When their gazes met, Neddy wet his wine reddened lips and the coil of lust in Fortuna’s belly further tightened. Things were progressing apace. She certainly hadn’t expected to find Neddy Darleston sitting upon her bed this night. Had virtually forgotten the offers made in the garden, with all that had followed between her and Giles.
“I say, Giles, you do realize you’re wilting. You can’t hope to satisfy her with that.” Neddy reached out and flicked the tip of Giles’s cock with his fingertip. It jerked in welcome. Neddy wrapped his fist around the shaft and gave it a couple of neat strokes.
Completely astonished Fortuna gaped at them.
“Lay off.” Giles shoved Neddy so that he fell back upon the bed. “If I’m wilting it’s due to a combination of the cold and unexpected company.”
“Oh, but aren’t you glad I came?”
“I’ll reserve judgment on that,” Giles replied, raising his brows.
Neddy turned and grinned at Fortuna. On all fours, he crawled up the bed towards her, only stopping when he was just shy of actually kissing her. “Good evening, Miss Allenthorpe. I trust you, at least, are pleased to see me.”
“The hour is somewhat late,” she said playing along and offering him her hand.
“Ah!” He obligingly bowed low over her knuckles, if somewhat awkwardly due to their positions. Then he leaned in and teased her lips. Not quite kissing, but tantalizing her with the promise of one. “But better late than never, I always say.”
She sought reassurance of Giles, and when he nodded and smiled, Fortuna slid her hands up into Neddy’s damp hair and pulled him to her. He kissed with a lazy grace that was both utterly charming and completely indolent. It was a kiss quite unlike Giles’s.
Having experienced it, she was certain that Neddy wasn’t drunk, although he had been drinking. The taste of it, spicy oranges with an aftertaste of cloves, lingered in his mouth. She could feel his smile as he slowly drew back. “I’ll assume from that, I’m welcome.”
Giles peeled back the covers and got into the bed beside her. Neddy feasted upon the sight of her bare flesh, his attention coming to rest on her perky nipples. “Dainty,” he observed, cupping her breast. The nipple pressed into his palm, and he coaxed it to further prominence as he claimed a second kiss.
The moment was oddly dreamlike; two men, in her bed together. It couldn’t be real, or acceptable. She knew it wasn’t, but nor was being here with one man.
Neddy lowered her to the mattress so that his body completely covered her and his hair tickled her skin. Fortuna’s hands fluttered over his back and the rounded cheeks of his firm arse. He was altogether differently built to Giles, longer, leaner, but the muscles across his shoulders and upper arms were thickly corded.
“Roll off her you oaf,” Giles teased, when Neddy’s antics left her breathless. “You’re squashing her.”
“Nonsense. I’m not, am I?” He sought her gaze.
She shook her head, but he rolled off her all the same and tugged her onto her side facing him. Giles immediately snuggled up to her back, and began tantalizing her with wicked kisses to the back of her neck. One hand stretched over her hip and covered her mons. She wriggled back against Giles’s warm body and realized he was hard again. He loosed a groan as his fingers slipped into her quim.
Neddy watched them with hungry eyes. He pushed himself upright and tugged his shirt over his head. Exposed, his shoulders were every bit as pleasing as they’d felt covered by the fine lawn. She touched him there as he lay back down, but he impatiently moved her hand to the front placket of his breeches where the hummock of his cock lay.
In an erotic trance, Fortuna slipped the three silver buttons upon his waistband. He wore under breeches too. The very tip of his cock pressed hard to the fastenings. She touched him first through the fabric, before stroking the velvety soft skin. He was not especially thick but long, very long. Two hands wouldn’t encompass him. She explored him, right down to the root where she softly traced his ball sac and the sensitive bit of skin beneath.
“Good Lord, what have you been teaching her, Giles?” Neddy said when she touched that spot. He hissed as his eyes fluttered closed: “S-sensitive there.”
“I’m simply curious,” she replied, “and while I have a man willing to lie still for it.”
“I don’t know about lying still.” Neddy laughed, and his cock jerked up towards her. “But explore as you wish.”
