One Night Is Never Enough

by Anne Mallory

  Her bedroom was . . . neat. Tidy. Unsurprising, really, but something made him pause and look again. There were very few personal objects in the space. For a moment he wondered if this was a guest room.

  His gaze caught on the dressing table. A white king stood regally next to the cheval glass. A sentinel. He walked over and touched the crown, lifting the piece by its little ivory notches.

  “An interesting decoration.”

  She bolted his way—slipping across the floor on bare feet—and snatched it from him, carefully placing it back on the table, squaring it next to the mirror again. Then as if suddenly realizing what she was doing, she crossed her arms, shoulders hunching up for a moment. The most uncertain reaction he had ever seen her make.

  She gave a little shiver that seemed to start in her shoulders and vibrate down to her feet, and his hands automatically reached forward and drew up and down her arms to warm her. She tensed at the contact but relaxed as he continued the gentle, though vigorous, massage.

  Small amounts of patience paid big dividends with her. He had felt it in his bones the first time he had spoken to her, and the observation had never failed him. Besides, touching her loosened something within him, a coil that he hadn’t even been aware of before she’d entered his existence.

  He gradually drew her closer until she was pressed against him, his arms wrapped around her. She sighed softly into his shoulder.

  With someone else he would say, “Better?” in a roguish way. But the word stuck to the back of his tongue, and he just kept his arms around her instead. The faint golden shadows embracing them.

  “I wasn’t sure you would come,” she said, her voice barely audible.

  “No?” The question came out much more seriously than he’d intended.

  “I wasn’t sure I hadn’t simply dreamed the whole thing.”

  He raised a brow though she couldn’t see it.

  “Perhaps I’m dreaming now.” She gave a lifeless laugh. “I must be since there is a man in my room, and my mother is naught but a floor above and a room over.”

  He didn’t ask after her father. Roman knew where the man spent most nights. Dividing his hours between the tables and his mistress’s bed.

  “You opened the window,” he couldn’t help but point out.

  He expected a defensive, sarcastic response such as, “You would just have broken in anyway.”

  But she said nothing before pulling back a space, eyes meeting his in the faint light. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Why?” He internally kicked himself for asking. He didn’t need an answer to that question, dammit. She was the one who wanted to know why, why, why. He simply coaxed and took what he wanted. And here she was on a candlelit tray. Who cared why?

  “Because I don’t want to feel broken. Because . . .” She pulled her lips in, as if remembering the taste of something unforgettable. “Because you make me feel alive. Because . . . because I want you to burn me from the inside again like you so easily do.”

  Fine. He cared a lot about why, then. And for someone with such an abundance of pride, she delivered raw statements like flowing water gushing from an undammed creek. Handing him pieces of her soul so easily when it was obvious that with others she normally kept a tight grip.

  He was rock hard. God, he wanted to crawl right into her and never leave.

  He touched her face, tilting her chin, gently slipping his mouth over hers. She gave a breathy little sigh, reaching up to touch his cheeks, his chin, her lips opening beneath his, allowing him to deepen the contact. He felt like he was drowning.

  He pulled back, unnerved.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered, head tilted back, a half-drunk look in her eyes. Not drunk from liquor, though. Her lower body automatically molded to his as she looked up at him. He could feel the heat of her, burning, pressing against him, making him list five different manners of filthy things he could do to her in the next five seconds flat.

  Her eyes pinned him, though, and he swallowed, unsettled.

  “Me neither,” he whispered back, taking her lips in his. Trying to drown the words, the admission. He stepped her back and laid her on the bed, her golden plait coiling like a tether. He lay down next to her, resting his head on one hand and touching the silk rope with the other. “Sad to keep it chained like this.”

  She swallowed. “I do it every night. It keeps it tamed.”

  “Oh?” He pulled the end so that it curled across her chest, examining it in the faint candlelight. “I think we should rectify that, don’t you?”

