Winning the Wallflower: A Novella (5 page)

The very sight of her made his chest ache. And other parts of him ached as well.

“You’re really not very talkative,” she said with a sigh. “Well, I suppose we should return to the ballroom. My mother might conclude that you were trying to compromise me.”

He could do that. The very idea sent a raw pang of hunger through him. If he threw away everything that made him a gentleman . . . He could compromise her and then he would not lose her.

“That was a joke,” she explained with a little shrug. “There’s a limit to the amount of humiliation one woman should have to undergo in one evening, don’t you think? Goodbye, Mr. Ravensthorpe.” She curtsied.

If there was one thing that Cyrus was proud of, it was that after leaving school he never, ever breached the rules of civil behavior. No matter how despicable his cousin became (to take the thing that most tested his limit), he never lost control.

And that self-control meant that he had never touched a gentlewoman in any sort of intimate fashion. For good reason: he’d been so busy making a fortune that he hadn’t bothered with activities that brought gentlewomen into his reach.

“I don’t think you’re attractive,” he said, his voice grating a little.

Her lip trembled, but she nodded and said in a toneless voice, “Well, I suppose that you—”

He reached out and hauled her into his arms, a fragrant, yielding bundle of womanhood, and then glared down at her. “ ‘Attractive’ is a word one uses to talk about a new curricle, or a maiden aunt.”

She said nothing, just blinked up at him.

His arm tightened around her waist, pulling her even closer to his body. “You’re not merely attractive, you’re lovely. Like a flower, but one with thorns.”

His voice had turned husky. That was a tone a gentleman wasn’t supposed to use around a lady. He gave up on words, bent his head, and kissed her. It wasn’t the kind of kiss one gives a maiden, either. He didn’t gently brush her lips, coax her to open them, introduce her with finesse and courtesy to the pleasure of open-mouthed kisses.

Instead he dove inside, a hungry, take-no-prisoners kiss. A kiss that came from some deep place that had grown more and more frustrated in the last minutes, as he’d listened to her disparage herself when she was perfect . . . absolutely perfect.

When he had chosen Lucy, he noted her height with approval, but he hadn’t thought about what it implied. It meant that she fit into his arms as if she’d been made to measure. He needn’t drop his chin to an awkward angle, or hunch his back, or lift her up against his chest. He merely pulled her against his body and there they were, like two puzzle pieces, his hardness pressing into the giving softness between her legs.

The growl that came from his lips was an utter surprise. But he was lost now, his control snapped, gone like a straw in a windstorm.

Lucy’s lips tasted faintly of lemonade and woman. Even in his madness, Cyrus registered that the fiancée who had just ended their betrothal was kissing him back, her lips trembling, even meeting his tongue with her own: sweet, shy . . . distinctly desirous.

Cyrus was in the grip of a heady, purely sexual response. He groaned, far back in his throat, and pulled her to him even more tightly, letting his hands roam. She had narrow, patrician shoulders, he discovered, and slender arms with just a touch of muscle. “Do you ride?” he growled, tearing his mouth away from hers.

His desire leapt even higher as he looked at her face. Her lips were rosy, her eyes a little dazed.

“Yes, every morning,” she said, putting a hand to his cheek. “I can feel your beard growing.”

Cyrus stilled. He had his father’s dark, thick hair, and he shaved at least twice a day. Even so, by this hour in the evening he often had a shadowed darkness on his jaw. His facial hair was one of the ways his cousin had baited him.

But Lucy obviously didn’t share the duke’s disdain. Her eyes were bright and excited, and he could feel her fingers tremble on his cheek. “It makes you look quite rakish,” she whispered. “Dangerous.”

“You were right,” he said hoarsely. “I
didn’t
notice your figure. I merely decided that it was acceptable.”

Her fingers stilled on his face.

He pushed her away from him and deliberately—scandalously—let his hands slip from her shoulders down the front of her gown, curving around the soft curves of her breasts. Lucy let out a little gasp but didn’t break his gaze. “I see you now.” His hands tightened until he could feel small, taut nipples through her chemise and gown.

“And now that I see you,” he said, his voice dropping a register, “I find you absolutely . . .
acceptable
in every way.” He gave that word an intonation that revealed just how much he wanted her.

A strand of hair fell by her cheek, and all of a sudden Cyrus had an image of Lucy—
his
Lucy—lying on a bed waiting for him, all that sun-bright hair tousled around her shoulders, her eyes soft with anticipation, her body barely covered by a few pieces of silk. He would buy her silk, in the same color as her lips.

His entire body roared with sexual anticipation. “Bloody hell,” he said slowly. “I can hardly believe that I didn’t look at you clearly. What a fool.”

A small smile touched her lips and he almost—almost!—asked her whether it was too late, but he had made it a rule never to ask for anything that made him vulnerable. Instead, he kissed her again.

And once again he felt a note of deep satisfaction at the way she fit against him . . . but satisfaction was quickly swamped by potent, roaring desire. He hadn’t felt this way for years, not since he embarked on his plan and relegated sexual need to the place it belonged, in the background.

He didn’t consider himself a sensuous man. Sex was a necessary pleasure, one that could be fit into moments that weren’t filled with more enthralling pursuits, such as calculating to a hairbreadth exactly when to buy or sell a company, the very moment to play the markets in order to influence currency.

But now desire and possessiveness and lust were hitting him at once, making him tighten his hold on Lucy, crushing her breasts against his chest, desperately searching her mouth for the answer to a question he hadn’t asked.

