Page 46 of The Marquis' Game of Seduction
“The last risk I took, I regretted it every single day of my life,” Colin said. He sounded haughty and mean and vapid, and he hated this about himself.
“Just try,” Allan returned. He tilted the rest of his Scotch down his throat and tapped the glass on the desk. He turned toward the door and walked out. When he reached the hall, he bid adieu to his friend and added, “Just trust your instincts, Colin. I know that they’ve led you astray before. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? We must always return to them, hone them, make them better. It’s only through this mechanism that we can become in any way the sort of men we’re meant to be.”
When Allan disappeared, Colin poured himself another glass of Scotch and sat at the edge of his desk, kicking his legs out like a young child. He felt somber and chaotic, in the kind of mood that required a wild ride on horseback across the London night. The wind ripped against the glass, seemingly strong enough to tilt to the entire mansion to the side.
If he couldn’t ride across the night, then he knew what he had to do.
Before he could think about it twice, he left his glass on the desk and stomped toward the hall. His feet found the path up the stairs, toward Rose’s bedroom. He wasn’t entirely certain if he was breathing. His tongue slipped over his smooth teeth. He tried and failed and tried again to recite the words of his story to himself, a routine for what he would have to do when he found her.
When he reached Rose’s bedroom, he clicked his knuckles against the door. The sound was ominous and strange, even in his own ears. He regretted it and almost spun back the moment it happened, but not before Rose’s little feet scampered across the floor and she discovered him out there, peering down upon her. He felt much larger than normal, standing in the dark of the hallway. Rose stood in her nightgown, with lace detail stitched across the neck and little, glowing buttons all down the front.
“Good evening, Rose,” Colin said. He swallowed and tilted his head. “I don’t suppose I could speak to you for a moment. It’s quite important.”
Rose stepped back. She looked at him the way one might look at a ghost. When Colin entered her bedroom completely, he brought the door closed behind him and clipped it shut. The sound felt oddly final.
“Is there something wrong, Colin?” Rose asked. Her voice sounded like it was lost in her throat.
“I suppose so. Yes,” Colin offered.
How could he tell her this incredible secret? He felt it pressed against his chest. He imagined all the possible answers she could spin back to him.How dare you tell me I was making things up? Of course I know what I saw. How dare you make me think I’m crazy—or that I’m seeing ghosts…
“Rose, I…” Colin began. He smeared his fingers through his hair and tipped himself onto the edge of her bed. He did so without asking. The alcohol made his blood race past his ears. “Rose, I wanted to tell you that I think I’m falling for you.”
Rose’s teeth snuck out from between her lips. She bit down on her bottom lip. Her eyes were enormous, catching the light of the moon.
Colin stood. He felt he didn’t know how to handle himself, where to put his body. “I think about you all the time. You’re the woman I dream of. When I awake, I see your smile, and when I go to sleep at night, I hear your laugh. You’ve been an enormous breath of fresh air in an otherwise putrid existence. And I…”
Colin didn’t know what else to do. He pressed forward and dropped his lips against hers. They were pillow-soft and eager. A sigh escaped her lips as she leaned into him, pressing her perfect breasts against his chest. She wore nothing beneath the nightgown, and her nipples were perky and tart and alive.
Colin felt his member grow hard against his leg. His arms wrapped tighter around her, drawing her closer. He sucked on her bottom lip and then slid his tongue into her mouth.
Colin drew back against the bed and dropped against it. His large hands were monstrous over her thighs, and he tugged them up and around him, so that she straddled his cock. Her hands traced over his cheeks as they shared earnest kisses.
Her hair swirled over her shoulders, and several of her buttons became undone, spilling her breasts out before him. His mouth searched over them, and his tongue found those perfect berry-like nipples and sucked and kissed until she tossed her head back in wild pleasure and closed her eyes.
Colin wanted nothing more than to be within her. To feel the softness between her thighs. Perhaps if it had been any other night, he wouldn’t have pushed it. But he’d already broken all of his self-propelled rules, crafted an evening that seemed outside the bounds of his ordinary existence. And for this reason, he found himself yanking her nightgown over her shoulders and revealing the splendor of her naked frame: glowing shoulders, round and bouncing breasts, a flat stomach that then curved down toward the pulse of her between her legs.
With hungry eyes, clearly following some kind of instinct that she, perhaps, didn’t even know herself to have, Rose unbuttoned his collar and yanked off his suit. He struggled to undo his pants, then kicked them off, so that their bodies were bare, in view to one another only with the light from the bulb-like moon outside.
“I’ve wanted you,” Rose whispered—words that would be recited in Colin’s mind for days and weeks and months to come. “I’ve wanted you so badly.”
Colin splayed her gorgeous body across the top of the comforter. With tender, aching motions, he eased himself on top of her. Incredibly, through his chest, he could feel the wild rabbit beating of her heart. He wanted to tell her not to be afraid, but in truth, he felt he was more afraid than she was. He’d come to her bedroom to reveal the truth of his circumstances, yet had grown cowardly and lust-filled. Certainly nothing good could come of this.
But they made sweet, tender love into the night. Colin allowed his mind to ease away from him and fell deep into his physical needs and desires. Rose followed him into this world, sighing and crying his name and dipping her nails into his back. Before too long, the sun had begun to trickle up over the horizon, casting everything in a strange grey light. Rose’s head dipped against Colin’s chest, and he felt her fall into sleep. He gazed at the ceiling, his hands sweeping over her hair. He tried to envision what would happen next—how they could possibly follow the beauty of this night. But he came up dry, unsure of himself, unsure of any next steps.
He tried to live in the beauty of this fleeting moment. Tried to tell himself that nothing else but the here and now mattered. But as the sun crept higher into the sky, he knew this couldn’t be so.
And with every breath Rose took, every time she dug her head a little deeper on his chest, he was reminded of the secret that remained between them. Could she ever forgive him for what he’d done in lying to her? Could he ever redeem himself?
He didn’t know.
Chapter 20
Colin stepped out of Rose’s bed before she fully awoke. He carefully slipped his clothes back on, as many as necessary so that he could slip back to his bedroom without inciting too much suspicion from the staff who, he knew, were already wide awake and swirling about the mansion performing their everyday duties.
When he opened the door, he flashed his eyes back toward Rose to catch her mid-way through a mid-slumber yawn, reaching her arms high above her body and then turning over. She didn’t yet know he’d gone.
Colin slipped into the hallway to find it completely empty. He tapped toward the edge of the stairwell, where he peered down to find Judith in the midst of a discussion with one of the top-level maids. He couldn’t quite make out what was said. Judith’s eyes seemed hard and ominous. Perhaps it was simply the nature of the morning, of her near-constant anxiety about ensuring that the mansion was in tip-top shape.
