“All right there, sassy horse.” The driver laughed. “You made your point, girl.”
Scarlett glanced back at the route the box had taken, her eyes growing wide. “Wh—”
I took her by the arms, forcing her to look at me. “You know damn well that I didn’t give you that for my own reasons. Or you should.”
Seconds ticked by,click clack,click clack. She nodded once.
“I can wait for tomorrow to talk this through,” I said. “No longer than that.”
She swallowed thickly and threw herself at me, burying her face in my neck. She held on as though she was about to let me go—for good.
“What is it?” I whispered into her hair, holding her as tightly as she was holding me.
“I—don’t know.”
“The studio?”
“Yes, no, yes, I don’t know!”
“Let’s forget about it for tonight.” I sighed. “We’re almost home.”
“Oh.” She sniffed. “I ruined it—our ride home. This has been such a beautiful night.”
“You didn’t ruin anything.” I cleared my throat and then called for the driver. “A few more minutes.”
“Sure thing,” he said, making a detour. “Ruthie doesn’t mind making up for lost time. She goes where I go, see?”
In response to this, Ruthie whinnied and gave us a long-toothed smile.
* * *
Scarlett seemed more like herself by the time we made it back to Royal Street. All hadn’t been forgotten, just left in the darkness so we could enjoy the rest of our night.
We enjoyed the detour. Laughing at nothing and everything, our touches more urgent the closer we were to home. This behavior continued as I waved the driver and Ruthie off on the street. My wife’s mouth became wilder, and under a hanging gas lantern, I pressed her back to the door of our place.
The shorter her hair was, the thicker it became. I pulled at the strands, tilting her head back even further, my eyes looking down on hers, our lips close. “In tempo,” I said.In time.“Dance with me first.”
Gabriel had his windows open. Music floated out, but not his.
As we started to sway to the slow tempo of the song, a fine mist of warm rain started to fall. Neither of us made to move, except to move in closer.
“Sing this one to me,” she said, looking up. Small diamonds of rain collected on her lashes and on the outer strands of her hair.
To give her credit, she never laughed at me. And I never felt foolish, though I couldn’t sing. I mostly hummed. A few verses I sang in Italian. But I almost laughed when the song was coming to an end and I noticed her eyes—wider than usual, transfixed, like a creature that had never heard words before and was trying to make sense of them all.
“You make me feel so damn much, Ballerina Girl.” I grinned at her.
One second I was grinning at her, and the next we seemed to be moving, soaked and warm, and then cold as the air inside of the house clung to our wet clothes. She shivered, and I said, “I’ll warm you up.” She whispered, telling me it wasn’t from the change in temperature.
Our house was full of people, yet there was nothing stopping us from each other. Whatever had brought her to tears in the carriage seemed to carry over; she encouraged me to almost violence, not to make love to her, but to claim her.
We moved toward a darkened hallway, right underneath the steps.
She popped every button on my shirt, and her nails sank into my shoulders as I sank deep into her, groaning in response to her hot slickness—tight enough to make me groan even louder and drive me fucking insane with lust and possession.
The need to have her surged inside of me, and moved by her urging, I took her hard and fast. In this, in bodily warfare, I’d fuck her until she submitted, which she did.
After she was defeated and I was declared the victor, her arms fell over my shoulders and she buried her face in my neck. Her warm breath flowed over me, and a tremble ran right underneath my skin.
