To Devlin’s amusement, Cedric blinked and lightly shook himself. “Oh. Yes.” He glanced around, noting the prime position of the box and the view of the stage and the audience it afforded. “Thank you. That will”—Cedric’s gaze returned to the other group, this time to rest on Therese—“help.”
Intrigued, Devlin studied Cedric. While as interested in ladies as the next man, Cedric resolutely eschewed tangling with the well-born variety.
The bells throughout the theater started ringing, pealing out a warning to the audience to return to their seats.
Devlin strolled to join Therese in farewelling Lord Swan and the Poulson party. Cedric, however, hung back, merely exchanging nods with the group.
Once the others had left, Cedric bowed over Therese’s hand and, with Devlin, rearranged the chairs.
The three of them sat across the front of the box, with Devlin on Therese’s left and Cedric on her right. As the lights dimmed, from the corner of his eye, Devlin saw Cedric, his gaze on Therese, hesitate, then Cedric leaned closer to Therese and whispered, “That young lady who was here with Lady Poulson.”
Therese turned to regard Cedric with awakening interest. “Miss Nagley?”
Cedric nodded. “I wondered if you knew much about her. I thought I recognized her. Where does she hail from?”
Reflecting that such a weak excuse for his interest had no chance of pulling any sort of wool over Therese’s sharp eyes, Devlin, cloaked in the deepening shadows, grinned and sat back in the expectation of enjoying the rest of the performance even more than he’d expected.
As the low murmur of Therese’s reply and Cedric’s subsequent questions continued while the orchestra finished tuning their instruments, Devlin felt utterly content.
If there was any development likely to increase his wife’s enjoyment of the evening, his good friend Cedric had just provided it.
It was still pouring when they left the Opera House, and the rain drummed so noisily on the carriage roof that it was impossible to converse as they traveled the slick streets back to Park Lane.
Not that Therese required words to convey her delight. Her face all but glowing, she sat beside Devlin and positively radiated her pleasure.
His satisfaction was commensurately great.
When the carriage rocked to a halt outside Alverton House, footmen holding umbrellas ran out and shielded them from the deluge as they descended from the carriage and hurried up the front steps.
Once indoors, laughing, they shook raindrops from their cloaks, then surrendered the garments to a smiling Portland. “I take it the evening went well, my lady.”
“Indeed, it did, Portland.” Therese’s expression said it all. “The performance was sublime!”
She whirled to face Devlin. “Even you have to admit that the final scene was utterly riveting, with so many voices soaring and weaving in such harmony.”
Smiling, Devlin strolled to join her. “I will admit to being entranced.” His smile widened, and he looked into her eyes. “Satisfied?”
She tipped her head in thought, then with her lips irrepressibly curving, replied, “For the moment.” With her dazzling eyes and a plainly inviting look, she drew him with her as she started for the stairs.
Buoyed on a wave of unalloyed happiness, as they climbed, leaving the bustle in the hall behind, Therese linked her arm with Devlin’s. She felt as if the music was still swirling in her mind, a compulsive harmony running through her veins.
They reached the head of the stairs, and as they turned down the corridor to their apartments, she pressed the side of her head against his shoulder. “Thank you.” Raising her gaze, she met his eyes. “This evening will live in my memory as one of my most fabulous experiences.”
He smiled. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
They were nearing the door to his room. Eyeing the panel, she heaved a mock-disaffected sigh. “Devlin, ‘enjoy’ is far too mild a word.” Slipping her arm from his, she seized his hand and drew him on—past his door toward hers at the corridor’s end. Looking over her shoulder, she caught his eye and mischievously grinned. “I didn’t just enjoy it—I reveled in it.”
She faced forward, opened the door to her room, towed him through, and paused. She waited only until, his gaze locked on her, he reached behind him and pushed the door closed before flinging herself at him, into his arms.
He caught her, and as she’d hoped, he stepped back to catch his balance, and his shoulders hit the panel. Immediately, she pressed her body to his, reached up and, with both hands, framed his face, then smiling entirely unrestrainedly, in a sultry tone, purred, “Now, my lord, let me show you just how much I gloried in the music.”
She set her lips to his, noting that his lips were, initially, as curved as hers had been, but as she pressed a flagrantly enticing kiss upon him, his lips firmed as—as always happened—her desire ignited his. She felt the flame take hold in the irrefutable change in his body and the corresponding reaction of hers.
In open challenge, she parted her lips in blatant invitation, an invitation he seized. He took over the kiss, and his tongue surged into her mouth—licking, stroking—and claimed.
Pleasure leapt, spiked, then swelled between them, a heady, intoxicating, familiar brew. Desire, passion, and unshielded need were always there, essential elements of their intercourse—potent, ravenous, and compelling.
With their mouths fused, they lavished and ravished in an escalating dance of give and take; in her head, she could almost hear the welling beat of their shared dance, could almost sense the swirling, evocative strains as the moment fully ensnared them both.
She didn’t know how he’d managed to secure the box, and she didn’t truly care. At that moment, all she cared about was making clear to him the depth of her appreciation for the wonders of the evening thus far.
By creating wonders of a different kind.
As a reward, as encouragement.
She’d done this before—taken the initiative in an encounter—for much the same reason. And as before, he not only allowed it, but with his hands on her body, with his lips on hers, actively encouraged her to do her worst.
Or her best, as the case might be.
Through the scorching, drugging kiss, she made her intentions clear, then doing her level best to ignore the flaring sensations his hard, possessive hands, roving her curves, sent surging through her, drew her hands from his face and turned her attention to unbuttoning his evening coat.
That accomplished, she deftly undid the large buttons of his waistcoat, then fell on his knotted silk cravat.
By the time the silk hung free, he’d managed to wrest control of the kiss from her and, with knowing hands, set fires burning beneath her skin, and the entrancing, uplifting melody playing in her head threatened to sweep her away.
But she wasn’t willing to let the reins go; pressing and stroking her silk-clad curves against the muscled planes of his body, she snared his attention, momentarily captured it, while as rapidly as she could, she slipped free the buttons on the placket of his shirt.
She tugged the hem of the shirt from his waistband, found and undid the last button, then in triumph, drew back from the fiery kiss, grasped the gaping sides of the shirt, and wrenched them wide.
Her gaze fell on his magnificent chest, and her breathing suspended, then she forced in a breath, raised her gaze to his, sent her tongue skating over her lips, and placed both hands, palms flat, on his heated skin.