by Peyton Meri
She licked her lips. When his gaze dropped there, she instinctively caught the corner of her lip between her teeth remembering what had happened earlier when he had looked there. Heat. Warmth rushing to her cheeks told her that her face was undoubtedly turning a shameful red at the liberties she’d allowed. Liberties she had enjoyed and was still wet from.
“Let’s move on, shall we? You will remain here for the duration of the liaison. I will need access to you when I need to get to you. There will be no compromise on that. Everything I do or need is done under this roof. Do you have a problem with that?”
Ledi was stunned. “I—oh, I suppose not—wait!” Stay here for the length of the sordid affair? Her responsibilities and her mother flashed through her mind. “Will I be the only—” What was she to call herself? His paramour? She couldn’t. “Um, lover in residence? If not I would like to say I’d much prefer to be. Yes. That is something I cannot compromise on.”
He paused for a long time. She was going to pass out from holding her breath if he did not answer soon. He did.
“Yes. It will be just you for the duration sleeping here,” he said, coldly.
Ledi’s breath squeezed painfully, slowly out of her in a wheeze.
His sleek brows knitted and his voice sounded annoyed. “Are we good on that?”
He took her short response as agreement and continued. “Things will go smoothly then. Don’t look so peaked, Miss Barrton. You’ll enjoy our little sessions. I can feel it.”
As if to bracket his meaning in a thorough sense, he rubbed the tip of his fingers of his right hand, the one that had been up her skirts under his nose. Ledi felt her face grow hotter.
Wicked knave! But could she truly be furious with him? He had not come to her begging. She had come to him, practically on her damn knees because of her brother and sister.
“As for the rest of your family, how do you plan to explain your absence?”
“My mother is my only concern,” Ledi answered. And she was. Rena was off with her Lord Ackley somewhere and Evann, she still had no idea. She told him briefly about her mother’s illness.
“I see. Your mother will, ah, not grow curious?”
“No. I will tell her I’ve taken her advice and visited my friend she’s been pushing me to visit for the past year.” Her mother’s words whipped through Ledi’s mind. You deserve a break from all this. From your brother and sister. From me.
The count’s deep voice drew her attention back to him. “So then, her care?”
“Well, I suppose that should be added in as well, seeing as how you insist I remain here for the duration,” she stated.
A silent pause. She was fast becoming comfortable and wise with this bargaining. Then his slate-blue eyes darkened on her. Ledi held his gaze with a steady one of her own.
After another moment passed, finally he responded. “Very well,” he said. “Round the clock care it appears from what you’ve just told me will be needed. Consider it done.”
“Truly?” she asked, startled that he’d given in so easily without batting an eye.
He was already turning away, a bored expression upon his face, to look down at the documents on the desk. “Yes. I’ll have my solicitor hire a few professionals to see to your mother’s needs while you are working off your brother’s debt and uh, your part of the deal.”
Ledi flinched at his words, glad his head was down and that he had missed it. How was she going to get through even one night with this cold man? What the hell had she been thinking? She questioned herself for what seemed the hundredth time.
“I would like to meet the hires first, then,” She told him with a prayer the firmness still held to her tone. His dark head came up slowly at her direct demand. Ledi squeezed her fingers together and rushed on. “So that I will know that she’s in capable hands, of course,” she added. She damned the crack in her voice and hoped he hadn’t noticed.
He gave her a once over scan as if weighing her demand. Then that blasted look of disinterest crossed his face again just before he lowered his gaze back to the documents. “If that is what you wish. It can be arranged. After other little matters—your feminine concerns and the like are seen to.” He pushed the document across the desk, his large hand holding out the fancy quill to her.
Ledi inhaled a sharp deep breath and signed her name. A piece of her soul chipped away as she scratched the pen slowly across the bottom of the page. She was going to burn in hell. Already the fiery flames of hades singed her skin.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Your horrible, selfish, immature actions put you in his crosshairs. Your greed in his debt. Your own hand did the hell brought down upon you, Evann. No one else is to blame.” Ledi’s words were as dark as her glare.
“Gambling, keeping up with appearances and…and the ladies. It costs more than you can ever imagine, Ledi. Why am I am bothering to explain? You’re a woman. You’ve no idea what it is like to be a man.”
Ledi scoffed and drew back, appalled at her brother’s gall. “And you’ve no idea what it’s like to be a woman. How dare you, Evann? And as far as keeping up. I think you meant to say keeping up with lies, didn’t you?”
His face reddened further with his anger as he jerked his arms about. “Call it what you will, Ledi. My luck abandoned me. What other choices did I have?”
“You had the choice to stop, Evann, many times over.”
He cast her a look of contempt. “Not as easily done as said, sister. As I’ve said, you don’t know how hard it is for a man. A young man aging quick is far different from a woman. The two do not even compare.”
“Is that so? And how, dear brother, is a young man so different from a young lady? Futures, all our futures, you’ve put at stake for your own self-seeking needs.”
