by Ingrid Hahn
Secrets it would be keeping. Was it a hair ornament? Surely the end would be pointed were that the case. What would a man like the marquess give her? Something deliciously wicked, no doubt.
She studied it as they jostled up a narrow road late the next afternoon. Dappled light spilling through the trees lining the road made the jewel glint and glitter like it possessed a life all its own.
Several hours later when the coachman informed her they were drawing near, she glanced out the window at something looming in the landscape, and her mouth fell open. It wasn’t a hill they were approaching, but a castle.
The marquess waited for her at the front steps with more servants than she’d ever before seen in a single place. Any moment now, heat would climb her neck and suffuse her cheeks.
The blush didn’t come.
The carriage stopped. He opened the door, fixed the step, and held out his hand. She rested her fingers in his and allowed him to help her down. Wind met her face—a light breeze suffused with the scents of the country. Grasses grown long in the fields where sheep had yet to graze. Flowers on the cusp of blooming. And newly turned earth where yeoman farmers in the immediate vicinity were making ready to plant their late crops.
The marquess was perfectly groomed, the curling ends of his hair carefully artless around his face as if he’d styled it on a particularly romantic late-period representation of Alexander the Great.
Patience’s courage quavered. This was foolishness. The risk was enormous.
“Welcome to Glenrose, Mrs. Warrington.” Ashcroft’s smile was full of knowing, his lips tilted at a dangerous angle—slight, but unmistakable. They were curved just so. A bit of a slope here. A curve there. And a perfect dip following the shape of the sensual divot running the line between his nose and mouth.
A sensation like warm butter made her knees wobble. She’d opened her legs for this man. He’d put his mouth on her there. Those lips had opened for his tongue to work on her. Pleasure her. And he’d reveled in every moment. How long until he’d do it again?
He didn’t release her hand. Instead, he turned and presented her to the waiting servants. His shoulders were straight, his back long, his chest high.
He was proud of her. And when he looked upon her, eyes glowing, he only strengthened the impression.
The breeze picked up a stray curl and teased it against her cheek. The marquess reached up to brush it away, the back of his fingers light upon her skin.
The flood of heat came. But not the heat of embarrassment or nerves. The heat of anticipation, burning away the motes of doubt as the flames licked her insides.
There was no turning back now. Sensible or not, Patience needed this. Him. The freedom to taste all that family, social mores, and religious teachings would deny her. All that was deliciously forbidden.
A slight hint of a bruise darkened the lower side of one cheek. Patience frowned at it. “Are you all right?”
“Never mind that, dear woman.” He smiled. “I think I have it.”
She paused, studying his bright expression, mentally grappling for purchase on the conversation. “Have what?”
“What the V stands for.”
“Oh?”
“Vesta.”
“Vesta?” She chortled. “Is that an honest guess?”
“It was until you laughed.”
They paused. He surveyed the castle. “Isn’t it magnificent? I have half a mind to persuade my friend to sell it to me. He doesn’t do aught with it.”
“It’s…rambling.” In her reticule she carried a scrap of paper and stub of pencil on which to jot notes for new chapters of The Haunted Tower. Details about the castle would be perfect to work into the story.
His tone dropped a notch. “It reminds me of you.”
A lifetime of defensiveness reared its ugly adder head, hissing and spitting. Patience mentally tried to decapitate the hideous thing. The marquess wasn’t like the others. He didn’t speak to her in insults, veiled or outright. “Oh?”
His eyes went warm but didn’t leave the structure. “Startling. Complex. The jewel of the landscape.”
Unsure what to make of the compliment and torturously aware of another mysterious jewel she’d tucked in her reticule, she turned. “Surely for our purposes we don’t need quite so many servants as this.”
“If I have a whim, I need it seen to.”
It would have been funny were he not speaking so matter-of-factly. “Need?”
“Need, Mrs. Warrington. Need.” The tenor of everything between them shifted in the low notes of his words. When he leaned close, she caught the earthy scent of him, perfect for his unabashed hedonism. “Being near you makes me hard.”
Patience nearly tripped over her own feet. How was she supposed to maintain any semblance of propriety with him around?
She shook her head at the absurdity. Lack of propriety was precisely the point. “You don’t waste time, do you?”
Thank all that was holy for that. She needed to be touched. Everywhere. She needed the entrance to her body filled. A man on her. A man in her, filling her and defiling her.
“Whatever time there is in the world isn’t enough now that you’re here.” He reached to finger a loose curl dangling down the nape of her neck, lazily swirling it around and around. “You blush so prettily.”
Her hand went to her face. Her heart skittered with delight that was anything but girlish.
“Tell me, my lovely…” They passed through the gaping double doors. It was a fitting metaphor for the start of her new life. His voice dipped lower. “Are you wet?”
“Don’t you think that’s something you ought to discover for yourself?”
A devilish smile flashed across his face, all eagerness at the promised carnality. “How I look forward to my time with you.”
Instead of leading her directly to the bedroom, he brought her to the parlor.
“You left something for me in the coach.”
He raised a hand. “All in good time, Mrs. Warrington.”
