“What’s your choice?”
The nervous flutters in her belly escaped as a laugh as he backed away. The unhurried motion of his fingers moving along the buttons on his fall set her trembling with anticipation.
“Now, Beth,” he said, as he worked the last button undone.
He came for her.
She gasped and backed against the wall.
He cupped her bottom, lifting her away from the wall—lifting her up until her legs rode over his arms. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms tightly behind his neck. Pray God he didn’t drop her. Fear tingled through her, heightening the excitement as he throbbed against her wetness.
“Plead for me,” he breathed.
“Yes, you arrogant bastard, fuck me. Now. For God’s sake, now.”
He nipped at her earlobe. “Use my name.”
“Fuck me, Grey, please fuck me har—ah!”
Hands on her bottom, he pulled her wet heat down onto his cock. Hard as iron, his erection filled her, stretched her. The suddenness, the sweet satisfaction of it made her cry out. He lifted her until he came all the way out. The loss of fullness and pressure was devastating and she tried to push down, but he held her firm. Then, ruthlessly, he pulled her down again, reawakening all the intensity of that earlier moment. Delicious pleasure made her weak and she went limp as she felt a shudder pass through his body.
“God,” he breathed. His cock throbbed within her as he held still, then he lifted her and pulled her down, again and again, with excruciating slowness.
Just when she expected him to tire and rest, his movements built in speed. Over and over and over. Fucking her like no one else ever had. Using her. Controlling her. Providing her with the sensation of flying wild and free.
After a long interval of mindless sensation, she made an abrupt landing against the wall, her heart hammering so loudly she couldn’t hear his panting breaths, though she felt them convulsing his body. He shifted and thrust, his pelvic bone making intimate contact with her nub. White-hot sparks of pleasure exploded within her. He covered her mouth with his as she cried out.
His thrusts came shorter and faster until, with a sudden, sharp inhalation, he withdrew. He pressed his cock to her belly, surging as warm wetness jetted against her.
An immediate sense of loss assailed her. She clutched his shoulders and sobbed softly. Her relaxed internal muscles tightened with a wistful regret because he had not spilled himself inside her, leaving her all saturated and slick with his seed, marked and claimed. As his.
What madness.
He braced her against the wall. Moments passed with nothing but their panting breaths. Her cooling sweat made her shiver and his lips grazed her temple. He murmured something. Against her belly, he remained hard. She hadn’t known it could be so for a man.
“Let’s lie down,” he said. Tightening his grip on her bottom, he carried her to the bed and laid her on it. He moved away and stripped his clothes off. Naked, he looked somehow taller, leaner, his shoulders and chest wider, his hips narrower. As he approached the bed, his face was all angles and hardness in the waning light filtering in through the curtains.
“Where did you learn something like that—like what we just did?” she asked, watching as he reached under his pillow and pulled out a linen towel.
He sat beside her and began wiping his seed off her belly. “You don’t really want to know.”
His light, teasing tone practically begged her response. “Yes, I do.”
He grinned and a devilish light entered his eyes, making him look positively boyish. Then he shook his head and folded the towel over to a new, dry side and wiped her upper thighs.
“Are you going to tell me?” she demanded impatiently.
He traced circles over her stomach with a fingertip. “From a Russian princess, years ago, when I was not much younger than you. She liked to play games, too.”
“Princess? Ha, she was not!”
“Well, now, she said she was…and if she wanted to be a princess to me, who was I to gainsay her?”
A princess indeed. Beth bristled all over. “Well, you needn’t sound so pleased about the matter,” she blurted.
She wished she’d bitten her tongue clean through rather than said that.
He laughed softly. “Why do women ask questions they don’t really want answers to?” He lowered his head and kissed her belly. “Don’t fret yourself. You’re more beautiful than any princess I’ve ever seen.”
He found her navel with his tongue, flicking and teasing. She gasped as renewed lust flashed through her. But the import of what he’d just told her sank in. “You’ve really been to Russia?”
“My father sent me all over the world as a supercargo. I had to learn things they don’t teach at Harvard.”
“Like how to fuck a princess?” Her words came out all snappish and inside she cringed.
He laughed and tossed the towel aside. “No, I don’t think he intended that. The only things my father approved of were working and making a profit. I know he took an early evening at least once, or else I’d not be here, but other than that his only pleasures were the counting house and the Exchange.”
“What did your mother think of that?”
His eyes grew shadowed. “I don’t know. She was a very frail lady and kept to her rooms. She died when I was six.”
Her heart contracted with sympathy and she suddenly wanted to embrace him and crush his dark head to her breasts. To offer him solace more tender than passion. Her mouth went dry and her belly fluttered with pure fear at this emotion. She quickly changed the subject. “I have never been further than Baltimore.”
“If these damned wars ever end, perhaps I’ll take you for a tour of Europe.” He trailed his fingers over her quim. “Would you like that?”
“Yes,” she said.
He looked up at her, his eyes glittering with passion. “Then consider it a promise.”
