“What is it?” she said. “Every muscle is tense.”
He swallowed, unsettled by the thought of how easily things could change. “I’ve never been comfortable with storms. They always herald something tragic.”
She was perceptive enough to know what he was thinking. “You’re afraid this won’t end well? The case, not the play.”
“I’ve come to expect disappointment.”
God help him, but he needed this to be different.
She must have sensed something in his silence, for her hand slipped a little higher, her fingers brushing along the muscle of his thigh. Not a bold touch, but a gentle, deliberate caress meant to soothe him.
He drew a deep breath.
Then it faltered.
His eyes closed.
There had never been comfort like this. The kind meant to settle a storm. The kind meant to unravel a man and see him undone. Soft. Feminine. A call to the soul.
“Let me help you forget,” she whispered.
He couldn’t refuse even if he’d wanted to. Her fingers grazed his growing arousal, and it took all his strength not to groan aloud in a theatre full of people.
“Olivia.” Her name left his lips, but he didn’t clasp her hand to stop it roaming over the placket of his trousers. “Do you know how easily you undo me?”
God help him, his body had already betrayed him. She must have felt him, hot and hard against her palm, yet she didn’t pull away.
“I have some idea.” A coy smile touched her lips. “You don’t exactly hide it well.”
“Hide it? You’re about to bring the Marquess of Rothley to his knees before the whole auditorium.”
No one else had ever wielded such power over him.
“Let me do this for you, Gabriel. Watch the play.”
He tried to focus. But the next line from the stage—Let us be satisfied!—was devilishly ill-timed.
His wife sat perfectly composed beside him, face angled toward the stage, the picture of decorum. But he felt her deftly slipping the buttons on his trousers, the action hidden from every eye but his.
“Do you mean to test the limits of my control?”
“I mean to ensure betrayal is the last thing on your mind tonight.”
“What I’m thinking now isn’t fit for respectable company.”
“And yet I need to hear it.”
She slipped her hand beneath the placket, a slow, tentative touch. Not practised. Not polished. But it stole the breath from his lungs and scattered reason like leaves in a gale.
“You want to know what I’m thinking?”
“Yes.”
“That I’d rather be alone with you. Doing something far more satisfying than watching this play.”
Her tongue skimmed her bottom lip, that maddeninggesture he’d come to recognise. Her gloved hand slowly circled him. Silk on skin. Torment and paradise in one forbidden touch.
“What would you rather do?”
