In the Arms of a Marquess(52)

Lightning flickered. Ben moved to her and surrounded the side of her face with his hand. He tilted her chin up and scanned her features.

“Did he hurt you?” His voice was harsh. His warm skin against hers and the worry in his eyes slipped through her like spring water, washing away fear.

She shook her head.

“Then why are you crying?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I do not like being threatened.”

He released her but did not move away. “I have learned something. It concerns a ship and cargo. Illegal, as you guessed. But I haven’t enough information yet. I must pursue another avenue first.”

“I don’t see how you have any time for that.”

His brow furrowed. The moonlight, skittish now behind clouds, cast his features into carved relief. He was beautiful, and Tavy drank in the vision of him so close, like on that other night so many full moons ago.

“Well,” she took a deep breath, “it seems to me that you spend a great deal of your time—” She bit her lip. “—otherwise engaged.”

He stared at her mouth. “I would certainly like to.”

Her heartbeat tripped. She lifted her chin. “I saw you with Lady Nathans last night. At her bedchamber door.”

His gaze swept up to hers.

“So, you see,” she continued, the crackle in her voice matching a sizzle of lightning close by, “I am somewhat skeptical of your dedication to this project.”

“Lady Nathans was how I learned of the ship.”

Tavy’s mouth dropped open. “You—You were with her to—to . . . ?”

He held her gaze steadily.

“And she—she—”

“Enjoyed a brief sojourn into the exotic.”

Tavy stared. And abruptly understood. Her heart turned over.

He looked, of all things, resigned. But beneath the surface in his eyes shone a hint of something quite different. Something she had seen there for an instant seven years earlier when Aunt Imene said those horrible words. Something of despair.

“Did— Does she know why?” she finally managed.

“Not entirely.”

“Still, you must be quite an actor.” She schooled her tone to nonchalance, her heart racing. “But I suppose she is very beautiful. It could not have been all that difficult for you to maintain the pretense. Or perhaps it was not pretense on your part. Not all, at least, despite your avowal of a surfeit of such women.”

The slightest dent appeared in his cheek, but his eyes remained shadowed.

“Thoroughly direct, as always,” he murmured. “The only pretense of that sort that I have engaged in lately is in making you believe I do not want you.”

The breath whooshed out of her.

“Oh. Is that all?” she uttered.

“What more do you want?”

“A great deal more, I should say.” She did not halt the words that rushed to her tongue. She could not. “I want what you gave Lady Nathans.”

“Miss Pierce,” he said as though he hadn’t heard her, “it may be to your advantage now to go back to the house and lock yourself in your chamber.”

She blinked, her breaths coming fast, the breeze stirring about them chill but her body hot as lit coals.

“Lock?”

“Octavia, go now,” he said huskily. “Or you are going to get a great deal more than I gave her.”

She recognized that husky quality in his voice. She craved it.

“Why do you keep telling me to go?”

“Because I find I cannot bring myself to.”

“I want to stay.”

“I don’t think you know what you want. But I know what I want, and it is not what you are looking for.”

She trembled from her lips to her toes. “Will you marry Lady Constance someday?”

His brow lowered again beneath satiny hair.

“Will you?” she repeated more firmly.

“No.”

“Does she wish to?”

His eyes looked so strange, intense and somewhat confused. Then, abruptly, fierce.

“No,” he growled, and dragged her to him. He covered her mouth and there was no holding back and no reason to now—not Marcus or Constance—nothing but her fear of falling.

She cast the fear aside, sinking beneath the onslaught of his lips, his hands tangling in her hair, his hard body grazing hers as she twisted his waistcoat between her fingers to hold him close. She couldn’t get close enough. She wanted him inside her, his heat. Needed him. But she could not lie to him. He kissed her as though he would not cease, but he had before. The memory of his cold words beneath the trellis pricked her.

She broke free and sucked in a breath, gripping his shirt. He kissed her throat, trailing hot caresses into her hair, his tongue slipping along her sensitive earlobe.

“What if—” She gasped, his big palm hot and heavy on her behind. “What if I want it for the same reason as Lady Nathans?”

His mouth captured hers and she met him because she could not resist.

“What if that?” she insisted.

His eyes swam like pools of midnight water, his chest moving hard beneath her hands. “I don’t care anymore.”

She twined her arms around his neck and gave herself up to him. He kissed her and she knew only his mouth and hands and that she never wanted this glorious madness to end. Rain pattered onto the marble steps and her cheeks, thick droplets heating beneath his palm cupping her face then curving down her neck. She drank him in, tasting him, water slipping off his skin and between her lips in tendrils like nectar. Ravenous, she closed her teeth around his jaw, seeking him with every part of her. He pulled her tight to him and his kiss consumed.