My Darling, My Disaster (Lords of Essex)

by Morgan, Angie

  Gray nodded and sat in the seat opposite. His face looked strained as he explained the rules of vingt-et-un. Lana didn’t let on that she already knew how to play, and Gray only realized it himself after he’d lost three hands.

  He shook his head with a resigned grin. “Let me guess. James?”

  “He’s a good teacher.”

  “Perhaps we should up the stakes with a bet.” His eyes dropped to her lips. The way he was looking at her made it hard to breathe, as if her body was about to ignite on each inhale. “If I win, I claim a kiss.”

  Her heart thumped unsteadily in her chest. “And if I win?”

  “Claim whatever you like.”

  Perhaps her mind wasn’t in the game, or deep down she wanted to lose, but she drew too many cards, going over twenty-one. He won with a paltry twelve. Lana’s mouth grew dry at the look in his eyes.

  “I claim my kiss.” Gray pushed back his chair purposefully. Each step he took toward her made her body tremble, until he leaned over her, his arms pressed on either side of the armchair. He didn’t hesitate—his mouth took hers in a hard, demanding kiss. His lips and tongue were the only things anchoring her to him, and Lana strained upward, scraping his lower lip with her teeth. She knew she was being wanton, but she didn’t care. She drew her tongue along the inside of his lip, and Gray growled low in his throat. He ravaged her mouth until they were both breathing hard.

  He pulled away abruptly, and without another word, turned and resumed his seat. The only signs that anything untoward had just happened between them were the rapid rise and fall of his chest and his storm-pressed eyes. Lana composed herself as best she could, despite her overheated body. Every part of her tingled, like tiny wicks of flame were singeing the underside of her skin. Lord, one kiss and the man set her afire.

  “Shall we play another round?” His voice was husky.

  Lana downed the contents of her glass and nodded weakly. Gray dealt and then stood to refill her drink. Her body thrummed at his proximity, but he made no move to come any nearer to her before returning to his chair. Lana’s hands shook as she held her cards. Sixteen. She knew she should stay—the odds were in her favor—but she asked for another card. She held her breath as Gray dealt it. A five. A natural. She had won, unless Gray held a natural, too.

  “Twenty. I lose,” he said, his gaze heavy-lidded as she turned over her cards. “What do you claim?”

  Lana stared at him, her pulse racing like a runaway horse. Her breath deserted her. It would be so easy to claim a confession or a coin for her winnings, but those things wouldn’t satisfy. She wanted the same as he did. As he’d just done. She wanted his mouth on hers. His hands on her body. The dress and the gaming hell made her bold. Impulsive and reckless.

  She licked dry lips and answered before she could stop herself. “I claim…you.”

  He remained absolutely still but for his pupils constricting and a short, indrawn breath. They were the only signs he’d heard her before she stood on trembling legs and walked to his chair. She sat on the edge, her own breath coming in shallow pants. She leaned down and grazed her lips across his. Emboldened by another softly indrawn breath, she slid her tongue along the crease and pushed tentatively inside. Gray sucked it deep, grasping her arms and pulling her into his lap in one motion. His teeth ground against hers as he possessed her mouth completely and utterly. This kiss was nothing like the first. It was all heat and burning passion, threatening to ignite them both. And ignite it did. Her breasts ached, and the space between her thighs felt molten with want. Lana could feel his erection pressing into the backs of her thighs, and it only made her feel more empowered.

  “I want your hands on me…as they were in the carriage to Essex.” She heard her own brash words and hid her overheated face in his neck.

  Gray leaned back with a sharp gasp, resting his forehead on hers, his eyes closed. “You should not say such things, Lana. I am weak when it comes to resisting you.”

  “As I am with you,” she admitted softly, her thumb rising to trace the contours of the lips that had taken hers with such urgency. She pushed her thumb into his mouth, and he sucked on her finger. White-hot sensations streaked from her breasts to her thighs.

  Lana knew what she was doing was imprudent. She was inviting ruin, but the truth was she didn’t care. She wanted a sliver of happiness. With this man before her. Now. She wanted him. All of him.

