Do demonstrate, if you please.
It was an order, yet a sort of abandonment—and the combination gave Augusta a sense of power of a sort she had never known.
Until Joss laughed at her. Of course he did. She didn’t even need to see his face to know the curve of his lips, the leaping line of his dark brow. “What shall I demonstrate? The speed with which I can divest you of your bodice?”
“That would be acceptable,” she murmured, head still pillowed on his shoulder, against his throat. She would never be done breathing in the scent of him, so unique yet so familiar.
“Acceptable, you say. That is hardly a hearty endorsement. I shall have to think of something better.”
“Demonstrate…” She trailed off, thoughts floating in a scatter like dandelion seed. “Demonstrate what it would take to overcome you.”
Lifting her head, she looked down at him. Rolled herself, rubbed herself, over the long hard planes of his form. His eyes were dark and deep as the night sky, and she imagined them full of stars. “Not much,” he said. “Not much at all.”
Over her back, his hands roved, finding the small buttons of her silk gown. The buttons trailed to the gown’s waist, a row of pearls, and as his fingers slipped smoothly over the precious orbs, she wondered whether she had thrown money away on useless things.
But as Emily had said, it was time she truly wanted to vanquish, thought she wanted to break, a memory she wished to reduce to a glassy shell that she could stomp on, victorious.
And under Joss’s fingers, time seemed at last to vanish. Not she but he was the victor as the silk parted and his strong hands skated over her stays, her shift. Or maybe they both won, as his fathomless eyes closed and as hers flew open wide, startled by the unaccustomed pleasure of another person’s hands grasping her with tenderness. As Joss pushed her up, tugged her bodice down, eddies of air cooled her pleasantly. In this room, she had at last thawed in the heat of her desire and of Joss’s body so close to hers.
In another minute, he had coaxed loose the laces of her stays, pushing the mass of linen and boning away. Her shift soon followed. Then she sat bared to the waist, a voluminous mass of crushed cloth about her. Shivering with anticipation, she hitched one knee onto the narrow bed.
And all he did was look, and look, and look. As though she were a feast he was not permitted to eat—at least, not quite yet. Her nipples hardened; her sex pulsed, wet.
“You look edible,” he said at last. “Delectable.”
“Like a peach?” A silly thing to say. But she was nervous, deliciously so. And being nervous—uncertain yet not afraid—was a sort of fizzing excitement in itself.
He grinned, sweet and sincere. “Far more luxurious and luscious than any foodstuff imaginable.”
“I did wear a peach-colored gown.” She watched, eager, as one of his hands extended toward her. “So you would want to nibble me up.”
“Or lick you?” Lightly, one fingertip brushed her nipple. The touch was shocking in its pleasure, so careful, so quickly over. And then he bent his head, cradling one breast in his palm as he took the other nipple between his lips. Nipping, tasting, with gentle abrasion of teeth over sensitive skin.
“Yes,” she murmured. “Or lick me. Whatever you choose—oh. Please choose that again.”
“Why do you always smell so good?” he murmured.
“I use”—she caught her breath as he did something particularly ingenious with his lips—“Meredith Beauty’s finest cold-process soap, made with oil of honeysuckle. It is expensive and impractical, but then, I can be.”
“Can be what?” He looked up at her with mischievous eyes. When he pinched lightly at one of her nipples, she sagged back against the wall.
“I have no idea,” she said. “Were we talking about something?”
“Nothing of consequence. Now, do let me touch you some more.” He returned his full attention to her breasts.
Sensation jolted through her like lightning, shocks of pleasure almost startling in their intensity. The persistent chill she carried about with her was gone; he turned her liquid with his strong hands, his hot mouth. His tongue touched the valley between her breasts. Without thought, she pressed herself more firmly into his hands, his mouth, wanting him to claim her further.
