One Night Is Never Enough (32 page)

She stared at him, disbelieving, as he rose, stretching. “Overbearing?”

Roman stretched farther, his shirt lifting a bit to show a peek of skin beneath. “My God, I was just up, and still, how do people sit in those knobby, wooden chairs for so long?”

“You are spoiled.”

“I know.” He grinned widely, his eyes lighting with that rare boyish charm that was so odd on such a sinful face. “It’s brilliant, no?”

She shook her head but couldn’t stop an answering smile, trying to fully push away the lingering unease Andreas’s words had caused. “You are a menace.”

“Also brilliant.” He swept forward and suddenly lifted her up and over his shoulder.

She let out a surprised squeak. “What are you doing?”

“Being a menace.” He strode forward, kicked the door to his bedroom fully open, and plopped her down on the bed.

“This is hardly proper,” she said breathlessly, anticipating his next movements already.

“There is nothing proper I want to do to you anyway.” A finger stroked down her throat.

“I can’t stay all night,” she whispered.

He smiled and leaned forward. “We’ll see.”

Chapter 19

L
oose hair fell across her eye, and she had the strangest urge to blow it from her view. Emily did that, but Charlotte had never dared.

She touched his collarbone, tracing it down to his sternum. There were old and plentiful wounds there. She circled one at the top, then moved to the next.

“Cataloging my imperfections?”

“From where did you get them?”

“Here and there.”

She circled a third that undoubtedly had been made by a knife, then pinched him in response to his nonanswer. He caught her hand and flipped her. Her hair spread in all directions, leaving her free to observe him. He pinned her hands above her head with one hand, and her breathing sped back up. One bent leg pressed her hips to the bed.

“I’d rather examine you.” His free fingers traced down her collarbone and followed the same path she had taken but veered off when he reached her left breast, tracing the perimeter, watching it with a lazy smile as her chest rose more rapidly, pushing it higher toward him.

He leaned down, his roughened cheek resting on the edge of one breast, his lips breaths away from the other. “You realize”—every puff of warmed air hit her—“I could do anything to you right now. Anything I want.”

She squirmed, strangely aroused by the thought. Then again, she had given complete trust to him in this arena weeks ago. “You do realize you already did things to me?”

One finger traveled up the inside of her thigh, and the tip curled slowly into her. She arched against him, still pinned beneath. He withdrew the touch and began making lazy patterns on her thigh. Her breath came quickly now, for at any moment he would repeat the motion. She knew it. Could feel him smiling against her chest. His amused breath against her exposed nipple.

“There is your
perfect
thigh.”

She tensed at the word.

His finger slipped over her thigh, then just as easily slipped into her, her body once again ready, curving in a little more, brushing against the shockingly potent place that he’d already overcome her with.

“And your
perfect
smoothness.”

She clenched around the digit, body trying to lift up. His palm cupped her, and his thumb rubbed between. She panted out a breath, then another, all calmness and coolness erased.

“And your
perfect
reaction.”

“I hate that word.” She breathed the response.

“I know you do,” he whispered against her ear.

“Who are you?” And unlike earlier, this time she purely meant it as a question to him.

He pulled back and met her eyes steadily. “Simply a man.”

“I know so little about you,” she whispered. “Sometimes I’m not even sure you are real. While you know everything about me.”

“What flowers you like, what time you rise in the morning, how you take your tea? Hardly things that others don’t know or can’t learn.”

“No.” She kept her eyes locked with his. “Not those things.”

“How you like to be touched?” He pulled a finger over her thigh, the sensitive inner flesh that always made her shiver. “How your body responds best? What makes you moan?”

“Not just those either.” She shook her head slowly, tilting it back on the pillow, something choking and fearful and overwhelming taking hold of her.

“What you hope for? What you need?” He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “What you fear?”

Everything she feared. Things she didn’t want to admit to herself. Foolish, vain things. And things she both wanted, and needed, him to know. That terrified her far worse than anything else ever had. For this man to have her secrets—what would that mean? She couldn’t have anything lasting with him. She would be married. This would come to an end. And even if she went the way of the
ton
—affairs and liaisons after the production of heirs—he would undoubtedly lose interest. Men always did once they put the trophy away.

And yet, it whispered between them. That he knew her secrets. That he held them close. That he might
always
do so.

“Yes.” The word barely emerged, and in fact she thought she might not have spoken it at all, except that she could see the reflection of it in his satisfied expression as he leaned back again.

“And you?” she whispered. “What do you fear, Roman? You, who seem fearless.”

His satisfied expression immediately turned blank. He released her, his leg retreating, only his tapping fingers on her hipbone remaining.

She didn’t think he would respond, but she kept silent, not wanting to fill the silence. Hoping he would start speaking.

For how long had she let him give her what she wanted and needed yet not asked after him in return? Something of their conversation from earlier, before they’d come here to play cards, echoed between them, unspoken. Unresolved.

And he could so easily say nothing.

“A cage. No exit,” he said.

Her throat clenched. “A confirmed bachelor?” she said lightly.

“Mmmm.”

His tapping fingers began drawing lazy patterns again. “A raven, a dove or rabbit . . . life extinguished.”

Her heart beat faster. She wanted to ask—

“No choices.” He sucked suddenly at her throat, at the beating pulse there. “Choices taken away.”

Her eyes closed. When they reopened, he was drawing patterns once more—across her chest and down her stomach.

“There are so many things to fear, aren’t there, Charlotte? Silly things.” He touched a lock of her hair, pulling it over her shoulder. “Real things.” He touched her hand, fingers circling her fourth finger from the right. “Dangerous things, and things that make no sense.” He smoothed his hand down her stomach and over her hip. “Better to live now than fear what is to come.”

