Flawless (17 page)

Knocked.
Not pounded like a bored drunkard looking for sport.

Curious, she smoothed her nightdress and touched the cap that concealed her hair. The high neckline and tiny buttons would keep her covered, but no amount of fine linen would keep her safe. Though loath to admit it, her body yearned for his. Her mind could concentrate on little else.
The hypnosis he managed over even her most determined efforts was just as frustrating as stuffing her brain with fresh terminologies.

Her stepmother, Catrin, had charmed her otherwise abrasive father through a combination of humor, bustling energy, and firm tranquility that Viv desperately envied. She felt no such calm as she crossed on silent feet. Thick carpeting absorbed her nervous energy and tickled her soles.

Upon opening the door, she found him standing as recklessly as her imagination had promised. He pushed past her and closed them in together.

But always with Miles, the truth quickly overwhelmed what meager fantasies she permitted.

“You
reek
,” she said.

He yanked open his ascot, ditched his collar, and undid three buttons, as if purposefully sinking to her lowest estimations. “I spent the last six hours in a club where the men drink like syphilitics and smoke like bonfires on Guy Fawkes Night. Of course I reek.”

Suddenly all she could see was skin—his neck, his forearms, a flash of flat, hard belly as he yanked one shirttail free of his trousers. He raked his hair into snarled disarray, deconstructing what remained of his gentlemanly mien.

He settled on the high-backed chair next to her bed. His spread-eagled legs and lax dress mocked the chair’s dainty floral print and prim construction. He owned every space, no matter how diverse. The world would conform to his standards, never the other way around.

“What I mean is that you’ve been drinking.”

“No, I have not. Not a drop. Not a cigar.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “And not even a single whore.”

Viv flinched. “Then why act this way?”

“So I can prove it to you.”

“Pardon me?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I’d come home as somber as an undertaker fresh from the Queen’s funeral.” He let a lazy, antagonizing smile shape his mouth. Viv watched, enraptured, as he touched his tongue to his lower lip. “Admit it.”

“I’ll do no such thing. Men who are sober come home and go to bed. They do not barge into their houses as if storming the Bastille.”

“Men who are married generally have the option of going to bed with their wives, but I defy that convention, too. I’m an original several ways over.”

“And how am I supposed to believe you?”

Miles stilled. He hadn’t been moving, per se, but the energy he gave off vibrated around him like a cloud of bees. At Viv’s question he peeled his long, negligent body out of the chair and strode forth until her back bumped the closed bedroom door.

“This is about trust, isn’t it, Viv? I understand. I do.” He touched the pulled thread embroidery banding her nightcap and smiled softly. Then he propped both hands flat on either side of her head, forging a cage with his body. “But by that rationale, you must let me establish trust before you can accuse me of breaking it.”

“We tried that once.”

“Let me try again.”

He absorbed oxygen and common sense. Viv wanted to dig her nails into something to relieve the tension snapping in her chest, but the nearest thing to claw was Miles. His forearms, she thought, with their dark hair and sinewy new muscles. No careful restraint this time. She craved a kiss that meant hands and arms and whole bodies.

“What do you have to offer, my lord?” She had wanted to come across as haughty but her words were too breathless. She sounded like an ingenue negotiating a peck on the cheek with her first suitor, not a fully grown woman setting the terms of a seduction.

“You could make inquires at the club. Poll the waiters and the barmen, if you like. Ask that snake Neil Elden what an aristocratic snob I am for having refused to drink with him.” He grinned. “I admit, that was actually a rather enjoyable bit of restraint on my part. But of course, men cannot be trusted, and perhaps they would all be lying for me.”

“Wait, you spoke to Mr. Elden? What is he like?”

“Conceited. New money. Quite handsome. Better watch yourself, Vivie. He could turn your head.”

“I have
never
strayed.”

“Neither have I.”

She laughed in his face. “No matter what means you have in mind for proving your abstinence this evening, you could
never
prove that. Stumbling out of a whorehouse is damning evidence to your discredit.”

