Page 36 of The General's Gift
It was not a simple desire that he could brush off as the result of her beauty or physical proximity, but a soul-deep craving to consume her surrender, to make her his. The thought rocked him, sending ice down his spine and heat through his blood.
This girl, his best friend’s daughter. His ward.
She stopped. Had she felt his gaze? Chest rising and falling rapidly, she turned.
Their eyes met.
The ballroom had been vast a moment ago, but now it shrank.
Her lips parted, her cheeks flushed, her breath unsteady—a painting still wet on the canvas, color dripping from its edges, too raw, too real, demanding to be seen before it dried into something untouchable.
Dancing, she was gorgeous. But like this—still, breathless, watching him in return—She was spring breaking through frost—color bursting where the world had been gray, too sudden, too tender, impossible not to reach for.
She severed the contact and bowed playfully to the dance master at the piano. “Mercy, Monsieur Pierre. Your fingers are still nimble as I remembered.”
Forcing his gaze away, Hawk cleared his throat. “I thought I was paying for a waltz lesson.”
Not to be surprised by a wrenchingly beautiful ballet solo that had robbed his breath when even Ney, France’s bravest Marshal, hadn’t done it.
She brushed a cloth against her cheeks. Hawk mourned the loss of the pearly droplets of sweat decorating her skin.
“I’m a coryphée. I never danced with partners.”
“You won’t be presenting on the stage when you are introduced into polite society, Lady Cecilia. In a ballroom, a lady dances not by herself, but with a gentleman.”
She shrugged. “I will skip dancing then.”
The heat of his own skin rose beneath his collar, his coat suddenly too damn tight. This French Bonbon was once again trying to disobey him. A ballerina who refused to dance with a partner? Ridiculous. A fabrication meant to vex him.
Everything blurred except for that red hair and the insufferable shrug of her shoulder. “A lady can no more escape the ballroom than a cavalry officer can avoid leading a charge.”
She had spent the last month dismantling his household, bending every soldier and servant alike to her will. If he didn’t dance with her right now, he would lose control of this campaign. A slip of a French bonbon didn’t threaten his authority. He had flogged officers for less.
Because the commander who seized the battlefield dictated the terms of war, he took his stance at the ballroom’s center, feet braced, shoulders squared. “Play a waltz, sir. Lady Cecilia will dance with me.”
The words vibrated in the silent ballroom like the first cannon shot across the field.
For a moment, nothing. The waiting hush before a thundering charge.
Then she moved.
Not forward, not in the straight line of a soldier, but in a languid, gliding arc, like a butterfly caught in a sudden gust.
Hawk’s pulse sped.
Until she landed before him, he could not have known whether she would face him or balk.
But she stayed, and they faced each other, two armies poised on the battlefield. She lifted her chin to him, pretending that shedidn’t have to crane her neck to do so. Her bun had unraveled, red tendrils slipping free to frame her face, curling against the damp heat of her skin.
Her lips held the ghost of a gasp, and the scent of her dance, perspiration mingling with lilacs hung in the air between them, warm and dizzying. He was aware of the sound of her heightened breathing, of her chest rising and falling underneath the flimsy bodice of whatever delicious tulle concoction she was wearing. But her eyes were moist, and still, and locked onto his. Unlike in her solo, there was no dance in her eyes, so how could they say so much? Come play with me. Protect me… and then, make love to me.
By God, how he wanted all that was promised in those promise-colored eyes.
Heat coiled low in his spine, an ache that didn’t belong in a ballroom. He wanted her to surrender to his command, not to look at him like this. Her gaze had the power of a dragoon charge. Ten thousand strong barreling into his chest, breaking into his infantry squares, his artillery, reaching his reserve.
A man who professed duty above all else would’ve turned to the door and left. Duty didn’t demand he dance with her. But he could no more leave than he could stop breathing. And so he looked at the piano and gestured for the waltz to begin.
Celeste had never danced with a man in all her life. Now she was looking up at Britain’s most formidable general, waiting for the music to start. Sunlight caressed his silver hair and cast hard shadows over his sculpted jaw and the uncompromising line of his lips. He had to be more than a palm higher than her, not to mention the broadness of his shoulders, bunching the dark blue of his riding coat.