  He didn’t wait for her response but rose to his knees, crouching next to her, and started to unlace the strands. The back of his hand brushed the tip of her breast, and her stomach clenched beneath the thin gown.

  He slowly unwound the strands. Separating each section and letting the loosened silk fall to brush her exposed skin—at her neck, her wrists.

  He smiled at the increased rise and fall of her chest and leaned down to run his lips along her throat, up the underside of her chin. Her hands were suddenly on his cheeks and she was pulling him up and into a kiss. Demanding. Hot. And this was why she was going to be his.

  He disengaged himself reluctantly and chuckled in her ear. “You don’t want to go slow, Charlotte?” His hand drew down and circled around her backside, fingers wrapping just a bit farther around, the thin material no barrier at all.

  He looked back to see her gazing at him, lips pulling into her mouth again, tasting him. And the thought that he might truly crawl into her and never leave took him. But there was a thread of uncertainty in the depths of her eyes. That damn tendril of guilt coiled once more.

  Here he was planning to rob her of her virginity, after all. Something that some considered a badge of honor on the marriage bed. The loss of which happened far more often than the social elders liked to admit, no matter that they themselves had been young once. Young and foolish, thinking that a warm touch meant love or affection. Or simply wanting the experience, desiring the relief.

  He batted away the guilt. He’d make it up to Charlotte. Just like with Andreas, he always did.

  He lifted her braid once more and continued uncoiling it, pausing only to pull her to a seated position. He straddled her, keeping most of his weight balanced on his knees, but there was enough pressure there for her to feel him. Her arms were back, supporting her, pressing her, lifting breasts against his chest with every breath.

  He pulled his fingers through the freed strands, embracing her as he smoothed them down her back, his rougher cheek brushing her smooth one. He reached down and gripped the bottom of her nightgown, slowly inching it upward, making her arch against him, using her hands to balance and prop herself up, making him rise a little with every pressed arch, like she was a mare, and he the rider adjusting her saddle in motion.

  The gown came free, and he pulled it up and over her head, using one hand to hold her as it slipped from her raised arms. She didn’t meet his eyes as her hands returned to their previous position, propping her up behind. There was no covering herself with her hands, but pride stiffened her back, straightening her posture as she leaned back on her hands. As if waiting for him to say something and setting herself on edge to hear it.

  All sorts of things came to mind. Lovely, glorious, beautiful—the way she held herself. She met his eyes, and he felt himself clench. The uncertainty was still present in her eyes, of course, but there was also a demand there, that he fulfill her expectation of him, of his challenge to her.

  Nothing could make him harder.

  But he knew that commenting on the thoughts running through his mind would make her think he was simply describing her beauty, and it would cause her body to tighten further. So instead he leaned forward, and whispered against her ear, “When I am inside of you, and you are wrapped around me, will you try to burn me too, Charlotte?” He stroked a section of her hair, using it to tilt her head back, eyes as fierce as hers. “I hope so.”

  He pull
ed the edges of her hair around her shoulders, over her breasts, her chin dropping back to just above her bare chest, the long strands dripping to her waist, falling to the sides of it in a waterfall of gold. The uncertainty in her eyes was gone; only fierce longing remaining.

  He smiled, a slow, absolutely satisfied smile. The cat who was about to devour the cream in one delicious lap.

  He set about touching her, stroking her, tasting her. Making the longing turn to fire. He knew how to pull out each reaction. His looks, his charm, had ensured that he had had access to the best teachers. And, thankfully, he had always had enough sense to be choosy.

  He wondered if Charlotte knew, really knew, what she was getting into. He didn’t want one night. Just as he’d threatened, he planned to suck her dry.

  Her head tilted and dug into the pillow, her fists clenched in the bedcovers. Glorious. Doing everything to burn her from the inside as she had requested. He wanted her writhing and screaming, and as the thought trickled, he couldn’t help himself and circled her with his tongue, pushing at just the right angle. She arched violently, pressing against him, a cry escaping from her lips.

