Wicked Becomes You (31 page)

Maybe he loved her.

He started across the floor toward her. She held still, watching him approach. It was
possible
he loved her. He did not require her money. He’d had her virginity with no promises made or asked for.

He did not stop at a polite distance. He came directly into her, his hands closing on her waist. She resisted the urge to look up toward the balcony. Everyone thought them married, and these touches were permissible among married couples. That did not change the effect it would have: in a minute, if he did not release her, they’d make a spectacle so powerful that the balcony would probably collapse beneath the weight of the crowd craning over.

She put her hand over his. He offered her his trademark rogue’s smile. She understood now exactly what that smile signified. It was a personal promise of long, sweaty nights and no quarter given.

Her grip tightened over his by no conscious volition. If he loved her . . . then what couldn’t she do? What couldn’t the world show to her? What wasn’t possible?

“I am bored out of my skull,” he said. “Do you think we’ve put sufficient time into this purgatory?”

“We promised we would not leave until the twins did,” she reminded him.

His head tipped slightly. A new gleam entered his eye. “Would not leave the house,” he said.

Beneath her palm, his skin was hot, his fingers strong. The possibility in his suggestive smile made her pulse quicken. “Alex, we can’t . . .”

“Come,” he said, turning her toward the door. In her ear, he breathed, “Be a little wicked, Miss Maudsley.”

Here, indeed, was wickedness: she realized, as she followed him out of the ballroom and down the hall, that she had been dreaming of this while she’d wandered, lost, through the house. She knew exactly where they should go. She stepped ahead to lead him and he followed close on her heels, not speaking, nudging her when she paused, nipping at her ear and muddying her doubts when the curious glance of some masked passerby made her courage falter.

She stopped by the baize door, now standing shut, through which she had spied the open linen closet. Turning back to Alex on a great breath, she said, “I think this might work. Just inside, there’s a—”

He took her under the arms and put his mouth to hers as he backed her through the door. Some distant, rational part of her listened for the thump that spelled the door’s closure; the rest of her wits were already scattered beneath the driving pressure of his kiss. They had not kissed with this intent since Milan. There had been no opportunity. In the days since, she had started to wonder if the wildness and freedom she’d felt in his arms had been the product of an overfevered imagination, the wishful thinking of a woman afraid of slipping back into deadly, dulling comforts.

But she had not imagined it. His lips on hers made every part of her come alive. She pressed herself into him for more of it, then let him push her back against the wall, breathing encouragements into his mouth, urging him on to greater ferocity. Her nails caught in his shirt, beneath his shoulder blades, digging into the density of his muscle, daring it to try to resist her. His mouth slipped down her neck, teeth scraping, testing; he bit the place where her throat joined her shoulders, as if to hold her in place, when she wanted to be nowhere else.

She tasted his chin, his jaw, the skin which had been rough with stubble in Milan, now so smooth from the wick of a sharp-edged blade. His palm covered her breast, lifting it clear of her corset as he sucked the skin at the base of her throat, just inside the lacy neckline of the silver tissue gown she wore. She hoped he marked her. She wished he could make her somehow indelibly his; that they were still children so they could cut their fingers and mingle their blood and know this meant something. She longed for some transformation more lasting than that wrought by the law and his name, some visceral change he might effect in her so that anyone on the street with one glance would know she was his.

The fabric of her gown was so thin that she could feel the chafing of his thumb, now, the slight, sweet abrasion of his nail across her nipple, as though she were naked, and he, too. Flesh to flesh, pressing into each other, every doubt in her melting.
I want this
. God above, she wanted to be his.

His mouth closed over her nipple through the fabric, sucking strongly. It pulled a hot, sweet current from low in her belly; she ran her hands up and down his broad back, restless, impatient, ready to jump from her skin if he did not take her now. This was mad, insane. A servant could come along at any moment.

The thought cleared her brain a little. She had no desire to kowtow to convention any longer, but decency was a noble concept all the same.

She groped blindly along the wall behind her. The door was there somewhere, she knew it. Her fingers closed on nothing. “Wait,” she panted.

“No,” he said, and bit down lightly on her nipple, startling a low, hot sound from her throat.

“Someone—Alex, someone could come. We should . . . stop.”

He lifted her by her bottom, pinning her between his body and the wall. “Yes,” he agreed in her ear. “Someone could come.”

A hot, dark thrill ran through her. She understood, all at once, that games had a place in this matter, too. But . . . a strand of fear intruded, constricting her ardor. “Alex—” She wasn’t ready for such things. Not yet. “Please,” she whispered.

He hesitated only a fraction of a moment before drawing her a pace down the dark, narrow passage. She heard the click of a latch, and the smell of the linen closet flooded the space: starch and lemon and lavender. His hand at her waist guided her inside; he pulled the door shut and total darkness enfolded them.

His lips touched her ear. His voice was soft and so, so low. “You’re right,” he murmured. His hand smoothed over her bottom, tickled the tops of her thighs. “This is much better. Anything might happen in such darkness.”

The shiver that passed through her, the current of want that powered it, dried her throat to dust. She turned blindly for his mouth, and he ran his tongue along her lower lip. His hands slid slowly, slowly, down her arms. Encircling her wrists, he pulled them behind her, his silent squeeze an order: she would leave them there.

His mouth returned to hers now, his kiss slow and deliberate and thorough as she stood still, all the pleasure points in her body pulsing ever stronger, the imagined restriction of her arms somehow feeding this desire: standing in the dark, blind, willingly trusting him. “What do you want?” he whispered.

“You,” she said.

Without warning, his finger brushed lightly between her legs, making her jump and whimper. He stroked again more firmly, rubbing almost contemplatively at the juncture of her thighs. “What do you want for yourself?”

