She shuddered, the mere idea of it making her feel sick inside. ‘I’ve told you, I don’t make scenes any more.’
‘Good,’ he said, ‘then just shut up and dance.’ He pulled her closer to the warmth of his body, and they danced on in silence for a while, Madeline too aware of all the curious eyes on them to relax.
But eventually, as one tune drifted into another, and they lost their interest value when it became obvious that she and Dominic were not going to treat them all to a scene, she began to relax, let her body lean more reliantly on Dom’s, and surrendered to the weak pleasure of being in his arms.
The continual brush of his thighs against her own and the slow caressing movement of his hand against her back eventually sent her eyelids flickering shut, soothing her into a state of near euphoric pleasure until the dance, the music, the people all began to fade into the background of her consciousness as the awareness always buzzing between them swamped out everything else until her head was full of it, her senses homed on to the alluring smell of him, the touch, the sweet sensual taste where her lips kept brushing against the silken warmth of his throat. She sighed softly, her breath moistening his flesh where it brushed, and Dominic touched his mouth to her cheek, his hands drawing her even closer. They danced on and on, the world around them melting further and further away as they moved.
The Prestons’ home was old and rambling, old enough to possess its own ballroom built i
n a time when the rich had played more than they worked. And Dominic danced her around and around the floor until she felt dizzy, disorientated, too weak to even want to fight the feelings busily resurrecting themselves between them. This, she decided, was what she had been born for. And her four years away had done nothing—nothing to erase this need in her for this one man.
‘This isn’t what I want to be doing, Madeline.’ His mouth was a trembling whisper against her ear. ‘I want to be alone with you.’
‘Please don’t, Dom,’ she pleaded, groaning at her own weakness as his words sent her swaying closer to him.
‘Too late,’ he murmured in husky triumph, and swung her away from him so suddenly that she stood blinking up at him, the amused gleam in his eyes only half concealing the passion burning beneath.
Madeline gazed bewilderedly around them, stunned to find the music gone, the hum of light chatter; and that Dominic was quietly closing the door of the Preston’s beautiful book-lined study.
He had danced her out of the ballroom and across the hall into this room without her even being aware of it! Appalled that, while she had believed him as absorbed in their dance as she had been, he had actually been coolly planning to get her alone like this, she flung herself away from him, and stood trembling with angry humiliation.
‘I am not going to fight you for supremacy over that door, Dominic,’ she informed him coldly. ‘I would prefer if if you would just move away and kindly let me pass.’
His eyes were lazy on her angry face, the proud lift of her chin, the faint quiver of her mouth which said she hadn’t quite managed to grasp back her self-control. A fire burning in the Prestons’ grate surrounded her in a warm rousing glow, highlighting the pagan blackness of her hair, the perfect symmetry of her slender figure, the agitated rise and fall of her breasts beneath the passionate red velvet. Her skin, pale and smooth, and her eyes, dark and luminous, like sapphires on fire themselves.
‘You don’t want to go anywhere, and you know it,’ he said, suddenly no longer sleepily amused, but angry—angry enough to make her back warily as he began moving towards her. ‘Like me, you want this so badly that you’re actually trembling with it, so damned hungry it’s eating you up inside!’
He reached her, and her heart leapt as his hands came firm and determined to her hips, pulling her against him. She put up her hands to his shoulders to hold him off, but they were shaking so badly that they held no strength. And his tight smile said he knew it.
‘Four damned years trying to fight something that has no intention of going away!’ he muttered. ‘What a waste, Madeline. What a damned stupid waste!’
She made a small sound of denial, but it came out as nothing more than a strained little whimper, and on a husky growl that sent her senses leaping his mouth claimed hers with a burning demand and they were kissing with a frenzy which left neither of them with any barriers to hide behind.
The fire was hot on her back, the front of her burning from the heat of his body pressed hard against her, alive and throbbing with a need that sent a thick insidious heat drenching through her.
‘Meet me later,’ he pleaded huskily.
‘Where?’ It never occurred to her to refuse. The old excitement was running like fire through her veins, the old compunction to go where her instincts took her—where Dominic led. She felt suffused with the power of it, alight and alive.
‘At the boathouse,’ he said, reviving memories which had her groaning painfully, and, on a soft growl, his mouth came back to hers to deliver a kiss hard with angry frustration. ‘As soon as you can get there.’
He put her away from him then, holding her with his arms locked so that she couldn’t sway closer to him. And on a surge of that old Madeline desire to pierce his control, she ran the flat of her palms along his shirt-front where the skin burned beneath—then on down his groin, fingertips tantalising the taut sensitive muscles so that they contracted violently to her touch. Her eyes lifted, catching his with a look so utterly salacious that he had to shut his eyes to it.
‘Witch,’ he whispered tightly. ‘Do you want me to take you here where anyone could walk in and catch us!’
Her hands jerked away from him; she was horrified because she was suddenly aware of how easily she had slipped back into the old Madeline ways, driving him further than any decent woman had the right to do. ‘No,’ she whispered, and wrapped her arms around herself as a shudder of self-contempt rocked through her.
As if he sensed what she was feeling, Dominic was suddenly behind her, his own arms coming to cover her own, hugging her back against him. ‘I want you, Madeline Gilburn, ex-love of mine,’ he murmured huskily against her hot silk cheek. ‘Any way I can get you. I’ve never stopped wanting you. The new Madeline, the old Madeline—any Madeline I can have will do, so long as she is my Madeline!’
She quivered, too, too susceptible to the passionate possession in his words to refuse. ‘You and I, this time,’ he promised. ‘You do know what I’m saying, don’t you? I’m talking about us trying again. Being whatever we want to be to each other, no family intervention, no arm-twisting, no outside collusion—understand?’ She nodded, and was rewarded with his mouth feathering heatedly across her cheek. ‘You won’t let me down?’
She shook her head. No, she thought bleakly, she wouldn’t let him down. It was, after all, only what she wanted herself. Dominic was right, and the four-year-long separation had made not an ounce of difference to this—this madness which was their passion for each other.
‘I’ll be there,’ she promised. And he let out a long breath, his body relaxing behind her.
* * *
It was gone three in the morning by the time Madeline led her saddled horse from the stall and took the frisky mare over to the hard-packed soil before mounting her and turning her in the direction of the river.