Anthony came dangerously near. Close to her body, but more unsettlingly, close to her soul. She retreated a step, hoping the distance was enough to sever the powerful connection that had forged between them. It was not, however. The bond only strengthened. Dark green eyes, rough and turbulent, beckoned her near. She felt as if she had no control over her own movements, as if she was floating on air toward the formidable rogue. No, it was the other way around. He was advancing on her.
Thick arms slipped around her, pushing her up against a hard chest—and another hard part of him. She stifled a second gasp when she felt the sturdy tip of him poking into her abdomen, demanding her attention. Which she readily gave. How could she ignore that part of him?
“I haven’t been with another woman since the day I met you.” His voice was as rough as the look in his eyes. “I went to the club, intent on doing whatever it took to learn Gillingham’s secrets, even if it meant sharing the doxy’s bed. But once I got there I couldn’t be with her. I didn’t want to be with anyone else but you.”
Those words were making her shake, with desire or with love, she wasn’t even sure. All she was sure of was that she wanted him deep inside her. Now.
Oh, she was a fool. Aching for something that would only bring her more heartache in the future. But she didn’t care right then. Right then, the urge to be with Anthony was stronger than any voice of protest or risk of regret.
“I spent the evening playing cards, the doxy draped over my arm,” he went on to explain. “When I lost every pound I had with me, I made the excuse that I was penniless, that I would have to come back to see her some other night. But I don’t intend to return. I don’t intend to spend my nights with anyone else but you.”
His lips came down on hers in a thoroughly possessive, thoroughly demanding, thoroughly thrilling kiss. She teetered on her toes to better meet the hot thrusts of his tongue, stabbing into her mouth with a vigor that so aroused her, she could feel the moisture already pooling between her legs.
He moved over her mouth in deft and eager strokes. All the while, it seemed as though they were levitating toward the bed. When she felt the feathers press into her backside, she didn’t care to think how she got there. All that she cared about was what Anthony was making her feel.
Her heart ticking faster than the seconds of a clock, she let go of all her fears, of all her doubts that they shouldn’t be doing this again, that it was wrong. But it felt so right. And that was enough for now. Regrets could come at dawn. She already had a lifetime of regrets to nurse. What was one more?
His hand fisted around the hem of her skirt. Slowly, he pushed the garment up her legs, the fabric slithering along her thighs, leaving her trembling in the wake of the steady ascent.
When she was bare from the waist down, he broke away from the kiss and repositioned himself. Parting her knees, he kneeled between her splayed thighs.
In the candlelit room, she was wholly exposed to him. A sudden tickle of embarrassment encouraged her to bring her legs back together, but his hands clamped over her inner thighs, the heat from his palms branding her, stopping her retraction.
Slowly, he spread her legs wide again. “Don’t hide yourself from me.”
She was almost giddy with the emotions bubbling inside her. She was shaking for sure, her heart shuddering, her breaths coming out in quick and raspy pants.
“Let me look at you,” he said with a gruff edge, his piercing gaze devouring her, making her sweat and her body ache.
“Let me touch you.” His fingers combed through the dark and curly patch of hair between her legs, exposing more and more of her moist and quivering flesh to his searching green eyes.
And then, with a dark twinkle in those lustful eyes, he whispered, “Let me taste you.”
He bowed forward. She gasped and tightened every muscle in anticipation. But he didn’t touch her with his lips. Fingers still entwined in the thick curls of her apex, he only blew over the exposed flesh. A soft whistle of cool air, followed by a short puff of warm air.
She shivered violently at the shifts in temperature. Cold and hot bursts of air breezed over her damp and sensitive skin. Gone was any thought of modesty. She felt nothing but a throbbing want.
The tension eased in her muscles. Eyes closed, she dipped her head back against the pillow, and released a half sigh, half moan of pleasure when he finally dropped his head to kiss the dewy mound between her legs.
