Clara attributed her odd perceptions to the few sips of champagne she’d had, and that scalding beverage in the punch bowl.
Her handsome escort stopped before a painting that hung at the bottom of a wide, circular staircase. “Here it is.”
Clara looked up. “It’sThe Nightmare.”
She sensed the man quietly studying her face. “You know your art.”
“Yes, though I’ve only read about this one. I had no idea it would be so—”
“So what?”
“So....” Dare she say it? She looked up at the curvaceous contours of the sleeping woman’s breasts beneath her gown, her arm limp and flung down to the floor. “So erotic.” She continued to stare in silence at the details: the grinning devil, the luminescent horse entering the bedchamber from some other, unnatural world.
She could feel those gleaming green eyes watching her, taking in her response to the painting.
The man leaned closer. “Some say it leads to the dark recesses of the mind.”
The heat of his breath in her ear caused a wave of gooseflesh to surge across her skin.
He moved silently behind her as she studied the painting, and his presence at her back was more unsettling than anything she saw inThe Nightmare,for the man standing at his ease behind her was true flesh and blood, sumptuous and beautiful, and he was breathing hotly against the damp back of her neck.
“My word, but you are lovely,” he whispered.
Unaccustomed to such open flattery, Clara grew breathless. “Thank you.”
“Your perfume…strawberries.”
She turned to meet his gaze and tried to imagine what he would look like without his mask. He must surely be the most handsome man in all of London. He certainly had more charm and appeal than anyone she had ever met in New York or Paris.
“Come with me, darling,” he said softly.
He was smiling now, like that grinning devil in the painting. He took her hand and slowly backed up. Captivated by the playful glint in his eyes and the engaging way he looked at her, Clara followed him around the bottom of the staircase until she realized, with hazy, besotted awareness, that he was leading her away, into the dim, private shadows beneath the stairs.
Chapter 2
Warning bells rang inside Clara’shead, but a more willful part of her nature—the part that wanted to experience what this man offered—somehow managed to silence them.
He backed up against the wall, pulled her toward him until her breasts were pressed firmly, thrillingly against his chest, and with a smile, he leaned close for a kiss
It was one of those life-altering moments, when all that she believed about herself would be tested. Clara should have stopped him. She should have placed her hand on his chest and pushed him back, but alas, she did not. She did nothing to stop the snowball from rolling, nor did she try to control her desires, for there in the dark, she and this gentleman were hidden from view.
He was the most exciting man she’d ever encountered. After two long years of self-inflicted emotional repression to try and fit into a strict, upper-class society, she couldn’t resist the opportunity to taste freedom. She wanted to burst forth like a flash flood, breaking through a dam.
She gazed into the man’s eyes and felt her proper convictions break.
His eyes were smiling when he kissed her. His tongue swept in and touched hers with the confident skill of an experienced lover, heating her blood and igniting a fire that roared like a monster in her ears. She swayed into the kiss and into his body, relying on his strong hands around her waist to keep her steady through her knees, which incidentally, in the last few seconds, had turned to warm pudding.
If she had any sense at all, she would put a stop to this immediately, but her lusty curiosity wouldn’t allow her proper scruples to gain a foothold. She’d never imagined a London ball would be as exciting as this. It felt like she was dreaming. Or drowning.
“Ah.” He sighed against her cheek. “That was the most enchanting kiss I’ve had in...I don’t know how long.”
He pressed his lips to hers again, closing in on her with his whole body, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Come with me upstairs,” he whispered in her ear.
“Upstairs?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s still early, love. I doubt all the rooms would be taken yet.”
