The Lady Most Willing

by Julia Quinn, Eloisa James

  “What? No.” She frowned at him. “Would you mind not crouching over me like some sort of demented housecat grown large?”

  Byron dropped to his elbows and, very deliberately, lowered his body onto hers. There was a gasp from her, and a barely stifled groan from him. “There will be no Italian lover,” he said, clenching his teeth so that he didn’t resort to a ridiculous, primitive display of manhood.

  “Who are you to say that?” she demanded, her eyes darkening, even as her arms looped around his neck. “You are not my fiancé.”

  “I know; he’s dead.”

  “And ruined me in the process,” she pointed out, yet again.

  “Right.” Byron had already decided that he didn’t give a damn about Dugald. If he, the Earl of Oakley, was going to throw over his father’s principles, he was going to do it in style. In other words, he would not only marry the most notorious woman in Scotland (if she was to be believed), but he would never tax his wife with the fact that she came to their bed less than innocent, tarnished by a blackguard fiancé with the stupidity to compromise her as he plummeted to his death.

  “You really must stop flirting with me.” She scowled at him. “Though this can hardly be called flirting.”

  “What is it?” Byron asked, settling his body a bit more firmly on top of hers. All the right parts of him were pressing against the right parts of her.

  “Something worse,” she said darkly.

  “Or better,” he said, leaning down so he could give her earlobe a little nip.

  “I know it doesn’t matter to you, but I’d rather not have everyone think that I’ve dallied with you as well as with Dugald. I’m already next thing to a Babylonian scarlet woman. A Highlands version, of course.”

  “That bad?” Her ear was delightful: small and round and feminine.

  “I told you that Dugald’s mother crosses the street when she sees me. After spitting.”

  “What about the Italian lover?”

  “What about him?”

  “What’s his name?” Byron asked, keeping his tone easy. He didn’t want her to know that the Italian was about to plunge from his own metaphoric ivy.

  “Well, how should I know? I haven’t met him yet.”

  A great burst of joy spread through Byron’s chest, so he bent his head to her mouth. She tasted like wine and Fiona, a combination more potent than the strongest whiskey.

  “Ach, man,” she whispered, when he slipped away from her lips and kissed a path along her jaw. “Ye do drive me mad, ye truly do.”

  “Your burr comes out when you’re drunk,” he whispered back.

  “I’m not drunk! I’m a little tipsy, that’s all.”

  “And you’ve decided to take an Italian lover?”

  She nodded. She seemed not to notice that her hands were exploring his back, each touch making him press more firmly into the cradle of her legs.

  “Ti amo, amore mia.”

  “I suppose you’re trying to make me think that you’re Italian, rather than the most punctilious earl in all London?”

  Byron dropped a careful line of kisses down her neck. “I’m not your Italian lover. I’m your Italian husband.”

  Her eyes were closed, but at that she opened one and squinted at him. “Don’t you understand who I am?”

  He smiled down at her. “Most scandalous woman in all Scotland. Seducer and killer of an idiot by the name of Dugald. Have I missed anything?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Future countess,” he added calmly.

  A crease appeared between her brows, and he kissed it.

  “You’ve gone mad.” She seemed quite convinced of it.

  “I don’t care.” He caught her mouth again and plunged into a craving, demanding, all-consuming kiss. One hand found its way to her breast, and with a little sigh, she arched toward him, sending a rush of fire to his loins.

  “What if you change your mind?” she whispered, a while later. There was just the tiniest quaver in her voice.

  “In my family, we never change our minds. That was my father’s problem, you know.”

  “He had a problem?”

  “My mother left when I was a boy,” Byron said. He rolled off her body and pulled the cape over her again. Then he ran a finger down her delicate nose. “One day I realized that she hadn’t summoned me to her room in some days. I finally concluded that she must have died, if only because my father was so obviously affected.”

  Fiona came up on one elbow, her beautiful eyes fixed on his face. “You grew up without a mother.”