He was tender and gentle at first with his kisses. Soon, though, his mouth parted, opened wide to unleash the eager thrust of his tongue, which stabbed and stroked at the most sensitive part of her, leaving her gasping and digging her fingers into his hair to hold him firm against her pulsing flesh.
“Don’t stop,” she pleaded. It was a breathless request, yanked from her lips in a moment of desperate urgency. She didn’t want the erotic moment to end. She felt a sense of panic at the thought that it would. But he couldn’t stop. Not now. Not when every nerve in her body was tingling. And to make sure he didn’t abandon her, she held him fast, giving him very little room to move.
She was burning inside. She was shaking. Nothing had ever felt so good…but she was wrong. He guided her thighs upward until she hooked them over his broad shoulders, giving him more access to her supple flesh.
Her stark cries of delirious pleasure provoked his tongue to swirl and dart with greater passion. The louder she grew, the more ardent he became with his thrusts, giving her what she demanded.
He licked and he kissed, whipping her into a state of pulsating arousal. Her fingers tightly knotted in his hair. Oh, sweet heaven, it was pure ecstasy.
“Anthony,” she cried. She wanted release from the pressure building at her junction. Her innards twisted with the demand for that relief. And he gave it to her. His tongue laved over the quivering bud pulsing between the folds of her flesh, and she shuddered with unbridled relief, the strain and the throbbing draining from her loins. She felt so peaceful, so content when it was over.
“That was wonderful,” she praised weakly, eyes still closed, breathing hard and fast.
He chuckled with a deep sound of masculine satisfaction. “You’ll feel it again in a moment.”
Unclenching her fists from his hair, she opened her eyes to look down at him. “I will?”
“Oh, yes, my dear, you will.”
He kissed the insides of her thighs, and straightened to his kneeling position once more. It was then she saw his rigid shaft, still swollen with arousal. He had yet to have his own release.
Timid, but determined, she wanted to give him back the same pleasure he had given her. She wanted to be familiar with every curve and ripple of his body. She wanted to feel the heat of his skin burning under her palms. She wanted to hear him groan again and again, knowing all the while it was her touch that was evoking his candid responses.
But how? How to touch a man as jaded as Anthony and make him ache inside the way she ached for him?
She kneeled in front of him.
His questioning gaze, dark and intense, glazed over her. “What are you doing?”
She could hear the stress in his voice, sense the great need he had of her. Her answer was to lay a hesitant hand on his magnificent chest, her splayed fingers stroking the gnarled muscles that twitched and capered under her every caress.
He closed his eyes with a groan. “Oh, yes, Sabrina, touch me. Touch me anywhere you like.”
She’d like to touch him everywhere, she thought with a sudden wanton impulse. “Show me,” she said. “Show me how you like to be touched.”
His lids opened, heavy with desire, an unmistakable hunger reflecting in the dark green pools of his eyes.
“Like this.” He rested his palm over her fingers and guided her hand down the moist, sleek expanse of his midriff.
Sabrina watched in fascination as her hand moved lower and lower. Her fingers trembled softly when he brought her palm to the base of his shaft, and folded her fingers over his throbbing erection, bidding her
to cradle the warm, hard length of him.
It was such an odd sensation, to feel the power of his manhood surging through her fingertips. She looked into his handsome face to find his eyes were closed again, his expression tight, as though he were concentrating hard to keep his lust under control.
She kissed his neck. He inhaled sharply. She nuzzled his jaw line with her nose, kissing him softly, her fingers still gripping his turgid flesh.
The noises he made, low moans and grunts of passion, mirrored the ones she had made earlier. She liked hearing those noises coming from him. She liked even more knowing she was the cause of them.
“Move your hand over me,” he said. And to demonstrate what he meant, he steered her fingers up the length of his shaft and then back down again, stroking and rubbing at a swift and steady pace.
