His Reluctant Lady

by Aydra Richards

  And he was not prepared for the surge of possessiveness that swept over him, for the feral sound that climbed in his throat as he crushed her lips beneath his again. He ground his hips against hers, and she gave a bewitching little moan.

  It wasn’t enough. This could never be enough. But she made a mournful little sound when he peeled his hand from the soft thrust of her breast and slid it down her waist, her hip, her thigh. She might balk. She might not. But either way, he had to try. He crumpled the fabric of her gown in his fist, dragging the heavy skirt upward.

  “Do you trust me?” he whispered against her lips.

  “Of course not,” she murmured promptly. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He choked on a laugh, which broke their kiss and drew a mutter of protest from her. “Will you trust me just a little, then? Trust me just enough to…” He won his battle with her skirts, thrusting the gown and petticoats and chemise upward enough to get his hand beneath, to slide his fingers across the silky flesh of her inner thigh. She didn’t precisely freeze, but her nails prickled his skin, and her eyes widened in astonishment.

  “Just a little further,” he crooned in her ear, relishing the shudder that slipped down her spine as he nipped her earlobe and teased the shell of her ear with the point of his tongue, as he’d like to tease other parts of her. His fingers coasted up her trembling skin, stopping just shy of his goal—close enough to tantalize, but too far to satisfy. “Say yes, Poppy. I need to hear you say it.”

  Her lips parted, but no sound emerged. With one finger, he stroked the delicate crease at the top of her thigh, and she trembled.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes—oh, please.”

  Thank God. He buried his face in her throat, dropping frantic kisses across her skin as his fingers slid through the sleek curls between her thighs, and into the damp warmth beneath them. A groan vibrated his throat to find her already so slick, so hot, her private flesh parting for his fingers like the dewy petals of a rose. Her hips nudged upward into his hand as a whimper of raw need broke from her lips.

  With nothing more than a few gentle strokes she was quivering in his arms, aching for release. It would be so easy to push her over that summit, to make her fall apart. But he needed to feel her, to experience what he could otherwise only imagine. With one finger he breached the tender opening of her body, slipping past the muscles that clenched to repel the invasion.

  He soothed her with little more than a murmur, and she subsided into acquiescence as he rubbed his thumb over the tiny bud hidden at the apex of her thighs. If not for the protection of his coat, her fingernails would have scored him. Her thighs clamped around his hand, her back arched—and with a whimper, she shattered.

  With a sense of wonder, he felt the luxuriant pulse of the contractions within her, how her silky interior flesh clenched around his finger, as if to draw him deeper inside her. If she felt so glorious in his hand, he couldn’t begin to imagine how she’d feel when he was buried inside her.

  Too soon it ended, too soon her hands eased their fierce grip and she canted her hips away from his fingers. Her eyes opened, a wealth of knowledge swimming in them that she had lacked before.

  “Oh,” she said, and there was a whole host of emotions in the simple word. Surprise, awe, satisfaction, pleasure—apprehension, concern, alarm.

  Oh, she had said, and damned if he didn’t agree with her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Will you hold still?” Westwood’s mutter singed her ear, and Poppy fought to calm the jittery, riotous feeling that had made her jog her knees up and down and contributed to his lordship’s frustration. She was sitting on the piano bench, where he was doing up her buttons, since she certainly could not have managed such a task on her own.

  “Damned inconvenient,” he said. “Why the devil would one gown require so many buttons?”

  Surely he didn’t expect an answer to that. It had to be rhetorical. Still, there was something so much more satisfying in coming out of a gown than going into it—with each successive button, she was reverting once more to herself. The strange, fluttery sensation in her stomach began to recede, her breaths began to even, and as the buttons between her shoulder blades were done up, her shoulders set once more into the resolute stiffness that governed her waking hours.

  At last he’d managed the final button, pinning her collar properly back in place against her throat. Her glove was still missing; she flexed her fingers in the light, wincing at the sight of the ink stains on her fingertips.

  “You’re remarkably quiet.”

  And he was remarkably chatty. “I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m meant to say.” Having never found herself in such a situation—nor even imagining that there had existed a reality in which she might—words, which had generally come so easily to her, had failed her.

  “Probably the sort of thing a woman like you is supposed to say,” he said absently, bending to retrieve her glove from the floor. Though he reached for her hand, presumably to help her don her glove in the same manner he’d helped her back into her gown, she snatched it from his fingers and slipped it on herself.

  “What am I supposed to say?” she inquired. And then as she caught the sardonic gleam in his eye, the eloquently lifted brow, she snapped, “I truly don’t know, so you needn’t look at me as if I’ve said something amusing.”

  He opened his mouth for a rejoinder, but he must have decided she was in earnest, for he closed it again and considered her for a moment before at last he deigned to answer. “Generally, when one is compromised, one wonders if a proposal might be forthcoming. You would, naturally, inquire as to when I might find the time to speak with your guardian regarding my intentions.”

  “I have no guardian,” she said inanely. He had delivered his own comment so flatly that it was very nearly insulting. “And I wasn’t compromised.”

