Authors: Kerrigan Byrne
Millie shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
He shrugged a gigantic shoulder and the movement rippled over his expensive evening jacket. “No matter. These private parties are hardly intimate, are they?”
Millie took a moment to scan her surroundings, taking in the hundred or so dancers and revelers in various stages of drunkenness and excess. “I suppose that depends on your interpretation of the word,” she remarked wryly.
There was that sound of amusement again. It hailed from deep, deep in his cavernous chest. A sound more suited to the shadows of the jungle than an English ballroom.
“Would you care for a waltz, Miss LeCour?” He stepped closer, invading her space, towering over her like a wall of heat and muscle.
Millie hesitated. Not because she was afraid, but because she very much doubted that a man of such height and width and—she looked down—large feet, could waltz worth a damn.
One tread of his heavy soles upon her feet and she feared he’d break them.
“I’ll step lightly,” he murmured, reading her mind.
She looked up, and up, into those unsettling eyes. There. Not a feeling, not an emotion, per se, but a glimmer. One of enjoyment … or regret, she couldn’t be sure.
Lord, but he was fascinating.
“See that you do,” she teased. “One cannot act if one cannot walk, and so, Mr. Drummle, I am at your mercy.”
“So you are.” He took her gloved hand in his—enveloped it, to be accurate—and led her to the floor. She paused to wait for an opening amongst the swirling couples, and gasped as he pulled her forward, seizing a place and twirling her into it with powerful arms.
It became instantly obvious that her fears regarding his dancing skills were completely unfounded. Indeed, he was the most graceful, skilled man on the floor … or perhaps on any dance floor in London. He held her close, scandalously close, his hand on her back securing her to him like an iron clamp. The warmth of that hand seeped through the layers of her clothing and corset, an undeniable brand. Yet, the hand that held hers was gentle, but just as warm.
The arms beneath his suit coat were even harder than she’d guessed. The swells of muscles where her hands rested flexed and rolled with his movements, and Millie found herself entranced by them. So much so, that she stumbled and lost her footing around a turn.
He pulled her even closer, allowing her to seamlessly recover while supported by the strength of his astonishingly solid body. Regaining the rhythm of the waltz, she threw him an appreciative glance.
“It seems, Miss LeCour, that it is
I
who should have been worried about injury to my feet.”
She laughed, dipping her forehead against his shoulder. Her heart sped along with the tempo of the waltz, sending warm flurries of nerves flooding through her. Perhaps her scruples about him had been as mistaken as her worries over his dancing capabilities.
“Tell me, Mr. Drummle, what is it you do?”
“I’m a longtime partner in a business enterprise,” he answered.
“Anyone I’ve heard of?” she pressed.
“Undoubtedly. My partners handle the day-to-day running of the business, meetings, mergers, acquisitions, and so forth. I’m over contracts, damages, and … personnel.”
“My,” she flirted. “You sound like an important man to know. Tell me more.” She used this ploy often. Men loved to talk about themselves. But this time, she found that she truly was curious about him. About how he spent his days. His nights.
And with whom.
“It’s all rather dull and workaday compared to what you do.” Millie felt, rather than saw his head tilt down, inching closer toward her. The din and atmosphere of the Sapphire Room suddenly melted away. Everything seemed darker, somehow. Closer. Their feet waltzed over shadows and their bodies synced in a flawless rhythm that felt, to her, sensuous. Sinful, even.
His scent enveloped her, a warm, masculine musk of cedar trunks, shaving soap, and something darker. Wilder. Something that smelled like danger and sex. The kind of sex that marked you afterward. The kind she’d heard in the wailing of ecstatic obscenities and pounding of headboards against thin walls in the days before she could afford her own apartments.
Tilting her head back, she’d meant to smile an invitation into his eyes, but her gaze never got that far. They snagged his lips. Soft against the hard, almost cruel brackets of a perpetually masculine visage.
Those lips
would
indeed mark her. The russet stubble would redden her skin and tickle any flesh she exposed to him.
“I believe,” she whispered, breathless again for the second time in his presence. “I believe that you want to kiss me, Mr. Drummle.”
