Page 81 of The Duke
“Only this one.” Her pouty lips drew down until she resembled a child expecting a severe reprimand. “Though I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve refilled it. Please don’t lecture me— What are you doing?”
He gripped her in a way that made it impossible for her not to follow him as he led them into the crowd at a deceptively leisurely pace. “I’m taking you elsewhere before everyone realizes how drunk you are, and the night is ruined.”
“Am I drunk?” she queried.
“Undoubtedly.”
“I’ve never been drunk before,” she said, casting a wistful gaze into her glass. “Champagne hardly tastes as strong as gin. Though I probably should have stopped when I started feeling the bubbles all the way to my toes.”
“Do try not to speak nonsense until I get you out of here,” he muttered, fighting a wry sort of amusement as he wrested the glass from her hand and set it on the tray of a passing servant.
Though the ballroom was overcrowded and the rest of the company increasingly inebriated, Cole knew they were already a bit of a spectacle and in danger of becoming a full-on exhibition. His searching gaze found Blackwell by the pillar at the entry, enjoying a cross breeze and a glass of something expensive. The canny bastard understood the question in Cole’s eyes immediately, glancing down at the countess nearly teetering on her feet. Dorian made a gesture with his dark head toward a door on the south wall, and stepped forward to call the attention of the gathering for yet another toast to his dear wife.
The congregation thus distracted, Cole half led, half dragged Imogen through the appropriate door and down a dark and eerily empty hall. Securing her to him with his left arm, he tried to ignore the breasts crushed against his side, or the way her head lolled rather sweetly onto his shoulder.
“We’renot spinning anymore,” she informed him with a sigh. “But everything else still is.”
He tried a few doors and found them locked, until one gave way beneath his grip. Dragging her inside with him, he shut the door and threw the skeleton-key lock, shrouding them in sudden darkness.
“Oh no.” The shadows seemed to draw her from her stupor as she squirmed clumsily in his arms.
“Hold still,” he commanded gently.
“No,” she gasped, twisting in his grasp like he’d seen many recalcitrant children do in the arms of a firm nanny. “No, this is wrong. Ican’tbe alone with you. I simply can’t.”
“Why not? You know I won’t hurt you.”
“You don’t understand.” Her fervor increased, her arms flailing out. “It is not I who is in danger. Butyou. We can’t be here, not alone.”
A spear of trepidation pierced him at her words, and he subdued her easily, shackling her arms to her sides. “Why, dammit?” he demanded. “What are you afraid of, woman,tell me. Did you see someone? Were you threatened?” She had nothing to fear. No one else would touch her tonight. On that they could both rely.
“I’m afraid… I’m afraid I’ll kiss you again,” she lamented. “I seem to keep doing that when we’re alone in the dark. And then you’ll get angry. You’ll say or do something improper. Or something bad will happen right after.”
Cole felt every muscle in his abdomen curl against her as he bit out a harsh, unfamiliar, repetitive sound.
“Oh,pleasedon’t laugh,” she begged. “It feels too… delicious. I can barely resist you when you’re an ill-tempered brute, how do I have any chance if you’re laughing?”
He hadn’t recognized laughter. It had been too long since he’d experienced it.
Delicious.She certainly had the right of it. Everything about this moment suddenly took on a rather epicurean atmosphere. The close room warm with the heady breath of a summer’s night. The creamy delight of her bare arms beneath his hand. The scent of her blooming around him, warm and floral. Suddenly he was Adam in the Garden of Eden, confronted with temptation, with a fruit too ripe and enticing to be denied. He shouldn’t taste her. Not like this, when her wits belonged to champagne, and her body belonged to him.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he found that they were in a study of some kind, the furniture hulking and sturdy and decidedly masculine. The drapes had been left drawn open, the clear night casting the dark blue of the room in a silvery moonstone finish.
“I won’t get angry,” he soothed, allowing his grip to become more cradling then commanding. “And I won’t let anything bad happen.”
She froze in his arms. “What about the kissing?” she asked dubiously.
Concealing his smile in the darkness, Cole let his head drop to settle beside hers, nuzzling into her hair, reveling in the scent of it, in the softness of the skin beneath.
“I can’t make any promises about the kissing.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
The night had been an enemy to Cole until this moment. A time and place where shadows loomed and remembered terror lurked. He couldn’t rightly tell which was worse. The nightmares he had when asleep…
Or awake.
In the past, he hated how darkness seemed to sharpen his every instinct, to heighten his other senses, intensifying sound, underscoring scents, and increasing the sensitivity of his skin.