Happy warmth suffused her and she laughed, pretending for a moment that he meant it and they had a future together. That they could build a home together based on love and comfort. Her secret dream. She had never known who her own father was and her mother had died giving birth to Beth. Denied a home by her mother’s legal husband, Beth had grown up under the care of her mother’s employer, a very proper Philadelphian lady who had seen to Beth’s material needs and education but held herself at an emotional distance.
Beth had reconnected with her older half-siblings once she’d come of age and she’d worked hard to prove herself working in the family shop. But she still felt a stranger amidst their rowdy brood most of the time. She’d never felt at home anywhere. She suspected she never would.
“When do you have to leave?” he asked, his hand moving low along her stomach.
“I should return at nine.”
“Then we still have time left.” He stroked her nether lips with feathery motions. “How many times can you come, Beth?”
“I don’t know…twice…three times, maybe, on the odd occasion.” Well, she had come three times during the act—once.
“No.” He slid his fingers into her slick channel. “I mean, how many times can you come before you can’t come any more? Before you’re exhausted and can’t move?”
“I don’t know,” she said, laughing at his question. How could there even be time during a fuck to come more than three times?
“Didn’t you ever wonder?”
“Uh…umm…no.”
“It is a question that I’ve pondered often in the time that I’ve known you.” He moved his fingers within her until her hips were dancing in tune with their motion. “I propose that we spend the remainder of the evening finding out.”
He pressed a kiss to the centre of her cunt, right on her most sensitive nub, and she gasped. Then he took hold of both her ankles, pulling her legs about his waist with such haste that she gasped. He stroked his tanned hand over her pale inner thigh, with painful slowness, to the soft hair at her juncture. He traced the plump outer cunt li
ps, parted them, then rubbed his cock against her throbbing bud in slow, silken circles.
“Please…” She grasped his shoulders, seeking to pull him up level with her. “Please, be inside me.”
He slid to her entrance. “Is this what you need, Beth?”
“Yes…” Her breath caught, for he was filling her. “Oh God…yes. Yes!”
He took her then, the fast, furious pace driving her into a vortex of ecstasy.
When she opened her eyes, his lips were moving on her breasts, his tongue laving her nipples. He was still hard and pulsing within her…and it began all over again. And again. Unending. He taught her a whole new meaning to the word ‘stamina’. He kissed and petted and fucked her until she couldn’t come any more.
Until she couldn’t move.
And she had no idea how many times. Numbers and pleasure did not seem to be compatible in her brain.
However, he hadn’t come. He lay panting against her ear, hard and pulsing within her. He wrapped her hair around his hand twice, held her head up and kissed her with such ardour it felt like he was sucking her breath away.
“I don’t think I can get enough of you.” His voice was charged with passion and somehow, she’d no idea how, it wrung an instant, heated response from her. She wanted him, needed him as if she’d never had him.
“Come inside me this time,” she said.
“Are you sure, darling?” He caressed the hair off her forehead. He took her hand, kissed it, then pressed it to his cheek. His eyes shone like silver stars.
“I am.” She panted with desire. “Just this once. Mark me, claim me. Inside.”
His face sharpened and he withdrew. “Roll over.”
She rolled over, pulled herself up on her knees. He slapped her buttock once, and again, harder, the sound cracking in the chamber. Then he thrust inside her and she arched backwards to take him in, pushing against him until his cock touched the mouth of her womb. He groaned. Her hair brushed her back as he swept it aside. His hand encircled her throat, his breath tickling her nape.
“Beth, oh, Beth—I am going to fill you full of myself.” He nipped lightly at her neck. “I’ve come inside no other woman in eighteen years.”
The possessive timbre of his voice made her catch her breath.
He gave a harsh shout and his whole body shook against hers. His cock jerked within her…and he had not withdrawn. He was claiming her, filling her full of himself. Just as he had promised. Her internal muscles clamped down and she bent her head all the way down, stuffed her face into the pillow and screamed.
Her legs collapsed a moment before he fell against her back. Cold air hit her neck as he lifted her damp hair away. His lips touched her neck. “Damn, Beth, damn.” He lightly nipped her flesh. “Oh, damn.”
* * * *
At the washstand mirror, Beth ran a final, smoothing hand over the coiled braid at the back of her neck. She felt weak with shock at her own actions. She’d never before allowed a man to come inside her. She had always demanded they pull out. She’d certainly never begged a man to do otherwise. But, in her heart, she couldn’t be sorry. She felt marked, claimed as his in a way far more primitive than mere money could claim her.
But, all right, this had been the last time. And her courses were due to come within the next day or two. Chances were on her side that she wouldn’t conceive his child. The thought made her sad.
Dear God. A little wave of nausea swept through her. She actually felt sad that she wouldn’t bear some wealthy New York merchant’s bastard? What had she sunk to? Her desire for Grey was making her lose control over her wits.
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed eight in the evening.
“I’ll send for my carriage,” Grey said, as if the matter required no consent from her.
She turned to where he lounged on the bed, his head propped against the headboard.
“Thank you, but I can’t be seen coming home in a carriage.” She pulled on a glove.
“Couldn’t Mrs Bickle have sent you home in one?”
“She never has.”
“Well, let’s say she did today.”