His hands slid down, fisting in the yards of costly fabric, tossing them back. Peach silk slapped Augusta in the face, making her laugh. She escaped the luxurious barrier by sinking to her elbows atop the scrapped-together coverlet, the mattress firm but yielding beneath her.
As Joss fought his way through the fabric, he began to smile. “My dear fake widow, you are not wearing drawers.”
“I usually do not.”
His smile widened. “Augusta, you will slay me.”
Her name on his lips was another shot of pleasure, far more intimate than any falsehood or nickname. “That was never my intention. But if you die of pleasure, that is not such a bad end.”
He stroked the outside of her thighs, hands sliding hard over the sensitive skin. Her knees parted as though unlocked. He had always held the key to her undoing, had he not? Or was this her remaking instead?
Beneath the crumpled silk and linen of her clothing, he held her hips. “I want to taste you.” With the firelight a halo behind him, his dark eyes burning hers, he looked like a beautiful fallen angel.
“Let the record show that you proposed this. I but agree, though quite gladly.”
“Ever the shrewd woman of business.” Then the laughter fell away, leaving him serious. “I will give you the pleasure you seek, also quite gladly. And then we shall see if you still want anything of me.”
“Of course I—”
“Don’t answer yet. Not even if you’re sure it’s true. You won’t know until you’ve taken your satisfaction. So just—wait. And see.”
Unblinking, he looked at her without touching—curse the man. “All right,” she said. “We shall see.” She would have said anything to claim him.
Sinking back onto the mattress, she let her legs fall open wide. Let him do what he would; she had given him permission. Whatever he took or gave was on her terms.
He didn’t touch her right away, and she lifted her head to peek at him. “I am ready.”
“You might think so.” His voice held amusement. “But I shall make sure of it.”
The faint shush of cloth against cloth sounded, then he laid fabric over her eyes. Running a hand over it, she felt creases and starch and smelled that smoky-sweet sandalwood. “Your cravat?”
“It will be yours for a little while. Hold tight to it, now.”
How odd. He wanted her eyes covered, as though surprising her was important.
She liked that, liked that he wanted to surprise her, and that he had undressed a bit too. Easily, she recalled the sight of him with his shirt gapping open to reveal collarbone and a hint of dark hair on his chest. “I want to see you.” She lifted a hand to peel back the cravat.
He caught her about the wrist. “I’m glad to have divined something you want. Maybe later you shall have your way. Right now, take your pleasure from me.”
Strong hands slid downward, tracing her form, then trailed to her inner thighs. So long untouched, she shivered when he only trailed his finger lightly over her skin. When he reached her private curls, her toes clenched. When a fingertip parted her, pressing within, she moaned.
Oh, the seduction of control; it made her slick and hot and needy. Who was in control, though? He was hers; she used him for pleasure—and yet she was the one naked and splayed. She strained for his touch, hearing him laugh low as she pressed blindly against the cloth over her eyes. Tension coiled spring-tight within her as he played over her folds, sank a finger within her, withdrew it and pierced her with two. She could not open her legs wide enough, she could not take him deep enough. She wanted him all, unbearably, desperately—
And then he pulled back. “Do you remember what I said I wanted to do?”
She groaned. “No. I shall murder you if you stop.”
“Oh, I have no plan to stop.” The mattress shifted, the ropes beneath it creaking as he changed position. “I’m going to taste you now.”
And then his mouth was on her. The sensation was so intense she did not recognize it as pleasure at first. Shocked, she shook and twisted away. When he laid one hand over her belly, she trembled, then settled under its warmth.
And he undid her. With fingers he parted her, with tongue and lips he stroked her. Each tiny movement on her sensitive flesh sent a wash of pleasure through her. Tightly, his fingers filled her and coaxed her; wickedly, his hot mouth pulled at her. It seemed there was no place he did not see and touch and kiss, and this claiming was startling, too, in its pleasure.
