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He swallowed, fitting himself behind her so that no space separated them. How could he reassure her that no one else mattered?
James knew the pain of being rejected by family, and that wasn’t what he wished for her.
His voice thick with emotion, he soothed her in the only way he could. “Wrong or not, I thank God you’re here tonight, Clara, and for you playing that piece for me. I’ll never forget it.”
She turned in his arms, her eyes questioning. “You didn’t think it too indecent?”
He might have laughed at such innocence when they first met, but tonight the question broke his heart.
Clara wasn’t sheltered. She was forced to live what he had rejected—a life spent being someone else, or at least trying to be.
He shook his head slowly, cupping her face. “No, Clara. It was divine. Powerful.”
“Powerful,” she echoed, pressing a tired finger into the pad of muscle on his chest. “Youare powerful.”
“You.” He shook his head minutely in wonder. On the periphery, warning bells rang at his awe, at the loosening of his tongue that allowed him to share his thoughts and his past.
“All too often, I’ve been powerless in my life. If I were powerful, I’d have saved my parents, then my aunt. I’d amend society’s strictures so that my brother could openly hold the reins of his enterprise without it being another blemish on our family name.”
“That’s forothers. What would you do for yourself?”
“For myself?”She considered for a long while. “I wish to play that prelude for whomever I wish without concern for my reputation. I’d go to university like you and David. Pursue philanthropic activities—even if the recipients are frowned upon.”
She’d shared but a few ideas, but James was captivated and could see that she imagined much more in her mind. Her eyes held the same glory as when she was playing the piano, the same rapture as he slid his body into hers.
“Seeing you as you are now,” he said in a deep voice, “I want to fall to my knees.”
“Truly, fall to your knees?”
“Yes. And so I shall.” His chin indicated upstairs.
She shook her head. “Why? Why would I want you on your knees?”
“To worship you,” he murmured, hands running reverently from her hips up to her shoulders.
She straightened her spine, and her voice sounded more confident. “What if looking upon you on your knees is not how I wish to be worshiped?”
Wariness edged in around him as vulnerability enveloped him. He’d offered to supplicate himself at her feet.
And she might deny him.
“What if,” she said in a more tentative tone, “I had an idea of what pleased me?”
This was a language he understood. “I want to give you pleasure, Clara. To give you your due. What would do that?”
She traced his mouth. James stood still for it, refusing to give into the desire to capture her finger and bite it gently.
“Your mouth,” she breathed. She stared at it another moment and then with parted lips, kissed him with whisper-light pressure.
He purposely kept his hands to his sides, waiting for her to expound.
She didn’t.
“My mouth, where do you want it?”
