Page 73 of One Dangerous Desire
“I managed but quite poorly. I paid for a few lessons.”
May made him suffer, not taking his hand, not filling his empty arms, but she started a tantalizing little dance of her own. Circling around him, as if she moved on the spoke of a wheel, and he was its axis.
“Was he a good teacher? I learned from a frightful man who swatted me with a yardstick for every misstep.”
Maybe May was capable of more patience than he’d given her credit for. He would have snapped the yardstick in two over the man’s head after the first strike.
“She was a fine teacher.”
“She?” The wheel ceased moving, and May shuddered to a stop, hands hooked above each hip. “Did you break her heart?”
“No, if you must know, I broke her toe.”
“You didn’t.”
“During the first lesson.”
Her hands slid down, and he watched them as a hunter watches his prey. He craved those hands in his.
Finally, she put him out his misery and placed one palm against his, positioning his other at her waist. She remained stiff and unyielding, but at least she was in his arms.
“Was she beautiful?”
HE LICKED HISlips before answering. A simple, habitual gesture on most men, but Rex turned it into a seduction. She knew what he could do with those lips. How his kisses could turn her insides to warm syrup.
“She was tall.”
Elegant, long-legged temptress, no doubt.
“And blonde.” May had spent half her life wishing for cornstalk tresses, or even chestnut, perhaps auburn. Any color but the lack of one.
“She wasn’t you.” He closed the distance between them, used his hand at her waist to maneuver her close, and stole her breath in a kiss. He clutched at her like a hungry man, kissed her like they might never get the chance again.
“Ain’t that a lovely sight, boys?” The grinding, smoky voice of Rex’s father sounded from the entrance of the ballroom.
In a single burst of movement, Rex pivoted toward his father and pushed May behind him. She allowed the shelter but lifted onto the tips of her boots to see over his shoulder. His father was flanked by two titans, men half again as tall and half again the width of George Cross’s narrow shoulders.
“Your business is with me, Cross. I’ll see her into a carriage and return to speak with you.” Rex reached back to grasp her hand as he spoke and then strode up to the three men who were blocking the ballroom’s entryway. He stepped toe to toe with his father, holding May protectively behind him.
“Move. Now.” Rex gritted out the words and didn’t flinch when the two behemoths on either side of his father bristled. One lifted a gnarled bit of wood, cradling it lovingly in his arms like a musician might hold his instrument.
His father shuffled back a step, and for a breathless moment, May believed he’d relent. Rex would take them all on to protect her. Of that, she had no doubt, but the notion of the damage the three men could inflict made her feel boneless and weak. She’d never fainted in her life, but suddenly dizziness fought to overtake her.
Clutching at the back of Rex’s coat, she shook herself and managed a deep shaky breath. She refused to be that silly, frivolous girl anymore. Whatever George Cross intended, she’d face it with Rex. Though, at her size, she’d prove next to useless if the three men set on Rex to injure him.
“Really believe she’ll marry the likes of you?” George Cross nudged his chin in her direction. “Think you can satisfy an heiress?”
Despite Rex’s hand holding her in place, May couldn’t stay her tongue. “I’m quite confident he can, Mr. Cross.”
“What if she grows to hate you?” Rex’s father continued as if she hadn’t spoken, staring into Rex’s eyes, an ugly sneer trembling at the edge of his mouth. “Judge you every day, she will, in her pompous, uppity way. As your mother would have done to me.”
When the twisted little man talked of Rex’s mother, May heard the emotion in his voice. Whatever Cross felt for Rex’s mother, he seemed determined to transfer all of his pain and resentment to Rex.
“Step aside,” Rex growled, squeezing her hand, as if to signal that the time had come to move. He reached his other arm out to push his father aside, but Cross feinted back, lifting his own hand out and executing a mock bow, as if to usher them through the doorway.
Rex tucked her under his arm, tight against the hard, heated protection of his body, and moved across the threshold. Just when she thought they’d moved far enough to be free from the grasp of Cross and his cronies, one of the bulky giants reached around her, yanking so hard she slipped from Rex’s clasped hand, nearly off her feet. Then the vise of flesh and iron around her chest was gone, and she was pushed toward George Cross. He hooked her upper arm in his and pressed the cool, sharp edge of a knife to her throat.
“This here’s what we call persuasion, boy.”
