“Flings do not have parameters. As far as I know. They continue until one or both parties become bored, I assume.”
He nodded, the tip of his nose drawing a line up and down the side of her face right next to her ear. “But sometimes the involved parties have … other affairs. Simultaneously.”
“Do they? Yes, I suppose I see how they could.”
He chuckled. “Does your clear surprise mean you’ve never considered the possibility of taking two lovers yourself?”
“It does.”
“You won’t take two lovers now.” Not a question. He lifted a hand to her face, nudged it so she faced him once more then returned his lips to hers. “Only. Me. Freddy darling.” His mouth on hers was starving and demanding, taking everything she gave him, and even though she wished to keep some of herself back, she gave him everything. The tiny bits of self knit inexpertly together by an unsteady hand that meant well, the old parts that ached and the newest parts that had taken root this evening like a lemon tree in her soul. She gave him all of herself, and he took it, swallowed it whole like a titan swallowing a lesser god.
But he gave her something in return. Pure pleasure.
One hand cupped her neck and the other her breast, and his needy caresses quickly pulled her bodice low and spilled her body into his hands. He nudged a knee between her legs, lifting higher until he teased the aching, trembling core of her. She moaned, pressed against him.
He ripped away from the kiss to trail his tongue down the line of her throat and circle her hardening nipple, kiss it, suck it.
Her body became too heavy a burden to keep standing, and she clung to him, wrapping her arms around his powerful shoulders and holding on, resting the safety of her melting body in his arms. Another nudge of his knee at her core, lave of tongue on her breast, and she trembled toward shattering.
In public. At the end of a hallway. A party roaring below. Her daughters sleeping two doors down.
She gasped and rolled away from him. “We can’t.” Each word a trial, almost. Frankly, a betrayal. To him and his need. To what fired between them. To the bold her screaming to be born anew.
But still ... wise.
He stepped to the side, once more trapping her body between him and the wall. “The parameters, Freddy darling, are you and me. Do you understand? No boxers or widowers. No other lovers.” His hand tight on her neck, her shoulder, rough fingertips digging into skin, marking her. The lighthearted, jolly performer gone, evaporated entirely in the rush of his … what? Possession?
Yes. She felt possessed. His and his alone.
She nodded.
He kissed her, a hard meeting of lips that melted soft and sultry then ended much too soon. He rested his forehead against her. “God, but you’re everything I want. Everything I’ve ever wanted.” A curse sharp between his teeth, then he turned on his heel and stormed away.
She pressed her hands against her mouth. What had happened? What was happening? She’d expected an easy-going lover when she’d persuaded him into her bed—his bed, truthfully—but she found herself wrangling something much more difficult. A man with potent desires and fears angry as welts rising red and furious on the skin. He should have been, oh, a scarf—easiest thing to knit in the world. But he’d so far proved a much more complicated pattern. Vulnerable revelations and fire-golden pleasure. Silly stories and Hyde Park rides. He should have been a man she had fun with and discarded, the wicked widow way, but he threatened to steal everything—her body, her heart, the safety she pulled about her daughters and herself like a well-worn quilt in the unknown darkness of the night.
This could not last much longer. But her body wept at the thought of never melting alongside his again. She could not end it yet. Not just now. Let him possess her a bit longer before she must give him up for good.
Ten
Grant had waited for her to return to the party. Waited until every other guest had left, their well wishes ringing in his ears. Waited until even Nora had retired upstairs and the fire in the parlor rang empty, hollow, and cold. He looked into the dying embers of the fire and swirled the whisky in his glass, downed it, waited some more, his legs feeling heavy as logs, his fingernails biting into the mantel.
“Out of the way, Webster.” Max shoved a shoulder into him, pushing Grant to the side before kneeling and throwing wood into the fire. Wood instead of coal was one of Max’s few extravagances. He said the coal smoke sat in his lungs, making it hard to breathe.
Grant felt like that now, as if black smoke had poured across and into every inch of him, mucking him up, hiding everything.
Max stood and rubbed his hands as the newly fed fire roared. “Either leave or have another drink with me.”
“I’ve already had too many.” Grant held his glass high. An amber drop glistened on its bottom. He sighed, held it out to Max. “Fine then. Another.”
Max chuckled and did as he was asked. “Didn’t take much convincing. Drink it down, have another, then tell me what’s biting at you.”
Grant shouldn’t drink it down. Shouldn’t have another. He already lurched too close to a talkative edge, and the secrets he kept from Max at the moment …
He laughed, threw half the contents of his glass down his throat. His need to dull the night’s dawning realizations demanded more attention than the need to keep his face safe from Max’s giant fists. He’d done what he’d known he would do, what he’d known he couldn’t do.
He’d fallen in love. With a former viscountess with two adorable daughters. A woman who wanted nothing of his heart. Only his body. He growled. Was that true? She didn’t want marriage, that he knew, but she was not a woman who gave her body without at least a corner of her heart attached. He saw it in her soft gaze and in the way she teased him, quietly and with a slightly crooked smile. In the hallway, she’d promised him possession. A single word answer—yes—to his demand she see no other man. Would she have done that if he were only a body to her? If he had not snagged a tiny bit of her heart?
Not that it mattered. In fact, she should take back whatever bits of her heart she’d already given him. He had the lifespan of an insect and would only leave her wailing and a widow once more.