“I told you, I cannot be seen leaving a carriage in my neighbourhood. Too many watchful eyes, waiting for someone to make a misstep.” She tugged the other glove on.
“You are a beautiful girl, you can’t walk home at dusk.”
“I am twenty-three—hardly a girl—and I have always walked where I wanted to go.”
“Well, you’ve never been under my protection before.”
“I am not—” Anger at his arrogant presumption bristled through her and forced her to take a deep breath. “I am not under your protection.”
His eyes darkened to the colour of gunmetal and he jerked upright. “When you’re with me, you damn well are.”
With a frisson of alarm in her belly, she took several steps backwards. “Understand me, sir—we are lovers when and only when and for how long I choose. You have no rights of protection over me.”
His dark brows drew together. “I am going to walk you downstairs and see you put into a carriage.”
“I won’t take a carriage.”
“You will if I bodily carry you to it and put you inside.” He came to his feet.
Heart fluttering wildly, she backed away. “You can’t be serious. You don’t have your breeches on.”
He glanced down at the dark blue banyan he wore, as if he’d forgotten he was not dressed. His jaw tightened and she ran for the sideboard. As she grasped her reticule, his arm latched around her waist like a band of steel.
She twisted in his arms to glare at him. “Let me go, you autocratic jackass,” she hissed.
“Just because your brother doesn’t care about you—”
The words cut into her like shards of ice. “He cares.”
“He lets you traipse around like a girl on the town, meeting with men—”
“We’re not wealthy. We don’t take carriages. I have to go out and work. He’s a gentle, quiet man, except when he’s angry. Believe me, if he knew I was seeing a man, he would be outraged. That’s why I have to be so careful.”
“And you’re very good at being careful, aren’t you? Like a cunning little cat. You’ve so much experience.”
“You’ve certainly enjoyed the benefit.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “We’re getting deep here, Beth. I want our relationship to be defined.”
“We’ve met three times and neither of us has any claim on the other.”
“By God, you’re in serious need of taming.” His hands tightened on her, his eyes darkened and dangerous. “Are you so unaware of how the world is? What perils you flirt with, with your reckless behaviour? I could detain you. I could take you to my yacht and take you with me to New York. I daresay a week at sea would prove ample time to tame a vixen.”
Encircled by his powerful arms, she had no doubt he could follow through on his threats.
She lifted her chin and met his gaze steadily. “If you do, I promise you I’ll get free the first moment your back is turned, and I’ll never, ever come back.”
His eyes widened and his grip loosened. Clutching her reticule, she dashed for the door.
“Beth!”
The anguish in his voice made her stop, her hand frozen on the doorknob.
“I wouldn’t really,” he said.
“You said it.” She would not turn around.
“I lost my head. Forgive me.”
At his contrite tone, a hot, metallic dryness filled her mouth. Fear of herself. Fear she would turn and run into his arms. Her hand shook upon the knob. She turned it, wrenched the door open and fled down the hall and into the night.
Chapter Five
Beth came out of the back room of her family’s Southwark cobbler shop, transfixed by the wavy patterns swirling in the creamed coffee she was taking to Charlie. She’d spent the past week sleepy and distracted.
“Mr Sexton, my sister, Miss Elizabeth McConnell,” Charlie said.
/> She jerked her gaze up. Sure enough, there he stood. Her breath caught and she set the mug on the counter with a heavy crash. Dressed in a plain, brown broadcloth jacket and nankeen pantaloons, he could have been any tradesman from the neighbourhood. Yet his height and arrogant bearing set him apart.
Those silver eyes focused on her, the momentary heat there reminding her of being abed with him. After a week spent aching with loneliness in her bed and staying away from City Tavern, tingling warmth suffused her belly. Her eyes traced the familiar contour of his angular jaw. She remembered their last meeting. When he had made her come over and over and how she had pressed a frantic rain of kisses upon that jaw. Remembered the taste of his sweat, the scent of their mutual arousal. Now wetness began to flow between her legs.
Her eyes flickered to her brother’s bland, pumpkin-shaped face and she prayed he could not read the ardent hunger on her face.
Grey was insane to have come here.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss McConnell.” Grey’s tone was cool and polite. A distant half smile curved his mouth.
“Entertain Mr Sexton for a moment, will you? I need to see how much cordovan leather we have in the back.”
She watched Charlie’s massive back as he departed, then she turned on Grey. “How did you find me?”
“There are only so many cobbler shops in Philadelphia. And certainly only one woman with such pale blonde—”
Outrage stunned her. “You were asking about me?”
“Don’t worry. I am the soul of discretion.”
“Ha! More like the soul of arrogance.” She glanced at the back room door, searching for Charlie’s huge shadow, then turned back to Grey. “And it’s done you no good. I am determined to meet you no more.”
He looked tired, as if he’d spent as many sleepless nights as she. A warm wave of tenderness suffused her. She wanted to cradle his head to her naked breasts and caress his black hair until he slept and never let him go. But she knew all about gentlemen. They viewed a woman of her class as just another bauble to possess and discard once they grew bored. This gentleman had recently proven himself no different.
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