But until now while he might regret that he’d broken hearts, his heart had remained unscathed. After one tumultuous, ecstatic day with Selina Martin, he could already see that this time, he wouldn’t walk away without a backward glance, his eyes focused on the next target.
Even more unprecedented was his need for her to see him as something beyond the eager and skillful lover. He never confided in his paramours. Tonight he’d told Selina more than he’d ever told anyone else. However painful it had been dragging up all that ancient grief, the result was more blessed peace.
Or at least he’d felt at peace until he started acting like a bloody idiot, admitting he was jealous of that undeserving bastard Cecil Canley-Smythe. Brock had suffered his lovers’ jealousy too often. Not a few of the scandals attached to his name concerned discarded mistresses making trouble. Shrieking scenes, public and private, a knife attack that had left him with a scar on his arm, two attempted suicides – although neither very convincing efforts, he was grateful to say.
Not to mention the husbands who hadn’t appreciated his attentions to their wives. He’d never killed a man in a duel, thank God – partly because he was always the guilty party – but he bore wounds from the field of honor. The devil must look after his own. Only that could account for Brock living long enough to make a fool of himself over Selina.
Now he felt new sympathy for his discarded mistresses and their jealous tantrums. Selina was his. The thought of her with another man burned his gut like hot acid.
If he felt like this now, God knew what state he’d be in when he took her back to the Blue Wagon. He’d be a candidate for Bedlam.
Trying to talk sense to himself and failing miserably, he wandered the room, snuffing the candles. Then he built up the fire to keep the room warm until morning. Winter in Essex could be bitter. The prospect of waking in a warm bed eased his disquiet. While the world froze outside, he’d have snuggly, sleepy Selina in his arms.
After shucking off his breeches, he slid naked into the bed. He pulled the blankets up and turned onto his side. "I’m sorry." His voice was soft. "We said we’d keep things light, and I’m spoiling that."
She remained on her back, studying him. Her gaze ate him up, as though he was a pot of hot custard and she had a tremendous appetite for pudding. Sensual interest, an incessant hum in his blood when he was with Selina, stirred to life.
"Our affair promises to be more…complicated than I imagined." A self-deprecating smile curved her soft lips. "I thought the union would be purely physical."
"I accused you of seeing me as a walking cock and nothing else."
He’d been bitter at the time. He wasn’t bitter now. Perhaps because it was clear that while he swam far out into strange oceans of emotion, so did she.
"I underestimated you," she went on in a husky voice. "You’re not at all the heartless rake I’d judged you to be. And I overestimated my ability to keep my feelings separate from what we do. As a temporary mistress, I’m a complete failure." Her eyes darkened with chagrin. "Yes, I am jealous of all those other women. But I don’t want to be."
His restless discontentment retreated, although everything she said only made their situation more difficult. "At least I’m not alone in feeling confused."
"No, you’re not alone."
He found it in himself to smile as he lay flat beside her. "Let’s sleep now."
"Yes." She rose on one elbow and bent to kiss him with a searching tenderness that scraped a rift across the rusty heart that had never been at risk before. Her rich hair tumbled down around his face, firelit with gold. He tangled his hands in that opulent fall and tugged her closer.
When she drew away, emotion constricted his throat. Words jammed unspoken behind his lips, words he had no right to say, words that would shatter this idyll. Words like "stay" and "love" and "forever."
"Thank you, Brock. This has been a day I’ll never forget as long as I live. I never knew such pleasure existed. I only know now because you showed me."
"Selina…" Her name forced its way past the lump blocking his throat.
As if she wanted to hear no more, she shook her head. "It’s late. Let’s see what tomorrow brings."
After all they’d done, she must be deuced tired. Exhaustion weighted his limbs, too. He slid his arms around her shoulders and brought her down until her head rested on his chest.
He never spent the night with a lover. Early in his career as a rake, he’d learned that sleeping beside a mistress gave her inflated ideas about where their intimacy might lead.
