The tale of the dancing girl Read online

  Heaven help her. When had she learned the sound of his footsteps?

  “Forgive the interruption, Mrs. Smith-Jones.” Colonel Weston put both hands on the back of her chair and pulled her away from the table.

  A delicious, vulnerable shudder rippled through her. He was strong enough to simply lift her in her chair, and force her to do as he’d politely requested.

  He stepped to the side and offered her his arm. “Your presence is required. Elsewhere. Allow me to escort you.”

  No one gasped. No one appeared the least bit shocked. Delilah was often asked to translate at functions such as these.

  The last time she’d looked into his face, she’d been making an effort to swing her behind as she walked away. She raised her eyes to his.

  Ah yes, he appeared to remember that, as well.

  He wore the same expression she’d seen last night: a cocktail of fierce, amused, relentless energy. Slowly, deliberately she smiled and drank it in, the resulting heat as intoxicating as any liquor. She felt her lips and cheeks flush.

  Delilah nodded toward her dinner partners and set her napkin beside her plate. She rose to her feet.

  “Of course,” she said.

  There was no visible combustion when she tucked her hand into the colonel’s elbow. Inside, she was dissolving into sugar syrup. She licked her lips and tasted sweet.

  It was a long walk to the end of the table. Neither of them spoke.

  Delilah needed a conscious effort to slow her breathing. Her dress this evening was a pale lemon, almost white, pleated organza. Heavenly stuff. Cool and loose. It covered her from collarbone to midcalf, disguising every degree of curve. Nothing like the outrageous outfit she’d worn last night. But somehow her hips and breasts and belly still seemed to believe she was dressed as a Khanum dancer. She swayed side to side, her spine limber, her breasts rudely announcing their presence through thin fabric.

  Layer upon layer of concealing clothing, and in the time it took to cross the room, she’d gone so deliciously juicy, Delilah had the embarrassing realization she might soak through it all the next time she sat down.

  Goodness, she’d need to find a water closet before returning to the table. She’d need to pat herself dry.

  Illogical, unruly body. Weston was a menace.

  He led her out the patio doors and across the interior courtyard.

  “Where are we going?” she said, meaning I’m not going one step farther with you.

  “Not far,” he answered, meaning Yes. You are.

  “I haven’t finished dinner, Colonel.”

  “That is the least of your worries, Madam.”

  She raised her chin and squared her shoulders. Necessary subterfuge to disguise the twirl and dip of desire that wobbled her knees.

  “We’ve discussed this, Colonel,” she whispered.

  “No.” The word lingered in the air as he chuckled. “We’ve not discussed this.”

  She was ever so delicately…trapped. She walked along beside him, one hand on his arm, inhaling careful shallow breaths, the back and forth of their conversation creating the same feeling of pleasant constraint that came from wearing a well-structured evening gown. It was part of the evening’s entertainment.

  “Here we are.”

  He stopped in front of a door, held it open for her.

  Delilah tried to see around the frame before entering, but the colonel placed a hand on her back and pushed her forward.

  He entered directly behind her. Delilah moved farther into the dark room.

  “Thank you,” he said perfunctorily.

  Delilah heard the door swing shut with a heavy thunk. The clank of an old iron lock followed.

  “You think you can lock me inside?”

  “No.” He sounded perfectly calm. Helpful even. “I’m hoping to keep everyone else out.”

  There was a rustling and then a match light sparked. Weston lit one candle and several others flared to life. Delilah turned in a circle.

  No. There was only one candle sitting on a two-door sideboard.

  It was a small public room, just large enough for the ambassador to meet in private luxury with guests. All four walls were hung with mirrors, full-length gilt-framed mirrors. Weston lit another taper. The shadowy glow of reflected candlelight filled the room.

  “Versailles palace,” Weston explained. “The first ambassador set himself up as a king to intimidate the locals.”

  “Certainly does make an impression.”

