“That’s what you’ll get when I sheath my cock in your little quim,” he growled, one hand cupping her breast, the other her—now she knew the name—quim.
Harris went suddenly silent, his head leaning on the chair, his arms loose on her body, his breath even. Turning her head, she saw he had fallen asleep. He’d said he’d not drunk as much as she thought, but the alcohol must have done its thing. And if spending himself left him half as relaxed as her, it also must have contributed.
Carefully, she put her toes in her slippers and rose to her feet as noiselessly as possible. Her dress resumed its previous position, covering her. Edwina turned to him and froze. He hadn’t covered himself; his cock remained exposed over his breeches. Even in repose, it looked magnificent, nearly as imposing as when aroused.
She peered around for something to throw over his frame. On the couch by the fireplace lay a blanket. Treading to it, she picked it up and wrapped him in it. But she couldn’t help gawking at him for a while. The high forehead, the long lashes, the blade nose, and the cut-glass jaw sprouting stubble. Those thin, sensuous lips begged for obscene kisses. The sculpted torso, tapered hips, and long legs were a piece of art. In sleep, his ruggedness seemed smoother, yet his elemental masculinity still emanated stark and unyielding.
The view of him made her wish to start this whole tryst all over again. With a shake of her head to clear her wayward imagination, she forced her legs towards the exit.
That night, she slept like an angel because of those wicked delights.
After leaving work, Harris decided to walk home. Usually, he took a hackney as he didn’t use a carriage or a horse only for them to remain harnessed all day. The exercise would do him good at the end of the busy hours.
The early spring shed light on that late afternoon, a foggy sun struggling through the smog.
This morning, he had awoken with a cricked neck, a pounding head, and a sense of loss. The hard seat did little to dispel his need for Edwina. He envisioned her by his side on the bed as he sought her, tangling his face in her hair and his body in her heat. It became progressively more straining to keep his distance and the threadbare honour he never made a point to exercise.
Unsteady, he’d stumbled back to his chambers for a bath that should have washed the alcohol off but didn’t as the sense of light-headedness persisted. And he couldn’t tell whether it was the alcohol or the woman.
The staggering pleasure she gifted him within his study would be etched in his memory for decades to come. The little shrew wrung him dry body and mind. He’d considered himself too jaded to feel surprised by any new carnal engagement he might have. In the last few months, he had frequented Madame Lafond’s or even assembled his notorious parties in his house. But they held that taste of the same old interactions he’d been indulging in for years. Like eating stale bread, there had been no real enjoyment, merely the scratching of an itch, lately mild and dull.
When along enters the prudish chit in those drab, prim dresses covering a bottomless sensuality she had no idea was there and he had no idea he’d disclose. It pushed him to explore it in its entire extension until nothing else remained to reveal and enjoy, decency be damned.
Society be damned.
His conscience be—
Did he even have one? Had he ever?
Bleeding circles of hell! The mere notion of feasting on her buttoned-up person in every way, every hour of the night surpassed any nagging of that obscure fraction of his tattered morals. Two consenting adults couldn’t go wrong. And that would be the compass he’d use. He’d navigate through their delectation, satisfy both, keep her as his mistress until he rid himself of this untimely obsession, one he’d never possessed regarding any other woman. With time, it had to give. He could not live in this misery his whole life, starving for a woman who didn’t belong in his world; who wouldn’t stay in it, accept it.
Harris took the front steps two at a time. Home never felt so exciting. Hurriedly leaving his hat, gloves and overcoat with Hobson, he headed for the library in quick steps. Too quick. Five feet from it, he slowed to a leisurely pace. She’d hear his casual approach, not his impatient eagerness, or his keen drive. Much less his lack of control.
In his mind’s eye, Harris saw her sitting with a book, or even with her lace crocheting as she’d been doing of late. Hobson had informed him she’d taken to working in the library. He’d appoint a sewing room and furnish it with every possible device for her. Perhaps, he’d earn a smile—or a kiss would be even better.
His firm hand pulled the door open, mindful of appearing detached. But a hollow room greeted him. No fire, no book, no sewing basket. His entire frame froze, his thoughts boggling. She seldom failed to sit there at this time.
Swinging around, he went looking for her. She was neither in the drawing room, nor in the morning room, nor in her chambers, where he politely knocked. His feet flew downstairs faster than Hermes’s winged heels. The Greek god would punish him for his pride.
In the entrance hall, her hat and redingote were absent. “Hobson,” he called in the hopes he sounded nonchalant.
Instantly, the butler appeared. “Yes, my lord.”
“Did Miss Whitman leave the house?” he asked as though it was nothing to him, fishing his pocket watch and polishing it with his handkerchief.
“To Harding Howell & Co for sewing supplies, my lord,” the older man informed after a quick bow.
The shopping arcade held a reputation for its haberdashery, boasting every item under the sun. If the world produced it, Harding Howell & Co sold it.
Harris opened the lid and polished the glass cover. “Alone?”
The arcade would remain open until the last light. Gas lighting stood in its infancy, preventing shops from staying open late.
“Hardly, my lord. I insisted she took a footman with her.”