  “As did you.” He dropped a kiss on the end of her nose. “That’s why I knew the one thing you wouldn’t allow Marilla to take from you must be a portrait of your mother.”

  Her eyes softened. “I’m so sorry, Byron.”

  The pang was hardly more than a pinprick. “My mother was not very motherly. I thought . . . I thought if I could find a wife who showed no signs of passion that she wouldn’t think of leaving our children for another man.”

  She nodded. “You must have been devastated when she left.”

  “I didn’t know her well enough to be devastated. But my father was. He grew harsh and rather brittle. Even after I was grown, I didn’t question him about what happened. I had the feeling he might break.”

  “What would happen if he had broken?”

  He considered. “I suppose all that pent-up emotion would have rushed out . . . It would have been embarrassing for both of us.”

  “So you never asked him where she was?”

  “I pieced it together slowly, mostly from things I overheard. She ran away with my father’s brother. His younger brother.”

  Fiona gasped. “That must have been so awful for your father!”

  “Yes. He always talked of his brother as a man led astray by an evil woman. For a long time, I had no idea that my mother was the evil woman in question.”

  “That’s dreadfully sad. No wonder you were taught such concern about your reputation.”

  “It’s not my reputation that’s at the heart of it.” He moved a little closer, just enough that he could put an arm around her waist. “I like touching you.”

  She frowned at him. “If not your reputation, then what?”

  “I couldn’t bear to become like him,” Byron explained. “I thought if I didn’t fall in love, and I chose a woman who was utterly chaste, I could avoid the possibility.”

  “Lady Opal . . .”

  “I didn’t know her at all. But she seemed like the driven snow.”

  Fiona giggled. “She obviously got to know you well enough to guess precisely what would drive you away.”

  “I might kill a dancing master you kissed.” His voice came out hard, all the sheen of a civilized Englishman stripped away, leaving a blazingly possessive man. Just a man. It felt as if his heart stopped as he waited for her to answer, his breath clenched in his chest.

  The sharp pain there eased only when she leaned closer to him and said, “You don’t have me, so you’d have no right to raise an eyebrow.” There was a promise in her voice, a daring, silky promise.

  Byron took a deep breath, threw a silent prayer of thanks to whatever deity happened to be listening, and began nimbly undoing the lacing on her velvet bodice.

  “What are you doing?” she yelped.

  His fingers stilled. “How drunk are you?”

  Her eyes were clear. “I seem to have grown quite sober. But perhaps you should give me the bottle. I’m pretty sure that I’m hallucinating, and I don’t want it to stop.”

  “It won’t,” he said. He slowly pulled her jacket wide open. Of course, she was wearing layers . . . a blouse, a corset, a chemise.

  He had her out of the blouse and was unlacing the corset before she asked, “Byron, why are you doing this?”

  “Because I’m marrying you.”

  She was silent, and then: “Did I miss the moment when you asked me?”

  “Yes. You must have had too much to drink.” He threw
her corset to the side.

  But she shook her head when he reached toward her chemise. “Byron. No.”

  “I want you,” he said, his voice dismayingly like a growl. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. I . . . I think I—”

  But she interrupted before he could finish that sentence. “You want to marry me, even given my reputation.”

  “You’re the one for me,” he said, giving up on her chemise and cupping her face in his hands instead. “I don’t know why. All I know is that the moment I saw you, my life changed. What I wanted from life changed. I don’t want to marry a woman who dislikes me enough to stage a performance with a dancing master. I don’t want to be safe and prudent. It’s true that if you leave me, I’ll turn into my father and stalk around being horrible and brokenhearted. I’d rather risk it than not be with you.”

  “But you’re beautiful. You’re an earl, you’re brilliant, and if you stop being so frighteningly distant, ladies will fall at your feet. You needn’t marry me merely to prove that you’re a changed man.” She gently pulled his hands down from her face.

  “Would you marry me if your fiancé hadn’t died falling from your window?” Byron asked. “Not just because I’m an earl, but . . . for me?”

