The Proposition (33 page)

He cut straight through the crowd, shoving people, using his size to get through. Damn it, he didn't like the way the man nodded and leaned toward her.

As Mick came up to them, the arsehole asked her, "So, having a little 'outing,' are we?"
We?
He and Winnie were no
we,
and Mick was about to tell him so.

He could have saved himself the worry. The second Win saw him, her face lit. She turned toward him, ignoring the other man. "Where are the drinks?" she asked.

He didn't have them. She laughed. Never mind. She grabbed Rezzo's beer from him, took a swill, then wiped her lips demurely with her fingertips. All was forgiven. Mick was confused. What had just happened?

Then more amazing: Winnie leaned forward onto her toes and planted a quick, damp kiss on his cheek. As she clambered back up onto his chair, then the table, he was left holding his face where her wet, cool mouth had touched him. Stunned. Oh, Win…

She began her dancing again. He laughed. A madwoman. Mad to dance. She couldn't get enough. She was too eager to be about her own entertainment than to be bothered with a toff out on the town. Mick let it go. She danced. He watched. So did the toff, he noticed. So did a lot of the men. Who wouldn't? Whenever she'd stop long enough to get a drink of water, the fancy fellow, though, tried to make conversation.

Mick listened to him ramble, paying less attention to what he said than how he said it. He put
bloody
into the middle of everything: hoo-bloody-rah, abso-
bloody-lutely. When he asked Winnie to step out front with him "where it isn't so noisy," Mick interceded. He put his hand over the fellow's reaching arm and said, "Not bloody likely."

The man looked at him. Mick realized he assumed they were the same, two toffs wanting the same bit of wild skirt, a lady out for a good time. Hell, the man couldn't have been more wrong about everything, though it made Mick frown at Winnie. Something was different about her, something nice, something he liked. Though somehow it worried him, too.

Then she became reassuringly the same. With all the starchiness she was capable of, Winnie said to the man, as if he were insane to have imagined differently, "I'm not going anywhere with you." She looked perfectly startled to have to inform him of the fact.

Thank you, loovey, Mick thought.

The fellow accepted her decision, though he handed her a quinine, which Mick might have complained about if he hadn't forgotten his own drinks at the bar and Winnie hadn't looked so thirsty. While she drank it, in under a minute, the toff mentioned he was in London for a horse auction, obviously trying to impress her.

Mick folded his arms. Hell. In the minute, offhand, in passing, they talked about breeding horses—for Ascot as opposed to good carriage horses—what it took to breed good hunting dogs, and where to buy a Van Dyke, whatever that was.

Winnie could talk to the fellow about these things. She knew all about them; she had lived in his world. Lived there still to a degree. He said to himself, She's the daughter of a marquess, for godssake, Mick. You're thinking you'll just up and marry a marquess's daughter? Then what? Haul her off to the country in a donkey cart? If you can find a donkey cheap enough?

What was so god-bless special about her anyway? Yes, she was quite the classy lady. Sweet, kind to people; kind to him. She was about as intelligent a woman as he'd ever known, and he liked that about her. He liked that she was sensitive and careful, even if she was so careful sometimes she made herself crazy. And pretty, Lord, she was pretty to him—in a unique way that no other woman could duplicate.

A smooth-skinned, strong-featured face. Very English. Beautiful coloring. An elegant height. Substantial. With pretty little breasts. A fine, grand bottom. And, of course, the damnedest legs a man might ever know. Lord, he'd like to see those legs, bare again, just one more time before he died.

He loved Winnie's body. It was odd, but Mick could no long remember if he'd always liked this shape in a woman, then Winnie came along and filled the bill. Or if he liked this shape because it was the shape of Winnie Bollash.

When he came down to it, he just didn't know. It was a mystery to him why he liked her so well, why he wanted her. A mystery usually summed up with the phrase:
I'm in love with the woman.

