Page 18 of Liaison with the Champagne Count
He’d overplayed his hand. He’d meant to chase her from the room with his insult, not draw her closer. Julien didn’t need to turn from the window to know she was coming for him. Emma Luce would not take being patronised sitting down. He could hear the rustle of her black bombazine skirts, smell the jasmine scent of her as she closed in on him.
‘You know nothing about me.’ He put up his last defence, hoping to drive her off. It was a lie though, he very much feared that shedidknow him. He’d not meant for that to happen. Oh, she did not know certain things, like he was sometimes acomtedepending on the government’s current attitude towards titles. She didn’t know his family had once owned these lands seventy years ago, a legacy that had been built over centuries and stripped away in minutes all for the sake of the mob, forégalité. But she did knowhim. She saw his passion, saw his heart, and that scared him. He’d not shown that to anyone since Clarisse. He’d not meant to show it to Emma Luce.
‘I could say the same,’ came the fierce retort as she took up a position beside him, staring out into the darkness, both of them acting like there was something to see. ‘What makes you think you know anything aboutme?’ She might be surprised there. He watched her when she thought he wasn’t looking. He saw the efficiency with which the house was run, the quality of the meals that made their way to the table every night, courtesy of her menus, the extra level of neatness the house took on under her care. Because he saw how much the servants enjoyed working for her. Petit sang her praises, saying how delightful it was to have a mistress who understood the delicacies of cooking. Mrs Dormand appreciated the burden of decision making that was lifted from her shoulders with a mistress present.
Oh, he knew quite a bit about her and he wished it made her less likeable. It would be far easier if she’d hid away in her room, crying her eyes out. But she’d done none of that. She’d thrown herself into her new life, her new role, as best she could. That made her impressive and interesting and absolutely more difficult to manage.
‘I know more than you think,’ he answered, edging his voice with a hint of challenge. ‘I know that being alone and being lonely are not the same. I amalone. You arelonely.’ She could not hide that behind her constant busyness. It wasbecauseof that loneliness that she was a force constantly in motion—reading her wine books, working with the staff, planning the gala, walking the cellars, learning her wines. All of it was a cover for what really plagued her—how to combat her loneliness. Embrace it and endure, or move on, even if that meant moving past Garrett Luce’s memory? He wasn’t the only one hiding certain truths. Her eyes flashed with anger and something else—admission perhaps? Sadness?
‘Yes, I miss him,’ she confessed. ‘It helps to be here. At Oakwood, I kept expecting to come around a corner and see him or enter a room and find him in his favourite chair. There were reminders of him everywhere; his clothes in the wardrobes, his toiletries still on the bureau where he’d left them before our trip, everything just waiting for him to come and pick them up again. It was like even our life together was waiting for him to return to it. But not here.’
She drew a deep breath. ‘Here, I am free to start again on my own.’ She tried for a smile. He could see what it cost her. She was being brave. His heart went out to her and in that moment, he yearned to tell her that he understood, that he knew a little something about starting over without the person you loved. That he knew there was no such thing. There wasn’t really a clean slate. The ghosts still followed; the past could never be entirely left behind. No one knew that better than he did. But such a disclosure required he tell her other things; that the woman he’d loved had lived in his family’s chateau while three generations of Archambeaux had not.
The Archambeaux had not lived in their home for seventy years. Now he lived here on Garrett Luce’s generous sufferance, sharing the residence with the ghosts of his past and his family. That could end. If Emma asked him to leave, if Emma refused to sell, it would all have been for naught. He’d spend his life like hisoncle—living a stone’s throw away from unfulfilled dreams. So, he did what he always did when conversations became too personal, too painful: he deflected.
He softened his tone. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being lonely, Emma.’
‘No, there isn’t,’ she said staunchly. She pushed back a strand of hair that had come loose. ‘It just takes getting used to.’ Yes, he could agree to that. Being alone took practice. There was an art to spending all of one’s time with one’s thoughts without letting those thoughts become overwhelming.
She faced him, giving him a full glimpse of her beauty, her strength. ‘Just to be clear though. I did not kiss you because I am lonely.’
‘Oh?’ He arched a brow, trying to be cool. That was too bad. He could have understood a kiss out of loneliness. Now he’d have to find other explanations and the path those explanations might travel made him uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure he wanted to discuss what she called a kiss. If they did, he’d have to admit to his reaction—admit that he’d liked the feel of her in his arms far too much. He’d have to admit that he’d hugged her back, swung her around. That normally, the person he’d have wanted to celebrate budburst with was hisoncle. But today, the first person he’d wanted to tell was her, and there she’d been, with him in the vineyard at the exact moment he’d wanted her to be there. They’d been reckless and he’d loved it.
He’d thought of nothing else since. He’d been prickly with it, snapping at her at dinner, trying to ignore the intensified awareness that hummed in his blood despite his best efforts these past weeks to keep his distance. The picnic had been a warning and he’d heeded it. But today proved his efforts were for naught. She’d destroyed his defences in moments. ‘Do you care to enlighten me, then? Why did you kiss me?’
