“Both,” she said. “Generously.”
He smiled over at her. “Of course you do.”
As he applied both to the drink, she asked, “Why does Poole hate you?”
“Oh, you know how it is,” he said with a grunt as he handed over her cup. “Their society doesn’t like outsiders. He knows what I am and what I come from, just like everyone else. My father didn’t try to shelter me from that and so all were allowed their opinions. In Poole’s case, I assume he doesn’t think my kind belongs in an earl’s hallowed halls. Even if I have the coin to pay for them and his ever so proper lordship doesn’t.”
Arabella nodded. “Oh yes, Montague’s fall from grace has been publicly marked. This place isn’t tied to the entail, and he might actually lose the house. Someone ought to remindPoolethat he wouldn’t have a position at all if you weren’t letting it.”
Silas seemed surprised for a moment that she knew so much about Montague, but then he shrugged. “Yes, but the earl has the right blood in his veins so that can be overlooked.”
They stared at each other a moment before she moved to the settee and took a place there. She sipped her tea and smiled up at him. “Well, this is perfect.”
“Good.”
She expected him to take the seat beside her, continue the seduction they’d started at the park. Instead, he sat one of the chairs that faced the settee. She felt his discomfort in that moment and what swelled up in her was a deep desire to offer him comfort. That desire startled her, for it was one she’d mostly tamped down over the years. If this man inspired it in her, that meant she had to be very careful. No, she couldn’t get close to this one, not even a little. It was too dangerous.
She set her teacup down and got up. He staggered to his feet as she did so, still polite despite all the labeling of himself as a bastard who didn’t belong. She smiled as she rested a hand on his chest and then slowly slid it up to wind it around the back of his neck. His breath caught, his pupils dilated, taking away some of that lovely green that was so interesting. When she lifted up on her tiptoes, he met her halfway for a kiss.
It was a kiss. That was the correct label, but just as before, when they’d kissed at the Donville Masquerade for the first time, it felt…different. There was something raw and hungry and desperate about the way their lips met. Like they lost who they were and found something else. His arms came around her, tugging her to his chest and the kiss deepened. She couldn’t help but moan, there was nothing artful to it. The pleasure was just too sharp and deep and powerful not to react.
She dug her hands into his hair and held tight as the sensations washed her away for a moment or two. Then she fought back to the surface, gasping for breath when their lips parted. She stayed in his arms, staring up into that remarkable face and memorizing the lines of it up close.
“Show me the rest,” she murmured.
He blinked like he was coming out of a fog. “Of…of the house?” he asked.
She arched against him a fraction. “Of whatever you’d like, Silas.”
He caught her hand with a grunt and all but dragged her from the room. As they moved up the long hallway together, he pointed into empty rooms.
“Parlor,” he said. “Another parlor. Too many parlors. If I don’t name something, assume it’s another bloody parlor.”
She laughed.
“Library,” he said. “Study.” He pointed at the grand staircase they were rushing toward. “And the gateway to heaven.”
“Very pretty,” she said, even as she struggled to keep up with him when he tugged her up the stairs. At some point she staggered and he stopped, pivoting toward her.
“My apologies,” he said before he caught her around the waist. He flipped her up over his shoulder and continued his way up the stairs.
“Silas!” she burst out, unable to control her laughter. Certainly, his disapproving servants would hear her, know what they were about to do. She had no idea if that would cause him trouble later, but for now he didn’t seem to care. No, he was entirely driven to carry her up the hallway upstairs.
“I have no idea what any of these rooms are,” he said as he passed by the doors, this time closed. “One must assume family chambers and…I don’t know…let’s say that one is a medieval torture chamber, just for fun.”
He opened the door at the end of the hallway and carried her inside, through an antechamber and into the bedroom. He tossed her onto the bed and she was able to catch her breath from laughing and the excitement of being carried through a house like he was some barbarian bent on claiming her.
Being claimed seemed a very good idea, even better when he began stripping off his clothing and tossing it onto the floor without a care in the world for where it fell or how wrinkled it would be later. No, he was only focused on her.
When he was naked, he pressed his hands to the foot of his bed. She shivered at the sight of him, shoulders so broad, every muscle of him defined, his cock hard against his stomach and his green gaze locked on her. Oh, she’d chosen her fantasy man very well, indeed, for he was even better in person.
“Come up here,” she said, crooking her finger for him.
He smiled. “You think you can direct me?”
She shrugged. “I think sometimes you’d let me. And sometimes you wouldn’t. You’d take over and leave me breathless and pleading.”
He began to crawl up the bed, his hands cupping her calves as he did so, then her knees, then her thighs. “And which do you think this afternoon will be?”
