Page 53 of The Lady is Trouble
He smoothed his coat, his hopelessly wrinkled cravat. “Are we counting something?”
“Our night,” she said, her gaze hungrily recording his weak effort to adjust the impressive bulge in his trousers. “This didn’t count against it.”
He hesitated, running his hand along the hard length, considering. With a deep exhalation, he looked up to find her staring. Their gazes locked, and her heartbeat stuttered and tripped.I want that.
I want him.
He took her in, a detailed examination as moonlight rippled over his face. She wanted to know what his naked body pinning her to a feather mattress felt like; how pleasure shaped his features when he came; what he liked best, what heloved.
“The way you’re looking at me makes me want to take you right here, in the Duke of Ashcroft’s damned torture chamber.”
She shrugged, her well-loved nipple scratching against boned stays and sending another whip of heat through her body. “I don’t know how”—she swallowed, having told him so much already, exposure of the highest measure—“not to want you, Jules.”
He laughed, his head lowering with it. Dragged his hand through his hair until it stood in dark twists about his head. “I don’t know how, either. God help me.” Footsteps tapped down the hallway, and he turned, throwing the most fantastic admission over his shoulder, “And I’m not leaving this world without making love to you, so no, this didn’t count against our night.”
Three light taps, followed by two more, sounded on the door, bouncing off the gothic tapestries papering the walls. Finn, letting them know they needed to leave.
Julian held out his hand, invitation and directive. “You must go.”
She slid to the floor, her legs unsteady but holding. “Not without you.”
His lips flattened, and she understood they were set to quarrel. “No negotiation, Yank. Ashcroft knows I’m here. Likely knowsexactlywhere by now. I have to bloody well wait him out.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You, my lovely partner, are leaving with Finn.”
“But—”
“I’m guessing Humphrey is in the carriage.”
Of course, he was. No need to go there.
Julian stepped in, her skirt brushing his knee. “You’re going to leave with Finn because I need my mind, every trace of it, for the conversation with Ashcroft. I can’t”—he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, let his fingers linger as they traced her jaw—“Iwon’thave you here. For your safetyandmy own. I shouldn’t have allowed this in the first place. Not here.”
His aura flooded the color of a flawless pearl. Compassion.
“You’re going to help him,” she breathed.
“Heneedshelp. Isn’t that what my life is all about?” He crossed to the desk and came back with the velvet bag clutched in his fist. He frowned, rotating the package as he tried to solve the puzzle. “Perhaps he’s part of the League, and we didn’t even know it. Your grandfather recruited others long before he rescued me from the rookery, and you came back from America. I’ve been trying for years to marshal our community, find those he contacted, but I’m still learning. In any case, I mean to discover how much he knows. And how we can help each other.”
His eyes when they found hers had softened to the color of a lake in winter. An endless stretch of crisp color hiding astounding depths. Seconds passed as they stared, spellbound. With a sudden shift, their lips met in heartfelt exploration. He clutched her to him, the crystal pressing into her back. Not the first hard object she had encountered this evening, she thought with a smile that shaped their lips and sent a shiver through her.
“I’ll come for you when I return to Harbingdon.” There was a plea hidden in his words, desperate and unsure, one she hadn’t the heart to deny. “One night, then you must promise to let me go. And I must promise the same.”
She drew his request in on a halting breath and offered agreement in its weakest form—a slight nod when the comment would not come.
Because, she could promise, but she would never in her heart agree.
Ashcroft’s medieval chamber lost its consequence the moment Piper stepped from the room, her gaze capturing his until the door between them snapped shut. Julian’s champagne euphoria had also departed, leaving a steady drumbeat in his skull and a slight tremor in the fingers wrapped around the earl’s crystal.
Or was his unsteadiness a tangible remainder of pleasuring Piper? He lifted his hand to his lips, the scent of her clinging sweetly to his skin. Watching her crest had been the most gratifying experience of his existence.
He would base a thousand solitary future orgasms off just one of hers.
She’d clutched him as if letting go was a test and whispered four heart-wrenching words before departing.Your promise, one night. Because she knew he always kept his promises, even ones that pledged to separate him from the love of his life.
“I’m beginning to understand why my runner disappeared without a trace.”
Julian flinched, the soul catcher shooting a vibrant prism over the desk as he bobbled the stone in his hand. The Duke of Ashcroft lounged against the doorjamb, his smile enigmatic, but his eyes glowing. They were exotic eyes in a predictably English face, an unusual hue, neither brown nor amber, and reminded Julian of the fires the man was reputed to start, which was strangely ironic.
All at once, he understood the game had begun.