  “Shh, shh . . .” He immediately was at her side, lips on hers, drinking in the reactions as he continued to touch her. He should spirit her away—to somewhere where she didn’t have to be caged. Why had he thought to have her here first? He hadn’t been thinking at all, that was the problem.

  He should wait. Should stop.

  The thought didn’t leave him, even as thirty minutes later she was writhing on the covers, hands clenched around his neck, lips clamped to his, making the most deliciously muffled sounds, and soaking wet below, as he slowly pushed into her.

  He shuddered, and she paused, midarch. He stroked her hair, murmuring in her ear. Small, unintelligible noises. She felt like liquid fire around him. And he wanted to slide slowly within her over and over—to make it last forever. Then to take her wildly, savagely—to shake the very foundations of the house with it.

  Shit, what was he doing? He paused, completely unnerved again.

  He hesitated long enough that she pulled back and met his eyes, head pressed to the pillow. Then she smiled, a beautiful smile, and her fingers dug into his nape, and he completed the motion, pushing deep inside, closing his eyes and feeling the wonder of it. Of being inside her.

  She clenched around him automatically, pushing her body up for more, the motions innate. Exactly the reactions he had carefully sown. Exactly the promise he had observed in the shopkeeper’s back room. Observed even before that, in every memory he had of her.

  Wild and wanting. On the edge of losing and taking control.

  “It feels . . . I feel . . .” She lifted her hips, allowing him to slide deeper, and another shudder wracked him. “Wonderful.”

  In his experience, men who caused actual pain for women—mature women, at least, even if it was their first time—had no idea what they were doing. And men who relieved immature women of their virginity didn’t survive long in his world. He had a special way of punishing them.

  He nipped her throat, pleased beyond measure once more at the things that emerged from her beautiful lips. Ecstatic that he was here, with her, like this. Slightly disbelieving, even with all of his overly grown arrogance, that he was here, with her, like this. “Good.”

  And with all the confidence and skill that he possessed, hiding the other, more troubling, feelings below, he made sure that the sensations built within her, that she was flying long and high and out of control as he pushed her over the edge, convulsing around him, easily taking him with her as he watched her face, caught her cries.

  He buried his face in her neck, shuddering, hiding his face for a moment until he regained control. Then he rolled to the side, taking her with him and watching as she stretched over him, smiling. Her face was soft—softer and gentler than he had witnessed before. A light in her eyes that made his spent body twitch to a semblance of life again.

  A look that caused the coil to burn and strange uncertainties to rise.

  He stroked her hair without looking away, a gentle embrace in the wild storm that was suddenly raging through him.

  Trying to convince himself that he didn’t know the meaning of fear. That nothing in the situation suddenly scared the blood out of him.

  Chapter 14

  “You are actually going tonight?”

  Roman hummed lightly and put his feet up on the empty faro table that had just been cleaned. Andreas would never be fooled, but there were others in the gaming room, and even if they were cleaning staff or direct reports, appearances had to be maintained. Even if Andreas was angry enough to discuss this outside of their private rooms.

  “I can hardly decline, Andreas.”

  His brother gave him a dark look and snapped an order to one of the boys moving chairs. The boy violently straightened, then rushed from the room to complete the request.

  “You are abusing the staff again,” Roman said lightly, rolling a pair of dice between his palms. “Besides, you should join me. Give those vultures a right shock.”

  Andreas narrowed his eyes. He ground a finger into the newsprint. “Did you read the other column?”

  Roman glanced casually at the paper tossed his way. There were many things in today’s paper for them to discuss, but he knew to which Andreas referred. It was the smaller of their problems, in Roman’s estimation. A slim reference as opposed to the glaring two-headed vulture on the third page that involved Andreas. “So?”

  “I thought you said you had the situation in hand?”

  “I do.”

