The Veiled Heart (The Velvet Basement Book 1) (19 page)

Voices, music, and a hum that came from a large body of people floated down the hall from the ballroom. Miriam took a left then a right putting room after room between her, the ballroom, and him until all she could hear was the sound of her breathing and the clip of her shoes as they tapped on the marble.

The house was impossibly large, deceptive even from the grand frontage.

The next turn took her into a corridor the width of her parlor and as long as her whole townhouse. She was in the picture gallery. Large gilded frames surrounded paintings of who appeared to be the Worthington ancestors, their estates, their dogs, and their horses. The paintings lined the walls on both sides in a mosaic of images filling the scarlet wall from the hip-height wooden paneling up to the fresco painted on the ceiling.

Freddy had made her feel brutalized, beaten, desperate, but never this. Never this agonizing pain sunk deep into the fiber of her being. Her heart twisted painfully in her chest. Heat flushed her face; and her eyes, damn them, pinched with heat.

One step after another echoed in the space as she fought the wave of overwhelming emotion.

Damn it, she stopped, held a hand over her heart, she needed to focus on something, anything to stop this feeling. The paintings, she’d look at them, breathe, and let the pain pass.

Miriam looked up.

Blast him.

There in front of her hung a painting of him. Did they really commission and complete paintings that fast? He was the second cousin removed. Most of the people in these paintings bore very little resemblance to him. Yet here he was painted and plastered up in the family gallery as if he had been expected to rule for decades.

Miriam stopped.

There was no use pretending. He looked wonderful. He looked like everything she expected a man of his station should: arrogant, strong, formidable. A man who expected obedience and held the power to make it happen.

She saw the other side of him as well. How could she not? That was the man she knew, the man she’d fallen in love with.

That was the real problem; she had fallen for him. Thought she was safe. There must be something fundamentally wrong with her instincts.

In amongst all that arrogance was the clarity he had when he looked at the world; it sparkled out of those beautiful, blue eyes. The color she foolishly thought of as her salvation.

Here in the face of the man she’d personified with the villainy of her husband, she saw the very things she’d dreamed of as a girl. She’d known a boy with blue eyes back then. It had been a sweet day; a day that had somehow stuck with her while a good many other days and experiences of equal goodness had slipped away from memory.

The soft, full mouth was the other. His lips were so expressive. A slight turn in either direction and his face was transformed.

The many lips of Max, the ones that kissed her; her mouth, her body, her sex. The ones that kissed her into a frenzied state where she forgot her surroundings, her name, her every thought except that he never stop what he was doing.

And then there were those hands. How did he have callused hands? If he’d had soft hands, if he had been any less built or toned, she would have expected that he was not what he presented.

So here she was.

In love with a man she couldn’t trust.

A man who could very well be a monster like Freddy, and just like Freddy, knew how to make her believe he was something very different until it was too late.

“Lily.”

His voice caused an immediate tightening in her chest.

“Leave me alone.”

“Lily, we need to speak.” His hand came around her upper arm and went to turn her around.

Instinct made her tug herself away and step back out of reach.

Then as fast as lightning, her hand was up and flying for his cheek before she even registered it was moving.

Max caught it. The hot broad heat of those calloused hands wrapped around hers and stopped her short of the punishing slap she desperately needed to deliver.

“I know you must be angry.”

“Angry?” she hissed. “I am so furious that I feel numb. I never want to see you again. Ever.”

Her hand pulled free and she stormed off.

Max was right behind her, and in a few steps his arm came around her waist and nudged her off course toward a door, opened it, and ushered her in.

The lock clicked.

They were in the library. An outrageously large library.

The gaslights were on, illuminating the space into a bright enclave of knowledge. Pfff. How fitting.

She looked at him. His face was hard, determined, and angry in its own right.

“I deserve the chance to explain.”

“Oh, do you? After you had how many times to explain?” Her chest started to heave as pain rolled through her again. “How could you, Max, after all the things I told you?”

