She furiously repeated all those reminders to herself.
But the intensity of his expression and the heaviness of the moment seemed to bely all that. There was an awareness hovering in the very air, sparking and shimmering.
She swallowed. “Because you know that if you attempt to kiss me, I shall punch you in the nose.”
Her words were unsteady. Revealing far more than she would have preferred, to herself as well as to Montrose, if he but listened.
“Will you?” he asked softly. He leaned closer. He stopped petting the cat. His hand was instead flattened on the bed, bracing himself as he raised a knee to partially join her there once more. His other hand cupped her jaw. “Do it now, Hattie, if you must.”
His face was close enough to hers to touch. His mouth near enough to kiss. He stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb. It was the only point of contact between them, and yet it felt like the most intimate of caresses. She could feel that tender caress in her core.
It made her weak.
Her fingers curled into a fist at her side.
“Go ahead, darling.” He gave her a slight smile, a taunting one. His breath was warm and faintly wine scented.
It was an improvement over gin.
She wondered where he had been before he had arrived at her chamber. Who he had been keeping company with? Why he had come here? Surely not just to steal a kiss? Surely not just to speak?
“What do you want from me, Montrose?”
She would not strike him, and they both knew it. Her heart was not in it, for she would far rather prefer to kiss him instead.
“You, Hattie.” He dragged his nose against hers. “You in my bed. You beneath me. You bearing my children. Is that so difficult to believe?”
It was. And it was also starkly, shockingly attractive. His words set off a reactive pang inside her that said she would not be averse to such a future. Indeed, part of her would like it far too much.
“You only think you want that,” she protested. But her hand, the one she had tried to make into a fist, was open now. And it had traveled of its own accord to his face.
She was touching his cheek. Feeling the prickle of his dark whiskers on her skin. He was so alarmingly masculine. So tempting. The rational part of her knew who he was, what he was. The rest of her did not give a damn.
“I know what I want, Hattie.” He pressed his lips to hers then.
The contact was brief. Fleeting.
Unexpectedly soft.
Disappointingly bereft of passion. She had expected him to brand her with his mouth. To consume her. Instead, he had given her the barest of kisses.
He retreated a few inches.
Here was where she should tell him to leave. Demand that he go. Insist she did not want anything to do with him at all.
Her lips opened. Her tongue moved.
“Is that the best you can do?” she asked.
The question was a mistake, because in the next breath, his mouth was on hers. Consuming. Ravishing. Not exactly punishing, but this was the kiss of a practiced seducer. It was knowing. His lips moved over hers, demanding she open. And she did, allowing his tongue to sweep inside.
She tasted him, Monty and red wine and sin and everything she should not want.
It would be far better to be a wallflower, to die a spinster, than to burn herself in this man’s flames. That was what her mind tried to warn her, anyway. None of the rest of her listened.
Because kissing Montrose was incendiary.
It was revolutionary.
She wondered if this was the feeling inventors felt—this deep sense of discovery, this heady excitement—when they realized their creation would work. When they understood they had made something that had never previously existed, something rare and unique.
That was how she felt kissing the Duke of Montrose in the middle of the night, alone in her chamber where he decidedly had no business being, whilst Sir Toby Belch witnessed their madness. She felt as if she had just found something incredible. She wanted to capture this feeling, this moment, him, and keep it forever. To relive it again and again.
To always feel this way.
But that was a sheer impossibility.
He jerked his lips from hers suddenly, ending the kiss as abruptly as it had begun.
He stared at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. “Hattie. You felt it, too, did you not? The rightness between us cannot be denied.”
The rightness between us.
She did not want those words to hover in her mind. To dazzle her with a promise which would go unfulfilled. But it happened anyway.
“There is no us,” she denied.
Also a useless action, wasted words. Because she could hear the lie of it, taunting her.
He took her hand and brought it to his chest. His capricious heart beat within, a reassuring thump. “I am here.” He released her wrist and pressed his hand over her heart. “And you are here. Our hearts are beating fast. You enjoyed that kiss every bit as much as I did, Hattie. Do not dare to deny it.”
His chest was solid and warm, as warm as his lips had been, as warm as his palm, seeming to brand her through the cotton of her night rail. “You are well-versed in the art of kissing, Montrose. If I did not like your kiss, it would be a surprise.”
Her words made him frown, and she realized this, too, was the wrong thing to say. For she had just taunted him.
“Are you suggesting you would enjoy any man’s kiss as much as mine?” he asked, his tone silky with menace.
She clung to her bravado. “Yes. I am saying precisely that. As long as he were a skilled kisser, of course. Any gentleman would do.”
He made a sound deep in his throat. A growl or a curse, she could not determine. And then his mouth was fused with hers once more.
Chapter Four
He should have kissed Hattie Lethbridge a long, damned time ago.
He should have married her as well.
He should have bedded her a hundred times over by now. A thousand times. It still would not be enough. Need for her was a rising tide within him. A raging river threatening to overflow its banks. He had not felt this alive in as long as he could recall.
