What Price Love? by Stephanie Laurens
She couldn’t drag her gaze from his, couldn’t free her senses from his hold, from the sensual web the dance had become.
His dark eyes slowly heated. The hard planes of his face subtly shifted, as if he, too, felt it, as if he, too, were conscious of the tightening grip of sensation, the burgeoning craving the dance evoked.
Not the dance. Them dancing.
Never before had she considered the waltz a sensual experience, yet when the music faded and he whirled her to a halt, she felt exhilarated. Keyed up, nerves on edge, as she’d felt only once before.
When he’d kissed her in the wood and nearly ravished her.
Something must have shown in her face. His dark eyes raced over her features; when his gaze fixed on her lips, they throbbed.
He muttered something, his tone low, harsh. Instead of releasing her, his hand closed more tightly about hers; his arm fell away reluctantly as, head rising, he scanned the room.
She moistened her lips. Her wits seemed to be working unusually slowly.
She had a strong suspicion that if they’d been functioning normally, they’d be urging her to flee. Something else was keeping her rooted to the spot, wholly focused on a man who was the personification of danger.
“This way.” Dillon looped her arm in his, with his other hand trapped her fingers on his sleeve. Lady Fowles had noticed them dancing; smiling benignly, she’d returned to her conversation. It was helpful that Miss Dalling had established herself as in de pen dent; no brows would be raised if he escorted her beyond the ballroom’s walls.
Rather than head for the terrace, as a number of other couples were, he steered her to a door that gave onto a corridor, presently deserted.
He’d been visiting the Kershaws since he was in short coats; he knew the house and all its nooks well. The rarely used conservatory, down the corridor and out of sight of the ballroom, was the perfect place in which to pursue Miss Dalling—in which to encourage her to pursue him.
Guiding her down the corridor, ignoring her weak, “What…? Where are we going?” he halted before the glassed conservatory doors, set one swinging wide, and whisked her through.
“Mr. Caxton—”
“Dillon. If we’re going to be engaging in personal persuasions, it seems only reasonable to be on first-name terms.” Tacking down a narrow corridor between masses of leafy shrubs, towing her behind him, he halted and turned to look at her. “What’s your first name?”
She frowned, narrowed her eyes. “Priscilla.”
His lips twitched. “What does your brother call you?” When she didn’t immediately answer, he guessed. “Pris?”
She didn’t deny it. She looked around, then back, realizing they were out of sight of the corridor or anyone coming through the door. There were no lamps burning, but the moonlight poured through the glassed roof, providing steady illumination, enough to see by. She glanced toward the gardens beyond the glassed walls, but dense foliage screened them from that direction, too.
Her frown grew more definite. “Mr. Caxton, I don’t know what ‘persuasions’ you think to employ, but regardless, I’ll thank you to escort me back to the ballroom.”
Clearly holding her hand was insufficient contact. Dillon sighed, let her hand fall, reached for her, and neatly jerked her into his arms.
6
She gasped as she landed against him. He didn’t need to see her wide emerald eyes hazing to know she was instantly swamped with desire. As was he. Closing his arms, locking her against him, he bent his head and covered her lips—already parted on that evocative gasp.
He surged into her mouth, laid claim, then settled to plunder, to taste her, to provocatively taunt until she responded, until her fingers tangled in his hair, then gripped, until her lips firmed and her body tensed, until her tongue met his, all fire and passion.
Reminding himself that this time he was going to remain firmly in control—that it was imperative he do so, that there was a purpose behind the kiss, one beyond the welling, burgeoning, cascading pleasure—once she was fully engaged in the kiss, once he judged she’d lost any reservation she might have possessed over dallying with him in such a dangerous way, he mentally drew back sufficiently to gauge her state.
If he wanted answers, he would need to render her thoroughly witless, take her to that sensual point where experiencing the next touch, the next sensation was the only thing that mattered in life. She recognized the risks she courted with him, that he could indeed sweep her onto that plane of vulnerable, trembling need.
He prayed she didn’t realize the same risk applied to him.
Pris sensed his retreat; she read it as a caution, as a belated recognition that this much heat, this much passion, wasn’t wise.
Too late. Her fingers speared through his heavy locks; seduced by the silky texture, she held his head steady and pressed boldly nearer until his hard frame fully impinged against her curves. If he thought he could tease her—offer a mere glimpse of the plea sure she might have, and draw back and dangle more like a carrot before her—he could think again.
The tiny part of her mind still functioning knew that reacting so flagrantly was reckless. She didn’t care. His arms tightened about her and she delighted; his hands spread over her back, hesitated.
She kissed him voraciously, tempted, beckoned; he tried to hold aloof, then the dam broke, and he responded.
With heat. With a fiery response that curled her toes.
His palms hardened, pressed, then slid low, evocatively molding her hips to his.
Her abandoned senses exulted. Nearly swooned when he ruthlessly took command of the kiss, took command of her senses, and recklessly spun them both into the eye of a passion-wracked storm.
He held her there, for long moments let the sensual winds buffet her, rake her nerves, her mind, let them tempt and promise.