She flew at him again. He easily caught her hands and held them at her side while he pulled her up against his chest.

“Sweetheart, please, it’s been hard on me too. Let me explain. You owe me that.”

“I don’t owe you a damn thing.” She wriggled to pull away but only managed to wriggle around so her back was now against his chest and she faced away from him.

That ache was now meshing with the darker urges he generated in her body. His hips and thighs against hers, the strength of his arms, the wonderful scent of him. His arms held her firmly in place and the solid warmth of his chest radiated into her.

The pleasure of being close to him. The way her body was tuned to him, and the excitement these touches brought. These were mixing with the anger, with the pain that constricted her chest making it hard to think, to breathe. They made her labor to draw in every breath and not scream. Not cry like the softhearted fool she had become.

“If I let you go, will you strike me?” His arms were around her from behind, holding her hands across her chest.

“That depends on what you say next or if I have to look at that self-righteous face of yours.”

“My face is not self-righteous. You could do well to reflect on that yourself.”

“Sod off, Max.”

“You promised me anything. I ask that you forgive me. I want you to forgive me unconditionally, Lily. Right now, no questions asked. Trust me enough to do that.”

“Hah. That is impossible. That is not ever likely to happen. Forgiving you would be like forgiving Freddy, and I will never ever forgive him for what he did to me.”

He let her go and stalked across the room. His chest was expanding and contracting rapidly. He was upset.

“I. Am. Not. Freddy.” His hand ran through his hair, upsetting the well-groomed fall of it. “I am nothing,
nothing
like Freddy!” His voice had risen and his face was tight with frustration and anger.

She would not soften. Misleading her through omission was as good as a lie itself.

“You may as well be Freddy as far as I am concerned. Two peas in a pod. Inseparable. You know, Freddy was one of the most charming men I met in my life right up until I married him.”

Max turned.

Seeing him on the other side of the room, her insides twisted with conflict. She wanted so much to run into his arms, to be pulled against his chest, and to have them be Lily and Max. However, now when she looked, she saw Freddy.

“I did not like Freddy. We were not close and we most certainly were not inseparable.”

“Oh, that’s easy for you to say, but everyone says that you were. So tell me that being close to Freddy didn’t have its benefits.”

His face said it all. Of course, there had been benefits. Everyone got something from being around Freddy. If not directly, then through the flow on from his associates and friends.

“So what did you get, Max? Money, women, influential friends?”

“No, it was nothing like that.”

“Oh, what then?” Tension crackled in the air between them. The silence yelling the answer. “Your father. Your father got something.”

Yes, that was it. The shame on his face said it all. He didn’t take for himself, but he walked the walk for his family. She knew all about that.

“So typical.” She layered it with all the disdain she could muster.

Max moved across the room with lightning speed and held her up against him.

“So typical of me, is it, Lily? So typical of my class, is that what you are saying, Lily? That once I was something special and now that I am of that despicable group of men of breeding and station, I am below your regard. Below your simple compassion and understanding.” His head moved down to her ear. “I wasn’t so despicable when my tongue was between your legs. When I thrust into you and had to hold my hand over your mouth to stop greater London hearing how despicable I was.”

His hand slid down her belly, down to her hips, and pulled her hard back against him echoing what they had done so many times. Her body burst into a molten heat.

“That is not fair.” It whispered out of her as her hips pushed back against him.

His teeth came down to her shoulder and bit. Bit hard and his hand pushed between her legs and cupped her.

“You may be angry with me, Lily. But this between us is real. Your body knows who I am, knows I am not Freddy. Just give me a chance to explain myself.”

“Don’t touch me. I am not a whore to be fondled and bullied. Let me go.”

His hands let her go and he stepped away. Immediately, she felt bereft. How did he do that? How did he make her forget about everything and just sink into him? Into them.

“Sit down, we are both acting badly.”

He led her to a seat. And like some mesmerized puppet, she lowered down into it.