  For all she knew, she would be dead in a week—if her uncle and Zakorov had their way. What use would her virtue be then? She had no way of proving their guilt, and they would stop at nothing to silence her and Irina. And if by some miracle Langlevit came through with decrypting the coded letters, she would be able to go home. She’d leave England forever.

  Leave Gray forever.

  It was something she did not want to consider, but her virtue seemed a small price to pay for the piece of him she would keep with her for a lifetime. This was her choice; he’d made that clear. Even though he thought her a maid, Gray would be honorable no matter what. She could act, or she could stop.

  She had no intention of stopping.

  She masked her nervousness with a laugh and pulled his head down to hers. She kissed him with unconcealed urgency, looping her arms around his neck as he scooped her up without breaking the kiss. Gray took her with him to the sofa, laying her down and pressing open-mouthed kisses to her throat. He nipped lightly at her skin as he traced a hot path to her swelling breasts. Lana arched backward, pleasure coursing through her from the feel of his hands skimming her sides and the tortuous, teasing track of his mouth.

  “This dress is sinful,” he muttered as his teeth tugged on the lace edge of the bodice. “And the sight of you in it even more so.”

  Gray pulled her bodice down with a satisfied grunt, laying her bare before him, and Lana blushed. She may have felt daring, but she was far from experienced. As his mouth closed over the peak of her breast, she almost expired from the wild burst of pleasure. He turned his attention to her other breast, his hands moving restlessly along the sides of her legs. Gray made every inch of her feel alive, and she wanted desperately to make him feel the same way. She knew she’d given him pleasure in the mews by touching him. Her hands slid down his tense stomach, brushing against the narrow fall of his trousers.

  “Lana,” Gray said, going still over her.

  She drew her fingers along his rigid length with a shuddering breath. Heat saturated her skin, and blood pounded through her veins at the hard feel of him. Gray raised his head, his eyes dark with passion, and stalled her tentative stroking with his hand. “Lana, enough,” he gasped. “I won’t be able to stop myself.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  His hungry gaze snapped to hers. “What are you saying?”

  She smiled through her sudden vulnerability, and the twin look of it in his own eyes. “I won that last round fair and square. Don’t try to renege now, Lord Northridge. Fulfill my claim.”

  “Lana—” he said with a groan. “You do not know what you are asking.”

  “I do.” She shook free of his hold and gripped him boldly. “I know what I want. Please, Gray.”

  He covered her lips with his.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She meant it. She wanted him. And as he held himself over her, Lana’s hair a tumble of loose silken curls on the velvet sofa cushion, her eyes sharp with determination, Gray wished she would push him away. Tell him to stop. That this wasn’t right. Something, anything, to argue against what his body and soul was yearning for. Her. He wanted to touch and kiss every inch of her skin. He wanted to bury himself deep inside of her and claim her as his own.

  Gray’s fingers trailed down her side, his eyes taking in the sight of her breasts, high and free of the bodice of that sinful scrap of a dress.

  “Have you been with a man before?” he asked, his gaze skipping back up to meet her reaction.

  She bit her lip and shook her head. He’d suspected as much, and a shot of pleasure accompanie
d the knowledge that she wanted to give herself to him. A virgin. This would be new territory for Gray. Territory he knew he should not traverse.

  “We are in a gaming hell,” he whispered. The dark purple sofa they were on suddenly felt like a bed of coals. “I should not take your innocence in a place like this.”

  Lana’s fingers grazed his cheeks, her thumbs pulling on his lower lip. “It doesn’t matter where we are. Place means nothing, I know that now. It is who you are with that matters, and Gray”—she lifted her shoulders from the sofa and kissed him lightly—“I would give myself to you anywhere.”

  He closed his eyes and groaned, her words pulsing more blood and desire into his already agonizing erection. He pictured her in all manner of places, her body open to him, wanting him.

  “I made a promise,” he heard himself saying around the images. “To myself. To never risk—” Another mistake.