L
ucy felt as if she were in the grip of a storm and the only solid point in her world was Cyrus. Her senses reeled with the taste of him, wild and free, like the wind and spice. He was kissing her with that sort of fierce piratical abandon she had always imagined.

The depressing part was that even though her knees were trembling and her body felt feverish and distinctly unladylike, it wasn’t enough.

All that daydreaming . . . and she’d missed the point. She hadn’t understood her own fantasy. It wasn’t important that the pirate king clutched his lady to his chest and kissed her. What mattered was the way the pirate
looked
at his beloved.

Cyrus’s eyes glittered, more like black than green. She could see the desire in his eyes, feel it in the hot throb of his body against hers. He bent his head and his mouth slid from her mouth down the line of her jaw . . . and still he held her tightly against him.

She had hungered for Cyrus from the moment she saw him, though she hadn’t known enough to understand the emotion. And now he craved her. Desire felt like a burning force that bound the two of them together, that made her ache in every spot where his muscled heat touched her and his body was touching hers in every place that mattered.

But it wasn’t enough. The irony was pointed, given that she entered the room with a scheme to keep him based on nothing but his physical beauty, and now, even though she could have him—she didn’t want him.

Desire only highlighted what was missing between them. The truth burned in the back of her throat, like tears that she could never shed. She wanted loyalty, respect. And genuine liking. She wanted him to look at
her,
and for her to see more in his eyes than lust.

Curse words that she had never spoken aloud ran through her head.

She could not allow herself to be compromised by Cyrus. Not for this. It would break her heart, all this fire and lust without something warmer behind it. She was already half in love with him, with his severity, the intelligence in his eyes, the utter restraint in his body . . . and now, the hunger in his caresses.

He would break her heart, because he hadn’t even known her name a few minutes ago, and now he was kissing her as if he cared.

He didn’t. He couldn’t.

The thought was enough to make a drop of sanity penetrate the warmth of his body, the incantatory way his hands were spread on her back, just above the flare of her hips.

She pulled back, caught a glimpse of his raw beauty once again, and had to swallow a pulse of pure desire.

“Cyrus,” she said, stepping free. But her voice came out like an aching, husky murmur. His eyes flared and he reached out for her again. “No,” she breathed.

“Yes,”
he growled.

Finally, his voice was the opposite of indifferent; it was warm and hungry. But there was nothing vulnerable about his face: how could there be? One was only vulnerable to someone one cared for.

Who would have thought that desire could feel so empty? Perhaps she should throw her instincts aside and allow herself to be compromised. Any moment Lady Summers would return, or Olivia would appear . . .

No. Even now he didn’t really care who she was. She knew perfectly well that he gave her that kiss because he felt sorry for her, because she was a wallflower. It had turned to something else when she was in his arms . . . but it didn’t turn to affection. It couldn’t.

“My parents do feel our betrothal is at an end,” she managed.

His hands slid from her shoulders. “Of course.”

She took a deep breath. “I shall be absolutely honest.”

“Why do I feel that it is your normal state?” There was a curl of teasing humor in his voice that made her feel feverish. She would give anything to stay with him, to see that face every morning, to hear him . . .
No
.

“I had planned to compromise you,” she said, offering up the truth with a twist of embarrassment curling in her stomach. “I had planned to lunge at you in front of an audience, and kiss you, and then you would have to marry me.”

The smile that curled those lips was probably outlawed in some countries. “Really?” he said, the word sleepy . . . hungry. “Do you want to practice? We don’t want to seem awkward in front of our audience.”

She swallowed. “No,” she whispered. “I know—I see that you desire me, and I can’t tell you how much that means to me. No one has ever looked at me this way, or wanted to kiss me.”

“They didn’t look carefully,” he broke in, his voice grating. “Believe me, I was as shortsighted and stupid as the rest of them. If any man out there had really looked at you, he would have pursued you like a madman.”

“I find that hard to imagine,” she said, a bit wistfully.

“I see you now.” His voice roughened.

That helped. She took a deep breath. “We see each other, then.”

There wasn’t even a touch of shame or apology in his face. “You needed to know.”

The new tension—desire—leapt between them like a taut wire. Even though she was feeling it for the first time, she still knew it. But desire wouldn’t carry a marriage. He had probably felt it for other women, more beautiful women.

He saw the truth in her eyes, even as she stepped back. “You’re still breaking the betrothal,” he said, voice flat.

“I have to find a husband who cares more than you do,” she said haltingly. “I never knew I could be so selfish, but it would appear I am.”

Cyrus had gone silent again, and the terrible distance in his eyes that she hated returned.

Her voice was a little shaky. “I probably don’t . . . won’t find—”

“I think you can probably find whatever you want.”

She nodded jerkily. “Of course, a fortune changes everything. I know that.”

“I didn’t mean the fortune.” But he didn’t explain, just looked at her from under brooding eyebrows. “So what do you want in a husband?”

“Someone who wants to talk to me, who asks my name without being prompted. Who . . .” She hesitated. “Who even loves me, perhaps a little bit.” As the words left her mouth, she could not believe that she was turning down
this
man. From the moment someone had pointed out a Mr. Ravensthorpe, two months ago now, she had longed for him. Lusted for him, if the truth be told.

And now she was rejecting him. It was unbelievable. A part of her was screaming, telling her that she could make him love her once they were married, over the breakfast table, or in the bedroom . . .

But a stronger, clearer voice was pointing out that he would likely never fall in love with her. Oh, he lusted after her. But she could not spend her life yearning for something he wouldn’t give her.

It would break her heart. It would break
her
.

The sentence fell from her mouth without her bidding. “I know that love does not always accompany a wedding, and indeed, affection grows with time, but I think—”