A Measure of Deceit

by Jess Michaels

  She melted into his kiss, letting him probe her mouth gently even as he continued his torture of her sensitive breasts. Her hips began to lift in time to the movement of his fingers and her sex clenched against the nothingness.

  “My God, you are sweet,” he panted as he drew away from her. “And you do test a man.”

  “I test you?” she panted, lifting against his still-teasing fingers. “I believe you may have that backward.”

  “Hmmm.” She could hear the smile in his voice even if she couldn’t see him, and pictured him grinning down at her. “Let’s see if that is correct.”

  He moved away from her, down the length of her body, his hand cradling her flesh all the way until he cupped her sex gently. She gasped at the heat of his slick hand and dug her heels into the bed as deeply as she could to gain leverage to lift into him.

  “Does this test you?” he asked, tone all innocence even as he dragged his fingers across her entrance.

  The oil on them merged with her own juices and the heated result made her moan rather than respond with words.

  “And this?” he continued, pressing one finger into her sheath gently. Her body opened for him and she shuddered as he stroked into her lightly.

  “You know it does, you can see it does,” she replied.

  “And this?” He circled her clitoris with his thumb now, barely touching the little nub, not placing enough pressure to make her explode.

  “Please, Connor. What do I need to do, to say, to get what you know I want?” she said, shocked that she was begging. She had never begged anyone for anything.

  His fingers stilled and the teasing left his voice. “Tell me you are mine.”

  “I’m yours,” she said without hesitation, for it was far truer than he would ever know.

  “That only I do this to you,” he continued.

  “You are the only one who ever has, and likely the only one who ever will,” she admitted, straining against the bonds. “There is only you, Connor. Only you.”

  He said nothing, but removed his hand. Suddenly his weight was on her and his hard cock pressed against her entrance. With a grunt, he pushed himself deep inside her ready sheath and she screamed with relief at the breach. The sound seemed to drive him on, for he began to stroke inside her hard and fast, circling his hips and lifting her into his thrusts by cupping her backside.

  Her orgasm came swiftly and without warning, washing over her as wave after wave of intense pleasure finally gave her relief. She wailed out his name, clutching at the ties that bound her, thrashing her head against the pillow. The sensations were multiplied by the teasing that had preceded them and by the fact that she couldn’t see, couldn’t move, couldn’t control any part of the encounter.

  And still he drove into her further, continuing to thrust until the last shudder of her sheath subsided and she lay weak on the coverlet. He let out a guttural cry and withdrew.

  When he had spent, he collapsed over her, cradling her with a care and tenderness that brought renewed tears to her eyes and only strengthened the feelings she did not want to feel for him.

  Connor removed the ties from Grace’s wrists and gently stroked at the pink circles where her thrashing had rubbed the silk against her skin. They would fade shortly enough. He repeated the action on her ankles and then paused. She made no effort to remove her blindfold, despite being free to do so. She merely lay there, quietly waiting for him to do as he pleased.

  Excitement swelled in his chest at that fact. They had crossed a threshold now.

  He moved to lie beside her, and only then did he lift the blindfold. She blinked at the brightness of the room, then turned her gaze to his and smiled.

  She was so extraordinarily beautiful in that moment. Her blonde hair was tousled, her full lips red from kisses, but she was more glorious than he had ever seen her be on a dance floor or a parlor in her finest gown.

  Here she was…herself. At peace. Perhaps he was the only person to ever see her that way, and he recognized that gift.

  “Did you enjoy that?” he asked, knowing the answer even as he tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

  She smiled. “Are you angling for praise?”

  He laughed. “No. Only ensuring I didn’t go too far. I tested your boundaries today.”

  She hesitated, pondering that statement, and he held his breath as he awaited her answer. Finally she nodded.

  “You do test me. I have never been so incapable of governing my own body or guiding my destiny. But I never felt fear or worry, only excitement.” She bit her lip. “I-I trust you, Connor.”

  He stared at her, moved beyond expression by her unexpected admission. This was not a woman who gave such confidence easily and yet she gifted him with it.

  “I’m glad,” he said. “I think it is a requirement when one submits as I’ve asked you to do. After all, if you didn’t trust me, you would be forced to fear me. I could do anything to you—even harm you—when you are vulnerable. I must give you reason to hand yourself over to me.”

  “And you have,” she said softly. “Perhaps more than you know.”

  He tilted his head at the unexpected words, but before he could press her on them, she rushed to continue, “But what about me? Our relationship is disparate in that you have all the control and you have all the trust. I don’t seem to have earned any in return.”

  He pursed his lips. “Are you referring to last night when I refused to talk to you about my father?”

  She hesitated, but then nodded slowly.

  He sighed. “You must understand how difficult a topic that is.”

  She turned her face away. “I do.”

  He looked at her sharply. There was a flash of pain on her face that he’d never seen before. Pain he wished to explore, but that would be asking her to provide more information without parity. And, in truth, he had a strange urge to speak to her about his past.

