Etiquette With The Devil (38 page)

As for the rest, it was nothing more than a game of chance. Either he would confront those chasing him to an early grave, or the threat would hang over his head as he waited.

Now that he was titled, he could continue his efforts in being a better man for Clara and the children, or he could ignore his responsibility and flee. As for Clara, well, that was no longer a matter of chance but rather luck. As in, he was lucky she had agreed to come to London. He was lucky she was sleeping a room away, close but still out of reach. It could be further by now if she wished it.

His bare back stuck to the door. The room was an oven. There was melancholy and misery in what he found himself stuck in now—a verifiable hell.

A spark of light flashed across the room before another crash rumbled the empty tea set on the table. He did not flinch, but his muscles tensed as the smell of lemons filled the stagnant air.

“What’s wrong, Clara?” His voice was a rough whisper. He felt her standing in the doorway without having to open his eyes. It was as if she had him by the throat. He heard the forced breath of her surprise over the rain battering the window.

“I can’t sleep with the storm,” she replied. “I’m sorry. I-I didn’t know you would be out here.”

Bly heard everything—the brush of bare feet across the carpet, the whisper of satin, even the trace of discomfort in her voice as she turned to retreat. But lemons. Always lemons. She did have him by the throat, not that she ever noticed.

“Why are you on the floor?”

His eyes opened in surprise just as lightning struck. It was a brief, white-hot flash, but she stood there in the doorway, with her hair tumbling down her shoulders. The light illuminated the space around Clara and her thin peignoir, the remaining silhouette the fleshy form he longed to touch. He closed his eyes tight, and exhaled.

The room was growing smaller by the minute.

“Bly?”

Maybe she would leave if he remained still. That would be the kind thing to do. Lately, she had not been kind, but acted rather like a shrike, spearing the leftover pieces of his heart onto thorns. Clara came back, again and again, picking and pecking, pushing him to near sainthood. That had been her mistake. She should know by now that he was no saint.

“A pistol?”

She was all but touching him now, he could sense it as if Bly held a compass in his heart. Clara was near and he lost all sense of direction; even if she could point him home, he was lost.

“You’re dangerous enough to me without it, love. Don’t touch.”

Bly tightened his hold around the grip of the pistol as her hand hovered above it, testing his patience. She never listened, though there was cause for it now. The gun was loaded and primed, ready in case someone tried to enter their hotel suite. He had sat in front of the door every night since their arrival. He would do so tonight if only she would return to her room.

“I believe I should be the one asking what’s wrong,” she continued. “I don’t know that I like finding you in our parlor holding a pistol. It makes me think you’re keeping a secret from me.”

He had several, but she was clever nonetheless. She always had been, except when it mattered. The matter of trusting him came to mind.

“Go back to bed, Clara.” Exhaustion and lust warred within his bones. He tightened his free hand into a fist and brought his head back against the door with a loud knock.

Clara walked to the winged chair by the sofa and circled it like a dog about to bed down. When lightening flashed again, she jumped back and his heart softened a bit.

“The storm will pass soon,” he started, but the rest of his assurances were drowned under the roar of thunder that ripped through the room.

She cowered a bit by the chair but did not voice her discomfort, even as the sound faded out to the rain striking the windowpanes. His heart pounded in his ears in the same inconsistent streak—quick, slow, and stopping.

Clara pushed and pulled until the chair faced the door and wiped at her forehead with the back of her hand.

“Do you need anything?” he asked.

“You can at least sit in a chair if you insist on keeping secrets. You can’t be comfortable on the floor.”

He was not comfortable at all, but it had little to do with sitting on the floor. “I didn’t insist on anything, love. Although I do remember asking you to go back to bed.”

“I’ll leave you alone if you wish. I just—” A tremor shook her voice before she took a nervous swallow, “can’t sleep.”

She turned toward the window and coiled her hair tight around her hand, the other bracing the back of her neck. Lightening blazed again, a scattered bunch of flashes, followed closely by a deafening rumble. Clara cried out and he shot to his feet.