“Why so late?” Ladies usually did their shopping in the morning in loud groups in a profusion of colourful attires.
“Apparently, she ran out of supplies for lace, my lord.”
“Thank you, Hobson,” he said with a dry nod.
“Very well, my lord.”
A soon as the butler disappeared through the servants’ door, Harris grabbed his coat and hat, gaining the streets and stopping a hackney in seconds.
The hackney left him at the entrance. The first department store London ever witnessed offered everything a lady might require, from hats to fans, from jewellery to perfumes, to ready-made dresses. Many of Harris’s associates imported articles from every corner of the planet to supply to them. He was well acquainted with the place due to the nature of his company, which made it easy for him to stride directly to the department where Edwina had gone.
Few people circulated there at that time when the shop was about to close for the day. As he reached the haberdashery department, he singled her out from a distance. The chit stood at the counter as her gloved hands took her reticule to rummage in it and produce coins to pay for her acquisitions. She had money though she never asked him for it. If memory served, he remembered her saying she earned a living with her laces. It made him admire her for her fighting instincts—the newfound admiration unprecedented. However, it stung that she would not rely on him to care and provide for her. It spoke of self-sufficiency, but also her lack of trust in him. Her actions showed she regarded this arrangement strictly as business and for a short period. Not so short if he had a say in the matter.
Before he started towards the chit, someone approached her. Taking the paper-wrapped pack, she turned, giving him the view of the person. Baron Enfield, all smiles and solicitousness, the lecher.
The same vicious bile which he had at the dinner when he saw her with Brunswick erupted from a never-ending source in the pit of his stomach. It choked him at the sight of another man sniffing around her. The baron bowed and took her hand, but not before having a good look at her covered bosom. She smiled politely at him as she curtsied in that elegan
t way of hers. Harris had the irrational impulse to thrash the man to within an inch of his life. But his surroundings reminded him he should act like a civilised man. Which he wasn’t, of course, though no one needed to know it. So, he did the next best thing; pretend he met her by chance. Schooling his features, he prowled to her as though he had but not a care in the world.
“Miss Whitman, what a pleasant surprise,” he announced himself, a lopsided smile on his lips.
At the sound of his voice, her eyes snapped to him, a blush surfacing on her skin under her dainty hat. For a moment, their eyes meshed, a force-field of lightning flashing between them. She had his cock exploding in her hand not twenty-four hours ago, for pity’s sake.
The chit proved to be well-trained because she recovered in seconds. “Mr Darroch.” She offered him the same polite smile and elegant curtsy. “It seems the gentlemen are populating the arcade today.” The hell she’d treat him like any other sop in her acquaintance.
She had been screaming in his arms not twenty-four hours ago, the prissy miss.
Darroch and Enfield exchanged a distrustful bow. “A happy coincidence as I have business involving the arcade,” Harris commented.
How delightful to be able to dissect what lay not only beneath her clothes, but also beneath that missish surface; a sensuous woman.
“A working man, how trivial,” jibed the baron. Clearly, this nobleman, like the whole ton, considered labour below him.
“Indeed, Baron Enfield,” Edwina interjected. “I do consider work a noble endeavour.” She sealed this with such a sweet smile, not a soul would say she stood up to the baron. She had impressive social skills.
The woman wasn’t to be trifled with. And why this inflated Harris’s chest like a peacock, he couldn’t tell.
Baron Enfield’s conceited smile lost its lustre. “A refreshingly kind heart, Miss Whitman.”
Edwina’s dazzling smile didn’t reach her eyes, but it seemed to have fooled the baron who returned it.
“Gentlemen, it was a pleasure talking to you, but I must be on my way.” With another curtsy, she turned and walked away.
The slippery little shrew!
“I was trying to convince her to a stroll in the park tomorrow,” the baron said, and Darroch understood it for the taunt it was.
Harris couldn’t help the triumphant grin that came to his lips. “She’s already accepted mine.” Naturally, she hadn’t heard of it. And she wouldn’t consider being seen with him in public. The perception infuriated him.
The baron’s upper lip curled in a leer. “A lady of lineage won’t contemplate a Scott savage like you.”
Harris reconsidered his decision not to thrash the sop, though he tamped down on his annoyance, not about to give the other man a taste of seeing him lose control. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that. My cousin’s brother has an English lady for a wife.” Lady Catriona was half-English, but the lecher didn’t need to get wind of it. He bowed to the other man and left.
A hundred or so yards away, Edwina found the carriage where she’d left it. Thanking George, the footman, for his help with her package, she stepped inside and nearly bumped into the cad.
Their gazes collided as her heart somersaulted. He looked imposing in his precisely tailored suit, dishevelled midnight hair and stubbled jaw. In the enclosed space, his scent of pine wood and man radiated to her. It reminded her of last evening when they had been so close, his scent enveloping her, clinging to her skin, lingering as she lay down in her bed.
Regaining her composure, she sat on the opposite seat, hands folded on her lap. Those dark eyes perused all of her, creating an unbearable tension.
“You followed me,” she accused.
“A tad late for shopping, wouldn’t you say?” He emitted at the same time a signal for the carriage to drive.
