Revenge Wears Rubies

by Renee Bernard

  Her leg was hooked over him, and when she drew her calf across his hips and grazed the base of his shaft, his body instantly hardened. It was easy to slowly reposition himself so that his cock was nudging her thighs apart, and he shifted Haley over so that her back was on the bed, but her bottom was nestled up against his arousal. He imagined they made an odd pinwheel, but he loved the view of her sprawling away from him, with her sex up against his.

  It was a lazy game that suddenly became increasingly sensual as Galen noticed that his hands were still free to do as he wished. Spreading her thighs further apart, he touched her, exploring her at his leisure and admiring how amazingly soft her skin was, warming to his attention and pinking up as he watched. She was the most exotic of flowers, and the honey she exuded was an opiate that made him forget everything but the celestial transport her body offered him.

  Haley wriggled against him, closing her eyes at the sudden renewal of her own need for him. It was ridiculous—this inexorable pull to join her body to his. It was as if her practical self was connected to the world around her by the smallest threads, and every time he touched her or even looked at her a certain way, she was cut adrift.

  He dipped his fingers into his mouth, and then the soft workings of his fingertips around and over her clit felt mysteriously like a tongue. It was the most wicked illusion she’d ever experienced, for his warm, hard cock was buried inside of her, gently rocking into her and stroking up against the side of her wall, finding a sensitive place that sent her reeling, the tense little coil of pleasure inside of her instantly tightening.

  She felt like the most licentious sultana to lie back and allow herself to be stroked and pressed, his shaft so delightfully thick and his fingers so skilled, her eyes filled with tears. Just when she thought she might find her release, he teased her and changed the rhythm or lightened the friction of his fingers over her engorged clit, and Haley gave herself over to the dance, following his lead and enjoying this decadent waltz.

  It felt a little strange to be angled away from him: she could reach his chest and press her splayed fingers against his heartbeat, but her touch was limited. “Galen, I . . . I seem to be . . . receiving far more benefit . . . than you. . . .”

  “Nonsense,” he said softly, but moved his hips to remind her that he was very much enjoying the connection between them, and she gasped as his shaft seemed to thicken inside her as he increased the speed of his fingers. “But if the lady is keeping a tally . . .”

  Something inside of her began an inevitable cascade, tumbling and gaining momentum with each fluttering pass of his hand over her clit, until there was no part of her body that wasn’t directly linked to that tiny bud, until she was sure that finding and mounting that invisible peak would shatter her completely—and she didn’t care. There was only the promise of release, and Haley arched her back as the first white-hot jolt of her orgasm unleashed itself and radiated up her spine. The intensity made her cry out, but it was as if another woman were moaning somewhere, and Haley could only ride wave after wave and pray that she would recover herself when it was all over.

  And then even gravity’s hold betrayed her, and Haley had the dizzying experience of being lifted and turned until she was on her knees, and Galen had repositioned himself behind her, quickly refilling the void inside her with his hungry cock. She cried out again, this time in a trembling sigh as the waves began to subside.

  But Galen caught her, leaning over her as he buried himself to the hilt, and one of his hands recaptured her sensitive clit and immediately reignited the fire there. She bucked against him, biting her lip to keep from begging him to stop because already she knew she didn’t want him to cease a single movement. The cascade swept away her thoughts and she pulled her knees together to tighten her hold on him, to increase the strength of her spasms, and it was all she could do to cling to the bedding and breathe through unthinkable pleasure.

  Galen began to move back and forth, gritting his teeth against the force of her orgasms, taking her in strokes that were so slow and so deep, he could feel her channel’s every twitch and release. He drew out until only the tip of his cock was inside of her, ringed by the tight pink of her opening, and then he deliberately pushed forward in a relentlessly slow invasion of her body until she finally moaned.

  “Galen, please . . . faster . . . faster . . .”

