Chapter 10

Quinton was touching her, tasting her skin, bringing to life every illustration she’d seen and stored in her imagination, every scene she’d imagined with their faces and bodies in the books she’d read. His hair was soft between her fingers as his broad shoulders pushed her legs wide. Each caress of his gloved knuckles against her inner thighs, her hips, her waist, turned her to silk heated by tangled bodies. She wanted to pool herself like liquid flame against him.

She wanted his gloves gone.

So, she reached down and dragged a hand away from her arse where it had been creeping. Then finger by finger, she tugged the glove from his hand. Inspiring him, apparently, because he tore his other hand from her body and ripped the other glove off with his teeth.

She chuckled, a purr of sound strung to the vibrations of desire he curled through her body. “You did that at the Woodford ball.”

His brows drew together as he spit the glove to the floor. “Did I? Bloody h—”

“Don’t think on it.” She finished removing his glove and dropped it to join its brethren. Then she squeezed his shoulders with her legs. “As you were, please.”

“Hell.” Flames leapt in his eyes. “Hell. That was—” He broke off his own speech with a growl and returned to kissing her thighs, working his way higher as his bare hands—big and strong and smooth—rubbed up to her hips, biting indentations into her waist beneath her shift. His thumbs began to swipe low on her belly, back and forth, creeping closer to her center as he licked a path up her thigh that made her tremble and grip his hair with one hand. She rolled her hips, bracing her weight on her other hand and biting her bottom lip.

The air on her skin, his touch, her own teeth sinking into her lip—a leaping of awareness, a shiver of sensitivity everywhere all at once.

And then without warning, his breath at her center, his hand cupping her mound and pressing with gentle pressure. She wanted this. She wanted exactly this. What no man would give her unless she first took his name. She should have known. Only a rake would do. Only that sort of man would kiss her between the legs without a blink of an eye.

But Quinton had blinked. And backed away. Because this wasn’t just any rake. This was Quinton Chance, her childhood friend, her lovely tormentor. And she’d wanted love from him for so long that after the rolling pleasure of this encounter receded, pain would remain.

But for now, she’d hold her breath and happily drown beneath the waves.

Reading about this act could not compare to experiencing it. The pages of her books never spoke of the self-doubt that came with tossing one’s skirt above one’s knees, rucking it higher, showing a man everything. Never spoke of the self-consciousness. She and her sisters were of varying shapes and sizes, and she knew herself to be more generously shaped than some of them. As society deemed her plumpness pleasing, she’d never questioned it.

But currently, she cared not for what society thought. She cared only for his impression, his reaction, the only man who’d ever seen her so. The light was dim, the candles flickering, and when he set his mouth more fully to her sex and parted it with his tongue, she gasped and threw her head back, threw every single doubt into the wind. His touch told all—he liked the look of her, the feel.

The descriptions in her books had not been thorough enough, and she wasted several precious seconds of pure sensation fashioning a few sentences that she would add to her favorite pages to make them more accurate. Tongues and teeth and sucking and—oh! He dragged his hands down to her thighs and squeezed, then tilted his head, his hair brushing against her sex, and nipped her inner thigh with his teeth, sharp, ultimately and entirely pleasurable.

And when he returned his mouth to its purpose, the pleasure did not stop. An intense feeling of neediness coiled inside her. And when he scattered kisses higher, tracing a path onto her belly and placing a kiss just below her navel, his hand replaced his mouth between her legs, his fingers searching through her curls and finding exactly the right place where the smallest, buzzing, aching bit of her needed him most. She arched into his hand. And then his thumb found what it had been searching for and flicked over it, a lightning sharp bolt of pleasure struck.

She cried out, her hands flying to his shoulders, squeezing tight, fingernails making indentations into the wool of his jacket, digging deeper, seeking flesh.

“Quiet, Merriweather.” He spoke against her belly, his breath skating across her skin. His hand stilled for but a moment before it began a circular movement, not quite touching that buzzing lightning bolt he’d flicked to blazing life before. Circling, circling, ever closer but never quite touching until he gently made his way to it, circling still, and the slightest, softest nudge of it unknit her body and soul.

She cried out again, trying to stifle the scream by biting her lip, the sound becoming a groan, a moan of the pleasure that tortured her body.

He pressed his face to her belly, and his arms wrapped around her waist. Between her legs, their bodies met, a hug more intimate than she’d ever experienced before. He held her as she shook, as she calmed, as her breathing returned to normal. When her muscles relaxed and she slumped within his embrace, he lifted his head, and she tried to lift hers with heavy neck muscles to look down at him. For a moment, their gazes caught. Something there, something glowing, something sharp and real, something that had always been there.

Shattered by a boot step in the hall.

Panic drained the blood from his face, and he jumped to his feet as she jumped down to hers.

The doorknob rattled.

“Quick,” he hissed, pulling her to the floor and flinging an arm around her shoulders as he rolled them under the table, then grabbed one of the scattered tablecloths and threw it over the surface, hiding them. The fabric settled around the table’s legs, pooling on the floor as the creak of hinges announced an opening door. More footsteps.