Sabrina could feel him growing larger in her palm. She studied his features, hypnotized by the expression of joy and need and pain she saw intermingling in each shift of his lips and brows. She wanted this man with all her heart. She hurt inside to have him. He made her feel alive. He made her feel happy.
She kissed his lips. A hard and passionate kiss. One she had never given him before. He stiffened when she pressed her body against his, a brief moment of surprise, but then he kissed her back with an urgency that matched her own.
“Sabrina,” he broke away from the kiss, his voice a half groan, half growl. “I can’t hold it in anymore.”
She released him, trailing her fingers up his sweating back and twisting her arms around his neck. Lightly, she pressed her lips to his. “So don’t hold it in anymore.”
She could feel him shudder against her. “Take off your clothes,” he bade in a hoarse whisper. “All of your clothes.”
With only a brief hesitation, she rocked back on her heels, unfastening the buttons of her blouse.
Anthony didn’t touch her. His smoky eyes followed her every move, though, and it felt as if his hands were roaming all over her, his gaze was so intense.
She slipped the blouse off her shoulders, dropping it to the floor.
“Now the skirt,” he commanded.
Fumbling with the laces, she unfastened the ties and pulled the skirt down her hips, yanking the garment over her knees until she was free of it.
“Take off the chemise,” came the next order.
She was anxious all of a sudden. Anxious to feel Anthony moving inside her. And knowing he would soon be buried deep within her, had her quivering with pleasure. Quivering so hard, in fact, her fingers kept groping at the laces of her undergarment with ill success. The knot wasn’t coming undone.
“Allow me,” he offered gallantly, brushing her fingers away. A few quick turns of his wrists, and the laces were loose. “Now take it off.”
Her heart was pumping in her ears. She peeled back the shoulder straps, nudging the wool fabric down her arms and over the full swell of her breasts.
“Oh, yes, Sabrina, don’t stop now.” He narrowed his spicy gaze to her exposed breasts, her nipples tightening under the lazy caress of his eyes. “Let me see all of you.”
She shoved the undergarment down her hips and wiggled out of it. She was bare before him. And he before her.
In an intimate and possessive gesture, one that sent a shudder down her spine, he raked his smoldering gaze over her. “Lie down.”
She fell back against the bed. He nestled between her legs, the cusp of his swollen shaft nudging the portal of her womanhood.
“I’ve dreamed of you all evening,” he said in a husky whisper. “Of touching you. Of tasting you.” He thrust hard into her and she gasped. “Of being inside you.”
The length and thickness of him filled her, her insides throbbing with want. He moved in swift and steady plunges. She clung to him in a desperate hold, and he to her, as if they could never get enough of each other.
The tension gathered between her legs, twisting and twining, just as Anthony had promised. She could feel the ache mounting in her thighs once more. It was magical, to feel the same intense explosion of sensations so close together. She cried out in release, Anthony surrendering to his desire moments later with a roar of his own.
The candles burned low around the room. One flickering dot of light in particular caused shadows to dance across the wall. The little flame puffed and puffed, as though gasping for air. Choked at last, the glowing light vanished.
Now only three candles burned in the room. Anthony noted the changes in the shadows as each light grew weary and died. The shadows became larger and darker, slowly embracing the bed.
He tightened his hold around Sabrina. She was asleep in his arms, so still and quiet. He felt protective of her, even against the shadows, as if they were trying to snatch her away from him.
What rubbish! No one was going to take her away, least of all the shadows. She was safe with him. And he intended to keep it that way.
For how long, though? he wondered.
Forever, answered a voice.
Forever?
Yes, forever.
Anthony rubbed his cheek across the crown of her hair and kissed her head softly. Forever it would be.
Chapter 24
T he procession of fine-crafted Town Coaches, each emblazoned with a noble family’s crest, jammed the street for more than half a mile. It would take the rest of the morning just to reach the front steps of St. James’s Palace, and caged with three restless women, Anthony did his utmost to refrain from scowling.