  He obliged her with the merciless skill of a man who wished to draw out her own pleasure, and his own. He increased his momentum, driving into her, faster and harder by degrees, until at last there was no sound in the room but the slap of flesh as their bodies came together in a crescendo of carnal lust.

  Galen tipped his head back, his orgasm ripping through him and robbing him of the last vestiges of his control. He spent himself in a hot rush of crème that never seemed to end. He squeezed his eyes closed tightly and marveled that he could feel his own heartbeat in every inch and extremity of his body—his fingertips and toes, his eyelids and . . . Hell, I think I can feel my hair. . . .

  It was such a ridiculous thought, he laughed at the sheer joy of being so completely undone, and discovered that even that small spasm of laughter added to the power of his orgasm and stopped his breath in his throat.

  “Oh, my!” He gripped her hips to prevent her from shifting as he waited for the last rivulet of his spendings to leave his body—and for his heartbeat to slow. “Don’t move.”

  “I . . . I shall have to move at some point, Mr. Hawke,” she teased, then laughed softly and undid all his efforts. They both gasped at the movement and fell apart in peals of laughter to fall into each other’s arms on the bed.

  “I cannot help but think that this is a most unconventional affair, Galen.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead. “We talk so little—”

  “Conversation would seem a waste of these minutes we steal, don’t you think?”

  “Not a waste.” She bit her lower lip, then smiled up at him. “I suppose there will be time enough for talk later, and if you aren’t forthcoming, I shall have to get better at torturing things out of you.”

  “Ah, torture!” He smiled, too, then felt his humor bleed away. “What use are stories of the past? They either say too much about a person or too little to matter. Although I do often wonder what you were like when you were younger . . .”

  “We are none of us recognizable from our past, I think,” she sighed. “People are like chameleons, changing over time. . . .”

  “Because they’re faithless and disloyal?” He couldn’t help himself.

  “No!” She laughed, playfully punching him in the arm. “Because when you’re eight and you swear you wish to grow up to be a fairy king, I don’t think you should be condemned as an adult to living in a house made out of mushrooms.”

  “Some promises are meant to be kept.”

  “Do you always keep your promises, Galen?” she asked him, drawing up to perch on his chest, her nose level with his and her expression suddenly more serious.

  He could feel her heart pounding against his, the firm press of her ripe breasts against his chest and the sweet naked length of her body lodged on top of his as if she’d been molded for him. Do you always keep your promises, Galen? Dear God, which ones—the ones to dead brothers and friends; or the ones to you, Haley? “I keep as many as I can.”

  “You never speak of yourself.”

  “It is an uninteresting topic.”

  She laughed again, and he was smiling before he realized it. “It is not uninteresting to me, Galen.”

  “We have already established that you are easily pleased, Haley,” he teased, bucking her over without warning so that now it was his body that covered hers. “But you’ll have to trust me that I never aspired to be a mushroom king.”

  “And what do you aspire to?”

  He kissed her to distract her from the question and ended up rewarding himself with another rampant erection. “Come to the house tomorrow.”

  She shook her head. “Aren’t you worried my
father is going to start asking about my sudden penchant for window-shopping?”

  “Come to me tomorrow, Haley.”

  “I wish I could, Galen, but Aunt Alice has committed us to viewing the Diorama in Regent’s Park and then we’re attending a party afterward. I don’t think I can excuse myself without creating suspicion.” She disengaged from his embrace, shyly beginning to retrieve her clothes. “Indeed, I should go home now before the afternoon is gone completely.”

  One glance at the clock confirmed that she was right, but Galen didn’t feel any more ready to let her go. “Tomorrow.”

  She shook her head and held her clothes in front of her. “Not unless you have an invitation to Lady MacLean’s dinner party, and frankly, I’m not sure I can maintain my composure after . . . It’s not like before, Galen.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I think you are dangerous enough behind closed doors, Mr. Hawke.” She turned to head toward the dressing room. “But lucky for me, it’s too small a dinner party for you to work your dark magic and make an appearance.”

