Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) (17 page)

Was the Regency Era a good time frame for
romance novels? Yes. Yes! Oh, God,
yes.

They made one more turn and came to a halt in
front of Peregrine as the waltz ended. Noting the small,
instructive inclination of his head, Cassandra took a step back and
dropped into another curtsy as Marcus bowed over her hand. The
quick, slight touch of his lips against her skin nearly sent her
crashing inelegantly to the floor, almost unable to deal with such
ecstasy and remain upright at the same time.

“Thank you, Perry.” She heard Marcus’s voice
as if from a distance, then watched as Peregrine beat a hasty
retreat from the room, looking for all the world as if he needed a
good dose of fresh air. She could readily understand why. The
atmosphere in the music room was full of tension, of electricity,
perhaps even a hint of passion.

“Cassandra, that was—adequate. Quite good,
actually. It’s a comfort to know that not all of our customs have
fallen into disuse. Would you care to retire to your chamber for a
rest before dinner?”

Retire? Leave? Go away? Allow this bubble of
happiness to burst? Was he crazy? Was the man out of his mind?

“But—but, Marcus,” Cassandra said, stepping
in front of him as he turned toward the door, “you said I could
show you how we waltz in 1992, remember?”

“Vividly, Cassandra, vividly,” Marcus
replied, the intensity of his tone doing wonders for her ego.
“However, after viewing your earlier demonstration, I have
concluded that anything you might show me would be a crushing
disappointment. Therefore—”

Cassandra tipped her head to one side
challengingly. She had him on the ropes now, and she wasn’t about
to let him get away. He
was
attracted to her; she was sure
of it. At least half as sure as she was that she was attracted to
him. “
Chickenhearted,
Marcus?” she teased, employing his
version of the age-old taunt. “Come on. What could it hurt?”

“We have no accompaniment,” he pointed out a
moment later, and she knew she had won.

“We don’t need any,” she told him, taking his
hand and leading him once more to the center of the room. “You can
hum, can’t you? Now, let’s take up our positions.”

Marcus took a step back, prepared to bow, but
she held out a hand, stopping him.

“No, you don’t have to do that. Let me
explain. We are at a dance—I guess you’d call it a ball—and you
have just seen me standing across the room. You don’t know who I am
but you like the way I look, and when you catch my eye I smile at
you—like this.” She tilted her head and smiled at him,
exaggeratedly batting her eyelashes. “The music starts. You hotfoot
it across the floor and ask me if I’d like to dance.”

“Without being properly introduced?
Impossible!”

“Wrong. Very possible. Even probable,
considering the fact that if people in New York waited for proper
introductions the marriage and birth rate would both drop sixty
percent. Now, you’ve asked me to dance and I’ve accepted. We walk
onto the dance floor separately—after all, we don’t really know
each other—and you turn to me. I walk into your arms.”

“I beg your pardon.” Marcus’s tone was
frosty. Positively glacial. And his left eyebrow had nearly climbed
to the top of his forehead “We enter the dance floor separately
because you don’t know me and you
walk
into my
arms?
”

“Now you’ve got it,” Cassandra replied,
enjoying herself more by the moment. “Here, I’ll show you. Start
humming, Marcus.”

His frosty manner melted marginally and a
twinkle entered his eyes, temporarily unnerving her. Maybe she
wasn’t upsetting him as much as she had hoped. Maybe he was even
beginning to enjoy himself. It was a daunting yet exhilarating
thought.

“All right, here we go,” she said, stepping
forward until she was standing chin to chest with him, close enough
to smell his cologne or whatever it was he wore, close enough to
feel his warm breath on her cheek, close enough to want to be even
closer. Taking hold of his hands, she moved them forward, placing
them, palms down, on her waist, then lifted her own hands and
rested them on his shoulders as she laid her head against his
lapel.

They stood that way, pressed together
intimately from chest to knee, motionless, for several seconds.

“Marcus, you aren’t humming.”

His spread fingers moved slightly lower,
burning into the soft flesh covering her spine just below her
waist. “That, my dear girl,” he growled from somewhere above her
left ear, “is merely your opinion.”