  That elicited a snort from him. “If a woman can be ruined with a kiss—and I assure you, she can be—you were most definitely compromised.”

  “Of course I wasn’t.” Good, she’d recovered her prim tone at last. Retreating into the frosty shell she’d concocted for herself, she smoothed her rumpled skirts out and stood. “No one knows I’m here. No one would ever expect you to have…to have done that with me. I’m certainly not going to tell anyone.” A rusty little laugh trickled up from her throat. “Even if I did, who would believe it?” No one would. No one would ever believe that a man like him would have been moved to an indiscretion with a woman like her. It didn’t even merit consideration. Her reputation was entirely safe.

  His silence was alarming. She risked a glance over her shoulder in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of the surprise that had crossed his face. “Of course, I must depend upon your discretion as well,” she said. She would not be hurt by the relief that settled over his features, she would not—

  But she was, just a tiny bit. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to marry him any more than he wished to marry her. But he could have spared her feelings.

  She swallowed hard. How did one take one’s leave from such a situation? She decided upon a curtsey.

  Her knees popped, because all she had needed was that extra bit of humiliation. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, and turned for the door.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” He crossed the floor faster than she would have believed, catching her by her elbow and steering her out into the hall, in the opposite direction of the ballroom. “You can’t go out the front. You might be properly attired, but you look positively debauched.”

  “Debauched?” How interesting. “I really must find a mirror—”

  “Not tonight.” Something like a laugh rasped out of his throat, shades of disbelief coloring it. “We’ll go out the servants’ entrance and find you a hack.”

  He seemed to know where he was going, so she allowed him to lead her along as she wondered how he knew the layout of the house so well. It took her only a moment to realize that this was likely not the first such liais
on he’d conducted here. He’d known precisely where to find the music room, after all. Perhaps it was a favored rendezvous location of his.

  Probably he knew of a dozen such rooms, at various homes throughout London, in which he had conducted such interludes. It wasn’t as if she was special, or in any way unique. He probably had only to twitch his finger to lure a lady—any lady—into his arms.

  Even she hadn’t presented much of a challenge. She drew in a breath as the shame she hadn’t thought to feel came crashing down around her.

  He paused abruptly, and she very nearly crashed into his back. He poked his head around the corner, surveying the hall for a moment before he took off once again, dragging her along behind him. This hallway was narrow, without the plush carpeting of the main corridors. They reached a door at last, which he wrenched open, and the cool night air sailed inside, winding around the both of them. It soothed her flushed cheeks, and she drew it into her lungs as he held the door open for her to proceed through.

  They had emerged at the side of the grand house, on an empty street. But they had made so many turns in the house that she could not orient herself, and did not recognize where, precisely, they had come out. The street was unfamiliar, and even more so in the relative darkness.

  On the corner, beneath the glow of a lit streetlamp, a hack waited. The driver drowsed in his seat, the reins held in a loose grip.

  “There,” Westwood said, reclaiming her hand. “I’m putting you in that carriage, and you’re going directly home.” He said it severely, as if he suspected that she might be diverted from it—although she supposed she had expressed some interest in finding a mirror, so perhaps he thought his caution was justified.

  The driver started as the approached, but recovered well enough to manage a gruff, “Sir?”

  “Please see that she gets home safely,” Westwood said, and began patting his pockets, presumably to find the fare.

  “That’s not necessary,” Poppy said stiffly. She’d hired a hack to bring her here, and she’d brought enough with her to take her home again. She slipped her hand into her pocket and drew out the coin, which she tipped into the driver’s outstretched hand as she murmured her address.

  The driver doffed his cap and said, “In you go, miss. Have you home in a trice.”

  Westwood, in a spontaneous show of gentlemanly manners, reached for the door to open it for her. Poppy declined his hand, scrambling into the carriage without his assistance—but he caught her shoulder before she could slide fully into the dark interior.

  His cool blue gaze slid over her face, assessing her with a sort of penetrating stare that unnerved her. She couldn’t know what he saw, but she could see that it had not pleased him.

  “What sort of nonsense is going on inside your head, I wonder?” he murmured.

  She jerked at her arm, vaguely surprised by the strength of his grip. “Nothing at all,” she said crisply, stung by the laugh he gave.

  “Somehow I suspect it would be a cold day in hell before nothing was going on in your head,” he said. And then, “For God’s sake, Poppy.” He dragged her closer, his free hand sliding behind her head to pull her down to him. And then his lips were on hers with a queer sort of tenderness that felt almost like an apology. It wasn’t passionate; it didn’t drive all thought from her head. No, it was so much crueler than that—it was soft and gentle, and it seared her clear to her heart.

  “You’re coming to Jilly’s dinner party,” he said when he released her.

  Reflexively she shook her head. “I won’t.”

  “You will.” He slanted her a cunning grin. “I’ve still got your notebook.”

  “But you won’t use it.” He’d implied as much already. She wasn’t sure what made her so certain, but she was confident in her assessment—he held her ruination in his hands, but he would not use it. Not against her, and not when it meant her sisters, too, would suffer.

  “But you want it back, don’t you?” And he gave a knowing smile as he saw her fingers clench, as though she were already imagining the little book back in her hands. “I’ll return it to you—at Jilly’s dinner party.”

