A Notorious Ruin

by Carolyn Jewel

  “Yes. I do mean that.” Could he endure this? He must. There must be no mistake. Not with her. “If that’s what you prefer.”

  “My lord.” She stroked the outside of his ear. “My lord, that would bore me to tears.”

  He hardly dared breathe. “Would it?”

  “It would.”

  “If I say I’d like to strip you naked, then you won’t agree until you believe the world can’t be right until I do.” He leaned closer, slid his hands to her hips. “I promise you, I will do everything in my power make you feel you must be in your bare skin.”

  She drew in a breath. “Such a promising man you are.”

  “I don’t like delicacy in bed, you know that by now.”

  “I do know.”

  “I have no patience with women who prefer the act to be neat and quick and incessantly tender.” He brushed his thumbs along the side of her throat. “I want your hands and your mouth on me. In places that might shock you.”

  “You assume I am easily shocked. Why?”

  “You.” He drew in a long breath and considered all the ways in which she deflected attention from herself. “You. So young. Yes, young, for all that you’re some years widowed. I look at you and see your delicacy and that empty-headed smile, and though I know it for a lie, I still fall into the trap.”

  “Careful, my lord, of ladies and their traps.”

  He laughed. He could not help himself. “And you, madam, must be careful of a gentleman who hopes your world will not be right until he’s made you a mass of need.”

  “A promising, dangerous man.”

  “Promise me.” He was half mad with lust, and she knew it. She did. He grabbed a handful of her skirt and pulled up, and up, and up until his hand was on her bare thigh. He slid a hand to her mons, and when his fingers sought entrance, and their eyes locked, she shifted her stance to give him the access he wanted. Needed. Desired. She was wet, so warm, and he was tender. For now. “Promise me when we are in that bed that you will do nothing unless you can’t live in your skin without action.”

  “You’ll give me back my Milton, then?”

  He forced himself to take a breath before he answered, sliding his fingers into her, and back, into her, then back. But he stopped, and her eyes popped open. “That is not the condition I’ve put before you. The Milton is yours. Whether you leave now, or if you never want more than this, the book is yours.”

  “Very well, then.”

  “And you, for now, are mine.” He turned them so the dying fire was to her back because, of course, of course, she would not face the chimney glass. He could see the back of her head and the slope of her shoulders. He moved behind her and pressed his lips to the nape of her neck. “I like sex dirty and loud, and I want a lover who’ll at least consider indulging in the occasional perversion. It’s no good if you imagine something else when you’re in bed with me.”

  She stayed motionless.

  “You heard the talk about me. In London last year.” He pushed aside the few curls that dangled along the side of her throat, and let his fingertips glide over the tender skin there. “The reason so many believed I could have done something like that.”

  “You’d never hurt someone. Not deliberately.”

  He shifted so he stood in front of her again, but he did not speak until she was looking at him. “I would if I were asked. If I were begged. If I knew you agreed.”

  Her eyes went wide.

  “If that frightens you, you ought to go now.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “I don’t want to go.” She grabbed his forearm. “But that is no guarantee of yes. My lord.”

  “Understood.” He moved behind her again, and he continued unfastening her gown. Half way through it burst into his head that his bedroom door was not only unlocked, but open. Flint would know to retreat, but he was well aware that Cynssyr had found himself married against his inclinations on account of a door left unlocked. He did not wish Lucy to find herself in that position.

  “A moment.” He strode to the door and locked it and crossed back to her to find her lapsed into quiet. She stood with her back to the fire, her gown in disarray, her lips firmly together. The edges of his lust crumbled. “You’ve changed your mind.” Behind her once again, he straightened her gown. He’d just re-fastened the top hooks when she turned.

  But she didn’t pull away as he expected. Feared. Instead she slid her arms around his neck and brought his head to hers. “Thrale.” Her breath warmed his cheek. “Beautiful, dangerous man, I am not afraid of you. I never could be.”

  “You should be.” His fingertips danced down her arms. “You should be.”