  Andreas’s fingers curled around the back of the chair behind which he was standing. Roman wondered if the wood would hold. They had plenty of other chairs, if not. “Trant is drafting legislation against us.”

  “It’s a rumor.”

  “It’s a fact.”

  Roman laughed unpleasantly. “It’s a threat. He won’t say a word—or do a thing—as long as they marry at the end of the summer. And they undoubtedly will.” He rolled the dice in his palm, bones suddenly cracking against bones.

  “And you can’t wait until then?” his brother hissed.

  Roman thought of that night, in her bedroom, and the three weeks’ worth of nights since. Heated liquid gold. “No,” he said simply.

  “I’m trying to understand.”

  Roman tipped his head. “There isn’t anything to understand.” He smiled his charming smile, but his eyes didn’t obey. “My actions lack sense.”

  Andreas hated things that didn’t fit into his cold, rational world. Anyone else admitting such things to him would have been derided, banished, or worse. “And what will you do if it becomes more than a threat?”

  “I have contingencies in place. Trant will prove himself beyond stupid if he doesn’t take what is offered. You know I have taken care of it. You are acting like a hen.”

  Andreas’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Lately, edge players have been shifting far too rapidly in both arenas for me to feel anything but snappish.” He threw the paper away from him. “Not that you would have taken notice.”

  Roman surveyed his brother. “Especially peevish today, aren’t we? I’ve dispatched cleaners to take care of the edges.” He took in Andreas’s tightened shoulders, his skin fairly humming with tension. “But you know this too. What has really lodged up your ass?”

  “Cornelius doesn’t just court the night edges. Whispers point to someone with power backing him. He will move swiftly—”

  “And I’ll take care of him, when he does,” Roman said coldly. He thought of the man who threatened their empire. Who was trying to buy pieces, planting seeds against them—seeds that Roman had helped to water lately with his actions. But Cornelius was just a man—flesh, blood, and bone—who wanted to improve his own slice of the pie. And men could be dealt with.

  Andreas pinned him with a dark look. “You go after Cornelius by yourself, and I’ll cut off your ballocks with my own knife.”

  �
��That hardly sounds pleasant.”

  “Cornelius doesn’t do his own dirty work. And he doesn’t hire just one person to complete his tasks.”

  And neither does anyone of my flesh and blood, was left unsaid. For Andreas would never speak such a thing.

  “I’ve never considered either man stupid,” Roman said, affecting a light tone and pretending to ignore the tightening of Andreas’s shoulders. “I’d like to think I am not either. I know Cornelius as well as you do, so why are you repeating things to me as if I am unaware of the dangers?”

  “Because lately you don’t seem to acknowledge the danger.” And it was as if every emotion in Andreas was pushed into the statement. “You go out willy-nilly, as if you are a forgettable yardsman courting a barmaid. You aren’t. You don’t pay attention to your own safety when she is near. Have you considered what would happen if you were attacked on one of your outings?”

  “Yes,” Roman replied, watching his brother, trying not to let his own tension show. Unwilling to admit that he had forgotten himself at times in the past few weeks. That if he were killed in the next few weeks, it would assuredly be near her. At her feet, in her bed. Inside of her.

  Unfortunately, that last thought just made him think that if he had to choose his final moments, being inside Charlotte would really be the way to go.

  “We deal with these issues all the time. For more years than I can count.” He motioned to Andreas. “Math is your strong suit.”

  Andreas rarely appreciated his jokes when he was angry, and the telltale tick in his forehead said that this time was no different. And when that tick appeared, most people ran—smartly—fast and far.

  But Roman knew what fueled the anger. Andreas had never handled concern well. And since there were very few people in the world Andreas felt concern for, the emotion always bubbled fiercely when it showed—and Andreas tended to get downright vindictive when faced with the recoil of his own feelings.

  One-eye was sure to be permanently assigned to “watching” Roman. Not that the man let him out of his sight for long in any case.