She smiled and inclined her head back, happiness and that sense of achievement welling and melding.
A little later, when the last dishes were being removed, she caught the begum’s disgruntled eye, and using hand signals, instructed her hostess in how to call the ladies to order and lead them back to the drawing room. The begum bestirred herself enough to be interested, and under her husband’s benevolent gaze, performed the task with aplomb.
Following her from the room, Emily decided that, strange though it was, with any luck at all, they would weather the evening well.
At the end of the evening, the bey insisted the captain see them back to the guesthouse. When they reached the gate in the wall, Gareth turned to find the captain bowing respectfully.
“The bey is pleased.” Straightening, the captain pointed to two figures lounging in the shadows, one at each end of the street. “Throughout the rest of your stay, we will keep watch.”
Gareth met his eyes, nodded. “Thank you-and our thanks to His Excellency.”
The captain almost smiled.
Opening the gate, Gareth followed Emily in, then turned. The captain saluted and walked off. Closing the gate, Gareth heard his footsteps march up the silent street.
Following Emily across the shadow-strewn courtyard, Gareth searched, and found Mullins keeping watch in one corner. Given the late hour, everyone else would long be asleep. The old soldier snapped off a salute. Raising a hand in reply, Gareth continued on into the house.
He would see Emily safely upstairs, and then, as he didn’t feel the least sleepy, perhaps spell Mullins. But first…
Halting in the gloom, he focused on Emily. “You did very well this evening.”
Of necessity he’d been forced to let her take point. He hadn’t liked it, hadn’t liked sitting back and watching her walk such a potentially dangerous diplomatic line, but she’d kept her balance, her poise, throughout.
When she turned and, wide-eyed, looked at him through the pervasive dark, he added, “You gave the bey exactly what he wanted without revealing anything he didn’t need to know.”
He saw her lips curve, caught the flash of white teeth as she smiled. “I enjoyed the challenge.” Slowly, she came toward him. “It helped that they all thought we were man and wife.”
True, but it hadn’t helped him, not when he’d had to listen to the other men comment appreciatively, and then compliment him on having secured such a prize.
She was a prize on many levels-just not his.
The recollection had distracted him. He refocused, to find her much closer-too close. His blood beat just a little harder through his veins; his attention locked on her, captured, captive. Unwilling to break free, even less willing to let go.
Halting a mere inch away, she raised a hand, closed her fingers in his lapel, then tipped her face up to his.
Her eyes caught, trapped, his. For an instant silence stretched, then she murmured, voice siren-low, lips gently curved, “Your reading of my attraction to you as being danger-induced desire…” Her gaze lowered to his lips. Her tongue came out, the tip sweeping her lower lip, then she lifted her gaze to his eyes. “Did it occur to you that you might be wrong?”
Wrong? It took a moment for his mind, distracted by other things, to make sense of what she was suggesting. Trying to see where she was heading, and why, he started to frown.
Emily mentally threw her hands in the air and gave up trying to find the words-the right words to explain just how inaccurate his reading of her motives had been. Was. She’d always believed actions spoke much louder than words. Sliding her hand from his chest over his shoulder to his nape, she stretched up as she drew his head down, and kissed him.
Pressed her lips to his, not in persuasion but in confident expectation. They’d just spent the evening playing husband and wife-effortlessly, seamlessly, convincingly. Surely, he must now see there was only one way that could be, only one reason she had performed the charade so consummately.
She kissed him, moved her lips on his, and let all she knew, all she believed, all she felt well and pour through her. To lead her, free her, and free him.
Lure him.
She parted her lips and welcomed him in, thrilled when he came, when his hands tightened about her waist and he took-took over the kiss, sank into her mouth, and gave her all she asked for. All she wanted.
Him.
In the unfettered dark, in the silence of the night.
The kiss spun out, deepening, broadening, their senses reaching, spreading, searching.
Wanting.
She tipped her head back on a gasp. Her cloak slid from her shoulders as she wound her arms about his neck. As his hands closed about her breasts. Possessively. Passionately.
He kneaded and she moaned, then struggled to mute the sounds he drew from her as he bent his head and set his lips to her throat as his hands worked their magic and she melted.
He shifted, moved, steered her back, guided her until her back met the wall beside the door. He pinned her there and let his hands roam, and she grew hotter, needier, more wanton.
She reveled in the sensations, then he murmured something dark, tugged her suddenly loosened bodice down, exposing one breast, then he bent his head and set his mouth to her flesh and she cried out.
Breathlessly.
Achingly desperately.
The evocative sound shivered through the night. It sank like so many daggers into his psyche, each tipped with need and longing.
Gareth longed. Through all the heat, the welling urgency, above all else he longed to have her. But that have was no longer a simple verb. A possessive one, yes, but it encompassed so much more.
There was so much more he wanted of her. With her.
For her, and for him.
With her supple body in his arms, her soft skin beneath his lips, the taste of her wreathing through his mind, he could think of nothing more, knew nothing beyond that want, that need, that longing.
The soft mounds of her breasts, firm and swollen under his hands, the aureolas tight and puckered, drew him. He bent his head and feasted. Devoured.
She clung, the soft sounds that fell from her lips urging him on, stirring him deeply, ever more provocatively, on a primal level only she had ever breached.
His mouth on her breast, he reached down, caught one of her knees and raised her leg, crooked it around his thigh. Lifting his head, he found her lips, covered them with his as he traced her leg upward, then through the layers of her skirts cupped her bottom.
She gasped as he gripped, then eased his hold and traced. The kiss turned greedy, hungry, then incendiary as he caressed, then kneaded.
The potent mix of hunger, desire, and passion, of escalating need, wouldn’t be denied. She clung and pressed it all upon him, until it filled him as it did her.
Releasing her bottom, he reached around and back, and found her ankle. Slid his hand upward from there, skating beneath her skirts and petticoats, skimming her stockinged calf, slipping higher still to pause and trace the frilly lace garter circling her thigh above her knee, then he reached higher.
Found and traced the outer planes of her thigh, gripped her bottom again, but this time skin to skin. Felt her tighten her arms about his neck, rise in his hold, then settle more firmly in his hand. Tipping her hips toward him, wordlessly offering.
He inwardly swore, but it was far too late to rein in his raging need.
His questing fingers slid over the locked muscle of her thigh, and slid inward. Exploring, seeking. Searching.
Finding.
Her slick swollen flesh slid like silk against his fingertips. He stroked, caressed, circled her tight entrance. Pressed lightly in.
She kissed him ferociously, then arched in his arms, helplessly begging.
