He halted at the edge of the dance floor, and with an expectant smile on her lips, she swept her skirts around and stepped boldly into his arms.
His grip on her fingers had shifted; now, it firmed, and his other hand splayed over her back. Neither contact was overly forceful, yet the pressure was definite and impossible to ignore. He smiled into her eyes as the music swelled, then he stepped out and swept her into the circle of whirling couples.
Instinctively, she moved with him, fluidly, without thought, as if her body had been made for this. Just as well, because all thought had deserted her.
Trapped in fascination, she delighted as they whirled smoothly, effortlessly traversing the floor, and it was as if she’d been freed of tethers that, to that point, unbeknown to her, had been anchoring her to drab earth.
Caught on a wave of sensation, her wits drifted away while her senses exulted and swirled. A delicious tension infused her, gripped her. Excitement, tantalizing and novel, beckoned, and eager and curious, she followed his lead into this new unknown.
From the first instant, their gazes had locked, the rich caramel of his eyes warm and enticing. She felt as if, hand in hand, palm to palm, they were sinking into the moment, into the experience, that she and he had stepped onto some other plane.
A plane inhabited solely by them—one on which the physical ruled, yet where every sweeping movement, every subtle pressure, and every bold step was infused with feelings beyond the tactile. In that private world, desire bloomed, and passion welled and swelled, and need slowly, steadily burgeoned until her nerves sparked with a heightened awareness, and she felt more alive than she ever had before.
This is what it feels like to be alive in every sense. To want and need and hunger.
To live as I’m meant to live.
Those realizations hammered at her as she stared into his gorgeous eyes, and the magic of the moment surrounded her.
For magic it was. She’d never felt the like, where her breath caught and her senses whirled and drew her inexorably on. The sensations wreathing through her mind were a flagrant sensual invitation to indulge in so much more; their temptation was blatant and provocative, yet also concealed, cloaked by the conventional and accepted rhythm and sway of the dance.
She drew in a much-needed breath, and her breasts swelled beneath the silken bodice of her new gown, and she understood beyond all question that—over the past short minutes—her life had taken a drastic turn.
She couldn’t drag her eyes from the promise in his.
She wanted him, and he wanted her. It took effort not to move closer, to press closer than the dance allowed.
They waltzed under the eyes of all of Sheffield, and that dictated a certain circumspection, yet she didn’t doubt what she felt, couldn’t close her eyes to what she now wanted.
Nor did she doubt that he felt and wanted the same.
And the magic of that was the most potent of all.
Acting on instinct, guided by habit and experience, Martin whirled them down the room. Lost in her eyes, in her turquoise gaze, he felt captured and cast adrift on a sea of swelling, roiling, turbulent passion he hadn’t in any way anticipated.
Never in all his many years spent in the haut ton, sampling the delights of the legion of ladies who had invited him to share their beds, had he ever felt such a powerful, overwhelming, all-consuming need.
A need that encompassed so much more than physical lust and carnal hunger that he hadn’t yet glimpsed the full extent of its reach.
Before stepping out with her in this waltz—this totally unexpected, unprecedented journey of revelation—he’d recognized and accepted that she was the one for him. That Sophy Carmichael was the lady above all others he needed by his side, working with him to forge a full, satisfying, and complete-in-all-aspects life.
That much had been obvious from their first meeting, and all that had happened between them since had only added to his certainty, but whirling down the floor with her in his arms, supple and giving and so temptingly close, stripped the last veils from his eyes. When it came to her, the power that drove him, that guided, pressed, and compelled him, was…immense, intense, and utterly undeniable.
Irresistible.
It was that and more. No other woman had ever sparked this particular fire within him.
No other lady ever would, of that he was certain.
She was his one and only, and his life would mean nothing if she wasn’t there, the lynchpin around which he revolved.
That she was and forever would be his ultimate weakness yet simultaneously his greatest strength came as a shocking, visceral realization. On one level, the understanding was frightening. He was a man who had always seized life’s chances and made them work for him; to know that his ultimate success in life now depended on another—and he could do nothing about that because, somehow, it had already been decided—was difficult to process, to absorb and accept.
He’d embarked on the waltz with complete confidence that, as usual, he was in control, not only of the immediate situation but also of the evolution of what would, he’d assumed, grow between him and her.
Yet the feel of her in his arms, the subtle sway of her distinctly feminine figure as she followed his lead without the slightest hesitation, theshushof her gown as her skirts brushed his trousered legs—indeed, each and every minor sensation combined to provoke a searing hunger that had him battling a nearly overpowering urge to seize, to haul her closer, lock her to him, and plunder.
As the music reached its apogee, then slowed and faded, and the dance drew to an end and he strove to hold his demons in check, while he remained ever more certain of his direction, he was no longer sure who—or what—held the reins.