These were Monty’s turbulent thoughts as he moved his lips over hers. Kissing her was a revelation. She was a revelation. Her lips were soft and full, giving and lush. Her tongue moved against his, exploring, filling him with desire.
He was glad he had added a drop of laudanum to his wine at the Duke’s Bastard. Because it heightened his senses. And he wanted to soak up every second of this embrace. He wanted to commit her taste to memory. He wanted to remember her sweet response forever.
He was supposed to be a hardened rake. Cynical and jaded. Aloof and unaffected. But he could not deny the way she moved him. Damnation, how she moved him.
And she knew how to kiss.
Hers was not the highly skilled kiss of a courtesan, but neither was it the kiss of a tyro. Possessiveness surged inside him. Who had taught her to kiss? He would find out. Later. Challenge the bastard to a duel.
He smothered the thought and deepened the kiss. For now, her lips were beneath his, and that was all that mattered. His body hummed with the longing to feel hers beneath it. To have her softness cradling his hardness. To pull her virginal night rail over her head.
It was white, of course. High-necked, too. Those pearl buttons at her throat had been a beacon calling to him with the need to be undone. He wanted to rumple her, muss her, unbutton her. To make his mark upon her with his mouth, with his teeth. Her chastity tempted him. Taunted him.
He could not deny there was something irresistibly alluring about the prospect of being her first lover. Of teaching her pleasure. Of instructing her in the finer art of how to be wicked. Burying himself inside her tight heat. He had never had a virgin before. Hattie would be his first, and he was heartily glad none had come before her. Indeed, he wished, in this moment, he had never had another lover. That she was his only.
> Why had he never noticed her before now? Why had he never suspected the fire lurking beneath her prim exterior? Had it been because she was his friend’s sister, or had he simply been too damned stupid to see the glory awaiting him?
Whatever the reason, he was making amends in the only manner he knew how—worshiping her with his mouth. With his hands, too. He cupped her breast, found her pebbled nipple through her night rail with unerring ease. He worked his thumb over the sensitive tip. She made a breathy sound of need low in her throat, and his cock twitched.
Yes, said the voice inside his head. More. Everything.
He wanted her the way he wanted a drink. The way he wanted more opium. He craved her. He wanted her complete surrender. To possess her. To claim. To fill. Above all, to please her.
She was intoxicating. He left her kiss to trail his mouth down her throat. She smelled of violets and herself. He licked her skin. Salty and delicious. Next, he found her ear. Kissed her there. Pressed his lips to the delicate hollow behind it. Felt her shudder.
“Tell me again, Hattie,” he whispered in her ear, careful to make certain his lips grazed the whorl.
Her breaths were ragged. She was not as unaffected as her perennially disapproving mien suggested. She wanted this, wanted him. And she was silent. He hoped it was because he had so addled her wits, she had forgotten what they had been speaking of before he had kissed her senseless.
Monty caught her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, rolling it, plucking at it. “Tell me any other gentleman would do. Tell me you would respond to another man as you have responded to me. That you would want another the same way. Go on. Lie to me.”
“You are sure of yourself,” she whispered.
He could have told her this was the sole arena in which he was sure of himself. But what would be the point? He was who he was. She already knew him as the selfish rogue, the scandalous rakehell.
He kissed her ear instead, then kissed down her throat. Leaving her breast, his fingers found her buttons, sliding them, one by one, from their moorings. With each fresh expanse of creamy flesh exposed, he kissed. Hattie made no move to stop him.
“I did not hear the words yet, darling,” he taunted against her bare skin.
He found her frantic pulse at the base of her throat. Found the satin flesh of her décolletage. Explored the curve of her full, round breast. He had never taken his time to admire another lover more. Everything about the night, about this, about Hattie, was different. He knew it to his marrow, even if he did not have the slightest inkling of what he ought to do with the information.
Continuing to tempt and tease and kiss her seemed the obvious answer.
Sinking his cock inside her seemed an even better one.
“Any other gentleman would do,” she said.
He froze. Surely, she had not just said what he thought she had said. His ears were deceiving him, he knew it. For there was no way she could be as far gone as she was, as flushed and desperate for him, and then tell him she would react thus to another man.
Monty used his teeth on her, gently biting the full swell of her breast. Not hard enough to cause pain or even a mark. But enough for warning. He gave up on the civility of buttons. Instead, he grabbed a handful of her night rail and tugged. The fine material rent, splitting in two. Her breasts burst forth as her gasp sliced through the room.
His eyes were intent upon his prey. This part of her, too, was beautiful. Her nipples matched the color of her lips. And they were hard, jutting out. Puckered little buds. Begging for his mouth. For his teeth.
“Would you let another man do this?” he asked her.
And then he lowered his head and took one of her nipples into his mouth and sucked. He was not certain which of them he was intending to teach a lesson more. She arched her back, thrusting her nipple deeper into his mouth.
She was so responsive, his Hattie. He could not get enough of her raw, unbridled enthusiasm.
“Yes,” she gasped. “No. Yes.”
