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CHAPTER FOUR

Lavinia understood the meaning of every word Dominic said, but they still didn’t make sense. “I don’t understand.”

The hand on her hip slid up, settled in the divot at her waist, and she felt the pressure of his palm and each individual digit in her bones.

“I should have asked for another dance earlier,” he said, the rumble in his voice sending an answering tug low in her belly.

“But you’re leaving tomorrow, and I’m nearly out of time. ”

“ You’re out of time.” She scoffed, then gestured at the clock on the mantle, steadily ticking towards her departure. “My train leaves for Dover in less than ten hours. I’ll be in Paris in three days. You’ve known for a week that I’d be leaving.”

He had the decency to wince. “I know.”

“So why now?” she pressed. “What is so important about one more dance that you’d leap into a rose bush?”

“I didn’t know about the roses?—”

“Tell me!” she barked, the words crumbling as her voice trembled.

There was no space for her affection for Dominic in her life in Paris.

As one of the first women in her program at the Sorbonne, she would have to be twice as good as the men to be considered their equal.

If she left her heart behind with him, swimming in unanswered questions, she’d soon drown. “Please, Dominic.”

His hand lifted from hers, and he cupped her cheek, brushing the strands of hair that had escaped her plait back with his thumb. “I wanted more than a dance. I wanted this.”

He kissed her exactly as she’d expect Dominic to kiss, with care but confidence, as though, despite having kissed more people than Lavinia had likely met, she was the most important, the most precious to him.

She’d had her fair share of kisses, but they’d either been forgettable pecks or a slobbering affair.

But Dominic coaxed a mewl from her throat, and when he retreated, she chased him, catching his lips again.

Her hand had somehow drifted up his chest to his shoulder, holding him in place as she explored his mouth in return.

She nipped at his full lower lip and he chuckled, stilling her by settling his palm at the nape of her neck.

His lips brushed hers when he spoke. “I take it you won’t slap me for taking liberties with you.”

She kissed him more firmly, flicked her tongue against the seam of his lips. He groaned, and a thrill ran up her spine. “I wouldn’t slap you,” she said. “I have an entire bottle of carbolic acid at my disposal to keep you in line.”

“Do you mean that bottle over there?” He pointed over her shoulder, and when she turned to look, he caught her with both hands at her waist and rolled, bringing her over his body to land on her side, thoroughly out of reach of the antiseptic.

“That was a dirty trick,” she laughed, and he grinned.

“I am known as a rogue.” He dragged his fingers down her cheek, along the curve of her neck and over the bump of her clavicle. “And I seem to have captured you.”

She tangled her legs with his and pulled herself forward until their chests were flush, her pelvis perilously close to the evidence of his arousal.

Lavinia wouldn’t consider herself wanton, but merely practical.

As the fifth child, she carried no burden to marry well within society, nor did she consider seeking pleasure outside the marital bed a grievous sin.

But it was not a deeply ingrained puritanical notion of ladyhood that kept her from laying with a man, accepting his body into hers.

She’d always withheld pieces of herself as a form of protection.

Within society, laughing at Lavinia was common, for her abnormal aspirations and unwillingness to tolerate the inanity of most of the other women of her set, for her desire to remain unmarried and pursue a man’s field.

Instead of hiding away in shame, she accepted the mantle of her unique nature and wore it with pride, a shield against those who sought to enhance their standing by pushing her down.

No one could laugh at her when she laughed the loudest. But giving her body to a man meant a vulnerability she wasn’t certain she could accept for herself.

When she’d met Dominic, had first entered the circle of his arms to spin about the dance floor, she’d expected his mockery and derision, but encountered curiosity and kindness.

And she’d clung to him, a port in the storm of self-doubt.

He knew all sides of her, her wit and her anguish, her worries and her joys.

His palm slid down her side to her hip and held her steady. “You’re eager, aren’t you?”

A flash of discomfiture chilled her. “I—I apologize.” She tried to pull away, but he held her in place.

“I didn’t mean that as a bad thing. But…” He bit his lower lip and she reached out her thumb, pulled his lip loose. She adored that lip and wouldn’t stand to see it maltreated.

“But what?”

He swallowed hard, his gaze drifting to where her robe had gaped open, the curves of her breasts pushing together.

Lavinia was fond of exactly two parts of her anatomy: her brain and her breasts. Fortunately, it seemed Dominic appreciated them as well.

“But,” he continued, dragging his gaze up her neck, pausing at her mouth, then finally to her eyes. “I’m finding it difficult to restrain myself.”

“Then don’t.” The words burst from her lips, and the momentary mortification at her loose tongue evaporated under the heat of his stare.

“You’re a lady.”

“I’m not a lady. I’m a physician.”

He chuckled, the sound rumbling from his chest to hers. But his hand hadn’t moved from her hip, as though he needed to remain grounded in the distance between them. “They can be one and the same. You’re the one who taught me that.”

She lifted her hand from her hip and onto her breast. The peaked nipple pressed into his hot palm, and her breath caught. His lips parted, a pained sound falling from his throat.

