Page 24 of A Lady of Means
“I can’t.”
Why was she walking to the door?
“I should not have come.The girl who meets men in secret and accepts only a half-life, I should have left her in the past.”
He was beside her in a moment, thanking God for his long, powerful strides.He closed the door just as she had opened it and put his back to it.
Her nostrils flared in challenge just as her body pressed into his.“What do you want from me?”
“My letters for the last 13 months weren’t clear enough?My asking you to dance at more than one ball in the same night wasn’t clear enough?”
“Not necessarily, no.How is this supposed to work?”she gestured between them.“You and me.A captain in Her Majesty's army and the season’s incomparable?Are we having tea and discussing military strategy?”A small smile played up at the corner of her bow-shaped lips before she turned her head to the side.
“I’m sure you could hold council on waging war with the best military strategists in Britain.”
He came from a long line of men who had served The Crown, he and his brother had played at strategy with tin army men and practiced swordsmanship and marksmanship farther back than he could remember.But her kind of battle tested even his own tactical skills.
The wood panels of the door cut into his back.His hands found her waist.The way that her waist dipped down to her hips was made perfectly for his hands.
She was of average height or a little taller, but he was not.He towered over her.Her chest was flush with his abdomen, her arms around his torso.
She tilted her head back as his lips lilted over her skin, up her jaw, a breath of temptation against her earlobe.“Tell me one truth, General Moria, and I’ll tell you one of mine.”
Moria swallowed, her eyelids stuttering, then went to smooth her skirts.He stilled her hand and brought her hand to his lips.Her eyes rose to his.
She must have found something to trust in his eyes, as she nodded and said, “I’m not a nice person.”
Devyn shook his head, but she continued.
“I’ve done some things that I….that I regret.Someone hurt me, a long time ago,” she pulled away and started to pace but she kept talking.“He took everything I had to give and left me to carry the weight of it all alone, and I can’t hurt him back, because…” she took a deep inhale.“He’s gone now.And it feels so wrong, all the conflicting feelings of love and hate and joy and disappointment that are tied up withthis,” she gestured around them, to the well-appointed but luxurious sitting room they inhabited and to the party just beyond the mahogany door.“This institution, these people…and so sometimes it’s easier tohurt, than to be hurt.”
He hadn’t interrupted, just felt the serrated age of every one of her words like knives against his heart, wanting to ask for more; but unwilling to risk her pulling away again.
“You’re a soldier, I suppose that’s what I am too.They wanted a mercenary, someone who could be bought for a price for their own purposes, but no cost they offered was worth the price of my pride, my revenge.”
“And how have you had your revenge, Lady Moria?”He asked, one hand grasping hers to pull her into him.
“By being gloriously unattainable and exacting.They wanted perfection, I gave it.They wanted courtship, I gave it.They proposed, I refused.They asked for a dance, I gave them only one and left them wanting more.They wanted conversation, I listened.I used what I learned to my advantage, whispering their secrets here and there,” she exhaled, he didn’t miss the way she straightened her shoulders before she continued.“They wanted my good opinion, I tested them to see what they would do to receive it.They wanted invitations to a ball.I told them it was a masquerade when it wasn’t and they came dressed in costume and I had a laugh.I was never not a weapon, never anything but a vixen looking for her next victim to poison.”
He saw what she was trying to do.She was taking a gamble, testing him to see if he was afraid or aghast at anything she’d said.Worse, if he pitied the choices she’d been forced to make.But he’d been a weapon too, not just in battle.His father had honed him into one long before that.He wanted her to feel that they shared similarities more than they did differences.
“And am I…your next victim?”he said the words against the shell of her ear and when her eyelids fluttered for a moment, he was almost undone.
“That’s the problem,” she said, and this time her heart was in her eyes.“I thought you could be; but I’m afraid that while I’ve ingested small doses of poison here and there,” she placed his hands at her hips, “this time, it might be a lethal dose.”
“Lethal?Or addictive?”
“Aren’t they the same thing?”her lips were a prayer’s distance from his own.It wouldn’t take more than a flinch to bring her bottom lip close enough to devour until she sighed his name and forgot it all.
She was faster, interrupting his thoughts with, “Now tell me your truth.”
One hand came up to hold her jaw.He swallowed before answering.“I am leaving in a month, again, to Halalabad this time.I’m supposed to be preparing to leave, but I lie awake at night, and I hear your voice and I see your face.Even though I know I shouldn’t, I still see you in front of me and all I can think of is how I can keep you this close and never let go of you.”
“Even after everything I’ve just said?”she asked, eyes catching on his lips where he wanted them, wanted the rest of her to be.
He pushed a strand of hair that had fallen back into its pin.
“I want all that you are willing to give me, Moria.”He said her name against her lips, her own brushed against his in answer.Her thieving hands stole him into her, her mouth closing in any distance between them.Her tongue slid across them and into his mouth, her leg drew over his.
