Bridal Favors (26 page)

He kneaded the nape of her neck and her body relaxed. Her shoulders rolled back against his chest. He could feel her heartbeat racing.

Yet even as she responded to his touch, he knew she devoured his words even more greedily. She drank every bit of praise with equal parts trepidation and eagerness, like a bacchant convert at her first orgy, willing to be seduced, fearful of the consequences.

“You think me . . . attractive?”

He heard the price that soft query cost her pride, and for the life of him could not think of a sufficient answer. So, instead, he pulled her roughly against him, making her aware in no uncertain terms of the extent of his attraction.

She felt him, hard and long and excitingly, disturbingly male, pressed against her hip, heard his breath rough against her neck, and opened her eyes, slowly, unwilling to release the magic of these minutes. Her gaze crept up the reflected ruby velvet skirts to where Justin’s big, tanned hand spread flat across her stomach, pinning her against him.

His face nestled in the curve of her throat, his brown hair brushed the tops of her breasts. She trembled. His mouth pressed lightly to the pulse at the bottom of her throat, as though reading her heart’s fluttering. “I want you,” he murmured against her flesh. “I desire you. You know I do.”

She drew a shaky breath, never wanting this to end and, conversely, wanting it to end sooner, that they might continue with all the things Merry had told her about, things wicked and enticing and disturbing.

She should push him away and hope that convention would persuade this preeminently unconventional man into marriage before she dared a physical relationship. But she’d always balked at the notion of a man having to be persuaded into marrying her; she’d too much pride. And she
wouldn’t
lose this opportunity to
make love,
to know what it was to be a woman, not a maid. She didn’t want to spend a lifetime wondering what could have been. She wouldn’t.

She was twenty-five. If it wasn’t Justin, she didn’t want it to be anyone else.

She’d been so absorbed in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed him lift his face until she saw him regarding her in the mirror. “Do you see it yet?”

“See what?”

“How absolutely ravishing you are?”

At the sound of Justin’s voice, Beverly stopped, his knuckles inches from knocking on the door. He’d come here fully expecting to find the room empty and his access to the crate unimpeded. He’d loitered in the hall until Lady Evelyn went down for dinner, and had been just about to enter and relieve her of the crate when one of the guests had seen and hailed him. He’d had no choice but to see what he wanted.

He hoped nothing had happened to the crate in the interim. But it had been only a short while. . . .

The sound of Justin’s voice caught him off guard, and then he realized that
she
was with him, too. He froze, more from surprise than from any real desire to eavesdrop.

He’d never heard that tone in Justin’s voice, one of wonderment and reverence and something more, something hotter and more elemental. It caused him to blush, and he was still blushing when he heard an unmistakable and unwelcome French-accented voice hail him.

“Listening at doors, Mr. Beverly?”

He turned, hoping that a simple, speaking glower would chastise if not completely quiet her. She was standing at the end of the hall, her head tilted to the side, her puff of red hair squatting atop her head like a turban. She’d didn’t look in the least chastised. She looked saucy.

She sashayed her way to his side and thumped on his chest with one stubby finger before waggling it under his nose. “What are you doing here?” she asked in an amused whisper. “Standing outside Miss Evelyn’s room red as the beet and . . . Ah!” Her whisper turned into a gasp as she heard Justin’s muffled voice.

Beverly grabbed her plump arm and hauled her some distance down the hall, only releasing her when he was certain they could not be overheard.

“He— She— They—” Merry stuttered.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he interrupted in disgust. “You are always going to such pains to let every male in the vicinity know that you are an experienced woman, and here you are sputtering like the greenest girl.”

“How dare you question my sophistication?” She drew herself up, the picture of outraged womanhood. He couldn’t help smiling. How many women would see a jaded past as being something worth defending?

“Then stop acting like a peahen. Mr. Powell is the last of his line and, coming from another line that’s been serving his mother’s family for three generations, I tell you quite sincerely that it is a line worth perpetuating.”

Her eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “
Oui, oui,
the line is worth keeping. What of it?”

“He has chosen her. Which I approve. They suit.”

She narrowed her eyes, puckering her mouth.
“Ah . . . and they are . . . suiting, right now? Then your plot has worked?”

“There was never any plot, per se,” he said indignantly, “merely the removal of obstacles and the provision of opportunity.”

“Excellent!” she cackled. “
I
approve, too! As will her mama— Oh!
Mon Dieu
!” Her face fell. She bit her lip. “Her mother may not be so . . . sophisticated as we. I was told to encourage her interest, not procure her for him.”

“I believe things are now well beyond even your ability to affect.”

With sudden continental fatalism, she lifted both shoulders. “
Mais oui.
You are correct. Now,” she tucked her arm through his, “tell me. What more can I do to help our lovebirds?”

With a slight pinching of his nostrils, Beverly disentangled himself from the female’s grip. It would never do to let her know that for one fell instant, he’d felt a little tickle of something—rather like static from wool. She would mistake it for something else. Instead, he said, “You can leave.”

And with that suggestion, he took his own advice and marched proudly away.

Thoughtfully, Merry watched the little butler stalk down the hall. He wasn’t at all her type. He was too old, he was too stiff, and he hated women. She turned in the opposite direction and began walking toward the kitchen, Evelyn and Justin Powell having slipped to the back of her mind.

While she and Buck Newton had had a good time, there wasn’t, well, any
challenge
left in seducing Buck, partially because she strongly suspected the reason he was called “Buck.” Any reasonably attractive—no, honesty compelled her to amend—any reasonably
willing
woman could do the same.

But Beverly—now
that
would be a challenge!

Chapter 20

EVELYN LOOKED INTO the mirror for a long, silent moment. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. I see.”

