Page 72 of The Duke of Ice
“I’m not letting you.”
His despair hardened to anger. “It isn’t for you to decide.”
The door to her house opened, and the butler held it wide.
“We can’t do this in the street,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Go. Inside. Please.”
She clasped his hand once more, her grip like iron, and gritted her teeth as she gave him a tug.
He wanted to dig his heels in, but he couldn’t bring himself to make a scene. He’d go inside, tell her to let him the hell alone, and then he’d leave.
Only, he underestimated Violet.
She greeted her butler with a wide smile that utterly belied the tension swirling between them. “We’re just going into the sitting room for a drink, Lavery.” She sailed into the room, and Nick reluctantly followed her.
As soon as he was inside, she closed the door behind him.
“What will your butler think?” he muttered.
“That we’re carrying on an affair, which is what he’s been thinking for days. And quite accurately.” She went to the sideboard and poured him a glass of something that looked like whiskey.
“You drink whiskey?” he asked, accepting the glass.
“On rare occasion. That’s been sitting there for quite a while, I’m afraid.”
He didn’t care. He tossed the lot down his throat and handed her the empty glass.
She returned to the sideboard and refilled it. This time, she took a sip before giving it to him.
He stopped himself before he drank. He didn’t want to be here. He felt his control slipping, and he didn’t want that to happen in front of her. “I need to go.”
“You keep saying that, but if you’d like to talk to me about Maurice—or anything else, I’m more than happy to listen. What I am not more than happy to do is stand by and watch you freeze over and withdraw.”
He glowered at her over the rim of the glass, then took a drink.
She stared at him and crossed her arms. “You can’t go back to being the Duke of Ice. It’s not good for you. This past week, you’ve been more like the old Nick, which I think was your intent given the way you recreated things we did before. So, let’s do what we can to keep him here.”
Yes, he had tried to reclaim what they’d shared, but he wasn’t the same person. Too much had happened. “The Nick you met doesn’t exist anymore. You keep focusing on the past. I’ve decided I don’t want to do that. Ican’tdo that.”
Lowering her arms, she came toward him, the feathers atop her head swaying. “Then we’ll find the new Nick, someone who doesn’t need to shield himself behind a wall of ice.”
She stopped in front of him, so close, but didn’t touch him. He burned for her just as he ached to leave. She’d push him to places he maybe didn’t want to go.
“What if I can’t do that? Everything that’s happened has made me who I am.”
“And I’m a part of that,” she said softly. Her gaze turned sad. “We can’t go back, but I still hope we can move forward.”
He wasn’t sure. Even now, those old feelings of bitterness stole over him. In his darkest moments, he’d blamed her for instigating a string of misfortune. Though he knew that none of it was her fault, it was difficult right now to differentiate that in the midst of his anguish.
His body hummed with buried emotions and suppressed need. Before he could force himself to turn and go, she placed her hand against his chest.
It was a simple contact, not even particularly intimate, but he felt it all the way to his core. And it provoked him to move—but not to leave.
He slipped his finger beneath the gold bandeau encircling her head, to which those ridiculous ostrich feathers were attached, and slid it from her hair. He grasped one of the feathers and tossed the headpiece to the floor. Then he pulled the pins from her curls, letting lock after lock of blond silk fall through his fingers.
When her hair was loose, he combed his hands through it, settling it like a veil over her shoulders. She was so beautiful, eyes sensuously narrowed, lips parted. Her tongue darted across her lower lip, and his control collapsed.
Clasping her back, he dragged her against him. He crushed his mouth over hers, seeking immediate entry to the pleasures within. Their tongues met and clashed as his hunger drove him to press her body tightly against his. But the damn hoops beneath her skirt kept him from feeling what he wanted.
