The Madness of Lord Westfall

by Mia Marlowe

  They slow-walked down the hothouse aisle like a pair of drunkards clinging to each other so they’d stay upright. Pierce was unwilling to break off their embrace. He lifted her so he could more easily suckle her nipples through the thin fabric of her chemise. Once her underthings were wet, he could see them through the linen, all berry-colored and taut, winking up at him, begging him for more.

  As he continued to move toward the door, he knocked several containers of seedlings off the benches and upset one of the orange trees in its pot. The oranges rolling on the pavers sent fresh bursts of their glorious fragrance into the space.

  “Wait, please wait.” She wiggled out of his arms with her spine pressed against the door. “I have a very nosy neighbor on the eastern side. We have to walk through the garden as if nothing is amiss.”

  “Nothing is amiss,” he said as he continued to torment her nipples. “I just want to swive you like no one has ever swived anyone before.”

  Her smile was bright enough to illuminate all of Vauxhall’s Dark Walks. Even on a moonless night.

  But her fingers trembled as she did up her buttons again.

  He peeked once more into her mind.

  She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t afraid. She was trembling with need. She wanted him quite desperately.

  He was doing surprisingly well for his first time. Barring the destruction in her hothouse, of course.

  She smoothed down her hair and then straightened his jacket on his shoulders.

  “Race you to the door?” he said with hope.

  “No. We must walk. Sedately. As if we have no pressing need to—”

  “Swive each other senseless,” he interrupted.

  There was that smile again. He could live for weeks on just one of them, and he’d been given two in one glorious afternoon.

  “May I at least offer you my arm?” He suited his actions to his words.

  “Oh, my dear viscount,” she said as she slipped a hand through the crook of his elbow, “I’m depending on you to offer me far more than that.”

  “I shall do my best not to disappoint.” They strolled into the sunshine as if their insides weren’t pounding.

  “If you continue as you’ve begun, I’ll never believe this is your first time.”

  “This is your first time as well.”

  She cocked her head.

  “Your first time with a madman.”

  She attempted to lighten the moment with a little laugh. “I do not think you mad.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said without rancor, “and what’s more, you like the idea.”

  She started to protest, but they’d reached her back door and he held it open for her most properly. Then, once it closed behind them, he pressed her up against the wall and reached under her hem, sliding it up her thighs.

  “You think because I’m mad, I’m dangerous. And I am,” he admitted. “But I will not harm you. Not for worlds.”

  Her skin was silky smooth and hot, almost feverish. Where her pantalets ended, an apparently open crotch began in the garment. Pierce silently blessed the modiste who had come up with that idea.

  Touch me.

  So he did.

  She was wet and welcoming, and holding her was like holding a piece of her soul, all trembling and naked. When his fingers moved, she grasped the lapels of his jacket as if she were drowning, and he was all that would keep her afloat.

  There were no more words, no more thoughts forming in her mind for him. Nothing he could make sense of, in any case. Instead, a burst of sensations shivered through him.

  Harder. Ah, just there. That’s it.

  The sensations gathered themselves into a fist and punched his heart. His knees nearly buckled.

  Whether they were her sensations or his, he wasn’t sure.

  Maybe it didn’t matter.

  The pleasure between them built to an almost unbearable tension.

  They started a dipping, turning waltz to music only they could hear. When they kissed, it was her hands that began roaming now. First, his cravat unraveled and fluttered to the floor. Somewhere between the salon and the foot of the stairs, his jacket came off. Then his waistcoat. By the first landing, she was tugging his shirt over his head and raking her nails across his bared chest.

  Pierce undid her buttons, not stopping with only a few this time. He popped off a couple in his haste. He’d promised himself he’d go slow, but those urgent little sounds she made as he kissed her went straight to his groin. No one would call them words. Even when he opened his mind to her, nothing he recognized as a fully formed thought materialized. It was far more primal, more basic than thought. But he didn’t need to understand those noises to know what she wanted.

  Somehow, he found himself laying her down on the stairs and, wonder of wonders, she went willingly. He kissed her in unexpected places—the crease of her elbow, the juncture of her shoulder and neck, the hollow of her temple—to distract her from the oddness of unevenness beneath them.

  He began to peel away her layers. The gown was easy. Once he undid enough buttons, it slid off her shoulders and down her body as they inched up the stairs. His clumsy fingers snarled the laces in her stays so badly, he had to resort to his boot knife to cut them.

  Her eyes widened at the sight of the blade.

  “I meant what I said. I’ll never harm you, Honora,” he promised. “However, your laces are in imminent danger.”

  She laughed. Lord, the woman had a laugh that would tempt angels. It was low and liquid and full of pleasure. It was a hot bath a man could sink into and, even if he drowned, he wouldn’t care a whit.

  After he sliced the laces, she joyfully shed her stays and they were left on the stairs alongside his boots, which she had to help him out of. A trail of discarded clothing traced their progress from the rear of the house and up the flights of stairs.

  His trousers came off next and then she practically tore off his smalls.

