“I’m not leaving,” she said as he opened a door upstairs and then kicked it closed behind them.
“Not for a very long time,” he agreed, letting her feet down and spinning her around to unlace her corset. When it came loose, Tessa pulled it off but backed away.
“Take off the shift,” he commanded.
She shook her head, winding her finger in the ribbon that held it closed. The fabric of her shift was plastered to her skin, so wet it was almost transparent. “Take off your coat. And waistcoat.”
His grin flashed, dangerous and promising rather than lighthearted and easy, and he stripped off the garments.
“Now the boots,” she said, backing toward the bed.
His dark gaze fixed on her, he complied, advancing on her all the while.
“The shirt,” she whispered, her heart pounding in her ears. “The trousers.”
“The shift,” he retorted, whipping the shirt over his head.
She bumped into the bedpost, and reached behind her to curl her fingers around it for strength. He was beautiful, broad-shouldered and lean-waisted, his skin golden in the light of the lone lamp. His hair fell loose around his temples, ruffled by her own hands, but didn’t hide the heat in his eyes. Without the elegant trappings of crisp cravat and tailored waistcoat, he wasn’t the imposing earl, but just a man . . . who wanted her as desperately as she wanted him. With shaking hands, Tessa reached for the hem of her shift and tugged it off, casting it aside with a faint plop as it hit the floor.
His gaze sharpened into ravenous hunger. All trace of laughter and geniality vanished from his expression. “I should have brought another lamp.”
She shifted her weight. “I could go get it.”
That devil’s grin touched his lips, and he looked at her with gleaming eyes. “You wouldn’t make it to the door.”
“Oh?” She made a motion as if to try it, but he caught her before she’d gone two steps.
“Do you really want to leave?” he whispered, brushing aside the wet tangle of her hair so he could skim his lips along the back of her neck. His hand moved down her arm to cup lightly around her breast. “Don’t tease me any longer, Tessa . . .”
She shivered, as much from his words as from the way he was playing with her nipple again. “I haven’t teased you at all.”
He laughed softly, still touching her gently, his fingers tracing her hip bones, the edge of her ribs, the faint swell of her belly. His chest was broad and solid against her back. “You’ve driven me half mad.”
“No, I meant I wasn’t trying . . .” Her words scattered in a sigh as he wrapped both arms around her. He was still nuzzling the back of her neck, and every slight scrape of teeth on her skin made her quiver. “I didn’t mean to tease you,” she tried to explain.
“That’s undoubtedly why it worked so well.” He was kissing her shoulder now, his breath hot on her skin.
Tessa bit back a moan and wet her lips. “Charles,” she said. It felt daring and intimate, using his name. Of course, she was naked, pressed up against his nearly naked body, eyeing his bed with longing. Intimacy felt right.
“Charlie,” he whispered. “I despise the name Charles. It sounds so pompous.”
Tessa laughed in spite of herself. “You are hardly pompous.”
“I certainly hope not now.” He flattened his palms on her waist and slid them down over her hips, then leisurely back up the front of her body. This time she couldn’t hide the moan. “You’re bewitching,” he said in a voice both soft and dark. “Simply exquisite.”
“Charlie . . .” Her knees were giving out as he stroked his wicked, beautiful hands over her skin. She managed to turn in his arms to face him, touching his face with an unsteady hand. “Make love to me . . .”
“Yes,” he said as if roused from a dream. With shocking ease he picked her up and carried her to the bed. “Absolutely.”
Restraint faded quickly in bed. Tessa had a fleeting thought that he must be the very wickedest of rakes, because no man should be able to wring such feelings from a woman. Every inch of her skin seemed to grow more sensitive, as if her nerves were straining toward him. It confounded her. She was no virgin, and she’d thought she knew what to expect. But with Charlie . . . He turned her onto her back at one point, and she realized she hadn’t even noticed she was on her stomach. He surrounded her, engulfed her, until she had no capacity for thoughts or feelings that didn’t center on him, and her, and the way they moved together.