“I don’t want you to treat me like a lady tonight.”

Dom crashed his mouth to hers with a desperate moan, his lips caressing hers, his tongue parting the seam of her lips with an urgency that spoke of longing, of the need to make up for wasted time.

He made short work of the buttons at her neck, then his palm caressed her breast through the delicate fabric of her nightdress.

When he rubbed the nipple between his thumb and forefinger, she whimpered against his lips as the pressure triggered an answering tug in her core.

“I knew you’d be responsive, so sensitive,” he murmured against her neck.

“You’ve thought about me like this?” His lips were on her collarbone now, then laving kisses over the flesh swelling against the lace at the neckline of her nightdress, tugging loose the ribbon that gathered the fabric.

“Too often. It’s something of an obsession.

” He hooked his finger on the lace at her neckline and drew it down slowly, holding her gaze and waiting for her nod before pulling it low enough for her breasts to fall free.

“Every time we danced I gave myself a headache trying to keep from staring at them, wondering what they’d feel like, taste like. ”

His rough words and adoring expression were enough to make her pussy clench, and she felt gloriously wanton, desirable, passionate. Dominic Bailey wanted her, not as a dance or conversational partner, but as a woman.

Distantly, alarms rang in her head. Dom was nothing but respectful, but his romantic entanglements never carried longevity, at least to her knowledge. Was she merely another notch on his bedpost, to be used and forgotten when morning came?

But pleasure tore through her, chasing the fear back, as his lips closed around her nipple, the warmth of his mouth and scrape of his teeth sending her writhing. He sucked, the steady pull driving the coiling tendrils of impending release into a pulsing knot in her core. “Do that again.”

“You love this, don’t you?” He nipped the furled bud and released it, lapping away the sting.

Lavinia had lost logic—a condition that she’d normally find infuriating—and responded by digging her fingers into his thick hair. “I—yes, oh…”

He chuckled, clearly finding hilarity in her state of befuddlement, and she tugged at his hair.

“You’re not letting me think,” she managed, breathless.

His grin was wicked. “Your brilliant mind deserves pleasure, too, darling.”

Darling. Her heart reached its greedy arms around her lust to cling to the word, pulled it inside and let it glow. She wouldn’t let the insidious doubt over his intentions poison this sensation, of being seen when no one else bothered to look.

His mouth was becoming more insistent, the pulls and flicks of his tongue on her nipples sending bolts of lust directly to her weeping pussy, and she nearly climaxed at the touch of his hand on her thigh, pulling up the hem of her robe and nightdress.

He paused at her hip, his hand tensed as though he were barely restraining himself. Lifting his head from her chest, he kissed her chin, her lips. “I want to make you come more than anything. Please, will you give me the honor?”

He’d never asked her for a second dance, but wanted to bring her to climax. He’s a rogue , her subconscious bellowed, as though she could forget. This was not courting, nor was his desire indicative of any more profound feelings for her.

But at least he cared, on some level, for her, more than most men of the ton had offered. She could imagine far worst circumstances for shedding the last vestiges of her innocence.

She kissed him, relishing in the silk of his hair and she pulled his mouth to hers. “Yes. Make me come.”

For all the messy, desperate passion of their kisses, the mad swirling of tongue and clashing of teeth, his hand moved between her thighs with agonizing patience, a slow skim of his fingers over her mons, a delicate stroke of her outer lips.

When he finally— finally— dipped one finger to where she was wet and aching, her core clenched around nothing, aching and greedy and desperate to be filled.

The sound she made was pitiful, a low whine that only intensified the caresses of his mouth, and he circled the swollen nub at the apex of her thighs.

A bolt of pleasure thundered through her, and she realized with something just short of fear that she was perilously close to climaxing.

The work of her own fingers between her legs never delivered release so easily, yet Dominic’s clever touch had her teetering over the edge.

Her lips fell slack as she moaned, his slow circles drugging and invigorating as they increased in pressure, and he kissed her cheeks, her brows and temple, as though she were precious to him, something far more profound than their friendship.

The clash of sensations had her lifting her hips, wanting more, the emptiness in her core suddenly debilitating.

“Dom,” she moaned, thrashing her head, “I need more, I need…”

She trailed off, and he hummed against her neck.

“I know, darling.” His hand slid lower, deeper between her legs. “Let me in, let me take care of you.”

He slid one thick finger into her pussy, her arousal easing his way, and she moaned again, tossed her head back at the bliss. But almost immediately it wasn’t enough, and she was canting her hips, grinding against him. “More, Dom, please .”

“Yes,” he said against the underside of her chin. “Anything.”

A second finger slid in beside the first, the stretch just enough to make her shudder, to bear down on his hand so the heel pressed against her aching clit. Suddenly, the impending climax seemed too strong, too powerful to bear without giving away something far more significant than an orgasm.

And when he kissed her, pulled her tight against his chest and murmured in her ear, something too low to discern through her thundering pulse but she knew meant affection and safety and pride, a placid harbor in the storm of her release, the worst possible thing happened.

She realized she was in love with him.

And then she shattered.