Unraveled (Turner #3)(68)

She was wet and ready for him. He nudged her opening; she spread her legs as best as she could from that position. His entry wasn’t smooth or easy, but it was good. When he was finally seated inside her, she felt an impossible thrill.

She had no notion how much time was left in the opera. By the libretto she’d been watching, not much. Only a few minutes until the curtain fell, and the audience stood to leave. Their discovery wasn’t just a possibility; it was practically a given.

But there was no sense of hurry in his deliberate thrusts. He didn’t use his fingers to aid her along. There was nothing but the slow, slick feel of him, taking her in a leisurely rhythm.

“Hurry,” she said.

“Not a chance.” He sounded amused, not transported by passion. “If you think I’ll let you go before you explode, you are vastly mistaken.”

“Everyone will find us.”

“Then they’ll see this.” His hand pinched her nipple.

The soprano started one last, desperate climb into the heights. The music swelled over them. Their surroundings couldn’t disappear—they wouldn’t. She felt not just the need rising up in her, but that growing crescendo of music, the swelling sounds of the orchestra. Her pleasure wrapped around her, taking her higher. And then it hit, hard, just as the singer hit that final, clear lingering note. She heard herself call out.

Surely someone must have heard. But no; her cry was muffled in the roar of applause that followed.

His hands closed on her hips in grim satisfaction. His thrusts came harder and harder. And then he stiffened behind her. His teeth grazed the back of her neck. He came as the audience began the rustling murmur that presaged an immediate exodus. One last lingering kiss against the back of her neck, and then he disengaged.

He should have been flustered. It would be mere seconds before their privacy was invaded. She turned. He was as calm and unruffled as a windless lake. He adjusted his trousers. She must have been positively disheveled in contrast. He’d reduced her to a panting heat. At the very least, her hair must have fallen from her chignon. But he patted her skirts back into place and gave her a long, slow smile.

“Now we’re going home,” he said.

They said little as the hired hack brought them around. He stroked her hands, kissed her lips. He held her close, and she basked in the warm glow that came after intimacy. It took her almost a quarter of an hour to realize that something was wrong.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” she said finally. “I hadn’t thought you would be the sort to get excited by the threat of discovery.”

“Did you like it?” he asked simply.

“I loved it.”

He smiled in response and looked away.

And that was when she finally understood. He wasn’t the sort to become aroused by the thought that their tryst might be discovered. No. He’d listened to what she told him earlier. She liked danger.

So he’d created it for her.

“Turner. I don’t know what to say.”

He made an embarrassed motion with his hand. “Pray don’t say anything at all.” He set his hand on her shoulder, and let it slide down her side.

She let out a shaky breath. He’d satisfied her, and not just physically. He’d filled that part of her that yearned for danger. He didn’t talk of affection, but beneath the gruff exterior, he was tender. And he didn’t need to say he cared to make her understand.

She’d worried about not being able to pay him back for his forbearance in the matter of the Patron. But this… Her left hand couldn’t repay her right. There was nothing of commerce to their arrangement any longer. He’d done something that she suspected was deeply, deeply contrary to his own nature. And he’d done it to let her know that he accepted her. All of her.

Falling in love with a man who’d declared the relationship to be a month long, who’d warned her he would never love her, was all kinds of reckless. He wouldn’t even share a night with her after intercourse; he was never going to share her life. And yet he made her feel safer and more in peril all at once.

It was dangerous to entrust him with anything besides the month he’d asked for. But then, her tastes ran to danger. Perhaps that was why she tossed her heart his way without a protest.

“You did that for me,” she said, as he handed her out of the carriage.

“If you think I put you up against a wall and had you without my own self-interest being engaged, you’ve a great deal to learn about men.” He opened her front door.

He made it sound almost vulgar. But he’d thought about her. About what she wanted. What she needed. It wasn’t the act itself that made her heart feel so tender; it was the care he’d put into it. As if she were somehow precious to him.

“It wouldn’t mean the same thing if you did it here,” she said.

“We can test that.”

She swatted at his hand. “Don’t. Don’t try to make something sweet and beautiful into something tawdry.”

Silence. Then: “There’s nothing tawdry about you, Miranda.” He paused, just that tiny amount. “Darling.” His arms came around her in the dark. It was an embrace—one without heat or want, just care. Affection. Love, even if he wouldn’t say it, and wouldn’t want it said. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him close. She held that fluttering sense of new emotion close as well.