When he rolled away from her abruptly, Tessa struggled onto her side and raised her head. “What’s wrong?”
“Not a thing.” He was sitting on the edge of the bed, head bent, then stood and peeled off his trousers. She’d almost forgotten he still wore them. “Not one bloody thing.”
Tessa stared. “No, I see not,” she said without thinking. The visual proof of his arousal made her more intensely aware of her own.
He caught hold of her knee and lifted her leg as he rejoined her on the bed. He knelt straddling her thigh, catching her knee under his elbow. “Yes, you should see,” he murmured, devouring her, pinned beneath him. “If I just told you how much I want you, you wouldn’t believe it . . .”
She blushed, although not with much shame. “I would.”
Slowly he shook his head. His expression taut, he flicked a stray lock of hair from her temple, then traced a scorching path from her cheek, down her throat, over one breast, across the hollow of her waist, back to the dusky bit of curls between her legs. His gaze followed his fingers as he stroked her there. Tessa arched off the bed, the pleasure all the sharper after having ceased for a few minutes.
“Yes, that’s how I want you,” he said in a growl. “Writhing . . . begging . . . wild with wanting . . .”
“Please,” she gasped, knowing she was all those things, and more: desperate for him to feel the same.
“Good God, yes.” He shifted his weight and drove his full length inside her in one smooth stroke.
She gave a long gasping sigh. He inhaled deeply and rolled his head back. For a moment neither moved, as if too caught in the sensation of joining, of connection. When he opened his eyes and looked at her, Tessa saw her own lust and longing reflected in his eyes, as if his facade had fallen away to reveal his soul to her.
“Again,” she said, her voice vibrating with desire.
His mouth quirked, and he slowly flexed his hips, withdrawing before surging forward again. This time she gave a little cry. “Yes,” she panted. “Again.”
He pressed a hard kiss on her mouth. “And again.” He planted his hands beside her shoulders and loomed over her. “And again . . . and again—my God.” His voice grew rough and raspy as he matched his actions to his words. There was an agony, and a desperation, and at the same time an awed joy to his tone—or perhaps that was her own feelings again, swamping her senses. She groped for him, gripping his shoulder in wordless urging. Her heartbeat drowned out all thought as her blood flowed hotter, faster, seeming to sing in her veins. She hiked her leg over his hip, shamelessly opening herself even further, begging him to take more, reveling in the way his breath hitched as he did so, his strokes becoming longer and harder.
She opened her eyes, swimming in tears. Her skin felt taut over her bones, pulled tight by nerves and anticipation. With shaking hands she touched his cheek. His eyes met hers, black and deep like the night sky. “Charlie,” she said with hardly a sound.
He lifted one hand and brought it to his mouth, swirling one fingertip between his lips. Then he slid that hand over her trembling belly, and touched her where their bodies joined.
Tessa sucked in air. She dug her heels into the mattress. One heartbeat—two—and it broke, that unbearably delicious tension inside her, in a pulsing wave. Charlie seized her knee where it curled around his waist, as if for balance. His breath huffed as he thrust twice more, and then he gasped and gr
oaned as his body joined hers in climax.
For a while neither moved, Tessa because she had no desire to, and Charlie because . . . well, probably because she was clinging so tightly to him he couldn’t. She didn’t want to let go of him. Slowly, gingerly, he lowered himself, taking care not to crush her with his weight as he folded his arms around her. His breath was hot and fast on her shoulder when he pressed his lips to her collarbone, and she could see his pulse, as rapid as hers, in his throat. It was bliss. She let her eyes fall closed and a smile curved her mouth.
She must have dozed off, although little had changed when she opened her eyes again. Charlie still held her close, his head beside her shoulder. With his free hand he was lightly tracing delicate patterns over her skin, his touch as soft as a feather. From the hollow at the base of her throat, over the sensitive swell of her breast, across the lines of her ribs, into the dent of her navel. It was bold yet reverent, and so tender she felt another piece of her heart slip away.