  Chapter 17

  Fiona’s heart was pounding so loudly in her ears that she hardly heard his quiet question.

  She’d always told herself not to want anything. Now she was breaking all her own rules. It was strange and rather terrifying to discover just how much she wanted to catch Byron in her arms, to kiss him, to reassure him, to make that tiny gleam of uncertainty in his eyes disappear.

  “I would,” she said, her voice ringing out in the stables. “I would want you if you were one of Taran’s men, if you were a stable boy, if you were merely an Italian lover.”

  “But I’m not,” he said. “I’m the man who is going to be your husband.” Their eyes met, and then he leaned toward her. She closed her eyes, falling into that dark sweep of emotion and desire that came with the touch of his lips.

  After that, there wasn’t any fighting over her chemise. A short time later, he stood before her, skin the color of cream, dappled with flecks of shadow by the oil lamp, the powerful muscles in his buttocks leading to muscled thighs, lean calves . . . “I even like your ankles,” she murmured, devouring him with her eyes. His body was heavy and aroused, like nothing she’d imagined.

  He didn’t answer, but dropped to his knees before her, his eyes ravishing her, his hands sliding up her legs slowly, seductively. Where his fingers trailed, hot, eager kisses followed.

  Fiona writhed on the old blankets, arching her hips instinctively toward him, crying out when his lips moved on to torment yet another part of her.

  “I—I—” she cried, meaning to say that she’d never heard of people, respectable people, doing things like this.

  But he just nudged her legs farther apart. There was a hum of pleasure in the back of his throat.

  He was as careful in this as he was in everything: now delicate, now rough, experimenting to see what made her cry out, alternating with . . . She couldn’t find words because she was too busy trying to draw air into her lungs, and then her mind went black, and she was twisting against his hand, trying, trying . . . and then he finally slipped a broad finger inside her and she nearly screamed.

  She did scream, at last, when the world broke around her into tiny shards of light that were somehow flashes of feeling at the same time. They swept over her body in wave after wave.

  Byron laughed, and then lowered his head again. She reached down just in time and grabbed his hand. “Don’t touch!”

  “Why not?”

  She could hear the laughter in his voice, but she ignored it. The air still felt harsh in her lungs, as if she’d stopped breathing for a time. “I’m—I’m—just don’t. It’s too much. Too intense.”

  Byron frowned to himself. Obviously, Dugald had been stupid in more ways than one. A silent shrug. If the idiot Scotsman had been too much of an idiot to please his fiancée, that was all to Byron’s advantage.

  Fiona lay before him like a dish of strawberries and cream, her skin flushed with pleasure, her dark red hair strands of rubies against the rough woolen blankets. Too harsh for her back, he thought. There was no question but that their joining would make him lose control. He could feel crazed lust possessing him, like a kind of madness.

  He had never lost control during a sexual act. Yet with Fiona, the slightest kiss brought him close to the limit of that control. She made him feel like a madman, crazed with the wish to possess her, to make her his. Knowing that was stupid didn’t help.

  She would end up with abrasions on her back, and he had just enough control left to want to avoid that. He picked up her soft body and rolled backward, letting her down on top of him.

  She balanced her weight by catching herself on his chest and then pursed her lips in the most carnal pout he’d ever seen. “What are you doing?”

  Byron traced the line of her deep bottom lip with a finger. “I thought we’d try it this way for our first time,” he said, trying to disguise the keen ache that he felt at the mere sight of her breasts . . . and utterly failing. They were ripe and full, the perfect size to drive a man to his knees with lust. The groan that broke from his throat was more like a growl as he curled up to draw one pink nipple into his mouth, pleasuring first it and then the other.

  She liked it. Her fingers clenched in his hair and broken cries flew from her mouth. Through the roaring fog of lust, he spared a thought about his good fortune to find a woman who was not afraid of marital congress. Who wasn’t pushing him away and shuddering in disgust the way most virgins did, or so he had been reliably informed.