This small triumph made Cassandra even
bolder, goading her on to further heights, further advances. “Now
we move our feet, Marcus. One foot at a time, and slowly, like an
old man shuffling along the sidewalk—the flagway. Two steps
forward, two steps back. And hum.”

He did as she had instructed. Their bodies
moved in unison, their proximity causing her to be increasingly
aware of his body against hers, her thigh becoming more familiar
with the intoxicating bulge of his manhood with each slow step of
the dance. Instinctively seeking to be closer, she slid her arms
up, up and around his neck, then leaned back, to look into his
eyes.

He stopped humming.

“Like it, my lord? We call this slow
dancing.”

He peered down at her, his chin crinkling
endearingly as it collided with his high shirt collar, “I can think
of other names for it,” he said, drawing her even closer into his
arms.

They weren’t dancing anymore. They were just
standing; simply standing. So why did she feel as if she were
spinning in circles?

“Marcus?” Cassandra could hear her own heart
beating in her ears. This wasn’t a game anymore, a ploy to make him
notice her, a lighthearted flirtation to keep her mind off the fact
that she was one very displaced person. “Marcus? I don’t know if I
should bring this up, but we aren’t dancing anymore.”

“No, we’re not, are we? But no matter. I
believe I understand the moves. However, as long as we are here, I
have just thought of another little experiment we might try.
Another
comparison
we might make between your time and
mine.”

“Such as?” Cassandra was uneasy. When had the
power slipped from her hands into his? His hands, that were so
intimately pressed against her waist, holding her tight against
him.

“Such as, my dear Miss Kelley—has lovemaking
shifted in its application as well as its constraints? In short,
has this Sexual Revolution you spoke of not so long ago
incorporated anything new into the world of lovemaking? Or are the
rudiments basically unchanged?”

Cassandra’s tongue pushed forward and
moistened her suddenly dry lips. “I—I think they’re pretty much the
same,” she said, hating herself for having suddenly lost her
nineties air of sophistication and becoming a nervous, fumbling
adolescent in the presence of—she suddenly decided—a master of the
art of seduction. She should have known the marquess had not spent
all his time studying. He was too handsome, for one thing. Women
had probably been throwing themselves at him since he was twelve,
for crying out loud. Oh, Lord, what were his hands doing now? She
could feel his fingers moving, kneading, splaying themselves lower,
cupping her buttocks. She stiffened. “Marcus?”

“
Hmm?”
he questioned, his tone
absentminded, as if he were distracted, his attention centered
elsewhere. Slowly he lowered his head, his eyes never leaving her
face. “Since that first day, that first hour, I have wondered what
it would be like to hold you, to kiss you. You possess such energy,
Cassandra, such life, such spirit. Even when you are
angry—especially when you are angry. You delight me even as my mind
tells me that you could be very dangerous to my peace of mind, to
my purpose in life.”

“Well, if you feel that way, Marcus, perhaps
we’d better call this off now, before I corrupt you entirely.”
Cassandra braced her hands against his upper arms, preparing to
push him away.

He shook his head. “Too late, my dear. My
intellectual curiosity has been aroused.”

Pressing her forehead against his chest,
Cassandra muttered softly, “And that’s not all that’s been
aroused.” She lifted her head once more still wondering why she was
fighting him when she had been wanting this for weeks. Then she
decided that she understood. “Marcus? You’re trying to scare me
into behaving myself, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps. Am I succeeding?”

She looked at him a long time, admiring the
way an errant lock of his coal black hair fell forward over his
brow, drinking in the sculpted planes and angles of his handsome,
smiling face, delighting in the mischievous twinkle that she saw in
his eyes. She felt a smile tickle at the corners of her own mouth.
Oh, what the hell. It didn’t matter why he was doing what he was
doing. Just as long as he didn’t stop. “I don’t think so. Maybe you
should try harder?”

“Why, Miss Kelley—what a splendid idea,” she
heard him say just before he captured her mouth with his own.