Selina had spent the day surprising him. Here was another surprise. He liked having her here at his side, with what remained of the night stretching ahead.
Her scent drifted over him and calmed the turmoil in his mind. The touch of her hand on his bare chest was tender, and he read trust in the way she settled beside him. He cuddled her close and despite everything, he felt that the world turned in the right direction. Selina was safe in his embrace and at this moment, she was completely his.
Brock closed his eyes, although he wasn’t yet ready to sleep. The sweetness was too precious to cede it to oblivion.
She turned to lie on her side with her back to him. He pulled her closer. Through her shift, his hand cupped one full breast. Her nipple peaked against his palm, and she made a drowsy sound of encouragement.
That throaty murmur made him swell against the lush curve of her rump. He’d been half-hard since coming to bed.
For pity’s sake, he was insatiable. She’d think he was a brute.
He started to pull away, but she caught his wrist and tugged his hand back to her breast. "Don’t stop," she murmured in a voice heavy with weariness.
"You’re tired," he said, hearing how half-hearted he sounded.
She must have heard it too, because she gave a low chuckle. "Not that tired. Fuck me, Brock."
It was his turn to give a weary laugh, as he buried his face in the warm tumble of hair. "Whenever you say that, I go as hard as a rock."
Her hand fumbled behind her to stroke his cock. "Good."
Under her brief caress, he closed his eyes.
"Should I move?" she asked.
"No." His voice was muffled in her hair. "We can manage like this."
He pushed down the top of her shift so he could caress her bare breast. He teased the nipple until she was gasping and bumping against him. "Oh, Brock."
His hand strayed to her hip where he scrunched her shift up, until he could work his way under it to cup her mound. He stroked her cleft until she was wet and ready, and her breath emerged in erratic gasps.
"Part your legs and tilt back toward me." Arousal roughened his voice.
She obeyed with an alacrity that fired his excitement. He caught her thigh and lifted it to give him access. He slid into her with a slick ease that shuddered through him like an earthquake. She whimpered with pleasure and pushed back, taking him deeper.
He paused, drinking in the wonder. The snug clasp of her muscles, the scent of jasmine and aroused woman that enveloped him, the slippery silk of her hair against his face. He burrowed into the cloud of hair until he kissed her nape. She trembled and released a long sigh. He skimmed his teeth across the skin and ended with a gentle bite.
"Oh!" When she tightened, heat blasted him. He started to move in leisurely thrusts, going as deep as he could and lingering at the end of each incursion.
"Brock, that’s…that’s wonderful," she murmured, placing her hand over his where he held her thigh.
"Tell me," he said in a low growl. There was something incomparably exciting about Selina saying naughty things in that precise contralto.
"Tell you?"
"Aye."
"I can hardly think when you’re inside me. Now you want me to talk?"
"I love to fuck you. I want to hear how you feel when I do."
When she shifted, the movement threatened to blast his head off. Then she began to speak. "Your…organ…"
"Cock," he said on a
groan.
She made an incoherent sound in her throat. "Your…cock is so big, I feel like you fill every inch inside me. I love it when you move. When you go fast, you make me dizzy with excitement. When you go slowly…"
He suited his actions to her words, pulling back with a gradual retreat that left her gasping.
"…I feel like we become one person. I feel like you appreciate me the way nobody ever has before. I feel like what we do extends out into…eternity."
Dear God, be careful what you wish for.
When she’d started talking, it had been a game, a spice to flavor his arousal. He should have known she’d propel him far beyond that. He’d passed his thirty years in the shallows, but Selina drew him out into dangerous depths of emotion.
His wicked heart cramped as he slid into her, glorying in her welcome. He rocked his hips in a gentle rhythm. "Selina…"
"I can’t…" Her hand tightened over his, and her voice thickened.
"I love your quim," he said hoarsely, as he set up a slow, sure movement. If only to justify those beautiful words, he wanted to pleasure her forever.
