Virtuous Scoundrel (The Regency Romp Trilogy Book 2)

by Maggie Fenton

  Sebastian turned to glower at his valet. Crick’s bulldog face was screwed up with satisfaction. The fiend. He’d certainly had his revenge for the past few miserable days.

  “The look on yer face,” Crick murmured gleefully, just loud enough for Sebastian’s ears as he exited the room.

  “There will be the devil to pay, Crick! Just you wait!” he hissed at his servant as he stomped back toward the door to shut it before turning to face the executioner.

  Katherine took an age, it seemed, to turn to him on the piano stool. The softly flickering light from the oil lamps and the moon trickling through the windows made her hair look like finely spun platinum and her skin like alabaster. Her intelligent green eyes surveyed him from head to toe, her expression unreadable. Too serene to be real.

  He nearly forgot he was supposed to be angry at her. And hurt. He tried for nonchalance, though he doubtless failed at that miserably. “Visiting a bachelor’s residence at midnight, Katie? Your reputation shall be ruined.”

  She rolled her eyes. “How utterly ridiculous. Threatening me while you’re covered in . . . gop.” She nodded toward an obvious bit of icing stuck to his cravat. He ran his finger through it and brought it to his lips for a taste. It was cloyingly sweet, but he went back for more.

  She seemed to falter before she proceeded, her eyes charting every movement he made, every lick of his tongue. Interesting. “If you were worried for my reputation, you would not have come to the ball. It is damaged enough as it is. What’s one more indiscretion?” she asked, with a small, enigmatic quirk of her lips.

  Sebastian grimaced. She didn’t sound overly upset about his bad behavior tonight, but he decided it was neither the time nor the place to inform her of the even more embarrassing love confession he’d made after she’d gone. Her reputation was doubtless buried six feet under by now. But he had already decided that he was not apologizing for tonight, no matter how unreasonably he had acted. If she had a problem with what she read in the gossip sheets in the morning, she could go and stuff it along with the rest of the world.

  “It really was not well done of you to break Marlowe’s nose,” she continued, rising to her feet, coming toward him. “He didn’t do anything but be kind to me, even if I did not deserve it.”

  To hell with it. He was tired and in need of a bath and a hot toddy, and perhaps the Cure to restore his clarity, not another rebuke. Especially not from her. There was no point in dissembling anyway. He’d already bared his soul to the woman. He’d nothing left to hide.

  “I was jealous,” he said with a shrug. “What do you want, Katherine?”

  Her eyes flashed with impatience and something else sharp and restless as she approached him. Anger, perhaps. At this point it could have been anything. He’d given up trying to read her.

  Before he even registered what was happening, however, she was so close to him he could feel the heat of her body, smell the clean scent of her skin. Verbena and mint. He nearly strangled himself on his surprise. He backed up the inch left between himself and the door, felt his shoulder blades dig into the wood paneling as she came even closer still, caging him in with her heavy silk skirts and penetrating, unreadable gaze. He felt as if he had suddenly stepped into a different reality.

  She leaned forward until her warm breath teased the side of his throat, and he froze, gooseflesh covering his skin at the unexpected caress of air. “What do women generally want when they sneak into a gentleman’s lodgings?” she whispered in his ear.

  He shivered all the way to his toes, and a bolt of lust ricocheted from his ear straight to his cock at her provocative words. That was unexpected. Not precisely unwelcome, at least to his body, which still craved her regardless of circumstance. But his damnable heart was another matter. She had hurt him before, but now . . .

  Now he wasn’t sure what she wanted from him, but the focused, determined look in her green eyes did nothing to relieve his unease.

  “I wouldn’t know,” he murmured, watching her warily, trying to control his body’s treacherous responses.

  She raised her hand toward his face and he caught his breath, torn between anticipation and dread. It had already been a night of clumsy, unexpected violence. Perhaps she meant to punish him as he’d so irrationally punished Marlowe, and he steeled himself as she brought her fist closer, just in case. But all she did was run her finger along his cheekbone, down to his jawline, collecting dabs of white icing from his skin, before bringing it to her lips and tasting it.

