Ren’s eyebrows arched in the shadows. ‘Why would he be jealous?’ There was a hint of teasing beneath the question, their conversation taking on a lighter, flirtier edge now that Gridley’s house was behind them.
Emma smiled and moved to sit beside him. ‘Because he thinks I prefer you to him.’
‘And do you?’
Emma slid a hand up his thigh. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.’ This was a dangerous gambit too, but she had to be sure of Ren. There was so much at risk, she would do whatever it took to secure her future—which was a far better justification for her actions than simply admitting to herself that she wanted him, but far less true. She would have wanted him without the plantation between them. In the back of her mind, she knew she had planned to make her intentions known tonight regardless of the evening’s outcome at Gridley’s.
Ren’s hand covered hers in caution. ‘Emma, do you think this is a good idea?’ Good idea or not, it didn’t matter. It was the only idea she had, if sex would be something irrevocable to bind him to her. Besides, it seemed an natural evolution of their relationship at this point. Everything since their kiss had been leading to this. He had started it with his wicked forfeit over backgammon, but by heaven, she would finish it. Her safety and Sugarland’s security demanded it.
‘It’s the best idea I’ve had in a long time.’ She leaned forward and kissed him hard on the mouth, as if everything depended on it, because it did.
Chapter Ten
This was a bad idea on multiple levels, starting with the most obvious: there’d been a lot of wine served at dinner. They’d both imbibed thoroughly. There were more complicated reasons, too, Ren knew: whether she admitted it or not, Emma’s encounter with Gridley had left her feeling vulnerable, feeling in need of a hero. He was aware he’d been that hero for her in the drawing room, coming to her side when he’d noted the conversation had taken a less friendly turn. Perhaps the hand running up his thigh was being grateful for his assistance. Perhaps she felt she needed to offer recompense.
Mentally, Ren knew he should put a stop to that hand before it reached a more critical juncture. His mind didn’t want ‘grateful’ sex, but his body didn’t seem capable of making those distinctions. His body was responding to her with the wholehearted enthusiasm of a healthy man who’d been celibate for over a month.
Emma had managed to get a leg over his lap, straddling him, with her coral skirts riding high, her hand between them cupping the hardened ridge through his trousers, her mouth on his in a full-bodied kiss, her tongue in his mouth, his own tongue giving as good as it got. As much as his mind willed, his body would not be mounting any resistance to her intimate assault.
Emma ran a thumb over the outlined tip of him and he moaned. It had been so long since anything had felt this good, this physically inviting. His hands ran up her legs past the curve of her calves to her thighs and came to an abrupt halt as one hand made contact with a leather sheath. ‘Good lord, Emma, what is this?’
‘An old habit,’ she murmured between kisses. Why did a woman take a concealed weapon to a dinner party? He should have pushed the issue right then, but his mind had finally registered the sensual reality of bare flesh. His hands had moved on, clenching around the soft swell of her buttocks, ‘You minx!’ Ren nipped at her bottom lip with his teeth. ‘You’ve been naked beneath this dress all night.’
She gave a throaty laugh and squeezed him, her eyes dark with desire. ‘I’m hungry for you, Ren Dryden. Are you hungry for me?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Ren groaned. She was bold, beautiful, sure of herself, all the things he liked in a woman. The nakedness beneath her skirts confirmed it. She’d planned to have him, a most titillating and flattering realisation. Confident lovers were hard to come by. Apparently so was privacy.
They both recognised they’d reached the limits of what could decently be accomplished. There was no question of taking this any further in the open-air carriage with the driver’s back so near. Emma flashed him a frustrated glance. They had another mile to go before they were home.
Inspiration struck. There was one thing he could do. ‘Can you be very quiet?’ Ren whispered at her ear, his hand sliding again beneath the bunched fabric of her gown to the damp, hot core of her. Whatever reservations his mind had about taking her, there was no arguing she wanted this, wanted him. His fingers were wet with her honey as he found her secret place, the centre of her pleasure. He ran his thumb over the hidden little nub, watching her eyes widen, feeling her body shudder with delight.
