Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,105

the last word she’d spoken to him since he’d helped her into the carriage.

He missed talking to her. Because people didn’t speak to him. Oh, his sister did. But the world on the whole did not. People put questions to him. Favors. But they didn’t speak with him about life and poetry and love and… and he was going to miss it. He already did.

Arms laden with a silver serving tray, he entered the parlor. Doing a sweep of the room, he found her with her back to the door. Her notebooks and sketchpads lay scattered about her, one resting on her lap, but her gaze remained directed at the window.

Reaching her side, Tynan set the tray on the table beside her, the cups and plates clattering slightly, and still Faye didn’t so much as look away from whatever thoughts so commanded her.

“Refreshments, my lady?”

She turned her head, blinking slowly as if she’d just realized someone had entered the room, as if she’d just realized it was him.

“Tynan,” she said softly.

“I take it the meeting did not go as you’d planned,” he remarked, claiming the seat beside her.

Faye rested her chin atop her knees and rubbed back and forth distractedly. “Oh, no. It was quite elucidating… and helpful.” She stopped that movement and held his gaze. “She’s offered to make inquiries about everything Oswyn revealed and share what she discovers with me.”

“And this is not good?” he asked slowly, trying to make sense of a response that did not make sense.

“Oh, no. It is wonderful,” she murmured, directing her gaze at the window once more. The moon’s beam sent a bright light through the windowpanes, bathing her ethereal face in a soft light.

Tynan shook his head. “I don’t understand, Faye. Did something happen?”

“Tomorrow is the end, Tynan,” she whispered, her voice breaking.

He froze.

Yes, that was what he’d agreed to give her. Seven days. And now that time was up, and he was free to go.

“It was always going to, Faye,” he said gently, even as his own lungs were making it a chore to get a painless breath through.

Then, in one fluid move, she stood and started over, gliding as she went, a siren’s sway to her hips. She rested her palms on his chest. “I want you to make love to me…”

Once more.

The request hung unfinished on her sultry contralto. Stretching up on tiptoe, she kissed him.

“Faye,” he whispered hoarsely when her lips left his. “I—”

She erased that feeble protest with her mouth, sliding her tongue against his.

“I want you to make love to me,” she whispered. “One more time.”

One more time. Before he left and before she went on her way to live in a world he would be forever removed from. His eyes slid closed, and he gave thanks for being the immoral bastard the world took him for, for that allowed him to forget the vow he’d made about not dallying with innocent women.

“Far be it from me to deny my ladyship’s requests,” he breathed between each meeting of their lips.

“Hurry,” she urged, and with a franticness to her movements, she wrestled with the neat row of buttons down the front of his jacket. Undoing them quickly, she helped free him from the garment. Together, they tugged his shirt over his head and tossed it onto the floor beside them.

With one hand, he was already dragging her skirts up. In the other, he caught her smaller wrists and raised them above her head, pinning them there as he pressed Faye against the wall.

Freeing her breasts, Tynan lowered his head and sucked deep of a pebbled brown peak, turgid from the cold and her desire.

She writhed and twisted, keening softly.

“Shh,” he urged, alternately flicking his tongue over the bud and suckling her. “Not a sound lest you’d have us discovered. Unless you’d like that,” he tempted with that wicked conjuring.

“Mmm,” she moaned.

He released her arms so quickly her limbs fell useless to her sides, and he slid to his knees, determined to worship her as the goddess she was. He pushed her gown up about her waist. “Open for me,” he ordered. Needlessly. She’d already let her legs fall wide, and he turned his attentions on that dark thatch of curls, already damp with her desire.

He teased a finger along her slit.

“I love how wet you always are for me,” he praised.

“Tynan,” she begged, lifting into his touch. Dragging her skirts up, he buried his face between her legs.

Panting, Faye slumped against the wall and let her