“Men have honor to uphold. You—girls, pardon me, ladies like you—it’s a matter of virtue. Keep that. Being an unmarried woman, spinster, a titled lady or not, even a lady far beyond first blush, still holds some value. After that’s taken, not much left save—”
At his sister’s reddening face and heavy breaths, Evann took a step back. Ledi leaned over the desk and slapped her hands down flat on top of it, fury boiling in her veins. “If you weren’t my brother, I’d slap those loose marbles of yours into a semblance of sense for your insults. Evann, you are more naïve than I am and by George! I swear I did not think anyone could possibly be more naïve than me.”
He shook his head, his smug expression only infuriated her further.
“Of course. Not anymore now that you’ve spread it for Benning,” he flung at her cynically as he turned on his heel and walked away from the desk.
“Don’t you dare take that disgusting tone of disdain with me. You don’t deserve nor have you earned the right to cast any deriding opinions upon my person any longer. No—you have no right whatsoever to judge me for what I was forced to do to fend for Mother and myself after all you and Rena have done. After all you both have taken. Especially after what you’ve single-handedly done. Which by far, outweighs anything Rena’s ever done. Something else I thought not possible.
“You are my older brother, Evann. The eldest of us three. You and Rena left us destitute. Both of you. You stole what was barely there to steal. Now you come back here expecting a dole out of forgiveness, when in truth, it’s a cover for begging for more scraps. And I’m supposed to bend over and say all is forgiven because we are kin by blood?”
Her temples pulsed with the pressure of her blood rising. Removing her hands from the desk, she curled them into fists, ready to jump on him and pound him but good. How dare the little bastard cast stones her way after all he’d done? She loved him, as a sister should, true. But she did not like him. Not anymore.
His suddenly contrite expression did little to cool her temper. He held a hand out from where he stood by the bookshelves. “Ledi, I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “Too bloody late for that, Evann. What I want you to do, is for you to take that courtesan out th
ere in the foyer, turn your hack around and never, and I do mean never, come back here again.” Ledi raised her voice over his loud protest and puff of chest. “I suggest you go right now before I call the authorities and let them know you are back in town. All I will let you leave with is what you’ve already stolen.”
Blood drained from his face and Ledi was surprised she felt not a tinge of regret.
Evann had shown in their short reunion that he was far from a changed man. That he’d brought a woman of ill-repute to their family residence told her he’d come to bleed her mother dry once again, probably to pay for the woman’s services, and that he would no doubt have taken off once again to parts unknown without a care of the heartache, the distress, the hardship he’d left behind.
He cared not one whit about her or their mother’s well-being. The sad truth, he never truly had. That is what Ledi felt, the sting of hurt that he was so selfish, so heartless and would never change.
It was who he was. Finally, after all these years she’d not only saw it, she’d finally accepted it.
Evann seemed to have realized it too. He wavered on his feet, then some color leached back into his cheeks as he clutched the small purse that didn’t belong to him in his fist. Two dots of guilt dotted each of his cheeks. “Would you truly call the constable on me and throw me out into the cold?”
Finally some real fear and truth in his words. Ledi walked around the desk, past him and to the study door. “Your last chance. Leave now or force my hand. Your choice, Evann,” she told him. She settled her shoulders back and stood stiffly before the study door awaiting his decision.
He walked close to her. “You bitch. You’re no better than a guttersnipe whore and you dare threaten me?”
Ah, the true Evann was back. He was enraged and looked ready to hit her. Ledi stood her ground. If he did, she’d strike him back. Though they’d not had a physical spat since they were youths, and he outweighed her by several stones, she would give him a fight he’d never forget.
But it was not to be. A deep voice shattered the pending explosion.
“I suggest you take the lady’s more than generous offer and get the bloody hell out of here. It would be wise to do so immediately. For if another word comes out of your foul, thieving skull, the constable will be the least of your woebegones.”
Ledi and Evann both turned to see Harker standing just inside the doorway. A finger near the trigger of the pearl-handled pistol he held up and leveled on Evann. The threat hung in the air.
Harker’s large frame filled the doorway in an intimidating stance. Much bigger and heavier than her brother by a few stones, the power in his frame would crush Evann, no weapon needed. Ledi’s heart thumped like wildly at the sight of him. At the sight of the man who’d occupied her days and nights, her every waking thought and dreams, these past few weeks. The man who occupied her heart.
He looked so devastatingly handsome in his open fury. His dark waves, tousled from the wind, crossed the right side of his beautiful crown. His vivid slate-blue eyes glinted with leashed ire on her brother. Those lips, she missed, she loved and remembered so acutely doing the most wicked of things across her body. Kissing, suckling her willing and eager flesh, were pressed tight in a hard line.
Oh, the threat was real. Decked out in a dark outfit and matching cloak, he was the epitome of the intimidating gentleman, save for one item. Her rule-breaking lover, his neck was free of a constraining cravat. She could not help but smile inside as she let her gaze slide over the strong column of his tanned throat. Hot pulses of lust stirred below her waist. Ledi realized her anger had dissipated while she took in the sight of the man she loved.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Evann’s fat greedy hands had touched all they had. Ruined everything. Their father hadn’t been smart enough to make the proper arrangements to prevent any travesties if they occurred like the ones Evann had committed from happening. Now, broke, near destitute, the count was her last and only hope.