  That was what he had meant to say, but it didn’t feel right. Or honest, not anymore. Sofia had, at one time, felt like a mistake. But that had been before her birth. Before he’d held her for the first time.

  Lana had heard it anyway. “You don’t want to get another woman with child.”

  He nodded, his nose brushing the soft swell of her breast. His tongue moved without a command from his mind. Lana whimpered as he suckled her nipple, the delicate pink skin tight and hard under his tongue.

  “There is always—” She gasped as his palm kneaded her breast and his teeth nipped at her flesh. “Risk,” she finished, her hips rising in an instinctual thrust. The pressure against his swollen length had him nearly ready to free himself. Ready to shove up her skirts and take what he wanted. Give her what she claimed to want.

  “Not if you resist,” he replied, angling his hips so that hers could not push up against his again.

  Lana stilled beneath him. Her eyes cleared, and she pushed up onto her elbows, causing Gray to move back another few inches. “You mean you…you’ve resisted?”

  He nodded once.

  “For how long?” she asked, blinking her surprise.

  He thought of their encounter in the mews and how the mere pressure of her hand against his length had been enough for him to spend himself in his smalls. It had been mortifying, but understandable, considering the amount of time that had passed since he’d last bedded a woman.

  “Since Sofia,” he answered.

  Lana sat up farther, nearly pushing Gray back onto his haunches. “Do you meant to say you haven’t—” Lana stopped, her lips still parted, a second blush rising to her cheeks. “That you’ve been alone for three years?”

  His eyes went to her breasts, still bared and so full and tantalizing. “God, you’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Gray.”

  “What?”

  She touched his chin and made him look her in the eye. “Three years?”

  He covered her hand with his and kissed her palm. “There’s been no one.”

  Just the aching, never-ending monotony of solitude. Seclusion. The temptations had always been there. Beautiful women. Willing women. But they had been faceless and nameless, and when he’d resisted their advances he had not felt remorse. He hadn’t felt as if he’d lost anything at all. But with Lana… He kissed her palm again and knew that without her he would feel adrift. He wanted to stay with her.

  He wanted to make her his.

  “Oh, Gray,” she whispered. The tenderness in her voice was his undoing.

  He took her mouth in a kiss that pushed her back upon the cushions of the sofa. His hand was at the fall of his trousers, freeing himself, when he felt Lana’s slim fingers joining the task of pushing down the fitted waist. Gray allowed her to take over, not wanting her to feel the shake of his own hand. He’d longed for her, dreamed of her, and knowing that she wanted him as much as he did her would make it extremely difficult to move slowly. Gently. But he would. It was salacious enough that her first encounter with a man would be in a gaming hell. She didn’t deserve to be rutted like an animal as well.

  Gray pushed up her skirts to find a soft lawn chemise, edged with lace around her upper thighs. His palm caressed her bare thigh, paying close attention to Lana’s hands. If she touched him again, he would be finished. His fingers reached past the sheer fabric in an upward search for her drawers, but Lana made a small noise in her throat. It reverberated along his tongue, which was currently entwined with hers. Gray broke the kiss, certain she would now push at his chest and tell him to stop. But once again, Lana surprised him.

  “I am not wearing any,” she confessed in an embarrassed rush, her lashes brushing her bright pink cheeks. Gray’s fingers stalled in their ascent as he clutched the folds of the chemise in his fist. Her innocent, provocative words nearly made him spend then and there.

  Inhaling raggedly and willing his rampant loins under control, Gray’s knuckles traversed the hot, velvety skin of a trim thigh. She was so soft, so warm. So bare. He cupped her uncovered womanhood and groaned at the hot, lushly feminine shape of her that fit snugly into his palm. Lana sighed, arching into his touch. His finger slid into her wet warmth, and with another push, he felt her close around his finger. She moaned her pleasure at his touch.

  “Lana.” He swallowed, his throat tight, need filling him everywhere. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She rolled her head side to side, her hair tangling underneath her. “You won’t. You never would. I trust you, Gray.”