For a man who claimed to have no restraint, he displayed a frightfully irritating quantity of—for lack of a better word—patience.
“It’s odd being called Mrs. Warrington.”
“I considered Cockburn, but the visceral image was far more off-putting than whatever humor could have been extracted from the name. How do you take your tea?”
Unable to discern whether or not he was joking, she let the Cockburn comment pass.
“You’re…fixing me tea?” Who wanted to think about tea? He’d promised fucking. Where is the fucking?
She settled onto a chaise longue, body humming with unspent need. It was the same longing that came with anticipating summer’s first berries. Inhaling their fragrance, but not being able to touch them. Knowing that when she could, they would burst in her mouth, plump and juicy. Except this was about a thousand times more acute.
“I never stand on ceremony. Besides, nothing will stand between me and your pleasure.” He gave her an expectant look, pausing over the tea things. The smooth tones of his low voice stirred the want already impatient and needy between her legs.
“Strong and very sweet.”
The marquess inclined his head in a formal show of acknowledgment. She thanked him as she took the teacup and their fingers brushed. He slowed, holding the contact just long enough to heighten the tension between them to an unbearable peak. The moment went long. Taut. The heat in his eyes left no question as to the untamed nature of his intentions.
“Pardon me, a moment, if you would be so kind.” He rose and bowed to her, seemingly all courtly gentleman with no hint of the lurking bacchanalian. It was becoming apparent that he did everything with a special flourish, not just practice perfect penmanship or lick quims. That in itself was a mark of his nature—taking enjoyment in all he did. Taking pleasure. “I forgot to send word round to my mother that I wouldn’t be taking her to church this Sunday.”
Patience’s mouth dropped open. “You were going to
take your mother to church?”
Now was not the time to be thinking of church or reflecting upon the sin running in her blood. If she was resolute upon making peace with what she was, it didn’t bear fretting about. Doing so would etch creases on her brow and give her mother one more thing to fuss over with pots of ill-scented creams and hocus-pocus pamphlets with recipes promising to restore youthful complexions. Which, if her mother’s face were any indication—lovely as it remained, although she wouldn’t accept any of Patience’s compliments—didn’t work.
Ashcroft left Patience with her tea and took a seat at the escritoire. He flourished his left hand as if loosening the muscles of his fingers before taking the goose quill and carefully dipping the tip into the ink pot. “As I do every Sunday.”
Patience stared at him as he wrote. He must have felt the weight of her focus, for he answered the unspoken question.
“I’m a sinner, Mrs. Warrington. I’m completely dependent on the good Lord’s forgiveness.” He blotted the ink. “Besides, other than what I’m going to do to you, there is little better than all that sweaty biblical fornication.”
“All that…” Heat burst over her cheeks. Just when she didn’t think the man could shock her any further, he proved her wrong. “I hardly think…well, there’s a bit more to the Bible than that.”
Folding the sheet, he cast her a devilish glance over his shoulder. “Not the way I read it.”
Chapter Eight
Giles had no interest in choosing between the two things he loved best. He’d been going back and forth about what he should do first—dip his brush or…dip his brush. Now that he had her here, he wanted it all. And he wanted it with a snap of his fingers. Or a flick at the buttons of his falls.
Letter sealed and franked, he turned his attention back to Miss Emery, standing before her with one hand clasping the wrist of the other behind his back.
And froze.
The desire to paint her exactly as she sat on the fern-green damask chaise longue, calm and composed, hit him so profoundly, he almost called for his painting things. The softness of the expression on the beautiful lines of her face…as if nothing existed in her world more complicated than tea. Proper gown for traveling, sturdy in its light wool. Proper bonnet. Proper posture. The light came from the west and stretched in long strips over the floor, not quite reaching her toes. The painting would be a window into a private world. One he wanted to examine with minute care.
She glanced up. Their eyes met. Giles still didn’t move, and under his scrutiny, her color heightened.
He cleared his throat. There were things that needed to be addressed plainly and openly before they could commence. Never let it be said that he, the depraved and lustful Marquess of Ashcroft, would be anything but absolutely correct in matters of fucking.
“We’re going to play in a variety of manners. I have dozens of options for you. I like them all, so listen carefully—this is important. You must like them as well. You may say no out of hand. You may say you’d like to try it, but stop partway through—or even as we’re getting started.”
She set down her tea. “I don’t think I understand.”
“Two things.” Giles nodded. “One, the choice is always yours. You have all the power here, Miss Emery, no matter what we do or try. And second, you always have the power to say no. Always. It doesn’t matter if you said yes previously. It doesn’t matter if we’ve tried something previously. It doesn’t even matter if we’re partway through what we’re doing. The second you say no”—he snapped his fingers in the air—“that’s it.”
Her mouth parted. Her lips were generous, like the rest of her. Large and full. Sinfully sensuous. They exactly matched his memory of her quim. A memory he’d like to revisit.
“Thank you, my lord.”
