Quickly, Cole closed and bolted the front door. Sensing that Elinor wasn't on the first floor, he slowly mounted the staircase. Each maple tread held firm beneath his steps as he climbed steadily to the second floor, his heart thudding in his chest and his breath rapid in his throat.
Elinor wrestled with the window and won, jerking up the sash to let in the evening air. The ancient lace curtains billowed with the breeze, their yellowed cobweblike fabric more impression than substance.
She turned back, her gaze sweeping over the shadowed bedroom filled with graceful, dark furnishings. It seemed as if nothing had been touched as if she had stepped into some magic mansion, unchanged by the years.
A sound drew her attention to the doorway.
Cole leaned against the dooijamb, his dark suitcoat and tie discarded. The white of his shirt was luminous in the dusky light while his face seemed shadowed and still.
She couldn't quite see his expression, but she felt him watching her with an intensity that quickened every rhythm in her body.
Energy seemed to swirl around the room as invisible as the wind and just as powerful. Elinor felt the current, the intensity vibrating from Cole. His smile was absent now, replaced by a deep, brooding gaze that sent a thrumming along her veins.
"It seems so strange to be here," she ventured, trailing her hand along an ornately carved bedpost. "Almost mystical somehow."
"You've never really been in the house, have you?" he asked, his voice low and slumberously soft.
She shook her head. "Only downstairs to see Daniel." Behind her, the curtains heaved and rolled in a sudden gust that stirred her skirt around her legs. Her every sensory receptor seemed heightened, as if she were being drawn into a dream colored by desire.
"I hated this house as a child," she said, her steps wandering to where a brass cradle embellished with curlicues sat in a corner of the room. "Oakleigh was always so much a part of my father's craziness that I came to dislike even the name of the place."
Cole said nothing, his gaze following her with a fervent intensity.
"But now that I'm standing here, it seems like a beautiful place filled with memories I can only guess at. As if I can feel all the living that has gone on here."
Straightening from the doorway, Cole strolled to the huge, canopied bed.
"These rooms apparently haven't been touched in the last thirty years except to be cleaned," mused Elinor as she moved to admire a chest set below a heavy mirror. "I think this must have been my grandmother's rooms. This silver hairbrush set has her initials on it."
"The room suits you," he said softly. "I can see you here, dressed in silk and satin, your waist cinched in a lacy dress that sweeps down over a hoop."
"I'm sure it would be very uncomfortable," she murmured shakily, her body quickening as he drew nearer.
"Not for you," he promised. "Your slender waist was made for a hoop." He stopped, inches away from her, his expression compelling. "I can imagine you in a ballgown of pink silk, your ivory shoulders bare above your decolletage, dancing the night away in my arms."
"Decolletage?" she whispered weakly.
"One of the best aspects of plantation fashion," he murmured, the warmth of his body sweeping over her as he leaned nearer.
Cole's finger trailed down from her shoulder over the dark fabric of her dress, bisecting the row of small buttons to trace an imaginary line across her breasts.
Elinor heard her own swiftly drawn breath.
"Low necklines," confided Cole just as he bent to claim her mouth.
His lips encountered hers like a homecoming, a deep longing fulfilled in the texture of their touch. She felt paralyzed, stunned by the emotion that curled through her as heady and drugging as incense.
Elinor reached for him, hands on his shoulders for balance, as she swayed beneath the magic of his mouth on hers. Even through the fine texture of his shirt, his skin felt warm and vital beneath her fingers.
Cole drew back, his breathing faintly ragged. "Do you know what I would do if you were a plantation lady dressed for a ball?"
"No," she whispered, transfixed by his smoldering eyes. His intent was there, a mix of desire and determination. In a flash, Elinor decided. There were a thousand reasons to deny him and only one to stay. No one and nothing felt more like home than Cole.
He brushed back her hair with the lightest of touches. "If you were a plantation lady dressed for a ball, I would dance you away from the ball, into the darkness. And I would bring you up here where we could be alone."
Elinor's pulse went into double time. He stood next to her in this silent room that seemed out of time, his voice that same low whiskey-colored velvet that always seemed to brush over her skin.
"Can't you hear the music, El? Imagine us leaving the candlelit ballroom, stealing into the dark." He stroked a hand along the curve of her cheek.
"We would still be able to hear the music, and yet we would be totally alone."
The wind whispered through the house, drawing at the window and then puffing out again. Elinor felt its tug, the swirl of the wind and the pull of Cole's magic.
"And when we were here, alone, I would draw you into my arms, like this."
She let him pull her close again, half captured by the spell of his voice, and knowing where the magic would lead them.
"First," he murmured, "I would take off your earrings." A deft movement of his fingers at her ear and the pearl slid into his palm. "And the other."
His whispering touch left her languorous and aching. Elinor felt herself sway, a faltering of her strength as he pulled away from her to deposit her earrings on the carved wooden chest.
"If you were a plantation lady," he said, "your dress would have a row of tiny buttons up the back." His hand swept down her spine lingeringly, resting at the small of her back.
"And I would unfasten each one, ever so slowly." Cole reached for the top button of her dress, his fingers brushing the sensitive flesh at her neck.
Elinor allowed her head to fall back, giving in to the seduction of her own desire for him.
"Can you imagine," he asked, trailing his fingers from one button to the next, "how we would both ache waiting for each tiny button to be worked free?"
"Yes," Elinor gasped, sensation rocketing through her as his fingers brushed the inner curves of her breasts with each button he freed.