The gun slid in his sweaty palm as she rushed to the window and began tracing the raindrops thrashing against the window. The room transformed from a suite to a box. He took a few steps closer, feeling his own breathing growing ragged.

“I feel as if I’m choking,” she whispered. Her hand fussed at the base of her neck, swinging the pendant in a hurried back-and-forth across its fine chain.

“It’s just the heat.”

Clara whirled around, her eyes wide and bright. “Is it?”

He nodded, his eyes pinned to hers.

“I wish that were true.” A jaded smile tugged at the corner of her lips. Those pink lips he wished to kiss. He had dreamt of doing so often enough that he could lean down and find them blindly.

Bly wished to lick the beads of sweat glistening on her skin and discover the taste of her. He wanted to run his fingers through her hair and fall so deep into the very idea of her, the very feel of her, that he would never resurface.

Lucent eyes, bright and haunting, stared back at him. Waiting. Searching.

Bly closed his eyes and exhaled, pushing out the crushing force that ached in his chest, and retreated swiftly to his room. He unprimed the pistol, noticing the slight tremor in his hand, and collected himself for a moment at the edge of the bed. The storm should be passing, yet it only whirled around London like the water around an emptying drain.

He pushed off the bed and walked across to the small washroom, where he soaked a rag and water and wrung it out. He could adapt to the summer’s heat; it was his wife that made him feel so unhinged.

Lightning flashed again and the answering rumble echoed in the darkness as he marched into the parlor and collided squarely into Clara.

Her body flattened against his with a surprised whimper as his hands snapped up to steady her, but not soon enough as the glass she held fell and shattered to the floor. Tepid water pooled around them in a puddle.

“Christ,” he muttered. “Don’t move. The glass.”

She flinched again at the rumble of thunder. “I thought you would like a drink.” Her voice, small and defeated, rang in his ears.

To feel her body against his was torture. Bly had given up on wearing a shirt for decency’s sake hours ago. The cloth still dripped in his hand as he struggled to think rationally. She averted her eyes and stared at the floor behind him.

“This will help,” he said, placing the cloth around her neck. Her hand curled around for his before he could withdraw his touch. She stood there, holding his hand without meeting him in the eye. The thunder faded, the lightning flashes dimmed, but Clara singed like a low torch, holding on even when he knew he should let go and allow the flame to die.

“No,” she breathed. Her eyes, those strange eyes that had always been his ruin, flashed to his, brighter than the white light of the summer storm outside their window. Her eyelashes, long and curved, fanned to the rapid rhythm of his hitched breaths. “No,” she said, firmer.

The room was sweltering now, gluing them together in the few places they touched. Bly ran his thumbs over her arms, feeling her skin prickle in gooseflesh at his touch. The heat had addled her mind, surely, because she was talking nonsense.

He harbored his doubts as she leaned forward and rested against his chest, her arms curling around his neck, her fingers twining into his hair. “I can’t rid myself of you, as hard as I try.” She brushed her lips over his chest and kissed his neck, even as his hands dropped to his side and froze. “Tell me you’ve tried, too. Tell me that I mean nothing to you. My heart can’t take this torture much longer.”

It took one deep breath to push out the three syllables, “What torture?”

“Loving you,” she sighed against the sharp edge of his collarbone. “I hate you for the cruel trick of it.”

Anger was laced there in her words, but it meant nothing as surprise washed over him. She had just said the words he never knew he wished to hear. Words he needed to hear. Words he would never forget.

“I’m a greedy man, Clara.”

She looked up, surprised, her eyes brimming with tears. If she had any other plea, it died at her lips as he bent down and kissed her.

There was a kiss in the garden the day he proposed, desperate and angry. There were those sweet kisses of years long lost to them both, which nourished him as he was tortured in Cairo. This kiss, the way her lips sought his, was like coming home at long last to his safe harbor.

Bly drew her tighter against him in spite of the heat. The warm rush of her sigh escaped into his mouth as her breasts pushed against his chest through her thin peignoir. “You can do whatever you wish, but I won’t let you go. You are as much as part of me as the heart racing in my chest.”