To his surprise, an exhalation of amusement escaped her. "My quim loves you back."
He groaned. "How the hell can I resist you?"
He reached down to tangle his fingers in the silky curls covering her mound. They were damp and soft, and the way she shifted under every thrust built his arousal. Each time he buried his length inside her, she sighed with delight. Those gentle moans played sweet music in his ears.
With a sublime lack of striving, she tipped over into a lavish climax. His balls tightened with the urge to lose himself, but he kept up the slow, intense momentum as long as he could. When she climaxed again on a soft cry of satisfaction, he struggled to hold himself in. Even as she came down off the heights, he slid his hand down her stomach and between her legs to toy with her clitoris. She convulsed around him and cried out once more.
On one last languorous glide, he pulled free and insinuated his cock between her thighs. He groaned with pleasure as he spilled on her skin while she still shook in ecstasy. Jerking against her back, he buried his face in that glorious fall of hair.
She reached down between her legs to caress the sensitive head of his dick. Her touch was tender. "That was lovely," she said in a choked voice.
"Aye, it was." He shifted to leave the bed and fetch a flannel, but she made a soft protest.
"Not yet."
He slumped against her back and slid his arms around her, drawing her into his chest. His hand shaped the soft weight of her breast. "Not yet."
They drowsed in the afterglow. It felt like much later when she spoke in a whisper. "I use my hands on myself."
"Hmm?"
She continued in an even lower voice, so he had to press closer to hear. "You asked…you asked how someone who had never found satisfaction in a man’s arms knows what pleasure means."
Surprise rippled through him, although he wasn’t as shocked as he might have been. This was the obvious answer. He’d been a fool to doubt what she’d told him about her husband. From their first kiss, he’d noted that she was unused to enjoying a man’s touch.
"I’m glad."
He was. He couldn’t imagine the demure woman he’d first met daring to explore her body, however unfulfilling her husband’s attentions. But the lover who had taken him to paradise over and over through this exceptional day, that woman had the courage to seek what marriage denied her.
"You are?" He heard sleepy disbelief in the question.
"Aye, with all my heart."
She rested her hand over where he clasped her breast. He was close to asleep when she spoke again. "Since the first moment I saw you, the lover in my mind when I touch myself is you."
Her honesty sliced into his heart with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. "My darling, I don’t deserve you," he murmured.
He kissed the point of her shoulder, bared where her shift slipped down her arm. Her skin tasted of salt and Selina.
Another long pause while he basked in having this miracle of a woman lying in his arms. Then she went on, and the aching sadness in her words had him closing his eyes in an agony of regret.
"From now on, whenever I find my pleasure, I’ll always picture you."
So often she’d stolen his ability to speak. Now his throat closed on more of those words he couldn’t allow himself to say. He bundled her tight against him and told himself he could bear to part with her when the time came. But he knew himself to be a liar.
Chapter 9
"I can hear it ahead of us, but I can’t see it," Selina said breathlessly, as she gripped Brock’s hand and stumbled after him along the frozen path.
Around her towered tall winter-brown reeds. Snow squeaked underfoot. It had snowed ever since the night she’d arrived in Essex. Now, on the day before she was due to go back to London, the weather cleared enough for her and Brock to leave the house.
With a determination that grew more and more tattered, she pushed aside thoughts of tomorrow’s parting. She refused to poison these last hours with her lover with bitter regret that this was all she would have.
He strode ahead of her, bundled up in a greatcoat and a thick woolen scarf, and with his hat pulled down low over his ears. It was perishingly cold.
"It’s not far, trust me," he said, glancing back with brilliant green eyes.
She’d wondered if a week in his company would blunt the impact of his extraordinary looks. If anything his handsomeness had a more powerful effect on her now than when she’d first seen him at Derwent Hall. And when she’d first seen him, his flashing dark beauty had made her knees tremble and her heart race.
