“Present company excluded?” she teased from behind him.
“No, in fact, I’m the worst of them.” Alexander seemed unusually intense as he drew to a halt behind a potted ficus. A chill ran up her spine at the rather indecorous look in his eyes. She swallowed and tried to school her voice back into practiced nonchalance.
“Would you like a refreshment, my lord?” she asked. Harriet had already had enough lemonade to fill a small pond, but what else was there to do at a ball?
“No.”
“Do you … want to see the gardens?” She still wasn’t certain why their dance had been cut short and why his eyes were still boring into her. “I’ve heard they’re quite tasteless.”
“Vulgar beyond imagination,” he said, without breaking his stare. Giving up on having discovered why they’d stopped dancing, Harriet finally grew silent. She briefly glanced down at her feet simply to escape his study. It was far too heating to endure for long periods of time; she felt certain she might incinerate.
“Will you come with me?” he asked, not at all clarifying his intentions.
“Are we leaving the ball? I didn’t think my dancing wasthatbad,” she joked.
That was the jest that finally got Alexander to loosen up a bit. His mask of fierce self-possession slipped.
“Harriet, I’m … I need to talk to you. I can’t do it here. I can’t … Frankly, I can barely think in the presence of that dress.”
“I could remove it for you?”
Harriet would remember this moment as her greatest triumph. Lord Alexander, behind a potted plant in a crowded ballroom,blushed.Had a woman ever made him blush? She felt brazen. Alive. So far from the pathetic creature she’d worried she’d be in his presence.
His lips twitched in the beginning of a smile, but he seemed determined to keep himself together. Rather unfortunate, that. She was enjoying the idea of him coming undone.
“I am sorry to cut your evening short, but would you come with me? Please?”
“Is … John all right alone? With your father?”
“If you knew my brother as I do, you’d be far more worried about my father.” Harriet chewed her lip, still unsure about abandoning him. “I’ll have the footman deliver a message to him on our way out,” he promised, eyes pleading.
“All right,” Harriet relented, taking the arm he proffered. In truth, leaving the ballroom suited her purposes.
Alexander would have paid an ungodly amount of money for his carriage to have been brought around faster. He understood how these things worked. He wasn’t trying to be rude to his driver, but God above, he wanted to get away from this place. To get away from his father. To get her alone. Togo.
He had approximately 497 things he needed to tell her, and he wasn’t certain of the order. In another life, a life he’d been living only a few months ago, he was an expert persuader. The bulk of his fortune had come from knowing exactly what to say to convince someone to agree with him. The person who had negotiated those land deals felt like a distant relative. In fact, the concept of linear thinking felt outside his capabilities.
He’d been disoriented to begin with, but then seeing her in that gown and then her offering toremovesaid gown! Well, it was a wonder he was still standing, let alone forming coherent thoughts. Though in truth, he couldn’t quite swear he was doing the latter.
Finally, his carriage was brought around, and he helped her in, glad to touch her hand, a moment as grounding as it was destabilizing. Alexander took the bench across from her for the sake of focus and because he couldn’t be certain she wanted him sitting beside her. Though acquiescing to both a dance and a carriage ride suggested some amount of goodwill, did it not?
He was ruminating so much as the vehicle took off that he didn’t notice Harriet reaching down to the hem of her skirt. It was only as she started to reveal her delicate ankles that he took notice. Truly, it took a lot for him to tear his eyes away from her breasts most days, but her legs pulled off the stunt easily.
“What are you—?”Alexander asked dumbly as Harriet continued to raise her skirts and then crossed the cramped carriage and settled across his lap, her knees resting on the carriage seat, bracketing his legs.
“With all of your experience, I would have thought you’d understand, my lord,” she teased wickedly.
He’d only had one glass of sherry, but surely, he must be drunk. He had no idea what was happening or how he’d gotten to the point where she was talking to him, let alone straddling him. He hadn’t even begun to apologize.
He hadn’t said a word, but she continued, unabated: “I would have thought you’d know what it meant when a woman sat on your lap. How silly of me. And here I was going to show you what you’d taught me.”
Alexander was stunned, which had a lot to do with her fantastic chest being precisely at eye level. Really only a small distance to mouth level. He was just able to get out a few syllables, the only intelligible portion of which was: “What I taught you?”
“Yes. You see, your parting advice proved to be quite … useful. I thought I might demonstrate for you.” Alexander couldn’t remember a single conversation he’d had in his entire life, let alone any advice he’d given her. Although he wasn’t stupid enough to pass up any demonstration that Harriet might want to bestow upon him, especially one held on his lap.
She leaned in to kiss the side of his neck and he nearly shot off the seat. The effect was his cock rubbing even more closely against her, which served to drive him madder. He wanted so desperately to rock against her. Of course he wanted to be inside her; however, that desire had been so ubiquitous for so long that at this point, it was simply a quiet background hum to his life. The need to rock against her was more like cannon fire.
Then, suddenly, miraculously, his prayers were answered.Shewas rocking against him. He heard someone moan before realizing belatedly it was himself letting out such desperate sounds.
