He hissed when she moved and she felt his breath stir the hairs on the back of her neck. Reassured that her effect on him was as great as his on her, she opened her eyes to look at their reflection in the mirror.
She stood naked and pliant before him, a stripped harem slave before her fully clothed master. The notion excited and frightened her, for she had promised herself to never put herself into another man’s power again.
Then again, this was merely a game, wasn’t it? Like the ones being played out downstairs. If she was a willing playmate, then she was giving up nothing but what she chose to give up.
So she leaned back into him, pressing her bottom to his rising lust, pressing her bare shoulders into his chest, leaning her head back upon his shoulder.
“Do as you wish with me,” she whispered. “Tonight I am yours to enjoy.”
She felt him tense—with surprise? Had he thought the battle not won? She moved against him, pleased to have taken the initiative from his hands. He was not the only one with desires, after all.
He released her hair and it fell softly to cover her breasts. Still she did not turn, for she found that she liked to look at the two of them in the mirror. She was pale skin and bright hair, her skin cooled by the air. He was darkness and heat, which came from his body in waves to surround her.
“Do you see?” she whispered to him. “We are day and night, together.”
“You are a fire goddess,” he murmured, almost as if he were surprised to hear himself say such a thing.
Alicia certainly was. Her Wyndham was not one to spout flowery . . . well, to spout anything, actually.
She wanted to turn to him, but he held her shoulders, keeping her to the mirror.
“I am going to watch you come apart in my hands,” he said. “I want to see you shiver and fly for me.”
She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that but she was certainly willing to find out.
He began to slide his hands from her shoulders down her arms. He pressed her hands flat to her thighs. “Stay,” he commanded.
She shivered. She obeyed.
He laid one hand flat to her belly, adhering her back to his front with gentle steady pressure. “Do you feel me?”
She felt the hard rise of his trousers against her buttocks, riding the crease of her flesh. She nodded silently, her gaze trapped by his in the mirror.
He slid his other hand down to cup her furred mound. She jumped slightly as his middle finger slid along the parting of her.
“Shh.” His breath was hot lava on her neck. “Do you feel me?”
His finger dipped in, dipped between the folds, making that pinpoint of her nerves pulse with pleasure. She nodded again.
He began to stroke his fingertip slowly up and down, in and out, barely penetrating the fold. It was excruciatingly pleasurable, but it only made the throbbing worse. She tried to tilt her pelvis farther into his hand, but he pressed her back once more.
“Stay,” he whispered.
Her thighs quaked, but she stayed, breathless and willing.
“I moved too quickly last night,” he said softly. “I should have introduced myself more politely.” His finger slipped a knuckle’s depth into her. His roughened fingertip grazed her most sensitive place. “Do you know what this is called, Alicia?”
She didn’t, not really. In her mind, she’d referred to it in silly ways—“lust button,” for one. While she was quite sure every woman had one, she was less sure that every woman was as fond of it as she was.
“This is called your clitoris.” He began to swirl his finger in a circular motion around it, his path eased by the onrush of her fluids when she shuddered with pleasure, tightening the muscles in her thighs convulsively.
“You are already so wet for me.” He slid his long finger deeper, parting her with his hand as he penetrated her in a long, slow thrust.
She gasped and staggered against him. He held her steady with the pressure of his other hand. She felt his organ grow harder behind her.
“There are many names for this place,” he murmured. “Some ugly, some not. I wouldn’t dream of calling such a welcoming haven anything but a beautiful name.” He swiveled the penetrating finger inside her. “We will call this sweet place your vulva. Perhaps not technically correct, but who will know?”
He slipped his finger out of her slowly and teasingly. She tried to follow his touch, but he held her still. He brought his hand up, and she watched in the mirror as he touched his finger to his lips. “You taste like sunlight and honey,” he whispered, his breath heating the inside of her ear.
Another shudder went through her. He was a wicked, wicked man.
She ground her buttocks against him. He pressed her still.
“Now I want you to take your hands and put them on your breasts.”
She did so, automatically covering them with her palms. He shook his head, his dark eyes unreadable in the mirror.
“No, I want you to touch yourself as I did. I want you to touch your nipples while I touch your vulva and clitoris.”
The strange words made her feel even bolder, as if they gave her power over her body. She did as he told her, cupping her heavy breasts and touching her fingertips to her nipples. It didn’t feel quite the same as when he touched her there, but the way he drew his breath in a faint hiss while he watched her— that was entirely exciting!
He wanted to watch her, he’d said. Watch her come apart in his hands as she had last night. “Touch me,” she whispered, emboldened by the bald hunger in his rigid expression. She traced her fingertips around her nipples, making them tighten in the chill air, and even plucked them slightly to pinken them.
Stanton could have sworn he was the one in control only moments ago. Now the unshockable monster he’d created tempted him boldly in the mirror, green eyes gone to wicked fire in the candlelight.
To reclaim the upper hand he—well, he used his hand.
Sliding his open hand down her side, he slipped it between her thighs once more. This time he plunged in, a bold invasion of a single large finger.