She arched against his hand, her body instinctively wanting to be closer to the source of pleasure. He revelled in her response, intoxicated by the knowledge he could render this beautiful woman boneless. She wanted him, without any inkling of who he was, or what his title meant.
He stroked her again, and the tiniest of mewls escaped her lips. ‘Shh,’ Ren warned with a wicked grin. He silenced her with a kiss, long and deep, while he stroked, while he rubbed. It became an intense, intimate game to see who would break first. Emma writhed against him, the kisses coming hard and fierce as her climax neared.
‘Do not scream,’ Ren instructed hoarsely, feeling her body tighten. Her hands dug into his shoulders in an effort to keep her silence. She gave a gasp and Ren smothered it with a kiss as she collapsed against him, her relief palpable. Ren was almost jealous. She was momentarily sated while he was still very much aroused and painfully so, craving her touch, craving the release that would come. His mind urged his body patience. This was good, but there was better waiting. This was just the beginning.
They pulled into the drive, the carriage coming to a stop in front of the house. He helped Emma down, the sight of her, ravished and dishevelled, fuelling his desire to the brink of breaking. Her hair had come down in dark glorious waves, her lips were swollen from ardent kisses, marks of his possession, signs that she was his. And she burned for him still, her eyes hot with wanting as they mounted the front steps. The momentary release he’d given her now becoming only a prelude, a sample of something greater to come.
She might have sparked what had happened in the carriage, but Ren had become the master of it, driving her to the edge of pleasure and over it, but even that hadn’t been enough for his wild Emma. She was burning, her body on fire for more, for him. Knowledge of it stoked his passion to the breaking point. He was a well-primed powder keg of male desire by the time they gained the hall. She tugged at the lapels of his evening coat, dragging him to her for a hard kiss. Any thought he’d entertained about making it upstairs to bed vanished in the wake of his wanting.
Ren answered her with a devouring kiss of his own, his mouth claiming primal possession. Her arms were about his neck. Her body pressed into his, her hips undulating in an unspoken request. ‘Take me, Ren. Here.’ Her voice was a feverish murmur against his mouth.
It was all the invitation he needed. Desire rode him hard. He bore her back to the wall, lifting, balancing, as her legs wrapped about him and her skirts fell back to reveal bare skin, the grip of her thighs urging him closer. He released the fall of his trousers and, by all that was holy, he couldn’t recall wanting a woman with such uncontrolled abandon. He felt rough and wild as he thrust into her, not in the least a gentleman.
Her head went back, her neck arched, a feral cry escaping her. He was a king in that moment, watching her thrash in passion, knowing that the wildness was not his alone. He thrust again and again, pushing both of them to the completion that waited just beyond the wildness. He gave a last, rough thrust, his body pulsing into hers as she screamed his name one last time.
They could not stay here, locked in an intimate embrace in the hall. It was Ren’s first thought once sanity returned, a thought mobilised by necessity. His muscles were starting to ache from the strain of balancing her against the wall.
‘Emma love, let me help you upstairs.’ He disengaged as gracefully as possib
le and gently lowered her until her feet touched the ground, but she was boneless in the aftermath of their exertions. While he might take manly pride in that accomplishment, it had its own consequences. She gave only the slightest of protests, his muscles giving rather more, when he swept her up in his arms and mounted the staircase.
By the time he’d tucked a sleeping Emma into bed still fully dressed and reached the garçonnière, Ren’s brain had started to register the fullness of what he’d done, what they’d done. It was perhaps more sobering than any amount of coffee. From the wicked game they’d played in the carriage to the unrestrained lovemaking in the hall, the interlude had been savage and uncivilised in the extreme.