  Galen smiled, the wicked smile of a man who liked nothing better than a challenge.

  Late that same night, he was alone and distracted in the dark of his room. He’d expected to be sleeping like the dead. But instead he was wrapped in sheets that held the faint scent of their lovemaking, and struggling to find peace.

  I should be basking in triumph. I should feel better. I’m supposed to be dreaming about innocuous green fields and fluffy clouds, damn it!

  Not that he’d expected John’s ghost to mystically appear with a blessing once he had the girl in hand, but . . . a sense of fulfillment? Of relief? Of accomplishment? Anything but this melancholy state of alertness defined by the dragging sound of the clock ticking on the mantel and the burning memories of her beautiful presence in his arms.

  A part of him acknowledged that he was the worst kind of villain, even foregoing using French letters to prevent a possible pregnancy—as if leaving her with a bastard child would be the coup de grace. Michael’s warnings about sparing his conscience later haunted him now.

  But Haley Moreland was nothing he’d anticipated, and not even the scream of his conscience would make him stop now.

  She’d surpassed his expectations. She’d eclipsed the fleeting fantasies of his imagination and surprised him at almost every turn with the candor and playful spirit of her lovemaking. She’d expressed her every delight, innocently hiding nothing from him, and naïvely spurred him on to please her even more, to find new ways to make her moan and sigh.

  Just thinking about her, his body reacted, a soft weight like hot sand in his belly slowly hardening his cock. Galen reached down, closing his eyes as his hand circled the thickening shaft, marveling that he could burn for her again so quickly.

  He inhaled her lingering scent, the orchid sweet musk enveloped him, and it was all too easy to conjure the memory of her, complete and compelling enough to make him groan. He closed his eyes, sliding his hand down to the base of his shaft, tightening on the sensitive base where his flesh contracted across his balls, and then began moving in a languid motion to draw out the pleasure.

  He imagined her in the red dress, the one she’d worn the first night he’d seen her, but this time, in his fantasies he adorned her in a ruby necklace dripping with diamonds and envisioned a very different encounter in that balcony.

  In his mind’s eye, he watched her draw closer and closer. This time there was no element of surprise. He was waiting for her in the dark. She was seeking him there. And the anticipation of her, the sight of her moving toward him in that red silk dress, so demure and impossibly sexy at the same time, heated his blood and made his cock start to turn rock hard.

  She knelt in front of him, her dress fanning out in a lush backdrop that mirrored her pouting red mouth. She reached up to feel him through the cloth of his pants and then brazenly opened his buttons to admire his cock.

  “It’s beautiful, Galen.” He could feel the heat from her breath as she whispered, each exhale caressing his skin and teasing him with phantom light kisses. And she held perfectly still, just there, her breath tantalizing and tormenting his ripe head, before she looked up at him through her long sable brown lashes. “May I?”

  He’d only had to nod and her mouth began to move closer and closer. His swollen head was already weeping and she licked off the first drop, then looked up at him again, her lips glossed by his desire. She smiled, wanton and treacherous, innocent and heartless—everything in the world he loved and hated in one glorious figure.

  She took him further into the soft cavern of her mouth, pulling, drawing, sucking in long, slow strokes that made his knees want to buckle. Her long, tapered fingers reached up to cup his testicles, and then she drew her fingernails lightly around them until they seized against her palms and she found the most sensitive point at the base of his shaft, pressing against it just as her tongue changed rhythm and began to lave him along the ridge underneath his cock.

  She grazed him with her teeth, just enough to send a shiver up his spine and confirm her control of him. She latched onto the base of him and began to suck until it became a pinpoint of such intense sensations that it bordered on pain. But she soothed him instantly, releasing him only to slide the hot, wet fires of her mouth back up to gently devour him once again.

