The Earl's Irresistible Challenge

by Lara Temple

  Lucas closed his eyes, trying to gather the resolution to pull away, but that was worse. It was absurd that such a tame caress should make the act of pulling his hand away feel a Promethean task. It was like watching a glass drop from across the room, fascinated by its descent towards destruction, knowing there was nothing one could do to stop the inevitable. Some sane corner knew there was something he could still do. Something as simple as take back ownership of his hand. His hand.

  ‘Olivia.’ He tried again, but her name was a torture in itself. It ran through him like water, warm and supple, like her body would be under his when he had her on her back, naked.

  She shifted her head, sliding her mouth along his palm, her breath warm and moist on his skin.

  ‘I told you last time, we cannot do this. Listen to me!’

  ‘I’m listening,’ she murmured, her breath heating the tips of his fingers.

  ‘We cannot do this, not here, not now.’

  She looked up from her demolishment of his defences, her eyes a fierce gold-shot green.

  ‘I dressed to seduce you. I told Elspeth we had important matters to discuss and I shall be a while. Must I leave?’

  ‘God help me, yes. Now.’

  ‘Will you come to Brook Street later so I can tell you what I found?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then just one kiss and I will leave.’

  She didn’t even give him time to consider, her hands wound themselves about his neck and into his hair and with a whimper of need and pleasure she opened her mouth under his.

  ‘One kiss... One simple, tiny kiss... Please, Lucas...’

  His papers whispered on to the floor as he raised her on to the desk. She gave a small gasp as he moved between her legs, pulling her against him, but she merely adjusted herself, slid her fingers deeper into his hair, warm and supple against his scalp as she pulled herself towards him and he felt a wave of something sharp and hard and unfamiliar rip through him as he took possession of her mouth, answering her seeking lips, delivering his soul.

  * * *

  Olivia had come with the intent to appease, but she was more than happy to find herself being kissed into oblivion while seated on the edge of a desk. He wasn’t gentle this time, and she didn’t want him to be. She felt everything she saw in his eyes—the tension, the fear, the frustration, the unspoken yearning for something that might forever be beyond what she could give him. It burned and flared in every sweep of his mouth on hers, the heated caress of his tongue and lips and the way his hands and body moved against hers. She was alive and alight with need, her nerves crackling and sparking wherever they touched, making her squirm and whimper, trying to get closer, to merge their bodies as well as their mouths. But just when her hands tried to push their way under his shirt he caught them in a hard clasp, his mouth softening until he was only resting his lips against hers.

  When he raised his head she remained with her eyes closed for a moment, listening to the music of her body vibrating from the tips of her toes to her scalp. This was no fading of a waltz or siren’s call of an opera, this was the rising of wind before the storm and not just for her. She could almost hear the same thrum of determined need in Lucas as he remained frozen. So when he spoke she hardly regarded his words.

  ‘You’ve had your kiss. Now go home.’

  He was right, she should go, but she couldn’t imagine moving from precisely where she was or breaking any point of contact with him. This was home.

  The realisation struck her as powerfully as the desire he so easily loosed in her. This was home. She had lost her home because of Bertram, but that had merely opened her to find another home, one of her own choosing, with Lucas.

  She didn’t say the words aloud because it was far, far too early. But inside her she said them—You are my home, Lucas Sinclair, and I am yours.

  She was not quite ready to leave it.

  ‘As a rake you are a sad disappointment, Lord Sinclair. It is quite unfair that it always falls to me to seduce you when you have all the experience,’ she admonished, running her hand over the soft lawn of his shirt. She liked the topography of his chest, it felt as powerful as he looked, and her fingers tingled at the rasp of hair beneath the white cotton. She wanted to see him, feel him, burrow into him...

  ‘Olivia...’

  She rushed on. ‘I told Elspeth this was very important and that it was the last time I would ask of her to leave me alone with a man while I was under her protection. I left her downstairs with Miss Austen’s novel and Jem promised to keep her plied with tea. Please don’t make all my machinations go to waste.’

  He laughed, leaning his forehead against hers, his hand curving over her cheek and his thumb pressing against her lips. ‘Relentless.’

  She parted her lips against the rough pad of his thumb, instinctively touching it with the tip of her tongue. The groan that shook through him at that simple gesture thrilled through every muscle in her body, her legs clamping tight against his, her fingers burrowing deeper into his hair.

  ‘Please don’t send me away, Lucas, not yet. Just a while longer...’ She spoke the words against his hand, tasting and testing its texture.

  ‘Livvy...’

  ‘I like that. No one calls me Livvy.’

  ‘That’s because you’re mine. But you cannot stay, Livvy. After what happened today I’m not feeling strong enough to be noble. I don’t want to be. I want to take you right here on my desk and devil take the consequences. So have pity on my conscience and leave. I will come see you this evening in Brook Street, I promise...oh, hell!’

  She wasn’t quite sure how her hands separated his shirt from his pantaloons, but the sensation of her hands skimming up his ribs was clearly as cataclysmic for him as for her, or perhaps his recoil was merely because her hands were cool on the warm silk of his skin. She tried to draw them away, hampered by the shirt.