Lottie’s heart raced for a whole new reason, and their gazes locked once more. The heat of their pleasure still wrapped around them somehow, made more scorching by how their bodies were tangled together—his legs bent up to his shoulders, his arms braced atop them, and her in his lap, hugging her knees. His body curved around her, and his breath stirred the hairs at the back of her neck.

The footsteps shuffled closer, and she leaned away from them, leaned into him—strong and hard, particularly in one place.

She knew what that was. She’d never seen or felt one before, but she knew. And knowing gave her power.

Not the time, Lottie.

If not now, though, when?

She twisted and settled her body into the bend of his hip, the crook of his shoulder, and draped her arms around his neck. She smiled.

“No,” he mouthed. But his arms tightened around her, holding her close, squeezing her tight. But not too tight. A gentle prison.

She tightened her arms, too, pulled him closer, whispered in his ear, “Don’t worry, Chance.” Words so soft they almost did not exist, but the tightening of his muscles told her he heard. “I’m not going to kiss you.” She let her lips settle against his earlobe. “At least not on the lips.” She dragged her mouth along his jaw and stopped at the very tip of his chin, nipped it with her teeth, kissed it, so close to the lips she remembered so well. Had their feel and taste changed with time? She wanted to know.

Not yet. As she kissed what little skin was open to her touch above his cravat—a sliver of neck, his earlobe, his chin, she slipped an arm between their bodies and found where his hard length strained against his fall. Cupped it, gently squeezed, then rubbed her hand up and down. She knew men liked this. Fictional ones at least.

He hissed, and his hand caught hers, a vise from which she could not escape. She would not force an escape. She’d finesse one. She twisted her wrist in his hold and grasped his, so they were both palm to pulse, and then she lifted his hand away from his body, brought it up between them and inspected it—hard knuckles and long fingers. His grip loosened, and he eyed her, a question there. Free from his grasp, she lifted his hand, kissed his palm.

Then the door slammed shut beyond their cocoon, and he changed. From a man curved large and warm around her to a darting snake seeking escape. The moment after their kiss in the woods all over again as he disappeared behind the tablecloth curtain.

Until a grayed muzzle appeared beneath it, nudged her feet, whined. Lottie lifted the cloth and patted Princess’s head above the dog’s sad, brown eyes. Bereft of Quinton’s body, Lottie felt a bit sad, too.

“Come here, girl,” Quinton said from beyond the cloth.

“Does he mean you or me?” Lottie asked Princess before scooting out from under the table. The dog, entire backside wagging, caught up with her master before Lottie did, and they were both too near the door when she caught his wrist.

“Quinton, wait—”

Slowly, he turned. “That”—his gaze darted to the table behind her—“will not happen again.”

“Why not? I want a lover for my own pleasure and a husband is how I must gain that. And you want a wife.”

“Not you.”

She flinched, released his arm, and pressed her fingers into her chest, massaging the ache he’d lodged in the vicinity of her heart.

He wiped his hand down his face. “I’m not supposed to be soft. I cannot be weak.” Did he speak those words to her or to himself?

“And what does that mean? That you’re not supposed to have a heart?”

“Perhaps. Putting that organ to sleep seems to be the only way I can remain strong. Hell, if you want to know the truth, it’s why I had to put you away.”

“Put me away? As if I’m a trinket? A cuff link, a button you can store in a box?”

“More like something you drop to the bottom of the Thames, hoping to be done with it forever.”

What a blow, what a killing blow. It didn’t kill her, though. He’d been delivering such blows for six years, and still she stood, alive and breathing. She’d become hardened to it, each blow showing her how to mend to become stronger. But what happened when all bits of her had been sewed up with leather and steel?

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I am your softness.” Dropping her arms to her sides, she prowled toward him.

“You are my weakness,” he said, backing away.

“Use what word you like, Chance. I’m going to woo you, court you, teach you to tear down your walls, to embrace softness as strength. I am going to awaken your heart as you did my desire.”

A flicker of panic like pain flickering across his face, then a tightening of his jaw. “It’s no good, Merriweather. Don’t even try.” And then he pushed through the door and left her in the half-lit dark.

On numb legs, she gathered a tablecloth and took it to Lady Noble, not even looking about the room for Quinton. “I’m afraid I’ve a megrim. I am terribly sorry, but I’ll have to leave early.”

“Of course, dear,” Lady Noble said. “I understand.” She patted Lottie’s shoulder.

Quinton leaned against a wall across the room, murder in his face. She’d not meant to find his form, but she could not seem to help but know exactly what space he occupied in any setting.

Lottie brushed up against Andromeda where she and Tristan had isolated themselves near a window. “I’m ready to leave. Would you mind, terribly, leaving with me?”

Andromeda studied Lottie’s face, nodded once. “Let’s go.” She hooked their arms together, and they said goodbye as they made their way for the door, Tristan trailing after them like a guard or a puppy.

The balmy night air brushed against her skin. A fresh breeze gave her lungs a reprieve from the clinging scent of Quinton’s cologne. Why did she feel so faint, so weak, when she was so determined?

