“…scoundrel,” she finished.
He blinked. “I’m sorry?”
She shook her head. “Oh—I—nothing. I was just…nothing.”
“Close the door, will you?” he asked.
She looked behind her at the door. Her only remaining bastion against whatever might happen once they were alone. She turned back and found he had taken a step toward her.
“If we’re going to have a private conversation, it would be best,” he said, his tone soothing. Hypnotic, almost. She found herself reaching back and doing as he’d asked.
When the door clicked behind her, she leaned against it. “I-I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, searching for normalcy. For calm. “I had to redress myself and it took longer than I thought it would.”
He moved closer and suddenly she felt his heat. In the dim library, in the quiet, in the private where no one knew they were together, everything felt close and intimate. She swallowed hard as she looked up into his face.
“I’m glad you came,” he said, his voice rough.
She felt off kilter so close to him, so she stepped around him into the room and looked around. “Oh, it’s beautiful,” she breathed as she peered up at the high bookshelves lined with books in spines of rainbow colors. They seemed to stretch forever.
“I agree,” he said, his presence right at her back again. “I have always loved this room.”
“Have you read all the books?” she teased as she looked at him over her shoulder.
She expected him to wave off the idea of sitting to read for hours, but he instead looked up at the shelves. “Almost,” he said. “There are still some tomes on minute farming techniques that are slow reading, indeed.”
She spun around to face him. “You must be joking. You really read all these books? You?”
He arched a brow. “Did you believe I couldn’t read? My professors would be very cross.”
She shook her head. “Of course I thought you could read. I just never pictured a man like you as wanting to beyond a daily paper and perhaps a pamphlet on horse races.”
“A man like me,” he repeated. “What sort of ideas do you have about me, Emma Liston?”
She pressed her lips together. Now that she’d bumbled out such foolishness out loud, she didn’t want to say more. Not with him standing so close.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Yes you do. Go on, tell me.” He folded his arms, eyebrows lifted, waiting.
She huffed out her breath. “I suppose I have always seen you as a…golden child. You can do no wrong, everyone loves you, you’ve never had to work for anything. Obviously you are a decent sort or you wouldn’t have such leeway, but I admit you never struck me as a…studious person.”
“A golden child who never had to work for anything,” he repeated. “You almost couldn’t have gotten it more wrong.” He smiled, but it wasn’t like his earlier expressions at the ball. This was tight and humorless. Pained.
“I’m…sorry,” she said softly. “I do not like to be judged by others and I see that I did just that to you. It wasn’t fair.”
His expression softened a fraction and he reached out to take her hand. Neither of them wore gloves, so just like in the garden his skin brushed hers, and she barely held back a shuddering sigh of pleasure at the sensation.
“Apology accepted,” he said softly. “And I hope you’ll find I’m full of surprises the longer we know each other.”
He was leaning closer now and her heart began to pound. She felt hot and cold all at once. This was out of control.
She jerked back a step and stammered, “T-terms. We were meant to discuss terms of our agreement. What were they?”
He watched her for a beat and then nodded. “Quite right. Straight to business.” He motioned toward two chairs set toward the fire. She took one, smoothing her skirts around her reflexively as she watched him take his own.
“What did you have in mind?” she asked.
He glanced at her. “We’ll have to be careful, of course. Our courtship cannot seem too serious or else it will serve neither of us. But we will chat in front of others, flirtation is the name of the game.”
She shifted. “I’m afraid I’m not very well versed in flirtation.”
He leaned in. “No? Why is that?”
“I-I’ve never had need for it, I suppose. No one ever…wanted me.”
“I very much doubt that,” he said, a gravelly tone to his voice that made her toes curl in her slippers. “But flirtation is not difficult. You smile, you laugh, perhaps you make an effort to touch me.”
“Touch you?” she repeated, her errant mind flying back to their earlier kiss.
“Not intimately,” he said slowly. “I meant a touch on the arm. On the hand. While we’re talking.”
She shivered. “I can…try.”
“Touching me makes you nervous?” he asked.
She felt blood rushing to her cheeks and reached up to cover them with her cool hands. “Yes,” she admitted when it was clear he expected an answer. “Yes, it makes me nervous.”
“Why?” he asked.
She bent her head. So many inappropriate answers swirled through her mind. None of them were something she could say out loud. Not to him. God, not to anyone.
He slid forward on his chair and reached out. He touched her chin and forced her to look at him. “Are you nervous because we kissed?”
She nodded. “No one has ever…done that before. And I…I just…”
His lips pressed together and he looked displeased. Her heart leapt. Probably she had entirely mucked this up. He would think her an idiot now and walk away. That was probably for the best, despite how he believed he could help her. But for the best or not, she found she didn’t want him to reject her.
“You are so innocent,” he said softly. “So sheltered.”
