“The settee it is then.”
“Oh, do ask me something else,” she said on a wisp of air, her fingers about to send him round the bend—or to straight Bedlam. “Hurry!”
And she called him impatient?
Zeus paused, reflecting. There remained so much still to be asked, discussed…discovered. But her breathy encouragement and the lure of tasting her proved too great a temptation. Time enough to tame his mind’s curiosity later. For now, he needed to explore the rest of her body—with his own.
“Shall I demonstrate my command of my delightful tongue?” he queried as calmly as possible, in view of how said tongue was practically frothing at the remembered taste of her mouth, at the thought of sampling her intimate charms, those honeyed secrets shielded betwixt her thighs. “I confess a need to do so, to see if you find it pleasing as well.”
Her stroking fingers skidded to a halt…brow furrowed. “You want to entertain me with witty repartée—now?”
Laughing more than any man in his position had a right to—Who knew lovemaking could be so refreshing?—Zeus gingerly lifted her off his lap. Sliding her back onto the settee, he guided her down with a gentle push to her shoulder.
She dug her elbows into the cushion and propped herself upright, indignation firing her gaze. “Where’s the humor, pray? For I fear ’tis me and my ignorance you find merits mock—”
“No you don’t!” Splaying her resisting arms wide so he could lean forward and steal a kiss—then slowly steal his way toward her breasts, Zeus chided, “Don’t turn stiff on me now.”
Tugging the shift out of his way, he winced when several threads snapped, but he didn’t stop, not until one finger tapped upon a bare nipple.
“But—” Eyelids fluttering, her protests dwindled as the tiny nub grew taut, firm beneath his touch. “But…”
“Show some trust, my lady. Trust that I know what I’m doing. You owe me that, wouldn’t you say?” Rotating his thumb over the beaded tip, he held her gaze. “Have I not answered every blasted question you’ve lobbed my way? Allowed my pride to be shredded fulfilling your bedeviling requirements? Suffered Hastings’ judgment, that of Miss Hales’, and ultimately your own? Choked down a scone not fit for starving swine?”
“What?”
Overriding her confused murmur, he demanded, “Did I not disrobe without demure—”
“Hardly without demure!” Despite her rejoinder, her mild pout at his litany of valid complaints, her back arched, thrusting her entire breast toward him.
“Very good, my lady.”
“What is?” she grumped, her diffident gaze bouncing from her distended nipple to his chest to a point somewhere over his head. “That I weakly allow myself to be mocked?”
“Nay, never that.” He settled his broad palm across the pliable mound of her breast, and damned if the firm tissue didn’t leap into his touch as if it belonged there.
“That I’m too curious to learn what else you may show me I fail to depend upon pride to see me strong and instead…” Once again, she cut her gaze to his. “Instead I begin to depend on you?”
“Mayhap I find the idea of you depending upon me satisfying in the extreme.” Exhaling audibly with a measure of contentment he’d never thought to feel today of all days, Zeus ensured her splinted leg was fully supported then he angled the other to hang off the settee, widening her thighs. He climbed into the vee he’d created between those pale, creamy limbs, a broad smile lifting his cheeks. A moment later it was wiped clear when his tongue sought the destination his hand had claimed seconds ago—her plump little breast.
“Mr. Tanner!” she gasp-moaned.
He hollowed his cheeks and sucked sharply, allowing his tongue to bedevil the knot of nipple now held snugly between his teeth.
“Mr. Tanner…”
This time it was a sigh. One of capitulation, of complete and utter sexual surrender. And Zeus couldn’t have been more pleased.
Until she added, more than a little primly for their current circumstances and his liking, “My body may melt under your torrid tutelage, but I have yet to be granted an accounting of precisely why you deem it necessary to laugh at me.”
To punish her for thinking so—especially when his mouth was so very delightfully occupied, Zeus drew deeply on her flesh, taking all he could inside the hot cavern of his mouth. He lashed at the tip of her breast with his tongue. “You horrid, haughty man,” she accused, winding her fingers through his hair, “to do such wicked things…and so splendidly!”