His eyes met hers, and her breath caught. As if he were asking her to rid herself of all her fears. Fingers touched her cheek.

“Are you playing other games with me, Roman?” she whispered. “Are you playing with me for sport?”

Was any of this real?

One finger drew down her cheek. “Yes. No. Yes.”

She hadn’t asked three questions aloud though. Which corresponded to which?

“Charlotte, who asks for everything. Charlotte, who asks for nothing in return for herself.”

She opened her mouth to speak, to deny, but he gently pushed his fingers to her lips.

“My parents died when I was ten,” he said absently, as if speaking of the weather. “Half of London seemed to perish that winter.”

She swallowed as his fingers moved down her throat. She knew of what he spoke. She’d been too young to remember it herself, but they had not visited the city for an entire year.

“There was no one else. No money left once the creditors came through. We didn’t have much to begin with. And I was too stupid to understand that I should have taken what little money was lying around and fled.” He laughed, an old laugh. “Like the debt-ridden aristocrats fleeing to France.”

He traced the curve of her breast.

“Took to the streets instead—nowhere else to go. The orphanages were far too crowded—then the sickness swept through them faster than in the rookeries. I found Andreas a few months in. Patched him up. Made him tolerate me.”

“His parents also perished in the sickness?”

“Mmmm . . .” He drew a pattern underneath her breast, then circled the tip, not coming too close, but teasingly coming just close enough to make her body tense.

“Tried to work as chimney sweeps for a while. Stupid, terrible job. And Andreas wasn’t cut out for it.”

She blinked at that.

“Boys can be . . . unkind . . . on the streets, unless you already are someone, or are protected by someone. And sometimes not even that helps. The newest sweeps get tortured and beaten. And, well, let’s just say that Andreas didn’t take well to anyone laying a hand on him. Or, after I’d forced him to accept me, on me.”

“Runaway,” she murmured. Abused child. From a wealthy house too, perchance, with the way he spoke.

Roman laughed without warmth. “No, but that is his story to tell.”

His fingers pulled along her collarbone, making her shiver.

“Our second week on the job, and I thought I’d never scrape the soot from my lungs. Andreas was up the bricks, cleaning, when one of the boys lit the straw beneath, telling him he was going too slowly and had better hurry.”

She closed her eyes, his hands moving over her like burning rushes.

“I knocked it away and got thrown into the bricks for the trouble. Bastards charged us for that later, when we couldn’t get the blood out of the mortar.”

His lips coasted over her throat, and she thought of the faintly raised scar behind his ear that she could feel sometimes when her fingers ran through his hair.

“Andreas went silent. That should have been their first hint. But the idiot then shoved a poker up the chimney, trying to do damage. He lit another rushlight when that failed.”

“What happened?”

“Suffice to say, Andreas dropped to one knee amidst the flames and shot out swinging.”

“And the boys?”

“One ran like the coward he was. One never quite learned to work his jaw correctly again. And the one who had been in charge still wears his patch today.” The last was said a bit fondly.

Her head jerked up. “But . . .”

Roman merely shrugged. “People change. I trust him with my life now. Another tale, and one that happened years later. As Bill says, fate can be a pox-ridden whore. And I’ve always had a tendency to collect strays.” His finger worked beneath her chin, then down her throat.

“With one swift stroke though, we were mostly left alone. Became crossing sweepers the next day with the notoriety in our empty pockets, seeing as we were already a set, and that is when everything changed.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, simply stared at his fingers ghosting over her skin. She took his hand and turned to her side, propping the side of her chin on her hand, fingers playing over his.

“We started running errands for Nicholas Merrick, a small-time thug who managed a gaming hell and ran a few
businesses
on the side.

“We started working more and more at the hell. Took the notice of the owner. Sent me to
school.
To gain some polish.” He flashed a smile, letting his full accent through. “To make contacts.”

“And your brother?”

“Andreas hardly needed
school.
” Again the accent. “Instead, he got the quick and dirty education in keeping—and cooking—the books.”

“Took over the business a few years later when Old Merrick kicked it. Then bought out the owner. Earned enough to buy some land. That turned into two plats, then three.”

Landholding was key. She knew better than anyone. The Chatsworths should have sold their country estate long ago, but her father needed the status. Landholders had far more rights.

“We quickly made people take notice. Between the two of us, with such different and complementary skills, it was easy.”

Roman the face of the business, its charisma and mercurial danger, and Andreas the hardened, ruthless spine.

“More land, more businesses. Started buying debts when we earned just enough prestige to make it work. If there is one thing people hate, it’s creditors, after all. You have to carry enough weight to create a pause. A big enough stick to get things done. And a twist to how you do things, for we usually don’t take the debts ourselves, we just make them available. Which helps some people and ruins others.”

She pinned him with a look. “Depending on if you like them.”

He feigned a look of outrage. “You make me sound like an ogre. Next thing I know, you’ll be calling me Andreas.”

Charlotte wanted desperately to know if he held all of her father’s debts. If that is what had her father drinking more heavily, acting more desperate.

His eyes held hers, watching,
waiting
for her to ask.

“No, I think I’ll continue to call you Roman.”

His fingers worked into her nape, pulling her head back slightly, exposing her neck. “That is good. I am fond of my brother, even when he is being an ass, and would hate to have to hurt him.”

His lips grazed her skin. “There, now you know all about me,” he said lightly.

There was something entirely
too
light about the statement. She touched his cheek, making him look at her. There was no emotion so easily defined as
fear
in his light eyes. Nor of concern or trepidation. Yet . . .

“While that tells me a very abbreviated version of your past,” she said softly—and some seed that had long been there, fed small chugs of water, growing slowly without her notice—suddenly pushed out its leaves. It made her breath quicken, stirrings of panic pushing at a strange river of calm. “I know much about
you
already, do I not?”