“You’re new to this, so I’ll let that pass. Going forward, you must know that any partner you take to your bed—or anywhere you please, for that matter—should offer you the same terms. He doesn’t need to be thanked. If, however, he is a selfish cur and does not offer you these terms, he’s not worthy of you or anyone. Tell him to go fuck a dead horse.”
“I don’t approve of defiling corpses, human or not.”
The rarity of having anyone surprise him spurred a frisson of delight. “No, you’re quite correct. It would be a detriment to the horse.”
She flashed a smile, pleased with herself—and rightfully so—before her expression went serious again. “I ask that you do me the same honor.”
He gave her a quizzical glance. “Do you the same honor?”
“By which I mean, your terms are my terms.”
Though he stared directly at her, Giles did a mental double take. The woman’s face was stone sober; she meant what she’d said. How unexpected. Nobody, innocent or experienced, had ever reciprocated.
Giles took the conversation in another direction. “I have another question. What is it going to mean when you give yourself to me?”
“Mean?” She started. “What does that matter?”
“It matters.”
“How?”
“Virginity is a monumental absurdity. It’s a means for men to control women, little else.”
The way she looked at him, she could have been connecting the pieces of a puzzle that had hitherto eluded her for years. “I don’t know if I have an intelligent response to that. I’ll have to think about it.”
“Mmm.” He nodded, not doubting that she would. “But what I think and what I believe doesn’t matter. It’s about what you believe. If you think it’s going to alter you or sully you…”
“I hope it alters me, but I know it will not sully me.”
She turned to him with her eyes lowered. Then her gaze lifted.
“I think before we begin, you ought to open your falls.” Miss Emery tugged the ribbons of her bonnet, tossed the hat aside, and swallowed, as if gathering courage.
“You do, do you?”
“You’ve seen me. Stands to reason I should see you. It’ll keep us on equal ground.”
“A week ago, I’d wager you couldn’t ever have considered saying such a thing to a man.”
“No, indeed.”
“How was it?”
“Easier than I could have imagined.”
“Are the ballrooms of England in danger?”
“While I wouldn’t refuse to have a peek down men’s trousers should the opportunity arise—some men’s trousers, I should say…” She paused, staring at him with heat in her eyes. “The man I’m most interested in seeing, my lord, is you.”
Giles had a cockstand unlike any other. His erection pulsed, ready to strut like the proud creature whose epithet it carried.
“Never let it be said I wouldn’t please a beautiful lady.”
He took one button at a time. Opening his falls hadn’t been this much of a thrill since one Mr. John Herbert, Esq., had cornered him in the back room of the fencing studio after a particularly lusty bout of sparring and asked Giles if he could see for himself “if it were true.” Always happy to oblige, Giles had done as Herbert had asked. Then allowed the man the pleasure of sucking him off.
The first time Giles had tried to be with a woman—a whore, for which he was not proud today, but he’d thought that was the natural way of things at the time—she’d taken one look and backed away, shaking her head, fear in her black-rimmed eyes. He’d been nineteen. She’d fled from the room and returned with her friend, demanding he show them both. The second whore’s bright-red mouth had dropped open.
As hard as ever and more frustrated than he’d been in his life, he’d left. He’d had to wait another year, finally parting with his accursed virginity after seducing a widow rumored to find pleasure in pain. She hadn’t balked at the sight of his arousal. Entirely the opposite.
From the first time he’d lodged his cock deep into the widow’s welcoming cunny, he’d known he’d finally found his second true calling in life. A calling as powerful as his first love, painting, that fed th
e other half of his hungry soul.
And now he was going to initiate another whose appetites he sensed were the closest another person’s could come to his own.
Miss Emery’s eyes were hungry. Her breathing was coming deeper, her breasts rising and falling. Giles wanted to rip open her bodice and shove his cock between the mounds, rutting until he came all over her skin.
One thing at a time. This was naught but the beginning. They had plenty to do in a scant few days, but he would rush nothing. Miss Emery was not the sort with whom one wanted to rush. She was a gift to be unwrapped layer by sensuous layer, reveling in the delights of exposure, course by silken course.
Falls open but not down, he paused. “Are you ready?”
“Never more so.”
Giles smiled. More than a few women had taken one look at his erection and flatly refused to go any further with him. An exercise in frustration, no doubt. He’d since learned to turn his unusual size to an advantage. Perhaps it was an advantage Miss Emery was a maid. She wouldn’t know the difference between himself and the average male.
His hand wrapped around the girth of his erection, the length hot and hard. Then he slowly withdrew it from behind the curtain of his tucked linen undershirt.
Her jaw dropped. Wariness flickered in her eyes. He immediately held up his free hand. “Don’t be frightened. It always works.”
If the display intimidated her, she gave no indication. “You like exhibiting yourself, don’t you?”
His cock pulsed once, ready to get good and wet inside the sweetness Miss Emery alone could provide. “I do rather.”
He reached to lightly stroke the top of her head, grazing the tips of his fingers ever so lightly down the side of her face. With one slightly crooked finger, he tilted her chin upward. Then he bent and caught her mouth with his own.
The spark lit between them burst into flame. Opening his mouth, he explored her with his tongue. Kissing and tasting. Drinking and devouring.
