by Anne Mallory
“How did you know Rockwood had referred me?”
“Each card is different. Subtle differences, but that is the best way to avoid forgery and to verify the identity of the sender.”
“You enjoy it too, the intrigue, the suspense.”
He smiled faintly. “I do.”
“What will you do when you want to retire?”
“I’ll turn it over to Jeremy.” He hesitated. “Or one of Jeremy’s children, should he have any.”
“What about your own children?”
“Jeremy seems more inclined to marry, doesn’t he?” Gabriel rolled over so he was looking down at her.
“I suppose that is true.”
He reached into her hair, tipping her head back on the pillow, pressing a kiss at her throat. “Is that all you wanted to know, Marietta?”
She wanted to know everything. It was hard to imagine the man ever being taken advantage of. She hadn’t known the boy. That he wasn’t interested in marriage was no surprise, so why did she feel a pit in her heart?
Her fingers curled into the coverlet as he rained kisses down her neck. “I want to—I want to know what happened…before?”
He leaned back against the pillows, tugging her over so her cheek pressed to his chest, her eyes facing away from his. His chest rose, fell and rose again. “What do you want to know?”
“How did they—how did they get you involved?”
His finger moved in an agitated pattern along her hip. “The attention was flattering at first. I thought Lady Dentry had the softest cloud of blond hair. A diamond of the first water.”
Marietta focused on her mousy brown hair. Vines of moss across his chest.
“I had some experience with women, though having the house butler as a father limited interaction. The maids were all willing, always batting their eyes, but father was strict and didn’t condone relationships beneath the stairs.” His tone changed. “There was nothing he could do abovestairs, of course.”
She moved her cheek along his chest.
His fingers continued their tattoo of her hip. “Lady Dentry started her venture in the same way I later did, I suppose. With a smile. She started with willing villagers, visiting men. But revenge, power, and control are hardly to be found with the willing.” The tattoo became frenzied and his fingers withdrew to the coverlet.
“Willing conquests became subservient men, and offered no challenge. But Lady Dentry realized her key one day with a young boy who wanted to marry a village girl so badly that he rebuffed her advance. She had to have him. She broke him, broke the girl, and moved on, salacious in her new quest. She wanted strong boys, ones who didn’t have a choice in the situation in which she placed them, just like she didn’t have a choice in her marriage. Under her complete power, the more subjugated and unhappy, the better.”
She rubbed her cheek along his chest.
“She enlisted a few other women with similar interests, vain or vicious women, and formed a little club.”
“And then you…”
His chest surged beneath her cheek a few times. “I wasn’t the first.” The clock ticked in the background, the only sound in the room for thirty ticks.
“But my fate was sealed the day I denied her, though she later said she would have kept me regardless. Jeremy visited for a week. Staying for a sennight while Mother went to town to visit friends. I saw the way Lady Dentry looked at him—only eight at the time—and then back to me. Predatory and all too sure. I knew at that moment that I’d never have anything to do with her after she looked at my brother that way.” He laughed, an ugly laugh. “Naive. As soon as my father was out of the picture, traveling with Lord Dentry to his various estates, she made a…deal…with me.”
“Deal?”
“Blackmail.”
She didn’t say anything else, waiting for him to continue instead of continuing to prod.
“Jeremy was safe. That is what mattered. Still is.”
“But you weren’t.”
“Six reasonably attractive women, two of them in the range of diamonds, one a diamond of the first water. Any boy or man’s dream, wouldn’t it be?”
“No.”
A chilling laugh shook his chest. “The sixteen-year-old body doesn’t always agree. More’s the pity.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. “What made you finally decide to leave after…after being there for so long?”
“Allowing it for so long?”
She stiffened and tried to look at him, but his arm held her in place. “That is not what I said.”
“My mother died.” His voice was so soft she could barely hear him. “Jeremy would have had to come live on the estate. I couldn’t let that happen. And something was off with the…women. I never found out what, but there was a new intensity. Something different in their eyes. I let a few things slip to my father in a rage. My mother was dead, out of their reach, and my father could fend for himself. I couldn’t risk Jeremy.”
“Your father—”
“He figured it out quickly enough with the clues I’d given. He found me packing and gave me everything he had on him, which unfortunately wasn’t much. Jeremy and I left that night.”
“The women didn’t try to find you?”
“Oh, they did. I can’t imagine their faces. Their anger. But the servants’ network takes care of its own sometimes. We hid in London, as I said. I started doing odd jobs, tutoring Jeremy. I fell into an opportunity that was a little questionable, but I parlayed it. Eventually I earned enough money, enough favors, to take revenge, to put them down. Monetary or social revenge mostly—either by bleeding them dry around town or ruining them the same way. And the rest…” He waved his hand.
“You were very brave.”
“Bravery had nothing to do with it. I survived.” He drew lazy patterns on her back.
“They underestimated you.”
“Most people in the upper classes do. You’ll have to watch for that when you return.”
“It is doubtful I will return.”
“They will embrace you with open arms as soon as your brother is released. You’ll be the talk of the ton. Able to have anything you desire, as long as you grab it quickly—society is nothing if not fickle.”