She blinked as he slowly dropped to his knees on the fancy rug before the fire and inched over to her. He was so tall that even up on his knees he was even with her face as she sat in the chair. He moved in, placing one hand on either armrest, and lifted up.
Their lips were now a hair apart and she began to shake. “What are you doing?”
“Perhaps you need help in more than just garnering attention,” he whispered. “Fear is a killer, Emma. It will destroy what you want faster than any other thing. I don’t want you to be afraid of me. Of the unknown. Of…this…”
He braced up, and his lips brushed hers for the second time in just a few hours. It was less surprising to her now. She found her arms folding around his neck and her mouth opening to him. He leaned in, and she met him halfway, tangling her tongue with his as he pressed her back in the chair and kissed her like he was a starving man and she was all the food in the world.
“You’re a natural,” he groaned against her mouth. “Made for pleasure.”
She didn’t really understand what he meant, but she shivered at his words nonetheless. Pleasure—oh, there was so much of that. She ached for more in the most outrageous places. Like in her hard nipples, low in her stomach, between her legs.
He drew back and met her stare. His was wide and a bit wild. Like he was battling a beast within himself. One that wanted something she didn’t truly understand, but she found herself leaning toward him. Toward it.
She caught the back of his neck and drew him to her, brushing her lips to his. He made a harsh sound in his throat and then he devoured her, pinning her to the chair as he crushed her hard against him and spiraled her into surrender once more.
Chapter Nine
James pressed hard against Emma’s softness, her quiet mewls of pleasure stoking a fire in him that he hadn’t felt in…well, a very long time. He was no monk—he took his pleasure and had had mistresses over the years. None had ever inspired such lust as that which burned in him now. And he had no idea why.
Was it because Emma was so innocent? Because she was so different from the women he normal
ly pursued? He had no idea, but he burned to touch her, to brand her, to take her.
But there could be none of that. Fake courtships and stolen kisses were one thing. Once he breached her, there would be no going back. Of course, that didn’t mean they couldn’t find pleasure.
He leaned back and looked into her face. Her eyes were shut, her lips shiny and full, her breath short as she panted beneath him. Oh, how he wanted to make her shatter. To wake her to a world he doubted she’d ever imagined.
“I want to touch you, Emma,” he whispered.
Her eyes flew open, and the blue-green was so soft and beautiful as she stared up at him through the dark. “Touch me? Aren’t you already touching me?”
He held back a groan. God damn but that sweetness, that innocence, was like catnip to him. His need to make her come multiplied.
“Not like I want to be,” he said, his voice harsh in the quiet. “I want to touch you…here.”
As he said the words he dragged his hand down her body and pressed between her legs, gathering the fabric of her gown there. She hissed out a sound of surprise and lifted her hips against him.
“I don’t…I haven’t…I want…”
“What do you want?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Her gaze snagged his, wide and wild. “I don’t know, James. I just feel…full. Like I’m going to burst.”
“I can make it better,” he assured her as he caught the edge of her skirt and pushed it up. He held her gaze as he did it, watching her. He would stop if he had to. If she wanted him to. No matter how impossible that seemed.
But she didn’t ask. She just stared at his ever-rising hand lifting her skirt inch by inch. He slipped his fingers beneath the hem when he got it to her knees and touched her bare legs.
“James!” she cried out, her hands coming to cover his through her skirt.
“I can make it better,” he repeated as he leaned in and kissed her again.
She sank back, her hands drawing him close, her tongue tangling with his. He slid his hand up over her knee, to her naked thighs, and finally he found her drawers. They were silky and soft, but he wanted something better to touch. Something sweeter.
He found the narrow slit in the fabric and parted it, pushing his hand in to where she was exquisitely hot and already wet. He could feel that wetness on her thighs.
He pulled away from the kiss and stared down at her as he smoothed his fingers across her entrance. She shivered at the touch and stared up at him with wild eyes.
“This won’t ruin you,” he promised, though in his heart that was exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to spread her legs wide and slide inside of her, he wanted to claim her until she trembled beneath him, until he found his fill of her.
But that wasn’t right. Neither was what he was doing at present, but at least it wouldn’t destroy her.
He pressed her outer folds open, his fingers slipping along her slick entrance. She moaned out a soft sound of pleasure as her hips jolted up against him and forced his fingers across her once again.
“What is this?” she whispered, her cheeks flaming.
“Pleasure,” he managed to ground out past clenched teeth. “This is pleasure, Emma.”
He smoothed his fingers along her again and again, then pressed lightly on her clitoris. She dug her fingernails into the chair arms, her eyes widening as she gasped out his name.
Hearing it said in pleasure was almost enough to take him over the edge. He leaned in and kissed her again, sucking her tongue as he worked at her, drawing her to lift against him, to find the release he could feel trembling through her.
And at last she found it. He felt her body tense against him as she cried out softly. Her hips lifted, her body thrashed and she gave over her orgasm in quick, focused waves.
