“No. I told you. It’s not officially mine yet. I can barely remember what it looks like. Mama said it was vulgar, and far too ostentatious to ever wear, and I do have one or two nice things of my own. It isn’t as if I need to wear paste.”
“The thing is,” Giles continued, patting her hand, “we spoke to someone earlier who says your Aunt Hattie was buried with the Star of Fortune around her neck.”
Fortuna glanced between the two gentlemen. So that’s what they’d been up to these last few hours. The green of Giles’s eyes was far too bright. Fortuna turned away from his gaze. This was no idle question. Giles obviously believed whomever he had spoken to. Only, how could it be true? “The gentleman must be mistaken, or it was removed from the casket after he saw her.”
“Maybe—but what if it wasn’t?” Slowly, Giles moistened his lips. “You told us that Mr. Pimcock went to India to find the real Star of Fortune. What if he actually found it?”
“What indeed?” Darleston turned his back to the fire and lifted one sardonic brow. “What indeed?”
Fortuna shook her head. She refused to believe it possible. If he’d found the Star, he wouldn’t have died a pauper. “He had nothing left by the end. He wrote to Mama only a short time before his death begging her for money.”
“Creditors?”
Fortuna shrugged. She assumed so.
“Did your mama send the money?” Giles asked. His brows furrowed.
“A little, I believe.”
Giles rose and paced across the carpet, the tension in his frame giving him a curiously rigid gait. His lips formed an aggressive moue, acerbated by the fierce set of his jaw. Clearly he didn’t believe as she did. Part of her wanted to run to him, to take his hands and kneel down before him and laugh. What else was there to do but laugh at the absurdity of it all? She was not an heiress, just the recipient of a vulgar fake.
“Giles, if it were real, do you not think my family would be flaunting that fact? I think Mama would have insisted on someone better ranking than a baronet for my husband too.”
“She has a point.” Darleston ticked his index finger against his lips. “Every eligible bachelor in the country would be flocking to offer for her hand. A huge ruby makes for a handsome temptation.”
Giles didn’t reply. His expression became unfathomable, which in itself seemed to suggest he was not done with the subject. He’d return to the matter again as surely as she’d return to his bed if only he’d extend a hand and lead the way.
“I think he spent every last penny he owned buying the original back. Maybe he knew he didn’t have very long left and the stone was all that mattered. You’ve never said of what he died.”
Fortuna shook her head. None of them had enquired. They’d assumed he’d succumbed to some foreign malaise.
“Why all so dour?” Neddy ambled into the room with Leach buzzing around him clothes brush in hand. Unfortunately the valet’s efforts were of minimal effect. Neddy’s coat remained riddled with creases.
“Tis nothing,” said Fortuna.
“I’ll explain on the journey home.” Lord Darleston took his brother by the elbow and guided him back towards the door. “It’s time we took our leave. I believe Giles and Miss Allenthorpe have some matters to discuss that don’t require an audience.”
Neddy raised his brows, his easygoing expression transforming into one of bewildered bemusement. “Not even intimate friends?”
Darleston shoved him out of the door. “Keep walking, brother. Don’t argue.”
For several minutes after the departure of the twins, Fortuna remained silent, her hands neatly folded in her lap. Contrary to Darleston’s implication, Giles didn’t seem at all eager to speak. In truth, he seemed to be studiously ignoring her; she could see no other reason for his fussing over the fire Leach had already built to perfection.
“What did Darleston mean that we have things to discuss?”
Giles shrugged, an act that pulled the fabric of his coat taut across his back, in turn emphasizing the pleasing breadth of his shoulders. Physically, there was much that she found appealing about Giles’s body. His shape reminded her of an inverted triangle, broad across the top, and neatly tapered to the waist, his loins forming the lower point. It was easy to lose herself in Giles’s warmth, to think only of the pleasure lying with him brought and to pretend that nothing beyond this house existed. Only he seemed increasingly determined not to let her forget, but to constantly push her towards seeking solutions to her problems.
Nor had she forgotten the time limit he seemed to have placed upon her stay. He’d given his maid a mere week’s leave to tend her family. Three of those days had already gone.
