head and kissed him so…fervently? Desperately? “Why did you start it?”

“Did I not tell you a moment ago?” she said. “To distract you. And you said it worked.”

“But what were you distracting me from?”

She returned to brushing at nothing. “I forget.”

“You have not forgotten,” he said.

“I have,” she said. “It could not have been very important.”

“One of these days,” he said, “I am going to strangle you, and when they ask why I did it, and I tell them, the jury will cry, unanimously, ‘Not guilty!’”

“You are not going to strangle me,” she said, “because I am going to strangle you first.”

“I should like to see you try,” he said. “That ought to be amusing.”

“I’ll be laughing, certainly, when your face turns black, and your eyes bulge out of your head.”

“I see what you’re trying to do,” he said. “You’re trying to divert me from the point I am trying to pursue. It won’t work. You said you were bored. Was that the reason you kissed me?”

She shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

“I understand that risk is exciting,” he said.

“No, it isn’t,” she said. “Not with you. It is…boring.”

He wasn’t sure what she was trying to do, but he wasn’t going to let her do it. He could be as tenacious as any bulldog. “It was not boring,” he said. “Not for me, not for you. If it were, we wouldn’t have a problem. But we do, and unless we cooperate to solve it, we’ll end up in a situation neither of us wants.”

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“Marriage,” she said. “Does it pain you so much to say the word?”

“As I recall, I said it only a moment ago, to bring you to your senses,” he said. “I notice that you’re not overly fond of marriage, either. Seven and twenty and not wed. It is absurd.”

She stiffened. “How old are you?”

“Eight and twenty,” he said.

“You’re not married.”

“I’m a man!”

One of the horses snorted.