Ren supposed he could chalk it up as the natural repercussion of a healthy man and woman living and working in close proximity. There was bound to be curiosity. They certainly had been aware of each other from the start and heavy flirting had followed. Under those conditions, what happened tonight had been inevitable. But now that the curiosity was satisfied, what next? How did they go on from here?
Was this to be a one-night experiment or was it the beginning of an affair, or even the beginning of something more, a relationship? Ren undressed for bed, carefully laying aside his evening clothes for Michael to brush in the morning. He wished his thoughts could be set aside just as easily.
Had this evening been only about the physical? His thoughts might have strayed in such lusty directions, but in the end Emma had started it. She’d been the one to straddle him, to intimately cup him. One could not mistake an overture like that. Even exhausted as he was, his body roused to the memory. What had she been looking for? Satisfaction? Appeasement? A safe harbour?
She might have started it, but don’t forget you finished it. You were the one to play a decadent game of ‘don’t scream’. You were the one to push her up against the wall, to thrust into her until she cried your name, his conscience scolded. It wasn’t done. Whatever tonight was, you enjoyed it far too much for it not to matter. His pleasure was not inconsequential. Tonight had been as much about his pleasure as it had been hers. At the end, his own climax had ripped from him like a river breaking its banks and for a while it had obliterated everything in its path— common sense and reality.
The truth was, tonight had been a moment out of context. He knew deuce little about Emma Ward beyond the present. Ren lay down on his bed, his hands behind his head, his eyes fixed on the stuccoed ceiling. He knew of her only what their short time together had taught him. What he’d learned were attributes. She was strong, determined, independent. But attributes were not history. How did those traits translate into events? Had those traits worked for or against her? Sir Arthur Gridley suggested those characteristics led Emma to be impulsive, to make rash decisions in business and in sex. Gridley believed she needed to be protected against that rashness. Was Gridley to be believed?
Gridley would be livid if he knew what had transpired here tonight. Ren drew a deep breath and exhaled, making the argument with himself. He hadn’t poached on another man’s territory. Emma had made it plain she did not welcome Gridley’s attentions, but Gridley wouldn’t see it that way. Ren wondered if that had been some of Emma’s impetus. Had she merely been caught up in the moment and looked for a quick way to strike out at Gridley?
He didn’t relish thinking of himself as a pawn in her neighbourly war. Yet, that was the one thing he didn’t doubt. Tonight, Emma had been frightened. The war between her and Gridley was real, suggesting the stakes for Emma were high. Ren had seen her fight fire and marshal her troops without hesitation. She was not a woman who scared easily.
That Gridley unnerved her spoke volumes, some of it rather difficult for his ego to contemplate. Had fear forced her into his arms tonight? The idea that her seduction had been planned was starting to pale from its original flattery. Had she been scared long before this and decided to seduce him as security?
‘Oh, Merrimore, what have you sent me into?’ Ren mused, feeling a bit guilty. No matter how pleasurable it had been, he’d acted rashly this evening. Would he have dared such a thing if Merrimore had been alive? What would Merrimore think if he knew Ren had tupped his ward in the hall, nonetheless? That was something Kitt Sherard would do. It wasn’t that he wasn’t an imaginative lover. He was. He just wasn’t normally an exhibitionist, given to performance in potentially public places. Good heavens, what had he been thinking? Any late-night servant could have run across them.
But that was just it. He hadn’t been thinking. Every ounce of his being had been focused on succouring his desire, sating his want. Tonight, the pursuit of pleasure had stripped him of all logical thought. He hadn’t even possessed the decency to do it in a bed in a private room with the door shut. Not that those details made it better in the end. In the final analysis, he’d bedded—he did use that term loosely since there had been no real furniture involved—a woman he knew very little about and knew even less what he meant to do about it.
