The rich ivory swell of her bosom plumped against the neckline of her bodice. Carefully his palms slid up to clasp the vault of her rib cage, and he hitched her a few inches higher on his chest. He pressed his lips to skin as smooth as glass, but soft and warm. His mouth traversed the lavish curve of her breast until he reached her cleavage. Very lightly, he let the tip of his tongue delve into the deep shadow, and savored the reflexive shiver that ran through her.
Hooking two fingers into her bodice, he eased one side down. Her flesh was revealed by millimeters, a beautiful rose-pink nipple budding in the cool air. She was so exquisite, so luscious. All the desire he’d ever known was nothing compared to this, a need that tore ragged edges along every breath. He put his mouth on her, sucking the tender peak past his lips, letting her feel the edges of his teeth, the velvety flat of his tongue. Soon he found a rhythm, tugging and lapping. He couldn’t help undulating his pelvis upward in lewd, subtle nudges, rubbing the swollen length of his shaft up against the sweet weight of her. She was too voluptuous and wonderful for him to be able to lie completely still.
Soon, however, he approached the brink and was forced to stop moving. He released her breast with a growl of frustration, panting heavily.
Cassandra whimpered in protest. “No, please … Tom … I feel …”
“Desperate?” he asked. “Feverish? Knotted up inside?”
She nodded and swallowed convulsively, and dropped her forehead to his shoulder.
Tom turned his head and rubbed his lips against her temple. She smelled like crushed flowers and salt and damp talc. Bewitched and aroused, he breathed deeply of her. “There are two ways to make it better,” he murmured. “One is to wait.”
In a moment, he heard her muffled voice. “What’s the other way?”
Despite the surfeit of aching, throbbing desire, a faint smile touched his lips. He lowered her to the settee until she was on her side facing him, with his arm fitted beneath her neck. Taking her mouth with his, he probed gently with his tongue, stroking and caressing the tender depths of her. He reached down to the heavy velvet swaths of her skirts and pulled up the front, until he found the shape of her hip covered in thin cambric.
Cassandra broke the kiss with a gasp.
Tom went still, his hand remaining clasped on her hip. He looked into her flushed face, assessing her mood, her quick-breathing excitement. God, he could hardly remember what it was like to be so innocent.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said.
“Yes, I’m … just so nervous …”
Tom leaned over her, his lips tracing the crest of her cheek and wandering lightly over her face. “Cassandra,” he whispered, “everything I have, everything I am, is at your service. All you have to do is tell me what you want.”
She turned a deeper shade of scarlet, if that were possible. “I want you to touch me,” she brought herself to say timidly.
Carefully he smoothed the cambric over her hip with slow circles of his palm. Her bottom was full and firm, as delectable as a fresh peach. He wanted to bite her there, press his teeth gently into the cushiony surface. His wandering hand strayed to her front, where the stiff edge of her corset dug into her abdomen. Searching lower, he found the open seam at the crotch of her drawers, and lightly fingered the lace-trimmed edges. His knuckles slipped beneath the cambric, grazing a thatch of soft curls as if by accident. She jerked a little at the touch. He let his knuckles drag gently along each side of the soft furrow, up and down, until he heard a slight moan. Encouraged, he slid his hand farther into the garment, cupping the beautiful female shape of her. His fingertips delved gently into the intricate layers of softness, stroking back and forth between the labia, finding heat … tenderness … a slick of moisture.
He could hardly believe she was letting him touch her so intimately. Softly he played with her, sensitive to every twitch and pulse of the vulnerable flesh. Taking hold of the silky inner petals, he tugged softly at each in turn. Trembling, Cassandra turned her face against his shoulder, her knees pressing together.
“No, stay open for me,” Tom urged, nuzzling into the little hollow beneath her ear.
Hesitantly her thighs parted, letting him tease and search until he found the melting heat of her entrance. He stroked across it gently, and she bit her lip with surprised dismay at the awareness of how wet she was. Tenderly he drew a damp fingertip upward, circling the half-hidden bud of her clitoris, awakening sensation but never quite touching where she most wanted.
