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“What if I don’t want to go home with you?” she said disingenuously, which admittedly would’ve had a stronger effect had she not been pressing herself quite insistently against Cora.
“I thought I’d been summoned for that very purpose, princesa.” She dared to glance up and was confronted with such wicked promise that all the air seemed to catch in her lungs.
Manuela’s limbs, the traitors, immediately loosened at the wordprincesa. It was absurd how much she liked it. It almost never sounded like a compliment. It was probably what Cora called all the besotted girls she seduced...and still every time, the effect was riveting.
Manuela was no stranger to being desired. She’d spent her life being ogled and coveted by men, but it was different when the desire was reciprocated. When the person whose attention you wanted returned it with equal fervor.
“I thought we’d agreed doing this would only complicate things.” Manuela tried to follow what Cora was saying, but the duchess was softly caressing her cheek with a knuckle, which made it quite difficult to come up with any thoughts that didn’t involve smashing their mouths together. With effort she forced her eyes away from Cora’s lips and attempted to come up with something other than begging for kisses.
“I never agreed,” she retorted and allowed herself to do some of her own touching. She circled her hands around that regal neck and tried her best not to appear too much the infatuated fool. “If I recall correctly, it was more like you decreed.”
“This won’t make any of this easier, sweetheart,” Cora warned, and she was probably right, but Manuela didn’t care. Besides, she was beginning to think there was no such thing as easy. Agreeing to marry Felix had seemed like the path of least resistance, and now that future loomed above her like an albatross. She might come to regret this, but that didn’t make her want it any less. In fact, she would walk through fire to get to it.
“There is no stopping this train, Corazón.” She dared use the duchess’s name, and her reaction was everything Manuela could have wished for. That frosty gaze melted just a touch, that beautiful, hard mouth softened. If it was up to Manuela, neither of them would stop this until there was nothing but ashes left.
She thought of Luz Alana who—much like the duchess—had always been so stoic. And yet they’d all watched as the ember of attraction she’d felt for her Scottish earl transformed into a passion so consuming she was on her way to marry the man merely days after meeting him. Luz insisted that it was all a business agreement, that they would divorce after they each received their inheritance, but one had only to observe the two of them together to see the flames engulfing them.
That was what she felt now. Manuela had ignited the fire, and Cora had arrived to stoke the flames.
“Hello, dear. I am so glad you could join.” Cassandra’s voice pierced through the tightly drawn silence between them, and Manuela almost cried in frustration. But whatever had been keeping Cora at a distance before had evaporated on her way here. Instead of pushing Manuela away, as she’d done at the dinner party, Cora tugged her closer, so close that her lips brushed her hair.
“I’ll talk to you about invitation etiquette tomorrow, Cassandra,” Cora admonished her, before pressing a quick kiss to Manuela’s head and melting her in the process. “But at the moment I have some urgent business with Miss Caceres Galvan, and I am afraid we must go.”
Unlike Manuela, Cassandra did indeed jump for joy. Despite knowing the folly of it, Manuela couldn’t help wishing that this could be the start of something lasting. That their well-wishing friends were sending them off to the start of their great love story. “I’ll look on you in the morning,” she called over her shoulder, as Cora volleyed back a terseI advise you don’tand pulled Manuela halfway across the room.
“I thought you’d be angry at me.” Manuela’s mouth would never learn. Cora didn’t respond, her sole focus on getting them out of the room. She only stopped when they reached a door at the end of a long hallway and pulled it open, leading Manuela inside. There was a staircase heading up to what she assumed were Claudine’s rooms, and there was another door on the opposite side.
Once Cora closed the door, she turned around and pressed Manuela to it. Her face was impassive, unaffected, but those smoldering eyes told a very different story. She looked down at Manuela’s mouth and licked her own lips roughly. Her own breath caught, riveted by the sight of that pink tongue.
“You thought you’d get my attention with this stunt?”
She could point out that she’d succeeded, but that would probably backfire. “I’ve been trying to for weeks. I got impatient.” She protested weakly as Cora’s fingers traced something on the expanse of skin over her breasts. Her nipples pebbled into hard points in response, and every inch of clothes on her seemed to tighten all at once.
“Here I am, princess. What do you want with me?” Manuela squeezed her thighs together to abate the throbbing between them as she struggled to make words that weren’t begging.
“I suppose I’m going to have to learn my lesson for disappointing your horses.”
Cora laughed, a husky, enticing thing that slithered right under Manuela’s skin. “That’s not the lesson you need today, princesa.”
Their breaths rose in unison as blood rushed to Manuela’s head. Fast and hot, fogging her mind, and all she could think of was being kissed. Those lips, she wanted them on hers so badly she could feel the ghost of them. An impossible ache pulsed at her core. She was desperate for Cora’s hands, her mouth.
“No?” Manuela asked, her voice reedy as Cora pushed away from her and turned to the other door.
“No,” Cora echoed as she turned the doorknob and cold night air filled the room. “From now on, youtellme what you want. Not with little notes or pouts. Or barters.”
“Tell you?” The question came out feebly, but Manuela had never felt more alive. There was enough energy buzzing inside her that she imagined she could electrify Eiffel’s tower herself.
“You said you wanted to experience for yourself what women like us do in Montmartre... You are about to.”
Manuela was hanging on every word out of Cora’s mouth, only marginally aware that they were stepping out into the street and Cora’s carriage was there waiting for them. “What will you do?”
Cora clicked her tongue, a wicked glint in her eyes. “Not onlyme, darling,us. You and me.” Cora’s voice was a seductive, dangerous whisper as her driver helped them up into the carriage. Once inside, she expected Cora to take her usual place as far away from her as possible. And she did take the banquette opposite Manuela, but this time, she sat right across from her. So close that their knees brushed every time the carriage jostled as it began its way down the hill. Her heart beat so furiously, she wondered if Cora could hear it.
The small lamps on the outside of the carriage windows lent the cavernous space inside enough light that Manuela could see the duchess’s face. This was the Cora from that first night, languid and hedonistic. With a glint in her eyes that spoke of long nights of pleasure and the darkest of deeds. Manuela could only hold on to the velvet upholstery of the seats as butterflies swerved madly in her belly.
“I didn’t think you wanted me anymore,” Manuela confessed, much too aroused to place any kind of restriction on her admissions.
The sound of Cora’s laugh cracked through the small space like lightning. She shook her head, an expression of disbelief on her beautiful face. “Want you?” Cora sounded almost outraged. She’d kept her coat unbuttoned, and it was spread over the seat in dark pools of red. Her mouth set in a vicious expression, readying herself to make quick work of what was left of Manuela’s virtue. If her teeth could unclench, she would’ve sneered at just how wrong the Greeks had gotten it.
