Dashiell was well aware he held her future in his hands.
One word from him and she’d be ruined beyond redemption. Dashiell shook his head.
‘No.’ He didn’t want her ruined. He wanted her…happy. He reached out to absently tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I want you to find your comet and I want to be there when you do. Graybourne’s daughter or not, my offer still stands.’
She spoke slowly, deliberately. ‘Such an offer raises your stakes in this. One night can be justified for a man. But two or more? People will think this looks like an elopement and that is not so easily explained away for either a man or a woman.’
He nodded solemnly. ‘I am not a newcomer to the world of Society, Elisabeth.’ He fully understood they were in this together now. Discovery would be damning for them both. ‘I am not unwilling to take this gamble.’
He was conscious of her studying him, letting the silence build between them until she whispered a single sentence full of amazement. ‘Why would you risk this for me?’
Because no woman had ever walked away from him and he sure as hell wasn’t going to start that now. But it was so much more than manly pride. The reasons went far beyond sex.
He would fight for Elisabeth and her dream. Somehow in the span of hours, she’d touched his very soul, a place that proved unreachable for so many others.
Dashiell gave a soft laugh and felt himself smile. ‘You make me feel alive, which is something I haven’t felt for a very long time.’ He took her cheek in the palm of his hand, his thumb idly stroking the delicate line of her jaw. ‘I don’t want to let you go, Elisabeth. I don’t want this to end.’
He would die if it did. This was his chance to live. ‘Say you’ll come.’
She was weighing it all; the risks against the pleasures, the present against the future.
His Elisabeth was smart. She knew how to make a decision. Her eyes softened. She had made her choice. ‘Yes, I will come.’
He leaned in to capture her mouth with a kiss, his body rousing for her. She was all compliance as he eased her backwards onto the wide planes of the chair.
Dashiell raised himself up over her and hesitated for a moment. ‘Why, Elisabeth? What changed your mind?’
Then she whispered the words her body had already spoken: ‘I want you, Dashiell. I want what we can be together.’
It was all the endorsement he needed. Dashiell knelt at her feet, pulling swiftly at the boots she’d so laboriously stuffed her feet into moments ago. He tugged at her trousers, sliding them over slim hips and long, elegant limbs until all that hid her from his view were the tails of her shirt. He rose quickly and took off his own trousers and knelt again, pushing the shirt up past her stomach and she was revealed in her feminine entirety.
‘Dashiell…’ She struggled to rise, her face flushed with her discomfiture at his intimate position, her cognac eyes mirroring her mind’s uncertainty about his intentions. He gently pushed her back. ‘Hush, Elisabeth, you’ll like this, I promise.’ He blew at her curls, feathering them with his breath, eliciting a gasp of pleasant surprise. He put his mouth to her until she arched hard against him and came undone.
She was a veritable angel in climax; her back arched, supple and lean in its curve, her butter-yellow hair spilling about the worn cushions. The sight of her caught up in pleasure was nearly his own undoing.
The initial wave of her pleasure subsided and she reached for him, drawing him down to her with a softly whispered invitation, ‘Come join me, Dashiell. I’d wager pleasure is best when shared.’
He was lost then. For a woman of untried origins, his Elisabeth was a temptress of the first water. He could no more resist her than Adam could resist Eve. He took her with a hard thrust, her body pulsing around him as it welcomed him, sheathed him. She met him thrust for thrust, her body matching him, driving him to the edge of his control until he gave a final thrust and spilled deep inside her.
He was breathless and complete in the moments that followed. This was unprecedented.
Not once but twice now, Elisabeth had managed to render him replete. Not depleted, not exhausted, but replete, fulfilled.
‘I think this is much better than what I’d have been doing at home.’ Elisabeth curled against his side, his head on her chest.
‘What would that have been?’ Dashiell idly played with her hair, combing through it with his fingers.
‘Entertaining another boring suitor at my mother’s dinner party.’ Elisabeth sighed drowsily. ‘I didn’t even know his name but no one seemed to care. Only his title mattered.
This one was the Earl of Heathridge’s heir and bound to be the worst of the lot, nothing like you at all.’ She tossed him a smug smile full of contentment.