  “Pierce, you’re huge,” Honora said when she came up for air after one of their kisses. She gasped, like a pearl diver who’d been submerged too long. She grasped him and ran her fingers over his full length. Pleasure lanced through him, sharp as a blade.

  “I take it that’s a good thing,” he said, knowing full well she was delighted with him from the joyful little thoughts that came tripping into his mind from hers.

  Then she did the most surprising thing in the world. She didn’t even think before she did it. If she had, he’d have had warning and could have braced himself for the shock. She moved down his body, rolled him over on the second floor landing, and took his cock between her sweet lips.

  He’d heard of such things, of course. Stanstead had been a wealth of sensual information before he’d married Miss Cassandra Darkin. After that, the earl kept his sexual knowledge to himself, which was all right with Pierce, who had never expected to be able to use any of it, in any case. But the idea of a woman taking that part of him into her mouth, into that soft, warm place where her tongue could lash him, that notion had stuck with him. Pierce had never thought such unasked-for bliss would ever happen to him.

  He’d nearly died many times in Bedlam. He had never felt closer to death than he did right now.

  And welcomed the manner of his demise with much gratitude.

  They always say misery loves company, but the reverse is true as well. Bliss is not bliss unless it is shared.

  ~from the secret journal of Lady Nora Claremont

  Chapter Ten

  Honora reveled in the feminine power of reducing a man to helpless need. Never had one shattered before her like this one.

  Pierce groaned. He gasped. He clutched her head and murmured an odd mix of blessings and profanities while she tongued him. He seemed about to burst out of his own skin.

  Finally, I’m convinced he’s a virgin.

  In addition to the joy of instructing an unbedded man, it added immeasurably to her pleasure that Pierce was an incredibly quick learner. He might have been the proverbial bull in a
china shop in her hothouse, but he’d demonstrated no clumsiness with her. He seemed to anticipate her every need. She wouldn’t have believed it his first time except for the shock on his face when she’d whorled her tongue over him.

  She ached to do this for him. To give to him without expecting anything in return. His bliss was enough.

  Of course, if she were honest with herself, she’d have to admit that sucking him made her insides pound as well.

  She sensed the tension building in him and didn’t want their interlude to end too soon, so she sat up and straddled him where he lay on the rectangle of Aubusson carpet on the landing. Then she pulled her chemise over her head. Her pantalets were no impediment to their joining, so she moved quickly to guide him into her.

  He cried out as he slid in. So did she. It was an incredibly tight fit, but she did her best to engulf him. Once he was fully seated, she slumped down to lie on his chest, to give them both a moment to settle, to prepare for what was to come. His heart hammered under her ear. She willed it to slow, for his breathing to return to some semblance of normal. She didn’t want him to spend too soon.

  As if she’d spoken her wishes, he began to take measured breaths. Then he sat up, bringing her upright with him, still joined, still throbbing inside her, still burning up with heated passion, but struggling to control it.

  “If we stay here, one or both of us is going to get a rug burn,” he said with maddening practicality.

  Then, with seeming effortlessness, he rose to his feet, careful to support her bum so his cock remained firmly inside her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and hooked her ankles at the small of his back. He was every bit as strong as he looked.

  “Which one is your bedchamber?” he asked as if he were asking for directions to the nearest market.

  “One more flight up. End of the hall. I’d rather face the garden than the street.”

  “You’ll only be facing me for a while,” he said with a grin.

  It was so unusual for him to smile, the whiteness of his teeth caught her by surprise. “You should do that more often.”

  “If one smiles without something to smile about, one is generally considered a bit nipped in the noggin.” He shrugged as he climbed the remaining stairs with her still clinging to him. “Of course, in my case, it would only confirm the general consensus.”

  “I don’t think you’re really mad.”

  He smiled again, this time wryly.

  “Well, I don’t.” She swatted his shoulder as he homed in on her chamber door. He jiggled the latch a few times. It was sticky sometimes, but he managed to open it and push through. “I just think you’ve had some unfortunate experiences.”

  He barked a laugh. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  She palmed his face. She wanted him to see she meant it. “You have a beautiful soul.”

  “Given the brevity of our association, that’s not something you can know.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “It’s not something I know. It’s something I feel.”

  He walked her over to the canopy bed that occupied the central portion of the room and sat on the edge. She pushed against his shoulders so that he plopped back onto the soft feather mattress and counterpane. She smiled down at him and whispered, “And now, here’s something I want you to feel.”

  Amazingly enough, once they settled into the bed and stopped talking, they started communicating in earnest. It was as if her flesh spoke to his, and he answered immediately. The merest wish would slip into her mind, and he was quick to fulfill it.

  She rode him with abandon, sliding up and down the length of his thick cock, luxuriating in her own arousal. If she angled her pelvis just so, she got the loveliest bit of friction right where she needed it. A bit more of this and she’d come with him inside her, fisting around him. She hadn’t done that since Lewis—no, she wouldn’t think on her dead husband. She would think on the live man beneath her.

  Then he rolled her over and began pounding away and she couldn’t think at all.