Fortuna circled his shaft with her palm again. The skin of his cock was deliciously tight around the heart-shaped head, and had the colour of burgundy wine. With her tongue, she tickled the sensitive eye, as Giles’s had previously instructed her. Neddy took a sharp breath, and she was rewarded with the salty taste of Neddy’s seed upon her tongue.
“I want to kiss you both,” she announced.
Giles chuckled into her shoulder, whilst Neddy shook his head in astonishment. “Weren’t you a virgin this morning?”
“Hm,” Fortuna pursed her lips. Giles, she was pleased, didn’t refute the remark. Instead, he rolled onto his back and pulled her astride him, so that her back pressed to his stomach and they lay partially propped up with him petting her clitoris.
Neddy straddled both sets of legs, and lavished his attention upon her nipples, sucking one while he coaxed the other with his fingertips, until they both steepled.
Giles’s erection pressed urgently into the small of her back. She longed to feel him slide between the lips of her puss again. Neddy’s bucked before her, nudging repetitively against her hip. Between them they were providing more pleasure than she previously thought possible. What struck her more forcefully though was the readiness with which she accepted them. The concept of loving two men, so unfamiliar that morning now seemed completely natural.
She reached out and pulled Neddy up to kiss her. This time the melding of their mouths was wet, hot, and imperfect. They clashed teeth, and he stole her breath away.
“Open your legs,” Giles coaxed, and she realized that for all her thoughts she had them prudishly pressed together. “Ned’s a big boy. You’ll have to give him some room if you want to welcome him in.”
Yes. She wanted that. Not in the same way she wanted Giles, but she desired it nevertheless.
“A moment if you please.” Neddy pulled off his breeches, revealing legs as firmly muscled as his arms. For a licentious wastrel, he was in curiously good shape, she could only assume he was a sportsman too, perhaps one of the men who frequented John Jackson’s academy on Bond Street.
Once naked, Neddy’s fingers joined Giles’s in stroking her quim. He drew his thumb back and forth over her clit, while Giles’s touch transferred to her breasts. She groaned at the squeeze on her tender nipples and the intense pleasure of Neddy’s long fingers fucking her.
Then his cock was right there where she needed it, replacing his fingers and pushing inside her with a nice firm thrust.
“Neddy,” she gasped. It was a stretch to take him, even aroused as she was. She had to lift her hips, but Giles helped her. Each stroke of his cock inside her hit some cluster of nerves that set her clawing at Neddy’s back like a thing possessed.
Giles pushed a hand between them and found her nub again. His touch remained light, but even that was almost too much. She was panting, coming, before they’d even found a proper rhythm, stars exploding along her spine, while Ned’s cock continued to glide in and out of her with ease. All her lady-like reserve stripped away, she cried out for more, harder… faster.
Giles’s breath scalded her shoulder. He rubbed against her, seeking his release. “Oh, you feel good. Yes, you do, Fortuna. God, I want you.”
Neddy groaned. His grey eyes fluttered open and closed. He knocked Giles’s hands away and taking her breasts within his hands, massaged them roughly.
Giles’s kisses became more like bites. As their arousal increased, both men were losing their civilized veneers. But their snarling roughness only excited her more. Giles’s cock slipped into the channel between her fi
rm globes of her bottom. Every time his cock tip brushed her anus, she gave a little exalted jerk. It felt good, but deeply, terribly wrong. The next such touch jerked her upright into Neddy, and Giles relinquished. He shuffled down so that his cock rose up between her legs.
With her legs now jammed together, one cock working rapidly between her thighs and another squeezed tight within her puss, they all three began to pant.
“You close?” Giles gasped; his voice up on high.
“Very. A few more and I’m gone,” rasped Neddy.
Fortuna felt her own muscles fluttering again, as the telltale sparks of a second climax starting to seep out across her skin.
Giles clutched Neddy’s arms. “Pull out... Pull out, damnit. Not inside her.” His words lapsed into a string of barked commands, as he started to come. “Oh, God!” he sighed. “Here it comes.” His ejaculate splashed her skin.
Fortuna blinked. She watched Neddy’s jaw drop open. He struggled with it. Thrust some more. Three…four, big hard jerks, before he pulled out. His seed spilled over his fingers and her pubic curls, as his handsome face contorted with what seemed more like agony than bliss.