  “Sweet,” she said after what seemed like an hour of the most lascivious finger licking he could have ever hoped to witness.

  He swallowed with great difficulty, felt the heat of desire spread through his veins and his breeches grow a bit snug. He’d not realized she was capable of licking, much less lasciviousness. He propped his hip against the doorknob for traction, afraid his legs might fail him under the circumstances. The room was suddenly sweltering, and he decided that the heat must have begun to melt his brain, for he couldn’t quite believe what was happening.

  Her purpose became glaringly obvious, however, as she closed the distance between them, pressing her body up against his own and pinning him against the door as if he were some swooning Minerva Press heroine—not that he read such drivel (though he did, religiously).

  He gasped as his melted brain finally caught up with the rest of his body.

  Dear sweet Lord, she was seducing him.

  She quirked her eyebrow at his floundering, leaned in, and, before he had a chance to properly brace himself, licked his cheek. And she kept on licking it until he began to slide down the door, his legs finally failing him. He groaned at the nearly painful sensations bombarding his untried body.

  She pulled away a little bit and gave him a half-questioning, half-taunting look. “What? Do you not like it?” she demanded.

  He breathed in a great gust of air and straightened, caught between fevered desire and angry confusion. “Of course I bloody like it,” he said on a gasp. “But why are you doing this?”

  “I thought you wanted me,” she said, leaning in again and pressing her mouth against his throat. Every lick of her tongue against his flesh sent jolts of lust straight to his groin.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, pulling her away just a little bit, trying to think straight despite his liquefied brain. “Of course I want you,” he said. “I want all of you.” Forever. But he did not have a chance to say this last bit because suddenly she was kissing him, and her mouth was hot and wet and sweet from the icing on his skin. And then her hands were on the side of his face, guiding him as she devoured his mouth with her lips and tongue and teeth. And then her leg, despite the bulk of her skirts, was creeping higher between his legs until her thigh was nudging against the front of his buckskins and what had become a very flagrant, very painful erection.

  He let out a broken, ridiculous sound, and suddenly her teeth were sinking into his lower lip in a vicious little bite. She drew back from him with a cool smirk as he licked at his lip, tasting the salty tang of blood through the sweet of the icing.

  “Katherine, wait,” he said, wiping his lip, trying to hold on to the last of his sanity.

  “Why wait?” she murmured. She pressed her thigh against him again until his eyes went wide and he gasped out another pained, aroused breath.

  He took her by the shoulders and shoved away from the door, pushing the both of them into the room.

  “Too far,” he hissed. Too far, too much, too fast.

  Something like fear passed over her expression, as if she was afraid she had indeed gone too far, before she quickly recovered her smirk. He knew in that moment that her aggression was nothing but a front, a show of bravado to hide how nervous she truly was.

  She was scared. Terrified that he would reject her, as she had rejected him.

  As if he ever would.

  She raised her chin a
little in challenge, though he was onto her now. “Not far enough,” she said, a flush staining her pale cheeks, her hair mussed from his hands. “Did you not come to the ball to claim me for your own territory?”

  Well, he had nothing else with which to combat her fears but the truth. “I came because I love you,” he said simply and honestly, pulling her close, kissing her urgently. “I wish you would believe me. I wish I could prove it to you.”

  “Prove it to me, then,” she demanded on a whisper. “Show me how much you love me.”

  He growled and thrust her against the pianoforte, knocking the stool over in the process, determined to give her what she wanted, what she needed. Her backside landed on the keyboard, and a great dissonant cluster of bass notes reverberated through the room. He kissed her mouth and throat and pulled frantically at her bodice in an attempt to free the flesh beneath. She threw her left hand out and hit a cluster of high-register notes as she struggled for purchase beneath him.