When he lifted his head just enough so he could speak, his breath a warm flame over her sensitized lips, she was clinging to him, clinging to the remnants of her wits, still whirling in the vortex of welling, swelling need.
“Did you find the string you were searching for?”
The words made no sense, connected with nothing in her mind. She blinked, then realized, remembered. “Ah…no.”
He kissed her again, waltzed her back into the waiting conflagration, until every nerve sizzled, until heat raced through her veins and pooled low. Until the world had disappeared behind a mist of desire, and only the two of them existed.
Lifting his head, he caught her lower lip between his teeth, gently tugged, then released it and murmured, “Is it your brother you’re protecting?”
This time, it took longer to gather her wits, longer to find the strength to think. She tried to frown, but her features seemed unresponsive. Her lashes fluttered as she battled to assemble the right words…no? Yes?
It was only because she couldn’t decide but had to think harder that she realized what he was doing. The effort required to snap her mind free of his sensual web left her weak; luckily, he was holding her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her delivery lacked incisive strength but was enough to make him draw an exasperated breath.
She would have smiled, but he kissed her again. For one long moment she let him pull her, unresisting, back under the glorious wave, then she mentally jerked back. She drew her lips from his enough to whisper, “What’s in the confidential section of the register?”
His only answer was a curse; she was smiling broadly when he kissed her again. But she now had his mea sure, and her own; she refused to let him submerge her wits. Reluctantly, she pulled back again, but tried another avenue of attack and leaned heavily into him. Let her stomach cradle his erection and sinuously moved against him.
He sucked in a breath, closed his eyes. He looked like he was in pain.
Another form of persuasion. Artfully she caressed, slowly, she hoped seductively. “How do the confidential details stop the falsifying of winners—is it some sort of descripti
She made the words as soft as she could, let her voice slide into the low, sultry tones she knew from experience rattled the cages of men’s libidos. She’d never before used her body, her voice, to deliberately entice; she derived more feminine satisfaction than she’d thought possible when he answered, his tone a gravelly rumble, “Yes.” He paused; to her delight, he was struggling to think. “I can’t tell you more than that.”
He could, if he would. She slid her hands from his nape to his shoulders, was about to run her palms down his chest when he glanced down.
“That’s the ugliest shawl I’ve ever seen.” With a tug, he unraveled the knot between her breasts.
Before she could catch the screening silk, it slithered over and off her shoulders and fell to the floor.
Leaving her—the real her—revealed, clad in her deep green silk gown with its daringly abbreviated bodice. It was a perfectly acceptable gown, yet her breath tangled in her throat; her nerves stretched. She glanced up, and her lungs seized.
He was looking at her—at her breasts mounding above the low, straight edge of her bodice, at the expanse of fine white skin now exposed—and there was heat in his eyes. His gaze caressed like flames, touching, brushing—threatening to consume.
Before she could do the sensible thing and step away, he raised both hands and, almost reverently, closed them about her breasts.
Sensation, sharp, indescribably shocking, lanced through her.
Her knees buckled.
He swept one arm around her, gathered her to him, held her against him, supported as his other hand eased, then caressed, fingers firm and seeking through the silk. Her pent-up breath hissed out, a sharp exhalation in the warm, earthy dark.
Forcing up her suddenly heavy lids, she looked into his face. Watched some expression move across the angular planes; in the weak light it was impossible to decipher it.
Easier to follow were his physical reactions, the tightening of the steely muscles that banded her back, the thin slash of his lips as they fractionally parted. His eyes as they tracked his fingers, as his gaze devoured and rising heat licked along her spine.
Even easier to sense was his fascination. With her body, with the firm flesh his palm sculpted, with the nipple his knowing fingers found and, to the sound of her desperate gasp, teased to furled attention.
With the delicate skin above her neckline that the pads of his fingers skimmed…
Then he bent his head and found her lips again, whirled her back into the spinning vortex of desire, into the conflagration that so temptingly threatened to consume her senses—just as long as she surrendered and let go of her wits.
Let him sweep them away and command her.
She wouldn’t—knew that she couldn’t, that she didn’t dare. That she couldn’t risk it.
The kiss evolved into a battle of wills, of wits, a flagrant duel of the senses. He pressed; she countered, fighting to keep her mind from the seductive play of his hand at her breast, from the evocative thrust of his hips against hers when, denied, he let his other hand slide down her back, over her hips to her bottom, to grip then knead provocatively, then to mold her hips to his.
He was devilish, experienced—unused to being denied. He had more weapons in his arsenal than she’d dreamed of, yet even while she realized he hadn’t been anywhere as near losing control as he’d let her believe, she also sensed, and his reluctance to engage those more potent weapons he possessed confirmed, that he was walking as fine a line as she—the line between conquest and surrender, not to himself, or to her, but to passion.
She pressed her hands up, framed his face, clung as she kissed him, as she met the next thrust of his tongue and with reckless abandon drew him deep.
His control shook, wavered.
Abruptly she discovered she’d waltzed them to the edge of a sexual precipice, and they were suddenly teetering on the brink.
She didn’t have strength enough left to haul them back.
Neither, it seemed, did he.
