Page 39 of The Lady is Trouble
She tried, with minimal success, to avoid staring at the hard ridge tenting his trouser close.
“Brilliant.” He lifted his elbow just enough to train one irate steel-grey eye on her. “I told you to let me go! Instead, you startthis? And damned if I wasn’t set on finishing it.”
“I had no other option. I wasn’t going to leave you there.” She worked her bodice in place as it seemed she’d lost him on this side of the world. “Heavens, the real thing is better than any description in any book. And statues, oh, Julian, they have nothing on you.” She saw him stiffen, heard his aggravated snort and felt she should add, “Don’t go ruining it. Not when I can still taste you on my lips.”
He dropped his arm, closing off her view. “I was rough. I’m sorry. The vision. Lack of control.” He wagged his fingers. “Too far, too fast. Need just about…swallowed me whole.”
The steady pulse returned to her nether regions as she imagined those artistic fingers touching her slower, whatever this meant. More and at a longer interval is what it said to her. “We can goslower?” she asked on a breathless whisper.
He shot to his feet, trying to gather himself when she could have told him it was a hopeless endeavor. He looked like he’d been forced through a keyhole, the darling man. A rumpled, bloody, sweaty mess, he cracked the door, spoke to Humphrey in an aggrieved tone, then closed it with a snap.
Jamming his back against the frame, he crossed his arms and regarded her with dismay. “You have to go. I…this…” He shrugged quite forlornly. His aura was a kaleidoscope, a mad churn, worse than the spill of color across his carpet.
He was slipping through her grasp, returning to his place as her protector, one fleeting second at a time. “Go? With Humphrey?”
He dropped his head to his hand and rubbed as if he could wipe out his thoughts. “Minnie’s there, too.”
“Oh, no. You’re going to send me back with both of them?” She scrambled to find a better solution than a cart ride to the house with two disapproving chaperones. “Wait until dark. I’ll sneak back. Use the kitchen entrance and straight up to my bedchamber without stopping.”
“No chance to get you out of here without notice when you look this”—he paused, rubbed his temple harder—“compromised.”
“You don’t look so wonderful yourself, Jules.” Although he did. Good enough to eat,damn him.
He raked his hand through his hair. “What do I tell them? Although I see you object, can you give us until early evening”—his head went against the door with a thump—“as I was about to have my way with Piper.”
She rose on unsteady legs. When she reached him, she laid her hand on his muscled forearm and tried to suppress her intense yearning. Could she help it if the dusting of hair beneath her fingers enticed beyond belief? “Wereyou about to have your way with me?”
His gaze left its inspection of the ceiling and drilled into her. Beneath her fingers, he trembled. His eyes flashed, the amber flecks competing with his flushed skin.
Taking her by the arms, he turned and crowded her against the door. “What do you think?” Then he bent low and brought her high, allowing his long body to press into hers, as solid as the wood at her back, neither giving mercy as he reclaimed her lips. She fisted her hands in his hair and moaned, the kiss racing back to where they’d left off, tongues tangling, hips beginning to mate.Oh, like what had occurred on the floor but not. Without his weight, this joining felt wonderfullydifferent.
“Send them away,” she whispered.
Those words, spoken without intention, broke the spell.
Julian ended the kiss gradually, skimming her cheek, her ear, a silky whisper. Then his brow settled on hers as he released a sigh and her body, allowing her to do a languid slide down his. When her toes hit the floor, she sought his gaze, but long, dark lashes conveniently hid it. His hands went to the door, braced on either side of her shoulders, fingers splayed.
He appeared a man cataloging the taste of a delicacy he didn’t anticipate consuming again.
After a charged moment, Julian tapped his knuckle on the wall, then peeled himself away until they were no longer touching. Their harsh exhalations were the only sound in the room, aside from the distant call of a woodlark. She wished she could say something to erase the resigned expression from his face, like a hard swipe with one of his rags across canvas. The smell of paint and linseed oil would pose an erotic challenge until the day she died.
“I can see you shutting down, turning away from me, from us, fromthis. It isn’t a surprise. So Jules Alexander, it pains me.”
“What isn’t a surprise is your arguing with me about this,” he growled, his gaze going hot, his aura flaring around him.
His scorching regard only made her burn as she recalled how skillfully he’d touched her, how he seemed to anticipate precisely what she needed andwhere, when she’d had no idea how to direct him. She’d never imagined longing this intense, hunger and hopelessness burrowing deep. The combination was horrific, a dreadful masterpiece. “This is my burden. For not letting you go, as you’ve begged me to from practically the first day we met.”
He had started across the room, sidestepping canvases, brushes, and rags, but her comment stopped him short. The glance he threw at her was as loaded as the pistol she’d seen in his desk drawer. “That is utter rubbish.”
“At least you’re not proposing another trip to Gloucestershire.”
He went to one knee, as dejected as the discarded stockings and muddy boots he knelt before. He toyed with her stocking without looking back, broad shoulders lifting and falling in resignation. “What in the hell do you want from me, Yank?”
She knotted her fingers behind her back. “Can I return the question?”
An emotion she couldn’t decipher crossed his face. “No.”
“I want you to share your knowledge, so I’m better equipped to manage the experience next time.”