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His suspicious eyes narrowed on her when he took her elbow. “Not before we dance the first waltz.”
Dancing with him would raze the shreds of resistance she still had left. It must not happen. “My dance card is already full, my lord.” She showed it to him without giving him time to read it.
But he was not so easily fooled. His strong fingers took her delicate, gloved forearm and held it firmly while he read the card. The scowl he reserved for her said she was discovered. “You are here to find a match, not to hide in plain sight.” The roughness of the tone only added spice to the syrupy voice.
She graced him with a saccharine smile. “You should also consider a match.” Her head turned to the surrounding people. “Perhaps, go find a debutante to continue the line.”
As the words saw the light of the chandeliers, a rather unpleasant emotion bloomed in her insides. Before last evening in the drawing room, the thought of him and another woman never occurred to her. Mistress or wife, or both, the image of him and any other woman produced a twist contorting her stomach, filling it with burning bile.
In these eight years, she had avoided thinking of him, had tried to erase him from her memory. The way he had hurt her made it easy to remember the man with disgust. Face to face with Edmund here, and the certainty he would vet each debutante carefully to choose one from an impeccable line, caused the cold reality to assail her. The bile that swamped her veins came mixed with despondency and a sense of impotence. In this precise instant, she wished she had never met him, and she had left the manor as soon as possible, even without a destination. She wanted to put it all behind her and occupy her due humble place in this world without ever setting eyes on him again.
Because now she knew what it was to kiss him, really kiss him, feel the texture of his calamitous mouth, the hold of his large hands on her face, the press of his virile body against hers; the delightful depravity of having his tongue entwined with hers, his taunting cock imprint on her softness. The sweet defeat of surrender, and the glorious decadence of his heat.
This promise of everything she would never have. Experience. Exult. Luxuriate.
“I will do that.” Sharp edges lined his answer. “But first I will dance with you to show you off to possible suitors.”
There it was. His plan, open for anyone who would hold no illusions or envision any castles in the air.
At the peril of causing a scandal, she inched her chin up and treated him with an enraged stare. “I will not dance with you.” It came low and hot.
The devil deflected any possible scandal by bowing to her like the ultimate gentleman. “I humbly request this waltz, Miss Kendall.” The surrounding revellers could hear him. But they could not see the unyielding glint in his glare, nor the firm hold of his hand on hers.
With so many witnesses milling around, she had not a shred of chance of avoiding the tragedy of her body in contact with his in what would be so much more than a studious moving to the rhythm of the instruments.
As they positioned themselves on the dance floor, her glare fulminated him. The orchestra started the music, and they moved in time.
“This fire in you requires a man, Otilia,” he murmured solely for her ears.
Their gloved hands held one another. His free one moulded to the small of her back, and she concluded she had never danced such a delicious waltz, floating with a man so physical. She soared with rapture, yet rooted on the ground with his earthy frame at the same time.
Her eyes flew up to him. “No woman requires a man to give sense to her life,” she rebutted. “Only if she chooses thusly.”
They swirled, and her dress billowed around his legs. Edmund loomed over her while she had to bend her spine a tad back to fit in his hold. The heat of him scalded her; the scent of him maundered her nostrils, causing her body to go pliant under his tutelage of the steps.
A smug grin sketched on his clever lips. “You will see the wrong of your concepts the day you experience surrender in a man’s arms.” The explicit image he evoked melted the centre of her.
She was already surrendering in his arms right now. And she did not like the helplessness of it. Or the pointlessness of it.
The music and the man got her lightheaded. They moved around each other as though they were one, light and thick with undercurrents, all wrapped in one blissful moment. Her other hand registered every ripple of his muscled shoulder as they did not divert their gazes from each other for a single second. Intense energy migrated from one to the other.
“I will not allow it.” She would not put herself at the mercy of a man merely to be destroyed by him, or by the disappointment that would inevitably follow. And the disdain.
His piercing attention held her prisoner, exposing the lie of her words. For had she not allowed that explosive kiss? Had she not let the yearning of him keep her awake in the night? The insidious presence of him to undermine her defences?
“More’s the pity,” he muttered, and it trickled down her skin like the most potent elixir.
They twirled again, and Otilia wondered if the drunk dizziness in her came from the music or from him.
“Why, my lord.” Her dismissive grin was a mask. “You sound very much as if you are volunteering for the task.” She would never know why or how she had this need to taunt him, needle him when they talked.
The ruddy colour climbing up his sculpted cheekbones left little doubt of his contrariness. “If it was me, Otilia,” he answered hoarsely, “it would not be a simple surrender. I would make you dissolve to the point you would forget your own name.”
His words were already doing it right there in the middle of a ballroom filled with hundreds of people. The boiling flush that cut through her pooled in her midriff so intensely it blurred her mind to any possible reply she might have given. His gaze zeroed in on her parted lips, burning the delicate skin; and she had to struggle for her eyelids not to close in anticipation of something she did not even have a clear idea of what it was.
The orchestra stopped that heavenly torture of a waltz with Edmund. She curtsied and rotated in the direction of the terrace. She was in dire need of fresh air after this turbulence of emotions he threw her in with a mere piece of music.
A