  “If you want me, however you want me, I am yours.”

  She did not mean that as he wanted. “However you want me, I am yours, Lucy. Never doubt that.”

  She kissed him. God, she did, and if he’d ever thought a kiss was nothing serious, this moment proved him wrong. From the very moment her mouth touched his, his world shifted. He wasn’t pursuing her, no words, no games behind meaning. He was not in control of this encounter. She was. She was seducing him. Had seduced him, and he’d fallen.

  If she left him afterward, so be it.

  Her upper torso rested against him. He wasn’t wearing a waistcoat or coat, and he was in his bare feet, and she melted against him with languid grace and took his mouth. One of her hands cupped the back of his head, sliding into his hair. There was this moment of unbearable tension that contained all his doubts and worries and fears that she was not the sort of woman he could show himself to, and that he had already gone too far with her and might now be too far gone to care about the consequences.

  Her body was soft where she was not laced up and corseted, and the hunger in the way she kissed him pushed him to the edge of complete capitulation. Words said at the wrong time would send him to ruin. Her arms stayed around his shoulders, their bodies close together, closer, not close enough. He tightened his arms around her, and he kissed her back, and she was just about the perfect height for him.

  As this kiss ended, he caught at her mouth again. A nip, and then she sighed, and he thought he might never have this chance again so he bent his head to hers again and kissed her. Again. Drawn in. Lost to her, his control unraveling.

  He knew his way around women. He did.

  He opened his mouth, and hers parted in answer, and their kiss turned him into a roaring mass of want. There was no room in him for anything but this. The two of them. His campaign of control and calm unraveled when faced with his hunger, and the way she kissed him. The way she kissed him back.

  All this time, his hands had been wandering, and he knew he shouldn’t. Not when he was too close to the edges of everything, but, hell, oh hell, he loved sex. He loved the way his prick lead his body into sex. He loved the way a woman felt in his arms and against him. He loved when he made a woman come apart. He loved most when the woman was Lucy.

  Her hands slid down to his chest and pushed, and he steadied himself and took a step back.

  “My lord.”

  He gazed into her eyes, dazed eyes, eyes that mirrored his state. He reached for coherent thought and found none.

  Her hand stayed on his torso, and she pushed him backward—this was her no, then. He put the length of another step between them, but she followed, and he thought he’d not given her enough room and backed up again, and again they were too close. It was his prick that got the message through to his befuddled mind that she was pushing him in the direction of his bed.

  “Are you sure?” he managed.

  “Yes.”

  The backs of his legs hit the mattress, and he caught her around the waist and kept her close. “You can’t begin to guess how badly I want you. The things I want from you.”

  She put her hands on either side of his face, and for a moment he was stupefied by the perfection of her features. “Since I came home…I never wanted anyone to touch me. I neve
r wanted anyone, not even you last season.”

  “You slay me.”

  “Good.”

  His hands wandered. “You have on too many clothes. Too many.”

  “And now you’re here, and you come along with this…” Her attention slid down his chest, and while she did that, she pushed his braces off his shoulders. “I want to feel like this. Please. Just like this. Make me feel like I’m about to fall off the edge of the world.”

  CHAPTER 39

  “Lucy.” The sound of her name whispered in that longing tone tugged at her marrow. Sensation pulled her down, down, far away from herself to the very core of her body’s reaction to Thrale. Her lips retained the imprint of their kiss, the taste of him was on her tongue, where he’d touched her, her skin tingled.

  They fell, in a tangle of limbs, onto his bed, and Thrale spread himself over her, the weight of his hips pressing against her body. Desire hollowed her out and anticipation became longing became need.

  He bent to take her mouth, without restraint this time. While he kissed her, their mouths open, tongues meeting, and, oh, the warmth of his body, the heat of him, the scent and the plain fact that they were in his room, his personal private rooms where they would not be disturbed, dizzied her. She melted, melted away into the moment of his touch.

