her free to revisit her doubts, her choice in inviting him here. He had thought to take her upstairs, now he opted for the terrace, fresh air and starlight.
She fanned her cheeks with her hand and gave a little laugh once they were outside. ‘I fear I’ve broken one of the cardinal rules of socialising.’
Nicholas gave her a slow smile, enjoying the flush of her cheeks. ‘What rule is that?’
‘The one where I’m supposed to let the man do all the talking. More to the point, I’m supposed to let him talk about himself through skilfully questioning him and drawing him out. It’s the first rule a débutante learns. If a girl can’t flirt, at least she can listen.’
Nicholas threw back his head and laughed up into the night sky. Her candour was absolutely refreshing in the most surprising of ways. ‘Hardly! I enjoyed your stories. I think this is one of the most enjoyable evenings I’ve had in years.’
‘Isn’t it, though?’ The sharp stab of cynicism brought Nick up short. She was watching him, her moss-green eyes narrowed in contemplation. The entire spell had come unravelled. He would have to weave a new one now from whole cloth.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Nick feigned a quizzical look, although he knew very well what she was asking. If she was going to be so bold, she’d have to own to it.
‘You know what I mean. Dinner, the stories—it was all meant to draw me out. I think it was very clever of you to use a simple débutante’s trick against me.’
She was far smarter than his usual client or else far less pliant. This was going to be a challenge. She had all but accused him of feeding her a generic line. Nick reached for her hand, tracing idle circles on the back of it. ‘Trick is a harsh word, Annorah. What makes you so sure it was a ploy rather than the truth? You’re a very enjoyable woman to be with.’
It was true. He’d liked watching her come alive as she told her stories, as she talked of her childhood. It was a childhood not unlike his own and he glimpsed wildness in her as she spoke. It was a wildness well contained and it made him wonder what had happened to see such a commodity so carefully fenced and penned. He wondered, too, what it would be like to see that commodity unleashed, the fences down.
‘I’m a very suspicious woman to be with,’ she rephrased. ‘Especially when it comes to someone taking an instant liking to me.’
That someone being male, Nick would wager. There was hurt behind her words. Omitted parts of the story told over dinner were starting to emerge. ‘Some people have a natural affinity for one another, do you doubt it?’
Annorah gave him a look that practically shouted her opinion on the subject. ‘Some, perhaps. Not all. Not most.’
She was challenging a lot of his assumptions tonight. He’d not expected his country conquest to be a prickly, worldly, beauty. He’d expected this to be easy. He could see it was not going to be that way. For a while at dinner she’d forgotten all that. He could make her forget again, but he was going to have to work for it.
Nick raised her hand to his lips and took a deductive stab in the dark. ‘I’m not a fortune hunter, Annorah. I’m safe and you’re safe with me. I’m not most.’
She shook her head. ‘I invited you here to fill my head with flattery that I knew would be false from the start. You might be worse, I think—’
‘Then don’t think,’ Nick interrupted swiftly. Her thoughts were not headed in a direction conducive to romance. He cupped her cheek, running a gentle thumb down the line of her jaw. ‘You didn’t bring me here to think. You brought me here for pleasure.’ He began to intersperse his words with kisses, starting at her jaw and moving to the slim column of her throat. ‘There’s no shame in pleasure, Annorah, no dishonour in desiring it. Pleasure is a human enough condition.’ His mouth was at the base of her throat, his lips over the pulse beat. She was starting to melt again. He caressed her with words, with kisses, feeling her body come alive as he intended.
He took her mouth then in a decadent dance of a kiss. Slow and savouring, his lips were in no hurry to leave hers and there was languorous exploration; there was tasting and teasing, duelling and heat. He brought her against him, letting her feel the planes of his body, hard and sure through his clothes. The press of his hand at her back urged her closer, coaxing her to meld into him, convincing her this was heaven and earth all in one.
Nick knew the moment he had compliance. Her arms went about his neck, she arched her head back and he murmured against her exposed throat. He asked once more, in husky tones redolent with desire, ‘Come with me.’
This time she came. He was careful to maintain contact, careful to keep her hand surrounded by the warm, comforting grip of his. It should have worked and it did up to a point. It worked all the way up the stairs, down the hall to the third door on the right, which he knew to be her room, and then it stopped working. For her at least.
His body was surprisingly primed for what should lie ahead. There would be no need for his usual ‘assists’, as he liked to call them. It was no small matter to call up stimulation at a whim. But tonight it had been easy, the only thing that had been, in fact. From the moment he’d seen her in the delectable lavender chiffon with its high waist and low-cut bodice gathered beneath her breasts with ribbons designed to maximise the effects of its cleavage, he’d had no problems in that regard. The gown fit her curves to perfection as had the candlelight, although she had not flaunted it as one of his London women would have.
He reached for the door handle, ready to usher her inside and follow, but she stalled him, her hand covering his, her eyes honest and perhaps a little sad when they met his. ‘I’m sorry, Nicholas. I don’t think I can tonight.’
He smiled softly and placed a kiss on her cheek. ‘Perhaps I could convince you. A massage by candlelight, perhaps? We have all night, we can go slowly.’ It would be a delight to linger with her, no fears of angry husbands bursting through the doors.
‘No,’ she said more firmly, stepping away from him to establish distance. ‘You’re a very attractive man, Nicholas D’Arcy, but you are still something of a stranger. I think anything else we do tonight would be nothing more than a mistake. I, for one, would rather wait and hope for better.’
She turned the knob and slipped inside, leaving him alone in the hall uncomfortably aroused and wondering how was he going to turn off what she had so unwittingly turned on. When he’d contemplated this evening earlier in his chambers and laid his strategy, he’d never envisioned he’d be spending it with only his own hand.
But here he was, aroused both physically and mentally. Nicholas undressed, not bothering with nightclothes or a light. With any luck he’d find relief and then sleep shortly afterwards. He lay down on the bed and took himself in a loose fist, running his hand the length of his cock in long fluid motions, starting slow and then increasing his speed as his need grew. It didn’t take long. He hadn’t thought it would and he did feel a measure of relief when it was over, but only a measure. He reached for a towel and waited for sleep to follow.
His mind would not cooperate. There in the darkness, his brain was alive with thoughts, darting here and there on tangents and considerations, all of them on the same subject: Miss Annorah Price-Ellis. Had she gone to bed unsatisfied as well? Even now was she rethinking her choice? She had not been immune to him. Had she gone to bed, too, forced to find her own satisfaction? Now that would be a perverse irony indeed, to have them both just doors away, pleasuring themselves instead of each other. It would have Channing and the boys in stitches if they knew. He would never live it down.
Neither would he live down her comments in the hall. A mistake? She would wait and hope for better? Those were two things a woman never thought about sex with him. Nick fluffed his pillow and rolled to his side in search of a more conducive position for sleep. But it turned out to only be conducive to further examining the wonder that had struck him earlier. What had happened to tamp down her wildness?
He felt a surprising affinity for Annorah Price-Ellis. Her stories had struck a chord of memory in him. He, too, had such memories of country