He was but one man. He beat the other alternative. Her becoming one of Madame Duvay’s or Madame Pentaks’s girls. The thought of knocking on either of the madams’ doors and entertaining the many men there made her shudder. She was still offering herself, but it would be to just one man.
A few years older than herself but not by much. Probably just barely over thirty. The light scruff covering his jaw told her he’d not shaved in a day or more. Striking features suppressed her next breath. She was stunned to be left breathless at the sight of the half-naked barely decent man before her.
A straight nose, dark, soft brown thick brows, slanted nicely over sharp deep-set slate-blue, penetrating eyes. Dark brown hair, unfashionably long and thick, yet she could not imagine any other cut on him. It suited him perfectly.
Ledi’s pulse quickened when he stopped less than an arms’ length in front of her.
The mere size of him, by god, she was unaware that her gaze traveled all over him, everywhere.
Muscles, lean and tanned skin, rippled and moved when he did. Shoulders she could not span with two hands splayed wide. A sculpted chest, very little hair, rosy nipples, a narrow waist and dark hairs that went down below the lip of his unbuttoned breeches. A shocking feeling stirred inside her.
The sight of him made her mouth suddenly dry. She wished she had something to hold onto and cursed the fact that she’d left her bloody reticule on the small settee behind her.
Her brother possessed not a single lick of pride. His words were true, yes, but Evann was still her brother. It was a different thing that she thought that way about him. Not others. “I ask that you to refrain from any further disparaging remarks where my brother is concerned. You only know the amount he owes you. Not who he is.”
An arched brow over slate-blue eyes that gleamed with something Ledi could not name, scrutinized her. Something mysterious lurked there and she knew she’d stuck a nerve.
“It is indeed the how he arrived to that amount that which tells me all I need to know about your brother’s character, Ledi. Moreover, the fact that you sit here before me with this scintillating, albeit preposterous, illicit bargain or deal—whatever you wish to call it, imparts it all. Nevertheless, I do intend to honor everything in full.
“As to your tender, sisterly protective nature you seem to hold for the selfish wastrel, and seeing clearly how apparently blind you are to his wrongdoings, I give you my word of honor that I will do my utmost best to refrain from speaking about him heretofore.”
Ledi was so angry she could spit at his cutting words. Somehow he’d just mockingly insulted her and in such a condescending way. Then in the next breath, she calmed. What she had come here for—the deal warranted no respect.
Ledi blinked a few times to scare off her tears. Respect had fled the moment she’d stepped inside his home.
Ledi watched him pleasure the widow Tambers as she’s forced to watch
She had no right to be jealous. This is what the devil man did. It was who he was. She’d know all this when she had made the decision to come here that night which seemed so long ago.
Then by god, why did it anger her so?
Like sopping rags soaked in burning lantern oil, hot jealousy coiled around her from the tip of her toes to her crown. So did a strange desire take hold of her body.
Liquid heat not only pooled inside her belly but between her thighs as she was forced to continue watching the beautifully and perfectly shaped redhead bend over the couch, skirts pushed up as Harker pleasured her with his hand or whatever the hell he was doing between her legs.
His large frame blocked her view. He’d not yet removed a stitch of his own clothing, but his arm was moving at a fast, steady and controlled teasing pace that caused the breath to constrict inside her chest.
That his hot searing gaze remained locked on hers across the room to where she stood behind the thin drapes, made Ledi feel even more insanely full of white-hot wicked desire. Shame seared her cheeks for being excited at the act playing out before h
er.
The woman’s soft moans of ecstasy increased in tempo, as did Ledi’s own breathing. She wanted to tear her gaze away from the blasted man but even through the gossamer of the curtains, she could not and could clearly read the command in those darkened passionate slate-blue depths.
Ledi swallowed back a strangled cry. It was as if he were performing the erotic act on her though he touched another. He knew it, she sensed. He damn well knew what he was doing and how it would affect her body.
The widow began to writhe on the couch. The edges of her fine petticoats she now fumbled and gripped to shove against her wet open mouth to stifle her loud escalating moans of pleasure, she stood on tip of her slippers.
As Ledi’s body clenched and unclenched, her thighs rubbed together, her eyes widened, her body trembling and she fisted her own hands in the drapes, the rings at the top across the thick bar made a noise in resistance. A hard pull would bring the beautiful wine-red drapes crashing down all around her. What would he do then?
She was so hot. So angry. So jealous. So mad with desire for him even though he’d dared to carry out such a crude act in front of her. Through unshed tears, Ledi watched as it happened.
The red-haired widow arched her slender back; her deep guttural groan of ecstasy muffled against her petticoats spoke loudly of her release. Ledi tensed. Pain struck her heart, it was the closest she could describe the feeling.
Not once during it all, did Harker take his gaze from hers as he helped the satisfied and breathless widow straighten her skirts and right herself. Tears blurred Ledi’s vision.
“That, my dear, Count, was almost as delicious as having you inside me,” the widow purred in a heavy breathless tone. Her hand reached up to caress his cheek. Ledi tightened her fingers in the drapes as if it would in someway ease the itch to slap the woman. “You always know how to make a woman scream with pleasure even with that crude looking thing.”