She gasped and shuddered against him. He withdrew slowly, then plunged in again. He repeated the motion until the teasing light of power left her eyes and her head dropped back on his shoulder and she was his willing, shivering plaything once again.
He drove her higher, fighting to ignore the grinding pressure of his own arousal and the way that her rounded bottom quivered voluptuously against his iron erection. She cried out, a senseless sound, as she rolled her head upon his shoulder. Her hands fell to clutching at the arm that crossed the front of her body, holding her still for his exploitation.
He watched every moment in the mirror. He watched the way her parted lips refused to close enough to form words. He watched as her eyelids closed against the rising pleasure. He watched the sway and quake of her full, soft breasts as she shook in ecstasy. He watched the way his fingers began to glisten with her juices and the way the flush of arousal bloomed over her belly and breasts.
But when she came, he closed his eyes to relish the way her wet heat pulsed around his finger as he plunged it deeply one last time and held his palm tight against her swollen clitoris.
She fell back against him then, her knees useless to her. Stanton allowed himself one last moment of giving her pleasure, then he changed one hand for the other and passed his dry one across her face, easing her tossed hair from his view of her expression.
“Tell me a lie,” he demanded.
Alicia’s eyelids fluttered open. Her confused gaze met his in the mirror. “Wh-what?”
“Tell me a lie, right now,” he urged. “Any lie at all.”
She raised her head and blinked at him. “Ah . . . my eyes are blue?”
Stanton froze. “Say it again, not like a question.”
She was gazing at him curiously now. “My eyes are blue.”
Icy reality cut through Stanton’s arousal. He pulled his hands from her and turned away, leaving her to stand naked and al
one before the mirror.
The chill hit her skin immediately. Shying her gaze away from her own image in the mirror, she turned away to reach for her nightdress, drawing it swiftly over her head.
She had never experienced such pleasure as Wyndham gave her. So why did she feel so empty?
The image resurfaced of his eyes while he pleasured her. His gaze had been almost . . . distant. As if he studied her. Alicia shook off the sudden chill that riddled her spine.
He’d observed her as if she were an experiment.
“Well, if that was a test, I certainly hope I passed,” she muttered uncomfortably. “I should hate to see what might constitute failure.”
Failure. The word sliced to the heart of Stanton’s fear. If she could not be trusted, then everything he did here was useless and possibly detrimental to the Four’s tenuous control of George. If she was to be trusted, then he needed to expend everything he had in the search for the conspirator.
If he could not discern which was which, he might very possibly fail at both.
In one swift movement, he turned to her again. He took her by the shoulders and pressed her firmly to the papered wall. She jerked her head up, surprise evident in her eyes.
Her sunset-glorious hair was a mess, tangled by her earlier thrashing in his grip. He pushed back the silken disarray to look again into those eyes, desperate to divine what he could not see in her.
“What is the truth, Alicia?”
Alicia felt her heart sink—fall—dive headlong into a pit of pain. She had thought that his turning to her meant that he wanted more, that he believed her and wanted to reassure her—that her past didn’t matter to him.
It wasn’t true. Although it sounded like madness, somehow he had been trying to see inside her. He had opened her up to his invasion and used her desire against her.
Just like Almont.
His face, so close to hers—his dark searching eyes that seemed to spear deep into her—
He was a stranger. She knew nothing about him but what he wished her to know. He was full of secrets and thoughts and motivations that she was never going to be privy to.
And yet he not only wanted the truth from her—which she had always given him—but he wanted her to prove the unprovable.
23
She would not run from this battle. She would not hide away. She would not disappear to make his betrayal easier.
Raising her hands, she cupped his jaw in her palms. “I am not the only one here,” she whispered. “There is a man inside you who is here with me too.”
Meaningless, perhaps, but it made something real flicker behind his mysterious eyes.
“I am here with you,” he said.
She smiled sadly, letting the tips of her fingers trace through the hair at his temples. “No. You are somewhere else entirely. You are in another room, talking to another woman. Whoever you think you are talking to . . . she isn’t me.” She caressed the sharp cut of his cheekbone with her thumb. “You are talking to the notorious liar Lady Alicia Lawrence, conniving gold digger, infamous tart. You are so busy not believing her that you cannot see the truth.” She stood on her tiptoes and leaned forward to whisper in his ear.
“That woman doesn’t exist,” she said softly. “She never did. There is only Alicia, naïve and self-important, perhaps, a mostly innocent girl tricked and trapped and thrown to the street, stripped of everything but one hundred pounds and a loyal nursemaid.”
She eased back and kissed him softly on the lips. “I can introduce you to her if you like.”
Stanton didn’t believe her. He wanted to, for it would make everything simpler. It would make everything wonderful, in fact. But without his skill he was lost, subject to suspicion and wildly vacillating doubt. What if she was? What if she wasn’t? What if she was manipulating him this very moment? What if he became so wrapped up in her that he no longer cared?
He had to know. He had to finish this, one way or the other.
