The Elusive Lord Everhart: The Rakes of Fallow Hall Series (15 page)

Yet it seemed as though he’d meant to say something else entirely.

She kept forgetting about his injury. He always seemed so capable to her. It was difficult to imagine that he couldn’t do whatever he wished, whenever he wished it. As he’d likely done all his life.

“You could lean on me.” The words tumbled out unheeded, surprising her. She rationalized them away instantly, telling herself that it was only the nurturing aspect of her personality that caused her to make the offer.

Everhart arched a skeptical brow. “A dance, for pity’s sake? I think not.”

Not knowing what possessed her, Calliope decided to make one final attempt at friendship. Yet perhaps it wasn’t friendship that compelled her but something else entirely.

She’d always hated the way things had ended years ago. So abruptly and without warning. Although she never admitted it, out of everyone from their circle of friends, she’d missed Everhart the most.

Remembering that loss keenly made walking away impossible now.

Calliope sat down beside him. The sloped portion of the chaise did not allow much room to keep a proper distance. Then again, what she was about to suggest wasn’t entirely proper either. “Then a dance for friendship’s sake.”

“We cannot be—” He stopped as she pivoted her upper body toward his, her hand slipping onto his shoulder.

Before she could rethink her plan or accustom herself to the warmth emanating from his close proximity, she reached down and eased his grip from the cushion’s edge, sliding her other hand into his.

“Friends,” she finished for him.

“I have no women friends.” He swallowed, his gaze drifting from her eyes to her mouth as if in a silent warning. Or perhaps it was more of an invitation.

A shiver coursed through her as his arm slipped around her waist. His hand opened against the small of her back and slowly drifted upward to rest just beneath her shoulder blades. Alone like this, it would be easy for him to nudge her closer. Perhaps that was exactly what he wanted her to imagine.

“You seduce every woman of your acquaintance, then? The same way you are seducing me now?”

“I beg to differ.” He offered a mocking grin and lifted their joined hands into a less-than-formal waltzing pose. “You are the one seducing me. You are wearing me down to the point where my head is spinning as if we were actually dancing.”

His gaze bore into hers, and she thought for just a moment that instead of scolding her or shaking her, he might want to kiss her. The way it had been in her dream.

“My head is spinning too,” she admitted on a breath. Her gaze drifted to his mouth.

Everhart shook his head. “Don’t close your eyes.”

“But if I don’t, then I’m likely to . . . ” She wet her lips.

“Likely to . . . what?”

To kiss you
, she nearly said. Thankfully, her lips didn’t form the words. Yet in the same breath, her head must have misunderstood. Because before she knew it, her lips were on his.

She gasped the instant she realized what she’d done.

Yet as he’d commanded, she kept her eyes on his. They were of like mind, both holding perfectly still. The only movement he made was an exhale through his nostrils. His breath mingled with hers. He didn’t even blink. But as he stared at her, his pupils grew larger, like onyx gems rimmed with aquamarine.

When she heard a low, raw rasp tear from his throat, she realized something very important. Everhart had had no intention of scolding her
or
shaking her. It was quite possible that all along, the intensity of his gaze had everything to do with kissing.

To be certain, she kissed him again. This time, she lingered and pressed her lips to his again in the only type of kiss she knew how to give. Even
she
knew it was not enough. It was too . . . chaste. Certainly not a kiss that a woman of four and twenty gave to a rake. Yet she’d had very little experience.

Everhart was patient, neither withdrawing nor pushing her naïve exploration. Inspired by that thought as much as the map on the table behind her did, she wondered what it would be like to
explore
Gabriel Ludlow, Viscount Everhart. She imagined that his lips were the continent rising up from the sea, awaiting her . . . first . . . step.

This was new territory. Calliope tilted her head, nuzzling the tip of her nose into the valley beside his. Her mouth slanted, silk against velvet, soft against firm. The sensations riveted her, making her wonder why she’d wasted her life on anything other than kissing expeditions. If she’d had forethought, she could’ve been proficient by now. As it was, with her nose pressed against his, breathing became harder. Opening her mouth seemed the only solution because she couldn’t bear to draw back, even for a single breath.

