Page 13 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)
As soon as she shut the door behind him, she was on him like a scent in a matter of moments.
Her gloved hand clutched greedily at the front of his shirt, her face indelibly close.
His own hands removed her mask and then stole to her waist, one of them curling a fist around the fullness of her skirts.
“Did you come to claim your kiss?” Moria spoke the words so close to his mouth he could taste the lingering notes of champagne and sugar on her breath.
Her fingers curled into his hair; he fought the urge to close his eyes as her nails scratched against his scalp.
Christ. No woman had ever captivated him so fully with so little.
Just kiss her already, his body screamed.
On the other side of the door, there were voices. Moria let out a curse and hung her head at his shoulder. He tore his gaze away from the rapid rise and fall of her breasts against her dress, surely her nipples were hard from the way her dress must be scraping against her tender flesh.
She pulled away and turned to step around him. He stopped her, a hand at her wrist. “Stay.”
He tightened his hold on her hand, feeling her pulse leap under his touch. Her teeth were clinched but there was a flicker, then a glimmer of longing in her eyes, but she withstood it.
“I can’t.”
Why was she walking to the door?
“I should not have come. The girl who meets men in secret and accepts only a half-life, I should have left her in the past.”
He was beside her in a moment, thanking God for his long, powerful strides. He closed the door just as she had opened it and put his back to it.
Her nostrils flared in challenge just as her body pressed into his. “What do you want from me?”
“My letters for the last 13 months weren’t clear enough? My asking you to dance at more than one ball in the same night wasn’t clear enough?”
“Not necessarily, no. How is this supposed to work?” she gestured between them.
“You and me. A captain in Her Majesty's army and the season’s incomparable? Are we having tea and discussing military strategy?” A small smile played up at the corner of her bow-shaped lips before she turned her head to the side.
“I’m sure you could hold council on waging war with the best military strategists in Britain.”
He came from a long line of men who had served The Crown, he and his brother had played at strategy with tin army men and practiced swordsmanship and marksmanship farther back than he could remember. But her kind of battle tested even his own tactical skills.
The wood panels of the door cut into his back. His hands found her waist. The way that her waist dipped down to her hips was made perfectly for his hands.
She was of average height or a little taller, but he was not. He towered over her. Her chest was flush with his abdomen, her arms around his torso.
She tilted her head back as his lips lilted over her skin, up her jaw, a breath of temptation against her earlobe. “Tell me one truth, General Moria, and I’ll tell you one of mine.”
Moria swallowed, her eyelids stuttering, then went to smooth her skirts. He stilled her hand and brought her hand to his lips. Her eyes rose to his.
She must have found something to trust in his eyes, as she nodded and said, “I’m not a nice person.”
Devyn shook his head, but she continued.
“I’ve done some things that I…. that I regret.
Someone hurt me, a long time ago,” she pulled away and started to pace but she kept talking.
“He took everything I had to give and left me to carry the weight of it all alone, and I can’t hurt him back, because…
” she took a deep inhale. “He’s gone now.
And it feels so wrong, all the conflicting feelings of love and hate and joy and disappointment that are tied up with this,” she gestured around them, to the well-appointed but luxurious sitting room they inhabited and to the party just beyond the mahogany door.
“This institution, these people…and so sometimes it’s easier to hurt, than to be hurt. ”
He hadn’t interrupted, just felt the serrated age of every one of her words like knives against his heart, wanting to ask for more; but unwilling to risk her pulling away again.
“You’re a soldier, I suppose that’s what I am too. They wanted a mercenary, someone who could be bought for a price for their own purposes, but no cost they offered was worth the price of my pride, my revenge.”
“And how have you had your revenge, Lady Moria?” He asked, one hand grasping hers to pull her into him.
“By being gloriously unattainable and exacting. They wanted perfection, I gave it. They wanted courtship, I gave it. They proposed, I refused. They asked for a dance, I gave them only one and left them wanting more. They wanted conversation, I listened. I used what I learned to my advantage, whispering their secrets here and there,” she exhaled, he didn’t miss the way she straightened her shoulders before she continued.
“They wanted my good opinion, I tested them to see what they would do to receive it. They wanted invitations to a ball. I told them it was a masquerade when it wasn’t and they came dressed in costume and I had a laugh.
I was never not a weapon, never anything but a vixen looking for her next victim to poison. ”
He saw what she was trying to do. She was taking a gamble, testing him to see if he was afraid or aghast at anything she’d said.
Worse, if he pitied the choices she’d been forced to make.
But he’d been a weapon too, not just in battle.
His father had honed him into one long before that.
He wanted her to feel that they shared similarities more than they did differences.
“And am I…your next victim?” he said the words against the shell of her ear and when her eyelids fluttered for a moment, he was almost undone.
“That’s the problem,” she said, and this time her heart was in her eyes. “I thought you could be; but I’m afraid that while I’ve ingested small doses of poison here and there,” she placed his hands at her hips, “this time, it might be a lethal dose.”
“Lethal? Or addictive?”
“Aren’t they the same thing?” her lips were a prayer’s distance from his own. It wouldn’t take more than a flinch to bring her bottom lip close enough to devour until she sighed his name and forgot it all.
She was faster, interrupting his thoughts with, “Now tell me your truth.”
