“Silas,” she whispered.
He shook his head and to her surprise the playful sensuality left his expression, replaced by something else. Something regretful and pained. “I wonder if I’m being selfish toward you, though.” He hesitated. “Well, I suppose I’m always selfish, some would say. It’s one of my traits. But in this case, too selfish.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “How are you being selfish toward me?”
She truly couldn’t find the answer. In the time they’d spent together, he’d been nothing but generous. With his passion, with his time, with his humor andhiswild. He’d given, she’d never felt taken from.
And yet he looked genuinely concerned.
“I’m taking what they would pay for,” he said. “I’m keeping you from the next step, perhaps. From the next man who will tend to your comfort and your stability, just because I can’t stop…” His breath came out in a shaky sigh as he smoothed his thumb across her lower lip. “…touching you. So doesn’t that make me selfish, Arabella? Because it certainly doesn’t feel selfless.”
CHAPTER14
Silas found himself holding his breath as Arabella stared up at him, her gorgeous face soft in half-light and half-shadow. He couldn’t read her expression, she had schooled it a moment ago, but before she had he’d seen surprise and a little pain in it.
What that meant for her answer to his question, he didn’t know.
“What are you saying, Silas?” she asked at last, tone even. “That you don’t want to keep doing this?”
The words pierced him like a sword passing easily through cheap armor. “I want to,” he said immediately. “But I fear it’s unfair.”
Now therewasa flicker of emotion. She released his hand and walked back to the terrace wall where he’d first found her after he stepped out. She looked toward the garden a moment and then she faced him again. Rare vulnerability lined her features.
“My life isn’t about making choices,” she said, barely loud enough for the words to carry. “I pick a man, yes. I negotiate for terms of an arrangement that will be best for me. I suppose that seems like choice to many. But the fact is that once I’m his, I must do what will keep him happy. Tobewhat will makehimhappy. I don’t choose what opera we go to or what we eat. I put my clothing on, yes, but I don’t really pick the color, I pick what he’ll be most attracted to. I laugh at his jokes, even if they’re not funny. I believe in whatever politics he holds true, even if I hate every part of them. I become his doll and I put a great deal of myself away in the process.”
Silas winced at that description. “That sounds deeply frustrating.”
“It is sometimes,” she admitted. Then she drew a shaky breath. “But I want to make something clear. Since you reappeared in London, since we connected, I haven’t had to do that. Ichoseyou, Silas. And I didn’t try to water myself down or fluff myself up for your pleasure. I was just…me. Christ, you even saw me with my hair rolled.”
“I’m not surethatwas your choice,” he said with a chuckle. But the humor of that moment didn’t reduce the weight of the rest. The absolute power of her saying she had chosen him.
“You were what I wanted all those years ago at Vauxhall Garden,” she continued. “And it turns out you’re what I still want. So please don’t take that from me out of some misguided attempt to protect me.Thatwould be selfish.”
It felt like someone had given him wings and now he could soar to dizzying heights. Or like Arabella had reached into his chest and placed a gentle hand around his throbbing heart. He could see that the honesty, the vulnerability shook her. She was trembling as she looked up at him.
He knew how to ease her, of course. And how to celebrate this unexpected admission that rocked him to his very core.
“So you’re using me then,” he said, and made sure the teasing was very obvious in his tone.
Her gaze lit up and she smiled. “I suppose I am. There’s a shift. Usually it’s you lot that use me.”
He shifted as he thought of the night he’d come to her, pained from his encounter with his siblings and hehadused her. Pinned her to her carpet and poured all this desire and pain into her quaking body until it was all dulled. That had mattered, even if they’d pretended it away since. He wanted to do something that mattered as much to her.
“Would you like to do that tonight, Arabella?” he asked.
There was a fraction of a moment where her breath caught and her pupils dilated in the lamplight. He felt the longing coming off of her in waves. Desire, yes, of course there was desire there. But there was also something deeper. Something more powerful that called to a matching sensation he tried to ignore and pretend away and close off so that it couldn’t hurt him. But it was there, hovering between them like some beautiful mirage that he feared would vanish if he tried to move toward it.
She began to back into the darkened corner of the terrace, away from the doors and the windows that allowed those in the ballroom to see outside. He followed without hesitation and when they reached the darkness he crowded into her space, caged her in with a hand on either side of her head against the outer wall of the house and leaned down to kiss her.
The touch of lips was explosive, just as it always was. It could be a day or an hour without her and he would crave her like he’d been starved. He wasn’t even surprised by the intensity of feeling anymore, it was almost like an old friend.
She wound her arms around his neck and lifted into him, making the ache in him even sharper and more powerful.
“You said you have to do things for them, be things for them,” he murmured against her mouth. “Play for their amusement.”
She drew back a little, her gaze barely glittering in the impossible dimness of the night. “Yes.”
“Then why don’t I play for yours?” he whispered, and lowered to his knees before her, dragging his mouth on the path he had to take to do so.