Max turned to the sideboard.

“We could both do with a brandy.”

Everything seemed to slow down. The mesmerized feeling shifted into a daze. The steps of Max’s shoes on the wood. The clink of the stopper being removed.

Inside her chest, her breath was tight and her heart beat faster and faster. It was all too much. The room didn’t have enough air. Didn’t have enough space to think this through. Her head said one thing, her body another, and her heart was spinning in circles.

Miriam got up while his back was turned. Her feet moved faster and faster. The bookshelves seemed to fly past her. The sound of her breathing was all she could focus on. She turned right at two bookshelves then started to weave between them, ducking down one aisle of bookcases after another, moving as fast as she could.

It felt like the bookcases went on forever as if she could run and run and never have to face it all.

She had to find a door and escape from here. Aunt D could stay, she didn’t care; however, she would be leaving.

“Lily!”

His voice was harsh and loud in the space. She heard his steps running, hers also, her heart hammered in her ears as she wove in and out of the bookcases, doubling back, looking for a door.

“Lily!”

Max, Max, how could you? A tearing pain pulled at the center of her being.

The irony was her legs were running, running away, and another part was running to him; wanting to run back to the common garden, find him standing there in his blue seaman’s coat, hands in his pockets, just there, always there when she needed him. She wanted to run right to him and find him.

“Lily, stop!”

The sound was much too close. Miriam looked around and screeched. He was so close. She ducked down an opening and saw a door.

Max was right behind her.

Miriam shifted to the right, then the left, his hand reached out and missed her.

She almost fell.

Then she felt the tug at her skirts as his hands grabbed hold and pulled her back. He pulled her close, their steps slowing, their feet almost tangling together.

The back of a large chair pushed into her front. Him at her back.

Max turned her and his mouth was on hers.

Hungry, demanding as he pulled her close, held her head so it was immobile under his harsh devouring.

She tried to close her mouth but his tongue pressed in. She wanted to close her teeth on him, but his hand on her jaw held it open. Her body was on fire. Pulsing with its automatic response to him. Miriam raised her hands into his hair and tugged back hard. He grunted and then lifted up for her to get a breath then came back down.

She kissed him back this time. Kissed him with all the anger she had. He was not going to win this; he was the one in the wrong, not her. It was well within her rights to be angry.

I want you to forgive me now
,
unconditionally
,
Lily
.
How dare he? She kissed him back harder. Pulled his head down on hers, closer.

His touch moved over her, squeezed her breasts. Her mouth opened as he found her nipple through the fabric and pinched hard. Hard enough for her to feel it under all her layers. Hard enough to be aware of the sensation traveling between her legs in a flash of heat.

Two could play at this game. She let go of his hair and ran her hand over his shoulders, his chest, down over his hard, firm buttocks, and pulled him in closer. He flexed under her hands. A firm demanding thrust of his hips.

Too much of her gown bunched between them. Cool air was on her shins then higher as he hoisted her skirts. She was naked underneath, as the blighter had asked. It incited her all over again. She wriggled to get out of his hold.

He held her firm and his hand was there between her legs. He bit at her chin.

“You did as I asked.”

She bit him back. “Lying snake.”

“Oh, Lily. Sweetheart, please. Don’t be angry, love.”

She bit him again and his fingers started to move. Pleasure rippled through her at each touch, each slide, and each push in.

Her head rolled back as the sensations washed through her, rippled out in a hot aching need that was like a balm to her torn and ripped heart. His mouth took hers again. His tongue did what his fingers did; and in a few deft swipes with his thumb, she crashed over the edge. Her shout of pleasure telling all the books, periodicals, and Max how much she responded to him, how much he was the conductor, and she the orchestra of this passion between them.

Max didn’t leave it there. He continued to build her up until she was tugging him close again. Needing him all over again until she couldn’t even remember what she should be upset about. It was nothing but a distant beat that she would take up again, later.