Grinning inside, from ears to erection, Zeus glanced up. While entertaining his eyes with her flushed and piqued features, his mouth with her breast, and his mind with all the bawdy bedchamber antics they’d share in years to come, he stripped to skin. Blindly, he rid himself of his boots—nearly wrenching his ankles off in his haste—then he ripped clear through one of his woolen stockings until they too were gone and he could finally dispense with his drawers and banish his buckskins to the floor.
“What is the jest, you wonder?” He spoke around her nipple, doing his best to distract her, unwilling to confess it was her naïveté he found so heartening, so joyful. Worried she might not see those qualities the same way he did. “That a man such as I could find exactly what he’s been searching for all his life, and so very close to home.”
“I do not—” When he bundled her shift out of the way and brought one hand to the juncture of her thighs, she broke off. When he fumbled open her legs to touch her honeyed center, she gasped and came up off the settee. “Do not take your meaning.”
After another upward sweep of his fingers through her damp curls, another sharp pull on her breast, he released the succulent treat and rimmed the puckered areola with his tongue before pledging, “You shall, and soon. Of that I promise.” Her womanly scent continued to entice him downward, beckoning him to take further liberties.
Answering the call, his moistened fingertips parted the swollen folds. Her damp heat coated his wandering fingers. Captured him completely. “Have you any doubts, my lady? If so, you’d best speak them now.”
He meant about marrying him, because in truth, if he tasted her beyond what he’d done so far, she would be his wife.
So when she answered, “Nay, no doubts, Zeus. I want you to show me passion. Every bit of it,” using his name, he knew she’d be his forever. That they’d miraculously captured each other.
“But show me your form first,” she challenged when he pressed deeper toward her core. “Now that you’re fully revealed.”
Realizing his exploring fingers had gone a little too far too quickly, Zeus tamped down his own urges and ordered his passion-coated fingers to retreat. Coiling them into a fist, he hiked off her.
“Stay close,” she said when he started to step back.
“Did you not see enough earlier?”
“Nay.” Then softer, “I may never see enough.”
So he halted at the edge of the settee, her heartfelt sigh caressing his ears. Rather pleased with his new position, he stared at one of her dainty feet, the one sans splint and bindings, while giving her time to admire him (he hoped).
Zeus found himself grinning. Even her toes were ladylike.
He swore he could feel her gaze drift along his nude body like a tangible touch. Her silent perusal continued until the tension stretched taut between them.
In his bid to grant her as much time as she needed, Zeus sought a distraction and found one fortuitously close by. Lifting her uninjured foot with his open hand, he cradled it and bent to feather light kisses over her toes. When a tentative swipe of his tongue caused her to squirm, knowing there’d be plenty of time for more attention here after they said their vows, Zeus moved on, applying himself to licking a decisive path over the top of her foot, past her trim ankle, over her knee, and up to her thigh where the hem of her shift bumped his nose.
God, he had to taste her. Freely—without any encumbrance between them. “By God, woman, I hope you’ve seen enough because my patience is
—”
“About to be rewarded. Come back.”
As he replaced her foot on the cushion, with a damnable arm that shook he couldn’t help but notice, Zeus marveled at the set of circumstances that had landed him here, within reach of everything he’d never known he needed. Feeling lighter inside than any man had a right to, he climbed onto the settee between her legs, flattered by her shy, somehow sultry smile. Welcomed by her outstretched arms. “Miss me?”
“You and everything you’re teaching me.” After that admission, she mmm’d her approval when he snugged his groin at her mons. On top of the shift.
Zeus fingered the filmy cotton—the only item of clothing yet to be discarded—and met her inquisitive eyes, scouring his mind for another question she could refuse to answer. “Why did you not learn to read after Letheridge kicked off?”
It was the wrong thing to ask.
“I meant to—truly, I did!” she stammered, frowning and shoving him away in an effort to sit upright.
Zeus knew he’d inadvertently found her Achilles. Dammit, why couldn’t he have just continued kissing her ankle and kept his chops shut?