Rather than grimace, Miles tilted his head to one side, his expression pensive. “It all goes back to trust, Viv. I said as much. A little at a time, I should think.”

She much preferred his teasing—so much easier to rebuff than unexpected sincerity. But neither did he deny the behavior she had accused him of perpetrating. Old disappointments battled with the better man he seemed intent on becoming.

“So, asking those at the club is off the calendar,” she said. “How will you do this thing?”

He leaned closer until she could smell his breath. She strove to concentrate, to detect whiskey and smoke there, but she was too busy trying to ignore how near his mouth was to hers. “You’re going to kiss me,” he said, his words a delicious, rumbling promise. “Like you did in the street and overlooking the wide Karoo. And you’re going to enjoy it just as much.”

“Hardly.”

“You are. And you’re going to use that delectable pink tongue of yours and taste me.”

Viv shivered. She looked for any means of escaping his mesmerizing ease, but her legs wouldn’t move. Her knees had turned to porridge. The temptation he offered was as old as time—but it was not forbidden. He was her husband. They had been betrothed with all the romance of a business negotiation, but in the eyes of God and man, they were wed.

She could have him. If she wanted.

But that would be the beginning of the end. The respectable stability she had aspired to for so long would never be hers.

“I will do no such thing,” she said thickly, though unable to look away from his lips. So close now.

“You will. And when you taste nary a drop of whiskey nor a hint of cigar smoke, you’ll have to believe that I’ve kept my word.”

“Tonight, perhaps.”

“Is that an invitation, my dear? Because I could come back again and again.” He placed the gentlest kiss on the apple of her left cheek. “And again.” Then the other. “Until you believe me.”

Viv closed her eyes. Oh, but he had always been able to deliver such pleasure. His voice, the scent of him—apparent now under the clouding smoke on his clothes—conspired like an opiate to muddy her thinking. The promise of another stupefying kiss was even more tempting. She breathed past a hot ache that radiated out from her belly. Only the wall held her upright.

“Vivie,” he whispered against her mouth. “Kiss me.”

Y
ou promised me a month.”

Miles grinned against his wife’s mouth, half out of abject pleasure—the manic thrill of anticipation—and half mocking himself. They were bargaining over a kiss. Yet another simple, charged,
erotic
kiss. What a farce. Yet he’d never been more intoxicated by the chase.

“I heard no such protests the other day. In fact, if I recall correctly, I needed to hold down your hands so you wouldn’t undress me in the street.”

“Stop it. You promised!”

“One month, yes,” he said, “until I climb into your bed or drag you into mine. Or perhaps we won’t make it to a bed at all. We’ll be so desperate for one another that any surface will do. But that doesn’t mean we cannot negotiate other . . . pleasures.”

“Leave me be,” she said, her plea a breathy whisper.

He pushed more boldly into her space, his forearms tight, his cock hard and impatient. “You started this. Now prove me wrong, if you’re so blasted confident in your
appraisal. Find me steeped in scotch and smoked like a cod.”

“No.”

“Coward.”

The gold in Viv’s magnetic hazel eyes had brightened, overwhelming the softer green. A severe frown and compressed lips lent righteousness to her expression. An angry valkyrie. She simmered, puffing quick breaths from her nose. Miles didn’t know if she was preparing to kiss him or hit him.

Just touch me, Vivie.

He half believed that when she did, she did so out of spite—simply to surprise him.

She tipped her mouth upward and dove in. No timid touch. No hesitant exploration. She gripped his forearms, nails gouging his skin, and kissed him like an invasion. Any talent for breathing escaped him. She was bolder than he remembered, her tongue more aggressive, her lips more assured. Denying each other this beautiful heat seemed a capital crime. He should taste her hot essence and feel the generous blending of their bodies every night. Every fresh dawn.

It would never be enough.

Miles kept his hands planted firmly on the wall bracing her back, lest he whisk her into bed. Yet again, no hands. What an exquisite torture. Instead he devoted himself entirely to their kiss, foregoing the distractions of breast and hip and thigh. This was Viv, his wife, the one he’d lost. And she’d given in. He would never tire of such a gorgeous victory.

