To Charm a Naughty Countess (13 page)

“You don’t have to imagine, you know.” How demure she sounded.

“I know.” His voice was no more than a croak.

“You know.”

“Yes,” Michael said, aware that he was agreeing to much more than a simple statement.

She watched him. Maybe waiting for him to draw back, as he always forced himself to. But he couldn’t budge this time. A singular need had crept over him, putting in roots like ivy climbing stone. His careful control was cracked into pieces by something vibrantly alive.

It could not go on, this slow grinding away of his regimented self. He would agree to anything, anything at all, only to be with her. To find himself at last, or to throw himself into a crucible of madness and be melted away.

“I know,” he said again.

Caroline nodded. “Then see me home.”

The last time Michael had seen Caroline’s house, it seemed like a tooth in a chattering mouth. This time, the house stretched tall and quiet, and moonlight plated all of Albemarle Street a soft silver.

This was London at its finest: at night, when the crowds vanished and the world was hushed and muted. It was easy to see the City’s beauty now, without the clamor of distractions to every sense. It was easier, too, to feel sensual joy when one’s senses were not overwhelmed.

For now, there was no color in the world but what the moon granted. He rode in Caroline’s carriage in darkness and silence, with no lamps and no words. Only an awareness as heavy as touch, that the wait would be over soon.

There was no harm in waiting a little longer to make sure everything was right.

“Home at last.” Caroline’s words snipped open their cocoon. With a bounce of carriage springs, a footman dismounted from his perch and lowered the steps of the vehicle.

“How lonely a silent house always seems,” Caroline murmured.

Michael stepped out and handed her down, the brush of her fingers distracting him from the thought that he held precisely the opposite opinion. Or the fact that
lonely
was the last word on his mind as he escorted her inside.

They climbed a proper flight of stairs to the equally proper environment of Caroline’s drawing room. It held no suitors this time, only the flowers they’d left behind as tribute to their favorite. Michael had never given a gift to Caroline.

Yet.

Now that they were alone in her house, he felt a fizzing anticipation, the sprightly cousin of the anxiety he denied. Like anxiety, it made his fingers tingle, forced his breath to labor.

But ah, this time there was pleasure in it. There was pleasure in watching Caroline sway about the room, straightening things that didn’t need to be straightened, trimming a lamp wick that didn’t need trimming. Old habits came forth in times of nervousness, and Michael remembered that she had not always been a countess. She had been raised in a parsonage, and cosseted though she might be now, she was efficient and graceful in her bustle.

And she was nervous. As nervous, maybe, as he. Pride pooled, low in his belly, that he had discovered something about Caroline that he had not known before.

“Thank you,” he said.

She stopped fussing about, turning to look at him. “Gratitude from a duke? To what do I owe this honor?”

“Caro.” He shook his head. “Don’t.”

“No teasing. I forgot.” Her laugh sounded jittery.

Michael drew a deep breath. “Thank you for…” He trailed off, not sure how to confine what he wanted to say in the small packages of words. It sounded so grandiose any way he framed it:
For
showing
me
that
my
limits
are
not
what
I
thought. For helping me when I didn’t know I needed it.

For
being
a
fantasy, come to life: a friend, in the body of a goddess.

“Thank you for welcoming me,” he finally said, and it was close enough.

Her mouth made a shape that he supposed was a smile, though it curved down like a rainbow. “You are very welcome.”

She sat on her long sofa and patted the upholstery next to her. “Come, sit with me.”

Michael sat.

He could sense her body next to him, too close and too far for comfort. His back was stick-straight, his legs tense, his hands flat on his thighs. Out of the corner of his eye, he looked at her, wondering what to do next. Should he touch her? Would she touch him?

She sank against the back of the sofa. Then, before Michael could unbend, she turned sideways and kicked her feet up into his lap.

Michael froze. His mouth opened, then closed again. A wooden dummy without a puppeteer. Caroline sighed and shut her eyes.

When she didn’t move again, Michael allowed himself to lean back a bit. He stared at the feet in his lap.

He had never seen a woman’s feet so closely before. Had never thought much about them, truth be told. Feet were useful, quite literally pedestrian. They were hardly erotic or intimate.

