Lust. Charlotte Featherstone
Head heavy, limbs warm, Chastity moved deeper into the darkness of the ten-foot-tall maze. She was breathing heavy, she realized. The lace that held her cameo secure around her throat felt suffocating. Her stays were tight, pushing her breasts higher, making it difficult to get air into her constricted lungs. Her fan dropped to the deep, damp grass as the air grew thicker, began to wrap around her, where it worked its way under her skirt to caress her calves, then thighs. She felt strange, as though she was disembodied. Her mind, always sharp and clear, would not work, and her lungs did not seem able to provide her body with adequate air.
With a gasp, she felt heat slide over her waist, then up to her breasts and, unable to bear it, she tore the lace choker off, flinging it to the ground, gasping to breathe. She was being smothered, but by what or whom, she could not fathom. She was utterly alone—and yet she wasn’t.
“A beautiful woman such as you should not be out in the dark, unaccompanied by a gentleman.”
Whirling around, Chastity startled when she heard the deep voice behind her. The man’s identity was cleverly concealed by an intricate mask made of gold and wire, designed to look like foliage. With his height, and the breadth of his shoulders outlined by the moon, and his long black hair whispering in the slight breeze, he looked like the fabled Oak King come to ravish her.
Unsteadily, she took a step back, coming up against a large birch tree that marked the entrance to the maze. She did not know this man, yet there was something about him that called to her—his voice, perhaps, or maybe the way he stood, so proud, so masculine, so … certain of himself.
“I have frightened you.” His accent was thick and alluring as he spoke to her, his voice musical, yet deep and intensely male. “I would not have it so.”
“I didn’t hear you approach, sir,” she said, noticing how the mist had not evaporated, but seemed to draw to him, like a moth to a flame. It was almost as if he was shrouded in it, shimmering in the glow. Chastity stared, frozen, fascinated by the magic of it, lured by the beauty of him.
“Forgive me.” He stepped closer to her, the vapor glinting and shifting around him. The scent that made her feel so strange earlier became stronger, heavier. It was a delicious smell, one that made her body tingle with a warmth she could not define.
“Have we met, sir?” she inquired, taking a step back as he approached her. He was now bathed in a shaft of moonlight, the effect quite breathtaking. She saw, even despite the mask he wore, that he studied her from beneath a thick veil of black lashes. His hair was as dark as a raven’s feathers, heavy and glistening like spilled ink in the moonlight as it grazed the shoulders of his velvet jacket. A frock coat that Chastity was quite certain required no extra padding.
He let her study him and she half wondered as their gazes met if the man was not fully aware of what his face and his figure must do to the opposite sex. Any sane woman would find this man unavoidably compelling and sensual. Any woman would wish to find herself in his arms, being kissed by his lips and ravished by his elegant, yet extremely masculine, hands.
She was not just any woman. Yet this outsider seemed to have a most disturbing effect on her. He possessed a beauty, a mysterious strangeness that seduced her even as her brain warned her to run, to leave the maze as quickly as she could. But she could not move. Her dance slippers were fixed firmly upon the ground as if they had been glued there.
Do I not tempt you? Are you not thinking, at this very moment, what my body would feel like upon yours?
The words came from nowhere—no, from him—despite the fact he had not moved his lips. Did not even smile. Just stood before her, silently allowing her perusal.
Your gaze lingers on my fingers as though you hunger to have them caress you, to slowly pull the tapes of your stays and reveal what has been so meticulously hidden beneath that gown. Despite the mask, I see in your eyes that desire, the burning deep inside to have my hands upon your flesh.
His voice again, beautiful, lyrical. His words luring. Enticing. But still his masculine lips did not move. Her own thoughts, then? she wondered. Was she even capable of conjuring up such base imaginings?
It frightened her to think so. It was impossible to believe that she, an innocent who had never been touched, could consider such things, yet Chastity could not dispel the fact that the stranger had not spoken aloud. Regardless, she heard his deep voice as though the words had been whispered intimately in her ear.
Reaching for her hand, he wrapped his ungloved fingers around her delicate ones, the warmth sending a delightful frisson along her spine.
“You are far too bold, sir,” she gasped, flustered when he looked up at her with piercing blue eyes that only seemed to glow as the gold of his mask glinted in the moonlight.
“Is it?” The deepness of his voice caused flutterings in her stomach. “Then let us begin again,” he suggested silkily. “An introduction in a private garden while bathed in moonlight is an auspicious event. One must ensure that it is perfect and unforgettable.”
Somehow Chastity knew that she would never forget one moment of this meeting.
The mist glittered in the moonlight, outlining his broad shoulders, moving with him as he stepped closer to her. He was otherworldly, breathtaking in his beauty. She would be recalling this moment, the feel of her body tingling and awakening, when she was an old woman sitting by the fire.
“The moonlight becomes you,” he said in a voice that was rich and smooth, that seemed to wrap around her. He reached out and Chastity saw how the glistening mist crystals glittered on his fingers, then wafted over her to her shoulder, where he caught a loose tendril of hair. “You were made to be seen in the dark. You are a perfect angel by sunlight, a tempting goddess by moonlight.”
She could hardly think. Was it the scent that surrounded her? The strangeness of the glittering mist and the masked stranger? Or was it that she was breathing too fast? Whatever it was, it was playing havoc with her mind. Had she heard him correctly, that he had seen her in the sunlight? Impossible.
“I don’t believe,” she said, then licked her lips to moisten them, “that you know who I am. Perhaps you have mistaken me for someone else?”
“No, there is no mistake.” The tendril of hair wrapped around his finger and he used it to pull her closer to him. “You call to me. I could find you anywhere, even in the largest crush of people or in the shadows of the Dark Walk in Covent Garden. There isn’t a place where you could hide from me.”
She should have been terrified by such a statement, yet she was horrified for another reason altogether—her body’s quivering response to such knowledge.
“You don’t realize it, but your body cries out, and my own answers it. We are destined to be together. Each to complete the other.”
His voice dropped to a seductive whisper as his eyes held her transfixed. This conversation was much too intimate for any innocent, let alone a virtue. He had obviously mistaken her for someone of experience and worldliness.
“I must beg you, sir, to release me. You are not known to me, and I am certain that you have mistaken me for your midnight rendezvous.”
“Lady Chastity,” he purred, drawing out the end of her name. The sound gave her goose bumps and she shivered, her fingers trembling in his.
“Sir?” she murmured, trying unsuccessfully to look away from his mesmerizing beauty. “How …” She licked her lips. “How do you know who I am? We’ve never met.”
“Haven’t we?” Turning her palm up, he bared her wrist and traced the delicate blue veins with the tips of his fingers. Together, they watched his graceful fingertips skate across her smooth skin, and Chastity, unable to control the sensations his touch evoked, whimpered with the need to feel his caress all over her. His lashes lowered and he closed his eyes as if he knew that her whimper was one of desire, not fear.
“What is your title, sir?” He was too richly garbed, and too well-spoken,