Cassandra’s eyes closed. A loose tendril of golden hair strayed across her cheek, fluttering with every deliciously uneasy breath. Tom built her pleasure slowly, relentlessly, stroking down the sweet cleft and massaging his way back up again. He concentrated on her responses, adoring the way she gasped and writhed and pushed herself at him. Leaning down, he drew the tip of her breast into his mouth and nibbled delicately. Her pelvis began a helpless rhythm, lifting and lifting. Very gently, he pressed the tip of his middle finger to the entrance of her body. Virginal muscles tightened against him, but he waited patiently, his fingertip wriggling deeper at the first hint of yielding. The first joint of his finger gently entered the silky channel. Deeper … to the knuckle … deeper. Her flesh pulled at him, grasping delicately as if to welcome the intrusion.
His mouth went to her other breast, kissing the turgid nipple, using his teeth and tongue. He searched inside her, tickling lightly, finding places that made her squirm. She crushed her parted lips against his throat, panting and kissing his skin feverishly.
Gradually he withdrew his finger, hot and wet from the elixir of her body, and caressed the little pearl in soft, even circles. Within seconds, she was gasping and writhing as she approached the pinnacle. His mouth found hers, absorbing her moans, sucking and licking at the sounds of her pleasure as if he were pulling honey from the comb.
An abrupt noise broke through the haze of lust—a decisive knock on the door—followed by the turn of the knob.
Cassandra squeaked in fright and stiffened in his arms. With a savage growl, Tom rolled her beneath him, concealing her naked breasts from view.
“Don’t … open … that … door,” Tom snapped at the would-be intruder.
Chapter 17
THE DOOR CRACKED OPEN sufficiently to allow Devon’s voice to come through. “We’re all waiting in the parlor with nothing to do. You’ve had enough time to talk.”
Despite Cassandra’s blind panic, Tom kept his hand between her thighs, fondling and teasing her through one helpless spasm after another. Her climax had already begun, and he’d be damned if he’d let it be ruined. “Trenear,” he said with lethal calm, “I have few enough friends as it is. I would hate to kill you. But if you don’t leave us alone—”
“Lady Berwick is going to kill me if I don’t bring Cassandra back to the parlor,” Devon’s muffled voice informed him. “Given the choice, I’d rather take my chances with you. Also, bear in mind that regardless of what the two of you may be trying to decide, nothing is going to happen unless I give my consent. Which is damned unlikely, given what I know about you after ten years’ acquaintance.”
It was close to impossible for the usually articulate Tom to form a reply with Cassandra quivering beneath him. She shook and arched, burying her face against his coat to keep silent. He slid his finger inside her, relishing the strong clamping of her muscles around him. A flash of heat went through him at the thought of being joined with her and feeling her flesh wringing and clenching on him—
“We haven’t decided anything yet,” he told Devon brusquely. “I may ask for your consent later, but right now, what I want is your absence.”
“What does Cassandra want?” Devon asked.
Tom was about to reply for her, but Cassandra jerked her face back, bit her lip after a hard shudder, and spoke in an astonishingly composed voice. “Cousin Devon, if you could allow us five minutes more … ?”
A short silence passed. “Very well,” Devon said. The door closed fully.
Cassandra dove her face against Tom’s chest, gasping uncontrollably. His experienced fingers soothed her through the last few twitches and tremors, his thumb swirling over the little bud, his middle finger stroking deep inside her. Eventually he withdrew his finger and gently petted the silky-coarse curls.
“I’m sorry, buttercup,” he murmured, cuddling her spent and trembling form against his. “You deserve time and privacy, and consideration. Not to be fondled in the library over the tea service.”
Cassandra surprised him with an unsteady chuckle. “I asked for it,” she reminded him. To his satisfaction, she was calm and glowing in the aftermath, the signs of strain gone from her face. She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Oh, my,” she said faintly.