Not permitting her to gain distance from him, Zeus kept his heavy body anchored over hers. He attempted to soothe the legs that’d tensed beneath him, unfurling the fist full of her nectar he’d gathered like a prize so he could graze one slickened finger over her thighs. Her scent nearly did him in. “Never mind that now—”
“I did! It’s just that with the funeral and his creditors flooding in before his corpse was cold and then the fire—”
“Shhhh, it’s over now.” Zeus stilled his foray, endeavored to do the same with her rising panic. “I’ll take care of the creditors. Put your mind at rest on that front.”
She clutched at his arms as though she was sinking in quicksand and trusted him to pull her out. “But I meant to, I did! Everything changed so precipitously after the house burnt, and—and—”
“Tell me of it, sweetheart. What fire?” Mayhap if she unburdened the words tripping her tongue, they could return to setting her settee on fire with their own carnal conflagration. “What burnt?”
She hugged him closer, pulling him down and burrowing her face into his neck. “’Twas such a tragic loss.” She sniffed. “Amherst was so very lovely, my favorite of all his properties.”
Her words doused him with ice. “Burned? Amherst?” Zeus went rigid, saying it. Then he sought comfort by wrapping both arms around her and squeezing her tighter, settling himself more deeply against her. “Amherst?” he whispered hoarsely. “It’s…gone?”
Chapter Seven
Endearments, Confessions & Completion
The nod of her silky head against the underside of his chin confirmed the worst. “Up in billowing clouds of black smoke that smoldered for days.” She turned her face to his, pushed on his shoulders until she could snare his gaze. “Why? Do you know it?”
“I…” He…what? What could he tell her? That his reason for being there no longer existed? That his sole ambition these last years was gone? Turned to nothing more than dusty embers blown into oblivion by the first gust of wind.
Then why, he pondered as he stared into her grief-shadowed eyes then lower at her lips, parted and plumped by his kisses, did it not feel as though his very dreams followed the scattered ash? Why was he not, even now, retreating from her in a fury? Striding quickly away while he cursed the time wasted? The loss of the ultimate goal that had guided his every action for over a decade?
He should leave, allow her the opportunity to marry a better man than he. Maybe that seafaring one she’d sent on his way. A man not consumed with seeking vengeance against a father long dead.
But he couldn’t make his feet move toward the door. Couldn’t stop himself from brushing his fingers over the tussled strands of red-gold framing her concerned face. Couldn’t stop his thighs from wedging themselves more solidly along hers.
“Mr. Tanner?” Her searching fingers feathered over his jaw. “Zeus? What is it? What has you looking so lost?”
Did he tell her? Admit the lure, until meeting her, was not the bounty she offered—that of herself—but lands he not only coveted but loathed? Or did he stay mute? Give her the taste of passion—just a taste, mind—she craved, and then leave, as a true “gentleman” should?
Zeus swore harshly. A true gentleman wouldn’t consider tasting anything beyond what he’d already stolen. He’d settle for licking his fingers clean on the way out and never look back.
Well, hell. As though defying his very thoughts, those bound-to-be-tasty fingers opened and after smearing her essence across his chest, rose to entrench themselves against her scalp,. And why shouldn’t they? A real gentleman would never have compromised her to this state to begin with.
Guilt crashed down on him.
A bastard might, by some miraculous stroke of fortune, marry a lady, but that wouldn’t change his stripes. Wouldn’t make a gallant gentleman out of a churlish cur’s seed.
Before he could rationalize it further, mayhap talk himself out of the altruistic action, Zeus wrenched his head from her comforting hold and blurted, “Forgive me, my lady. I must go.” He angled backward, distancing his torso from hers, determined to leave, to do right. “I cannot marry you!”
Nails pierced the skin of his shoulders even as she wound her strong leg around both of his. “No! What are you saying? Leaving? You cannot—”
“I came here for Amherst, not for you.” The weight of regret made him nearly shout at her. “I don’t deserve you!”