  ‘Are my hands cold?’ she asked contritely and he groaned again and caught them, pressing them against his skin.

  ‘No, they are deadly. Don’t stop. I surrender.’

  Every question she had he answered, in words or gestures. He took off his shirt at her demand and helped her with her dress, and every time he baulked and tried to convince her to stop, she used everything he was teaching her to overcome his qualms. She didn’t want to stop any more than he did. She didn’t want to wait on conventions. She wanted to show her trust in the most elemental way, and if she did not yet dare tell him she loved him, she could show him.

  ‘I want you as naked as Mr Discus Thrower. I was thinking of you when I touched him...’

  ‘I felt you were touching me. If we had been alone...’ Lucas groaned, his hands fisting in her chemise, bunching it around her hips. She slid forward, pressing against the surging bulge in his pantaloons, her breath stopping as the pulsing heat between her legs rose to a high pitch and spread out in waves, making her skin tingle and her breasts ache. Every inch of her wanted to feel him, to brush against him. She wanted nothing next to her skin but him. The cotton fabric of her chemise felt rough and foreign on her skin. She wanted it off.

  ‘We are alone now,’ she whispered. ‘What did you want to do to me?’

  ‘Not to you, with you. This...this is what I wanted to do.’

  She had no idea how she found herself spread out on the sofa by the fireplace, Lucas leaning over her, his mouth exploring her body, the stubble on his jaw a tantalising contrast to the silk sweep of his mouth and the damp caress of his tongue, finding and searing places she had never imagined could be so crucial to her.

  Her own hands were exploring, touching where they could reach, mapping him as he mapped her. At some point she dragged his mouth to hers and he kissed her deeply, his body half-covering hers with heat and textures she wanted to explore and learn one by one. She felt her legs part, trying to making room for his and for the pressing heat between them,
and his breathing quickened. But the kiss gentled suddenly and he raised his head. She wrapped her arms around him, afraid he might stop.

  ‘Lucas, please don’t stop.’

  He shifted between her legs, his weight on his forearm, his eyes coal black and burning.

  ‘I won’t. Not before I show you what you are capable of, Livvy. I won’t go any further, but whatever the law says, from today you are mine. If you have any doubts you want to be saddled with me for the rest of your life, tell me now.’

  ‘Not one, Lucas.’

  He touched his lips gently to hers, then to her cheek, his free hand continuing its teasing exploration downwards. She tried not to tense as it feathered over the curls at the juncture of her thighs. It was a single soft stroke that mapped a part of her that was as mysterious to her as the world she had entered when she met Lucas. She did not know why this was different from everything that preceded it. Even though she knew the heavy pulse just below where he was touching had to be reached somehow, it scared her.

  ‘I won’t hurt you, sweetheart. This is what the music is about. Do you trust me?’

  His mouth brushed hers, the words like the touch of sunlight—caressing, warm, soothing. But though his fingers stroked just as lightly over the downy curls between her thighs, they were an agony, making her thighs shiver with tension. Surely nothing should feel so intense, so necessary and so foreign, and not threaten to destroy her.

  ‘Do you trust me?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes.’

  He kissed one corner of her mouth and then the other. ‘Then let yourself feel.’

  His fingers slid against skin that felt like the surface of the water, shimmering and warm. Then he was at the core of her heat and she shuddered and her hips rose without thought, seeking, begging.

  ‘I can’t help it... Lucas!’

  His mouth caught hers with a growl and he kissed her deeply. A hungry, plundering kiss that turned the fire below into a blaze and suddenly she was shaking with anticipation, trying to meet the rhythm of his fingers and body as they tossed her higher and higher.

  His mouth moved downwards as well, over her exposed breast, brushing and coaxing and finally closing hot and moist over its crest just as the tension below reached a peak. She wanted to throw him from her, pull him on top of her, something, anything but remain in that unbearable, beautiful storm. She heard her own voice, but not hers, begging, urging and finally melting into a moan that caught in her throat. She clung to him, her fingers pressed hard into his back and nape as bolt after bolt of lightning slashed through her, harsh, brilliant, shattering her again and again into nothing but light and heat.

  When her body gathered again, it was into liquid warmth, as if she had moved one by one through all the elements, from the insubstantiality of air to the crude needs of earth to the all-consuming blaze of fire and finally to warm, embracing water. She rocked there for a while, warm and safe, cocooned against him. Slowly waking.

  He had shifted and now she lay half on him, his arms holding her, and they stayed there, her cheek pressed against his chest, her body warm and heavy but utterly alert, as if the whole of creation was flowing outwards from her centre.

  She could feel the empty house that would be filled, the cold, snow-covered streets that would thaw and fill with life, the winter that would bud and flower—all spreading out from the love inside her. She smiled at the foolish vanity of the sensation, but held it to her as well. This was love and this was her lover. Hers to care for and cherish and do everything she could to make him happy and free. She turned her head lightly to touch her lips to the hollow of his shoulder, sealing her vow. She never, ever wanted to move. Or only so they could do this again.

  ‘That was...wonderful,’ she whispered against his bare shoulder, revelling in the wonderful scent and feel of him. ‘I thought it would hurt.’

