One Night Is Never Enough (9 page)

She stared at him, unable to move. Unable to look away from his eyes, the shadows of the queen he drew along the boxed square the only thing in her peripheral vision.

“Like those whites and dark blues you wear—the darkness never bleeding into the crisp, clean, untouchable color. Purely surrounding it or using it as accent.”

She had to clear her throat to remove the block but refused to look away. “And you think this is intimacy we are exchanging? That you are pulling my secrets from me?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps you are pulling mine from me.”

“You’ve given me nothing but taunting words and seductive phrases. I hardly think right now that you are the Roman who ‘bleeds away in the deep of the night.’ ”

He leaned forward. “That you even admit as much . . . But I have given you such details should you seek to unwrap and use them.” He smiled. “I hope you do.”

She didn’t know how to deal with the emotions he was provoking, so she motioned to the board. “It is your turn.”

“So it is.” He hummed a bit. “Do you enjoy working with the Orphans of Liberty?”

She looked up at him through her lashes, relieved to be on a safer subject, wary of what he might twist the conversation toward. “Yes. They are not one of my primary focuses, but I enjoy the group immensely.”

“Not one of your primary focuses? You don’t think orphans should be a prime focus?”

She narrowed her eyes but thought she read his expression right. “You are being deliberately difficult. They are already supported by a generous set of benefactors. They don’t require my efforts like other groups do.”

“Mmmm . . . like the London Women’s Group? Giving underprivileged women a second chance.”

She moved her queen-side bishop in a jerking motion, snatching one of his pawns, without meeting his eyes. “Should I be flattered that you know of my interests, Mist— Roman?”

“Merely something I heard in passing.” He waved a hand above his king-side rook and pushed it along its crooked path. “And I am always looking for new interests myself. Perhaps I should donate to some of the causes you find worthwhile?”

“So that you can brag of them to your conquests? Not be called on your duplicity?”

“Duplicity, deceit, deception—such useful skills, no?”

“I hardly think so.” She viciously plucked his rook.

“No?” The corner of his mouth lifted. “But you employ them so well.”

“Pardon me?”

“And on yourself most of the time, mmmm?”

She clamped her lips on an automatic chilly refusal. Something within her not letting the
duplicitous
denial through. Panic spread sharply.

He reached over and touched her chin, thumb skimming her lower lip, releasing it from its tight grip. “But not now, no? Is there something here in this night that makes you feel the release, Charlotte? Something
intimate
?”

She watched his eyes as they traced her lips, felt the pad of his thumb in their echo. Drugging something in her.

“Is there something about me that allows you to brook the thought of relief? Or have I simply provided you the means at the perfect time?”

She spoke, his thumb brushing her lip with each whispered syllable. “You think much of yourself.”

“Only in the way that I read your reactions. I would not play these games with someone I found uninteresting, or with someone uninterested in me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“No? Is that because you don’t see your own worth? Or rather
know
it? For I have a feeling you
see
it quite frequently.”

In the mirror, every day.

She tore herself away from his grasp. “And you, Roman? What is your worth? In the games you win?”

“Perhaps. Or in the people that are mine.”

Something slithered through her, an insidious thread. “And you? Do you belong to them as well?”

He leaned in again, smiling, a dark, delicious smile. “Of course. For that is the risk and the quest, is it not?”

“I don’t believe you. Few men wish to belong to someone else. And you do not strike me as a man who would belong to
anyone.
”

“Where is your sense of adventure, Charlotte? Your desire for competition? For winning?”

“I am playing am I not?” She shoved her piece onto an empty square. “But most of those feelings are long past. Matured.”

Safely buried.

“Then we will simply need to dig them back up. Rejuvenate them. Return Charlotte Chatsworth to her vibrant glory.”

She didn’t look up from the board, but his words wound through her, hooking in, provoking want. Panic and desire. For he somehow knew exactly what to say to her. Pulling her like the marionette on strings she had been in the hall hours ago. The sands of time slipping through her fingers as they played, just like the metaphorical paint dripping from her skin, baring her with each uttered word.

“Come.”

He reached beneath the table, and she could hear a series of snaps. He lifted the top of the table and stood. She stared at him. At the stump of the table left. Neck and legs without a crown.

“Come with me, Charlotte.” The words sang of sly promises and seductive creatures of old, almost making her squirm on her chair.

But she looked to his eyes, to the circles that had gathered beneath. Strangely, they made him look more like a fierce, sleek predator.

Was he done with the game then? Exhaustion pushing to other things? Falling back to the threat of leaving her virginity on his sheets?

He balanced the tabletop on one hand, like a servant carrying a platter. He bent, and his fingers curled around hers, sneaking beneath her palm, slowly lifting it and her to standing.

“Come.”

She didn’t know if she would have had the remaining presence required to extricate her own hand, so when his just as slowly descended, still wrapped around hers, softly leaving it at her side, his fingertips pulling along hers, the hoarse words popped forth.

“Where to?”

“It draws toward morning, and like all creatures of the night, I find myself wanting a darker, softer place to hide.”

He carried the board gently, balancing the pieces on top, and walked toward the room at back. The navy-and-red coverlet sang of illicit purposes.

“I promise I only have a continuance of this game in mind,” he called over his shoulder. “For now.” The last was lower in both volume and register. Almost as if she weren’t even required to hear it. It being more of a stated promise.

