The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,92

said it. And yet . . . she instantly found herself. “Your meaning was clear.”

“Apparently it wasn’t,” he said dryly. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, offended and calling me out for some imagined slight.”

“This is no imagined slight, Charles!” she cried, her voice climbing, and she briefly closed her eyes, fighting to get control of her rapidly spiraling resentment and outrage. “This is a very real affront,” she said, this time calm and quiet in that delivery.

“Because I cannot have a club of my own.”

The fact that his wasn’t even a question only added to the rage threatening to simmer over once more. “It is a society,” Emma gritted out.

He smiled. “Well, there you are. They are different, after all.”

At that poorly timed jest, she narrowed her eyes. Why, he thought he could simply charm away their conflict. He must have seen something, however, for his grin faded.

Charles took a step toward her. “Emma, I am sorry if you misunderstood, but I didn’t promise to disband my club.” She backed away from him, lest he attempted to weave more of his sorcerer’s magic over her.

“You only started this to goad me, Charles.”

Something flashed in his eyes. “It may have begun as one thing, Emma.” And he continued forward once more, refusing to allow her the physical barrier of space. Well, she’d be damned if she retreated any more. Emma dug in her heels and locked her feet to the floor. Charles stopped with only a pace between them; he roved his eyes over her face, and then his fingers came up in a distracted caress of her chin. “But my reasons for establishing my club? They have since changed.”

Frustration pulled an exasperated sound from her lips. He expected her to believe that his motives were honorable. “I want you to stop.”

Charles immediately let his hand drop.

“I mean poaching my members, plagiarizing my meetings, Charles,” she clarified.

His knuckles came up once more. “So I can touch you?”

A pained laugh escaped her, only to die a moment later as he tenderly cupped her cheek; all the while, the tips of his fingers resumed the caress he’d previously abandoned.

And something shifted in that moment.

Passion flared to life, hovering in the air around them, the fans of it deepening by the slightest touch, one that somehow still managed to conjure all the wanton moments that had been born in this very room, and at the hand of this man who now stroked her cheek.

And Emma turned into his touch, angling in a way so that she leaned into him, wordlessly, silently, and secretly wanting more of him.

Why does it need to be a secret? Why was it wrong for a woman to find pleasure when and where she wanted, while men were afforded the luxury of assuaging their needs without any explanation needed? Free to feel.

I want to feel . . .

“You should go,” he said hoarsely.

“Why?” she asked curiously.

“Because this time”—his already low baritone dipped, emerging a shade deeper with a passion she recognized—“this time, I want to make love to you in every sense of the word.”

“So you’ll send me away . . . ?”

“It is the right thing to do.” And there was a faint entreating quality to that admission.

Emma studied the sharply beautiful planes of his face, each chiseled contour tight and tense. The corners of his perfectly formed lips white from the manner in which he clenched his mouth.

Now he would show principles. Now, when she didn’t want him to. But then Charles had always proven contrary, wanting her only after she had left him.

Charles made to draw away once more, but this time, Emma quickly caught his hand and kept it there, pressed against her cheek, and then, curving her palm over the top of his hand, she guided it lower. She directed him lower, leading his touch to where she wanted it, pressing it against the bodice of her low-cut gown, the vast expanse of exposed flesh bare against his naked fingers.

He groaned. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Emma. You’re playing with fire.”

Yes, she was. And for the first time, she wanted to be burnt by it. She wanted to be consumed in a conflagration of passion, coaxed by his touch. “What if I said I wanted you to do . . . more of those things to me? All of them.”

Charles’s gaze locked with hers, and she braced for his continued moral resistance. But then he took her mouth under his, in this, her first