Tessa knew she had no delicacy, no coyness in her. It wasn’t in her to be artful. She didn’t pretend that making love presaged a betrothal, or even a lengthy affair. She didn’t know if tonight had affected him as if had her; but whatever her other failings, she didn’t lie to herself, and she couldn’t lie to him, not now.
“I’m not a widow,” she whispered.
The man in her arms went still, his fingers pausing mid-stroke along the sensitive curve of her waist. “I see,” he said after a moment. “Is Mr. Neville more accomplished with his pistols, or should I send Barnes to fetch a sword?”
A half-hysterical, half-despairing bubble of laughter lodged in her throat. “Neither.” She wet her lips. “There is no Mr. Neville. There never was. I invented him. I’ve never been married.”
He let out his breath. “That is a great relief. I swore off married women years ago.”
She turned her head away, not wanting to know about the women he’d had before. She waited for him to ask why she’d lied, but he didn’t. His fingers resumed playing along her skin, a caress so artless it grated on her conscience. “Don’t you want to know why?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Do you want to tell me?”
No. She didn’t want to talk about it ever again, but it wasn’t really fair not to tell him. Not when they lay tangled in each other’s naked arms in bed. The more the haze of hunger and lust cleared, the more uneasy she felt misleading him. “I was almost married,” she began haltingly. “Once. Long ago. He seemed to understand me—my odd, unfeminine ways, as my family called them—and wasn’t bothered by my manner.”
“It has some perverse appeal,” he murmured.
Tessa frowned. “Don’t tease me now.”
“Sorry,” he said, kissing her shoulder. “Go on.”
That kiss unnerved her. He was taking this very well; perhaps he wasn’t paying attention. Or perhaps he didn’t really care so much after all. “I believed his promises. He said we would have a perfect marriage, that we were made for each other. I—and everyone else—believed him. Eugenie was the only one who didn’t warm to him, not that it mattered to me then. Eugenie is very dear to me, but she can be so silly at times, and I ignored all her worrying and warnings because I thought he loved me. I have always been rather determined . . .” She faltered, feeling again the weight of her stupidity. “I daresay even headstrong—”
“Surely not,” he said.
She flushed, thinking again that he was laughing at her. “But I overheard him the night before our wedding, talking with his brother. His brother called me the oddest woman he’d ever met, and instead of protesting, he laughed and agreed, and said he would never have offered for me if not for a few redeeming qualities. He said I had a shopkeeper’s brain that would make his fortune, sufficient connections to establish him in society, and just enough beauty that he could tolerate bedding me.” To her disgusted horror, her voice began to tremble at the memory, and she ruthlessly quelled the unexpected surge of hurt. “Within a year, he assured his brother, he would have trained me when to speak and when not to, and keep me quietly at home, where he might get a couple of brats on me while he put my dowry and business sense to good use in London. He, naturally, would keep his mistress in town, because no woman who thought as much as I did could be satisfactory in bed.”
For a long moment he said nothing. Tessa kept her eyes resolutely fixed on the shadowy outline of the closet door, slightly ajar. It cast a long slender shadow over the wall toward the bed, a dagger of darkness pointing right at her. All over again she felt like a naïve nineteen-year-old girl, fancying herself in love with a gentleman who understood her forward ways and respected her intelligence. She felt again the thrill of spouting off her thoughts on investments and money, not just household economies women were expected to learn but ideas about bank stocks and lease agreements. She remembered the attention Richard had paid her, and how blindly she had reveled in it. And most of all she felt the stabbing humiliation that she hadn’t seen he didn’t really care for her; he’d been using her all along, and she had been grateful to him for it.
“At least he recognized you were his superior, intellectually,” said Charlie at last.
She frowned, then snapped her head around to see him. His face was ghostly pale in the moonlight, but his expression was enough to make her heart twist. “I wasn’t,” she whispered. “I let him seduce me. I thought I loved him.”
His jaw hardened. “Don’t mistake my next question; I’m ferociously glad you rid yourself of him. But . . . did your father or brother do nothing?”