When he opened his eyes after the last pulses of his orgasm had died, his grey eyes were almost blue. “Giles,” he growled through his teeth. “What the hell sort of request was that? Pull out!” He shook his head in disbelief. “Are you stark raving mad?”
“Playing safe,” Giles remarked. He put a finger in the semen smeared across Fortuna’s stomach and traced a lewd doodle just above her fair curls.
“Safe, eh?” Neddy nodded. He rolled onto his back and his cloak of lazy affability fell neatly back into place. “An earlier warning next time, if you don’t mind.”
“A warning of what?” asked Fortuna, finding herself nestled once again between the two men.
Giles found a kerchief and wiped the spilled seed from her skin. “We don’t want you to end up with child, my sweet.”
Cautiously, she wet her lips. “No,” she said. “No, of course not.” How could she have forgotten there were more consequences than slights to her reputation to consider?
“Come here.” Giles pulled her close, so that her head rested in the crook of his shoulder. “Don’t fret. We’ll look after you.”
But if it came to it, would you marry me?
She didn’t ask, fearing the answer she’d get.
Chapter Seven
When Fortuna descended the next morning she found Lord Darleston artistically draped across the drawing room sofa. Still clad in his evening clothes, his luxurious curls lay like strands of fire against the glossy black pile of his coat. The coat itself, although rather ostentatious for the hour, had an overindulgent charm to it. Decorated with gold frogging and excessive amounts of braid work, it reminded her of the hussars she’d seen on parade before the Palace.
Fortuna crept towards the fireplace, keeping a wary eye upon him. She could feel his gaze following her, almost as if it were a touch. When she faced him, he didn’t try to disguise his stare, but held her trapped within the intense grey pools of his eyes.
“How thoroughly have you been plucked?” he asked.
Heat suffused her neck and cheeks.
“Good Lord, have you been here all night?” Giles entered the room with Neddy at his heels.
Darleston shook his head, which made his hair shimmer with the warmth of the firelight, red, amber and bronze, like streaks of autumn.
“I’ve been here a little over an hour. Although apparently, I should have called earlier so as not to miss the entertainment.”
Fortuna half-turned towards the fire, so the men wouldn’t see her embarrassment. She’d enjoyed every minute of her night with Giles and Neddy, and there was much to be said for waking sandwiched between their naked bodies, but she found it difficult to endue Lord Darleston’s mocking.
“Poor Leach was in a God-awful state when I arrived,” Darleston cocked an eyebrow in his brother’s direction. “He seemed to think there’d been a burglary, what with the smashed ornaments littering the floor and a great deal of furniture knocked about. Perhaps by some of the ruffians Macleane is rumoured to have hired.”
“Ah!” Neddy gave them all a sheepish smile. “That’ll be my cue to go say my piece.” He sloped off towards the back of the house, still pulling on his somewhat crumpled evening coat.
“Are they the tidings you’ve brought us this morning? That Macleane’s resorted to hiring toadies to knock heads together, as if any of us would cave in to such nonsense.” Giles slipped his arms around Fortuna’s waist and pressed a delicate kiss to the back of her neck. He felt reassuringly warm against her, and while she welcomed the show of affection, it also heightened her colour.
“Violence has always been curiously persuasive, Giles. Ask Neddy about that. But no, that’s far from my only news.” Darleston chucked the morning paper across the floor so that it landed on the hearthrug by Fortuna’s feet.
Giles picked it up. “Reward for a missing daughter? Kidnapping?” he asked.
“Neither. It’s more interesting than that. The society pages,” said Darleston, as he tapped one of his long fingers to his lips, “second column, about halfway down.”
Giles shook open the paper and turned to the relevant part. “Mr. and Mrs. Allen—.” Dovecote broke off, and stared at Fortuna. Slowly, his gaze drifted back to Darleston. “This is ridiculous. What do they expect to achieve by it?”
“What is it?” Fortuna tugged at the edge of the broadsheet.
“I think perhaps it would be best if you read it yourself.” Giles spread the newspaper over the occasional table by the window and tapped his finger to the relevant piece of print. Fortuna followed the words, stopping after the first sentence to re-read it twice before continuing to the end. It was short, factual.
