Perhaps it was because he’d had too much to drink.
Perhaps it was because they were alone.
Perhaps it was the shadows promising to hide secrets.
Leaning over, reaching down, he wrapped his hand around her ankle and pulled her toward him.
Startled, she looked up, but she didn’t resist, and he quickly had them hip-to-hip. He splayed his fingers along the back of her head, tucked the other hand beneath her chin, tilted her head up and sipped at her mouth. He circled his tongue around the outer edges of her lips before running it along the seam. An opening, a slight parting, an invitation.
He slid his tongue inside and groaned when he discovered hers waiting, ready to parry. No shy miss, his Little Rose.
She tasted dark, rich, and decadent. The rum added a tartness, a sweetness, a uniqueness. He swept his tongue through her mouth as though he’d never explored it before. Where in the garden there had been a hungry need, tonight the need was leashed. He didn’t want madness or haste. He wanted to linger, to enjoy, to relish.
He felt her fingers scraping his scalp, combing through his hair. Touching, caressing. Marvelous, so marvelous. He felt like a cat stretching beneath the sun. It was so very long since he’d been stroked with such tenderness. So long since any woman had given to him as she was doing now. No frenzy, no hurry. Only savoring.
In the garden, he had taken her mouth on a rush of passion and the hard edge of something that resembled jealousy, although he’d never been jealous in his life, not even when it came to Juliette. He’d known she was his, that no one would take her from him.
Yet the Fates had.
But with Grace it was different. He couldn’t define her or what he felt for her. It wasn’t love, yet it was more than the hollowness that accompanied him when rutting. He wanted to kiss her. He’d wanted to kiss her at the exhibit when she rhapsodized on about silly glass. Her passion for the creation of the pieces had sparked a passion in him.
But tonight it was just his whiskey and her rum, and a darkness that said, Taste, taste me again.
She sighed and he was acutely aware of her falling into him. It was a good thing they were sitting, as he thought his knees might have buckled with the force of the desire that slammed into him.
He’d had far too much liquor to perform. That was a good thing. He wouldn’t ruin her, but damn, she tasted so tempting, cream on strawberries, chocolate on cake. He didn’t ever want to leave the little paradise that was her mouth—
And it was that thought that had him leaving it. She wanted a man capable of great love. She deserved that sort of man. And that wasn’t him.
He pressed his forehead to hers, listened as she gathered her breath, enjoyed the sensation as she trailed her fingers across his shoulders, down his arms, leaving only the memory of her touch behind.
His chest tightened into a painful knot. With gentleness and his fingers, he brushed the strands of hair from her face. “Ah, Grace, I’ve always loved you. Surely you know that. I just can’t love you with the depth of caring that you want.”
“It’s scary to love, isn’t it? It doesn’t seem that it should be so, but it is.”
“Not always.”
“You weren’t scared when you fell in love with Juliette?”
He shook his head. He’d known no fear. He’d thought it marvelous, all the rioting emotions he felt.
“If you’d known on the day that you met her that you’d only have a few years with her, would you have still fallen in love with her?”
He didn’t know the answer to that. Because he hadn’t known, he’d gone into it with naive innocence. Innocence he could never regain. Now he knew that forever was a myth, and that “until death do you part” was not a promise of growing old together.
“It’s bad form to speak of another lady when a man is kissing you,” he told her.
“You’re not kissing me at this precise moment.”
“Perhaps I should remedy that.” And he did, taking her mouth again, unhurriedly swirling his tongue through the dark depths until he’d had his fill of her, for the moment at least. “I’ve never kissed a woman who tasted of rum,” he said quietly.
“What about the naughty women you visit?”
“I don’t kiss them.”
Jerking her head back, she couldn’t have looked more surprised if he’d jumped to his feet and done a jig around the room.
“But you’re intimate with them.”
“I’m not intimate with them. I’m not making love to them. I’m rutting.”
“It sounds so ugly.”
He’d not wanted to travel there. He’d wanted to travel back to her mouth. “I ensure they are pleasured. They have a pleasant time. They are unaware that the only thing engaged is my cock.”
And with the uttering of that word to a lady, he realized he was probably six sheets to the wind. “My apologies. I should not have—”
“No.” She touched her finger to his lips. “I came to you, Lovingdon, because I knew you would be honest with me. Your words and sentiments might be crude, but you have never put a veil of protection between us. Your words reaffirm what I’ve believed all along. I don’t want a man rutting over me. I don’t want him thinking, ‘Let’s get on with this, I need an heir.’ I want pleasure. I want him to want to come to my bed. I believe love is the key, which is why I want to find a man who loves me. I don’t want to make a mistake, with which I would have to live for the remainder of my life.”
He skimmed his fingers along the side of her face. “You won’t. It would be a rather poor reflection on my knowledge of blackguards if you end up with a man who doesn’t love you. Trust me, Little Rose. I can spot a blackguard a mile away.”
“I do trust you.”
More’s the pity. Because at that moment his words were no more sincere than any of the dribble that Bentley had spouted. It was her lips, glistening and swollen, that prompted his wicked behavior. He wanted those lips, he wanted that mouth.