And there it was, for better or worse. His worry. He was in love with Winnie—with Lady Edwina Bollash—a lady he couldn't carry off and have forever. It was going to break his heart to leave her. But he was going to have to, and that was a fact. He was going to have to leave her to the likes of the toff.

By midnight, the crowd had thinned enough that in a cramped, crowded way, couples, now most of them to one degree or another drunk, clung to each other in what might have been called dancing. That section of the floor swayed again to the music, slowing along with the girls who moved more languorously on the tabletops—only three survived: Nancy, a girl named Lolly, and Win, his sweet Win. Mick didn't know if Winnie were aware of it or not, but her own movements had become willowy, softly undulant. Sultry. He was riveted.

The lordly fellow hung on, too. He wouldn't leave, and he wouldn't stop staring. It hadn't bothered Mick that any man in the room looked at her, not up to this point. He was damn proud to know her, to watch her make herself happy in a way that didn't hurt anyone—in a way, in fact, that made a lot of other people damn blissful. The men in the room were pretty much mesmerized by tall Win moving her long body.

Now, though, even though the upper-class fellow was being perfectly polite about his interest, Mick wanted to throttle him. For no good reason at all. Or no, for the simple reason that he had the good taste to watch the prettiest woman in the room dance better than anyone else. Winnie certainly had a way of moving to music. She'd said it was Strauss in her blood, but tonight it was gypsy. Sweet gypsy Win.

He realized after a while that he and the other fellow were standing shoulder to shoulder, watching her, though his own shoulder was a good six inches higher.

The other man noticed, too. "Can't help but observe," he said, "we both have good taste." Then he asked, "Is she yours then, mate?" He didn't own the word
mate;
it wasn't his. He was being chummy, trying to adopt the vernacular of the place—possibly because he'd noticed Mick had command of it.

"Yes," Mick said. It was simpler than explaining.

Then stupid Winnie, fresh from huffing and puffing her way off the table, stepped down and chimed in, "I'm not his. I'm not anyone's." She looked right at Mick when she said it, as if he should contradict, but how could he? She wasn't.

The fellow arched a self-important, condescending eyebrow at Mick and shifted his gaze to her, smiling. "May I buy you a drink then?"

"No," she said cheerfully. "I'm drinking with him."

"I could buy you something much fancier. I'm a baron's son." The awkward announcement, if it were true, was meant to convey he had money, connections, a way of wooing beyond the Bull and Tun.

Mick told him, just as cheerfully as Winnie, "You could be the son of a whore, and no one would care."

The other man jerked, blinked at him. Mick half-hoped he would rise to the insult. He would have been happy to level the arsehole. He hadn't hit anyone in years, and tonight felt like a splendid night for it. He was angry over something—over something larger than a stupid nob making eyes at Winnie. Still, whatever it was, he'd be only too happy to take it out on a mouthy fellow with more gall than a monkey pulling his own tail.

Now, it was Mick's experience that other men didn't lightly test out the truth behind his mean look. He didn't even have to make it all that hateful. It was one of the joys of being a tall, powerfully built man that his confrontations rarely escalated into physical matches of brawn. He was usually the declared winner by virtue of the other fellow taking a good look at him. So he let this other fellow study him.

Then Winnie pushed him. "Stop. Don't cause trouble." Oh, fine, now
he
was causing trouble. She looked down at his hands, both fisted together, and frowned. "Whatever happened to the drinks you were bringing us?"

Ah, the ale and shandy he'd left on the bar half an hour ago. They'd be gone by now. He tried to sidestep his way around her question. He didn't want to leave her, not now. But she was hot and thirsty, and there was no getting around her saying so.

"Go on," she told him and pushed him in the chest again. She used her full, flat palm, which he caught and held against him a moment, rubbing it up his shirt-front an inch, holding it to him.
Yes, touch me, Win.

It felt so good, her hand on him. Better still, the way her eyes met his made him feel like a bloody king. The male grit and gripe of him relieved in one direction and expanded in another. He wanted her. He wanted her right now. If there hadn't been a law against it, he'd have thrown her on the table and had her. That is, if there hadn't been a law and a lot of people and if Winnie herself weren't, almost certainly, opposed to the idea.