  Thrale moved to his side and pressed a hand to the outside of her thigh, just above her knee, and as their kiss continued, his hand moved higher. His body was solid and where she touched his arms or shoulders she encountered hard muscle. But then, she knew how he used his body, trained it, honed to a purpose.

  Clever fingers. His bare hand was on her bare thigh, sliding around to the inside curve. She bit her lower lip to stop a moan.

  “Do you want to be naked yet? Or are you content like this?”

  She pushed up on an elbow, her mouth damp with his kisses. “I’d like you to be naked.”

  He sat on his haunches, his shirt askew and showing more of one side of his upper chest. He grinned at her, a lopsided curve of his mouth, while he grabbed handfuls of his shirt and pulled it forward over his head.

  This was no gentle man. Not with a body like this. She recognized the bruises, some of them more faded than others, the mark of his training. More than a gentleman fighter usually incurred. She leaned forward and pressed a palm along the curves and slopes of his upper chest. Warm skin fit tight to bone, sinew and muscle. Taut. She traced a finger downward, toward his nipple and pressed there. He sucked in a breath.

  “My lord.”

  “Mm?”

  “You are not naked yet.”

  “Allow me to remedy that.” He pushed back, sliding off the bed long enough to shuck breeches and small clothes. He knew he was beautiful, that was plain from the way he stood, waiting while she drank him in. Well. He was entitled to be proud, with a body like his and a cock like that.

  A cock such as his demanded adoration. She moved to the edge of the mattress, close enough to touch him. He was erect, and when she touched him, he sucked in a breath. Her other hand wandered to his hip, then around to the roundness of his backside. Muscle flexed under her touch, but her attention now was on his sex. Thrale’s hands settled on her shoulders. A light touch.

  Lucy leaned forward, and his fingers flexed over her shoulders. “Am I wicked to think you are magnificent?”

  “Not at all.” The words came out clipped.

  She held him, lightly. “I do want this inside me.”

  There was suppressed laughter in his reply. “I would be happy to oblige you. Will you let me? Do you desire that beyond reason?”

  She curled her fingers around him. “I’m fascinated by what you say are your perversions.”

  “Oh?” The word came with a soft and deceptive neutrality.

  “Tell me one of them.”

  “Something I’ve done? Something I hope to enjoy in the near future?”

  “Mm. Yes. Both, I think.” She lowered her head to him and kissed the top of his penis. There was no filling the hollowness of her need, nothing but him.

  “I don’t know what to tell you. What’s safe.” He touched her head, and she glanced up to see him serious beyond the involvement of passion. “Yes is not enough for me, you must understand that. God knows there are women who agree because they’ve no idea how to say no, and I will not have that from you. It can’t be like that.”

  “Are you suggesting I don’t know my own mind?”

  He put his hands on either side of her head. “I need to believe in any yes you give me, and that can’t happen in one afternoon.” He tilted his pelvis toward her. “If you want to use your mouth on me, please, I beg you, do.” He sucked in a breath when she kissed his cock again. “Lucy. Lucy…God, yes.”

  She slid her fingers around him.

  “Before I’m too far gone, please. Use your mouth as you see fit. But if I want to take your mouth later? In a while, that’s something else entirely. Do you understand me?”

  “I’ll oblige myself, then, sir. For now.”

  “Please.”

  She did, and he tasted like desire. The shape of him, the texture, the sound he made as she learned what he liked, as she took her pleasure in his prick in her mouth. More than his sex. Every part of him sank into her awareness and transformed her into a creature who needed. She lost herself to the taste and texture of his sex, and his deep groan became her pleasure, too. Somehow they ended up on the bed, Thrale in his bare skin and her sliding her hands over his body, not sleek by any means. Unforgiving. The power. Yes, he was strong, and she knew because they’d boxed, even if only in jest, that he was fast, too. She could not stop touching him.

  He lay on his back, one knee raised, and she pressed her mouth to him and discovered what made him react even while she explored and touched him where she pleased, and that was lovely beyond anything she would have guessed. Her wandering hands and mouth arrived again at his sex, and he made a sound in the back of his throat that emptied her out.

