His careless reference to Pearl was unexpectedly painful to Isabella. Pearl had been there from the beginning, taking care of Alec when he was a ragged, hungry youth, a friend and lover for decades before Alec had ever become aware of Isabella’s existence. Once the novelty of her title wore off, how could she ever compete with a relationship like that? Then, shocked at herself, Isabella wondered that she even thought of competing for Alec.
Her world was not his. Hers was sunshine, his shadow. Like Persephone with Hades, she could not spend all her life in her lover’s underworld Kingdom. Sooner or later, she must once again seek the sun.
Disturbed, she swallowed the contents of her glass with a gulp worthy of Alec, and stood up. The liqueur immediately went to her head, making her sway slightly. Isabella clutched the back of her chair, and stood her ground.
Alec looked up at her, mildly surprised at her abrupt termination of their dinner. But he drained his own glass and rose too, offering her his arm with a courtly bow.
“Shall we repair to the yellow salon, Countess?”
“That’s very well done of you,” she answered admiringly, coming around the table to place her hand on his arm in the correct fashion. “The Prince Regent couldn’t have done it better.”
“But then, Prinny has to contend with a corset, and I do not.” He was smiling as he escorted her into the yellow salon and closed the double doors, after shaking his head negatively to Shelby’s inquiry about whether they would care for coffee to be served. “What shall we do now for after-dinner entertainment? Should you like to play at cards, or shall we discuss improving tomes we have lately read?”
Isabella considered the possibilities he had funningly proposed, then shook her head. A daring idea had come to her, one that, in the cold light of day, she never would have considered. But it was not day, it was night, and she was locked in the Kingdom of her underworld prince, where everything was slightly unreal. The only certainty was that his arm was warm and strong beneath her hand, he was handsome enough to take her breath, his smile dazzled her with its charm—and she greatly feared that she might be falling in love with him. Certainly some intense emotion must account for the dizziness she suddenly felt when looking up into that unfairly handsome face.
“Then what?” Her hand reluctantly left his arm, and he leaned back against the closed doors, watching her.
She took a deep breath. “I propose that we continue our lessons.”
“I’ve no intention of climbing on the back of another bloody horse—and particularly not after dinner.”
“No, lackwit,” she said, smiling a little. “I meant another kind of lesson. Like—dancing.”
“Dancing?”
“You have heard of it? Ladies and gentlemen do it together—you know, da dum, da dum?”
She swayed and pirouetted in front of him, one hand daintily holding up her daffodil yellow skirt while the other rested on the shoulder of an imaginary partner. The snatch of song she hummed was as light and gay as she was. Her voice had never been known for its musicality, and tonight, under the influence of strong drink and stronger emotion, it was even less on-key than usual. But neither of them noticed, or cared for such a triviality as that.
As he watched her, the light in his eyes flared, then darkened. His arms crossed over his chest. “I do believe you’ve had more wine than is good for you, my girl.”
“Is that what this strange feeling is? If so, then I quite see why gentlemen are so frequently in their cups. It feels quite marvelous. Come, Alec, will you not dance?”
“If you wish.” He smiled suddenly, not proof against her pretty persuasion, came away from the door, and held out his arms. Isabella floated into them as if they were the one place she longed to be—as indeed they were. “But I warn you, I’ve less experience dancing than sitting the back of a bloody horse. I’m likely to trod on your toes, love.”
That homely endearment, accompanied as it was by the feel of his arms about her—a feeling that she had both craved and feared for weeks—completed Isabella’s intoxication. She smiled up at him radiantly, one small hand resting on his broad shoulder, the other clasping his in the correct stance for a waltz.
“It’s easy. Just follow my lead,” she breathed into the warm skin of his neck, tugging him in the direction she wanted him to go. “One-two-three, one-two-three, dip, turn, sway—no, it’s I who am supposed to sway. Oh, dear, I fear I am teaching you the lady’s part.”