Unaware of the way his mind worked, she absently wet her lips and curved them up for him, her expression glowing—full of promise he doubted she understood, that she didn't mean.

"All right," he said. A drink for Winnie.

He went, watching her and the fancy, irksome fellow over heads and between shoulders as he shoved his way to the bar. Winnie didn't even look at the man, though, horse's arse that he was, he remained at her side, trying to get her to. At the bar, Mick played the same sort of game, torturing himself by looking for them through the crowd as he waited for the drinks. He tapped his fingers, hurried Charlie up, grabbed the mugs, then pushed his way straight back across the room.

Just as he came up, Winnie managed to rid herself of the upper-class nuisance. Yes, a nuisance, Mick thought. That's all the man was to her. Lord Baron's Son moved off, wisely shifting his interest to Nancy, telling her something that made her spill her beer laughing. Anticlimactic. One of Mick's newer words. It was perfectly accurate.

He was left with no place to put all the crazy feelings that raced around inside him.

He handed Win a half pint of straight ale. "Here," he said. "Drink up. You look as if you could use it."

She waved her hand in front of her face, an exaggerated fanning gesture, and smiled. "Hot," she said.

Wisps of hair clung to her neck. Sweat ran down her throat in two neat rivulets, one of them sliding between her breasts as he watched, making him curve the tip of his tongue to the back of his teeth. Yes, Winnie was roasting, he thought. He watched her chug the ale a little quicker than she should. As she drained it, he caught her eye over the rim of the mug. He tipped his head sideways, a nod toward the door at the back. Night air.

She nodded quickly. "Oh, yes, that sounds good."

He set his own drink down, untouched, and took her hand. It felt thin and fragile, soft. He rubbed his fingers over the knuckles as he led her through the room to the back. There, he pushed the door open, then leaned, holding it to let her go first. She brushed his chest as she walked past, out into the night, out onto the stoop, then down the one step to the ground; she walked into the dark.

He followed. It was surprisingly cool outside, quieter, though the music still rattled behind them. He came closer to her as his eyes adjusted, then saw the glimmer of her bare arms as she wrapped them around herself in front. He watched her silhouette from the back. Her pale neck in the moonlight that came between buildings into the alley. Without all her clothes up around it, her neck was long and slender, supple. Her shoulders were rounded. He knew from the shadows and her posture that the muscles of her back were lean and strong; she would have a beautiful back.

He reached, rubbed his palms over her shoulders and down her bare arms, to her elbows. She shivered, making a lovely, light sigh, then surprised him by stepping back against him. Ooh, more promises, Win. With her nestled there in his arms, he took his right hand and lifted a strand of hair that had fallen to her left shoulder. He brushed it back up then gently continued, pushing her head over to make an open place, opening up the vulnerable curve of her neck.

He bent his head into the exposed crook and kissed her there as he pulled her strongly into him, wrapping his arms around her. He more or less ate her neck—lips, teeth, tongue—all the way up to the edge of her jaw where it met the back of her ear, then all the way down again to where her collarbone met her shoulder. It was a delicious stretch of skin.

She shuddered and gave him access while molding her back against his chest.

His, he wanted to say.
Me. Only me.
But he didn't have the right.

Just a compelling inclination. A relentless drive down one narrow train of thought that carried him, again and again and again, to the same conclusion. He needed to have her. He needed to put himself inside Winnie, into the sweet, dark privacy of her, and stroke himself there till he came—h-h-o, God help him.

Putting words to his strongest wish made his head swim. It made the world tilt under his feet. He told himself, Time to think with something other than what was coming to attention in his trousers. Get yourself on the straight and narrow here, Mick. Winnie wouldn't like all this.

But he kept kissing her neck, because Winnie wasn't the same tonight, and any fool could see it.