He didn’t offer his arm, but simply took her hand. This portion of the garden was lit with gas lamps. People were strolling about. She couldn’t afford for anyone to see her in such an intimate position, so she worked her hand free and wrapped it around the crook of his elbow. “For propriety’s sake,” she murmured.
He didn’t argue, but simply started walking along the cobblestoned path that wound through the various groupings of flowers. “My mother is incredibly single-minded, doesn’t like anything mixed together, so over there are the roses, there the lilies, there the daffodils, off to the side are the delphiniums—”
“So she feels about flowers the same way she feels about people. Heaven forbid a commoner should love a noble.”
Her breath hitched at his declaration, one he’d never admitted to, even though she’d long suspected it was true. “Do you, Finn? Do you love a noble?”
Putting his arm around her back, closing his hand over the side of her waist, he drew her off the path, darting between hedgerows and past trellises until they were in the darkest part of the garden, away from the lamps, the posts, other wandering couples. Cupping her face between his hands, he whispered low and earnestly, “How can you doubt it, Vivi?”
Then he took her mouth in the sweetest kiss he’d ever given her. If she’d not already fallen in love with him, she would have absolutely done so at that very moment. His lips claimed her as his, not forcefully or arrogantly, but simply with truth, with longing, with desire. He wanted her as desperately as she wanted him. It was there in the thrumming tension of his body as his fingers fluttered over her bared shoulders. In the way his mouth followed suit as he dragged it down her throat along her collarbone.
“God, this gown drives me to madness,” he rasped.
He lowered his head to the pliant mounds, her breasts plumped up just for him to savor. And he feasted, kissing, licking, burying his nose in the valley of her cleavage, inhaling deeply. “You witch. You placed perfume there.”
She laughed lightly. She had. She’d chosen this gown because it was so risqué, because it gave him access to parts of her that had always been kept hidden from him by a layer of cloth. Taunting him had been her purpose in donning it.
“I could take you right here,” he vowed in a throaty voice. “Against the wall, a trellis, on the ground.”
“And if we were discovered...” She couldn’t even begin to imagine the dire consequences that would follow. If he were a nobleman, in spite of being promised to Thornley, she’d find herself marrying Finn. Her father would insist. But he wasn’t a nobleman, and what her father might do to him didn’t bear thinking about. He’d no doubt toss him out on his ear, and her mother would lock Lavinia in her room—she nearly laughed at that. They weren’t the villains in a fairy tale. They’d express their disappointment and displeasure and forbid her from ever seeing him again. Her father wouldn’t punch him, but he might ask a footman to do so.
Any discovery at all would mean an end to their time together, to this wonderful and exhilarating feeling that came over her whenever she was with him.
“It wouldn’t go well,” he finished for her as he reclaimed her mouth.
No, it would not, but how could her family object to him when he brought her so much happiness, when she counted the minutes until she was again in his company, when he’d never taken advantage of her—
And if he did take advantage, well, they couldn’t send him away if he’d totally ruined her.
When his mouth once again began a slow and sensual sojourn along her throat, she whispered, “Not against a wall or a trellis or on the ground. But in a bed.”
He went still, so still that if he hadn’t remained standing, she’d have thought he’d died on the spot. Leaning away from her, he wrapped his hands around her upper arms. “What are you saying, Vivi?”
“I want you, Finn. I love you. With all that is in me, I love you. I have for ages. Make me yours, tonight.” Breaking free of his grip, she wound her arms tightly around his neck and nipped at his strong chin. “Ruin me for anyone else.” A nip on his jaw. “Sneak into my bedchamber after the ball.” She took the soft skin of his neck between her teeth. He growled low. “Make me truly yours.”
“Are you mad? Your parents will catch us.”
“No, they won’t. My room is at the end of the corridor. I won’t make a sound.” She brushed her lips over his. “I want to be yours and yours alone. I want no other.”
His arms came around her, pressing her close, flattening her breasts against his chest as he crushed his mouth against hers with such hunger and urgency that every girlish aspect of her blossomed into womanhood. This was what she craved: the fire and the passion, the I-cannot-live-without. None of this existed with Thornley. All of it burned with Finn.
He would take her innocence, make a woman of her.
In the distance she heard the music that would accompany a waltz drifting on the breeze. Their time together in the garden had come to an end. Regretfully, she broke off the kiss. “There is the start of the last waltz, the one I promised to you. I must return to the ballroom shortly so I’m there for my next dance partner when this tune ends. I’m sorry we didn’t get another waltz.”
“I can’t deny you anything, Vivi.” Taking one of her hands, placing his other hand on her back, he swept her over the grass.
She would have laughed aloud in glee if she weren’t afraid someone would hear her, would catch her in this compromising situation with him. Once she was no longer a virgin, it wouldn’t matter. But for now, it mattered.
They only danced for half the tune, so she would have time to return to the ballroom before her next dance partner noticed her missing. Finn walked her back to the residence, stopping where the shadows were thickest.
“Are you sure, Vivi?”
“I’m sure. Come to me later.” Lifting her skirts, she dashed to the terrace steps that would lead her back into the ballroom, where she would begin counting the minutes before she saw him again.
Chapter 8
He crouched in a back corner of the garden, watching the residence, waiting for the music’s final note. He was a fool to consider sneaking into her bedchamber and bedding her there—but he didn’t want her to see the squalor in which he lived with one of his brothers. His single room was small, the bed cramped, the walls so thin he often heard the couple on the other side snoring, or worse, going at it. They were so blasted noisy, her always using the lord’s name in vain, him grunting and growling like a rutting boar. Then afterward their loud sighs and laughter, each of them always proclaiming it had never been so good.