His answer wasn’t the witty flirtation she’d expected. Just as suddenly as she’d found herself whisked onto the dance floor, he twirled her away from it. The crowd melted before them, artists and actors mixing with lower nobility or wealthy merchants. Those with money, power, influence, but not burdened by the more strident social morals of the upper class.
Eyes followed them as they left. Millie was used to it. Because of her celebrity, people watched her wherever she went, but this time, she had a cloying suspicion
she
wasn’t the center of attention for once.
The farther into the Sapphire Room they ventured, the darker and seedier it became. In a gloomy nook of the hallway, two bedazzled women were locked in a passionate embrace, one lovely head buried in the other’s neck. There was desperation in their passion. One born of unfulfilled desires denied too long.
Millie found an echo of that desire surging within her own body, as she followed Mr. Drummle’s wide back into a narrow nook beneath the grand stairway. Here, the entry chandelier was dimmed to create a wicked atmosphere, but it provided enough light to cast their corner in complete shadow.
That shadow became theirs as they claimed the darkness.
Gasping, Millie found herself pressed against the wall, imprisoned between it and Bentley Drummle’s unyielding torso.
A willing prisoner, but a prisoner nonetheless.
Lord, she never did this. Certainly, she’d stolen a few kisses, or gifted them as favors. She’d shamelessly flirted, openly admired, and even allowed the pursuit of men on occasion. But never like this. Publicly, with a man she barely knew whom she didn’t need to charm for money or gain.
Just pleasure.
He stood like that for a moment, or it could have been an eternity. Their breath mingling in the darkness. Wine and port and desire.
She couldn’t see his face clearly, backlit as it was by the chandelier that cast a halo around his vibrant hair. Millie knew for a certainty that neither of them were angels, and with a man as mysterious and sensual as this one, she could pave her way to hell in only an evening.
Best get started, then.
She strained toward him, lifting her mouth in invitation, but he didn’t allow her to move. He just stood against her, his chest pressing her breasts higher as those big hands rested on her waist. She read hesitation in the movement, a hesitation she didn’t understand.
Millie knew he could see her a little. She didn’t have to fake the come-hither look this time, and finally, those hands began to move.
This man never seemed to do what she expected him to. Even now, his hands weren’t exploratory, but purposeful. They spanned the indent of her waist. Then her ribs, increasingly confined by her ever-quickening breath. His own inhale hitched when he reached her breasts, but he didn’t stop there. Didn’t cup or test them, didn’t reach beneath her low bodice to find the straining, aching nipples. His hands merely kept moving upward, across her bare chest and shoulders, the calluses on his palms abrading her tender flesh and unleashing chill bumps everywhere.
And
still
he didn’t kiss her. Merely stood with a whisper between their lips, his hands inching toward her throat.
Millie released a whimper of need, unashamed of the frenzy beginning to build within her. Who could have known? That desire would be this delicious? That anticipation could lock you in its hands—its large, callused hands—and strip away your pride until you wanted to beg.
“It won’t hurt, I promise,” he whispered as his fingers gently reached the nape of her neck, and then her jaw, and paused there.
It already hurt. She
ached,
ached in places generally best left ignored. Millie’s breath had now been reduced to little more than needy pants. “If you don’t kiss me, I’ll die,” she confessed.
He froze.
Vibrating with frustrated arousal she surged against him, lifting to her toes and grinding her lips against his.
The kiss was as hungry as it was sudden. While his eyes may have been cold, his mouth was hot and tasted of wine and male. She kissed him with abandon, enjoying the way his entire body jolted and went instantly rigid.
From the rough fingers at her throat to the hard sex in his trousers.
At the press of his arousal against her, Millie’s sensitive breasts likewise swelled beneath her corset, becoming full and heavy. Her clothes felt confining, her skin itched to be bared to him. Demanded it.
At last, his tongue invaded her mouth and she moaned her approval. His thumbs, at first resting against her clavicles, caressed the dip of her throat, the curve of her chin, the line of her jaw, all while tasting her with the insatiable gluttony of a hedonist.