Her lips parted. Against his warning, her eyes drifted closed.

Everhart shifted, tilting his chin up a fraction as his mouth opened too. He exhaled the essence of sweet whiskey. She swallowed, feeling it warm her all the way down to where her stomach seemed to have drifted, heavy, throbbing in a foreign place deep within her.

Like a dedicated cartographer, her lips pressed, brushed, and traced. Still, it was not enough. Her tongue followed the same route, earning another rasp from him. Unable to hide the pleasure that the sound gave her, she smiled against his lips. She liked kissing Everhart, more than she’d ever imagined. And she
had
imagined . . .

Then he moved, drawing her closer. His tongue delved beyond the boundaries of her lips and into her mouth. A sound that was neither rasp nor moan but something in between rose from her throat. Reflexively, she lifted her outer leg and turned, draping it over his. Half lying on top of him, her hands opened against his chest and closed over his waistcoat.
This is mine
, she thought.
This waistcoat. This kiss. This man. All . . . mine
.

The powerful need to possess him startled her. She began to pull back, only to have him follow and coax her into the kiss once again. She went willingly.

Her leg glided wantonly against his, earning a growl of approval from him. His skillful hands answered her entreaty, sliding over her back, along her sides, until they drifted up along her rib cage to map out the twin islands of her breasts. Her back arched in supplication, offering her breasts into the care of his hands.

“If you are not seducing me,” she whispered against his lips, “then what are you doing with your hands?”

“I’m merely following the siren call of your body.” He scraped the short nails of his thumbs across both of her nipples, eliciting a shock of pure pleasure.

A quake traversed her entire being. It pulsed in the air around her, coming out on a gasp. She let her head fall back when he did it once more. A debutante would certainly be scandalized, not only by his actions but by her own response. How many novels had warned her about the follies of a young woman taken unawares?

As for Calliope, she was neither young nor unaware. In fact, she was all too aware of everything she felt in this moment—the taut aching of her breasts, the tingles covering her heated flesh, the immodest pressure of his thigh between hers.

She never wanted it to stop. “For a man named after an angel, you have very wicked hands.”

He lifted her higher, his lips against her jaw, her throat, nipping her clavicle. “Imagine what I could do with my mouth.”

Hmm
. . . “I’m certain I shouldn’t.”

He lowered her a fraction, sliding her body along the firmness of his thigh, and kissed her once more. “But you already have. I can see it in your gaze.”

The clock below started to chime, reminding her of the person she’d been just an hour before when her foot first touched that bottom tread. “It is midnight already?”

“I don’t care if it is,” he said, his wicked, greedy mouth following the line of her shoulder, where he’d pulled one side of her gown free, taking with it the tapes of her stays and petticoat.

“My maid will wonder where I am.” But Calliope didn’t really care either. She was inside a book—her own story now. Each turn of the page brought new adventures, new sensations she’d never before experienced.

“Let her wonder.”

Yes
, the heroine of her own story said.
Let her wonder
. On the verge of fainting, her inner narrator fanned herself.

Still, for propriety’s sake, she said, “I could not compromise you in such a manner.”

His laugh vibrated against the underside of her jaw. “Compromise
me
?”

“Your wager,” she said with her last noble breath. Quite honestly, she didn’t know why she was trying to stop any of this. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could live up here, shielded from everyone forever? “If we are caught then . . . the wrong assumptions would be made.”

“Ah, yes. Quite right.” He lifted his head and held her gaze. “Though wager or not, I am far from one of the heroes in your novels who would surrender to marriage in the end.”

At the austere certainty in his tone, those delicious tremors abruptly stopped. The enthralling kissing haze that had settled over her began to lift. And then she remembered who she was, who he was, and the reason she was here at Fallow Hall.