  “You know I came to England when I was fourteen,” he started slowly, measuring each word before he said them out loud. It was odd how natural it was to share them with her when he’d never spoken them aloud to anyone before.

  She nodded. “You mentioned it the night we had supper at Isabel and Seth’s.”

  “They asked me then what inspired the move, and I avoided the topic.” He sighed. “With your help, if I recall, as you changed the subject.”

  She nodded. “You seemed uncomfortable.”

  “And your life is dedicated to saving others,” he said softly.

  Her lips parted. “I’m not sure that’s a fair statement.”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps not. But you were right—I wasn’t comfortable. You see, I left Scotland that year because my mother died of a fever.”

  Grace tensed beside him and her hand came out to cover his gently. “I’m so sorry.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and he could see his mother in his head. After so many years, her image was faded now. He couldn’t even fully recall if it was accurate.

  “Her name was Doreen Sheridan and I loved her deeply. She was very young when she bore me, and in a way she was my friend as much as my parent. I was also close to my grandparents and uncle. I wanted to stay in Scotland, but he…he wouldna let me.”

  He flinched as the Scot in him grew stronger at this topic.

  “Your father? He was from England and wanted to return?” she pressed softly.

  He shook his head. “No, he and my mother weren’t married. I had never even met the man, though I knew of his existence, I knew there was some financial assistance coming from him and his family. I even knew he was of influence in some way, but he—” He broke off, for the words were hard to say, even after all these years.

  Grace sat up, utterly unconscious of her nudity, and slid her arm through his. “Why did you come here, Connor?”

  He swallowed hard. “My father is the Marquis of Merewood.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Passion can reveal or disguise a great many things.”—The Ladies Book of
Pleasures

  Connor watched as Grace drew back, her eyes widening in surprise. “Yes, I-I know the man.”

  “Of course you do,” he said with a humorless laugh. “You all know each other.”

  Her expression pinched at that broad statement, but he ignored it, though he softened his tone.

  “He’s an important man on top of that. He came to Scotland when he was sixteen and an affair with a fifteen-year-old farm girl resulted in me. He was forced by some debt of honor to support us financially. When she died, he didn’t like the idea of people he didn’t know running around with his ‘property’, so he had me dragged to England where he put me up in the North Country with a family.”

  Grace was blinking wildly and Connor stared, for he realized she was trying to control her tears. For him.

  “And you had never met him before then, never spoken to him?” she asked, her voice wavering.

  “The first time I met him was when I arrived in Northumberland. I was angry. I was terrified—I didn’t know these people who had all but stolen me from my family. They dragged me out onto the front steps and a carriage pulled up with a seal on the door. He pulled the curtain aside and looked me up and down, like he was sizing up a horse.”

  He could see Merewood now, disdain clear on his face. At the time, the man had been just a little younger than Connor was now. A strange thought since Connor couldn’t picture looking at a child that way. Not to mention his own child.

  Of course, he couldn’t imagine behaving in any way similarly to his father.

  “Did he say anything?” Grace encouraged.

  Connor blinked, brought back to reality with her soft voice. “He sniffed, and he and the man who raised me talked for a moment. ‘Do your best.’ That’s all I heard. Do your best, as if I were already a lost cause.”

  She shook her head. “Who were these people?”

  “The Worthams. They were relations of servants of his. They were never unkind and Oswald Wortham showed me what he knew about printing presses and books, so I must say they raised me to be self-sufficient. But they did not love me. They didn’t try to love me or make me their son. They only did as he asked. They did their best.”

  “And tried to train the Scot out of you,” she added, her tone filled with contempt, but not for him.

  He shrugged. “Yes. On his orders or their own volition, I couldn’t say. I fought them for a while, but even at that age, I could see there was no point. If I ran away, they found me. If I refused to eat, I only ended up hungry. Ultimately, I gave in to what they demanded, he demanded.”

  She tilted her head. “But eventually you came of age and you could have left. Why not go home to Scotland and your family there?”

  “Trying to get rid of me?” he teased in an effort to lighten the mood for both of them.

  She touched his face. “Never.”

  He sighed, for the stroke of her fingers across his cheek soothed him. “When I came of age, I was summoned to London. This was not an invitation I could refuse. I went and was taken to Merewood’s home. He was married by then and had taken his late father’s more elevated title. His real family, his new family, were away in the country. He looked down that nose of his—the nose I unfortunately share—and asked me questions about myself and my life. I felt as though I was being interviewed for a position in the household staff. It was utterly humiliating.”

  “Is that what he was doing?” Grace asked, outrage in her every word.

  He shook his head. “No, I think he just wanted to see what sort of person I had become. Why, I have no idea, since he had no interest in that subject before that day. When it was over, he handed me a letter of credit with a substantial sum attached to it and told me if I ever tried to approach him, he would deny me. I left, free to do as I pleased, with a pocket brimming with pounds.”

  Grace shook her head. “And yet you stayed in England.”

  “I did return to Scotland, but my grandparents were dead.” He stopped, for his voice caught and he needed a breath to gather his emotions.

  “Connor,” she whispered.