  Avoiding the man’s face, Delilah searched the room for explanations. High above the mirrors, open transoms allowed the cool night air to circulate. The sounds of dinner being cleared in the great hall, and the evening’s entertainment being readied—strings tuning—drifted in on the breeze.

  Odd. The only furniture in the room, except for the candle cabinet, was an old butler’s chair.

  Weston dropped the key beside the candle. The room had three additional pairs of doors, each twelve feet high, carved wood and barred shut with crossbeams.

  A butler’s chair?

  It was of an older style with a carved tray for cufflinks and the broad shoulders to support a man’s coat across the top of the back rail. A polished dowel halfway up the posts was the proper place for pants to hang and hold their pleat.

  The same little shock she’d felt when Weston came up behind her at the dinner table skittered down her spine.

  Why would someone store a butler’s chair in a meeting room?

  She glanced back at Weston, some kind of private joke apparent on his face. That smile of his was a risky thing. She looked away, or tried to. It was hard to escape in a room of mirrors.

  “What are we doing here? What is this about, Colonel?”

  “That was quite a display last night.” He walked to the chair. Sat down. Crossing one boot on the opposite knee, he reached for the buckle. His hand stopped midair and went into his pants pocket. Out came a round gold watch. With a flick, the cover opened.

  “I…” Straight to the heart of it he went. How to answer? She straightened her back. “Thank you.”

  He lifted his eyebrows and laughed. She’d surprised him.

  His weight shifted as he leaned forward over his boot, still holding her gaze. When he glanced down at the buckle, her eyes followed. With the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, oh so carefully, he pulled at what appeared to Delilah as an invisible thread.

  His hand turned over, cupping whatever he’d trapped in that pincer grasp. He glanced at her again, a charming, cunning look that seemed to think she understood what he was about. He brought his left hand, still grasping the open watch, beneath the right.

  With the dangling twist of his fingers he lowered whatever invisible treasure he’d found into the cover of his pocket watch.

  “I think that’s the last of them,” Weston said. “My souvenirs.”

  Her hair. He was saving the strands of her hair that had caught on his boot buckle.

  She stroked her forehead with her fingertips, shielding her face. The blush burned her cheeks.

  “I discovered them last night, when I finally went home.” A small accusation in those words. He had waited for her. “Without them, I might have considered the entire evening nothing but a man’s fantasy.” He snapped the watch shut, tucked it away. And then he reached for his boot buckle again.

  A man’s fantasy?

  Heat and nerves sent her walking in a little circle. She wanted to throw herself against his chest, spin her skirts wide and push her bottom toward his face again. She wanted to feel the warmth of his hand reaching for her.

  Her heels clicked on the parquet, marking the tempo of her frustration with this empty room. The mirrors left her no escape. The view of him surrounded her.

  Music began to drift over the transom, the civilized passion of the ambassador’s string quartet. Delilah found it irritating. She wanted drums.

  Weston loosened his second buckle, stretched his feet out and toed off his boots.

 
; “Your feet were bare last night, except for those remarkable little bracelets. When you did that spin…” He twirled his finger in the air. “Your skirts rose just enough for me—” he laughed to himself, or perhaps at himself “—for every man in the room to see.” Husky voiced, he confessed, “It came as rather a shock how irritating I found that.”

  “Perhaps you haven’t noticed, Colonel.” Delilah put her nose in the air to counter the throb his words generated. Standing still was torture. She wanted to roll her hips in a slow delicious circle for him. “Western fashion leaves my ankles visible at all times of the day. And bare feet are hardy a reason to call out the decency brigade.”

  “I quite agree.” In a moment he was barefoot himself.

  He stood, calmly unbuckling the leather belt that circled his waist, then slipped his hand beneath the shoulder strap angling across his chest, to unbutton his jacket. With all the care of a lifetime officer, he hung his coat on the frame of the chair.

  What in heaven’s name was he doing?

  “Captain Weston,” she started, “the circumstances of our meeting last evening were—”

  “Do not say unfortunate,” he warned, reaching for knot of his tie.