Yet there was something very intimate indeed in the way Caroline had stretched out next to him, laid her body across his lap. As if they belonged, intertwined.

As if they were lovers.

Cautiously, he slid his hands from his thighs, where she’d pinned them beneath her ankles. He held them up to the level of his shoulders, half curled, unsure where to place them. He could not,
not
, stroke her legs through her gown, her stockings. He could not slide her slippers from her feet and stroke their arches to see if she would squirm or laugh.

He could not, because it was new. And unless he knew he was going to do something perfectly, he would rather not try it. Not in front of someone he wanted so much to please, in a moment when so much seemed at stake.

Caroline rescued him, curving forward to capture one of his hands in her own. Grateful, his other one flew to cover hers.

They sat like that for a minute or two, while Michael simply held her hands. Through their gloves, he pressed the graceful taper of her fingers, the rounded crescents of her nails. Hands were so much more than tools, than instruments for pouring out tea or scrawling a letter. Hands were… comforting.

Not an exhausted comfort of the type he felt when he slid into bed after a long day’s work. This comfort was a balm that strengthened him. She chose to be with him; she held his hand. There was nothing small about this small gesture, because it was not
despite
. And maybe because of that, he didn’t want to pull away. He only wanted to feel her fingers in his and see what came next, and next.

“You are always welcome, Michael,” she repeated, “especially if you are content to sit with me in this way. It is very tiring to constantly convince the polite world that I am delightful and that I find them so too.”

Michael’s hands jerked, surprised. “You do not?”

“I do, usually. I enjoy this life. It’s the same every year but different too, as faces and politics change. But living in society is also a performance. I must be my brightest, my most vivid, my most pleasant.” She wiggled her feet. “Sometimes it is a relief to take off the costume and simply lie down and admit that my feet hurt.”

She grinned: a girlish expression, paired with woman’s words, a woman’s body, lying lush and low before him. Honest and tired from carrying the weight of expectations.

Would she take off the costume too? He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry.

“You don’t have to act a part with me,” he managed. “But I do not think you could ever stop being delightful.”

Her fingers tightened in his. Then she struggled against a cushion and slid herself to a sitting position. Her feet scooted across Michael’s lap, teasing his groin before she folded her legs next to her.

“Why, Michael, that was quite charming of you. Thank you.” She did not smile. If anything, she looked puzzled.

Michael was puzzled too. For the first time in his life, he had managed to be charming. He was not sure how he had done it.

“I do enjoy your company, you know,” she added.

“And I yours.” Was this a flirtation or nothing more than a handshake of friendship? Had he misinterpreted every cue? He had thought they were moving to passion, frantic and hot, but this was slow and rather sweet.

Rather… yes, rather comfortable.

He sighed, letting the bloom-scented air of the room fill his lungs, pervade his body. Seldom did he feel comfortable. There was always something to do, some guard to maintain. But tonight, there was neither. There was nothing he need do but sit and hold Caroline’s hand in his own.

Then she lunged for him, catching his shoulders in her hands, and was on his lap with her lips pressed to his before he could finish his deep exhale.

Just as suddenly, she pulled away and slipped back to his side, demure again. Or as demure as a woman could appear with lips flushed and bodice slightly askew.

Michael moistened his lips. “What…?”

“It was time,” she said. As if in response, a clock on her mantel bonged out the hour. Midnight. If Michael were at all superstitious, he would call it the witching hour.

But he was not. Midnight was only the start of a new day.

He swung her weight from his legs, then stood. With as courtly a bow as any prince could have made his queen, he held out his arm, and she took it, rising to her feet. She stood facing him, waiting for him to make the next move.

He wanted to. But he did not want to move wrongly. He tried something that had worked before: a kiss, a slow brush of lips on lips. His free hand was clenched at his side, an anchor of sanity, reminding him with the cut of fingernails into his palm:
keep
your
wits
about
you.

Caro pulled back. “I am not a Carcel lamp, Michael.”

He stared. “What are you—what?”

“You’re analyzing me, are you not? You’re holding back.”