Tom couldn’t stop himself from kissing her again. “You’re the sweetest thing I’ve ever held in my arms,” he whispered. “I want to be the one who pleasures you. The one you reach for in the night.” He nuzzled and nipped at the velvety surface of her lips. “I want to fill the empty places inside you … give you whatever you need. My beautiful Cassandra … tell me what I have to do to be with you. I’ll meet you on your terms. I’ve never said that to anyone in my life. I—” He stopped, painfully aware of the inadequacy of words. Nothing could convey the magnitude of his desire for her, the lengths to which he was willing to go.
Cassandra moved to sit up, slow and sluggish, as if she were under water. He watched regretfully as she pulled up her bodice, concealing the wondrous breasts from view. Her face was partially averted from his, her expression distant, as if she were deep in thought.
“Cousin Devon said negotiating with you was a nightmare,” she commented after a long silence. “He said he was surprised it didn’t end in murder.”
With a leap of hope, Tom realized she was asking for reassurance.
“It wouldn’t be like that for us,” he replied instantly. “You and I would negotiate in good faith.”
A frown knitted the space between her brows. “You wouldn’t try to mislead me? You wouldn’t add fine print to the contract?”
It occurred to Tom that her suspicious expression was very much like Bazzle’s when he’d asked Tom about buggering.
“No fine print,” he said immediately. “No tricks.” When she didn’t look convinced, he exclaimed, “Good God, woman, I would hardly expect to deceive my wife and live happily with the consequences. We’ll have to trust each other.”
“That’s the marriage part,” Cassandra said absently, echoing his words of a few minutes earlier. Her gaze lifted to his, her face turning pink and radiant as she seemed to come to a decision. “All right, then.”
His heart stopped. “All right what?”
“I accept your proposal, contingent upon our negotiations, and subject to my family’s approval.”
A flush of mingled triumph and awe swept over Tom. For a moment, all he could do was stare at her. Despite what he’d wanted and hoped for and had thought might happen, the words came as a surprise after all. He was afraid to believe she actually meant it. He wanted it written down, engraved on something, so he could reassure himself later that she’d really said it. She’d said yes. Why had she said yes?
“Was it the shoes?” he asked.
That drew a quick laugh from her. “That part didn’t hurt,” she said. “But it was the idea of being met on my terms. And I want very much to help people in a large way.” She paused, turning serious. “This won’t be easy. Our life together will be a leap into the unknown, and I’ve never been comfortable with newness. I could have chosen a far lesser man than you and not felt nearly this afraid. You’ll have to be patient with me, as I intend to be with you.”
Tom nodded, his mind already assessing potential obstacles. Nothing could be allowed to stop this from happening. He had to be with her. “When you said our engagement is subject to your family’s approval,” he ventured, “I hope you don’t expect it to be unanimous.”
“I would like it to be. But it’s not a requirement.”
“Good,” he said. “Because even if I manage to talk Trenear into it, debating with West will be like tilting at windmills.”
She looked up at him alertly. “Was Don Quixote one of the books you read?”
“To my regret, yes.”
“You didn’t like it?”
Tom gave her a sardonic glance. “A story about a middle-aged lunatic who vandalizes private property? Hardly. Although I agree with Cervantes’ point that chivalry is no different from insanity.”
“That’s not at all what he was saying.” Cassandra regarded him ruefully. “I’m beginning to suspect you’ve missed the point of every novel you’ve read so far.”
“Most of them are pointless. Like the one about the French bread thief who violated his parole—”
“Les Misérables?”
“Yes. It took Victor Hugo fourteen hundred pages to say, ‘Never let your daughter marry a radical French law student.’ Which everyone already knows.”
Her brows lifted. “Is that the lesson you took from the novel?”
“No, of course not,” he said promptly, reading her expression. “The lesson of Les Misérables is …” Tom paused cagily before taking his best guess. “… ‘It’s usually a mistake to forgive your enemies.’”