So tight, he wound her; so far, he drew her along; so high, he tossed her. She could not bear his touch another instant; she could not stand for it ever to end. And then one final, marvelous movement with his tongue and fingers sent her cresting in harsh waves, flying into a great endless freedom.
When she fell, gasping and damp with perspiration, he was there to catch her. “You are a marvel.” He pressed a kiss to her thigh.
The intimacy made her shiver; she pulled him up, closer, for an embrace.
He wound himself behind her on the bed. Strong arms enfolded her, pulling her against his chest. She could feel his heart beating quickly, as though he had shared the ecstatic flight with her. But he had not: a hard ridge pressed against her back, the insistence of desire unfulfilled.
Who had used whom? And what ought they to think of each other now? She was his in a way she had never meant to be, and she had mastered him not at all.
Though he still held her within his arms, his breath coming shallow and ragged. Maybe he did not wish her to go.
Maybe. The word woke desperate thought and terrifying uncertainty. And she kept falling and falling, so fast she had to close her eyes against the dizziness of it. The peach silk that had seemed so luxurious was too hot and too clammy, and she felt foolish in her nakedness.
Best to make him naked too. She turned in his arms, face to face on the narrow bed. If she pulled the cloth from her eyes, it would be impossible not to kiss him, impossible not to search for his heart in his gaze. And what if it was not there?
She held the cravat tightly over her face, breathing in his scent. They had made the room smell of desire, musky and intimate, and her own heart seemed to stutter its wish to stay. This slope-ceilinged room made an unlikely cocoon, but she could not remember ever wanting to remain in a place more.
She must keep him here. “I like your kind of demonstration,” she murmured. “Now let us demonstrate together.” Her hand sneaked to the fall of his breeches, which strained against his obvious arousal.
He snapped back, and she heard him shift away from her on the bed. “Not that.” Hazily, Augusta dropped the cloth from her eyes and raised her head. Joss crouched at the end of the bed, a man of knots: neck corded, jaw tight, fists clenched. “No, Augusta. I can’t stand up to that sort of demonstration.”
“You needn’t stand. You could just lie down.” Her wet skin felt clammy, missing the heat of his frame behind hers. When she sat upright and leaned toward him, he clambered off the end of the bed.
“I really cannot, Augusta. I can’t—do that particular thing with you.”
He shook himself like an animal shuddering off water, top to toe. His shirt gapped at the neck, and she saw a hint of olive skin, the valley of his collarbone. He wouldn’t let her touch him? She had never wanted anything more.
“Please.” She didn’t know what she was asking for, hands outstretched. Anything. Her hands on him, his on her. His body within hers, the deepest claiming for them both.
He turned to the desk, picked up the brown glass vial and held it to the firelight. “You did ask me to demonstrate what I wanted of you, did you not? I believe I have done so. My desire for you has never been in question.” Setting the vial down again, he folded his arms tightly across his chest. “The better I know you, the more I want you, until I think I will expire from longing.”
“You can have me,” she said unsteadily. “I want you to have me. Please.” Did she sound as though she was begging? She almost felt she could weep.
“Not lust, Augusta. I’m talking about longing. You are bright and cunning and beautiful and brave. I want your body, but I want the rest of you too.”
“What do you mean?” Her lips felt numb.
“We’re together on the outside, you and I. You know me, and I know you, better than anyone else.” His hands fell, then moved in helpless circles. “I want…I want to scheme with you and laugh with you. I want to be the man you wake up next to every morning. I want to buy you a plain dinner and watch you give away gloves. I want to unpin your hair and stroke my fingers through it.”
She became aware of her unbound hair spilling over her shoulders and breasts. An odd tickling sensation. When she shook its length back, an expression near pain crossed his features.
“You want a great deal,” she said faintly.
“I do. And I have already been given more than I have any right to. But have you ever known a man who was satisfied with what he had a right to?”