“Perhaps,” she said as she stepped up into the carriage and settled into the squabs of Andromeda’s coach across from her sister, “because I let him kiss me beneath my skirts.”

“Pardon?” Andromeda said.

Tristan, climbing into the coach to sit next to his wife, fell back to the street with a curse. “I’ll walk. Seems you two have much to talk about. A man knows when he’s not needed.” He shook his head as if to dislodge Lottie’s words from his ears, then winked at Andromeda. “Meet you at home, Captain.”

“I did not mean to speak aloud.” Lottie fidgeted with a fold of her skirt.

When the coach rolled forward, Andromeda crossed the space between them to sit next to Lottie. “Perhaps you did not mean to speak, but you clearly need to. Well, then, let’s hear everything.”

“I’ve decided to woo Quinton.”

“Oh. I did not expect that.”

“You think it a mistake.”

“I think it… an interesting choice. Why?”

“I’ve never told you, but… we kissed once.”

Andromeda jumped up and back, her arms flailing wide, her shock rocking the coach.

“Come now, Annie. It’s not that surprising.”

“It is!” She held out her hand just beneath Lottie’s nose. “See. I’m shaking.”

Lottie rolled her eyes. “You’ve become more dramatic since your marriage.”

“When did you kiss?”

“After Mother and Father’s funeral. He followed me. Comforted me.”

“Oh, Lottie. I… and it was good enough to keep you pining through six years and countless mistresses?”

Lottie nodded. It had been perfect. “And three of my own suitors.”

“What of them! They’ve courted you and—”

“Either Quinton has scared them off, or I have sent them packing.”

“Scared them… well, Pepperidge. He made quite the scene this evening. Good riddance.”

“Erstwhile proposed, and I told him no when he refused to kiss me first.”

Annie’s nose wrinkled. “He wouldn’t kiss you? Good riddance to him, too.”

“And Phillipspots… At the Woodward ball, Quinton drove him away and then revealed to me that he’d not been able to stop thinking of our kiss. He was foxed, Annie, so much so he doesn’t remember what happened, but… even foxed he remembers our kiss.” Lottie tangled her hands in her lap. “That means something, yes? Gives me reason to hope.”

Annie hesitated, then reached for Lottie’s hands, folded them in her own. “It’s unexpected.”

“And I know it wasn’t the alcohol because tonight we did quite a bit more than kiss.” She licked her lips, desire sparking across her skin from just the memory of him touching, kissing her thigh, tasting her. “Something in him wants me as I do him, and I need to know. If it’s possible.” She hung her head. “It might not be. But I would rather try and fail than never try at all.”

Andromeda leaned into her, wrapped an arm around her, and rested her head on Lottie’s shoulder. “Then let’s woo a viscount for you, Sister dear. You seem to be doing well so far, but he appeared rather angry upon returning to the drawing room this evening.”

“I told him I was courting him. I’ve been using Samuel’s Guide. But Quinton does not approve of being courted.”

“Perhaps you should abandon our esteemed brother’s courtship Guide for a different sort of book altogether. Since it seems the man can be seduced, even if he cannot be courted.”

“Astute observation.” And she’d told him, more or less, she needed a husband only to bed her. But if that husband were him, she’d likely prove incapable of keeping her heart out of the bedroom. Would it be worth it? Outside of his heart, which he’d bricked away from her so well not a seam remained in the walls to pick apart, he had what she wanted—a knowledge of bedroom pursuits, a willingness to use that knowledge with her. Perhaps she could wall off her heart, too, to take what pleasure he could give.

“Annie?”

“Hm?”

“He said I was his weakness. What can he mean?”

Annie chuckled.

“Don’t laugh,” Lottie said, slapping her sister’s shoulder.

“Apologies, it’s only that you should have started with those words. You’re his weakness? That’s the most telling thing of all, isn’t it?”

“It sounds a horrid thing to be.”

“Not at all. It means you’re his soft spot, his vulnerability. If any man wanted to hurt him, they’d go through you to do the most damage.”

Oh. How horrible. “I don’t want to be anyone’s weakness. I want whatever man I marry to feel stronger because I am with him.”

Annie stroked Lottie’s hair.

“I’m not weak.”

“I know.”

“I’m excellent at planning things.”

“Quite right.”

Lottie pulled out of her sister’s embrace, sat tall and proud. “And I’m wonderfully well-read.”

“Just so!” Annie sat tall, too.

“And if I’m going to convince him I’m no weakness, I’d better show the man my strengths.”

“Huzzah!” Annie clapped. “If anyone can do it, you can, Lottie.”

“I must plan a few courtship teas for Samuel to prance a few new men before Prudence and the twins, but I see no reason why I cannot also plan a little courtship of my own.”

Annie snorted. “Courtship? I was sure you were going to say seduction.”

Lottie grinned in the shadows. “You understand me well, Sister.”

She’d thought Quinton understood her well, too. But if he thought she’d give up when he sliced her heart to shreds, he didn’t know her at all.