“Not even close.” Amusement lurked at the corners of her mouth. “I have my work cut out for me, it seems.”
“Yes,” Tom said, encouraged by the remark. “Take me on. Influence me for the better. It will be a public service.”
“Hush,” Cassandra begged, touching his lips with her fingers, “before I change my mind.”
“You can’t,” Tom said, knowing he was taking the words more seriously than she’d intended. But the very idea was like an ice pick to the heart. “That is, don’t. Please. Because I …” He couldn’t break their shared gaze. Her blue eyes, as dark as a cloudless midnight, seemed to stare right inside him, gently and inexorably prying out the truth. “… need you,” he finally muttered.
Shame caused his face to sting as if from spark burns. He couldn’t believe what he’d just said, how weak and unmanly it had sounded.
But the strange thing was … Cassandra didn’t seem to think less of him for it. In fact, she was looking at him with more certainty now, nodding slightly, as if his mortifying admission had just cemented the bargain.
Not for the first time, Tom reflected there was no understanding women. It wasn’t that they were illogical. Just the opposite. Their logic was of a higher order, too complex and advanced to submit to a complete proof calculus. Women assigned mysterious values to details a man would overlook, and were able to draw piercing conclusions about his innermost secrets. Tom suspected that Cassandra, after their handful of encounters, had already acquired a more thorough knowledge of him than his friends of more than a decade. More troubling still was the suspicion she understood things about him even he wasn’t aware of.
“Let me talk to my family first,” Cassandra said, reaching out to make little adjustments to his collar and necktie, smoothing his coat lapels. “I’ll send for you tomorrow, or possibly the day after, and then you can make your case to them.”
“I can’t stay away from you that long,” Tom said, affronted. “And I’ll be damned if I let you handle this by yourself.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“It’s not that! Letting you handle it without me has every appearance of cowardice.”
“Tom,” she said dryly, “your love of confrontation is a secret to no one. There’s no danger of anyone accusing you of cowardice. However, nothing you say will make headway with the Ravenels until I convince them this is what I want.”
“Is it?” Tom asked before he thought better of it, and cursed himself silently. Hang it all, now he was begging, doglike, for scraps of reassurance. He couldn’t believe the power she had over him. This was what he’d been afraid of since the beginning.
Cassandra, alert to every subtle color of his mood, reached for him
without hesitation. Grasping the coat lapels she’d just smoothed, she pulled him close and kissed him, soothing the rough edges of his anxiety. He kissed her deeply, taking as much as he could, while the sweet fervor of her response sent a fresh surge of arousal coursing through him. His flesh thickened, his lungs pumping with wild and uneven force. The self-control he’d always prided himself on had been reduced to smoldering rubble. He felt too much, all at the same time—it was all the colors mixed together. It was madness.
When at last their lips parted, their breath mingling in rapid gusts, Cassandra stared into his eyes and said firmly, “I want you. I won’t change my mind. If we’re to trust each other, Tom … let’s start now.”
Chapter 18
“ALL WE CAN DO is advise you,” Devon told Cassandra the next day. “The decision is ultimately yours.”
“For God’s sake,” West said in exasperation, “don’t tell her that.”
Devon sent his younger brother a sarcastic glance. “It’s not Cassandra’s decision?”
“Not when she’s obviously in no condition to make it for herself. Would you let her dance at the edge of a railway platform when she’s drunk?”
“I haven’t been drinking,” Cassandra protested. “Nor would I ever be so silly as to dance at the edge of a railway platform.”
“I didn’t mean it literally,” West retorted.
“It’s still a mischaracterization. You’re implying I don’t know what I’m doing, when I happen to understand my own situation better than you do.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily agree—” West began, but quieted as Phoebe lightly dug her elbow in his ribs.
The five of them—Devon, Kathleen, West, Phoebe, and Cassandra—were out walking through Hyde Park, having felt the need to escape the confines of Ravenel House. With such a volatile topic of discussion, the large double library had seemed as pressure-filled as a kettle at full boil.
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