  She sat up, a hand resting on his belly. His cool grey eyes settled on her face, questioning. Words rasped from her throat, heavy with need. “Lovely, lovely man.”

  He lifted a hand to her arm, sliding a finger along her forearm. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Lucy leaned over as if she intended to kiss him again, and he lifted his head in acceptance. “Lord Thrale. At last you are naked.”

  His fingers tightened on her arm, and then released her, and he was tracing a line across her bosom, along the top of her shoulder.

  She bent closer. “I want to be naked, too.”

  “I should like it very well if you were. Even more if you felt you must be.”

  “I must. I truly must be.” She turned her back to him so he could unfasten the hooks of her gown, and while he did that, his fingers brushed her skin. It was an awkward business, getting her clothes off, but they managed it. He had the presence of mind to fold her clothing over a chair. She would have tossed them wherever they might go.

  At last, she stood facing the bed, between his thighs, down to nothing but her linens. She lifted her arms when he pulled up her shift, and that he let drop to the floor. Trepidation edged her state of arousal, but she held his gaze, and though his arousal was obvious, she felt, for the first time in her life, that he desired her for more than her face and her body, and it brought a lump to her throat.

  He reached for her hands and brought her close, and he kissed her, sweetly, so sweetly, as if he cared for her, and then he released one of her hands to set his palm to her lower back. A stroke of his hand, trailing fingertips along the valley of her spine. Their skin touched, her breasts pressed against him, against the hard planes of his torso, he continued the kiss, continued the sweep of his fingers along her spine.

  He stopped kissing her, but his mouth hovered over hers. She was not coherent, could not think beyond her need. “Do you think you can live now?”

  Lucy brought up her hands and shoved him back on the bed, and she followed, sliding her bare skin
over his, and he groaned, a sound that made her want to cry out with the same need. He rolled, with her in his arms so he was on top, and she had never been this ready in her life. She bent her knees to give him access. “No, no, I can’t live. Please, save me.”

  He laughed, and so did she. His lips touched hers, then her chin, then the base of her throat, and he continued down, hands and mouth sweeping away all but their bodies. Her body. His mouth slid along her breast, his tongue flicked over her nipple, and she called his name. He slid a finger along her sex and she was wet, slick, and, too close to the edge. Too close to falling and she fell, fell, fell, and all the while he moved his fingers in her, and she died away.

  When she came back to her body and opened her eyes, he was watching her, and her hunger for him flared as sharp as ever. She threw a leg over his upper thigh and arched, and he shifted, too.

  The slide of his sex into her threatened to send her over the edge again, and it was perfect, sublime, that push of him into her, and the lump that had been in her throat came back and emotion burst through her, overwhelmed her. She tried to memorize every moment, every sensation, afraid she might never feel this way again.

  He stroked in her, and she met him, matched him. The silence between them was profound, yet it bound them, too. She squeezed shut her eyes and let her senses concentrate. His thrusts quickened, and she matched that too, and when she opened her eyes, she saw him as lost as she was, and she had never in her life seen a man so fierce.

  Except.

  Except he pulled out of her too soon. She wasn’t ready for that, and she hissed in a breath. He stayed over her, breathing hard, still fiercely concentrating. He had not spent himself, and when his eyes came back and met hers, he smiled.

  “A near thing,” he said, and then he had her in his arms again, and he rolled onto his back, bringing her over him, and their gazes met again, he held his breath a moment, during which she understood the intent behind the maneuver. “Yes?”

  She straddled him, and sank onto him, that unbearable edge had dulled just enough. He held her hips, fingers gripping, and when she’d adjusted and they’d found a gentler rhythm, he slid his hands along her thighs and then upward to cup a breast, and that edge came back, more intense this time. She bowed into his palms, and he spread his fingers wide over her. He slid a finger over her nipples, then another, then a tug on her, and she nearly came apart.