Page 35 of A Lady's Wicked Revenge
She struggled to keep a straight face, still unsure if she was being put on.
“In any case, you needn’t worry. Mister Davenport told me he would give much of the staff the evening off. Such moments of rest are in short supply in this house if you have not noticed. I think he and the staff were relieved enough to be out of my stepfather’s eyesight that they would agree to virtually anything.”
Diana folded her arms, her mouth reduced to a short, forbidding line.Weeks of sneaking around the gardens, and he has never once acknowledged what we have done inside this house. He’s up to something, I wager. Well, whatever game he’s devised to entertain himself, I won’t fall for it.
“I promise you, on my honour—no, on yours, which you’ll likely agree I value much more on my own …” Colin rested a hand against his heart, a semi-serious frown on his face. “We will not be bothered nor spied upon this evening. We are free to behave as we like, as free as we are on any of our delightful morning exercises.”
Diana stared into his eyes for a long while, trying to drag any insincerity from his expression. Finding none, to her surprise, she lifted a napkin to her mouth, taking a moment to marshal her thoughts … then lowered it and said with a sinister smirk, “I’m flattered, but I’m not sure I’m flexible enough to do allthatwith this table in the way.”
Their laughter rang long and loud from the chandeliers, and just like that, Diana was shot full of nothing but feelings of affection for the handsome young man. For hours they ate, drank, talked, and laughed; their conversation turned ever bolder and saucier by Diana’s comment and by the copious glassfuls of wine. Somewhere between the third and fourth glass of wine, her affection began to transmute into desire, her dreams still fresh at the forefront of her mind, and when Colin placed his hand on the table between them, she did not hesitate to lay her own hand atop his. Their fingers interlaced, her eyes found his own impossibly green ones, and their conversation came to a halt as their blood rushed to their cheeks.
“You know,” said Colin in a low, husky voice that neared a whisper. Diana looked at him anew, feeling that she would happily assent to whatever he was about to say. “I cannot say I feel like eating or drinking any more. Yet it seems a shame to end such a lovely evening already.”
She swallowed, nodded mutely. Distantly she was surprised at her uncharacteristic quiet, but how could she think anything at all over the mad, insistent cry of desire from every cell in her body? Or when faced with those gorgeous green eyes?
“Perhaps we should continue this somewhere else.” A mote of intensity flickered in a sea of green. “Somewhere we can be alone.”
“My room?” Diana squeaked.
Colin’s eyes darted to the door, and though his bearing was as unshakeably self-assured as ever, his face endearingly flushed a gentle shade of red. He nodded, looking as though he were trying not to smile. “Not now,” he mouthed. “After the staff has gone to bed.”
Diana nodded her assent; her mind blanked out as though filled with thick fog. She was dimly aware that she and Colin parted, that they left their dishes on the table for the servants, and she walked down the corridor in a haze. All the while, her brain was devoid of thought, of emotion, of anything but the same two words repeated like a chant:
My room. My room. My room.
And then she was sitting there on her bed, and time resumed at a glacial pace. Her mind was still fixated on the same two unhelpful words, unable to supply her any guidance for how to proceed. To distract herself from the hammering of her heart in her ears, Diana occupied herself with all the tasks that had some marginal need of being completed—arranging the pillows on her bed, shifting the position of the cushions on her settee, desperately looking for something she could tidy or straighten, though Missus Fessler had already completed her usual competent work on the room.
She looked around for any manner of refreshment to offer Colin or to steady her own nerves, but finding none save a pitcher of water, she soon gave up this particular search. Finally, she settled on making sure the drapes were fully closed before positioning herself in what she hoped was a casual pose on one side of the small sofa, facing the door and opening her novel on her lap.
She glanced at the clock and saw that only ten minutes had transpired since she had left the dining room.
What time does the staff retire for the night?Diana wondered bitterly, unsure if she was overeager or dreading Colin’s arrival. She studied the page of her book that she had marked, then spent several minutes flipping back through the pages, having no memory of having read almost anything in the story.
It became absolutely tortuous, the waiting that ensued. Diana second-guessed her impulsive acquiescence to Colin’s proposal to visit her in her room, promising to send him away as soon as she heard him at the door or to hide under the covers and pretend she had not heard him knock.
Second-guessing this reversal of her opinion, she decided there was no harm in having him in for a short while, reasoning it was nothing more than a continuation of their harmless explorations in the garden. Back and forth, her mind ran until she was dizzy from the effort. All the while, she felt her body stiffen with anticipation at each noise that entered her ear, real or imagined.
When at last there was a soft knock on the door, Diana felt her hair stand on end, her heart leaping into her throat. She frantically tried to focus her eyes on her book, to pretend she had forgotten about Colin entirely by this point, but this artifice was abandoned by the time he slid onto the carpet and closed the door softly behind him.
“Good evening,” he said, stalking over to her and sitting on the settee so close she feared she might scream.
She swallowed this impulse and managed to squeeze out a shaky, “Good evening.” But she could see in his eyes that he had not come for more conversation, a feeling she knew with every fibre of her being that she shared. So instead, she dropped her book carelessly to the ground, losing her place completely, even as Colin leaned forward and their lips met in another impossibly singular kiss.
Again and again, their mouths clashed together. A bolt of lightning snaked through Diana’s body at the feeling of Colin’s knee pressed on the settee right between her half-opened legs, her womanhood quivering at the thousand possible somethings of this contact.
She drew in a deep, trembling breath as Colin’s left hand ran down her cheek tenderly, then nearly choked with pleasurable shock as his right brushed against her full, heaving bosom through her dress. Everything she thought to say, every trace of mind or reason was blotted out, leaving her with no words left in her brain but increasingly insistent whispered choruses of ‘yes.’
Diana did not know who first rose to their feet and conveyed the pair to the bed—by now, their limbs seemed to move in concert with one another, their heartbeats keeping the same allegro time and their breath coming as one. Whoever instigated it, all the pleasures of the flesh in which Colin had tutored her of late had not prepared Diana for the feeling of lying back against the bed and seeing him crawl in with her. She felt an aching, bottomless emptiness cry out inside her, and she whimpered as she felt Colin lie beside her, wishing she could feel the pressure of his body atop her instead, feel him within her as a husband completes his wife.
But Colin was still Colin, it seemed, and relished teasing her as a cat does a mouse. Even as she felt her body ready itself to be devoured by the large, strong body pressed against her, instead, he only pulled her close with one powerful arm and ran his teeth delicately along the nape of her neck. Diana cried out, half with laughter, and felt herself stifled by a hand against her mouth.
“If you make such noise, I shall have to stop,” Colin said in a soft voice, almost inaudible over the throbbing of her pulse. “You don’t want that, do you?”
Diana shook her head furiously, feeling her brow furrow in despair at the thought.
Colin gave a tiny smirk, and she felt herself melt even more at the sight. “Are you sure? I’m not sure I believe that—”
“Oh, shut up and kiss me,” she interrupted as she wrapped her hands around his neck and pulled him into a deep kiss. She could hear Colin laugh in surprise, but this did not stop him from returning her kiss with great enthusiasm, their tongues tangling into a frenetic dance.
