Chapter Ten
Charlotte had always known she was taking a risk by coming to Ewan’s home and hoping,planningto pursue the life she wanted with him. It had been a risk when she’d believed his house would be brimming with family and friends. It was a greater risk when they ended up alone. It was a risk to kiss him, to touch him, to fold herself around him and hope.
But even though she’d known the risk—she’d taken it with eyes wide open from the first second she’d entered his home and found him skulking in the foyer—his rejection hours before still stung.
And now she stood at the window in his music room, staring out at the sea in the distance, trying to make that sting lessen. It wasn’t working. His words danced before her eyes, painful curls of his fingers and that expression…the one that said she would never understand and that he would always be alone.
She sighed and crossed the room to take a place at Ewan’s pianoforte. He did not play an instrument, but when she pressed her fingers to the keys, she found it in perfect tune.
“Of course it is,” she muttered out loud as she mindlessly let her fingers dance across the keys. It was likely yet another thing he had done for her. Oh, her mother played, too. His aunt did a very little. But the pianoforte was forher. Like the beautiful bedroom. Like the favorite food. Like the way he pleasured her. All of it was for her except for the one thing she wanted above all other.
His heart.
She shifted her fingers and slowly began playing his favorite song, “Robin Adair”. For a while, she played it silently, but the lyrics rang in her head, and at last she began to sing.
“‘What made th’ assembly shine? Robin Adair. What made the ball so fine? Robin was there. What when the play was o’er? What made my heart so sore? Oh, it was parting with Robin Adair.’”
She’d always thought it strange that Ewan liked the song so much. The story of a woman who loved a man who had parted with her fit Charlotte’s life more than his. He had always been her Robin Adair, for he made everything worth doing, but he never stayed with her at the end.
She glanced up from the pianoforte, and her fingers faltered on the keys and she trailed off in singing the lyrics. Ewan stood leaning on the doorjamb, watching her intently. Their eyes locked and he stiffened, like he wanted to turn away from her.
She straightened her spine and started playing the song over, this time without singing. She arched her brow, silently challenging him, silently willing him to surrender.
He drew in a long breath, then pushed off the door and came into the room. She watched him, still playing, as he shut the same door. As he turned the key. As he strode across the room. She scooted over and he took a place beside her on the piano bench. He shut his eyes and she continued to play, putting all her love for him into each note as she focused on her fingers and the placement of each.
She was halfway through the second playing of the song when he leaned over and she felt his breath against her neck. She shivered, her own breath coming short as he pressed a kiss to the flesh there. Somehow she continued playing as his mouth traced her throat, her shoulder to the scalloped lace edge of her gown. He slipped a finger beneath the same edge and slid it, tugging it off her shoulder and following the skin he’d revealed with his lips, his tongue, the slight nip of his teeth.
She caught her breath and her fingers fell away from the pianoforte. It didn’t matter anymore. They didn’t need music. She turned on the bench, folding herself into him as she lifted her lips. He angled his head and kissed her, his tongue probing deep, devouring her with all the passion that burned and boiled beneath the surface of their friendship and always had.
She mewled softly, a sound of pleasure she couldn’t deny, catching his lapels and grinding up into him. It had been a very long day, an emotional day, and this moment, this touch, this man was what she needed more than anything.
From the fervor of his touch, it seemed he felt much the same. His hands came to the back of her gown and he unfastened the hooks there, parting the fabric so he could slide his fingers beneath both it and the chemise she wore. His hands caressed her bare skin and she broke from the kiss as her head dipped back and she hissed out a sound of pleasure.
His mouth moved to her exposed throat as she did so, and she dragged her fingers into his hair as he sucked and licked the sensitive, delicate flesh. As he trailed down a path with his lips, tugging her dress lower and lower until it fell around her waist between them.
She was naked from the waist up and he drew back to stare at her. His dark eyes were dilated with need, focused with desire, and she arched slightly, perhaps even a bit proudly, to show herself to her best advantage.
Although he had touched her more than once, seen her this way more than once, his hand trembled as he brushed the back of it against her breast. Electric pleasure shot through her whole body and she shivered with it, surrendering to the undeniable power of her body yearning for his, knowing that her desires would be fulfilled.
He cupped one breast, stroking his thumb over the nipple, then lowered his head and sucked gently. She jolted, her eyes fluttering shut, her legs shaking as he swirled his tongue around and around her. She wanted him. Soon.Now. Hard and fast, slow and languid, it didn’t matter.
She shed his jacket, tugging at his shirt, pulling until she parted it in the front and revealed that masculine, muscled chest. God, but he was perfect. Chiseled from granite, awash in warmth, made for her.
She pressed her hands to that chest and pushed him back, forcing him to stand so he wouldn’t careen to the plush carpet beneath the pianoforte. He stared down at her, watching as she reached up and unbuttoned the placard on his trousers. She lowered it with aching slowness and his hard cock popped free, curling up toward his stomach as she pulled the trousers down and left him exposed.
She licked her lips as she reached for him, caught him in her palm, stroked him from base to head. He grunted deep in his throat, his hands fisting at his sides as she repeated the stroke with tortuous and deliberate speed. She wanted him. She wanted to take him and claim him and make him hers. She was tired of fighting him on that issue. She just wanted his surrender.
“Lay down,” she ordered.
He arched a brow and pointed across the room at the chairs by the fire. His expression was rather adorably confused, for the room had no settee.
She shook her head. “On the floor.”
He smiled regardless of whatever questions he might have about her plan. He kicked away his boots and the trousers still around his ankles, and then did as she asked, spreading himself out on the rug next to the pianoforte, in front of the fire. He was leaning back on his elbows, watching her with focused intent. The golden glow of the flames danced over him, and her heart stuttered.
God, how she did love this man. Always. Forever. Despite…not despite his mutism. Despite the fact that he tried so hard to keep her at arm’s length, to protect her from exactly what she wanted.
Today she was taking it.