  Lana thrust up against his hand, and he couldn’t endure another moment. He removed his hand from her center and aligned himself, his erection painful. He must have winced, because Lana, alarmed, lowered her gaze. She dragged in a sharp breath, her eyes going round and anxious.

  “Shhh,” he said, knowing what she must have been thinking. That he could never fit within her. “Our bodies are meant for this.”

  She nodded but still eyed him with trepidation.

  “Lana,” he whispered, dipping his head to interrupt her stare. “It will hurt. But only for a moment. I promise you.”

  He wanted to bring her pleasure, not pain. Which meant he had to fight his desire to pound into her, the way his inner carnal need was screaming for him to do right then. He could not change the surroundings, but he could control how they came together. He slowed himself. He had to make her first time special…and something worth remembering, despite the entirely unsuitable ambiance.

  Gray took her lips in a hungry kiss, leaving no inch of her mouth unexplored. Her fingers gripped his shoulders, her head falling back as he licked and nipped his way down her throat to her cleavage. His hands were as busy as his mouth and tongue. He reached forward, her core hot and damp and ready. Lana’s undiluted responses to his caresses excited him more than anything. His fingers stroked expertly, making her breaths shorten to tiny gasps as his mouth grazed over the bud of her nipple, drawing it deep.

  “Gray…”

  Lana’s entire back arched, her eyes going wide at the release he knew was rocketing through her rigid body. As her shudders crested, he slid into her, inch by agonizing inch, grinding his teeth and holding her stare, her expression shifting between bliss and discomfort. He nudged against the wall of her innocence and held himself steady.

  “Is that…all?” she whispered.

  Gray wanted to laugh, but it hurt too damn much. “God no.”

  He thrust forward hard and seated himself completely. Lana cried out, but she wasn’t alone. Gray’s own groan of satisfaction rent the air of the private salon.

  He wanted to give her time to adjust to him. Wanted to be patient as her pain subsided. But Gray had to move. He needed to feel the sweet friction of her body around his length before he came.

  “Does it hurt too much?” he asked, his voice strained.

  “N-no,” she gasped. Gray made a small, testing thrust, and Lana’s gasp dipped in octave to a moan. “No,” she said, more clearly.

  Her fingers threaded through his hair and gripped the back of his neck, and Gray br
oke.

  He withdrew completely and thrust back inside without hesitation. He rocked into her again and again, each time seating himself deeper and deeper. Lana’s body gripped him as he retreated and parted for him as he returned, and he felt himself hurtling forward, toward a bliss he hadn’t realized existed. He took her with him, watching her eyes dilate from the sensations possessing her as thoroughly as they did him. He would hold himself back if it killed him.

  And it just might.

  It wasn’t only that he was finally bedding a woman after being so long without. It was her. He was making Lana his in the truest way possible. He wanted to keep her this close for always. He wanted her in his bed every night and every morning. Hell, every afternoon. He pictured her writhing beneath him in the midnight blue silk sheets on his bed, whimpering his name the way she was right then. He shifted position, and she clutched his shoulders, crying out from the force of her pleasure as her nails scored his skin.

  Gray’s climax rushed up on the wake of hers, a deluge of pain and pleasure and raw need.

  Stop.

  His conscience had a weak voice, but he heard it nonetheless. He withdrew from Lana’s trembling core and spent himself. He couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. His body thrummed with life and the desire for more of her. But he held himself away, taking deep, steady gulps of air.

  “Gray?” she whispered. His vision returned, and he stared down at her. Lana’s eyes conveyed confusion. He knew why.

  “To be safe,” he explained.

  She nodded, her eyelids heavy with satisfaction. Her pink cheeks bordered on crimson. He kissed the apple of each cheek and then her lips.

  “You’ve made your claim, it seems,” he said, attempting humor. But his voice shook, and Lana did not smile.

  She stared up at him, her breasts rising and falling on each quick breath, and Gray understood he’d made his claim as well. Lana was his. This beautiful, bewildering woman who he’d had no business at all making love to, was his.