  She watched him bare his neck. “Un—expected.”

  In seconds his shirt was open. Skin, caramel-colored from the sun, glowed in the candle’s light. He must take his shirt off out of doors. Often. Delilah flushed with that deviant train of thought.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hanging up my shirt. Talking with you.”

  “You are removing your clothing.”

  “Obviously.” He was assessing her, measuring her reactions. Delilah could see it in his eyes. Lust barely trumped the force of all that intelligence focused on her. They were passing fire back and forth between them, watching to see which would go up in smoke first.

  How much did Weston know? About her? About women? The sensation of Nima’s clever fingers, teaching her things about her body, raced along her skin. Her hands trembled. Did he know about pearls?

  A little sound, a moan that she refused to permit, reverberated in her throat at the thought of Weston’s fingers between her legs choreographing the rise of that amazing fever.

  “Soldiers are literal beasts, my dear. We have been trained to follow orders to the letter.”

  He tipped his head, as if to ask “Ready, then?” and thumbed the braces off his shoulders.

  “‘Orders?’” she repeated hoarsely. “What orders? Sir! Your pants.”

  “I was given to understand you would not entertain a gentleman in uniform.”

  One quick tug at a string and his short clothes dropped gracefully atop the pants around his ankles. He took a single, neat step to the side and there he stood, naked and unashamed.

  He was so beautiful, it hurt her eyes. She couldn’t blink. In the surrounding mirrored walls, there was no view of him that was unavailable. The line of muscle that led to a curve of shoulder. She turned her head away as he bent to hang his pants, and she witnessed the arrow of his tailbone funneling into the cleavage of his buttocks. Below that, the tight girth of his thighs and unprotected tendons behind his knees…

  She didn’t know where to look, couldn’t stop looking. He surrounded her in this extravagant mirrored room. The male form, perfectly formed. It took her breath away. Literally. She was panting as if she’d taken a fright.

  Broad at the shoulder, narrow at the waist. What a lovely shape he made. His color changed at the hip, pale as moonlight. You could drink from the hollows of his buttocks, like a cat at a dish of cream.

  He spread his hand flat over his abdomen, absorbing her attentions, absently rubbing low across his belly, drawing her eyes down, touching himself everywhere but there—along the thick rise of his cock. Standing at attention. Waiting for attention.

  In the candlelight, it was the same color as his lips, flushed dark with blood and desire.

  “As you require, Delilah, I have removed all barriers to our developing a more lasting…relationship.”

  Staring at Weston in all his glory was the most boldly wicked, improbable act of her short, small life. An aching, empty hunger opened inside her, squeezing tight everything between her heart and the wet entrance to her body. The longer she chose to stare, the more certain she became—watching him wasn’t nearly enough.

  She caught a glimpse of her own expression in the mirror. Magnified by the mirrors, she appeared larger than life and hungry…exactly the way he’d looked last night in the courtyard.

  In the dining hall the string quartet began a new song, something old-fashioned. A Viennese waltz, Delilah realized.

  Weston held out his hand. “Dance with me.”

  “Dance?” She couldn’t help it; her gaze dropped again. As if that were the reason she couldn’t, shouldn’t dance with him.

  “Don’t give it a moment’s thought.” There was that tone again. Amusement. Expectation. “Merely a sign of my increasing regard.”

  “This is not—” Delilah pinched her lips together quite hard. Laughter would only encourage things. “How can I—we—?”

  “It’s never hindered my dancing before, has it?”

  Good lord. Delilah’s memories of dinners at the ambassador’s home suddenly re-formed themselves into French postcards, naughty pictures to examine later, when she was alone.

  “In all fairness…” Oh, he was the soul of reason. Absolutely respectable sounding, exactly as if he still had all his clothes on. He took a step toward her. All the lovely naked men in the mirrors moved closer. “You had your dance last night, darling. Now it’s my turn. Dance with me.”

  “Fairness? What is fair about this?”