All the heat leeched from her skin.
“I didn’t agree to this. How could they? I distinctly told him I wouldn’t.” She stared at the two men in bewilderment, watched their lips move, but couldn’t hear their words over the drumming of her heartbeat in her ears. “No. I won’t have this.” She scrunched the page into her fist, then ran to the fire and tossed it in.
“Fortuna,” Giles soothed. He laid a hand upon her upper arm. “Succumbing to hysteria won’t help. Besides, the engagement is meaningless. It’s a gentleman’s agreement, nothing more. You’re of age, are you not?”
She nodded, but the gesture quickly changed into a shake. “You don’t understand. I fled with you because I knew they’d attempt to coax me, but always the final decision lay with me. Oh, they’d persuade me. They’d make life difficult. But this bypasses me entirely.”
“Parents arrange marriages all the time.” Darleston pushed himself upright, off the chair. “Giles is correct. The announcement changes nothing. You have to be present for a wedding to proceed, and I don’t think you’re about to meet Macleane in a chapel.”
“It’s nonsensical,” said Fortuna, with a stamp of her foot. “They can hardly expect to coax me out of hiding with it, when it’s what I left to avoid.”
Giles stroked his fingers through the flaxen strands of her hair. “I don’t think that’s their intention. I think they’re trying to minimize the damage to the family name. Eventually, word of your absence will get out. This just tells everyone that you’re already married off, so not to worry about it. No, what concerns me about this is that it tells us Macleane is still as determined as ever to secure your hand. Why? Most men would have abandoned you by now and Macleane’s a famous preacher of maidenly virtues. And whoever heard of a woman going astray to return with her chastity intact?”
“Not I,” drawled Darleston. “I’d say the plan is obvious. She returns, marries Macleane. Society forgives. It’s remarkable what deviances are tolerated providing a wedding band is in place.”
“Except I won’t marry him.”
Darleston’s thin lips stretched into a bemused smile. “Then accept that you are going to be publicly shunned for t
he rest of your days.”
“Robert!” Giles barked.
Darleston shrugged his broad shoulders. “The truth,” he mumbled.
The truth. It was unfortunately so, Fortuna thought, her hands pressed to her lips. She wanted to stay here and love Giles, but she couldn’t hide from the world forever. Eventually, she would have to leave his house, and she didn’t want to be shunned by her family for the rest of her days. Already she missed Alicia’s companionship, Gabriel’s moodiness and even Mae’s vexing coquetry.
Giles snatched up the poker and began to jab it into the fire amongst the newspaper ash. “There’s something fishy about Macleane’s part in this. His two previous wives were pious angels. Still, honouring the deal he’s made with your father when you’re obviously no longer intact, just doesn’t make sense. He could easily break it off. He wants you for some really special reason.”
“Maybe he’s had a change of heart, and he’s heard about Fortuna’s talent for sin,” Darleston remarked. “She does have a spectacular talent for description. You know more lewd words than the whore I bedded yester eve.”
Fortuna twisted her hands together. “Don’t slight me.” Her sharp tone caused Giles to jolt. His gaze flickered back and forth between Fortuna and Darleston’s faces.
“You’re not perfect, yourself,” Fortuna continued. “Why you have a reputation quite as black as Lucifer’s.”
Darleston clapped his hands gave a mocking laugh. “Yes, that devil, Darleston. I know who I am.” His voice sank into a completely filthy drawl, which she felt as a purr beneath her skin. “The remark was not intended as a criticism, Miss Allenthorpe. I enjoy hearing your lewd talk, and can’t tell you how much I’m anticipating hearing you describe how it felt to be crushed between Giles and Neddy.”
Fortuna glanced at Giles in alarm and saw his brow furrow.
“Leave her alone, Robert.” He pressed his thumbnail between his teeth, and chewed nervously.
Fortuna shivered. Lord Darleston placed all her senses on edge, yet there was something about him that fascinated her too. Perhaps, the fact that he always seemed so at ease, and so lazily confident. He could have forced himself on her that first night in the hallway, and she probably wouldn’t have pushed him away, but he hadn’t. Instead, he kept scratching at her, like a mean tomcat.
Three Times the Scandal (Georgian Rakehells) Page 12