He used his teeth on her, for she brought out the mercilessness within him. The need to pleasure within an inch of pain. “Which is it, Hattie darling? Yes, you would allow another man to suck your pretty, pink nipples until you moan? Or no. No, these sweet nipples are mine and mine alone?”
Her breath left her in one hot exhalation. Her verdant gaze was fixed upon him, her lips parted. Her pupils gave proof of her desire. “No.”
He flicked his tongue over her, back and forth, before withdrawing and blowing upon the wet peak. “Say it, Hattie. All of it.”
“What do you want from me, Montrose?”
Oh, no. She was not going to avoid it. He would have the victory of the forbidden words he wanted on her lips.
“I just told you what I want.” He blew on the taut bud of her breast. “Answer the question, sweet.”
“No.” Of course, she was stubborn to the last.
Had he expected anything less from her? Even pliable and filled with desire, she was still Hattie. And Hattie’s stern sense of self was one of the characteristics he admired about her most. That and her brilliant wit. Her beauty, rare and unique, was additional.
“No?” he repeated. He licked her nipple and then raised his head, locking gazes with her.
She swallowed. “No, I would not allow another to touch me thus. Only…only you.”
Her words made his desire surge.
The need to be inside her almost consumed him. Ruled him.
He forced it back, tamped it down.
“There, now. Was that so difficult?” He rewarded her by sucking the peak of her breast into his mouth, hard. And then he lowered his lips to the other and lavished all his attention upon it in similar fashion.
A most unwanted noise interrupted the heated moment between them.
He released her breast and turned his head in the direction of the sound, which was one-part growl, one-part hiss. The damned cat, which he had quite forgotten in all his raging need for Hattie, was perched nearby, growling low in its throat.
Perhaps the creature thought Monty was hurting his mistress.
Perhaps the thing was jealous.
Mayhap Hattie had trained the feline to perform just such a distraction on the odd chance a scoundrel would find his way into her bedchamber and attempt to seduce her.
“Oh, my sweet lad,” Hattie cooed.
And it took him a full minute to realize she was addressing the goddamn cat instead of him.
Preposterous.
The devil of the thing was, she looked so bloody tender and adorable, calling to the creature, he could not even be angry. He did, however, reach a realization. He could not bed her while the infernal feline looked on. No matter how badly longing for her was raging through his blood and hardening his cock.
One thing was certain: he had never before been interrupted in the act of seduction by a feline. A practiced rakehell like him should have done better. Instead, he was sitting here, his prick harder than stone, jealous of a cat.
Why had Hattie never gazed upon him with such tenderness?
Foolish.
He was a sapskull. Did he want tenderness from her? He had never before longed for anything more than slaking his lust with a woman. Was Hattie somehow different from all the others who had come before?
Monty had no wish to consider such a damning notion. Instead, he turned his mind to the matter of getting what he wanted in most expedient fashion.
He kissed her breast. “I have compromised you, Hattie.”
The wrong words to say, it would seem.
For they had the opposite of their intended effect. Her hands settled on his shoulders, shoving him with surprising force. “You have seduced me, is what you have done. Fortunately, no one knows. My reputation is not yet in tatters. You will have to leave the way you came, however.”
He had not come at all, and that was the problem. But she was not speaking of carnal matters. She was speaking of his departure, as though it were imminent. The devil of it was,
now that he had clambered up the tree, he found the prospect of his descent rather daunting. Perhaps breaking his foolish neck would be just the solution he sought, however. He had not wanted a woman as badly as he wanted Hattie in…ever. Now that he had kissed her, touched her silken skin, felt her body respond to his, his hunger had only grown. His need for her had intensified.
She was frantic, shaking hands attempting to cover herself with the tattered remnants of her night rail. Robbing him of the sight of her beautiful breasts. The cat strolled over, planting his bottom on the bed next to Hattie as if staking his claim.
Not a chance, he told the cat with his eyes. She is mine.
“I am not ready to leave just yet, darling.” He gently brushed her hands aside and repaired the night rail for her as best he could, given the damage he had done. It was enough to preserve her modesty, but there would be no repairing the tears. “We need to speak.”
“You have already said a great deal.” She eyed him mulishly. “Far too much, in fact. You must go, Montrose.”
He could not resist trailing his finger up her throat, all the way to her lips. The shape of them fascinated him. Everything about her did.
“I cannot go just yet until we speak about our nuptials.”
Her frown returned. “There will be no nuptials.”
He wanted to kiss the furrow from her brow. He settled instead for following the sweet bow of her upper lip. “Do not be foolish, Hattie. You must wed me now, of course.”
She grasped his wrist, staying his explorations without pushing him away. “No.”
Stubborn woman. He admired her spirit and boldness. But not quite as much when it was keeping him from what he desired most. Her hand on his wrist was the sweetest brand, burning into him. Touching her lips had been a mistake, because it only served to heighten his lust.
It was blazing through him. Heat and need were a fire within him which could not be tamed. But he could indulge in none of this.
Duke of Debauchery Page 4
