She wanted more than this as well, but what could it be? Crossing accidentally at the park would still raise eyebrows and have people asking questions, causing gossip and speculation. She couldn’t do anything that would bring embarrassment to her family or Thornley—nothing that would cause him to question the wisdom in following through on the contract. Her father would see her locked in her room for eternity. A ball was out of the question. Perhaps a darkened balcony at the theater... as though she would be allowed to attend a performance without a chaperone in tow. “It would be a risk.”
“This has been a risk.”
She couldn’t argue with that. “I don’t know, Finn. I’ll be so busy this Season with my coming out I’m not certain I’ll even be able to meet you every Tuesday.”
“Do you want to keep seeing me?” he asked.
“More than anything. You’re my dearest friend in all the world.”
He chuckled darkly, a sinister sound she’d never before heard emanating from him. She might have even heard him swear beneath his breath. He turned down the road that led to the factory. “I don’t want to be your friend, Vivi.”
He’d never called her that before.Vivi.In retrospect, after that first night, he’d never called her anything at all, not Lady Lavinia or Lavinia or m’lady. ButVivicoming off his tongue sounded almost like an endearment. No one had ever shortened her name, had given her any sort of pet name. She liked it, she liked it very much. But the words that had come before it confounded her. “I don’t understand, Finn. If you don’t want to be my friend, then why have we been doing this? Don’t you like me?”
He brought the wagon to a halt, set the brake, looped the reins around its handle so they were out of the way, and twisted around to face her, to cradle her cheek, to stroke his thumb along the corner of her mouth. “I like you far more than is wise for a man in my position.”
Abruptly, he released his hold on her and jumped off the wagon, leaving her wanting for something she couldn’t exactly identify. He came around and held his arms up to her. “Come on. Sophie’s waiting for you.”
Without thought to their earlier row or whatever it had been, she fell into a ritual in which they’d engaged too many times to count, placing her hands on his shoulders while he bracketed her waist, but this time it seemed as though he brought her down much more slowly, as though their eyes were locked while her body tingled. Her breasts came close to skimming over his chest. All she had to do was inhale deeply or push them forward and the nipples that had pearled would have brushed over him. And she imagined it would have felt as tantalizing as his roughened palm sliding over her hand.
Finally, her feet were on firm ground, but she couldn’t say the same of her imaginings. She was aware of him in ways she’d never been before. The breadth of his shoulders. She’d noticed them but had never considered how comforting it might be to lay her head in the hollow of one of them. With the nearly full moon, she could see there was a thickness to the stubble on his jaw that hadn’t been there before. He was no longer a lad on the cusp of manhood but had stepped over it in a most magnificent way.
Lord, help her. She wanted his hands on more than her waist. She wanted them on places that only her husband should ever have the privilege of touching.
She was grateful, and disappointed, when Sophie’s whinny broke the spell and Finn released her. Swinging around and walking toward the paddock, she came up short at the sight of her beloved horse. “She’s wearing a saddle.”
“You had a birthday while you were away, didn’t you?” he asked, coming up to stand beside her, and she could feel his gaze on her.
Turning her face toward him, she smiled, blinking back the tears that stung her eyes. Last year he’d given her a handful of flowers—picked himself from someone’s garden, she was rather certain. “It must have cost you a fortune.”
“You’re seventeen now, too old to be riding her bareback.”
“Finn, I’m so deeply touched that I don’t know what to say.”
He took a step nearer. “I don’t want to be your friend,” he said in a hushed, rough voice, repeating what he’d told her earlier, but this time there was an urgency to the words, in his tone. “I haven’t wanted to be your friend since I met you. But I’ve waited until you were old enough and now you are.”
She furrowed her brow, none of this making sense. “For what?”
“For this.”
Tossing aside his flat-cap, he very slowly began lowering his mouth to hers, giving her time to back away, to still his actions with a hand to his broad chest. But instead she merely parted her lips slightly and waited. What was a few more seconds after waiting for two years?
Although until that exact moment, she didn’t realize she’d been waiting for this, for him, for him to finally see her as more than a spoiled child who’d made the mistake of abusing her horse and then become petulant because her father wanted to protect her, had become angry at and dismissive of the man who would take the mare away. After taking it away, he’d brought her the gift of its partial return.
She would lose it again when her betrothal was announced in theTimes, but not tonight, not for weeks yet, perhaps months, maybe even years. As long as nothing was official, she could claim no commitment to another. As long as Thornley didn’t look up at her from bended knee, as long as he didn’t proclaim her his, there was always a chance he never would and that chance, albeit a slim one, allowed her to consider herself untethered, gave her the permission she needed to simply wait.
With her heart beating erratically as though she’d raced through London streets to get here, with her breath coming shallowly and slowly as though her lungs feared frightening the rest of her with their sudden need for air, she watched him slowly descending the few inches, his blond curls falling across his brow, his dark eyes—a brown she’d only ever once seen in daylight but with a richness to the shade that she would forever remember—intense, holding her captive as easily as the moonbeams that limned him.
Then his lips touched hers and the waiting that seemed to encompass a century suddenly seemed as though it had been no time at all. And the girl she had been suddenly found herself hovering on the cusp of womanhood and toppling off it.
Because what she had expected to be a gentle meeting of the mouths was nothing of the sort. Now that he had reached his destination, it was clear he’d arrived with a purpose, and as he cradled her head between his large hands, roughened by his labors, she could feel two years of yearning quivering through him, insisting, demanding, that the waiting not be in vain. His tongue outlined the rim, before traveling along the seam she’d prepared for him when she’d parted her lips in anticipation of his arrival. The opening gave way as he thrust his tongue inside, not sipping at her mouth, but drinking greedily, their tongues engaged in an ancient dance that sought to claim even as it granted freedom. A thrill shot through her with the knowledge, the evidence, that he desired her this desperately, that he more than wanted her, he needed her.
She recalled how careful he had always been to keep his distance, to not touch her except when necessary to seat her in the wagon or on Sophie. She’d thought his manners were reflecting a deference to her station in Society when compared with his, but as he lowered his hands, gliding them over her back, pressing her more firmly against him, closing his arms around her, she realized he’d been exercising tremendous restraint, had known what awaited them on the other side of his defenses once they were lowered.
He’d been striving to protect her from what he’d desperately wanted to deliver—until she was old enough to want it, accept it, and not be terrified by it. Although it did frighten her to realize that it seemed impossible to ever have enough of this, to know they would only have a short time together, a limited number of kisses, not nearly enough to last a lifetime.
Growling low in his throat, the vibrations in his chest thrumming against her breasts, he held her tighter until it was impossible for any moonlight, any light at all, to pass between their bodies. She wished he wasn’t wearing his jacket, considered asking him to take it off so she could experience a more encompassing warmth coming from him. She’d wound her arms around his neck and her fingers toyed with the ends of his silken hair. He smelled of man, not horses, and she knew he’d bathed before coming to her, always bathed before coming to her. His shirt carried the fragrance of fresh starch.
He dragged his mouth from hers, tasting her chin, her throat, and she wished she wore a ball gown that exposed her shoulders, a good bit of décolletage, and the upper swells of her breasts so his lips could travel over that skin as well, marking all of it as his. Even though it could never be, not for more than a brief amount of time.