  He swallowed hard. “No one had even told me. I just went home and they were gone, with only gravestones left behind. My uncle had departed shortly after they died; it was whispered he’d gone to the colonies. I had no family, no friends there. So I came back to London and decided that I would go into trade. Partly because I assumed my father would hate the idea and partly because I couldn’t picture becoming idle and living off the interest from a trust of a man I hate.”

  He looked down into her face and found her watching him so closely that he actually shifted.

  “And now you know the worst of it. Now you know all my secrets.” He smiled, but it was a mask of an expression, meant to soften what he’d told her, make it less impactful.

  She reached up to touch his face. “Have you talked to Merewood since that day, what…ten years ago?”

  “Close to fourteen, though I appreciate you making me younger than my years,” he corrected. “He passed me on the street once when I had a meeting at one of those ridiculous clubs, but he was with others, so he didn’t acknowledge me. And when the Lady’s book came out, he sent me a very stern missive about my inappropriateness, but otherwise, no.”

  She smiled for the first time since he’d begun talking. “You seem pleased with yourself that he didn’t like the book.”

  “I used his money to publish it and he knew it.” Connor’s grin broadened. “Oh, how he hated that. But he couldn’t get the money back without causing a scene that would make it obvious who I was. I ignored his letter, which I’m certain also drove him mad.”

  She touched his cheek again, spreading her fingers across his skin.

  “You are flippant about it,” she said quietly. “But do you want to see him? Especially now that you are in Society and could so easily do it?”

  Connor pondered the question. “I cannot pretend that I haven’t looked for him from time to time in ballrooms or parties. But as for what I would do if I encountered him…I don’t know.”

  “I understand that,” she whispered, and there again was that flash of pain, of openness that she so rarely presented, even to him, even after everything else she had given.

  It was gone before he could question her about it, and she removed her hand from his face and got to her feet. She swept up a robe hung on her wardrobe and wrapped it around herself as she paced the length of the room.

  “If you did wish to see him, I could arrange it.”

  He sat bolt upright and stared at her. “What?”

  She stopped walking and looked at him. “As you said, all of us ridiculous members of the ton know each other.”

  He flinched, for the tone seemed harsh and lumped her in where he knew she didn’t belong. It was such an old habit to dismiss their group as a whole.

  “Grace—”

  She cut him off. “Oh, Connor, we are all ridiculous. Let’s not waste time talking about it. I’m trying to talk to you about your father. What about a small gathering? He would never think I knew anything about your relationship to him and I could make a fuss over how sought after you are at parties, introduce you. What you did after that would be entirely up to you…and him, I suppose.”

  Connor stared at her, watching how her face lit up with her plan, how her hands fluttered before her while she spoke. He got out of the bed and moved toward her.

  “There you go again, my lady, always fixing everyone. Always in control.”

  She jerked her face toward him and her gaze flitted down to his cock. That tiny glance made it ease to attention, and she smiled. She tapped her wrist, which was still faintly pink from the silken bonds, and shook her head.

  “Not always, Connor,” she said, her voice rough with desire as he wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her against him. “Not with you.”

  “Good,” he said before he dropped his mouth to hers and kissed her.

  Grace knew full well that Connor’s kiss was a tec
hnique to keep her from pressing him on the delicate subject of his father. But knowing that and resisting his advances were two entirely different things. When he touched her, she was lost, and nothing else in the world seemed to matter except being in his arms and taking his body into her own.

  He spun her toward the bed, never breaking his kiss as he lifted her up on the high edge. She wrapped her arms around his neck, losing herself in his taste and the warmth of his naked skin. When he parted her robe, she shrugged out of it before her arms came back around him and she opened her legs.

  The first thrust came easily, and she shuddered at how needy he made her. Already she was on the edge, ready to fall. He cupped her backside and pulled her closer, while at the same moment he broke their kiss. She found herself face to face with him, nose to nose. There was no way not to look into his eyes, into his soul.

  She shivered as the second thrust came hard and fast. Her body began to burn with a fire only he could extinguish, and he smiled because he knew it.

  Thrust after thrust he continued, never breaking their gaze, holding her in an intimate sway that she both craved and feared. If she could see so deeply into him, could he see the same into her? Would he see her secrets, her pains, her past?

  Or worse, see nothing at all, because for him all there was between them was desire?

  She arched as he twisted his hips, and her thoughts were erased by the searing, explosive heat of her orgasm. He watched her through it, his face unreadable as she writhed and moaned against him. Only when it was over did he withdraw with his own cry of pleasure and spend away from her.

  When he turned back, a thin sheen of sweat across his brow, he had a strange look on his face. Her heart began to beat faster.

  “Is there something wrong?” she asked, closing her robe as if cutting off his access to her nakedness would somehow erase what he might have already seen.

  He shook his head. “I can’t stop thinking about what you said.”

  She forced a smile and a light tone. “How very romantic that I could distract you so in the midst of passion.”

  He cupped the back of her neck and kissed her hard. “You are a distraction of the best kind, my lady, and you know it.”