Both fell silent.
His disastrous lips stretched in a knowing smirk. “Yes, I followed you,” he admitted unapologetically. And possessively, as though he had the right to invade her personal space at his ease. And the only thing she could think was that she’d like him to invade much more than her space.
Silly ninny!
“I ran out of supplies,” she compromised, though Hobson must certainly have informed him of it.
His nod came slowly. “Did you use it as an excuse to meet Enfield?”
The close-range shot annoyed her. Brows pleated, eyes narrowed, nose flaring, her glare attacked him. “Of course not!” For starters, the baron was little more than a buck. And even so, he’d take a thousand years to grow into half the man Harris showed to be.
Good gracious! She must have sunk low to compare the cad favourably with a nobleman whose title tracked back centuries.
“Good,” he replied, crossing one ankle over a thigh. “No woman of mine goes around flirting.”
Her nostrils sucked in air audibly. “I’m not yours!”
Those lips stretched in a broad grin that smacked of a tremendous self-assurance. “But you’ll be.”
Edwina tilted her head. “My body, perhaps.”
He crossed his bunched arms and eyed her from the top of his blade nose. “All of you. Your desire, your moans, your will, your screams. Everything.”
His words induced a wave to cut through her, pooling in the centre of her. She now understood why it ached for him. “That remains to be seen,” she maintained, though the carriage’s rattling proved no match for the thrashing of her heart.
He breathed a short chuckle, his gaze telling her he recognised the exact chords to pull to play her to his tune as easily as if she came with sheet music. The worst thing being that with his experience and carnal desires, he had the right of it.
His jaw jerked to the wrap by her side. “What have you got there?” He changed the subject.
Her glance darted to the package, and she gave a slight shrug. “Thread, hooks, decoration.”
“You never ask me for money for anything.” More a statement than a question, he seemed awed by it.
“I don’t want your money!” The emphatic tone left no room for questioning.
“You’re under my protection. It’s only sensible I support your needs.”
Protection indeed! They’d drawn an agreement, black on white, signed and witnessed. Nothing more.
“I’m here to pay a debt, remember?” Her chin notched up.
“How can I forget?” His scowl arose out of nowhere.
What on earth was that supposed to mean? The man took to speaking in riddles. “You didn’t.” He’d refused to forgive the debt or receive the small amounts she offered to pay in the long run.
Edwina didn’t throw it as an accusation, totally aware that she went to him, she returned to accept his proposition. Nobody forced her to sign any arrangement. She’d strive to keep her side of it, wouldn’t think of breaking her word, ever. He granted her there’d be no child. And if they acted discreetly, she had the opportunity to go back to her previous life as if nothing had happened, minus the possibility of a marriage for love. That she forfeited in full conscience and didn’t feel it as too much of a loss. Her work, her family and friends should be more than enough in the way of fulfilment.
“You can cry off, as you once asked.” His direct glare indicated he spoke seriously.
But she’d not buy it. The man had a company, and not a charitable one. More than that, he was a libertine, intent on indulging in hedonism.
“And what? You’ll come knocking in years ahead to deny it’s cleared?”
“You have the papers stating just that, as you insisted we do beforehand.”
True, she possessed them, her family remained safe, her sister unharmed and with her whole life ahead of her. Her eyes scrutinised him as though she’d be able to see the depths of this complex man and understand what this was all about. The insight didn’t sprout from his perfect face, his remarkable eyes or his wall of a body.
“Walk away,” he continued. “With yo
ur honour, your future, your life.” The singular sign he wasn’t as cool as he wanted her to believe was the way he raked his wavy hair with a restless hand. The ebony strands fell everywhere, and for a moment, she only could lament she’d never mesh her fingers in it again. “Marry a nobleman, bear children, be happy.” His thick throat swallowed hard as his attention turned to the passing city outside the window.
There was something amiss here though she couldn’t put her finger on what. Why this now? He’d been adamant from the start of the role she’d play in his life. And he let her sample how it would be. He got her to yearn for it, from minute one. To come with this chit-chat? He’d said she could choose whatever they did. So she would.
“No!” His head jerked to her. “I’m not a coward.” Her chin lifted higher; her tone full of certainty. She’d not turn tail and run even though she’d thought of it in a moment of weakness. She knew better now. There should be no easy way, no lucky escape; life didn’t resemble a pink-hued novel, it drove hard bargains, and one must rise to meet them. “I accepted the terms. I’ll carry them out like the honoured woman I am.”
Their eyes merged in long scrutiny. “So help me the devil because you will,” he rasped.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Like every evening, Harris and Edwina sat in the dining room at opposite sides of the long table eating in sepulchral silence.
Harris’s mind had plunged into a jumble he was having a hard time untangling. What the blasting hell had that stunt he pulled in the carriage been? One minute he enforced she belonged to him, the next he offered her to cry off as though her leaving didn’t make a difference. As though the very notion didn’t tear his guts into a million pieces.
He observed her as she took a diminutive portion of food, her lips closing around the fork in a way that got him nearly dizzy with the fantasy of those cushioned morsels surrounding him.
Her Wicked LibertineEDIT Page 8