As she pulled away from the kiss, he followed, diving down onto her mouth with all his desperation and urgency channeled into an intense need to know.
He used everything he knew, everything he’d ever heard of. His hands roved over her body like a sculptor, creating her passion, building her desire from his necessity and her isolation. It was wrong. It was trickery. It was the only avenue left open to him.
He had to know.
She was leaning back against the wall, hands spread at her side, her throat arched and her eyes closed, submitting to his manipulative ravagement like a goddess on a sacrificial altar.
He pushed up her nightdress and parted her thighs with his knee. She opened willingly, still silent, still withdrawn into feeling his touch. Stanton plunged his fingers into her two at a time, stealing her moans from her lips with hot kisses, driving her to the edge of madness again and again—then slowing, easing, robbing her of the peak. He did it again and again, until she clutched at him, protesting, begging, the broken gasping words half-formed on her lips.
He captured her hands in one of his and pulled his cravat free with the other. With the length of linen, he tied her wrists together and flipped the end of the cravat over the iron sconce on the wall to keep her hands from interfering. “Stay,” he commanded.
She opened her eyes, blinking against the daze of unfulfilled arousal. Her lips moved, then she swallowed hard. “Stant—”
He drove two fingers into her wet slick opening once more, hard and fast, thrusting like a maddened lover, rotating the flat of his thumb against her clitoris. She gasped and shuddered and the protest never came into being.
He used her hard, taking her closer and closer before stopping, until she teetered on such an edge of eruption that the only thing holding her upright was the cravat tied about her wrists.
Alicia fought back the hurricane of need within her—oh, God, what was she becoming?—to look up to see that eerie detachment in Wyndham’s gaze once more. She ought to stop this—it wasn’t right to allow him to—
This was wrong. She couldn’t remember precisely why at this moment, but deep inside she knew it was—
Wrong—it was wrong—
It was splendid.
She let her objections slip from her mind with relief, setting herself free to feel the exquisite pleasure of his skilled hands . . .
You’ll be sorry.
She rolled her head against the wall, erasing the annoying whine of some disturbing insect. He was all around her, enthralling her, giving her such pleasure that she blissfully feared she might very well die from it before he finally fulfilled her.
What could possibly be wrong with that?
Finally, she exploded at his command. She cried his name out loud, amid keening gasps of pleasure. Her knees dissolved and she hung helpless from the sconce, panting.
He unhooked the cravat from its mooring and let her looped arms fall around his neck. Bending, he wrapped one arm beneath her watery knees and, with the other arm supporting her back, lifted her in his arms.
He crossed the room to lay her across the giant bed. She felt him untie the simple knot that held her wrists, distantly embarrassed to note that she likely could have untied it herself—had she wanted to.
Then she felt his weight settle next to her on the bed. “Lie to me,” he growled, his voice dark and desperate. “Lie, damn you!”
She opened her eyes to look at the only man she could imagine giving herself to so wholeheartedly. If only he could see her. “I will not lie to you. I love you.”
I love you. Words he never thought he’d hear a woman say.
And he couldn’t tell if it was true.
24
Alicia awoke the next morning with one sore shoulder and a—well, it was a little sore, but not as much as it had been five years ago. Actually, all things considered, she felt quite good.
The frightening encounter last night had been nearly erased from her memory by Stanton’s hands. There was still much to resolve between them, for he had all but fl
ed from her when she had confessed her love for him.
She rolled over sleepily and glanced toward the fire. Stanton was sprawled in the stiff chair, his big body looking entirely uncomfortable stretched awkwardly from his slouched position.
Alicia shed her covers and padded across the room to get a better look. Stanton rarely held still long enough for truly thorough observation. She knelt on the floor before him, tucking her gown beneath her feet to fight the chill. Garrett— being Garrett—hadn’t come in to light the fire yet, so sure was he that the gold gown had done its job.
Perhaps it had, at that.
Stanton sleeping was a very different sort of man. His brow was slightly furrowed but his jaw was relaxed. He looked altogether younger and more handsome. His hair was quite mussed, hanging over his brow and curling over his ear and jaw.
His shirt was open down the front placket and Alicia was tempted by the mat of dark hair she saw there. How odd that, as intimate as they had been, she had never seen him unclothed—not even without his boots until now!
His legs stretched out on either side of her, his big feet in naught but his stockings, his big hands resting on his thighs.
His trousers tightened over his stiffened rod.
She blinked. All by itself? In his sleep?
Now, in the dim light of morning, she could see the length and breadth of his organ as it pressed tightly against the tented fabric.
Stanton had not made love to her. He had not undressed, he had not revealed himself, he had not replied when she told him she loved him. Instead, he had left her on the bed, practically running from the room.
As Alicia saw it, she was owed a bit of male . . . barter.
She didn’t want to wake him too soon, but there were a few things he owed her.
Her memory buzzed with the scandalous ideas she had been exposed to last night. There had been one fancy concerning Lady Davenport and a wing chair . . .
Was it physically possible?
Celeste Bradley - [Royal Four 04] Page 21
