“I’ve nowhere to be at the moment, Annalee.” Somewhere along the way, his being here, however, had less to do with Jeremy’s favor and more with a genuine need to know that Annalee was well.
“Well, then . . . how fortunate for me.” With that, she dismissed him once more and continued looking . . . and then finding. She withdrew a bottle of brandy from the earl’s hidden stash and then straightened. “Nothing to say, Darling?”
“What should I say?” he asked quietly.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
As she removed the stopper, her hands shook. Even with the length of the office between them, he caught that tremble. Her eyes locked with his, and she glared at Wayland, daring him to speak. Daring him to say anything about that quiver.
She tossed the crystal cork onto the immaculate surface of the mahogany desk, and perching her hip on the edge and not bothering with a glass, she drank from the bottle.
She drank deep.
How easily her throat moved as she swallowed.
She was a woman accustomed to spirits.
Wayland ventured deeper into the room, joining her at the front. “You hated liquor,” he noted softly, the way he’d spoken with his father’s fractious stallion. They’d tasted their first brandy together—he, Annalee, and Jeremy. They’d all spit out their drinks and laughed uproariously about the gentlemen who indulged.
Annalee brought her bottle up in salute. “I judged it unfairly.”
Another change wrought by Peterloo.
As if she attempted to horrify or offend him, she took another swig, then wiped the back of her hand over her mouth, smudging upon her fingers what remained of her crimson rouge.
Wordlessly, she held out the bottle.
Her eyes shot up as Wayland came forward and seated himself in a like pose beside her.
He took the decanter and set it beyond her reach. “What happened tonight?”
“You saw it all,” she said, not pretending to misunderstand. “I was discovered in the fountain.”
He’d wager his very soul he hadn’t seen it all. “I mean when I left you, Annalee.”
Her lips grew pinched at the corners, and she stared over at the bottle she’d been drinking from. “I was startled by the fireworks.” She stared at that carafe as if it contained the answer to mankind’s existence. “I should have anticipated my parents would have had such a garish display commemorating the night.”
He shifted closer. “The noise,” he murmured. “It bothered y—”
“La, do not be such a killjoy.” She pouted. “I don’t want to talk about my latest scandal.”
Except, it wasn’t her scandal he spoke of. It was whatever had landed her in that fountain after he’d left her.
Jeremy’s urgings from earlier rang clear in his head. Annalee’s need for a friend. And help.
“Loud noises still startle me, Annalee. They always will,” he said, attempting to rekindle a bond that would always be between them. One she refused to acknowledge. “I’ve found there are far better ways to find joy than in a bottle,” he said without inflection.
Annalee scooted closer, pulling herself near until their legs touched.
He tensed.
“Tell me more about those better ways to find joy, Wayland,” she whispered, resting her fingers on his thigh. “I want to know all about them.”
“Annalee,” he said hoarsely.
Step away. She was only attempting to distract him.
But the Devil take his soul, he’d always been hopeless where this woman was concerned. He did not resist, as he should. Annalee continued to glide her fingers up and down, stroking him.
His mouth went dry. She caressed her palm up, higher, along that expanse of his thigh, moving it higher still, closer to that bulge pressing at the front fall of his trousers, as she’d done earlier in the conservatory.
This time, however . . . This time, he did not pull away.
His breath hitched noisily, and like a siren, empowered and emboldened by his surrender, Annalee slid off the desk and stepped between his legs.
“Annalee.” He repeated her name, a guttural prayer. For more? So that she would stop? It was all jumbled in his thoughts.
“I love the sound of my name on your lips, Wayland,” she whispered. Raising her head, Annalee took his mouth, and there was . . . a sense of coming home in these, the first lips he’d ever kissed.
Annalee caught her hands in the fabric of his shirt and dragged him closer, and God help him, he went.
“I want to taste you,” she breathed against his lips, nipping at that flesh, suckling his lower lip, urging him in every way to allow her entry.
With a groan, he let his mouth open and granted her that which she sought.
He gripped her firmly by the hips, his fingertips sinking into her flesh with an intensity and possessiveness to his touch, firmer than it had been all those years ago, and she reveled in that primitive grasp he had upon her. Then he was drawing her closer to his cock, and she pressed herself against him, rubbed along him.
There grew a franticness to their kiss, and he stroked his tongue against hers, that flesh gliding along Annalee’s, and she rocked her hips in time to the erotic dance they now engaged in with their mouths.
And then, knowing what she’d once loved, he drew up her skirts, and she let her legs fall open and settled herself atop his thigh. With a breathy sigh signaling a sybaritic relief, she rubbed herself against the perch he offered.
And just as he’d done long ago, he caught her by the waist and helped guide her on to the pleasure she found from this simplest and yet most erotic of acts.
“So close.” She panted. “I’m so close.” And he swallowed the remainder of her words with his kiss.
Wayland’s mouth slid from hers, and he trailed a path of kisses down the curve of her cheek, lower to her neck.
He suckled that flesh, and on a long, low groan, Annalee let her head fall back, opening herself to his worship.
How he’d missed these moments in her arms.
Annalee’s breathing grew labored, and her movements more frantic as she rode him, grinding herself against him in a bid to reach her peak.
It was so good. It had always been good between them . . .
Biting her lower lip, she buried her head in the crook of his shoulder. “Wayland.”
And then suddenly he stopped; the sound of his name wrenched from her lips brought him crashing back to earth . . . and the moment.
He blanched. Good God, what manner of cad was he?
Wayland remained with his hands upon her waist, and a growing horror filled him, knotting his insides. His fingers clenched and unclenched reflexively upon her before he caught himself.
As if she’d caught fire and he’d been burnt, he yanked back his hands. “Annalee,” he said hoarsely, shame coursing hot where desire had once raged. “I shouldn’t . . . That is to say . . .” He held up his hands.
“Shame,” she murmured, her lips forming a sardonic twist. “What a cute emotion.” Annalee straightened and pushed down her dress. The satin skirts, still damp from her tumble into the fountains, fell around her in a noisy rustle, their descent slowed as the article caught on his knees. He immediately pushed that fabric from his person.
As she casually went about straightening her garments, Wayland did so as well, with a rapidity born of his horror.