Don’t don’t don’t.
But he was beyond listening to his conscience. Just one more taste, one more little sip. She tilted her face up slightly, the most beautiful invitation he’d ever received. He framed her face between his hands. “Just one more taste.”
She nodded, her mistake, his undoing.
He started with the freckle, the one on the corner, the one that went into hiding when she smiled. He wondered if all the other lords had noticed it. He should tell her about it. If he loves you, he’ll notice that you have the tiniest freckle at the corner of your mouth.
If he loves you, he’ll be fully engaged in the kiss. He won’t be thinking of other women or exhibits or laws that need to be passed. He won’t be thinking of anything beyond the flavor and feel of you.
But he was thinking of other things. He was thinking of fire molding glass, he was thinking of flames licking at red, he was thinking of hands fashioning and shaping—
Hands skimming over her from toe to crown. His hands wrapping around her small ankles, traveling over her slender calves.
He carried her down to the carpet. She didn’t protest. She simply went, with the trust she had spoken of earlier. He wouldn’t ruin her, but there were other lips to taste, other flames to fan.
Don’t don’t don’t.
He didn’t love her, he couldn’t love her, he wouldn’t love her—not in the manner she desired, not in the manner she deserved.
But she wanted lessons in blackguards, and tonight he was just drunk enough to give her one she wouldn’t soon forget.
She knew there was danger in coming here so late at night when he’d no doubt be well into his cups, yet she’d not been able to keep away. When she walked into the library, she had felt the energy like a storm just before lightning struck. She should have said, “Thank you for the gift. I’ll be on my way now.”
But she had seldom been one for doing what she ought.
Life was too short. Life could be snatched away.
She needed his
kisses the way she needed air. This kiss was different from the one before, gentler and yet hungrier. It made no sense. The other had seemed to be about possession.
This one was more about ownership. He was beginning to own her heart.
Beware! her mind cried. Beware, beware, beware.
She couldn’t love him as a woman loved a man, not when he was unwilling to love in return. She was fairly certain this was another lesson to be learned, that when he was done he would reveal whether a man who worked his mouth over hers with such determination would love her.
Not that she cared at that particular moment. She loved the taste of whiskey on his tongue, loved the way her mouth molded to his.
He trailed his lips over her chin and lower, lower. She held her breath. His hot mouth closed over her right breast, and the heat of it shot straight into her core. It mattered not that she wore a dress and chemise, that she had left her petticoats draped over a chair in her bedchamber. She had chosen comfort over propriety.
It seemed he wasn’t of a mood for propriety either.
His hands bracketed her waist and he pushed himself down farther, rose up on an elbow and watched as his hand traveled over her hip, along her thigh. His gaze came to rest on hers, his holding a challenge that went unanswered.
She didn’t know how to respond. Her body was thrumming with need, with something she didn’t quite understand.
His large hand knotted around a section of her skirt, began gathering it up.
“Lovingdon—”
“Shh. You’ll leave here a virgin, I promise you that.”
She trusted him, but she wasn’t ready for him to know everything. She doubted she ever would be, but neither was she quite ready to leave him, to lose these warm sensations that were purring through her. “Are you mimicking a man in love with me or a blackguard?”
He raised his eyes to hers. “A blackguard. Most definitely a blackguard.”
“I should stop these advances,” she said.
“Yes, for other blackguards. But don’t you want to know what lies at the end of them? You’ll spend the rest of your life with a gentleman. Why not know what it is to be with a scoundrel for a time?”
Her throat was tight, her heart fluttering, her chest barely able to take in a breath. She thought she nodded. Perhaps it was only that she didn’t shake her head. Whatever, she’d apparently given him permission to go further.
He pooled the hem of her skirt at her waist. “Silk underdrawers,” he rasped, his voice tight, controlled.
“I like the way they feel against my skin.”
“I think you’ll like more what I’m about to place against your skin.”
He unlaced her drawers and began easing them down. Her face burned as she was exposed to him, and she thought of flames shaping the glass. She wondered what he was molding her into. A wanton, no doubt. Or a girl on the verge of truly becoming a woman. Would her husband touch her like this or was such behavior only the purview of rogues?
“Ah, Little Rose, red everywhere.”
Especially her cheeks, her neck, her chest. The heat was consuming, and only grew hotter when he pressed his lips to the inside of her thigh.
She had heard about the dangers of rum, how it released inhibitions, made one not care. She knew she should clap her legs together, shove him aside. Instead she opened herself more fully to his questing mouth.
She would no doubt have regrets when she was sober, but for now the scrape of his shadowed jaw against her inner thigh was too tantalizing to warrant regrets. He moved up, half inch by agonizing half inch. She felt his breath wafting through her curls.
Lifting his head, he reached for the crystal decanter.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Tasting rum on lips, remember?”
Before she could respond, he poured the golden liquid over her most intimate region. She squealed, kicked ineffectually at him, an instinctual reaction.
He dropped his head back and laughed, a bold, joyous sound that reverberated around the room. Suddenly the sound stopped, but the essence of it continued to vibrate as though it had become a permanent part of the air surrounding them.
