“Jonah,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around the back of his neck, bringing his mouth back to hers. “Dance with me again the way you did at the masquerade ball.”
“That? That was hardly dancing. You dance. That was just swaying,” he teased.
“So you want me to teach you some ballet moves and make you a real dancer?”
Jonah chuckled. “God, no. I would be tragic at ballet. You wouldn’t know this, but I had some moves back in the day. Do you know how many galas and charity balls and fancy parties I went to as an esteemed member of a prestigious law firm here in New Orleans? I was the toast of the town.”
Clara breathed out a laugh, kissing the indent at the base of his throat and making him groan. “Show me.”
He tensed and she shook her head, her nose rubbing against the base of his throat. “With your body. Let me feel it,” she amended.
His shoulders dropped and he laughed, pulling on her hand, leading her quickly through the kitchen and into another darkened hallway.
“Stay here,” he whispered, their fingertips brushing as he left her, walking to the library beyond and turning on the old turntable, feeling with his hands as he placed the needle on the edge of the record already in place. It was the record he’d put on after receiving the gift from Clara, wanting to listen not only to the tune, but to the words of the song she’d chosen for him.
The strains of All I Ask of You filled the room, and Jonah turned it up to its highest volume, making his way back to Clara where she waited for him in the blackened hallway.
She gasped softly when he suddenly took her in his arms, having not been able to hear him approach over the music filling the air around them.
“You knew the song,” she said, a smile in her voice as he spun her once, and her smile turned into a laugh, bubbling sweetly from her.
“Did you choose it on purpose?” Jonah pulled her flush against him, leading her down the hallway and lifting her slightly when he came to the place where there was a step up into the front foyer.
Moonlight filtered softly through the window high up on the wall and Clara laid her head on his shoulder as she followed his lead. “Yes,” she said, her voice wistful, dreamy.
He spun her around once, twice, as she laughed again, moving her through the unlit rooms, the steps he’d known so well once before coming back to him as though it hadn’t been too many long, lonely years since he’d held a woman this way.
And this wasn’t just any woman, just any partner he might dance with once and forget about after the song ended. This was Clara, and she was in his arms, and he never wanted to dance with anyone else again. Only her.
Jonah smiled each time a surprised burst of laughter erupted sweetly from her, spinning more quickly, picking her up as he took the small steps up and down into different rooms of the house he knew like the back of his own hand. The rooms he’d walked through in the dark night after night.
He was leading and she was following, and in the darkness like this, with her pressed so close to him, trusting him not to let her fall, he could almost believe he’d gone back in time . . . he was just himself, just Jonah, unscarred, a man with the freedom he’d taken so much for granted once upon a time.
But no, he wasn’t. He was scarred—damaged—and it hurt too much to pretend otherwise. This was his new world, but the real miracle was that Clara had come into it of her own free will, and she was holding him just as tightly in her arms as he was holding her.
He spun her past the windows emitting the barest glint of moonlight, a soft pearlescent glow barely peeking through the heavy drapes, but enough to see by if he stopped rather than spinning them back into the shadows.
She laughed, pulling him closer. “You dance between moonbeams, don’t you, Jonah Chamberlain?” Her laughter had faded, her voice sounding huskier than it had. Her words sounded familiar somehow, as if he might have heard them somewhere before, or thought them himself, but he couldn’t quite remember.
“We dance between moonbeams,” he said, spinning her again.
“We,” she repeated. “Yes.”
The music dwindled and then faded away, static from the needle replacing the notes. Jonah stopped, both of them breathing heavily in each other’s arms. He could feel his own heartbeat—hers too—the blood pulsing between them, the gravity that suddenly filled the air.
“Kiss me again, Jonah,” she said. “Only this time, don’t stop.”
His heart skipped a beat and then took up the same rapid staccato. “What?”
She took his shirt in her fists and pulled him closer, impossibly closer. “Don’t stop kissing me. Take me to your bedroom.”
“My bedroom?” His blood was pumping furiously through his veins, he could feel every sweet curve of her softness against him, and his heart was beating so harshly, he couldn’t think straight.
“That place where you sleep?” she said, a smile in her voice. She let go of his shirt with one hand and placed it over his pounding heart. “The place where I’m going to sleep.” He heard her lick her lips, and it sent a hot pulse of blood to the already-throbbing place between his legs. “Under you. And on top of you and—”
She let out a surprised gasp as he swooped her into his arms and headed for his bedroom. He made a brief pause in the library where he switched off the record player now playing a song from Phantom of the Opera that he didn’t know the name of.
Silence enveloped them as he walked the rest of the way to his bedroom, kicking the door closed and putting Clara down, her body sliding against his before her feet hit the floor.
He kissed her as she grabbed his shirt once more, leaning into him so his back hit the door. He was losing the ability to think at all, losing the ability to reason, but before he allowed himself to fall into the oblivion of pleasure, he had to be sure she would not regret this. “Are you sure? You haven’t seen me. I’m—”
“I don’t care,” she said between kisses. “Don’t you know that by now?”
He groaned. He was painfully hard—desperate—and her hands were everywhere, moving down the plane of his chest, her fingers tracing the muscles of his abs through his T-shirt. Slow. Slow down. Speed up. Don’t stop. More. God, he wanted everything, and all at once.
He didn’t know this version of himself, this Jonah so frantic with lust that he was coming apart at the seams. He’d always been the one in control, the one who set the pace and made the terms when it came to the women he’d been physical with.
But Clara . . . oh God, Clara . . . She was making sweet little panting sounds, making him delirious, causing him to pulse hotly in his jeans with each small utterance. Christ. He was going to explode. It’d been so long. This wasn’t going to go well. If she pressed her hips into his one more time, he was going to come in his damn pants.
“Clara.” His voice was filled with desperation. He tried his best to add a hint of levity, as though he found the situation vaguely amusing, when in fact, he did not. Maybe they could laugh about it. No big deal. You touched me once, and I lost it.
“I’m not going to last—” His words left off on a moan as she unbuttoned the top button of his jeans, the sound of his zipper barely breaking through the lust fog he was in. “W-what are you doing?”
“Helping.” Her hand wrapped around his hardened flesh and he groaned, his back pressing into the door behind him.
“Oh God,” he panted, as her hand gripped him more tightly, stroking up once and then down. Jesus. Jesus. It felt so good. He should stop her . . . maybe. But he couldn’t begin to figure out why.
Clara leaned in and kissed his neck, nipping it softly as her hand continued to work its magic. He grew harder, and his gut clenched with pleasure before he came, breathing out her name raggedly as his head fell against the door.
“Better?” she asked on a whisper, releasing him as he fought to catch his breath.
“God, yes.” That small trickle of embarrassment returned, and yet the bliss still coursing through him dulled it. He’d be embarrassed about it later. Or not. Because for now the happiness lighting his insides was too great to allow him to fully believe that was possible.