AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She winked at Audrey Rose and slipped inside, leaving us alone. A curious thing happened to my pulse—it surged. Fear and desire shot through me. A confusing mix I’d need to ponder later when I was alone. For now, I needed to remember to breathe and act like the gentleman I was trying to convince myself I was.
“Cresswell.” She swayed forward, narrowing her eyes. “Is it really you?”
I flashed her my most charming look. “Not to worry, Wadsworth. Sometimes I can’t believe I’m actually real either.”
Her gaze moved to my mouth and lingered. An expression close to longing crossed her face. It was the same look she’d given me when we’d kissed in her cabin a few nights ago. I recalled the warmth of her body, the feel of her soft skin, the way she’d tasted…
I inhaled deeply and focused on solving mathematical equations. I thought of numerators and denominators. I conjured square roots. Anything, anything to keep from noticing my pounding heartbeat and the way she made me nervous and excited all at once.
And then she slowly licked her lips—as if she’d deduced the heat blazing through me, destroying my resolve to set her free.
It took all of my willpower to keep myself a decent distance away. One word or plea from her was all it’d take. It was more than lust. More than a physical need. I adored every part of her. If she asked me to, I’d unleash every one of my desires, pleasuring her in a way that would let her know precisely how much I cherished her.
Once that happened, there’d be no denying the depths of my feelings. How wholly and madly I loved her. A fact more solid and tangible than any in the history of the world. I schooled my expression into a mask of ice, hiding the blazing inferno raging within. I wanted her to choose me without being influenced by my own feelings.
“Thomas?” she asked, her focus stubbornly fixed on my mouth.
“Yes?” My voice came out a bit rough, and I cleared my throat. I was finding it hard to think, to breathe. I wondered at the look in her eyes—the one that seemed to mentally run her fingers through my hair, gently tugging my head back, owning me playfully. I—
One thousand nine hundred and seventy-two divided by seven…
“Thomas, are you all right? You look a bit peaked.” She wasn’t aware of it, but when she gave something her attention, the force of it was overwhelming. “Why are you sneaking about this early?”
To find salvation from my demons. To free myself from the cage of my room and the fears that threaten to be my undoing. To feel the stinging prickle of snow on my face and forget that there wasn’t a cure for my current condition. Her gaze was a palpable caress as she slowly shifted it downward, igniting a deep male need that startled even me.
“I’m not sneaking, I’m prowling, Wadsworth.” I gave her a lazy grin. It was an effort to keep my tone casual, to stop myself from trying to kindle her desire too. Though, judging from the growing longing in her expression and the way she shifted her body towards mine, perhaps she’d fanned those flames on her own. “Why are you sneaking about?”
I was going to tease her further, asking if she was coming back from a late-night tryst, and felt a violent, invisible kick to my gut. I cursed myself for thinking up that atrocity and forced my jaw to stay locked together, lest I make a bigger fool of myself.
Of all the times to picture the ringmaster with his arms around her…
“You’re deflecting.” Her clever eyes narrowed again, homing in on my expression. “Have you discovered a clue? Was there another murder?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak yet. Images of her curled into someone else, her hair spilling like a secret over his chest, still assaulted me. I kept my gaze on her face, refusing to glance down at her costume. And the expanse of skin it revealed. Despite my best efforts, when a blast of wind shot through the promenade, I looked. I only meant to see if she was cold and needed my jacket, but her corset was pulled so tightly together the swell of her breasts stole my senses. I wanted to snap the stays and run my… nine hundred and ninety-eight thousand divided by twenty-six was thirty-eight thousand, three hundred eighty-four and—
As if my mind invented a bucket of imaginary iced water to douse me with, I suddenly wondered who’d helped her into her costume. Jealousy writhed inside me, striking at all common sense and dec
ency. I slowly exhaled, my breath curling in tendrils of smoke. I imagined I looked like the dragon my ancestors had named themselves after.
That thought slapped the idiocy from me. I wasn’t a fire-breathing monster, nor would I ever be. I needed to focus on her, not my insecurity. I needed to trust her, even when I didn’t understand what her goal was. If I could do that in our work space, there was no reason I couldn’t stop being a jealous idiot now.
She stepped closer. “Are you all right?”
I was still fighting the urge to hunt down the ringmaster and toss him overboard, struggling to overcome my insecurities so I could have the sort of romantic relationship built on wholeness I strongly craved, trying to solve a string of gruesome murders, and attempting to prevent myself from becoming the monster my father convinced me I was by setting the girl I loved free. At the moment, that girl was making the last part extremely difficult, the more she seemed to want to wrap her arms around me.
I longed to touch her. First her mind, then her heart, and, finally, her body. I wished to own every inch of space between us and fill it with each emotion I’d ever suppressed or pretended away. I wanted to strip my soul bare for only her to see and then do the same with my clothing, giving her everything I had of me. Scars and all.
“Thomas?” she asked again, brow crinkling with concern. “Are you all right?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Never better.”
She shivered, and I knew it wasn’t my obvious lie that had affected her. I shrugged my jacket off and placed it about her shoulders, my knuckles accidentally brushing the top of her breasts as I secured a button at her chest. The contact sent a searing lick of fire through me as quick as a lightning bolt. Her breath caught, and she flicked her attention up. It happened so fast that I didn’t have time to wipe the longing from my face.
I stepped back as a wintry mix of rain and snow began to fall. She moved with me, a huntress sighting her prey. The trouble was I wanted to be caught more than I wished to run.
“I thought about you tonight,” she murmured, fixing me with a stare that promised all sorts of beautifully wicked things. “I drank the green fairy and danced with abandon. Don’t worry,” she swayed forward, and I held very still as she placed her hands on my chest and slowly, carefully, dragged them down to rest over my heart, “it wasn’t inappropriate. I’m saving that honor for you. Remember?”
I would have to be dead to have forgotten when I’d remarked not so long ago about drinking wine and dancing inappropriately together. I inhaled slowly, trying to form a coherent thought, a task proving to be especially difficult. Warring feelings battled for supremacy. That persistent, pure, white-hot envy as I pictured her dancing with someone else, surpassed only by an overwhelming satisfaction that she had been thinking of me.