“Don’t deserve…?” It was a ragged sigh. But her leg only gripped him tighter, the heat of their melded bare skin burning a path to his soul, forcing the confession to erupt like steam trapped too long.
“I’m Letheridge’s bastard! His damnable son!” And with that admission, though he’d once sworn he’d make any sacrifice, surrender anything necessary to regain his questionable birthright, Zeus realized he wasn’t willing to heap more lies upon the ones already uttered, wasn’t willing to sacrifice Juliet. Wouldn’t use additional duplicity nor her own inexperience to do it. “You deserve someone better! Someone forthright. Someone…else.”
“Leth’s…boy?” Said as though simply the act of comprehending his statement took great strength.
“His bastard.” Zeus nearly spat at her, making it clear as shattered crystal. He would have no more falsehoods between them.
He expected her to throw him off, to scurry away. To curse him for the deceitful, deceptive rogue he was.
Zeus was confident he’d get over losing her. In another decade. Or ten.
But instead of screeching at him to remove his filthy person from her sight and her life, Juliet wound her arms savagely round his neck. Nearly cut off his air.
But who needed to breathe when she hadn’t cast him out? At least not yet…
Zeus clutched her as fiercely as he could. And prayed. For the fortitude to leave or for her forgiveness to stay, he knew not which.
He couldn’t go! Juliet’s mind screamed. Not this beautiful man with his impertinently insightful replies.
Discounting the wretch who caught her out due to an untimely dust mote and resulting sneeze, not a single one of the other applicants had seen through the ruse, surmising she watched from beyond the shielded corner, once she’d had the forethought to retreat there after the Mongrel Misadventure.
None of them had realized she created the crewel-worked “masterpiece”, save Mr. Tanner. While some had told her the truth during questioning and not simply what they thought she wanted to hear, none had done so with his aplomb. With confidence bordering on arrogance.
And certainly none drew her as a magnet, their very person energizing hers in such a way that when she neared them, parts of her came alive for the very first time in her life.
And now he sought to desert her? Over nothing more than his unfortunate circumstance of birth? “Nay, you cannot! Not if that is your only reason for thinking to do so.”
“But Lecherous Letheridge…” She thought he mumbled rotten, hateful father and hated, useless son. Then clearly, “I should go. Must go. For you. For—”
“No!” She planted hungry kisses on his mouth to still the ongoing protests. Then over his cheek, his ear. “I don’t care! It does not matter who sired you! Not to me.”
He’d gone rigid as marble above her.
She couldn’t stop touching him, brushing her lips across his stubbled jaw. “You’re better than all of them, all of them I say.”
When he attempted to pull away again, she shrilled, “Applicant number six smoked here. In my sitting room! After I expressly asked him not to.”
“Stave off tempting me, woman!” He hurled the words at her, glaring fiercely.
Juliet glared right back. “Then don’t entertain the notion of abandoning me!”
“Ah, God,” he said hoarsely. “Do you not see? Another man would have more experience with crops and sheep, with—”
The only thing she saw was how empty and barren the future stretched out before her if he wasn’t in it. Zeus James Tanner. No one else could be as perfect for her as he. And Juliet was determined to prove it. “Brute twelve spilled copious amounts of tea down his cravat and didn’t even notice!”
“Juliet…” Zeus dropped his head to her shoulder, and she sensed him weakening.
“He did! Drank like a gluttonous goat!”
“No surprise there,” he muttered against her neck, “if you fed him those briny scones of torture!”
That was the second or third time he’d mentioned such a thing.
From beneath his solid presence, Juliet extended one arm and snatched a bite from a scone populating the bottom of the tray. A couple of the ones above it sported “icing” from Zeus’ fascinating, earthy display earlier.
Nibbling, she forced herself to shrug beneath the strangely tantalizing weight of his limbs tangled with hers. “Hmmm. It is rather salty.”
“Salty?” A swift jerk of his head and he saw what she was doing. “Confound it! You can’t eat that!”
Lady Scandal Page 10