“No matter. I quite like dancing.” His voice, so close to her ear, was husky. Isabella discovered as she steered him through another turn, humming tunelessly all the while, that he was holding her rather closer than propriety—or the dance—dictated. She made no effort at all to pull away. Instead she snuggled just the tiniest bit closer, and led him through the movements of the dance. A sense of breathless anticipation bubbled to life inside her. It felt so good to be held by him again, to have his arm about her waist and his head bent over hers, to feel the tingle of her breasts as they brushed his hard chest. She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes as she continued to hum the rhythm and move her feet in the patterns of the dance. He smelled of soap, and cigars—he had had one before dinner—and man. He was warm, and solid, and strong—and hers.
Hers?
Just then his foot made brutal contact with hers as he had prophesied it would. Isabella, wrenched from her imaginings by the shooting discomfort in her toes, made a pained sound, her eyes flying open as a grimace contorted her face. Alec had lifted the offending foot almost as soon as it had crushed down on hers. Now he pulled away from her, shaking his head in apology.
“I did warn you,” he reminded her. “I’m sorry, love. Did that hurt?”
Isabella was surprised to find that, compared to the pain of no longer being held close in his arms, her abused foot hurt not at all.
She shook her head, and held out her arms to him. “It’s all right. You haven’t crippled me. Shall we continue?”
To her dismay, he shook his head. “I think I’ve had enough dancing for one evening, thank you. If I don’t take care, I fear I may find myself as intoxicated on you as you are on the wine. And that would never do, would it, Madame Tutor?”
His voice was thicker than usual. Isabella absorbed that, along with the hard, restless glitter in his eyes. The pupils seemed to contract and then expand with some unknown emotion as they slid from her face down the front of her dress and back again. A quivering excitement sprang to life inside her, a sense of herself as enchantress and him as the enchanted.
“So you’re tired of dancing, are you?” she murmured, stepping closer so that her breasts brushed his chest again. His hands came up to grip her upper arms, bare beneath the puffed sleeves of her gown, and he looked down at her in a considering way that did strange things to her breathing.
“Isabella …”
“I, on the other hand, could dance all night—with you.”
“You’re more than a little tipsy, love.”
“If I’m tipsy, then ’tis a wonderful state.” Her hands came up to rest on his chest, palms flat against the pristine white of his shirtfront, head tilted back as she smiled beguilingly into his eyes.
He caught his breath. She heard it quite distinctly.
“You’re going to regret this, Isabella.” The warning was laced with a note of wry humor, but underneath it lay a hard foundation of gathering passion, of need that burned at least as hotly as hers.
“If I do, it’ll be too late, won’t it? We’ll already have had tonight.”
Emboldened by the strength of her desire for him, or the spirits she had consumed—she couldn’t say which and didn’t much care—she slid her hands up his shirtfront, over the broad, tensed shoulders, to link behind his neck. With her arms around his neck she pressed herself against him, smiling, her head tilted back and her lips slightly parted.
“You’re right, of course.” He smiled down at her then with devastating effect, the hard restlessness in his eyes flaring into something
far hotter and brighter. “Whatever fireworks tomorrow may bring, we’ll have tonight.”
XLIX
But when he would have kissed her, she shook her head and, with a flickering smile, placed her hand over his mouth to restrain him.
“Dance with me,” she whispered as those golden eyes blazed down at her, and began to hum the lilting strain of the waltz once more.
With a laugh and a shake of his head to free it from her hand, he obliged her, his long body moving gracefully in the rhythms she suddenly was certain he’d learned long before this night, twirling and dipping her as he held her far closer than any dance had ever been designed for, so close that she could feel every hard muscle and sinew in his body as it moved against hers. He began to hum the melody too, his voice far more melodic than hers.
“You humbug, you! You waltz like you were born doing it! Why did you not tell me you could dance?” Mildly indignant, she pushed against his shoulder in a vain attempt to take herself out of his arms.