To make matters worse, Ren had to be honest. Despite the afterthoughts, he would do it again, even though it might be best if he didn’t. If sex with Emma Ward was so consuming he forgot all decency, celibacy might be in his better interests. He had a plantation to learn to run. He had a family back home relying on this money-making venture. He was relying on this venture. If he wanted to escape the clutches of the York heiress, he had to think with his brain, not his—
A memory from earlier in the evening stirred; something Gridley had said. Don’t let her lead you around by the short hairs. Initially, Ren had thought Gridley was merely referring to the division of the estate and the comment about who was really charge. Given Gridley’s longer-standing relationship with Emma, Ren had to wonder if that was all he’d referred to.
An uncomfortable feeling began to take up residence in his gut. Gridley had implied Emma was not above using seduction and had done so on at least one occasion. He had to exercise caution. He knew logically the interlude was a mistake, yet he also recognised he’d willingly make that mistake again if the opportunity arose.
She started it. Another discomforting truth presented itself. Emma had planned this. She’d gone to dinner stark naked under her gown. It was fair to say there’d been some premeditation there. A woman didn’t forgo undergarments on a random whim. Had she anticipated that when the act came it would be fast and furious, no time for undressing or for dealing with inconvenient underclothes? If she had, what did it mean?
The truth crashed about him in the darkness of his chambers. The longer he thought about it, the clearer it became. All roads led to the same conclusion. He, Ren Dryden, one of London’s most sought-after lovers, had been seduced by a master.
Chapter Eleven
Emma gave a languorous stretch, letting the morning sun caress her body. She’d slept better last night than she had since Merry passed away. She felt rested, in both body and mind. It was the first morning she could recall where she hadn’t awakened with her mind an immediate riot of lists full of things that had to be done. She gave another long stretch and stopped mid-action. Something didn’t feel right. She felt confined as if she was wearing a tight garment instead of her loose nightgown.
That was funny; she couldn’t remember putting her nightgown on last night. Emma ran hands down her body, her fingers halting when they met with satin instead of cotton. She looked down and confirmed her suspicions. She was still in her dress. Ren! The latter part of the evening came back to her in hot, vivid flashes; Ren’s naughty game in the carriage, Ren taking her hard and swift up against the hall wall. All the pent-up passion that had lurked beneath the surface of their interactions since his arrival had been given its head last night to the delight of them both.
There was no ignoring that what had happened last night had been rough and spectacular. There was also no ignoring that she’d started it. She’d been the one who had slid her hand up his leg, who had boldly straddled hi
s lap. But he’d not been resistant. He’d been more than ready for her when her hand had found him through his trousers.
Emma sighed and sat up, ringing for Hattie. She couldn’t get out of the dress on her own. She’d have to tell Hattie something to explain it. She’d have to tell Ren something, too. She doubted she could let the interlude go unremarked. One didn’t have sex against the wall with a guest living under one’s roof and not address it.
Hattie came and exclaimed, as expected, over the crumpled gown. Emma murmured a vague excuse about being late and tired and not wanting to wake her. ‘I just laid down for a moment...’ Emma offered an apologetic smile ‘the next thing I knew, it was morning.’
‘Well, I can press most of the wrinkles out.’ Hattie undid the fastenings in the back and helped her slide the gown off but the scowl of disapproval on her face suggested she suspected far more had happened.
Emma offered no further discussion of the evening. Her mind was already examining and discarding possible explanations she could give Ren for her behaviour as Hattie combed out her hair. She could blame it on Arthur Gridley. No, she would sound weak, desperate for a man to solve her problems. Ren would take that opening to further increase his involvement at the plantation.
She could blame it on the wine. That would sound irresponsible, but plausible. It would be better than blaming it on her curiosity, her physical attraction to him, or on the idea she’d been alone too long. All of which implied she wanted him to stay, even needed him in ways that superseded the practical tasks of running the estate. She had started this with the intent of using it to bind him to her, but she had to admit her plans were only a part of what had compelled her boldness last night. There’d been other, selfish, personal reasons, too. Those reasons also implied she might want to continue what they’d started in the hall.
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