Her lips curved before she could stop them. “You’re unpredictable. But then, so am I. Bessie feels we could be compatible on this front. ‘Incorrigible beasts’ was her way of terming it.”
Something in his expression softened—delight tempered with heat—and for a heartbeat she thought he might say something reckless. Which for him, she fathomed, would be something factual.
Instead, Dominic finished his brandy and gently set down the teacup on the sideboard as he passed it. Halting before her, he said, “I’ll be at Worthington’s ball next week should you choose to further our association. If not, Lady Lou, I more than anyone will understand.”
Lou. The nickname sparked in Louisa’s chest like the strike of flint.
By the time she found her breath, her probable suitor was across the parlor, hat in hand.
When the door shut behind him, she was left with the scent of citrus and spice, the teasing echo of his voice, and the infuriating knowledge that Dominic Beckett had once again left her longing.
Chapter Four
Where a single kiss changeseverything.
Until one can’texist another second unless willing to be wrecked by it.
Dom snatched a flute off the tray of a passing footman and downed the champagne with more fury than thirst, the bite of bubbles no match for the tightness coiling in his chest. He’d told Louisa Radcliffe things he’d never told anyone, not even Griff, who had a gift for prying confidences loose.
The duke’s rebellious daughter had unsettled his careful order, slipping into his thoughts, into hisdreams, like smoke.
Part of it was her defiance, part of it the reckless spark he recognized too well, and part of it the peril of a woman who met him without flinching, who seemed to see both his failings and his worth and did not look away. Leaving him with a fierce,unwiseyearning, all the more shocking for how quickly it had taken root.
The object of his obsession was across the room, standing far too close to her bloody earl—his competition, should Dom officially enter the race—her shoulder angled just enough to draw a man’s gaze to the tempting line of her bodice. Harcourt was basking in his own eloquence, hand lifted in an artful gesture. Dom had a story about himfrom university he could share, nothing scandalous enough to send Louisa running for the nearest exit, but enough to makehisjaw set.
Could she not see he was all surface polish, like most in that gilded circle?
If Dom had closed the deal, a keen talent of his in business but apparently nowhere else, Louisa would be at his side, making his pulse trip like a green schoolboy’s. He rocked back on his heels, jaw flexing as Harcourt took Louisa’s hand and led her onto the ballroom floor. She tilted her head toward the earl with the smallest smile, one Dom wanted directed at him, not squandered on a man who wouldn’t understand half of what lay behind it.
Obviously, Bessie hadn’t been pleased to hear he’d botched the tea. (Her words, not his.)
But, then again, his aunt had left out pertinent details.
For one, she hadn’t told him Louisa’s hair was the color of banked embers. Not merely auburn or the polite copper one praised in drawing rooms, but a living, breathing fire under the chandeliers. This very moment, he could see the strands catching the candlelight in reckless flashes, making a liar of every dull description he’d heard batted about in those mindless scandal rags.
And her eyes, a startling green lit with a clarity that left a man feeling both seen and measured whether he welcomed it or not. Bessie had also failed to mention that her charge wielded her wit like a rapier, her intelligence honed by an unyielding sense of her own worth. Nor had anyone confessed that Lady Louisa Radcliffe possessed the most delectable figure he’d ever witnessed draped in silk. They muttered “chemist” when they spoke of her, as though it were an oath, when in truth it ought to have been a benediction.
Beauty alone might have undone a lesser man, but the chit was daring—something he’d once been—and this attribute called to Dom even if it shouldn’t.
Like attracted to like, as he’d feared.
The memory of that morning in her mother’s parlor stirred something low and unwise in his heart and his cock, regions he’d tried valiantly to lock in a sealed chest. Sex had never been his failing or his folly, but romantic endeavors didn’t help a manthinkclearly either.
Sighing, Dom searched for another footman.
He’d called herLou, for fuck’s sake.
The nickname had slipped out purely because it fit her. His brain had latched onto the moniker the moment he strolled into her parlor—and with one glance—had the sinking feeling he’d made a critical error in believing he had control of the situation. He’d gone from thinking it was a sip-and-be-gone tea to actually considering his aunt’s proposal.
His brother’s sage advice chose that instant to echo in his mind:willfulness was hell to manage out of bed, but wonderful in it.
Dom could only imagine, and imagination was proving a dangerous thing. He hadn’t stroked himself to completion this often since he was fifteen. Which left him brooding (his best talent) in the middle of society hell, mentally rehearsing how to ask a woman to waltz for the first time in years.
When he’d never been one for moonlit serenades and dance cards.
In any case, practical arrangements such as the one he and Louisa were considering weren’t about whispered endearments or endless turns about a ballroom.
And yet—
