no waiting for her to beg, no time for her to answer. He sank into her, slowly, but irresistibly, and she spread her legs, wishing madly that there was more she could give, more he could take.
“This life and every other,” she whispered.
She pulled his head down and kissed him, hard and thorough, wanting the taste of those words to mingle on their lips. When he moved in her again, she felt the craving and the completion, twin gifts they gave each other with every stroke. And when she finally came apart, he joined her there — not a conqueror, not a captive, but a missing piece of her heart that had finally found its way home.
* * *
When they could breathe again, she turned onto her side, stroking her fingers across his chest. “If I’d known how good a bed could be, I’d have risked my chaperones finding us, ruin be damned.”
He laughed. The sound rumbled through her fingers. “Best that you didn’t know. I’m sure I only survived tonight because of your advanced age.”
She poked him in the side. “Careful, Claiborne. I’m still younger than you.”
Nick caught her fingers and brought them to his mouth, kissing each one before dropping his head back on the pillow. “Perhaps Charles had the right idea after all. If I died here, with you as my last thought, I’d die a happy man.”
“Don’t say that,” she said.
He looked up at her, his blue eyes serious. “I’m sorry. But chances are you’ll be my last thought no matter when it happens.” He paused, just long enough that she thought he was done, and then added, “You, or kippers. I’m quite fond of them.”
She giggled. “You are so adept at wooing ladies, aren’t you?”
“There’s only one lady I care to woo tonight.”
She remembered, then, the choice he had given her. “What were those objects you had for me?”
“Does it matter? I like the choice you made.”
She scowled. “You know I’m too curious for that.”
“Very well,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. He rolled out of bed, still naked, and strode to the chair he’d sat in. He picked up the pouch first, untied the leather thong that bound it, and unfurled it.
“These are the receipts for what you owe me — ten years’ worth,” he said, holding up a sheaf of papers.
Then he tossed them into the fire.
Ellie gasped. “Why did you do that?”
“As I’ve said, you weren’t the woman I wanted revenge against.” He didn’t even look at the notes as they burned — as though forty thousand pounds, and all the years he’d waited, were nothing compared to the next moment.
Instead, he came back to the bed with the mysterious box. “You said the other night that you don’t know what I did in India. And, frankly, it’s not worth sharing, at least not now. I mostly drank too much, fought every fever a man can have, made an obscene amount of money…and dreamed of you.”
He flicked open the clasp on the box. Inside lay a pile of delicate gold chains, threaded through dozens, perhaps hundreds, of tiny bells. He lifted a strand from the box. The bells chimed softly, whispering foreign dreams in the air — dreams Ellie had never had and yet, suddenly, longed for.
He leaned over her body, grazing his hands down her leg, and fastened the chain around her ankle. “I thought I would have you dance for me in these,” he said. “I dreamed of you serving me like a harem girl, wearing only bells and your glorious hair.”
He fastened another set of bells around her other ankle. She shivered, but he wasn’t done.
“If you saw what’s in my trunks, you’d know what I did in India. Jewels, fabrics, artwork, more jewels — every bazaar, it seemed, had something you might like. I think I have a flacon of perfume from every man who ever tried to bottle jasmine under glass. I said it was for my revenge, that I’d taunt you with it…”
He clasped another set of bells around her wrist. When she shifted to catch his hand, her body turned to music — but he evaded her grasp. “I lied to myself, Ellie,” he said. “Easier to say I hated you. Easier to plan for a guaranteed revenge than to risk not winning you back. Easier to hope you’d marry someone else, so I’d never have to bring these dreams back to face you…”
She cut him off as he fastened the last bracelet around her