They followed a narrow hunters’ track through reed beds which rustled in the wind. The sound was eerie, like a thousand voices whispering at her.
She gulped in a deep breath of salt-laden air and summoned up a smile. "I do trust you."
His gaze softened, and he drew her forward for a quick kiss. The heat that filled her as his lips moved over hers made a mockery of the freezing air.
"What was that for?" she asked shakily, after he pulled away and plowed on.
"For pleasure. And because you trust me. And because I can."
And because the wretched truth was that after tomorrow, he’d never kiss her again.
No, don’t think about that.
"I wish you could come back here in autumn. The marshes are alive with life. We could take a boat and go exploring."
She squeezed his gloved hand. "That would be lovely."
But never to be. Never was the saddest word she knew.
No, don’t think about that either.
She’d struggled so hard to cling to their every minute together, striving to stretch each second into an hour. But in the way of time, the seconds had turned into hours had turned into days. Now only one night remained. Selina didn’t know how she could bear it.
The rolling thunder ahead of her wasn’t loud enough to overpower the keening sorrow in her heart. They turned a bend on the path, and a gap opened up in the reeds. Something huge and gray sparkled in the space.
A few more steps and the reeds ended. She and Brock stood on a sandy knoll above an empty stretch of silvery sand.
"Oh, Brock…" Tears rose to her eyes, as she surveyed the vast magnificence of the North Sea. The water spread in shining immensity all the way to the faraway horizon.
As she leaned into him, he curled his arm around her. Warmth radiated out from him to ease her heart, even as a sharp breeze, stronger here in the open, whipped around her cheeks. She wore one of his coats, and she’d wrapped a thick shawl around her head.
"I’m a man of my word. Our first day, I promised that I’d show you the sea."
She’d learned he was a man of his word, despite the world calling him so wicked. He was also kind and even-tempered, not to mention a breathtakingly skillful lover. She’d expected only the last when she accepted his invitation to share his bed. It turned out
he was so much more than she’d anticipated. Interesting and clever and imaginative. And his dry humor had her laughing more than she’d ever laughed in her life.
She’d miss the lover the way she’d miss an amputated leg. But she’d miss the man even worse.
No, don’t think about that.
Brock shifted to stand behind her, wrapping her in his arms to shelter her from the wind. She nestled against his chest. This reminded her of the way they often slept, with him curled up against her back. As she felt then, she felt now. Protected and cherished.
She blinked away more futile tears and made herself drink in the spectacular view. In the distance, the clouds broke and the water turned dazzling silver.
"All my life, I’ve wanted to see the sea," she said in a thick voice. "I’m so glad that I saw it with you."
"You’ll never forget it," he murmured, resting his chin on her head and folding his arms around her even more securely.
"No," she said on a mere whisper of sound, and the answer encompassed everything that had happened in these remarkable days.
***
Brock noticed that just as on their arrival at the hunting lodge, neither Selina nor he did justice to Mary’s cooking. Which was a pity as his kinswoman had worked hard to make his last dinner with Selina special. But the roast pheasant and the extravagant spun-sugar dessert returned to the kitchen mostly untouched.
Since their first night here, when he’d been in such a lather to claim Selina, he’d managed to claw back a shred of civilized behavior. Most nights, he joined her in the drawing room for a brandy or a port before he bustled her upstairs. His impatience to have her under him hadn’t lessened any, but he’d learned to rein it in. At least for an hour or so. Although during their stay in Essex, the Earl of Bruard and his mistress were in the habit of retiring notably early.
Now he surveyed that mistress across the damask tablecloth. This last week, he’d come to know her so well. He knew the sounds she made when she found her peak, he knew the soft hum of delight she gave when he kissed her. He knew the surprised gurgle of her laughter, as if amusement took her unawares. He knew how she hungered for him, because even after a week of debauchery, she stared at him as if she wanted to gobble him up in one bite.
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