She laughed a little, making him lose his grip again. “That’s the story of my life.”
At last, the first button slipped through its hole. His thumb slid beneath the fabric, brushing across the soft skin of her back.
There. Now they were under way. One button down, and . . .
He cast a glance downward.
. . . what seemed like several thousand to go. Good Lord. Did dressmakers earn wages by the button these days?
He focused his attention and concentrated on the task.
A few buttons more, and he was exposing her corset. Really, he was well acquainted with women’s undergarments. How many laced corsets had he seen in his life? Dozens, surely. Perhaps scores.
None had affected him like this one.
The band of linen and whalebone was cinched so tightly around the thin, white lawn of her shift. The fragrance of violets was everywhere. Not overwhelming. Violets weren’t the kind of flower to overwhelm. Their scent teased him. Cosseted his senses. Made him feel warm and safe.
And this wasn’t safe at all.
If she were any other woman in the world, he could have had her half-naked by now.
But if she were any other woman in the world, he wouldn’t have ached for it half so much.
He’d always had a taste for the forbidden. He’d always had a liking for her. Add in the thrill of innocent white lace against the delicate blush of her skin? His heart was thumping in his chest. Blood was rushing everywhere it shouldn’t.
With every button he loosed, his depravity grew. He wanted to spread his hands, smooth his palms over the small of her back. Lay claim to her. Press his lips to the hollow at the base of her neck. Hook his finger beneath those knotted laces and pull her tight against his swelling cock.
Damn it, Rafe.
He grabbed the edges and ripped the last few buttons free.
“There. Finished.” And not a moment too soon.
“My corset, too,” she begged.
Oh, God.
He stood back a pace, examined the knot, and found the end of the laces. When he caught the grommet between his finger and thumb, he felt like he held the loose thread of his sanity. One tug, and he’d be completely unraveled.
He pulled it anyway. He’d come too far to do anything else.
“Breathe,” he told her.
She obeyed, and her sharp intake of breath made him wild. Suddenly, this wasn’t just a thousand buttons and the most enticing corset he’d ever unlaced. It was the soft heat of her lips under his. The sweetness of her kiss. Her fingers in his hair. The rain spinning a cocoon around them. Laughter and warmth.
“That’s better. Thank you.” She turned to face him, arms crossed over the bodice of her loosened gown. “Until this week, I hadn’t tasted cake in years. It’s so curious, isn’t it? How if you’re denied something again and again, eventually you start telling yourself you didn’t want it in the first place.”
He swept a lock of hair from her neck. “I think I might be familiar with that.”
“When Piers was coming back from Antigua, my mother starved me for months in advance of his return. I was allowed nothing but watercress soup and beef tea, she was so determined to cinch in my waist. In the end, the malnourishment made me ill. I was so weak, I couldn’t lift a pen, much less stand through a wedding ceremony. We had to postpone everything again.”
The rage was enough to choke him. “She was wrong. Wrong to deny you. Wrong to make you feel anything less than perfect.”
“But I’m not perfect. Not for this. If Piers thought I was perfect at seventeen, he would have married me then. The same with nineteen, and twenty-one, and twenty-three. The last time he saw me was almost two years ago, when he was here for that brief sojourn before leaving for Vienna. We could have exchanged our vows that very week, and I could have gone with him to the Continent. But he didn’t want me there. I would have embarrassed him, perhaps.”
“You would not have embarrassed him.” Goddamn. Any man who would feel anything less than proud to have this woman at his side was a man Rafe wanted to pound into mince. Brother or no.
“My mother always said the same thing. I was a good girl. But for a marchioness, that wasn’t good enough.”
Rafe was beginning to understand why she’d been resisting him all this week. Time and again, she’d been saying she just wanted “good enough,” and time and again he’d told her to want better.
“Clio, you are . . .” Sensual, alluring, voluptuous. “Beautiful.”
Somehow he had to make her believe this. If his sordid past and plainspoken nature would ever come in useful, this was the time.
“Believe me,” he said. “There are a great many men who prefer women with something to them.”
“Are you saying Piers is one of those men?”
“There’s a solid chance of it. I’m his brother, and I’m one of those men.”
God, the feel of her under him in the dining room yesterday. He could still sense her lushness embossed on his body. Every curve.
“Then that means there’s no chance at all,” she said. “You and Piers are nothing alike.”
“You’re right,” he said. “My brother and I are different in many ways. In almost every way. He’s a diplomat. I’m a fighter. He’s driven by duty. I’m a rebel. He spent eight years neglecting to tell you just how goddamn attractive you are.” He walked to the door, shut it, and turned the key. “I’m not going to wait another minute.”
At the click of the lock, a shiver raced down Clio’s spine. She crossed her arms over the bodice of her unbuttoned gown and hugged herself tight.
“I’m not going to touch you,” Rafe said. “I’m just going to talk.”
She shivered again. Did he mean that as some sort of comfort? His voice was the most dangerous thing about him.
“Unlike my brother, I don’t have any difficulty saying what needs to be said. No matter how rude or impolitic.” He paced back and forth in front of the door. “Listen to me. You . . . you didn’t have brothers. You don’t know the adolescent male mind. We can’t get enough of female bodies. Breasts, hips, legs. Hell, even a glimpse of ankle will get our blood pumping. We spy on the maids when they’re bathing, we trade lewd sketches . . .”
“Why are we speaking of this?”
“Because every man has one woman who was his first proper fantasy. The first he thought about, day and night. The first he woke from dreams of, hard and aching.” He met her gaze. “You were that woman for me.”