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Had that been what Julius had been trying to tell her as they’d sat by the lake...?
Was this to do with the promise that had been made?
Guilt washed over her as it dawned on her that it might not be ego that was keeping him from changing the line of succession but love for his sister...a desire to protect her. He had to keep his promise and protect his fragile sister.
But why couldn’t they just give him a moment to breathe, instead of bombarding him with constant demands to step into his brother’s shoes and take a wife?
Beatrice jumped as the door opened and Julius returned. She turned to look at him, but now she saw him through different eyes and it was impossible to go back to before she knew.
‘Hey...’ he said, bathing her with his smile. ‘We won’t be disturbed.’
He offered her his hand, and suddenly she desperately needed it, because the emerald carpet felt like a glass bridge beneath her feet...or a suspension bridge across a vast ravine. She was clinging onto his hand, both nervous and excited at the danger of adventure and secrets...
His bedroom suite, his most private abode, was decorated in dark, inky silk, from the walls to the drapes, while the thick carpet was the colour of mist rising. French windows led to a terrace, but she barely glimpsed it, for he clicked a button and the drapes fell and plunged them briefly into darkness. Then soft lights came on, and it felt like a late summer’s night with the air still holding the heat.
‘Take your jacket off,’ Julius said, and as she did so Beatrice found that the slight frown his request had evoked in her faded into a smile as she realised that she had not been imagining any of this.
This?
This interest.
For now, in his suite, he could watch as she hung her jacket over a chair even as he’d tried not to watch her before.
It was different now, though.
Different because his eyes roamed her body, and she liked their perusal as she delicately draped her jacket on his bedroom chair.
Different because Beatrice did not have to flick her eyes away, or deny that she was burning too.
Different because they were both smiling at each other.
She’d expected to feel shy, yet with only desire facing her Julius made it impossible for her to feel that way—as if her shyness had been erased, as if it had never existed.
‘Shoes,’ he said, and she slipped off her ballet flats.
She stood a quarter of an inch smaller, yet she walked tall as she went over to him.
‘Your tie annoys me,’ Beatrice said, and took in her hand the half-undone silk. ‘It should be on or off.’
‘Take it off, then.’
Whatever she wanted to do, she could, and so she took off his tie, and then undid the buttons of his shirt, looked at the fan of dark hair and the dark flat nipples. She ran her arms across his broad shoulders and down his long arms, then stretched up to kiss him. She tasted him, and explored how it felt to linger there.
He removed his shirt as they kissed, and almost growled in impatient desire as he unzipped her dress, for they were both aching for the touch of each other’s skin.
No one had seen her less than completely dressed since she was a child, but he made it so nice, stroking the sides of her ribs as if they were made entirely for the purpose of being stroked like that.
‘Lift your arms,’ he said as he unhooked her bra, and she acquiesced to his odd request, and then shivered as he stroked those ribs until she had no choice but to rest her arms on his shoulders. Then he cupped her small breasts with his warm palms and she felt the pleasure of his interest, not just the tease of his touch.
He moved down to her hips and then cupped her bottom. He pressed his fingers into the flesh, but gently, as if testing the ripeness of a piece of fruit. He spun her quickly, she didn’t quite know how, so he could feast his eyes on her bottom, and then he brought her back to face him...
His erection was pressed against her stomach, and he cupped her bottom again and rocked her against him. And of all the surprises that this experience was bringing—and for Julius there were many—this one felt the most intimate. For when he’d thought about Beatrice—and of course he had imagined what her naked body would look like—he had thought she might be a little bony. Yet in the flesh she was softer than his experienced eye had considered.
Julius felt as if he’d been let in on a secret—as if he was the only one who knew that beneath her grey, shapeless shift dresses her bottom was plump and her breasts were pert. She was soft and inviting, rather than the guarded, prickly woman she seemed to be outside of his bedroom.
Now she was kissing his chest and tasting his flat nipples, before going up onto tiptoe, and the motion was as beautiful and as rare as a thorny cactus flowering in the desert.
For they, too, flowered for just one night.
