The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,54
about her, Emma’s sharp features were a study of concentration. “No, I have not.”
He waited for her to say more.
Alas, he could have kept waiting until Boney was revived from the dead and made the march on back to Corsica.
Very well. Charles sighed. He knew why she’d come. What her visit here was about. “You were angry at my seeking out your father. I promised to no longer do so, and I’ve not. Your father paid me a . . .”
Her lashes swept low, her eyes forming narrow pinpricks. So she’d not known, and he’d said too much.
“You didn’t come to see me.” Sadness stole the previously spirited glimmer from her eyes. “Let us be clear. Every time you called, you came to my father.”
“Is that what it was about?” he asked quietly, that possibility sinking in. After all, she was a founding member of a women’s society where ladies came together, demanding more of a place in a world so determined to prevent such a reality for them. “Had I gone to you that first time,” he murmured, “would your answer have been different?”
“No,” she said, so softly, her reply so confident, so assured . . . so . . . automatic, his face heated for a second time that night.
Emma resumed her stroll, and no, he’d not imagined it. Her steps were slightly unsteady, and as he released his sheet and shoved a leg into one of the holes of his trousers, he peered at her. Periodically, as she went, she shot out a hand to steady herself. And that uneven gait was why she occasionally gripped items about his chambers: the bed poster. His desk. He glanced down at her heeled shoes, and when he returned his focus to her face, he found her eyes upon him.
Adjusting the front falls of his trousers, he started across the room, and stopped before her.
A few inches shy of Charles’s six feet two inches, Emma was taller than most men and any woman he’d ever known. And yet, even as all she needed to do was tilt her neck back a fraction to meet his eyes, her gaze did not meet his, but lingered instead upon his bare chest.
And close as he was, he not only saw that but heard the rhythmic movement of her swallow.
And he reveled in it. Finding himself, once more.
Charles brushed two fingers down the curve of her cheek, exploring those angular planes that had come to be an endless source of fascination for him.
Her breath again hitched, and she raised her gaze to his.
He lowered his mouth close to the shell of her right ear. “So then why are you here, Emma?” Though he wished to know that answer, he’d no regrets at her being here. Alone, with him, in this moment. “Why have you come?” He whispered the question, arranging those words in a different way.
Her body curved into his. Her flaxen eyelashes dipped a fraction, and he exulted in the telltale evidence of her desire for him. That triumph proved short-lived.
“Why . . . why . . . ?” Emma widened her eyes. “Never say you’re trying to seduce me?” She burst out laughing.
And he was so distracted by the sound of her laugh, full and bold and husky, seductive in sound, and so very different from when she’d laughed that day in Hyde Park, that it took a moment for it to sink in.
He bristled. “Are you laughing at me?”
“Y-y-yes,” she stammered, her mirth doubling, and this time she bent over and promptly lost her balance, landing on her knees.
Charles’s frown deepened. Oh, well, this was really enough.
Still, her amusement didn’t let up. She dabbed the tears of hilarity streaming from the corners of her eyes, and using her palm to leverage herself from the floor, she attempted to get to her feet.
Charles was immediately there. Leaning down, he swept an arm about her waist, and the other under her knees, effectively killing her mirth, as it ended on a shuddery gasp. He made to release her; sliding her body slowly down his frame, Charles set her back on her feet.
Emma pressed her hands against his bare chest . . . as if to push him away? And yet ever so slowly, her fingers unfolded, as soft as a butterfly’s caress, upon him, curling and uncurling in the whorls of hair that matted his chest.
His heart pounded hard, his hunger for her blazing all the stronger.