He turned the corner with the board, disappearing from view.

She approached the room at a much slower pace. Curious and apprehensive. Wondering where this night would lead. A faint flicker built within her as she stepped through the portal.

The bed was large, and it was hard to notice anything else in the room at first. She and Emily could share it with an extra person to either side. She didn’t think her own room was large enough to accommodate such a massive piece of furniture. Dark pillows scattered the top as if hastily thrown on. She thought she saw a tucked trouser leg sticking out from under the bed where the coverlet brushed the boards.

That small peek of disarray allowed her to draw a shaky breath and continue forward.

The counterpane itself was magnificent. The scarlet-and-navy pattern wove together into a tight sculpted print, like an oriental rug shot through with gold. She had never seen such exquisite cloth. She touched it with her finger pads, running them along the surface. The fabric was silky, smooth, the gold threads making just the slightest hitch. She curled her fingers into the fabric, feeling the layers beneath. He sat upon the bed, sinking heavily into the layers before arranging the chessboard on top, situating it in its own divot of goose down.

He scooted up and reclined on his side, a charming smile about his lips. “Much more comfortable.”

Decadent. Lush. Not comfortable.

She perched on the edge, determined not to be enveloped. A part of her, here in the illusory night, wanting the opposite. Just a little part.

“Come now, Charlotte. You can hardly see from that position, much less reach your pieces. It will be detrimental to your play.”

“I find myself thinking this change of venue can hardly be anything but detrimental to my play. Or to me.”

He raised a brow. “Not up to the challenge? Even with my most gentlemanly promise?”

She frowned and scooted up, dragging herself across the luxurious fabric half in protest, and sat with legs tucked to the side on the decadent bed, her voluminous, prim black skirts spread about her, her back ramrod straight, as her undergarments dictated. He reclined on his side, propped on one arm, shirt open at the collar and hitching beneath him. Creasing the covers under and around him in a depraved way.

She pulled her lips between her teeth, wetting the undersides, a feeling she could only identify as nervousness running through her.

“Suddenly afraid for your virginity?” He seemed to find some amusement in this as he arrayed the pieces that had scooted from the centers of the squares during their movements.

“Should I be?”

“It depends on what you keep doing with those delectable lips of yours. They keep promising different things.”

She raised her chin, the thought that she could be seen as deliberately trying to tempt him making her uncomfortable even as her lips strained to pull into her mouth again. “I am not a loose woman.”

“Oh,” he said in decided amusement as he met her eyes. “Of the state of your virginity, I have no doubt.”

“You didn’t seem particularly prone to the thought at the beginning of the night.”

“With you offering yourself up? There was a moment there that I thought I had been mistaken about your maidenhead, or lack thereof. That would have made things easier if it had been true. And more difficult.”

She blinked at the opposing statements.

He smiled at her look. “I’ll leave you to interpret that, shall I?”

“I don’t think it difficult to do so.” She narrowed her eyes. “Men don’t like others traveling the path they want to tread alone, even if their own paths are strewn with couplings,” she said coldly, thinking of one of their neighbors in the country. Of the woman’s fall from grace, of her mistake in trusting the wrong man. Of the men who had sought her out afterward—none of whom would ever have marriage in mind. Not for someone soiled by another.

A mistress could be soiled. Not a wife.

Even Trant’s eyes had been edged in distaste tonight. He wanted her badly enough that he was willing to overlook this, but she had no doubt that she would pay for this night forever should she marry the man.

But the man across from her continued to look amused, as if she were trying to explain a too-complicated riddle and failing.

“
Some
men desire the claiming of a woman’s virginity, true. A staked claim to say something is
theirs
alone.” He laughed—the sound warm and smooth, with just the edge of the roughness that seemed to travel beneath. The irregularity causing her to shiver but not in aversion.

“But what good is it to be first?” His lids fell a fraction, making him look far less affable and decidedly more dangerous. “The first hand in a game means nothing for the win. Some men say it sets the tone. I’ve often found that only a green gambler stakes anything of true value on the first hand. More likely it is a complete fluke. Merely practice. Warm-up.”

His partially hooded eyes surveyed her lazily. “Lasting until everyone else is a mere shadow at the table, until you’ve milked everything from them . . .” Dangerous eyes caressed her throat. “
That
is where winning lies.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that, nor to the reactions he caused as his eyes touched her lips, her wrists, her neck. Here on a bed, no less. And a decadent one at that. “Contrary to appearances, that makes you sound like a patient man,” she said, trying to focus on safe things.

Even though he had played as if he had all the time in the world,
this
wasn’t patience.
This
was—as she had thought earlier—playing a game far deeper than simple chess.

He smiled. “Andreas despairs of me, of course. If I want something enough, I will risk everything on a single toss of the dice.” He looked at her throat again, at the damn pulse she knew had to be jumping, and smiled slowly. “But it’s not so I will be first. It is so I will be the absolute winner.”

Her heart sped up. “What do you want from me?” she whispered.

“That is an excellent question.” He tilted his head. Then he carelessly motioned to the board. “But it is your move.”

She nervously touched the shoulders of the knight closest to her. The conversation, the night, had soothed and put her on edge in increasingly violent turnabouts. “Do you plan to play with me all night?”

There was that
affable
smile again, incongruous and edged in danger. “Are you not enjoying the game?”