“Shall I assume that he simply intended to remove Neddy, since you clearly have nothing you wish to say?”
Giles finally relinquished the poker, leaving it sticking out of the coal bucket. The firelight danced in his pupils and marbled the jade of his irises with golden flecks as he inclined his head towards her. “Would you rather he’d stayed?”
“Neddy? No, not particularly.”
“Yet, earlier…”
“Earlier?” It took a moment to realize he meant when her sisters had intruded, not the previous night when Ned had stumbled into their bed. “We were talking.”
“Naked?”
She rose from her position, so that her skirts fell around her. They rustled as she walked towards him, her hands outstretched to clasp his. “I’m not naked, Giles. I have no mastery over Neddy. You told me yourself that it’s difficult to avoid seeing him nude.”
“Neddy is more accustomed to action than conversing while naked.”
If she didn’t know better, she’d have sworn Giles sounded jealous. But his notions about free love wouldn’t allow him to admit that, hence, presumably the care he was taking over picking his words. Heaven forbid that he impose his wishes upon her, or limit her choice of lover in any way. No, instead, she’d set her own limitations on her relationship with Neddy. The younger Darleston was fun, and she greatly enjoyed his company, but Giles, Giles made her feel special in a way nobody else ever had. It made her chest ache to think that sooner or later they’d surely be parted. There was no point trying to explain to Giles how she felt though. He’d deliberately misinterpret her.
Realizing that they were frowning at one another, Fortuna turned her mind to more pleasing thoughts and thus allowed her gaze to wander over the now familiar planes of Giles’s face to his mouth and the gentle curve of his lips. She didn’t want to sit here vexed and anxious; rather she wanted to enjoy her freedom and make merry while the opportunity remained.
She smiled at Giles whilst she juggled with the idea of shocking him from his melancholia. “Would you like to see my stockings?” She flipped up the hem of her gown, to display the embroidered cornflowers that wound around her calves, then hitched the skirt higher still to flash a glimpse of the matching garters above her knees.
Giles gawped at her, his mouth briefly hanging open like that of a cod, before his typical rakish poise reasserted itself. “Do you know…” he inclined his head to get a proper look, “I think I may actually be more interested in what lies above those pretty garters?”
“Truly?” She feigned surprise. “There’s nothing so finely made. I’m afraid my shift is rather shabby.”
“Your shift maybe shabby, but your muff is beautifully presented.”
“My muff?” She sucked upon her lower lip, holding back the urge to laugh away the compliment. Did he truly think the curling golden hair, and the ripe ruddy slit of quim beautiful? His expression suggested so. Gone was the jealous glint in his eyes of moments before, replaced by desire.
Giles adjusted the bottom of his waistcoat, although his gaze remained fastened upon her upturned face. “Maybe you’ll grant me leave to touch you there.”
Another dart of pleasure speared her clitoris at the thought. When he’d traced his fingertips over the ruby nub the night before, his caresses had kindled a fever that left her
breathless and bathed in perspiration and had caused her body to spasm and clench with need. That same tingling desire gripped her again now. It clawed its way upwards from her belly, made her breasts feel heavy and too constricted in her stays. She longed to undo them, or for Giles to undo them, or at least to pull out the stiffening busk so that she wasn’t forced to stand so rigid. She took a dainty step towards him.
“I want you to touch me there. I want to feel your fingers slide between my lips and dip inside me.”
How bold she’d grown in stating her desires.
“How many fingers?”
Fortuna opened her eyes quizzically wide. “Two. Perhaps three.”
Giles smoothed two digits over her lips. “Just fingers, or do you desire me to please you with my cock as well? Tell me what you want. Direct me.”
Two fingers would feel good in her still tight passage; three would surely stretch her in a similar way to the cock she sincerely hoped he would pleasure her with this evening. She craved the sensation of him entering her again, of him filling her and feeling his cock flex inside her. When they were joined like that, as closely as any two people could get, moving as one, lost in the scent and feel of one another, gasping and utterly exposed, then, and only then did she truly feel at ease.