“I—” She shook her head, fumbling for words. What did he want? What did it all mean? And what did she want? She had intended to flick away the scab of her old wound, but that was a dreadful and wholly inadequate description for what had just passed between them.
At her fumbling silence, Joss smiled, dark and humorless. Then he turned to the fire, crouching to study its blaze. It didn’t need tending, but likely he wanted something to do with his hands.
The moment wound tight, as though somehow she had wound up atop the cliff again, but it was crumbling. There would be no flight this time—only a fall or a retreat. His cravat was a crushed rope in her hands; still more tightly, she twisted it.
“Lord Chatfield,” Joss spoke up suddenly, “is of the opinion that the question matters more than the answer. But I believe in some cases the answer is of great importance indeed.”
He stood, then turned to face her. “Do you love me?”
***
For a moment, as Joss stood mostly clothed, painfully aroused, and ridiculously vulnerable, he thought she wasn’t going to answer him.
Then she drew up her knees, making herself a tight ball of crushed silk and flowing hair, and asked, “Do you love me?”
Maybe Chatfield had been right. The question told him all he needed to know: that her answer was not yes. “God help me,” he said, “I think I do.”
The admission was both more and less than he had expected. It slipped from his lips easily, but the silence that succeeded was leaden. He had never loved before, never trusted a woman with so much of himself. It seemed it was too much for her.
And though this realization slashed and burned within him, he would not betray her trust. He would hope only that she might one day bestow it.
He pulled forth the chair from his desk and sank into it. If he sat with her on the bed again, he would never be able to restrain himself from pulling back that curtain of hair to see her beautiful skin, lightly freckled at the shoulders. He could never resist touching her, and if she reached for him once more, begged him to make love to her—
Well. That was just the problem. If she didn’t love him, it would not be making love.
“What do we do now?” Her eyes were wide and puzzled.
“What I want to do is not in question.” He shifted his weight; his erection made his breeches uncomfortable. “What you want to do, I’ve no idea. And what we shall do? I don’t know about that either.”
When her hands lifted, her breasts raised and bobbed enticingly. She twisted her hair again into a fat rope, exposing her peachy nipples to his view. “Can I not persuade you?”
“I’m sure you could. It takes every bit of my control not to remove your gown entirely and feast upon you again and thrust into you until we both scream with pleasure.”
A choked sound issued from her throat, and she dropped her rope of hair. “Why will you not, then? What’s wrong?”
He shut his eyes and tried to remember every reason he could not. There were so many; a lifetime. “If you really want a reason—if this isn’t just petulance—then it’s because of my birth.”
In a few quick sentences, Joss sketched out the family history: his arrival so shortly after the hurried marriage of Kitty Sutcliffe to the charming wastrel Jack Everett, who had soon left his wife and son to pleasure-seek himself to death in France. “And so I believe that women should not be dallied with,” he finished. His past lovers, graceless and brief, had dallied with him. The encounters had slaked lust but left him feeling low.
“Not even if I want it?”
“Not even then.” He sighed. “If anything should happen—if there should be a scandal or a child—you would suffer far more than I. You would bear the loss of reputation or the burden of an unwanted child. I will not risk tying you down in that way. I won’t have you forced into a choice you don’t want.”
For if she suffered, he now knew, he would too. He would feel it as his own. And it was suffering enough to know that she did not love him back.
“But it’s my choice to make,” she insisted.
“Not only yours,” he said. “It’s mine too.”
And that would be the end of it, he knew. He had pressed his love upon her, and she had pulled away. She wanted a quick tumble; he wanted a lifetime.
Augusta Meredith could buy the world, and the possibilities radiating from her made him forget the shape of his own life. What should a man such as he wish for? His dreams were small out of necessity. When he overreached, he was sure to get pounded down.
“Come, let us do up your dress,” he said. “I should see you home now.”