There were yards of flowing silk all around him, and the constant cries that he should not move an inch or he risked creasing the meticulously pressed gowns. Plumes were perched in tightly coiled coiffures: long, crooked plumes, so whenever a lady bobbed her head near a window to criticize the manner in which so-and-so descended from her carriage, Anthony had his nose tickled, or his ear jabbed, or his eye poked.
Struggling against the urge to yank those blasted feathers from everyone’s hair, Anthony’s frayed patience was further stretched by the wails of his youngest sister, insisting his sword’s sheath was tearing into the hemline of her gown. The blade happened to be nowhere near her precious apparel, but to keep peace in the angst-ridden coach, he pressed his sword hilt more firmly to his thigh after each holler of protest, until he was sure he had marked his own flesh.
Despite his best efforts, Anthony wasn’t able to keep that scowl from forming across his brow. But this was his penance, he reminded himself, for unsettling Cecelia’s début ball, and he’d have to suffer it in silence.
By the time their vehicle had reached the palace entrance an hour later, Anthony’s teeth were gnashed, his fingers were cramped around his sword hilt, the muscles in his neck and shoulders were knotted, and his face had been thoroughly whipped with feathers.
He was bloody grateful at that point to have no more siblings, for this would be his last presentation at court.
The viscount was first to descend amidst the fanfare of curious spectators on one side of the street, and anxious debutantes and chaperones on the other. His mother was next to step out in a resplendent gown of cinnamon-brown silk, with deep white ruffs around the neck, and long net gloves that went above the elbow. Ashley made her graceful appearance in sequence, her gown a demure shade of green, the sleeves slightly puffed, her shoulders wrapped in a diaphanous, mist-green shawl of fine silk. And then came Cecelia, adorned in dove white, her heelless slipper shoes peeking out from under the cascading fabric of her empire frock. All three ladies were a stunning sight, with perfected countenances of womanly grace, offering no testament to the farrago that had raged within their coach not too long ago.
And so the whirlwind ceremony had begun. The four of them passed under the ornately carved lintel, above them the balcony perched with chattering young ladies, all scanning the arriving ton below. Ushered into the long gallery, they crossed the Great Hall and made their way up the grand staircase and into the corridor, where they were met by a gentleman-at-arms. His mother presented the family card and they
were escorted through antechamber after antechamber after antechamber.
Anthony ground his teeth in frustration. The palace had not been this large when he was last here for his own presentation, he was sure of it. The regent must have added another wing in all that time.
Maintaining his brisk and steady strides, Anthony trailed after his family, paying little heed to his surroundings, anxious only to get the whole blasted affair over and done with. So engrossed was he with his apathy, he didn’t bother to glance sidelong when a bright green gem flashed in the corner of his eye. But when he heard the voice—that irritating, condescending voice—his gaze snapped up to peer sharply into one of the branching corridors.
The speed at which the procession was moving did not provide Anthony with more than a second to glimpse the figure. But that second was enough for him to recognize Luther Gillingham stepping into one of the royal chambers.
Anthony dug in his heels and stalked back over to the corridor’s entrance, glaring down the elongated passageway.
It was deserted.
He gave his head a brisk shake. It couldn’t possibly have been Gillingham. That nefarious scoundrel in the palace?
When pigs fly.
The viscount resumed his march. He was imagining things, seeing a resemblance where there was none. That had to be it. He was stretched tight between his obligation to Sabrina’s well-being—and the lustful joy he found in his gypsy’s arms each night—and the duty he now had of shuffling his sister about London. He was downright exhausted. A hallucination, though unsettling, wasn’t unreasonable.
“Watch your step,” hissed Ashley.
Anthony mumbled a whispered apology for having stepped on his twin’s train. In his bewildered state, he hadn’t noticed the party had finally reached the outer waiting room that led to the presence chamber.
The family card was passed into the hand of another lord-in-waiting who boisterously announced the Kennington clan to Her Royal Highness.
A Forbidden Love Page 23
