The Proposition (15 page)

Read The Proposition Online

Authors: Judith Ivory

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General, #Regency

BOOK: The Proposition
12.24Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Though no gentleman would do what he did after his crossed his legs. He laced his fingers together behind his head, elbows out, leaned back, stretched, and stared at her skirts again: waiting.

She made herself do it faster this time. Get them up; get it done. But she did the wrong thing, as it turned out. Instead of watching herself, her legs, she watched him. And what she saw not only fascinated, it all but undid her.

The sight of her bare legs affected him in a way he couldn't disguise. He tried to be nonchalant about it—the raised arms behind his head, his legs resting out. But after only a few moments, he'd grown tense enough that the posture no longer served him. He lowered his arms, leaning forward, elbows onto the tops of his thighs, staring as if his life depended on memorizing every inch of her bareness his eyes could cover.

She had power over him. Power that made her mouth dry. It made that feeling low in her belly roil around like something alive.

It warmed her to have his eyes on her like this. It made her face, her skin hot. As if the sun beat on her legs, as if its rays could insinuate themselves up into her. His gaze felt so tangible it seemed to touch her, brush her calves, push against the knickers at her thighs. It made gooseflesh run down the backs of her knees then up her shins, the sensation traveling further up and up into the center of her between her legs. The same, strange place again.

She shifted on her feet, feeling the table under her naked soles. They stuck slightly to the wood, the contact cool, humid from her feet having just come from her shoes.

The feeling was more discomposing than she could have dreamed. His eyes ran up and down her legs, making her aware of how long they were, tree-like, yet somehow his appreciation was candid: burning. There was no other word. She shifted on her bare feet, unable to make herself be still. She could feel her heart thudding. How long had it been pounding like this? Was it healthy for it to pump at such a rate for so long a time as it seemed? Her breathing felt short; she couldn't get quite enough air. Or no, more as if she needed a greater amount than usual. Her palms grew hot and sticky where they clutched the wads of silk, making her dress damp.

The clock ticked. She and Mr. Tremore said nothing. His intense regard only broke once. He became briefly distracted by her shoes, stockings, and garters sitting beside her, fascinated by her pile of clothes for a moment.

She raised her eyes to the clock, trying not to think. Only a minute to go, with him having his eyes on her bare legs, the silence in the room becoming heavy. Her bare legs, she thought. Even she had never looked
at
them so much. No one had. No one else had ever been so interested.

Just before the clock began to strike, he broke the stillness to ask, "Winnie, do you know how beautiful your legs are?"

She looked down, agitated, fidgety, wondering if he and she were talking about the same pair of legs.

Then he murmured, "I can't wait to touch them."

And her stomach rose up into chest, turned upside down, then melted, sinking, into her pelvis.

Nothing she could do about it: He somehow had more control over her than she did. Their eyes met.

She stared down from the height of the table at him, into light, greenish eyes beneath black eyebrows, coloring so unusual …
including a mustache, glossy with
health. With her gaze fixed to his, she felt that low place in her body roll again, the place between her legs, and as if in unison with her stomach, the goose-bump feeling lower slowly somersaulted over.

"I want to touch them with my mouth," he said softly, tentative. He knew he was on shaky ground, nothing they'd discussed. He wanted to woo a change into their contract.

No words. Winnie raised her eyes to stare across the room at her wall of books. Then didn't see them. Her vision blurred. She couldn't see for the heat at her eyes.

He continued. "I want to kiss the backs of your legs, behind your knees and up."

She shook her head. It was the closest she could come to contradicting him.
Once.
They'd said he could touch her legs once. He could put his hand on one leg. Then he had to take it away.

A lot of kissing up the backs of her legs wasn't— Dear God, her head grew light, so light she thought she might faint. It was too much. She felt overwhelmed, unwell…

The clock began to chime—a sobering, saving toll of grace.

Done!

Joy came into her chest with a burst of relief. It came out her mouth with gusto. "Your turn!" she announced.