And she did. But not in her reflection. She saw it in his eyes. Whatever else she knew, or believed, for this night she had no doubt that in Justin Powell’s eyes she was, indeed, a fountain of loveliness.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Beautiful.”

She pirouetted slowly, his hand still lightly on her waist, and encircled his neck with her arms. Everything she knew about herself had collapsed and been rebuilt in the space of a few minutes. The grace of confidence flowed in her movements and glistened in the darkening awareness of her eye.

She robbed him of speech. His glibness had finally run out, replaced by want, simple visceral need so acute it nearly brought him to his knees. Silently, he cupped her face between his hands, her hair tumbling like silk over their backs. He bent and grazed her mouth lightly with his. She was warm, her fragrance rising with her body’s temperature, powdery, elusively sweet, feminine, and provocative.

His loins ached, his arms trembled with his restraint. Want and need weren’t any excuse. She was acting on an impulse, a pull of attraction, on her gratitude to him for telling her what was manifestly clear, that she was beautiful.

But even as he thought these things, he was lifting her, shifting her toward her bed, nearing his perdition. His paradise. He wavered on the cusp of doing the unthinkable, seducing a young, unmarried, innocent woman. But then she raised herself on tiptoe and pulled his head down to hers. She pressed her lips beneath his ear and whispered in a ragged voice, “And I want you.”

Her words ground his scruples to dust and blew them away. Desire coursed like a liquid inferno through his veins and muscles. Seducer? Seduced. The line was blurred. He sank to his knees, his arms tight around her upper thighs, and pressed his lips to the soft swelling curve under her breast, damping the silky velvet nap with his tongue. He heard her inhale, and made one last stab at honor.

“Tell me to stop,” he said hoarsely. “I can. I will. But
you
need to say it. I’m a strong man, Evie, but you undo me. I’m ashamed of how weak I am, how much I would give to have you beneath me, to feel myself buried in you.”

He hoped the crudeness of his words, the images he evoked—images that sent his breath laboring, that thickened his blood—would frighten her. Or entice her. He clasped her hips and pulled her sharply against him, throwing her off balance, so that she needed to catch herself from falling by clutching his shoulders.

“Last chance, Evie. Tell me to go.” He closed his eyes, yearning.

“No.” The word came at once, quavering but certain.

He looked up and met her darkling gaze. His hands slipped around to her back. Fingertips trained to a cracksman’s sensitivity found and within minutes dispatched the dozens of seed pearl buttons. The ribbons on her corset took less time and then, in a fluid movement, he rose, pushing the gown from her shoulders. It dropped in a deep crimson pool about her feet as he peeled the embroidered corset away and threw it to the side.

His body was so hot and tense it felt alien, too hard, too unyielding. He would scare her. So he moved warily, skimming his fingertips along her jaw, through her hair, down her throat, and over her shoulders. He skated a caress along her slight ribcage to the elegant dip of her waist and the gentle flare of her hip. Then, with the backs of his fingers, he followed the swell of her buttocks beneath the taffeta confection of a petticoat to a narrow ribbon that came loose with a single tug. The petticoats followed the dress down, mounding around her pretty calves.

All she wore was a revealing chemise, a pair of lacy drawers with silk ribbons at the calves, a pair of stockings, and—dear God—she still wore shoes. She followed his gaze and, as if aware of the incongruity of them, stepped out of the kid slippers, losing two inches of height in the process.

Abruptly, he felt too big, menacing. He would hurt her. Especially as she was a virgin and he was in all ways a big man. And as he stood, wrestling with the issue, she reached out, and clasped his shirt’s placket.

“It seems only fair.” She tugged at the buttons.

In amazed gratitude, he shrugged out of his coat and dropped it, tore open his dress shirt, and flung it after. Then he stood, waiting. Except for the tacit knowledge that he could physically do whatever needed to be done, he’d never thought much about his body. But now he suddenly wondered what he saw in her wide-eyed gaze. Approval? Fear? Was he too big? Too ungainly?

He waited, counting an eternity of heartbeats while she simply looked at him. He prayed for her to touch him, and as if in answer to his silent entreaty, her hand rose, suspended an inch from his flesh. The anticipation would kill him.

“Careful,” he advised hoarsely

“I don’t want to be careful.”

“Why do you have to be so damned argumentat—ah!” She touched him. Her fingers played across his chest with winsome lightness, twining gingerly in the dark whorls of hair. She looked up at him, a little breathless, a little exultant, divinely female. “You like it when I touch you. You liked it in the wine cellar. You like it now.”

“Like?”
He took a step nearer, and she retreated before whatever she read in his eyes, at last yielding to common sense. Too late.

“Evie,” he said in a low, harsh voice. “I’d commit hideous crimes for your touch.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” she murmured, reaching automatically for her collar and discovering instead her nakedness. A blush flooded her delicate skin. He could see the color blooming, even under the sheer silk of her undergarments.

“Why not?” He took another step forward; she countered with another step back. Her thighs bumped into the bed.

“It sounds wicked.”

“It is. Blasphemous. Excessive. True.”

She turned her head away, the color deepening in her cheeks, and he knew that she was searching for words to stop him, to tell him that she’d changed her mind. He couldn’t allow that.

He swept her into his arms and toppled her back onto the bed, following her down, kissing her deeply, his tongue delving into her warm, moist mouth. A demanding growl vibrated through him. In answer, Evelyn opened her mouth wider, wantonly, hungrily, completely forgetting her former reluctance.

Suddenly, he pushed himself up on his forearms, breaking their kiss. She stared up at him, braced above her on trembling arms, the glorious, muscular planes of his chest glinting in the gaslight, the sound of his breath a rushing locomotive.