  His chest rose and fell with a shuddering breath. He shifted and she felt his mouth brush over her curls, the words whispering warmth over her scalp.

  ‘Sweetheart, I’m afraid it might yet, but not today, though the way I feel now I don’t know if I will survive the night. I just wanted you to know a little of what awaits you.’

  She finally opened her eyes, pushing away a little to look up at him, realising that though she was utterly naked he was still in his pantaloons. It took her a while to even notice the tension in the arms that held her. He shifted finally, raising her so that she was on his lap, his arms around her. She tried to move so she could see him, but he hugged her to him in a convulsive movement. Then he laughed a little and brushed his lips over her temple.

  ‘Relentless Livvy. Please don’t squirm, sweetheart. My control has its limits.’

  ‘What do you mean? Didn’t you...?’

  He shook his head and shifted her to the sofa as he retrieved her chemise from the carpet, followed by her dress and stays. She meekly allowed him to dress her as if he were Nora and not a very large, half-naked man, far more beautiful than the discobolus, perspiration glistening on the slopes and rises of his muscled torso and back.

  ‘Didn’t you want to?’ she asked at last, the question forcing its way out. His hands jerked in the act of easing her tangled hair out from the back of her dress and the involuntary tug stung her scalp before he released her.

  His hands settled on her shoulders, turning her. There was still the same midnight-black fire in his eyes as he took her hand and pressed it to the bulge she had felt at the juncture of his legs and she felt the hard, pulsing heat through the fabric. At the contact of her hand his eyes half-closed, a muscle leaping by the tense groove in his cheek.

  ‘I would give my soul right now to be inside you, Livvy. Which is precisely why I won’t.’

  ‘That makes no sense. If you want—’

  He smiled and pressed a swift kiss to her mouth before moving away to slip on his shirt.

  ‘This is not the time to practise your relentlessness on me, Livvy. In my present state I do not have to make sense, I only have to cling to the cliff face of my good intentions and try not to slip. Now put on your bonnet and go to Lady Phelps. I can’t imagine why she has not barged in on us yet, but I don’t want to tempt the fates any more than we have. Up with you.’

  ‘But I must speak with you about what Mrs Eldritch told me. I should have insisted on doing that first. Shall I tell her...?’

  ‘No. What happened here was...beautiful. I don’t want to mar it by discussing history and scandals, no matter what you have discovered. You will go home and rest and I will come this evening and we will discuss whatever you must tell me calmly and in the proper setting.’

  The knock on the door was timid and the voice that spoke through the door even more so.

  ‘My lord, Lady Phelps begs to inform you that the carriage has arrived and she and Miss Silverdale must be on their way.’

  Lucas strode towards the door and Olivia lowered her hand before she could try to stop him. In any case, he was right. She wanted to stay enveloped in the magic of the moment and discussing the letter, no matter how important, would always overshadow the memory of the pleasure he had shown her and the care he had taken of her.

  ‘She is ready, Tubbs. You may see her downstairs.’ He turned to Olivia, drawing her towards the door. ‘I will come by this evening, I promise. Try to stay out of trouble until then.’

  He gave her a little shove out into the corridor and closed the door behind her.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘Good evening. Miss Silverdale.’

  ‘Good evening, Lord Sinclair. It is good of you to call,’ Olivia replied as Pottle closed the door, leaving them alone in the drawing room. He moved so that the table was between them. He had come to Brook Street determined to treat what had occurred in his study just hours earlier with the lightest of touches and to keep as much physical distance between them as possible so his already fragile self-c
ontrol would not have to take another beating. He was not at all certain he would succeed—the memory of her pleasure was seared into his mind and he felt greedy with the need to take her there again, even at the cost of deepening his suffering.

  ‘Are you well?’ His voice was stiff, which was fitting.

  ‘Yes.’ Her own voice was husky and he finally noticed she looked as uncomfortable as he felt.

  ‘Are you nervous?’ A sudden thought occurred to him. ‘I did not hurt you, did I?’

  ‘What? No, of course not! If I appear nervous it is because I am, but not because...well, because of what happened. Are you not curious to learn what Mrs Eldritch told me?’

  ‘I am postponing the inevitable. In any case, before you begin, please sit down for my sake if not yours. I would rather take this sitting down myself and I cannot if you insist on remaining standing. My mother did instil a few codes of polite behaviour in us after all, though I know they have been glaringly absent today.’

  She sat and Lucas smiled a little wryly.

  ‘That was the first time you did as I asked without argument. Should I be suspicious?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Well, I am. Out with it. I may as well hear the worst.’

  ‘But it isn’t... Never mind. Remember that Mrs Eldritch mentioned Henry was helping her sort through her husband’s papers prior to removing from her house? Well, after we left she remembered that Henry had become quite excited about a packet of letters between her husband and a mutual friend who worked at Buxted Mallory Shipping the same time your father did. She looked through those letters and finally she found this. That was why she sent for me.’

  She unfolded the letter from Jasper Archer and held it out. Lucas remained seated.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It is rather long. Perhaps you...’

  ‘Just tell me what it says, Olivia.’

  ‘Very well. I shall read only the pertinent parts.’