  Since their first meeting at the musicale, he’d dreamed many naughty dreams in which he’d made love to her against his Broadwood, but he hadn’t thought it would ever really happen. It was, after all, a logistical nightmare outside of fantasy, as was becoming very apparent as he struggled to keep their balance against the instrument.

  He fumbled with the lacing at the back of her bodice like the rank amateur he was, but he finally succeeded in loosening it enough to strip her down to her snowy white unmentionables. Women’s fashions were definitely not conducive to a virgin’s seductions, but he was past the point of caring how ungainly his actions were. She seemed quite on board with all that he was doing, judging by her breathlessness.

  By the time he’d stripped her gown and slippers off, she had pulled his white lawn shirt over his head and had begun to stroke her cool hands all over the burning, naked flesh of his torso. It made him nearly insane with want.

  “Katie . . .” he murmured against her forehead, bracing his hands against the music stand as he endured her questing fingers. They really needed to have a long, long talk before they proceeded, and if he were a better man, he would stop them now before the rest of their wardrobe—and their wits—were completely lost to passion.

  A hot flush rose up from his core and spread through his limbs as her fingers dipped down to the waist of his breeches, teasing him.

  “I think we’ve said enough, don’t you?” she whispered in his ear.

  He was, alas, not a better man.

  “Never enough where you’re concerned,” he murmured.

  She was warm and writhing against him, licking at all the exposed bits of his skin, driving him to the edge of reason. He finally dared to thrust against her, connecting his hardness against the soft, concave curve of her belly as she lay across the keyboard.

  Her exhale was heavy, yearning, against his ear, and her body went lax beneath him at last, her questing hands falling away from the mapping of his body as if she’d forgotten how to work them. “Sebastian,” she murmured.

  The last of any lingering inhibitions flew away at the sound of his name, spoken with such yearning. There would be time enough to sort out the anger and hurt between them when they’d both regained their wits. Talking had never done them any good anyway. She’d wanted proof—needed it, judging from her actions—and so he would give her proof. She’d certainly not liked the tulips and duets, but she seemed quite enamored with his body, if the way she touched and kissed him with such abandon was any indication.

  It was the first glimmer of hope he’d had in days, and though he’d not wanted to engage in the physical act before he’d courted her properly, wanting so much to be the gentleman she deserved, desperate times called for desperate measures.

  The pianoforte’s legs creaked ominously as he pressed against her again, and with his last remaining bit of lucidity, he made the difficult decision to abandon his fantasy before he broke his Broadwood. Or their backs. Ignoring all the aches and pains of his battered body, he scooped her up, wrapping her endless legs around his middle, and carried her the short distance into his bedchamber.

  Crick had been busy. A fire burned merrily in the grate, and the light of a full moon spilled across the bedsheets from the window. He placed her against the pillows and paused at the edge of the bed, staring down at her in near disbelief, her tow hair and thin chemise limned in the light of the moon.

  Her bright green eyes were wide, a bit apprehensive underneath the bravado. She reached out a hand but stopped just shy of touching him. He leaned closer, chasing her hand as she pulled it back to her side, suddenly cold without her warmth pressing against him.

  He climbed across the bed until he straddled her, bursting with want. He closed his eyes, breathing hard, waiting for his body to calm down enough to proceed without embarrassing himself.

  Finally, he felt her fingers on his face, combing through his hair again, tugging him gently down until their lips met.

  “You taste good,” she murmured when they came up for air, stroking his sides.

  God. “So do you,” he returned, breathing in the citrus scent of her hair as he removed the pins and spread out the long, pale strands around the both of them, watching her hair slip through his fingers like gossamer in the moonlight.

  Then he felt her take his hand in hers, guide it down her legs to the hem of the chemise, felt her nudge closer to him, press her soft breasts against his chest, her hips against his hips, and her lips against his mouth. He took the hint and stripped the chemise over her head and the stockings down her legs, blindly discarding them across the room until she was bared completely to his eyes.