With as much poise as possible, Calliope disentangled herself from his embrace and stood. She supposed it was reassuring to know exactly what to expect where Everhart was concerned. It was like knowing the end of a story. This way, she wouldn’t be taken unaware again.

Still, the enormity of what had just transpired fell over her like the weight of an entire bookcase. However, under no uncertain terms would she let him see how her own book lay open, spine cracked, pages crumpled.

“Nor I, though you needn’t to put it like that.” She lifted her chin at an angle that didn’t quite suit her, but she held the position regardless. “I wouldn’t have you for a husband. Not when I’m in love with someone else.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“W
ho?” Gabriel leapt up from the chaise, ignoring the biting pain that knifed up his leg.

Calliope gave him a look that suggested he should know the answer.

Brightwell
. His blood seethed.

“I hardly think it’s any concern of yours.” She angled her bare shoulder away from him and pulled up her sleeve in such a casual manner that his irritation climbed. She should be trembling and blushing like the untried virgin she was, not rearranging her clothes without a care, like a seasoned courtesan.

“It is, when you’ve spent the last hour kissing me.” He felt compelled to drag that sleeve back down again, along with the other one and never stop undressing her until he rid her mind of any other man. Until he and he alone made her quiver in ecstasy.
Until
. . .

Until she was his.

“I disagree.” She narrowed her eyes with that saccharine smile.

He responded similarly. “Though it is clear that you have not spent much, if any, time kissing your beloved.”

She gasped at the insult, but he continued, not allowing her the chance to interject.

“You started off very green indeed. But I managed to tutor you quite effectively. I’m certain”—Gabriel gritted his teeth—“he will thank me.”

She was fuming now. Livid.
Magnificent
. He wanted her with a passion that nearly consumed him.

It was madness to have kissed her at all. Now, he felt as if she’d injected him with an addictive elixir—a drug—and he had become an instant opium-eater. He wanted more. His entire body shook with need.

This wasn’t wholly unfamiliar territory. He’d felt this way before. This same insanity had inspired the letter he’d written to her.

“He won’t thank you. He won’t even think of you. Or ever even wonder about you. Because he will know that when my lips touch his, he is the only person in my thoughts.”

And then with a final blow, she added, “The only person who has
ever
been there.”

Was she actually suggesting that she could have thought of anyone other than Gabriel when she kissed like that?

Not possible. “A woman does not kiss a man with complete abandon when she is in love with someone else.”

He reached out, prepared to haul her back into his arms and obliterate Brightwell from her thoughts forever. But she stepped back, out of his immediate reach. It was a short distance but enough to bring him a semblance of sanity.

He could not kiss her again, or at least he should not.
Would
not.

If she still imagined herself in love with Brightwell, then why had she refused him five years ago? “After Brightwell is married, you realize you love him? Perhaps you are just as fickle as you have always been.”

“Is my action from that one night all you ever think of?” Although her words came out with bite, there was something undeniably wounded in the depth of her eyes. “In regard to Brightwell, I have given you my answer. I will not repeat it again.”

He felt a sharp wrenching pain at seeing that look, at being the cause of it. The need for clarity compelled him to probe further, but tender regard for what lay beneath the sandy depths of her eyes softened his tone. “You told me that you refused Brightwell those years ago because you did not love him,
not
that you were in love with someone else.”

“Believe me, if I’d have come to the realization a moment sooner, we would not be having this conversation.” She exhaled as if exhausted, with her hands rearranging wayward locks of hair. “Now, I feel guilty of betrayal.”

“Who is he?” The air in Gabriel’s lungs seized, and he felt that anchor’s weight upon him again.

She gritted her teeth. “I cannot tell you.”

“
Cannot
?” he scoffed. “It is more a matter of
will not
.”

“All right then. Even if I could, I would
not
tell you.” Color bloomed in her cheeks. Her gaze collided with his as if she realized what she’d said.

Gabriel stilled. Her words penetrated the haze of lust, longing, and anger inside his brain. If she
couldn’t
give him a name, was it because she did not know it?