H
er mouth tasted of
youth, and springtime, and just faintly of the strawberry jam she
had partaken of earlier in the breakfast room. And, for all her
talk of that unscrupulous bastard, Somebody Renshaw, Cassandra
Kelley also tasted very much of innocence.

Marcus could feel her trembling beneath his
hands, hands that held her tightly against his manhood, crushing
her softness to his hard, heated body as he bowed her body
backward, forcing her to cling to his shoulders to support
herself.

How long had he dreamed of holding her this
way, tasting her, touching her, learning her? From that first day,
when she had taunted him with a maddeningly brief glimpse of her
satin-smooth hip, he had been experiencing the tortures of the
damned whenever she smiled. Lying beside her on her bed had been an
exercise in frustration he had relived nightly, his fertile
imagination changing the details, enlarging upon them until he’d
been forced to seek solace in a snifter of brandy.

Ever since that night, ever since she had
astonished him with that harebrained scheme of a mock betrothal, he
had gone out of his way not to be alone with her, not to give in to
the longings he felt to be inappropriate, not only because he would
be taking advantage of her vulnerability but because they shared an
uncertain future. It wouldn’t be fair to her if they were to tumble
into love, only to be torn apart by time. Or by an untimely death.
And so he had resolved to remain aloof, distant, unmindful of her
seeming determination to tease him into declaring himself.

But now, after all his fine promises to
himself, she was here, in his arms, where he’d always wanted her to
be, and he no longer gave a damn about what was right and what was
wrong. He was kissing Cassandra Kelley, and he wanted to go on
kissing her until his time, her time, all time melted away into
oblivion.

Clasping one hand firmly at the base of her
spine, he let the other roam free, moving up her back, his
sensitized fingers smoothing the fabric of her gown before giving
in to the temptation of inching forward to gently cup one small,
firm breast. He could feel her blossom through the thin fabric of
the gown as he rubbed the pad of his thumb over her sweetly erect
nipple.
Exquisite.

He moved his mouth from hers—reluctantly yet
eager for further investigation—to travel down the length of her
throat. He allowed his teeth and tongue only a single small detour
along the way, to play with one shell-like ear and blow soft
breaths against her skin. But sweeter territory beckoned—the smooth
expanse of skin above the modest cut of her gown. He felt his lips
seared by their contact with that smooth flesh, causing a frisson
of passion to skip down his spine.

She wasn’t fighting him, thank God, for he
couldn’t stop now. He just couldn’t. Not if he didn’t want to die,
to become a sacrifice to his own desires. But what was this? He
felt her hand leave his shoulder, to move beside his, guiding him,
helping him to free her breast from the bodice of her gown. Oh,
God. Marcus opened his eyes for a moment, to gaze at the perfection
before him. Oh, God.
Oh, dear God!

His mouth closed over her nipple and he began
to suckle gently, drawing it inside his mouth so that he could
tease it with the rough side of his tongue and feel her flower for
him. Cassandra moaned low in her throat, the soft sound encouraging
him to new intimacies, so that he slipped his other hand fully onto
her buttocks, moving his own hips forward so that she could not
help understanding his need, his desire. It was heaven. It was
everything he had ever hoped for or dreamed.

But it wasn’t enough.

He wanted more; he wanted all of her, all she
would give, everything she would allow him to take. He wanted to
sweep her into his arms and carry her off to his private chambers,
lay her on his bed, slowly divest her of this damnable gown, and
make slow, burning love to every delectable inch of her body for
the remainder of this day and all through the night.

Even that wouldn’t be enough.

He wanted her for a lifetime. Her lifetime.
His lifetime.

And that, he knew, just might prove to be
impossible.

Reluctantly, and silently cursing himself for
having been reared as a gentleman—although a true gentleman would
never have done what he had just dared—Marcus drew the gown back up
over Cassandra’s breast, then cradled her head against his chest
while he tried to regulate his rasping breath.

“Marcus?” Her tone was soft, tremulous, and
not a little apprehensive as she pulled away to look up at him, her
eyes swimming with tears. “What’s wrong? Why did you stop? Oh,
God—you hate me, don’t you? You think I’m loose, or fast, or
whatever it is you call women like me.”