His hands, on her body, firmed, his grip suddenly more demanding.
“Yes, Mildred—I do assure you it’s quite purple around the edges of the petals.”
Lady Kershaw’s haughty tones achieved what neither of them could. Jerked back to sanity, they both froze. Both rediscovered their reins and pulled back. Quietly, barely moving, they broke the kiss, hesitated for a moment, their breaths mingling, then they carefully lifted their heads and looked around.
“It’s this way—right at the back near the windows.”
Neither of them moved. They were in an aisle off the central walkway bisecting the conservatory. The brisk tap-tap of heels and a swish of skirts heralded Lady Kershaw and at least one other lady.
Pris held her breath, felt his hands tighten about her waist, tensing as if to whisk her behind him, but the ladies—Lady Kershaw and Mrs. Elcott—engaged in a heated argument about a particular bloom, swept past the open end of the aisle without noticing them.
She glanced at Caxton—Dillon. They were surely on first-name terms now. He caught her eye, held a finger across his lips.
Then he bent and retrieved her shawl.
She took it, bunched it in one hand as he pointed farther down the aisle. Taking her hand, he drew her with him; she tiptoed so her heels didn’t clack on the tiles.
He turned right at the end of the aisle, into another that followed the outer glass wall back toward the house. Before they reached the front of the room, the glass changed to brick. He halted by a door in the wall. Easing it open, he looked through, then stepped out, whisking her with him, then turned and shut the door.
They were in a small foyer connecting an external door with the corridor to the ballroom; Pris told herself she was glad the door hadn’t led into some other private room.
Her pulse was still racing, her skin still warm. Far safer to retreat, regardless of the compulsion of her traitorous desires.
Shaking out her shawl, she draped it over her shoulders and tied the ends once more between her breasts, concealing her dashingly dramatic bodice.
Glancing up, she surprised a disgusted look on Dillon Caxton’s face.
Meeting her gaze, he held it for a moment, then shook his head. “Never mind.”
He waved her back into the corridor. Without another word, they returned to the ballroom.
Just before they stepped across the threshold, he closed his hand about her elbow and halted her.
Brows rising, she looked back and up at him.
He trapped her gaze, quietly said, “Tell me why you need to know, and I’ll answer every question you have.”
She held his gaze for a corresponding moment, then equally quietly replied, “I’ll think about it.”
Facing forward, she stepped into the ballroom.
On her bay mare, crossing the Heath in the wispy fog of early morning, Pris skirted veiled riders from various strings out exercising in the chill. Disguised again as a lad, hat low, head down, her muffler about her chin, she cantered steadily toward the area favored by the Cromarty string.
The Heath, she’d learned, was the property of the Jockey Club and made available to the stables with race horses registered to run at the Newmarket track. While watchers were discouraged from viewing any trials, the early-morning gallops were another matter; she glimpsed the odd figure cloaked in mist studying the horses as they were put through their paces.
She rode on, praying that Rus would take advantage of the cover of the filmy fog to spy on Harkness and Lord Cromarty’s horses.
Her problems were compounding. When Dillon Caxton had offered to answer every question if she told him why she needed to know, while she’d known he’d been referring to the register, for one instant, she’d wished he’d been speaking of other things. Things of a more private nature.
“The last thing I need is to grow infatuated with a damned Englishman, especially one who’s more handsome than I am.”
Especially given he harbored the clear aim of
People got others drunk in order to question them. He’d tried to make her drunk on desire, intoxicated with sensual plea sure. The bastard. He’d added significantly to her worries. She had no idea why she was so susceptible to his “persuasion”; his dramatic, overtly sensual good looks should have inured her to his charm—mere attractiveness invariably bored her. Instead…
She was increasingly anxious that if he sought to more definitely tempt her, she wouldn’t be able to resist, to hold against him, or her own too-impulsive desires.
The next time…
Her nerves tightened. The longer she remained in Newmarket, the longer she took to locate Rus, made a “next time” increasingly inevitable. Then Caxton would press her further, and further, until she stopped resisting his questions. And him.
She wasn’t so inexperienced she didn’t know that the lust he wielded to fog her mind was perfectly real.
Her senses skittered, whether in fevered anticipation or anticipated fright, she didn’t like to think. Muttering another curse, she shut her mind to such unproductive thoughts and peered ahead. She was nearing the right spot.
Through drifting mists, she detected the outline of another string exercising, the thud of hooves reverberating oddly through the damp air. Breathy snorts mingled with instructions and quick replies, distorted by the fog; reining in a sufficient distance away not to draw attention, she tuned her ears to the chatter, instantly distinguishing the soft burr of her mother tongue.
Instead of easing, her nerves coiled tighter. Lifting the mare’s reins, she soundlessly urged the horse into a slow walk, traveling a wide circle around the area where Cromarty’s horses trotted and galloped.
She rode slowly to avoid detection, the clop of the mare’s hooves submerged beneath the race horses’ relentless pounding. The fog was both an aid and a disadvantage; at one point when it thinned she realized she’d ventured too close to the parading horses. Keeping her head down, she adjusted her route to arc around a large copse.