When he tilted his head before replying to something the other man said, she noted the careful way he spoke and the lack of true expression in his face. He was present but not engaged.
She knew people thought him dull and unemotional. Something she had previously struggled to comprehend. But seeing him now, she detected what everyone else seemed to misinterpret.
He wasn’t boring. He wasbored.
It astonished her that a man with a life so charmed as his could experience such a thing. He had the whole bloody world at his feet. Surely, he should be able to find something to enjoy in such a privileged existence. But there was no denying it. Every angled glimpse of his face revealed the same expression. Flat. Unaffected. Polite but undynamic.
So very different from how he looked when she had him on his knees.
Then…his body would be fraught with a different kind of tension. A tension that would ripple through his lean muscles and pulse along the cords of his throat. His angular male features would be taut with an array of complex thoughts and emotions. His eyes would flash with a primitive, instinctual hunger. His voice, rich and textured and deep, would reveal things to her that he could not speak aloud.
Things that reverberated within the darkest corners of her own being.
Charlotte forced her gaze to the floor as heat enveloped her insides. Forcing slow breaths to dispel the lurid thoughts and images from her mind, she reminded herself where she was.
She could not do anything that might be perceived as untoward and gazing at the marquess as if she wanted himnaked and stretched out before her in sensual offering would certainly qualify.
Seeing the marquess when she had not at all expected to had disrupted her equilibrium. She needed to shake off whatever spell the man had cast over her and recommit to her purpose.
Leaning forward, she whispered to her aunt that she’d be back in a moment. Straightening again, she intended to turn and stride sedately from the room. But her gaze slid toward the marquess without her permission.
And the blasted man was staring back at her.
The change in him was intense and breathtakingly evident. No one could look at him now and think him dull. His chin was slightly lowered and his jaw was hard as stone. He stared at her with black, fathomless eyes beneath a furrowed brow of serious contemplation.
Charlotte’s belly erupted in a flutter of activity as her skin began to hum.
Instead of leaving the room at a sedate, elegant pace as she’d intended, she practically fled into the hall, her gaze searching for any quiet dark place into which she could disappear for a moment to calm herself.
But even as she discovered an alcove tucked beneath a turn of a darkened stairway, she knew he’d follow her. Here, he would not allow her retreat as he was forced to do at the Lyon’s Den. She knew it. And a part of her acknowledged that it was exactly what she wanted.
Chapter Eighteen
Reaching the deepestshadows of the alcove, Charlotte took a deep breath and turned to press her back to the wall. Before she finished her exhale, he was there. Consuming her immediate space. Blocking the subtle reach of light. Claiming what she feared was already his.
Before she could lift her gaze, he gripped her waist in his large hands and stepped into her. When he could have pinned her to the wall with his body, he allowed space between them—a suggestion of choice, an option for retreat.
His breath stirred tendrils of her hair. His heat soaked her skin. His scent…
Filled her.
Tempted her.
Destroyed her defenses.
She was lost. She knew it.
“You cannot walk away from me tonight.” His growled words seeped into her chest, into her blood. “I’m in command here,” he murmured, heavy, thick, and dark.
Charlotte’s body thrilled to the sound. He was right. They were not in the safety of the roles that existed within the Lyon’s Den. The rules didn’t exist here. And she could no longer denyit was exactly what she’d been wanting. She hated admitting to herself that she didn’t have the courage to take what she really wanted from this man.
But she could give it.
Dropping her head back against the wall, she peered through the dark and heavy shadows to find his even darker stare. Even with her body already acknowledging and capitulating to his dominance, she couldn’t stop herself from taunting him. “Are you certain of that?”
The sound he made was feral. Deep and delicious. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
Charlotte didn’t deny it as she stared back at him in defiance.