  Her grip on his balls tightened and then softened, in a strange echo of every flicker of her tongue against him. And he groaned, as he could feel the telltale fisting of pleasure in the pit of his stomach and knew he was about to spend himself. He could feel the core of his cock changing into something molten, and then it was heaven, and she had all of him at once—she was commanding him to spend, supplicating him with every touch, every pull of her mouth and the sight of her skirts spread out around her, his queen kneeling at his feet in surrender—and yet she was in complete control, and he yielded to it . . . until she met his eyes again, and he knew what he wanted.

  He reached down to undo the pins of her hair, fisting his hands into the heavy brown silk to guide her mouth up and down his shaft. And she relinquished her newly won power and the very thought of it pushed him over the edge. He came in uneven surges, and she drank every last swallow from him, clinging to his thighs and squeezing his balls as if to rend the last drop from his body.

  Galen came in a glorious spasm, the crème jetting from his body in an ecstasy that bordered on pain, and he covered himself quickly with the sheet, dismayed at the sense of shame that shuddered through him on the heels of his release.

  He’d never been so consumed by a woman, and he worried that he hadn’t even begun to slake his lust where Haley Moreland was concerned.

  I should set her aside now, before this becomes some kind of obsession.

  Yes. Just set her aside.

  But not yet.

  Not just yet.

  The carriage let her off at the head of a street of fashionable shops to allow her to walk a short distance and then safely hire her own hansom cab to get home. Haley smiled at the scheme to protect her reputation, warmed by Galen’s care and attention to detail.

  Her steps took her past the colorful wares in the many-paned windows, but Haley kept her eye on her steps to avoid the mud and puddles on the thoroughfare, and her thoughts were still with her lover.

  “Miss Moreland!”

  Haley looked up in surprise at the unexpected greeting.

  “Out for a bit of shopping?” Rand Bascombe asked cheerfully. “But where is your maid or even your dear Mrs. Shaw? May I escort you to your carriage?”

  “My aunt . . .” Haley took a deep breath, wishing once again that she’d mastered the art of deception that others seemed to take for granted. “My aunt thought she might need it for errands, so I was going to use a hackney carriage.”

  “Allow me to assist you, then, for it can be a bit harrowing for a lady to hire one alone.” He held out his arm. “That is, if you’ve finished your shopping?”

  Haley nodded
and put her hand lightly on his arm, unwilling to carry the charade too far and risk saying something that would betray herself. “Yes, thank you.”

  “London is not a town I would recommend a lady going about on her own, Miss Moreland. But then you strike me as a resourceful creature, and very astute for a girl so remarkably fresh from the countryside.”

  Haley wasn’t sure how to accept a compliment that came so close to an insult by implying that any other girl from the country would have suffered a lack of acuity. “I’m sure common sense is a portable enough quality, Mr. Bascombe, to serve a woman anywhere she might find herself.”

  “Quite right!” He began to guide her through the passersby as he continued. “And it’s that candor and intelligence that I’m sure won Mr. Trumble’s heart. Naturally, you realize, I admire your fiancé’s ambitions and his knack for making friends.”

  Their broken engagement was not yet public knowledge, and Haley had no intention of correcting the man. Even so, she felt uncomfortable in a lie and tried to skirt the topic. “He’s a good man.”

  “And your knack for making new friends is no less admirable, Miss Moreland.”

  “I . . . would guess a person’s social circle can always be widened and improved.” Haley suddenly felt unsure of where Mr. Bascombe was driving the conversation.

  “Oh, yes! But please tell me, what is your impression of Mr. Galen Hawke?”

  Haley could only pray her expression didn’t reflect the extent of her shock and panic at his casual inquiry. He doesn’t know anything! And if I start sputtering like a schoolgirl, it will be exactly the disaster that Galen cautioned me to avoid! “He seems very . . . interesting. But, then we’ve made so many new and interesting acquaintances since coming to London.”

  “He is more than interesting!” Rand slowed his steps as they reached the corner. “He is an absolute mystery, my dear. I suspect he was a hero of some kind, during the Troubles in India, for there have been whispers of a most unique nature about him.”