He made a harsh sound in his throat and caught her wrists to press her hands against his chest. She could feel the thud of his heart through the silk of his waistcoat. “Do it. Unbutton my waistcoat.”
He held her wrists until she worked the buttons loose; then he dragged her hands up his chest and pressed them tight against his neck. He stared down at her, his dark eyes burning. “Take off my cravat.”
The command was low and hoarse, almost inaudible, but his voice throbbed with an intensity that brooked no argument. His words echoed inside her, and this time Charlotte didn’t think to resist him, but untied the knot, unwound the long piece of linen, and drew it away from his neck.
He took the cravat in shaking hands, and let it slip through his fingers and flutter to the floor. “Put your arms around my neck.”
She stared at the smooth olive-tinted skin left bare by the loose neck of his shirt, and a sense of unreality swept over her, as if time had somehow shifted, reversed, and they weren’t here at all, in a whorehouse, with long months of bitterness and unanswered questions between them, and suddenly she wished it were so, longed for it with an ache so deep she staggered under it.
She closed her eyes and slid her arms around his neck, but even as she sifted the soft waves of his hair through her fingers, she knew it was hopeless. No matter how brief, how fleeting that sweet, perfect first love might be, one only ever got a single chance at it.
She’d had her chance, and she’d lost it. She’d never get another.
Chapter Three
She did as he bid her and twined her arms around his neck. For a single, baffling moment her touch felt like home, but with his next breath the strange sensation dissipated on a wave of panic.
She thinks to send me to my knees again…
No. Not this time. He hadn’t survived blood and battles and chaos only to be brought to his knees by her. “Open your eyes.”
Fear made his voice harsh, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyelids lifted on command, as if he’d jerked a string, but somehow her compliance only made him angry. “So obedient. But what now, sweet?”
“Wot? Ye mean ye don’tknow?Aw, well, don’t worry, guv. I’ll help ye along.”
“Will you? Very well, then. Go to the bed and hike up your skirts.”There.That should earn him a slap to the face. One sharp crack and they could end this farce.
Without a word she turned, marched over to the bed, lay on her back, and reached a hand down to lift her skirts.
He almost laughed. Some things hadn’t changed, then. Charlotte had never been one to settle for a farce when she could have a drama. Julian crossed the room in two long strides, took her by the arm, and drew her to her feet. “How far do you plan to take this?”
She ran a teasing finger down his arm, but her eyes narrowed to dark slits. “Why, as far as you will, luv. Further.”
“You’d let me bed you?” His laugh was harsh, incredulous. “Do you have so little regard for yourself? Or are you a whore now, after all?”
As soon as the ugly words left his mouth Julian flinched away from them, as if someone else had said them. How had they gotten to this point? He’d only thought to bring her upstairs and show her how foolish she was to trifle with her reputation, and now he was calling her a whore?
Jesus.He had to calm down, to go easier.“I beg your—”
“’Course I’m a whore.” Her eyes flashed, and an echo of it reverberated in his belly, the feeling both strange and familiar at once. He’d seen that spark before. He’d always thought her more glorious than ever when she was in a passion. So much passion, as if she carried a flame inside her. But as quickly as the flame sparked to life it was gone, and she regarded him with cool, dark eyes. “That’s what ye paid for, innit?”
Ah.So that’s what this was. Not a farce or a drama, but charades, and she’d continue to play until he removed her masque, and once he did, neither of them would be able to hide anymore.Pity. Charades were much more entertaining than reality. More truthful, too, because they didn’t pretend to be anything other than what they were.
He didn’t want to see her face, but it was inevitable, this moment between them. It wouldn’t be cheated, and masked or not, her face would never cease to haunt him. It was printed indelibly inside his eyelids, waiting there to torment him every time he closed his eyes.
For months after he left London, every dark-haired woman he happened across washer. Every red lip, every long, white neck, every husky, teasing laugh—her. There were days when he thought he’d go mad from it, and yet still it was her, always, even after she’d tossed him away without a thought, much as she’d tossed her cheroot into the fire when she’d finished with it this evening—tossed it away to never think on it again.
Remove the masque, and end this.
He watched his hand reach for her as if he were trapped in a nightmare. The masque’s silk tie was slippery under his fingers and he struggled with the knot, but then the scrap of jewels and ribbon fell to the floor at their feet, the black silk stark against the white linen of his cravat.
He caught her chin in his fingers and turned her face up to his. So soft and warm still, her skin so fine, so smooth. The perfect curve of her cheek, the wide dark eyes tipped with those feathery lashes—in another lifetime they’d made his chest ache with want, and her lips, so full and red, had made his knees buckle.
“Do you like what you see?”
She stood before him, her loosened gown slipping off her shoulders. He’d unfastened every button, all the way down to that sweet spot at the arch of her back. He knew it was sweet because he’d tasted her there, had trailed his lips over that fragrant arch again and again…
But he’d been gone for months—no, for a lifetime, and everything inside him had gone so jagged, so sideways he didn’t recognized himself anymore. He was no longer the same man who’d been taken in by the promise of those eyes, those lips, and on a stab of inexplicable loss he thought some part of him must despise her now, in her fine gown and her elaborate jeweled masque, with her lovely face and hard eyes.