Millie had a sense that he was as lost to her as she to him. More so even, and the sensual, feminine power that surged within her fed her desire. She wanted him nigh gone for her. Drunk on her. Atop her, beneath her, and within her.
Perhaps they were
meant
to meet tonight. Maybe he was the man she’d been waiting for, the mythical hero that would sweep her off her feet and capture her heart.
His fingers tightened again against her throat, just a little, and she gasped. Then moaned as a thrill of fear titillated down her nerves and settled as a pool of moisture between her thighs.
“Again,” she demanded, her arms winding around his neck, her body rubbing against his like a cat demanding to be stroked.
His curse was lost in the cavern of her mouth, and she knew in that moment that they both needed to see whatever this was between them to fruition.
A commotion warned them before the door from the hall burst open. Two female bodies spilled into the entryway floor in a heap of skirts and spitting, swearing, scratching violence. One of them they’d seen kissing another in the hall.
The aggressor was a stranger.
Millie and Mr. Drummle leaped apart, suddenly surrounded by a riotous group of men crowding behind them, shouting pleased and lusty approval and encouragement to the fighting women. Millie watched them for a moment. Stunned that ladies could be so vicious to one another.
But, she supposed, jealousy was a powerful emotion.
“Well,” she called over the din, looking back over her shoulder to her would-be lover. “Would you like to—”
Her words died away, as there was no one to offer them to.
He’d disappeared.
Millie knew she’d had a touch too much to drink when she had to wonder to herself if the carriage she’d hired to take her the scant distance from Covent Garden to Drury Lane had, indeed, stopped. Because the world still rocked ever so slightly.
She wasn’t one to imbibe overmuch, but tonight was a special occasion.
Tonight she’d been abandoned.
Well, of course she’d had a splendid opening night at Covent Garden. There was that. But also, she’d had the most sensual, romantic moment of her entire life and then … nothing.
Bentley Drummle. What a
stupid
name. She was certain now that she’d heard it before, and not under the best of circumstances.
“Here you are, Miss LeCour.” The driver opened the door and cold November air blasted her with sobering force. “Watch your step, now.”
Millie took his offered hand and gathered her skirts before stepping down onto the street with a shiver. She overpaid the driver, Higgins was his name, a kind rather jowly man with a lovely top hat and bow tie. She thought at least he might be able to take the rest of the morning off and catch what few hours of sleep he could before the sun came up over the London rooftops.
She hiccupped and shuffled to her door.
Bentley Drummle. What a sod. She’d not give the man another thought. She was supposed to be celebrating her unbridled success and good fortune. Perhaps the man was sent by the powers that be to humble her on the night where her fame climbed to its greatest pinnacle yet. To remind her that in this world, she could still be treated like a common gutter slut.
God knew she’d acted like one with him.
Not only that, she’d been brought even lower by his rejection. Lord, but she was too romantic. Too willing. Too …
Lonely.
“Do you need help inside, Miss LeCour?” the driver asked with the careful voice reserved for drunks, invalids, and little children.
“No, thank you, Higgins.” With a turn of her key, she lurched inside and slammed the door on the evening.
Her apartments were not spacious, but for a suite in the middle of the city, they were downright palatial. As Millie stepped into the entry that served as a parlor, she let the warm glow of the welcoming fire melt her until she felt as though her bones were made of dough.
She loved this place. Draped in imported silks from the Orient, furnished with everything from Indian cushions to Louis the XIV antiques and bedecked with Turkish tassels, it paid homage to every example on the color wheel, and still maintained a balance between cozy and opulent.
“Millie, me love, you’re ’ome!” Millie found herself clutched to the plump bosom of Mrs. Beatrice Brimtree, her housekeeper. “An’ you’re as frozen as a snowman! Get in ’ere and take off your cloak. I drew ye a bath when they sent word that the celebration was beginning to thin.”
If either of them resembled a snowman, it was Mrs. Brimtree. Her round, pillowy breasts rested neatly on a figure that would never require a bustle to be fashionable. Every bit of the woman from her cheeks to her backside bounced as she walked, much to the delight of her ever-randy husband, George, who still called her “young lady” after twenty years of marriage.