Her only reply was silence; he could not tell whether it was wistful or angry or disappointed or…God only knew. Unresisting, she tolerated his hands at her waist, her chest, as he tugged her rumpled clothing into place. The hairpins were quite another matter. He picked up the scattered pins from the floor, but he had no notion how to fasten them into her hair again. In the end, he found a clean handkerchief and wrapped them up for her, setting the bundle in her lap.
“That’s everything,” he said.
“Yes,” she said faintly.
And then the door slammed open. “Everett! I remembered how to find your lodging all by myself!”
Only one person could be so proud of such an inanity. “Sutcliffe.” Joss turned to greet his cousin.
The baron—now dressed in a coat of red-and-white pinstripes, like a candy stick—clapped Joss on the shoulder. “I got another of those blackmail letters, and I spied on the person who delivered it. And now I know where they’re coming from!”
Just as abruptly as he had entered, he abandoned this topic to peer past Joss. “Your landlady said your cousin was here, but I knew it wasn’t me, because I wasn’t here yet. So I thought one of my sisters must be here instead. I wasn’t expecting to see you, Miss Meredith. Wait, that’s not right. What’s your name?”
“She likes to be called Mrs. Flowers.” Joss had tried to block Sutcliffe’s sight of the woman sitting on his bed, but it was no use.
“Is she an Indian cousin of yours?”
“I am no relation.” Augusta spoke up in a colorless voice.
Sutcliffe grinned. “You were fornicating! I say, were you finished? I brought my spyglass, but I never thought to turn it to your window.”
“We were quite finished,” Joss said firmly.
“Are you sure? I could give you a shilling.” The baron winked.
“There is no price,” Joss said, “that you could set on this encounter. Please go, Sutcliffe. I shall meet you at your house directly.”
Still craning his neck, the baron hesitated. Augusta said, “Do you want a shilling?” When he laughed, she rummaged for her reticule and tossed him a coin.
This did the trick: Sutcliffe bowed, then turned to depart. “I’ll see you back at Queen Square!” Then he thundered down the stairs, whistling.
Joss strode to the door and banged it shut, then leaned against it. “I’m sorry. I forgot to lock the door. I must have been…distracted. When I saw you waiting within.” Sentences stumbled slowly; his head thudded with fatigue and thwarted desire and the heaviness of an unwanted heart.
“There’s no point in shutting it now, if I ought to leave.”
“Stay if you like. As long as you like. I will let a servant know you’ll require a Bath chair later, if you wish some time to compose yourself. I must go, though. If Sutcliffe has truly identified his blackmailer…”
There would be no more reason for Joss to stay in Bath.
Augusta spoke up in that same colorless voice. “You leave me very easily.”
This hurt, like a punch thrown after the fight was supposed to be over. “For what reason ought I to stay? He has a purpose for me right now, which you have made quite clear you do not. At least nothing with which I can assist you.”
“I’m not sorry for what I want of you.”
“And I’m not sorry for what I’ve done or what I haven’t done. I can manage a bit of sorrow about the aftermath, though.” He needed to get away from her, now. Had she brought a cloak? Yes, there it was, tossed over his trunk. Impatience and anger welled up within him—she had everything, yet she wanted more—and he grabbed up the cloak and flung it in her direction. “I know you’ve never wanted anything from me but to own me. Other men, you might buy, but the cost of my pride is too high. Instead, I decided to give myself to you, and I was the one who paid.”
She stood, shrugging on her cloak and shoving the handkerchief full of hairpins into a pocket. The hood covered her tumbled hair; no one would know what had passed between them. “I could say the same to you,” she said. “But you would not take what I wished you to. Do you not think of what that costs me?”
That was too much; he laughed bitterly. “You’re an heiress. You can afford it, can’t you?”
For a long moment, she stared at him with those amber eyes. And then, without another word, she gathered the cloak about her and turned toward the door.
As she passed by the desk, the heavy fabric of her cloak brushed his glass vial of sandalwood oil. It teetered and rolled, then fell to the floor and shattered.