“What if I don’t want to grab some fickle fate? It has held me powerless for so long.”
He tensed. “Take the opportunity when it presents itself. Always. And society will present itself. A marriage proposal or five, I wouldn’t be surprised. Take the control when you can in a situation where you are otherwise at the whim of others.”
She chewed her lip. “Am I at your whim now?”
His arm moved, and thus freed, she turned her cheek to look into his eyes. “Are you?” he asked instead of answering.
“Yes, I do believe I am.” She pressed a hand against his chest as he moved to rise. “Your whim is not unpleasant, but I yearn to be my own woman. To control my own life and movements.”
His eyes turned unreadable. She thought for a second she had lost him. The second turned into two. Abruptly his eyes switched back to the watchful, slightly wary look he had long sported, but there was something else there too that she couldn’t read. Trust?
“Then teach me what it is you want,” he said. “Show me.”
She blinked. “I—I have nothing to teach you.”
“Do you not? Come. Teach me, Marietta. Don’t let my body do what my eyes don’t cede. Make me obey your will.”
“But…” She bit her lip. “Won’t that be—”
“No. Didn’t you say it is the will that is important? If I put myself in your hands, I trust you to take care of me.”
Shock, love, something crazy froze her stomach, working up her throat, choking her.
“You will go back to society, and things will change, but tonight…tonight is yours.” He rubbed one hand along her cheek, capturing the movement as she leaned into him. He abruptly snatched his hand away as if burned. “Do you see? It is hard for me. Second nature
to try and take control. Take it away.” He moved beneath her. “Free me.”
Love me.
She reached for him, her hand heavy and shaking. Everything culminating in this one moment.
Chapter 20
Gabriel watched her eyes as she reached for him. Wondered what she was going to do. Her long fingers moved over his body, flattening and pulling over the ridges of his stomach, the planes of his chest. Touching the hair at his ankles and moving up farther behind his knees, to his thighs. She paused for a moment, then her fingers curled around him, already alive with interest.
She moved her hand and fingers over the surface, eyes narrowed as she concentrated, her eyes darting to his stomach briefly before connecting back with his.
“Does this feel good?”
“Yes.” Her fingers were smooth, a little too gentle, but that was to be expected. Better gentle than rough at the start.
Determined eyes held his.
“You don’t have to do anything, you—”
Her tongue touched the head of him. He nearly shot off the bed at the sensation.
Sure, bravery was one of her dominating traits, but most women he had been with had eschewed this particular act, and it hadn’t upset him. It was too open. His face too easy to read. Entirely out of his control. He had never even come close to orgasm.
Marietta grew more intrepid and began to investigate all parts of him. He looked at the top of her head fondly. Even if he hadn’t known that she’d never done this before, it would have been obvious from her first tentative motions. It was the thought that counted though, that she would—
Holy—
Her lips slipped around the head of him, her tongue grazing the sensitive spot underneath. An accident, no doubt, her finding that spot. His stomach rose and fell in a higher arc than before. He tried to keep his breathing steady. She paused for a moment, and eyes peered up at him through a haze of hair shaded with gold in the lamplight. The sight of her like that, wanton and beautiful, was enough to tickle that coil of interest that usually stayed dormant under these types of ministrations. But it was Marietta herself who caused the coil to appear. It wasn’t—
Holy—
The second time was not an accident. The touch of her tongue pressing against him, tentative yet strong, was entirely a question. His damn body responded with another spike of breath. She did it a third time, a stronger press, more confident, and when he breathed in audibly, she concentrated more fully on those spots she was touching.
His resolve, his control, started to dribble right out of his ears, pushed out by all of the blood draining downward. She seemed to be cataloging each spot and its reaction, then systematically combining movements and finding new ones. Yet always basing subsequent actions on his reactions, on him.
That’s what had been missing in every previous encounter. Every other woman quite content to let him fulfill all her desires, but none of them truly wanting to fulfill his. To learn what exactly made him jump and shift and groan.
Marietta knew him, knew enough to gauge his reactions, and gave every indication that she wanted to know more.
Something foreign hissed from his mouth as she took all of him into her mouth and her tongue pulled along the length of him, up, up, pressing into the top, lips caressing.
Her name was a silent litany in his head. And in about thirty seconds it was a verbal litany from his lips.
She picked up her pace, a combination of untried maneuvers and those with which she had already found success. And the sight of her…dear God…
He couldn’t stop from pushing into the pillow, couldn’t stop the groan from passing his lips, the harsh breaths as his body spiraled from his gut up toward his tip. His arm went over his face, to block his expression, to stifle his cry. Lips popped from around him, the movement nearly ending the battle. His arm was suddenly batted away.
“Stop that.”
His eyes snapped open. “What?” He stared at her, uncomprehending, breathing as if he’d just run the length of the Thames.
“I want to see you.”
He could do nothing but stare.
Teeth nibbled her lower lip and she leaned one hand on the coverlet. “What you look like when you—” She moved her free hand in a circular motion, teeth worrying a soft track across the glossy surface of her lip.
He flashed a grin, his body simmering back to a controllable state. “When I what?”