“I didn’t tell them. Only Eugenie knew—I told her about his plans for me, not my foolishness with him—and I swore her to secrecy. I was young, and I was hurt, and I wanted to hurt him back. I waited until we reached the church.” She paused. “I wanted to make sure he never came back. My greatest fear, if I merely broke it off with him, was that my parents would attempt to persuade me to reconsider; no one else had ever shown the slightest interest in marrying me, and they had been so pleased . . . But I was so angry, Charlie. I wanted to humiliate him, as he had done to me, and so I waited until we stood at the altar, before my family and his, and when the vicar asked if I took him to be my husband, I said, very loudly and clearly, ‘Never, for he is a whining boor without the wits of a sheep.’ ”
Charlie ducked his head. He cleared his throat. Then his shoulders began to shake. Alarmed, Tessa gripped his shoulder. “What?”
He rolled onto his back, laughing openly. He threw one arm around her and pulled her close to press a smacking kiss on her forehead. “If only I’d been there! I would have stood up and applauded!”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” she protested. “The vicar gasped out loud, and my mother screamed.”
“I most certainly would have,” he said, still shaking with laughter. “Good God! I trust that put him in his proper place.”
“He turned as purple as a turnip,” she said in a small voice. “But I was proud of myself. I handed my sister my prayer book and walked right out of the church, leaving my horrified family to deal with him. It was awful of me, don’t you see?”
After a moment he got himself under control again. His fingers began stroking through her hair, and Tessa’s eyes almost rolled back in her head. She’d never realized how much she liked being touched—or perhaps it was just the way he touched her. “Nonsense. Awful? I think it highly appropriate. He hadn’t the wits of a sheep, if he thought you could be deposited quietly in the country and left to yourself.”
“No, Richard really was quite intelligent. I’d never have considered him if he’d been a fool . . .”
He laid a finger on her lips. “He was a damned fool,” he said, his voice dark and hard. “Don’t ever believe otherwise. Mathematical ability or a studious nature has no impact on whether one is foolish or not.” His touch softened, and his fingertip trailed down the side of her jaw, lifting her face gentl
y toward him. “Do you regret jilting him?”
She paused. “No, not really.” She had never admitted that; she often wished she had thought of a cleverer way to do it, sparing her family the pain she had caused them, but deep down she still thought Richard deserved every iota of humiliation.
“Then you did the right thing. And I say he was an idiot,” he whispered, brushing his lips over hers. “I would have applauded your telling him so.”
Tessa kissed him back. She was the fool, not recognizing Richard Wilbur as the vain, arrogant arse he was. She had been fooled by his obvious intelligence, his handsome face, his flattering interest in her thoughts on business matters but never on anything else. If she hadn’t been so naïve, she would have noticed that he cared very little for her feelings, or hopes, or even what sort of entertainments she preferred. He, rightly, had seen at once that she was an awkward young lady, not likely to attract other gentlemen’s attention. Hadn’t her mother all but said so, in her delight over his offer for Tessa’s hand? We thought you’d never find someone to suit you, she’d said after Richard had spoken to her father. And Tessa, relieved beyond measure that she wouldn’t be a spinster all her life as Louise used to tease her, had agreed. She’d been a complete fool, blinding herself to his faults because she wanted so desperately to be like other young ladies and not disappoint her parents.
And she clearly hadn’t grown wiser. She’d thought Charles de Lacey was an idle, arrogant aristocrat who cared only for the fashionable cut of his coat. Would she never learn anything about men? He had seen the truth in Mr. Scott’s canal scheme when she, with all her careful examination of account books and engineering plans, had not. He had saved her from making a terrible mistake—she, who’d always had such pride in her own judgment and perception. He made her feel admired and respected and even beautiful—the way she’d always imagined—dreamed—a woman should feel.
“Tell me about the fictitious Mr. Neville,” he murmured. “I hope he was kinder to you.”
The Way to a Duke's Heart: The Truth About the Duke Page 18
