This time she didn’t protest. She followed him when he stepped inside and looked around while he bolted the door. She’d been inside his chambers before, though the first time he’d been attacked at the coffee house, and he lay in his bed recovering. She’d entered quickly and left the same way.
His chambers were like a huge New York City apartment with separate rooms. The first room was a fancy living room of sorts, with heavy wood tables and four chairs upholstered in olive silk damask. There was a settee of brown velvet and an ornate walnut armoire against the east wall. A large hearth with a stone mantel was built into the west wall. Above it was a painting of a dancer. Aria thought it to be Gray from the graceful lines.
She followed him through a doorway into another room bare of furniture with moonlight streaming through the eight tall windows along two walls. Aria knew glass was scarce and expensive nowadays. She also knew that Gray liked being outside and these tall windows were probably the closest he could get to it sometimes.
“Another dance hall,” she remarked looking around while he lit candles throughout.
“This one is significantly smaller,” he told her, coming closer. “For when I just want to dance without leaving my rooms.”
Immediately following his words, he bunched up his nose. His eyes closed and his lips puckered. “Do I sound horribly spoiled?”
She shook her head, smiling dreamily at him. “Goodness, my lord Dartmouth, but you’re charming.”
Proving her words to her own heart, he laughed, freeing all traces of guile, opening his mouth wide and releasing a ridiculously adorable sound. This part of him was a stark contrast from the raw, sensual charm he emitted when he danced to the stoic, detached warlord who was harder to read than a book of braille if you weren’t blind.
She could read him though, most of the time. He possessed emotions—and they were strong.
“You’re not spoiled, Gray,” she assured, taking a step closer to him. “You’re wonderfully fresh. Like a cool breeze in the dead of summer. You’re a welcome breath of life using your body to be known.”
He looked down at her and smiled. “I like how you see me.”
He dipped his head to kiss her. She was sure he could feel her heart pounding against him. She thought she might faint. It wasn’t that she’d never been kissed. She had been, but never the way Gray had kissed her.
She almost groaned out loud when the luxuriousness of his full lips pressed against hers. His mouth was curious and cautious, opening to her and closing again around her tongue, her lips.
He didn’t keep kissing though, but rather hauled her against him, and cupping her right hand, he twirled her on her feet, around and around in place, and around the empty hall. They danced to music only they could hear.
He brought it to a whole new level when he ground his hips against her and began dancing contemporary. He kept her pressed against him, one arm curled around her waist, the other hanging at his side while he moved his hips, his chest, his hard belly. She matched his movements, keeping her left leg and hip between his legs. She thought she could seduce him, but she was the one whose knees almost buckled three times. But it wasn’t until he ground himself against her and smiled like a beast with nakedly male intentions that she had to close her eyes to fight against the sight of him and what it was doing to her.
When he bent his face to her neck and inhaled her deeply, she shuddered against him. He lifted his face and looked at her, then smiled and lowered his mouth to hers. His hand at her back closed around her fully, holding her closer.
Briefly, she thought about passing out. Could she stop it from happening? Was this what it was like to kiss the man you loved? To barely breathe waiting for the touch of his lips?
She coiled both of her arms around his neck. She wouldn’t let him go if he backed away from kissing her.
He didn’t. In fact, he matched her eagerness, and, taking her jaw in his palm, he kissed her and made her heart dance. His warm tongue became light, flickering around the darkest shadows—warm, golden light streaked with crimson. His breath, seasoned with desire, became fire, igniting her nerve-endings, setting flames to her blood. As the fire in his gaze had promised, he wreaked havoc on her with his mouth, his tongue, his teeth, the latter of which he used to nibble on her lower lip and chin. He was like somethingthat wanted to eat her alive. She was willing to be consumed.
She tightened in his arms, like wound coils ready to spring. At once, she felt him harden. Instinctively, she rubbed herself against him. She almost melted in his arms when he withdrew from their kiss, drew back his lips and ground his teeth. He jutted out his groin as if he meant to impale her but was stopped by the confines of their clothes.
Aria was a virgin. It wasn’t too unheard of for a twenty-three-year-old in 2024. She didn’t have time for a relationship, and she wasn’t about to give her body to just anyone.
Gray wasn’t just anyone.
She pulled at his shirt, then stopped to run her fingers down the taut nooks and crannies of his abdomen. He yanked the rest of his shirt over his head, then pulled the laces of her corset and threw the contraption over his shoulder. She worked the laces of his breeches, stripping him down to his hose, while he freed her of her skirts.
She thought they might do it right there on the hard floor, but he scooped her up in the cradle of his arms and carried her through another doorway that opened to his bedroom.
The urge to giggle like a schoolgirl was tempered by the desire to weep like a woman who had lost everything. No. She wouldn’t lose him. He was everything.
She wondered, fleetingly while he carried her to his bed, when she had stopped worrying about her family. Was it after Mrs. B. swore that she’d helped them out, or before that—when she began falling in love with an eighteenth-century dancer?
He set her down on the soft mattress and stared down at her. He swiped his finger over a tear dripping down her cheek. “What is it? Do you want to wait?” he asked patiently.
“No,” she told him, “Because no matter what, I won’t regret it.”
His expression melted into a smile and then he shed his hose like a second skin. She looked at him in the light of the hearth fire and swallowed. She might be a virgin, but she wasn’t ignorant of where he was supposed to put that thing springing up between his sinewy thighs. But as frightening as it appeared, as a part of the rest of his sculpted body, it was beautiful and enticing.
He climbed into bed with her and pulled two blankets over them, up to their chins. She shivered with him in the cold and then laughed with him. She was thankful that he didn’t jump on top of her and begin humping her like she had once overheard one of her students complaining that was how her fiancé did things.