  Oh, he was just what she needed. Rough, then tender. He slipped out of her, and she cried out, bereft, until he substituted his talented fingers for his thick cock and played a virtuoso performance on her most sensitive spot.

  She unraveled under him, her release pounding her insides. When she stopped convulsing, she pulled him to her, took him in, and led him to his own shattering climax. He arched his back and emptied himself into her in hot spurts. Then he collapsed onto her, taking care to support himself with his elbows lest his full weight bear down on her.

  She’d never had a more considerate lover. Not even Lewis.

  Nora stroked his back, running her fingertips over his spine. Too late, she remembered the French letter in her vanity. It had been so long since she’d needed to concern herself with avoiding conception, she’d forgotten all about it. Pierce probably would have objected to wearing the lamb-gut condom in any case.

  “I’ll wear anything you want, if only you’ll let me stay close to you,” he murmured into his neck.

  She hadn’t said anything about the condom. She was sure of it. And this wasn’t the first time he seemed to know exactly what she was thinking.

  “If I ask you a question, will you promise to answer it?” she said.

  He raised himself to look down at her, his eyes still glassy with the I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-anything haze that follows a good hard swive. “If you ask me to flap my arms and fly to France right now, I’ll climb up to your roof and make an attempt.”

  She laughed, but then stopped abruptly when she saw the seriousness on his face. “I believe you would.”

  He started to rise from the bed.

  “No, come back here, you.” She caught his arm and pulled. “Just answer my question, and I’ll be satisfied.”

  He settled back down, his lower body resting between her splayed legs.

  “Why did your family believe you mad?”

  He sighed, rolled off her, and lay beside her, staring up at the fleur-de-lis stitched into her canopy. At first, she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he began speaking about a boy who climbed an oak tree and a catastrophic fall and finally waking to hear voices all around him whether anyone’s lips moved or not.

  “You mean to say that you can hear my thoughts?” she said incredulously.

  His face was a mask of misery. “I can hear everyone’s thoughts.”

  She sat up and tucked the linens under her armpits. She was naked save for her pantalets and stockings, but she hadn’t felt really exposed until that very moment. It couldn’t be true.

  “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Now you see why my uncle had me condemned and committed. It is absurd,” he admitted. “It’s also unfortunately true.”

  “Really? What am I thinking now?” She cast about for something she was certain he couldn’t simply guess. Ah! Fides Pulvis. He’ll never come up with—

  “Fides Pulvis,” he said wearily. “It means ‘Trust Powder.’”

  She scrambled from the bed and pulled on her wrapper which was draped over her vanity chair. “You can’t know about that. No one knows about—”

  “No one but you and Lord Albemarle. And now officially—me.”

  But this was terrible. What else might he glean from her mind? Benedick’s confidences—all of them—were no longer safe. A large part of her value to her protector was her discretion. His secrets were legion and against her will, several of them flitted across her consciousness.

  “If you’re worried that I’ll tell someone that Lord Albemarle likes men, you needn’t be. I’m glad he’s of that disposition,” Pierce said. “It means you’re not really his mistress, and that makes me happier than I’ve ever been about anything.”

  But he didn’t look happy. He was frowning in her direction with intense concentration. Even so, she’d never seen anything quite as compelling as the naked viscount in her bed. His arms were massive, his chest well-muscl
ed, and beneath those sheets—she jerked her gaze away from him. She didn’t need him to be a party to those sorts of thoughts.

  Not now.

  “But this isn’t right,” Nora said as she paced with nervousness. “You can’t simply invade people’s minds like this.”

  “That’s not how it works. I don’t try to do it. It’s more as if your mind invades mine. If I want to keep the thoughts of others out, I have to slog away with a will to hold up a mental shield. They shoot about like darts, thoughts do, ricocheting here and there.” He dragged a hand over his crown as if his fingers might gather up the stray thoughts and yank them out. “As you can imagine, I’m not very good in a crowd.”

  “I don’t want you to hear my thoughts,” she said with vehemence. “Why did you even tell me you could?”

  He shrugged. “You asked why my family thought me mad. I told you.”

  “You might have lied. People do, you know.” Hadn’t he ever heard that ignorance was bliss? She’d never be able to relax around the man again. “Uncomfortable truths are best left unspoken.”

  “The truth is all I have.”

  “But you can turn it off, can’t you?”

  “Yes, with effort.” He grimaced. “There. My mental shield is up. Now I have no certain knowledge of what’s swirling about in that pretty head of yours, but I can guess.” He climbed out of bed and crossed the room to her. “You think I’m a monster.”

  “No, I don’t.” Then because she could be truthful, too, she added, “Maybe a little.”

  To her surprise, that made him chuckle. “That makes two of us.”

  Then he reached for her and drew her into his arms. She went willingly, though she knew she shouldn’t. He felt so good, so warm and big and comforting.

  But he really wasn’t a comfortable sort of man. She’d never know if he was plucking thoughts from her willy-nilly. It wasn’t right.

  It wasn’t safe.

  “Wait a moment. You said something a moment ago.” She pulled back and searched his face. “Something about you knowing officially about the Fides Pulvis. What did you mean by that?”