She frowned. “
You
.”

He laughed, a low, sexual sound. Between her legs, his light, teasing strokes were not enough; the skirt, while thin, impeded his touch. She strained toward him, and he said against her mouth, “Shh. In a moment.”

He pressed harder now, reminding her body of how empty it was, of the ways he could solve that, the ways he could satisfy her. But she did not want to wait anymore. Even as his hand rubbed and goaded her and the hunger built, that strange panic began to seep back into her thoughts.
Take me, Alex
. Was it so easy for him to wait? Did he not burn the same way she did?

She reached down and laid a palm on his erection, and when he took a sharp breath, no doubt to chide her for her insurrection, she said to him, “Shh,” and cupped him more firmly. She
wanted
this. She
needed
this. His hands curved around her bottom, clenching and squeezing her, lifting her against him, against her own hand. She went on her tiptoes to help him, to help them both. “Have me,” she whispered as she rubbed against him.
Have me
. Her fingers learned the catch on his trousers and flipped it open.

His cock sprang into her hand, hard and full and ready. He was drawing up her skirts now, pulling them up in great handfuls. Their mouths met and their tongues tangled as his palm met her stocking and smoothed up past her garter, finding the bare flesh of her thigh beneath her thin silk drawers. His other hand he lifted to his mouth; she heard a wet sound, and then he placed his finger to her quim, to the throbbing spot that leapt at his touch and made her swallow another garbled moan. For a moment, as he rubbed her and she writhed, the only sound was of their fevered breathing and the whispering shush of her gown.

She pushed against him, one final demand. His hand slipped back to her thigh, lifting her leg and placing her knee over his hip bone. The head of his cock, startlingly hot, brushed her entrance. “Yes,” she breathed. “Now.”

He slid his hand beneath her drawers and cupped her bare bottom in one large hand, while the other he laid across her back, his hand cradling her head. And then, very slowly, he pushed inside.

Twelve days. He was larger than she’d remembered. She could feel her body’s brief resistance before she remembered how to take him, so broad and blunt, demanding nothing but submission. Very gradually he pushed into her, so gradually, as though every infinitesimal fraction required its own moment of decision, of request and consent. He shifted in the darkness—using the shelves to brace himself, she realized, while he used his own bone and muscle to support her. And then he pushed once more and seated himself completely inside her.

Her head fell back into his palm. She felt pinned, held down, immobilized as he thrust into her steadily, aggressively, filling her without hesitation, his face a darker shadow over hers in the darkness. If the closet had been smaller, if he could have held her even more closely in his grip, she would only have welcomed it.
Make me yours
, she thought as she gripped him to her.
Never let me go.

Her climax came over her quickly, and as fiercely as the emotions in her breast. She clenched around him and he gave a soft, low moan in reply, and then pushed into her harder, and harder yet, and set up a steady, pounding rhythm that made her own satisfaction extend, spreading out in ripples and quivers, ebbing from her like a sweet dream as he sucked in his breath and came.

Afterward, his lips turned into her neck and he spoke very quietly. “Not purgatory after all,” he said. “Not with you here. Idiotic of me to think otherwise, even for a moment.”

And deep inside her, that small, cold kernel of doubt began to melt. Against his forehead, she smiled.

They returned to the ballroom separately, Gwen going first. Her mission, so they had agreed, was to find the twins and pull rank: as the bride-to-be, she was certainly entitled to demand an early night’s sleep.

She paused on the edge of the floor, mask now atop her head in a strategic decision—to disguise, or account for, the disorder of her hair. The crush seemed to have grown even thicker, and the air now held the distinct tang of sweat and alcohol. The Cornelyses must be overjoyed; no host could declare his party a success until the air began to grow foul.

“So the bastard finally saw it through.”

So absorbed was she in scouring the crowd that the familiar voice barely registered on her at first.

And then she stiffened and glanced sidelong.

Trent
stood beside her. He wore a mask, but she could not mistake him. He had a small birthmark at the corner of his mouth, very distinctive, the shape of the African continent.

The last time they had spoken, she had been engaged to him, still. After the note he’d sent breaking it off, she had not wished to hear his voice again, much less give him the honor of hearing hers.

She looked behind her for Alex, but if he had come back already, he had entered through the far doors. He could not be far off, though; they were meant to find each other again as soon as possible.
He
had suggested this. He did not wish to be parted from her: that was the only conclusion she could draw from his suggestion.

She smiled. She would pretend as though she hadn’t heard Trent’s remark, whatever on earth he’d meant by it.

But he had the bad taste to speak again. “I would pay good money to be with Pennington when he hears this news,” he said.

Now no doubt remained that he was speaking to her. She bit her lip very hard.

He laughed suddenly. “Why, you have no idea, do you?” he asked. “You should see your face right now. What did you think—that I broke it off of my own free will?”

She would not give him the satisfaction. She would
not.

“You always were a bit thick.” Incredulity flooded his voice. “But affection aside, you knew how badly I needed your money. I can’t believe you never wondered.”

She whirled on him. “Sir, I do not know why you are addressing me, but you will cease to do so
at once
.”

His brows lifted high, clearing the edge of his black domino. “Of course. Do accept my felicitations on your marriage, madam.” Sweeping her a low bow, he turned on his heel, checkered cape swirling, and walked off.

She stared after him.

He was lying, of course.

But to what end?

A hand touched her arm. She gasped and whirled. Only Alex.
Alex
. He was smiling at her, but a frown quickly overshadowed the smile. “What is it?” he asked, glancing past her, searching the crowd. In vain, of course. Everybody was masked. Not everyone knew a man well enough to pick him out by a small birthmark. Perhaps only fiancées and wives could do so. Those who had laid a claim, a personal claim, of their own volition, and had cause to learn such small things.