  When he could hardly breathe, and his loins were on fire, he said in a gravelly voice, “Now!”

  Her head was thrown back, all that gorgeous hair tumbling to her bottom, but at his command she straightened and braced herself on his chest.

  There was something odd and tentative about her expression, and Byron realized in a blinding flash that dim-witted Dugald had not only denied his ostensible beloved an orgasm of her own, but that he had apparently made love to her only in the most conventional of ways.

  Which left more for the two of them to discover together, he thought with a rocketing streak of pleasure, his tool hardening even more at the thought.

  He put his hands on Fiona’s lush hips and lifted her up, positioning her carefully, and then let her go.

  He was desperate with need, mad to be inside her. Her mouth formed a perfect circle as he thrust upward. She felt like liquid silk, hot and tight.

  She was so tight that his vision went white as a voluptuous fog of pleasure enclosed him. He threw his head back, his fingers flexing on her hips and arched so that this time, this first time, he was surrounded by her. A groan burst from his throat as he withdrew and thrust upward again, even the tiniest movement sending a blast of pleasure down his limbs. She was so tight. Very tight.

  Byron’s eyes flew open.

  Fiona was leaning forward, braced against his chest. She didn’t look precisely as if she was in pain, but her face was tentative.

  He froze, his back still arched, his hands gripping the curve of her hips. A good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon curse erupted from his lips.

  Fiona blinked and said, “There’s no need to speak in such a fashion.”

  “You . . . You . . .” The word came out strangled, harsh and dark.

  “I’m a virgin,” she said helpfully. “Or perhaps I should say that I was a virgin.” She wiggled her hips, and he swallowed a groan, his fingers tightening on her hips again. “It doesn’t feel terrible.”

  “The window,” he gasped. “The—the ivy?”

  “Do you really believe that I would be stupid enough to invite a lover to enter my bedroom by horticultural means?”

  Her eyes were sparkling, although a tightness around her jaw told him that the snug fit that was making him tremble fro
m head to foot was not as delicious for her. He began to lift her away from him, but she curled her fingers against his chest and said, “No!”

  He stopped instantly.

  She slipped back down until he was snugly hilted inside her. Byron couldn’t help it: his hips arched and he gasped her name.

  “Did you like that?” she asked, her voice changing from its usual calm, dry amusement with the world to something different. Nearly a purr. She braced herself against his chest and lifted herself a bit and then slammed back down.

  A ragged cry broke from his lips and he thrust into her again, taking that last millimeter, burying himself in her slick heat.

  Fiona laughed, and the sound fell on him like a blessing. She leaned forward and did it again, and he finally regained enough control to release her hips, though he was pretty sure he’d left bruises on her skin. His hands free, they went naturally to her breasts.

  He had his control back now, even if it was held by a thread so delicate it might as well be a strand of her hair. She had to come with him into the intoxicating, ravenous pleasure that beckoned.

  She had her eyes closed, swaying a little on top of him, her hands covering his as he shaped her breasts, rubbing those beautiful nipples again and again. Every time, he felt a delicate little shudder go through her body.

  Fiona was in the grip of a feeling so sensual that she didn’t even know how to name it. It was like the storm outside, as if she’d been caught up in something so powerful that the essential her was lost in the middle of a whirl of wind. Where there had been nothing, there was suddenly this hard, hot . . . this . . . She couldn’t think of the word.

  And Byron was caressing her breasts, and every time he rubbed a thumb past her nipples, he would nudge upward, just the smallest amount, just enough to remind her that he was there.

  Part of her.

  The very thought ran like liquid gold over her skin. She, Fiona, was finally not alone any longer. Even though they’d known each other for almost no time at all, she knew it with a certainty that flooded her whole body. His face, that beautiful, beautiful face, was contorted, savage, not graceful . . . because of her.

  “You will always love me, won’t you?” she asked, the words coming out with a gasp. Every time he moved, it made spirals of heat shoot through her legs.