Her lips traced the line of his jaw as he spoke, unwavering as she tasted his feverish skin. “Devil,” she whispered at last. The frenzied race of her pulse knocked against his skin, urging him on. For once, she did not pull back at his touch, but rather sought it out.

“I never claimed otherwise.” He pulled his fingers through her long hair, hot and damp from the sweltering heat, until they were well and truly tangled together. Bly wanted every bit of her until he was sated and happy, but that would take a lifetime, not a night.

“Make this stop.” Her voice was low and rough, its sweetness lost as her eyes searched his, burning with a light that cut straight to his heart.

Bly held her face between his hands, swallowing as the smile on his lips built and broke to the crash of another fleeting lightning strike. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, then to that freckle on her cheekbone, the one that drew his notice those years back when he had truly seen her for the first time, reeling from Clara’s words. His lips traced over her cheekbone, the corner of her sweet lips, before dipping below her chin and following the elegant curve of her neck to the freckle at the base of her throat.

She tightened her hold around his neck, the soft brush of her sigh drowning out the storm. He flicked his tongue along her shoulder blade, tasting the salt of her skin, drowning in her lemon perfume. With a slow hiss of his lips, he blew a stream of air over his trail of kisses and felt her shudder against him from the sudden rush of cold.

“Bly.” It was as much a whisper as a plea.

He slanted his lips over hers, opening her mouth with a lush kiss, feeling the familiar press of her tongue against his, savoring the sweet taste of her mouth.

He was no saint, certainly not as his control snapped. He cupped her full bottom and pulled her tight against him, desperate to close the space that had separated them for too long. He wanted to feel her, all of her. He wanted to stop reliving the memory of her body beneath his, and feel her fall to pieces around him so he could see the sated smile on her face.

A bed. He only needed to make it to his bed and the wait would be over. Jagged shards of glass lay at their feet, but it could tear his feet to shreds as far as he cared. He would burn alive for another sweep of her hand against his skin.

“Don’t let go,” she whispered into his ear. Her words took away the pain of the glass that sliced into his foot as he pushed her against the doorway of his bedroom. His lips crashed over hers, kissing away her worries.

The pink ribbon tying up her nightgown slipped down her shoulder as she circled her thighs tighter around his waist, rubbing against him. “I could never leave,” he said, his voice husky as he pulled at the ribbon and watched as one side of her nightgown fall, exposing the lush curve of her breast when lightning filled the room once more.

What an idiot he had been for once believing he could leave. He laid her onto his bed, watching her hair fanned around her like a halo, her eyes alive with hunger. Hunger for him.

There would be no secrets between them. He wanted to see all of her until he was drunk at the sight of her, until the sight of the pistol on the table no longer felt as if the henchmen’s axe was about to strike him down. He leaned down and nipped the skin of her shoulder as his hand roamed her body for the edge of her hem.

“I won’t—” he grabbed at her hem and pulled it over her head as she sat forward “leave you e—” he continued as her teeth pulled at his bottom lip, “ever,” he growled. Their hands made quick work of the buttons of his trousers and soon they were only two bodies finding each other in the darkness.

Their hands laced together in a sweaty web as he levered over her. He should go slowly, but everything raced ahead as his mouth sipped hers. He should be charting the course of her body as he did last time so he could remember. He gave in to his baser needs and sank his weight against her until she welcomed him with a throaty moan.

“Look at me, Clara.” Her eyes darted over his shoulder as he sank into her delicious heat, feeling the rushed air of her exhales prick against his skin. She was trying to kill him, he was certain of it as her body rocked against his, urging him on. “Look at me.”

Time stopped as he waited, perched perilously on the edge of whatever hung between them. Finally, her eyes lifted to his, and that veil, that darkness that had kept her from him since his return, lifted.

That lie he told himself shattered as he witnessed her unfurling. Bly loved this woman. Let the sky fall, let his demons chase him all his days, he would fight to stay and love Clara. “I won’t let go,” he said, his voice hoarse. He plunged into her again, feeling her hands scrape against his back as he filled her, her eyes still locked to his.