Fortuna grasped Giles’s hand and placed it above her stocking top, on the warm skin of her upper thigh. “Touch me.”
Two broad fingers swept upward towards to the apex of her thighs. They delved between the swollen lips of her puss and into the pool of gathered moisture, until they were coated in it, and glided lightly, bringing pleasure—fierce, bright flashes of it as he lightly stroked her nub.
“You feel like silk.” Giles lifted his fingers to his nose and breathed in her scent, before sucking the dew from his fingertips. “You taste even better.” He touched her again and this time his fingers dipped into her opening. Fortuna pushed her mons against his open palm as she leaned towards him, her lips parting in anticipation of his kiss.
Giles’s lips were soft and dry. Their tongues wrestled as she sought to bring him pleasure in the way he was currently doing for her. The hidden buttons of his breeches popped open easily enough, then her hand was pressed to the warmth of his bare flesh, her fingers combing through the nest of curls at his loins, while his cock bucked and nudged at her arm seeking attention. Fortuna ringed his shaft with her thumb and fore-finger and stroked his erection as she’d seen Neddy pleasure himself. Giles’s cock was poker stiff, but supple and warm. His breath shortened with each stroke of her hand, until it blasted like steam from a kettle against her cheek.
“You learn too fast, madam.”
“I like to please.” Boldened, she drew her thumb around the crown of his cock, and slicked it back and forth in the dewy tears leaking from its single eye. Giles whimpered and his hips jerkily rotated, but he didn’t stop her. Instead, he clung to her, and lavished more attention on her clit.
Fortuna sighed against his shoulder. Their image was reflected in the dark glass of the window. How perfectly rude they looked, standing in the centre of the parlour, Giles with his erection poking from the placket of his breeches and her, with her skirts rucked up to her waist and his hand pressed tight to her puss, and all the ruder for being clothed, rather than undressed.
She prayed this wouldn’t be the only time they stood together like this. That regardless of Sir Hector’s intentions and her family’s wishes, or this foolish notion that her godfather’s gift might actually be worth something, she and Giles might somehow have more than a handful of days left together.
“I like the feel of you in my hand,” she purred, “so hard and yet supple. I don’t think I’d ever tire of stroking you.”
Giles responded with a rather inelegant groan. It made her smile.
It wasn’t just the feel of him, she loved, but the knowledge that he was aroused by her, and that he wanted to be inside her, to possess her.
He’d possessed so many women. Had he loved any of them, or was the mutual gratification of physical needs all that mattered to him? She didn’t think Giles had ever truly fallen in love, for surely a man in love wouldn’t be quite so willing to share or grant freedoms that might exclude him from his lover’s life in favour of another.
“How many lovers have you had?” A sudden desire to know their names and faces seized her.
“Fewer than you imagine. And none quite so adept at rousing my seed without thorough practice.” He stayed her hand, and then gripped tight the base of his cock. Colour flooded his cheeks, and he gazed at her though half-shutted eyes. “You’ve a natural talent for sin, Miss Allenthorpe. Come, sit on my lap before you undo me completely and I embarrass myself by coming before I’ve tended to your needs.”
Giles sank onto the chaise, his legs widely parted. His cock stood proud, deep mahogany at the tip. She wanted to lick him, to lavish more attention upon that virile column, but when she bent her head, Giles caught her under her arms and lifted her up. “No. It feels as if I haven’t fucked you for days.” In truth it had been only that morning. “I need to be inside you.”
“I want that too.” She was dripping with need for him, as he dragged her astride his lap. With her legs so splayed she was open for him. His glans kissed her clit, sending another gush of dew down to lubricate her passage. Fortuna wriggled until they had the angle right. Giles still held himself at the base as she lowered herself until her body swallowed the whole of his cock and she felt his curled fingers brush against her labia. Every muscle he possessed seemed to be drawn tight; even his teeth were gritted as she kissed him.
“I’m too close,” he hissed when she tried to joust her tongue with his. “Keep still. Don’t move.”
“But I want to move.” She drew herself up slowly.