One hand came up to hold her jaw. He swallowed before answering.
“I am leaving in a month, again, to Halalabad this time. I’m supposed to be preparing to leave, but I lie awake at night, and I hear your voice and I see your face.
Even though I know I shouldn’t, I still see you in front of me and all I can think of is how I can keep you this close and never let go of you. ”
“Even after everything I’ve just said?” she asked, eyes catching on his lips where he wanted them, wanted the rest of her to be.
He pushed a strand of hair that had fallen back into its pin.
“I want all that you are willing to give me, Moria.” He said her name against her lips, her own brushed against his in answer. Her thieving hands stole him into her, her mouth closing in any distance between them. Her tongue slid across them and into his mouth, her leg drew over his.
He was grateful in that moment, that he hadn’t kissed her that first meeting, or any since.
This wasn’t merely a kiss, they hadn’t yet invented words for what this was.
She tasted like summer days by a lake, a million little promises leaping off her tongue and finding purchase in his mouth.
God, the girl knew how to snog him within an inch of his own demise, but he wanted her to know it wasn’t just slowly fading lust between them.
His heart nearly outpaced his thoughts until he saw her affection for what it was. He pulled back.
“I know what you’re doing. It might work but I’ll keep asking for the same thing until I get it.”
“Which is?” she asked, her lips feather light and so tempting against the curve of his neck, the suggestive press of her body so delicious against him that he grew painfully hard.
She was no innocent, blushing debutante. She was playing games with him when he’d asked for more of her, that was fine. But he was a soldier by trade, and an exceptional chess player, and he could play her games better.
In one swift motion, he turned her. He had her pressed against the wall, holding both of her hands in one of his above her. His groin pressed into the small of her back where it curved to her ripe little arse jutting into his breeches.
The silk of her skin and her dress against him was…
holy hell. Her back heaved heatedly against his chest, her breasts where they pressed against the wall made his entire body envious of plaster and wallpaper.
He didn’t have to remove her dress to know that she had gorgeous breasts.
The exposed skin made him want to see them as much as he wanted to fucking taste them.
He let the slight stubble he’d accumulated since shaving earlier scratch softly against the sensitive skin of her neck as he dragged his mouth up to her ear.
His voice was a silken, seductive purr against her as he said, “Everything I want. I’m not playing to win a trophy, Moria,” He licked at the tip of her earlobe and delighted in her shudder and the way she pressed her backside against him. He tightened his hold on her hands.
“Because you are no trophy. You’re the game, you’re the strategy, you’re the victor, the game maker. You’re all of it,” he said against the shell of her ear.
She undulated against him. Fuck. He wanted more.
He took his free hand from where it rested at her side and trailed it toward her breast, grazing his thumb over where her nipples would be hiding in that dress.
He languidly dragged that hand down to her entrance.
His fingers cupped her through her dress.
Her little fucking whimper of pleasure scalded his self-control, and one finger circled her entrance.
The scrape of fabric against her skin and another soft moan from her were the only sounds in the room, until he pulled his hand away from where he toyed with her to add, “I’m playing for keeps.”
His entire body shrieked in protest, “you bloody asshole,” as he pulled away from the apex of her and with a sensual drag of his hand down the backs of her arms, he released her and turned her back around to face him.
She had nothing to say, which gave him almost as much satisfaction as having her pressed against his groin. Her arms curled around his neck, and singed him with a searing, elevating kiss. Her teeth nipped at his lips, her fingers scraped through his hair.
The feel of her breasts pushed against his chest and the single undulation of her hips against his own, and his heartbeat was a single repeated syllable: more. More. More.
“Moria,” he panted, tilting his head back against the wallpapered wall as she nipped at the flesh of his neck. He felt the bite everywhere. What was it about this woman that did this to him?
“You want me?” she questioned.
He took her hand and placed it against the hard evidence of his unflagging want. She cupped him so hard through his breeches he had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out. She was toying with him too.
“You have competition, Captain. And I have to go back to the country in a few days. I hope you’re willing to do what it takes to ‘keep’ me.”
And with that, the dratted woman spun on her heels and turned to leave him there panting after her in a dark room at a ball he’d come to solely for her. He was faster, he had her hand in his in a moment.
He tugged her to him, and his mouth found hers like the stars guided a sailors’ course home. She kissed him back with such ferocity, with what felt like her whole body. He groaned into her mouth.
She pulled away again.
This time he let her. He wanted to ask so many more questions and learn all of her until there were no secrets left between them. For now, he had to let her have the upper hand or she’d never fold all her cards.
He pulled her close enough to straighten her dress, to shake and smooth out her skirts, to repin the fallen pieces of her hair, to retie her mask, to pull up her gloves.
Every touch was bliss, every touch was misery.
He savored each intake of breath or waver of her eyelids like a man headed for the gallows who might never know such contact again.
He planted a chaste kiss on her gloved hand and offered her his arm. He led her outside the darkened room into an empty hallway, where she squeezed his hand once before taking several steps and slipping into the room beyond with calculated grace.
Once, she looked back to him, a triumphant curve of a smile appearing before she turned back to the open doorway and joined arms with two women inside as though she hadn’t just been compromised in her sister’s library.