‘To celebrate the good news, to celebrate being here, and for the first time in a while, to celebrate the sheer thrill of being alive in springtime.’ The truth of those words shone on her face. ‘Because it fit the moment.’ She paused, something flickering in her eyes as her gaze held his, something that set undeniable tendrils of desire flaring within him. ‘Because Iwantedto kiss you.’
‘I do not think you know what that word really means.’ He should not have said that. He should not flirt with disaster. He should put an end to this conversation immediately. He should remind them both there were limits to their association despite the close proximity in which they lived. But he did neither. The distance between them closed. Her gaze became the colour of mist and fog. He traced the fullness of her bottom lip, his gaze dropping to that luscious mouth, his voice husky. ‘The English may think that was a kiss, but I assure you, the French do not.’
‘What, pray tell, is a kiss then?’ Her own voice was reminiscent of smoky brandy, throaty and coy, her teeth nipping at the pad of his thumb as it passed over her lip.
His mouth hovered, a whisper away from hers as he breathed his seduction. ‘A kiss is the meeting of mouths, the press of lips, full and open, it is the tangle of tongues, the taste of souls.’ He took her mouth in demonstration, the smell of jasmine filling his senses, obliterating all reason, as passion slipped its leash and ran amok.
Chapter Twelve
At the press of his mouth, chaos reigned; want ran like wildfire in her veins, hot and engulfing, her senses splintering like a tree at a lightning strike. Good God, this kiss was desire unchained, and it ignited a rough hunger of her own. She answered with a new fierceness that left her own need naked and known. She knew already that in the aftermath there could be no misinterpreting this kiss, with its unbridled, wild warfare, this duel of mouths, of hands, of bodies. Her hands were in his hair, her teeth tugging at his lip even as his own drifted down to nip at her throat—a throat she’d wantonly exposed, her body begging even as she laid siege to his.
She moaned her madness, her hips pressed hard to his, the physical evidence of his desire unmistakable against her skirts. She wanted, she wanted... The two words thrummed through her with the heat of his kiss, her mind unable to complete the sentence. It was enough to simply want, to let that want rip through her with the intensity of an inferno, devouring reason and anything else that stood in its wake. ‘Julien.’ She gasped his name, her hands ripped at his immaculately tied cravat and moved onto his coat, his waistcoat, the buttons of his shirt, and each barrier fell before the frantic speed of her hands.
His hands did not reciprocate with such delicacy. He seized the bodice of her gown with two hands and rent, sending buttons scattering while wild laughter welled up her throat. Had anything ever felt so delicious? So freeing? Her chemise and undergarments fared no better. Julien was rabid in his frenzy, and so was she. She wanted to devour him, claim him, as much as her own body cried out for the same.
Claim me. Mark me. Know me. Drag me fromthe abyss of aloneness.Bring me into the light.
Her breasts were bare in his hands, his head buried between them as he knelt before her, his hands futilely, frustratingly working the string of her pantalettes. He swore and brought his mouth to bear, ripping the string with his teeth, his hands roughly pushing them down, his mouth at her mons. She could feel his breath coming warm and fast against her nether thatch. Desire, honest and raw, surged in her, rising fast, riding her hard. Then he tongued her seam and she thought she’d lose her mind. ‘Julien, I can’t.’ She would fall if he kept this up; her legs had no strength.
‘Hold on to me,’ came the response, his own desire making him terse. And she did. Her hands dug into his shoulders, nails digging into those muscled depths as his mouth did wicked things to her most private places until release claimed her and her vocabulary was reduced to sounds. How he found the strength to carry her to the fireplace was beyond her, but then, in the moments following that oral decadence a lot of things were beyond her—thought, speech, basic motor functions. And yet, she was by no means sated. Her wildness had only been tempted by his mouth, not tamed.
‘How are you?’ Julien’s voice was a sexy tease, his eyes hot blue flames as he laid her down.
‘We are not done yet.’ She reached for him, working his elegant evening trousers down past lean hips with quick, adept fingers, freeing his phallus to her gaze. ‘You’re magnificent.’
He gave a possessive growl, his body fitting unerringly to hers like a puzzle solved. ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’
She wrapped her arms about his neck, drawing him down so that the hard length of him pressed against her thigh. ‘Don’t be gentle, don’t be nice. I won’t break.’ She didn’t want to lose the tempo, the heat and the speed that fed the fires of chaos in her, that didn’t let her think, only let her feel. If she took time to think she might not like where those thoughts led.
‘I was hoping you’d say that, too,’ he laughed, low, at her ear. Dear heavens, this man was rough seduction personified and her body was craving it, perhaps even her soul was craving it, needing the ferocity of him, needing the connection with another. It was a potent combination. He entered her hard and swift and she cried out, revelling in the power of the joining. She wrapped her legs tight about his hips, lean and powerful, her own hips rising to meet his.
Please, please, please, please...The words became a gasped litany as her body met his in the old rhythm.Pleasefor the pleasure,pleasefor the obliteration...justplease. And then release came, a thunderclap, a powerful storm of its own, its deluge dousing the fire. Passion contained, docilely returning to its leash, chaos caged.