“And spoil your fun? Not I,” he responded with a devilish smile, twirling her so quickly that her head spun and much of her indignation was lost in laughing protest. Her hair, insecure in its pins, loosened in the mad whirl and formed a soft halo about her face. With her cheeks rosy from exertion and her blue eyes sparkling with laughter, she was radiantly lovely as she leaned back against his arms to shake her head at him in mock reproach. Before she could give further voice to her sense of ill usage, he swung her about in a series of fast turns that left her breathless.
“Where did you learn?” This as she came up gasping for air.
“Remember Cecily?”
The woman who had taught him to read. Isabella remembered, and nodded. “Yes.”
“Besides her many other accomplishments, she was a great devotee of … dancing.”
Alec pulled her even tighter against him as he said the last word, his hand sliding down from its proper grip on her waist to very improperly explore the curve of her buttocks through her dress.
“Was … was she?” That bold caress so unnerved Isabella that she could barely think. Her insides turned to jelly. Her lips parted.
“Mmmhmm. Just as she did with her passion for reading, she passed her passion for … dancing … on to the lad I was then. I’ve had more than a passing fondness for it ever since.”
He was waltzing her about the room, the steps perfectly proper as his hands explored her body in a way that was anything but. He caressed her buttocks and spine and waist, stroking and squeezing and pressing her ever more intimately against him. Head spinning from a combination of the dance, the wine and the man, Isabella quivered in his arms, pliant and responsive to anything he might ask of her. The hard, sinewy muscles of his body enticed her. Then a movement of the dance brought her in contact with a more intimate hardness, and her knees turned to butter. If it had not been for the support of his arms close about her, she feared she would not have been able to stand. But stand she did, and dance too, because all the while he was conducting the delicious assault on her senses, he never faltered in the steps. He twirled her about like a child’s top, humming the haunting refrain in her ear. It was wildly erotic, this waltz that could never be performed on any dance floor. Increasingly helpless in the face of a burgeoning passion the heat of which threatened to incinerate the last remaining shreds of her inhibitions, Isabella could only cling to his shoulders and move as he willed her.
“I really think I must kiss you now, Madame Tutor. You’re so very kissable, you see.”
“Alec …”
“Shhh.”
The hand that was not clasping her waist slid up over her bare upper arm, over the silk of her sleeve, over the slight protrusion of her collarbone to cup her neck. Isabella trembled at the trail of fire his hand left in its wake, and when he tilted her chin up with his thumb she made no further demur.
“We’re good together, you and I,” he murmured just before his mouth came down on hers. “Remember?”
Remember? Oh, did she remember! Never, if she lived to be a hundred, could she forget the white-hot passion that both exhilarated and shamed, that swept her away with it, that changed her world. How could she not remember?
If he said something more, Isabella heard none of it as the roar in her ears from the heating of her own blood drowned out every other sound. Vaguely she realized that they were no longer waltzing, that they were standing in each other’s arms, while he pressed her head back against his shoulder with his kiss.
The walls of the room seemed to twirl and then recede as she kissed him back with a hunger so intense it seemed that she could never get enough of him. His lips were hard and hot as they moved over hers, his tongue boldly laying claim to the territory she willingly surrendered. He tasted faintly of the liqueur with which they’d finished dinner. With the part of her mind still capable of functioning, Isabella wondered if that was not part of the reason she felt herself growing ever more intoxicated as she explored his mouth.
But the truth was, she was growing drunk on the man himself.
When he lifted his mouth from hers, she mewled a protest and dug her nails into the back of his neck without ever opening her eyes.
“Careful, now, Madame Tutor. You’ll wound me anew,” he chided, and then Isabella felt herself being lifted off her feet.
“Alec …” Her eyes flew open, and she clung to him as he carried her toward the closed door of the salon. “What are you doing?”
“Taking you to bed, love. I’m too old and too fond of comfort to make love to you on the rug.”
“But Shelby, the servants …”He had opened the door and was maneuvering her expertly through it as he spoke.
“To hell with Shelby and the servants. I’ll do as I like in my own home. Now, close your eyes, and put that pretty little mouth to its proper use and kiss me.”