  He sat back on his haunches and took in the sight of her, delirious with want, more certain than ever he was in some fever dream. She was all pale, slender loveliness, her skin glowing like a pearl in the moonlight, with slight, peach-tipped breasts, a tiny waist, and long, never-ending limbs. He wasn’t certain she was human at all, but rather some fey creature who’d hidden her secret identity beneath a drab gray wardrobe for fear of discovery.

  But when he touched her, gliding the back of his hand over her delicate collarbone, down one sloping breast to that hidden place between her legs covered by that silky gossamer hair, she was warm, so warm, and she shivered and spoke his name in the King’s English, just like an ordinary human might do.

  So perhaps she was not a nymph after all, but there was absolutely nothing ordinary about her.

  He wondered if it was like this for everyone in love, this overwhelming, disorienting awe. He wondered if another man had ever wanted a woman as much as he wanted Katherine and didn’t see how that would ever be possible, outside of Shakespeare’s sonnets, perhaps, or Christopher Essex’s cantos. All of those were just words, however, and could not prepare him for the reality of the moment, for the strength of his sentiment and the touch and scent and sight of his—his—woman spread beneath him.

  When his hand reached the end of its journey and he felt that warmer, humid core of her, he faltered, at a loss as to how to proceed without cocking things up.

  Though he supposed that cocking things up was rather the point.

  He wanted this to be as perfect and as honest as his love for her, and perhaps it would be, even if he was a bit of a novice. He could feel how she trembled in anticipation even though she did not yet touch him. She wanted him as much as he wanted her, and that was all the encouragement he needed to give himself over to the moment completely.

  He carefully moved his mouth down her slim throat, over a small, perfect breast, feeling its peak harden beneath his tongue, hearing her breath catch in her throat. She tasted salty, clean. Wonderful.

  “Sebastian!” she cried.

  He decided he was onto something, so he continued his journey to the soft skin of her belly, then lower, over the petal-soft lips between her legs.

  “What are you doing?” she managed, tensing slightly but not
pulling away. He lifted his head for a moment, trying to regain his bearings. She was looking at him with a sort of glassy-eyed bemusement, her cheeks rosy, her mouth slack.

  “I’m not exactly sure, my dear,” he murmured, licking his salty lips. “But I’ve read about it in naughty books, which has led me to believe that you shall enjoy it very much . . . if executed correctly.”

  Her eyes went wide. “We shall see . . .” she began, then gasped when he went back to his task, parting her long, long legs gently and caressing her with increasing ardor, searching for just the right spot with his tongue. He knew he’d found it when she cried out a little, her body jerking beneath him.

  “I think . . .” she panted. “I think I should like to read those books . . .”

  He was too preoccupied to respond and continued his caresses until she began tugging at his hair and urging him on with small, broken sentences filled with nonsense. At last she came in one glorious, luxuriating shudder, moaning in stupefaction.

  He couldn’t recall ever being so pleased with himself.

  He raised himself over her on his elbows, studied her blissful, luminous face as she lay beneath him, pale flesh gleaming with a slight sheen of sweat in the moonlight, cheeks flushed from the exertion. She was so luminously beautiful in her passion, more alive than he’d ever seen her, even when she was playing Beethoven. Her eyes were a dark, forest-green from her desire, her hair a moon-soft halo around her head, and he began to reconsider her kinship to some otherworldly creature. Or at least the princess out of that fairy tale his mother used to read to him in French, the one who had awakened into her lover’s arms after a long, cold century of slumber.

  She twined her arms around his neck and drew him down to her, pressing his still-sore ribs against her own warm, damp torso until it hurt, but the pain barely registered. It was a perfect moment, to be enveloped by her, pulled into her warm arms after giving her such pleasure, an act that had been more luck, he feared, than skill.

  He embraced her, shivering, aching from unsatisfied desire, but unwilling to break the moment. He would have happily held her—and been held by her—all night, his own needs be damned. He could think of few better paradises.