An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,60
arched up to him, she pulled him closer. There was no mistaking what she wanted. “I want you inside me, Wes.”
He wanted that, too. Desperately. Achingly. He was hard and throbbing for her and she was ready and willing.
“I can’t,” he said, rolling to the side but still holding her. She was breathing hard in the silence.
“Cannot or will not?” Beatrice asked in a small voice because they could both feel that he certainly could. If he wanted.
Dalton turned to face her. He gently pushed a strand of hair away from her face and let his hand rest possessively on her waist.
“When we do this, I want it to mean something, Beatrice.”
“Oh,” she replied in a small voice that slayed him.
He was laying himself bare to her. Removing his armor. Setting down his sword. And she only said “oh.”
He felt that pang in his chest again, only this time it felt more like a knife than an extra hard beat of his heart.
“I can’t promise you daytime things,” she said. “I can’t promise you lifetime things. But at night . . . Dalton, I can be yours.”
“Can’t promise me or can’t promise anyone?”
“If there’s anyone it’s you. But I want my freedom. I won’t be owned again.”
He understood. This thing between them was too fragile and tenuous to be speaking of forever bonds. But something had been missing from his life and he had a hunch it was her and what they could possibly share together if things between them went a little further than an after-hours romp in a department store display bed.
“Can I try to change your mind?”
“You can try,” she said, and he saw her smile in the dim light. “I hope you do. Especially if it involves more of what we just did.”
He pressed a kiss on her lips and said, “Challenge accepted.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Dalton’s Department Store
Tonight they were in his office. Beatrice was perched upon his desk, looking remarkably at home in the space. They had nicked a bottle of champagne from the wine department, along with two crystal flutes from housewares.
“I brought you a gift,” Dalton said, extending a box wrapped in a gorgeous pink ribbon. Wooing meant gifts. Flowers. Trinkets. Tokens of affection. But what did a man get for the woman who had everything, and could have anything she wanted?
The one thing she couldn’t buy. Yet.
“I am not opposed to gifts,” she said with a smile that did things to his heart.
She eagerly unwrapped the package and breathed a soft ooooh when she saw what was inside: a few yards of a spectacular pink silk. It was soft to the touch, strong and light all the same. And it was a shade of pink like a woman’s secrets or like the flush of a woman’s skin after her climax. Strong and subtle all at once.
It was a pink that he’d had invented and made just for her, with her in mind. All the peachy pink underthings in her shop hadn’t been vibrant enough to match her spirit.
“Dalton, it’s lovely,” she sighed, clutching it to her chest. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Make it up into whatever you want. Right now you’re the only woman in Manhattan who has it.”
“Where did you find this?”
“It’s a secret.”
“A secret? We’ll see about that,” she murmured, setting the silk aside and pulling him close for a kiss.
“It’s exclusive to Dalton’s,” he admitted.
Her body stilled. She pushed him away.
“Exclusive? You know I cannot wear this if it’s exclusive to your store. As the president of Goodwin’s, your chief rival, I cannot waltz around New York wearing the exclusive wares of my competitor. I’m not going to be a walking advertisement for you.”
“For me or for us?” Dalton asked softly, but seriously.
“Yes. Both. It’s impossible that I should be seen wearing it.”
“Afraid of scandal?”
“I’m afraid of being seen as yours. All the progress I have made to make the world see me as my own woman—not a debutante, not a duchess, not just a divorcée—will be undone. And I’ll just be Dalton’s woman and nothing more.”
“So don’t wear it,” he murmured, pressing his lips to that spot on her neck that drove her wild. “Don’t wear anything at all.”
He kissed her, like it was another one of their rendezvous and he hadn’t just asked her to do two appalling things with one gift of pink silk.
His fingers found the edge of her dress, slid underneath to caress her skin and oh, she still yearned for his touch but .