Giles gripped her tight about the hips. “Do that again and I’ll come.” His own body undermined him, his hips lifting, cock seeking the tight, blazing, comfort of her sheath.
“That feels so good.” She tilted her head back, feeling wildly seductive.
“Fortuna!” He bit down hard enough to leave white indents in his lips that turned deep red a moment later.
“It’s fine,” she soothed, stroking his hair.
Giles started panting. His cheeks turned the same bright hue the crown of his cock.
“What can I do?”
“Nothing. Just give me a minute.” His grip moved lower to tug upon his balls. Fortuna rested her head against his shoulder and blew against what little of his neck lay exposed above his collar and cravat. “You know you’re rumoured to be one of the most skilled lovers among the ton.”
“Christ!”
She gently bit his earlobe, recalling all the ways he’d teased her the previous night. In her opinion the reputation was warranted.
Giles ground his teeth. Inside her, his cock flexed so vigorously she thought for a moment he truly had lost control. She squeaked, recalling his earlier concerns about releasing his seed inside her. Giles began to chuckle. “I’m not yet gone.” He churned his hips in a slow figure of eight. “Easy now. That’s it beautiful. Steady now. It’s just like churning butter.”
‘And how often have you done that?”
“Never.” His jade-green eyes crinkled at the corners and he smiled, affection and lust sprinkled throughout his expression. “Macleane’s a fool. You’re far lovelier than any gem.” He worked a hand between them, stretched his fingers across her belly, while his thumb split the seam of her labia and caught her clitoral hood. Round and round. The resulting ache built inside her womb and wormed its way up to her nipples, which tightened.
Fortuna pulled the pins from her front of her gown and scooped her breasts upwards, free of her low-cut stays. “Please Giles.”
He suckled, drawing first one nipple and then the other into his mouth, so that the connection between the three points of pleasure grew stronger. She could no longer hold still and let him control their motion. Instead she jigged up and down, trying to increase the pa
ce, but succeeded mostly in increasing the rapturous throb in her clit as his thumb continued to drum against it, and his cock stroked her from within.
Within seconds her gasps matched Giles in both volume and gusto.
“That’s it,” Giles breathed, “take what you need.” He lifted her now, with every thrust, so that their flesh slapped when it met. Orgasm speared her with invisible barbs that made her tingle from head to foot. Wave after wave of shivery pleasure licked at her skin. “Oh, Giles!”
His cock flexed inside her. He tried to grip his balls again, but too late, he was bucking, his seed spilling hot inside her. Hotter against her skin as he pulled out, groaning at the loss.
Completely spent, they bent their heads and rested their foreheads together, the evidence of their passion still sticky upon their skin.
“Gads!” He smiled into her eyes, and rubbed their noses together. “Good enough to maintain my reputation?”
“Not bad.” She smirked. “Of course, you’ll need to do it another twice to really prove your mettle.”
“Twice.” He yawned. “I’m a gone case. I’m not even sure I can walk well enough to carry you up the stairs after that.” Despite the assertion, he did carry her, and gently roused her to another peak with his lips and tongue within the comfort of his bed.
Afterwards, he cradled her, and whispered sweet endearments into her ears until his words lulled her to sleep.
Much later, Giles stared into the darkness of the tester bed’s enveloping canopy. The candle had burned down to a molten puddle. Fortuna lay asleep in his arms.
Free love. He’d made it his personal manifesto, had taken to heart all its dictates. He wanted Fortuna to have her freedom, but it still irked him that Neddy had been naked in her bed in his absence. Still, he couldn’t have it both ways. Either he embraced the concepts as he always had, or he abandoned them and lived like so many other repressed fools. There could be no middle ground.
Giles tucked Fortuna closer against his side and stretched to place a kiss upon her brow. He’d avoided mentioning the necklace again. She wasn’t ready to believe in its authenticity, and despite Darleston’s prodding, he hadn’t the heart to tell her of her father’s gambling debt. Let the old man explain how he’d wagered her future on the turn of a card.
Three Times the Scandal (Georgian Rakehells) Page 16