She gave him a pointed look.
“You’ll have to be specific, Marietta.” Laughter bubbled within him.
Her eyes narrowed, and the next thing he knew, her lips closed around him and she took nearly the entire length of him into her mouth. His body bent backward without his consent, all laughter strangled. Her mouth pulled back up, a strong press of tongue to his underside, and he thought, quite possibly, the world was about to end.
He reached for her, but she slapped his hands away, entangling her fingers with his and pinning them to the sides of his head. “Now, now, you did say I was in control, did you not?”
The motion brought her over the top of him, and she jumped a bit when their lower bodies connected. They weren’t in perfect alignment, like every cell in his body called for, but they were close to it. Too close. She looked down his body, her hair tickling his throat. He knew what she would see—his body at complete attention, glistening, straining upward. When her eyes drew back to his, he could see the knowledge, the desire, written on everything from her darting eyes to her moistened lips. Her right leg slid over his so she was straddling him. He barely heard her quick intake of breath as he slid along her heat, his own quick breath nearly drowning hers.
She repeated the motion so that he slowly slid along her, the motion slow and teasing. He gritted his teeth and pushed his hips as far into the bedding as he could, his body screaming to thrust up inside her, to make her wail and scream his name, to claim her once more.
She continued to hold his hands hostage and to rub against him. From the rose blooming in her cheeks, he wasn’t sure just who she was teasing more. One movement aligned them perfectly and he nudged, just an inch, an innocent look on his face when her head snapped up. Her eyes sparked and she kissed him, sinking down another inch. He returned the kiss and pushed his hips up, just a tiny bit so as to not attract attention. She drew back.
“No, no, no, Gabriel. I’m going to earn that prime spot in your harem.” She leaned down and flicked a tongue over the lobe of his ear as he had done to her many times. Dear God, had she paid attention to everything he’d done? Returning all of his seductive actions and words. “Three nights of sin and more.”
She swirled her hips. Ungh. Something unintelligible burst from his lips.
Confidence fairly radiated from her. Confidence, passion, and other emotions he dare not name. A drink mixed with the most potent ingredients for seduction.
Her swirling hips lowered her farther still, and the color fairly burst from her skin. Soft, breathy air escaped her parted lips. She freed his hands and planted hers above his shoulders.
“Touch me.”
Her lips hadn’t finished forming the words and he was reaching for her breasts, his thumbs rubbing circles that made her body shift madly and sink farther down. She pulled up an inch and the muscles inside her contracted around him.
“Mari—Bloody—”
And damned if she didn’t tighten around him again.
He grit his teeth and narrowed his eyes. He dropped a hand to where they were connected and flicked a finger upward at the same time he rubbed her nipple. She gasped and sank fully on top of him.
He wasn’t sure he had ever felt anything quite so wonderful as her contracting muscles and the feel of her, warm and wet around him. And never heard anything as wonderful as her ragged breaths against his ear.
“Not fair.” It was more of a released breath from her than actually formed words.
He moved his hands to her knees to stop him from touching her further. “Better?” he whispered agai
nst her lips.
She kissed him, long and deep, then shifted back so she was sitting on him. After a few tentative movements she found a rhythm she liked, and one that made his stomach muscles clench and his fingers clutch her knees. She swayed and lifted, riding, eyes closed and chin tilted like some wild fairy. Rose spread down her skin, making it glow. Her cheeks, fiery blooms, her eyelids heavy with passion. No man in his right mind would call this woman plain. He had never seen anything so evocative and gorgeous.
She moved over him, her breasts swaying with each movement. Dangling in front of him like ripe cherries. A nipple brushed his chin and he captured it between his lips. She moaned, her forehead dropping to his, her hair curtaining around them, her pace becoming more erratic as she pushed down, sheathing him, then pulled up toward his mouth in trembling thrusts, as if unable to decide between which she wanted more. He sucked hard and she threw her head back, mouth open, beautiful beyond anything, giving him exactly what he wanted and taking exactly what he needed.
He drew his hands up her thighs, to the sides of her breasts, then down her waist, forcing her farther down, pushing farther inside her, as far as he could go, no longer playing the submissive, pulling them back to equal terms, exactly where they should be. He gripped her hips and pushed down on them every time she drew back up, thrust his hips upward to curve into exactly the right spot. She went wild in his arms, exactly as he wanted, but instead of only reveling in her responses, the ones he drew and caused and controlled, he reveled in his own as well. The sleek, tight feel of her, the unintelligible sounds she was making in his ear, the wanton bliss of her reactions, responding like she was born to it. Born to him. Not something out of a power game, but something forged by mutual desire and compatibility.
Her lips moved over his ear, over his cheek, connected with his mouth, fiercely kissing him. Pulling his lips between hers, swallowing his groan as she made a particularly long downward thrust and swiveled her hips.
“Gabriel, I—” He curved upward again and her eyes rolled briefly back, her chin tilting and breath catching. Her hands fell to his shoulders to keep her upright. She looked into his eyes, her brown eyes completely smoked with desire and emotion, but not hazy from incomprehension. “Gabriel, I—”