She dropped hems and petticoats with a loud rustle of silk and linen and lace. Heavens, the sweet charity of being covered again. Who would have thought that to have one's legs bare, from only the knees down really—after all, she had on her knickers—could be such an ordeal?

"Not till the last chime," he said from his chair. Like some almighty emperor from the throne. "Bring 'em up again, Winnie."

"No."

They hassled back and forth as the last chimes struck. In the end, she had to pull her skirts up, let him look for ten more seconds, before she could get him moving toward the staircase.

Chapter 10

«
^
»

E
dwina watched over Mr. Tremore's shoulder in the mirror, his reflection above the washbasin. She watched him touch his mustache. It was brief, just the tips of his fingers lightly combing it downward, almost with affection. She felt a small twinge of guilt. Ever so small. Then he rattled the shaving brush in the cup again and slopped lather onto his lip. He picked up the straight razor, taking hold of his face to make the skin taut. He rolled his lip under his teeth,
then
—scritch—
he took the first swipe.

Oh! Edwina wanted to pat her hands together. Skin under the mustache! White, tender skin. She was gleeful to see it. She could barely be still for her feet's urge to dance.

He took another stroke of mustache off, glancing over at her, a deep frown. He returned his attention to the basin to sling the razor once, slopping foam into the bowl, then wiped the edge of the razor on a towel, raised his head, and scraped again. To get at the edge, he had to twist his mouth and hold his cheek, then had to make another contortion to get under his nose and over the curve of his teeth. Stroke,
scritch,
stroke. It didn't take more than half a dozen good passes, before the thick, bothersome mustache was in the basin mixed with a lot of shaving-soap lather.

Edwina looked down. Seeing it there, she felt as if she'd vanquished a dragon. Or a caterpillar at the very least; something that had been eating holes through her.

Mr. Tremore laid the razor down, then bent over the basin as he poured water from the pitcher. He splashed his face, rinsing over the bowl. Then rose up partway and stopped. He looked at his own face in the mirror.

He startled, blinked. They both did. He slowly rose, staring at his image in the glass.

Goodness, he looked different. Sharper. Cleaner. Smoother, of course. But unpredictably somehow … more severe in his handsomeness. Mick Tremore, clean-shaven, looked like an idealized drawing for a shaving-lotion advertisement.

With the mustache gone, his eyes became his predominant feature, and they, of course, were stunning. Light, mossy green eyes set beneath a jutting brow in a plane perpendicular to a long, straight nose. The bones of his face came forth, a near-patrician facial architecture of strong, masculine angles and planes. Oh, she'd been so right to insist, Edwina thought. So right to get rid of that animal tuft.

Mr. Tremore stared into the mirror, his unusual eyes focused on the lower half of his face. He put his hand over the wet, fresh-shaved skin, dragging his palm down his mouth, frowning. He pressed his lips, moving them, stretched his upper lip.

Whatever it felt like, he didn't dally with the sensation. He turned around just like that—they hadn't been in his bedroom a full minute, hadn't passed a dozen seconds beyond removing his mustache, when he pointed to the wood chair by the washbasin and said, "Get on that where I can get a good look. Then raise 'em up, Win."

Act II. Panic. She took a step back. "You're bossy."

"I'm not bossy. We're negotiating. I know what I want. Get on the chair."

"How did you get that right suddenly, all the
I'm's
and
We're's.
You're saying them correctly almost every time now."

"I've been listening to you. Stop stalling. We can be done in five minutes. Get on the chair."

"No." What she meant was she wasn't standing on anything.

How he took the reluctance in her tone though was, she wanted to back out of her second half of their agreement.

His face took on a look of genuine anger, a look, she realized, she'd never seen on him. It made her back up another step and talk faster than normal. "I'm not standing on the chair. The table downstairs—" She swallowed. "I didn't like it. It was too—" Awkward somehow. In some extreme sense.

Standing on the table downstairs, she thought, had made the strangeness at the end, the eerie feeling that had made her hot and light-headed. "I'm not doing that again," she reiterated. "You have to look where you are."