When she had come through the crisis, he withdrew his hand from her, sliding her skirts down properly as he reluctantly got to his feet and stepped away from her.
She stood immediately, her face pale and her eyes wide as she stared at him. Her lips parted and closed, and he could see her fighting with something to say. But before she could do it, the door to the library swung open.
They both turned toward it and watched as the Duke of Sheffield entered the room. As Baldwin saw them standing together in the middle of the library, in the middle of the night, he came to a sharp halt.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, his gaze sliding to James in question. “I didn’t realize anyone else was up at this hour.”
Emma said nothing—she just gave James a horrified look and fled the room, her cheeks flaming and her steps unsteady as she flew past Sheffield without so much as a side glance. James watched her go, wanting so much to reach out to her, to tell her it was all right, that she hadn’t done anything wrong. But he couldn’t.
He glared at Sheffield as he softly shut the door behind him. “Good timing.”
Sheffield threw up his hands. “I apologize. Though I’m not sure how I was to know you were in the library with…” He glanced over his shoulder. “With Emma Liston.”
James rubbed a hand over his face. “By the way you say her name, I assume Roseford, Simon and Graham have told you all about my plans with her.”
“Such gossip is bound to travel fast in our group, especially if we’re all under one roof. Brighthollow and I had a long talk about it with Roseford earlier today.”
“God,” James muttered, rolling his head back. “And what did the rooster society decide?”
“That you’re an idiot to come up with such a plan,” Sheffield laughed. “But you know Brighthollow and Roseford are both incredibly opposed to marriage. Probably more than even you are. So they aren’t the best judges of what is right.”
James looked at Sheffield. He’d always liked Baldwin. Of their group, he was the quietest, the one who kept his problems close to the vest. Simon and Graham were so close to James, and Baldwin was right that Roseford and Brighthollow were the least likely to give him any advice except to run screaming from Emma lest he get caught in some kind of trap.
But in this moment, he needed advice. Good advice from someone less involved and less biased. Because what had happened a few moments before with Emma was entirely out of control. It hadn’t had a damn thing to do with a plan or helping her or helping himself. He’d just wanted to touch her, and he’d done so without a thought to the consequences or the rules or anything except how he wanted to see her face when she came.
She had not disappointed. Her release had been powerful and erotic and infinitely sweet. But it muddied the waters of his plan a great deal.
“I don’t know what I want from her,” he admitted softly.
Sheffield hesitated a moment, then moved forward to motion him to sit. Once they both had, he leaned forward, draping his forearms over his knees, his face intense with concern and focused. “I thought this false courtship you’ve proposed was just a ruse to help you both. Though I certainly got a sense there was more going on between you when I entered the library.”
James shook his head. “I…she isn’t the kind of woman who normally catches my eye, and yet there is something about her that draws me in. Tonight I…I may have gone a bit too far.”
“How far?” Sheffield asked softly.
“Not so far as too ruin her, too far to be gentlemanly,” he said slowly. “I know I can tell you this and not have you say anything.”
“I won’t say a word to anyone,” Sheffield reassured him. “Though I admit I’m surprised. You have never made a move that didn’t seem calculated.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment,” James said. “But I’m also not certain it is wrong. Though I know my reputation can be a bit wild, I do actually think through most of my actions. Especially the ones that will affect others. Tonight, I didn’t think. And perhaps that means I should back away from Emma. For both our sakes.”
He said those words and his chest hurt with the thoug
ht. He pushed to his feet and walked away from his friend to the window, where he stared out at the darkness with unseeing eyes.
“What has changed since you first came up with this idea to help her?” Sheffield asked after a few seconds of silence had passed.
James turned back. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, has Miss Liston’s position increased in any way?”
James shrugged. “The little bit of extra attention I’ve paid toward her so far has seemed to help her a bit, but no. She is still in the same position.”
“And has her family come into more money or any other thing that might give her more value in the eyes of some?” Sheffield pressed.
“No, of course not,” James said. “What are you getting at?”
“We both know that this plan of yours is more beneficial to Miss Liston than it is to you.” Sheffield folded his arms across his chest. “You may pretend not to care, but I recognize that you want to help her. And that is not the worst impulse. Many people have…” He hesitated. “Have things that happen that are not in their control. Things that damage them. And good people should help. So if you are asking me what I think you should do, I think helping the young woman is still the right thing to do.”
James stared at Sheffield. No one had spoken to him about his plan in those terms. If he abandoned Emma now, just because he was uncomfortable with the desire she inspired in him, was it being fair to her? After all, he had dragged her into this idea. She never would have asked to be in this position without his prodding.
“I know you are right,” he said at last.
Sheffield smiled, and there was some relief to his expression. As if he were truly invested in the idea of James helping Emma. James looked at his friend more closely.
“Why are you up so late?” he asked.
Sheffield shifted. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “And I thought a book might help.”
The Daring Duke Page 9