She tilted her head, deepening her attack as if daring him to relent.

She should have realized how close dares came to gambling. This exhilarating kiss mimicked the thrill of outplaying an opponent, finding crevices of weakness and spreading them wide. Miles gave up on the futility of not touching her. With quick fingers to aid his questing lips, he glided down the row of buttons that fronted her nightgown.

Three. He would permit three buttons.

Expecting Viv to stop him with each unfastened pearl, he revealed the buttery soft skin of her throat, then the hollow at its base, then the gentle upper swell of her breasts. He kissed her with an open mouth, greedy for the sweetness of each new treasure. Soft moans and her clutching hands urged him without words and tunneled through his best intentions. Another seed pearl slipped free of its buttonhole. With the strong sweep of his tongue, he worshipped one perfect nipple. Viv arched on a gasp. She found his hand and pressed it against the delicate weight of her left breast.

Such an unexpected invitation.

Miles suckled until she writhed beneath his intensifying licks and nips. That sensitive flesh beaded against the softest touch of teeth. He palmed her breast with one hand and grabbed fistfuls of linen with the other, yanking the material up, up, toward her thigh. Sliding beneath that diaphanous fabric was as easy as nuzzling his way to her other nipple. Only the thin cotton of her drawers separated the questing tips of his fingers from the hot welcome he would find between her legs.

Was she as wet for him as he was hard for her? Needing to know, he cupped her mound and pressed his index finger between her concealed lips. Viv’s hands tightened in his hair. He should have winced at that sharp pain, but he was too busy relishing her madness, her need, her body’s undeniably slick response to his attention. He smiled against the under slope of her breast and licked upward, all the way to the sensitive spot behind her ear.

“Now feel how much I want you,” he rasped.

He grasped her backside with both hands. Bodies flush, he ground his aching shaft against her hip. He could take her right there, banging the door off its hinges for anyone to hear. Let them listen. He and Viv made incredible music.

But her muscles had seized. She became utterly motionless, no matter the quivering hum of desire he felt coursing through her still. Barely more than a whisper came her plea, her command: “Stop, Miles.”

He could have lingered, his forehead pressed to hers, their exhales mixing as the world returned, but he needed a quick withdrawal. Break away. End this
now
, before he went back on the word he needed her to trust.

He straightened completely and looked down. What he saw nearly thrust him to his knees.

Viv’s eyes were dark, hungry, ripe with passion. Drowsy lids made her appear even more vulnerable, more sensual than ever. Her secrets and her lust were equally shadowed by burnished gold lashes. The tender flesh of her rosy, parted lips was slightly swollen and red from his stubble. A high blush stained her cheeks as if with the juice of a berry.
She was delicious, so tempting, and stricken by a look of wonder that left him humbled.

The eager fingers that had tangled in his hair slackened before retreating entirely.

With a heavy shudder, Miles wanted to throw up his hands and stalk out of the room. Why? Why did she hate this so much?

Or was it him? The question hit him like a brick to the skull. Had he really damaged her regard with such relentless skill as to engender true hatred?

He couldn’t remember. There existed huge swathes of time that had been simply . . . erased. Drinking, gambling, an abiding boredom—they were a curtain over whatever initial hope or sentiment she had brought to their union.

Rather than let Viv’s indifference get the better of him, he made a show of examining the crescent-shaped gouges along his forearms. Her mouth became a thin white line. The becoming blush drained away. Her wonder was gone, as was any residual anger. Now came regret. He could’ve dictated the turn of her passion, even after all this time.

Nothing had changed.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“Hardly. Neither of us are.”

He ushered her away from the door and opened it, allowing himself only one glance back. She stood three feet away; he would need to take a step to touch her again. His pride wouldn’t permit it, not when crows of doubt feasted on his confidence. What if some things couldn’t be fixed?

“Forgive the intrusion, Lady Bancroft.” He bowed, his back stiff and his chest aching. Not to mention the pulse throbbing in his cock. “Good night.”