  “Nothing will happen that you don’t wish to happen. Your power still reigns here.” He opened his arms, the muscles of his chest rising and tightening. “Don’t be frightened.”

  “I’m not frightened.”

  “Excellent.”

  He took a step closer. And another. Close enough to touch.

  Delilah raised her arms. “And after we dance?”

  “One step at a time, my dear.” He placed a hand on her waist, cupped her fingers in his other palm.

  Delilah closed her eyes. The picture they made was too much to absorb. All around her, mirrors reflected the endlessly fascinating image of him—the soft blur of the hair on his legs, the flexing muscles of his bottom, a pink-and-white ridge of scar just below his shoulder blade—while his body’s heat soaked through the gauzy layers of her dress.

  “Shall we?” He stepped off in perfect time to the music.

  Delilah followed. One step back—two-three—one step forward. She inhaled sharply as her thigh brushed his bobbing cock. Weston slipped his hand lower, insisting she remain with him.

  Two-three. Two-three.

  “You were magnificent last night.”

  “I…thank you.”

  Her nerves were skittering. Her breasts throbbed. A trickle of moisture began to trail down the inside of her thigh. Weston’s hand encouraged her closer, whirling her into the music.

  “Tell me something. Your costume last night. Was it completely authentic?”

  “Authentic?”

  “Were you wearing nothing…but the dancer’s clothes?”

  Nothing…but the dancer’s clothes. He knew what Khanum dancers wore. And didn’t wear.

  “Nothing but.”

  He swayed a little, tipping his head to press his lips against her temple. After a moment he murmured, “Take them off now.”

  “What?” she barely answered.

  “Your panties. Take them off for me.”

  He spun her to a stop and loosened his hold, allowing her the space to do as he’d asked.

  “Is that an order, Colonel?” She sounded winded, hoarse.

  After an endless tension, he nodded. Once. “Absolutely.”

  Dizzy and hot and desperate to feel his body against hers again, oh, just a little longer, Delilah reached beneath her dress
and tugged at her underclothes. They dropped around her ankles. Strange how something so small had such considerable effect on her. And on him. He looked as if he’d stop breathing again.

  Without her panties, she felt the straps of her garters framing her cheeks. The slippery silk of her slip caressed her skin as it had last night, when she’d wiggled against Nima.

  “Hold me,” she asked, hands reaching for another dance. “Please.”

  He took her fingers, stepped close and denied her. “Kiss me.”

  Their first kiss. Lips so tender Delilah’s eyes pricked with tears. He opened his mouth and exhaled a sigh. The warm tingle that followed felt as if he were breathing something inside her to life.

  Her hands fluttered over his chest, floating in the air between them, resisting all that luscious skin, so close she could smell his heat.

  “Touch me.” Oh, he was full of orders.

  She obeyed, willingly. Her palms lit against his chest, fanning over the twin shadows of his nipples. They were hard and tight as her own, though smaller. He closed his eyes when she flicked her thumbs across them.

  With a burst of feeling he scooped her into his arms and swung her around, backing up several steps until the chair was behind him.

  “Now I’ll hold you.” He sat down hard on the butler’s chair, one arm firmly around her waist, the other stretched along her leg, fingers searching for the hem of her dress. “Like this.”

  He wedged her between his legs, so that her knees were cocked at the top of his thighs, her own legs barely open over his erection, the tip of him pressed hard against her throbbing, mysterious pearl. He wrapped her close, nosing between her breasts, learning the curves of her breasts with the sweep of each eyelash, the tilt of his nose, the lick of his tongue.

  In the mirrors Delilah saw her own face with her chin resting on Weston’s head, lips already pink and swollen, cheeks flushed. She tightened her grip on the shoulders of the chair, crumpling his jacket, and began to match the sweet double pulse of the waltz still playing somewhere—two-three, two-three; she rocked her pelvis against him.

  His mouth went straight to her breast and opened, wet and hot, over her dress.