With a somberness that didn’t seem to fit with what had just happened, he held her gaze. “God, I can’t remember the last time I laughed.” He laid his head on the pillow of rumpled skirts at her belly. “Damn, but it felt good.”
“Laughter is a balm for the soul.”
“Especially one as black as mine.”
His eyes came to bear on hers again, and there was something different in them, something heated and dangerous. “It was a release, as good as any I’ve had with women of the night. You’re deserving of one as well.”
He lowered his head, and she felt his tongue lapping at the rum, lapping at her. Velvet over silk, and so much nicer than undergarments. She wouldn’t mind having that sensation over her entire body—but then he would learn the truth, and while she trusted him, some things a woman simply did not share.
She shoved dark thoughts aside and instead focused on the pleasure, the laughter of her senses. Oh, he was wicked, doing things that she was certain no husband would ever do. It was so inappropriate, so naughty. It was not for the refined, for ladies.
It was decadence at its most decadent.
She knotted her fingers in his hair because she couldn’t stand the thought of not touching him. Pressing her thighs against his shoulders, she wished she felt the silk of flesh there instead of soft linen. She should have asked him to remove his shirt. Had she known where he had planned to take her, she might have asked him to remove everything.
He kissed, he stroked, he suckled. He created sensations that were beyond description. Pleasure rolled through her in undulating waves that threatened to take her under, to lift her up. If she were glass, she would have melted by now.
Her breaths came in short gasps, her sighs evolved into ever higher pitches.
“Lovingdon—”
“Let it happen, Grace. Let your body succumb to the ultimate joy of pleasure.”
Then there were no more words, only his tongue urging her on with its determined actions. Swirls of red spun behind her closed eyes. Faster, faster, a vortex that flung her over a precipice—
She screamed as her body tightened, her back arched, her fingers dug into his scalp. She shuddered and trembled, reached heaven before floating mindlessly back to earth.
There was silence in the coach. It wasn’t heavy or awkward. It was simply present, because after that mind-shattering experience, Grace had been without words.
So had Lovingdon apparently.
Quietly, he had reassembled her skewed attire. With his hand on the small of her back, he led her to the coach and climbed in after her. It didn’t seem to matter that it was her family’s coach, that it would either need to return him home or he would have to walk.
Perhaps he was aware that she wasn’t yet ready to be alone.
Otherwise, why would he be holding her now, his arm around her shoulders, her face tucked into the hollow of his neck? He smelled sultry and wicked. Every now and then she thought she caught a fragrance that might be her.
“I’m beginning to see the appeal of marrying a blackguard, whether he loves me or not,” she finally said.
He chuckled darkly. “I thought you might.”
“I suppose the best thing would be to marry a blackguard who loves me.”
“Blackguards don’t love.”
“Pity that.”
Silence again.
“I suspect,” he began, “that I shall forever think of you when I drink rum.”
Heat and pleasure swarmed through her. She would never again drink rum without thinking of him. “I fear your carpet is ruined.”
“Simple enough to have it replaced.”
She placed her hand on his chest, felt the steady pounding of his heart. “I’m not certain what I should take away from tonight’s lesson.”
“Not all men would have stopp
ed where I did. Never allow a man to lift your skirts.”
Pressing her lips to his neck, she tasted the salt of his skin. “Tonight I’m ever so glad I did.”
She was aware of him stiffening, was certain he would regret his actions on the morrow when whiskey was no longer coursing through his veins. Perhaps she would as well, but she also knew that even a man who loved her might never make passionate love to her. When all was revealed, he might find bedding her a chore.
The coach came to a halt. Lovingdon leapt out, then handed her down.
“Your father is much too lenient, allowing you out at all hours.”
“As I told you earlier, he doesn’t know.” Rising up on her toes, she kissed his cheek. “Thank you for the glass. That’s all I intended when I came to see you, to thank you for the glass.”
“Intentions—bad or good—have a way of going astray.”
“Good night, Lovingdon.”
She headed up the walk and heard the coach rattling away. At the top of the steps she turned back and saw Lovingdon walking down the drive, a solitary figure, encased in loneliness. She wanted to rush after him, return to his residence, curl up in his large bed and hold him. Just hold him. Have him hold her.
She waited until he was no longer in sight. Then she turned and pressed her forehead to the door.
Oh dear Lord, now she’d gone and done it.
She’d fallen in love with him all over again.
Chapter 11
“If a man is keen on us, he will look us in the eye when we speak, and if we speak low, he will lean in to hear what we say. If he doesn’t lean in, he doesn’t fancy us.” Grace was standing in a distant corner of Uncle Jack’s parlor, speaking with Minerva and Ophelia. A small gathering of family and friends had arrived for dinner to celebrate Minerva’s birthday.
She had hoped to see Lovingdon here, but he had yet to show. He’d not attended a family gathering in two years. She was disappointed tonight would be no exception. She knew Minerva was equally disappointed. It was not every day that a girl turned nineteen. Her oldest brother should be on hand.
When the Duke Was Wicked Page 14