He dropped his other hand to his side. “You didn’t enjoy my kiss.”

This was a raw realization. Illogical, since it was only an evaluation of behavior. It should be no more painful to hear than if she informed him she disapproved of the incline he’d chosen for his canal walls in Lancashire.

He could not be offended by the truth—but he
could
be wounded. Especially when he put something of himself forward, something he thought represented the best of him.

Caroline shook her head. “It was pleasant enough. But I didn’t invite you here to be pleasant. I invited you here so that you might share yourself with me and so that I might share myself with you.”

Michael’s fists clenched tighter.

“If you want to give me pleasant kisses,” Caroline continued, “I will take them, and gladly. But you’ve given me more than that before, and I want to see that part of you again. If you’ll let me.”

She stood before him, straight and watchful. Not touching him, not clasping her hands. Only waiting for him to react or reply.

He felt himself at a crossroads: continue on his cautious road or take a sharp turn. Be daring with his body, as he had with his money.

He had always meant the best for those who depended on him; he had tried to do well by them. But he had not done well by himself. He was tired and pinched, and the solitary road was narrow and cheerless.

He did not know what the other path held, but he wanted to try it.

He took a step toward Caroline, his feet noiseless on the fine carpet that stretched across her floor.

She smiled at him as he stepped closer, and he forgot that he possessed feet. He forgot everything except Caroline, face to face with him. Her eyes were the color of a tropical sea. She was an escape, a haven, warm and bright. With her, he could shed the cold of this unnatural summer, shed the wintry isolation in his heart.

He took her face in his hands, and she blessed him with a smile. “What a relief.”

His mouth covered further words; he stilled her tongue by brushing it with his own.

He was blasted by a lust all out of proportion to the chasteness of her embrace.

This was the Venturi effect in life: the speed and pressure of rushing heat. As his awareness contracted, he felt he would burst with the unfamiliar, perfect dissolution of Caroline’s mouth on his, her tongue tasting his, soft and hot and fiendishly wet. She seemed to be licking his whole body with that tongue; his muscles knotted and bunched, and his cock pressed against his trousers, wanting release.

There was no release, not from this anguished ecstasy. Michael would not have it so. She wanted him, and he would have every bit of her. He would understand a woman’s body; he would bring her so much pleasure that she would never be able to give him up.

Dimly, he realized the illogic of his thoughts. The unlikelihood of bringing Caroline to ecstasy when she’d had many lovers and he’d had none. What did he know about giving a woman pleasure or gaining her heart? He had never experienced either.

Silence
, he told those doubting thoughts. He had always been a fast learner.

Against her neck, he tested the pressure of each kiss, noting the reactions it evoked. Light, and she shivered under the brush of his lips. If he touched her skin with his tongue, she laughed, a low, smoky groan. And if he sucked at the fragile skin… good God, she fell apart, sagging against him, her eyes falling closed as if drugged by the sensations of her own body.

Each moan, each caress, was a triumph. He had waited a lifetime for a woman who would touch him not
despite
but
because.
A woman who cared nothing for his title, yet wanted him all the same. A woman who knew his fears and faults.

Who thought he had a remarkably fine arse.

The thought made him laugh. Caroline’s eyes fluttered open. “Something funny, Wyverne?”

“Michael,” he reminded her in a gruff tone. Sliding his hands around her, he cupped her own pliant rear and pulled her close. Chest to chest, heat to heat, they fit together. He had never felt anything so wonderful as Caro in his arms, filling his sight, her cheeks flushed and her lips red from the abrasion of his kiss, intoxicating him with her faint floral perfume and a muskier smell that must be desire.

She pulled back just enough to slip free the buttons of his waistcoat, then slide her hands beneath his shirt. His coat bound him tightly as she explored his chest with eager fingers, and Michael was glad for the lean muscle he’d earned through years of riding, walking, surveying, digging. Through much work, he had built this body, and she liked it. Her gloved fingers brushed across his chest, and his knees buckled before he locked them, his breathing shallow and quick.

Thank
God, it had all been worth it
. Eleven years as the duke of huge, troubled holdings, and it was all reduced to these minutes, or hours, in her arms.