  If she got it back, there would be no proof linking her name to her novels. She had no idea what he would do with it in the meantime, whether he would keep it in a safe place, whether it would be discovered by someone else. Perhaps he would share it with his friends, and they would laugh at the foolish spinster who had made herself notorious.

  His smile dissolved the longer she had remained silent—and he gripped her hand in his, his fingers twining themselves around hers like rope. “Poppy, I will drag you to Jilly’s party myself if I must. So you might as well give in gracefully.”

  “That would be scandalous,” she said, with a delicate shudder.

  “Perhaps I’m not feeling entirely gentlemanly at the moment. Don’t tempt me.” He released her fingers and let her scramble away into the depths of the carriage. She could still feel the pressure of his hand on the back of her neck, the gentle sweep of his lips over hers. She resisted the urge to scrub her sleeve over her mouth to exorcise the feel of him, the taste of him.

  With a low chuckle, as if he had somehow divined what she had been thinking, he stepped back and closed the door of the carriage, sealing her in the darkness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  She’d brushed off his clumsy suggestion of an impending proposal as if it didn’t merit consideration. It was beyond comprehension—one would have thought she’d have leapt at the opportunity to snare a rich, titled husband. Instead she had all but laughed off the possibility, spouted some nonsense about how nobody would believe he’d compromised her even if she told them.

  Which meant she didn’t believe anyone would ever think her worthy of seduction.

  David downed his glass of whisky with growing irritation. He’d have put money on the fact that the confusion and distress that had been scrawled across her face when he’d put her in the cab had less to do with the fact that he’d shoved his hand beneath her skirt and stroked her until she’d come against his fingers and more to do with worry over whether he’d had some sort of ulterior motive in the doing of it.

  Probably she had measured herself against Lady Nettringham and found herself wanting. Probably she had decided that he had been making sport of her after all. Not that he’d done too terribly much to disabuse her of that notion.

  For some reason it made him furious. She dressed herself like someone’s maiden aunt, cloaked herself in a mien of frosty indifference, and presumed herself to be below anyone’s notice. She wore her coldness like armor—or at least she had, until he’d stripped it from her and she’d come to life in his arms, fiery and passionate.

  He had wanted to prove that their first kiss had been a fluke, and in that he’d failed miserably. It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t the sort of woman to whom he was ordinarily attracted. But he could still feel the gentle weight of her breast in his palm, could still shape her perfectly, as if his fingers held the memory of her soft skin within them.

  If he ever got another chance to slip his hands beneath her skirts, he was damned sure going to take it. But would she let him?

  Possibly—if it were offered in the spirit of assisting her with her precious research. If she wished to know what a woman in the grip of passion looked like, he’d debauch her anywhere she pleased, as often as she pleased. There was always the opportunity to slip away to some deserted section of a house, and he knew all of the best places.

  Jilly’s library would be a prime location. Somehow it suited—he’d like nothing better than to lay her down on that comfortable little couch amidst the walls of books and slide his fingers inside her again. And he didn’t have to worry that she’d scream when she came. Though not as reserved in passion as out of it, she did, at least, make the most enchanting little sounds. They’d stirred him more than any practiced moan or sigh, because they’d been artless and genuine. There was nothing contrived about her reactions; the breathy little whim
pers had been one more thing that belonged only to him, that she’d never shared with anyone else.

  He alone held all of her secrets. He knew the ink stains on her fingertips, the tiny birthmark just above her breast. He knew the sound of her sighs, the feel of the sleek, soft curls between her thighs, the clamp of her inner muscles around his finger. He knew the sounds she made when he touched her, the prick of her fingernails into the fabric of his coat.

  He knew the small bruise he’d inadvertently left upon her throat, and wondered if she’d yet discovered it. At least her high-necked, matronly gowns would conceal it from prying eyes, because nobody would believe it to be anything but what it was.

  He’d left his mark on her, and he flexed his shoulders, wishing he’d had the foresight to remove his coat and let her leave her mark on him, for she’d have surely dug those little claws straight into his skin. It seemed somehow unfair that he’d come out unscathed, while she would have to wear his mark like a brand.

  Saturday. Saturday was soon enough—and this time, he’d have the good sense to remove both of her gloves.

  ∞∞∞

  Poppy stared at the little mark against her throat in the reflection of the cheval glass in her bedroom, considering it not with a novelist’s eye, but with a woman’s. At first she’d thought it was some sort of dirt, a smudge of something she’d acquired when Westwood—and he was, once again, Westwood—had peeled back her gown.

  Well, she had acquired it there. When it had failed to be brushed away by her fingers or washed away with a dampened washcloth, she had at last realized that it was, in fact, a bruise. And then she had recalled the abrasion of his stubble-shadowed jaw against her skin, the suction of his lips against the fragile flesh of her throat and realized that he had left it there.

  She’d even managed a fair approximation of fury over the mark, until she had also recalled that it would be hidden beneath the neckline of any of her gowns. No one would know of it; no one would even suspect that any such evidence of her ill-considered liaison existed.