He twisted his mouth, an instant's displeasure, then pulled the chair he'd indicated around, straddling it backward. He dropped himself into the seat, bracing his arms on the back. "Fine," he said.

It was her word. He said it exactly as she often did. The man was a parrot today, soaking up more than she wanted at the moment. She backed a step further, staring into his newly revealed, somehow sharper features. He didn't look as kind without his mustache. She almost missed it for a moment. He didn't look himself.

"Take up your skirt," he said.

She let out a huff. "Don't make it any cruder than it is."

"I can make it any way I want: It's my turn."

He touched his lip again, and his brow drew into a deep, preoccupied crease. One elbow braced on the chair back, he absently fiddled with the newly shaved skin.

Edwina hadn't been aware she was retreating further until her bare heel stepped rudely into the baseboard. By then the weight and balance of her substantial body was already in motion. She collided, her shoulders hitting the wall.

"You gonna start, or do you need some help?"

She brushed at her skirts, getting herself settled on her feet, wishing somehow for more time, a delay, which wasn't of course going to happen. Get on with it, she told herself. "No, I don't need any help." She grabbed her skirts, two handfuls, looking down at them.

"Good," he said. "Because I want to get to the last minute as quick as I can."

The last minute? Oh. Her stomach dropped. The touching part. She wouldn't think about it. She lifted her eyes—she would look at his clean lip and do what she'd done before.

It was harder this time. She had the memory of the odd, tingling embarrassment that in the last instant had just about leveled her. Added to this now was knowing that the odd sensation his eyes made on her would become somehow the concrete feel of his hand. How was she supposed to manage
that?
Just stand here? Let him walk up and put his— Oh dear heaven, she
thought.

She stared at his lip and kept telling herself it was worth it: as she gathered up her skirts. She began again, taking the fabric up more and more into her fists. The air was warmer than downstairs. She felt a draft on her legs that was almost balmy as her hands claimed scrunching silk and underlinens. When her fists couldn't hold any more, she pressed the scroopy stiffness of her skirts back against her knickers, hiking, pushing skirts up under her forearms. Skirts rising, rising … bare feet then shins. When she saw her knickers, where they began at her knees—

She suddenly remembered what he'd said he wanted, the part about kissing the backs of her legs. No. She looked at him. "You can't—you have to—" She couldn't say it. "You can't use your—"

"Mouth," he finished for her. He laughed, a release. Of sorts. It wasn't a particularly nice laugh—dry, ironic. There was a subtlety to him she hadn't given him credit for till now. He understood nuance. And perhaps even some sort of double entendre she couldn't grasp: "All right, loov. I won't put my mouth under your skirts where you don't want it. It ain't my intention to make you unhappy."

Ain't.
The word let her breathe. Thank God he still said it occasionally. Still her Mick. Funny, joking Mick. Who wasn't joking now. He bit the inside of his mouth, a movement that sucked his lower lip in at the edge. His eyes were hooded, half-closed from watching the show that was lower to the ground than before. Looking, looking, not a moment's reprieve…

Winnie got the whole wad of her skirts pulled up into her arms and against her hips. She didn't know how long she'd stood there, fretting and rubbing her thumbs at the silk, standing with her skirts up in front of a man who gave the sight his full concentration. She only jerked to greater consciousness when he rose, swinging one leg back and off the chair, standing up to his full, rather imposing height. He seemed huge when he came toward her.

"What are you doing?" she blurted.

"I'm going to touch your legs. We agreed—"

Other books

Forever in Blue Jeans by Lissa Matthews
Pearls by Colin Falconer
The World Series by Stephanie Peters
A Taste of Heaven by Alexis Harrington
Rip Tides by Toby Neal
Stranded With a Hero by Karen Erickson, Coleen Kwan, Cindi Madsen, Roxanne Snopek
Haunting Refrain by Ellis Vidler
Some of the Parts by Hannah Barnaby
Gray by Pete Wentz, James Montgomery