“Yes, Alec.” She surrendered to a will that was, for the moment, stronger than hers, closed her eyes, and lifted her lips for his kiss. His mouth crushed down on hers, blocking out all awareness of anything but him. So oblivious was she that she had no notion that Shelby, shocked and muttering something about scandal and bad blood, saw her locked in Alec’s arms and retreated into the shadows. She had no notion that Alec was climbing the stairs quickly, as if she were no weight at all, his kisses robbing her of her breath all the while. She had no notion of the desperateness of her hold on him, or the quiescent way she lay in his arms, her head thrown back against his shoulder, her feet dangling. She had no notion when they reached his chamber, or of how they got through the door. All she knew was that his arms were lifting away from her as he set her on her feet by his bed.
She opened her eyes then, looking up at him with a passion so intense that it set the blue-gray depths ablaze, clinging to his shoulders with abandon as her lips once again sought his, brushing the stubbly roughness of his chin and cheek in her quest. Mindlessly her hands sought and found the proper neckcloth that he had worn at her insistence. Now the elegantly knotted folds offended her, and she tugged at them, trying to work them loose so that she might free more of his flesh.
“Gently, gently, love. We’ve got all night,” he whispered against her lips as he dropped soft kisses on her seeking mouth. Once the neckcloth was sent flying, to land forgotten on the floor, her attention turned to his coat and she pushed against it, trying to work it down his shoulders. With a quirk of his lips that was not quite a smile, he shrugged out of it. Then even the last semblance of a smile vanished as her fingers went to work on the buttons of his shirt, sliding them free of their holes. The sudden blaze in his eyes was the only warning she had that his desire had reached flashpoint. He drew in his breath, sharply, then yanked at the sides of his shirt so that the remaining buttons popped and she had free access to his chest.
She caught her breath then, too, her eyes and hands moving to the expanse of bare flesh revealed by the forcibly opened shirt. Her fingertips were sensual as they stroked over the sleek contours of his chest, burrowed int
o the soft wedge of hair. His skin was hot and firm over muscles as unyielding as wood. At the feel of him under her hands, she grew intoxicated all over again. Driven by instinct, she bent her head to press tiny, biting kisses into the rigid muscles of his chest. At last she found the male nipples that were already taut with anticipation, first flicking them with her tongue and then biting them.
“Christ, love, this goes too fast,” he muttered, catching her head with both hands and pulling her away from him. His accent was roughening, and somehow that less than elegant intonation set the seal on her intoxication. She looked up at him then, with his hands still lying flat on either side of her face. His teeth were clenched in an effort to keep a rein on his burgeoning passion, but even he with his iron will was not proof against the sudden fierce hunger that shone from her eyes.
“Love me, Alec. Now. Please.”
“Oh, God, Isabella,” he groaned in surrender, and slid his hands away from her head to catch her arms and haul her up for his kiss.
But she didn’t wait for that. She launched herself upward before he could lift her, almost leaping at him as she wrapped her arms around his neck, raising herself on tiptoe as she pressed her breasts against the hardness and heat of his bare chest. With torrid desire she kissed him, her passion made that much the sweeter for all the time she had fought to deny it. Her hands burrowed under his hair to spread out against his skull, holding him to her even though he made no move to lift his head. Her mouth twisted under his. Her tongue invaded his mouth with hungry ardency as the passion she had held in check for so long blazed up to consume them both with its flames. On the morrow, she knew, she was going to regret what she had done. But for now, in the steamy semidarkness of his bedchamber lit only by the dying embers of the fire in the hearth, she was burning with the intensity of her need for him. Lady or strumpet, in the dark it made no matter. She was all a woman, and he was all a man. And oh, how she wanted him!
His hands were shaking as they sought for and found the fastenings of her dress. But the tiny buttons resisted his importunities, and at last he grew impatient. Catching the neck of her gown at the back with both hands, he yanked it open. The material gave with a loud rip, and buttons scattered everywhere, clattering as they hit the floor and rolled.
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