A Gentleman Undone

by Cecilia Grant

Three hundred. That was ridiculous. He’d better not have agreed. She could tell him so later. “Don’t stop.” That was the important thing to say now. “Please.” So he couldn’t accuse her of commanding him.

  He chuckled low in his throat, as if he were following her thoughts exactly, and sank his mouth to her once more.

  Men liked her bosom. Better than they liked her face, most times. And so she’d had ample experience of hands and mouths, strokes and pinches and bites and sucking and the astounding things tongues could do. Will Blackshear did them all, with a thorough, intricate care that lit up nerve endings one by one. She gasped and twisted, desperate as an eel on dry land. If this kept up it would all be over before he even got inside her.

  “Enough.” It didn’t sound like command, did it? “That’s enough.” No, it sounded like abject pleading for mercy.

  He raised his head and fixed her with a look that made the room spin around them. “It’s not enough for me. Spread your legs.” He swung his knee up and over, pushing her thighs apart even as she obeyed.

  The sheet slid all the way off him. He was naked above her, impressively erect, his eyes glinting with sinful intent. He planted his second knee in between hers, and she spread her legs even wider to make room.

  But instead of bringing his body forward he drew back, and back again, still kneeling, and she knew what was coming and she dug her heels in the mattress to lift up her hips, greedy wanton that she was, without even waiting for his hands to slide under her.

  He caught her hips in a firm grasp and bent his head, and he dragged her into a whole bright world made of just his mouth and hands. No, his mouth and hands and the stubbly nascent beard on his chin, prickling all her most sensitive places into a frenzy as he rubbed his mouth over her.

  No doubt he could be thorough. No doubt he could pleasure her nerve by intricate nerve here, too. But he’d primed her too well. His tongue stroked once, plunged once, and circled once, and she was done for. She shook all over, hips pushing to answer him of their own volition, hands clapped over her mouth to stop up cries that could have woken people in the next parish.

  She was his. The taking would be but a formality. Every nerve, every cell in her body sang for him and him alone. Her hips sank slowly back to the mattress, his hands bearing her weight, cupping her arse in a fit so perfect that they stayed there, between her flesh and the linens, even after she’d come all the way back down.

  He knelt at a forward pitch, his hands under her and his head bowed like some heathen worshipper. He didn’t speak. He didn’t look up. He remained in his prayerful posture for one long moment, and when his chin finally came up and his eyes met hers he was smiling with such serene satisfaction she might really believe he’d found a revelation between her thighs.

  “Come here.” She reached out with both arms. “If you please.”

  His hands slid out from under her and he stretched out to his full height on the horizontal. Instead of settling atop her, though, he eased himself to her side and lay facing her, his fingers venturing out to trace her hairline, his eyes roving over every inch of her face.

  “That was a fine program.” She turned her body to face him as well. “I liked it very much.”

  “There’s more to it, actually.” He trailed a finger down her cheek.

  “I should hope so. You didn’t take your pleasure.”

  “Nor do I intend to.”

  Oh. Well, not much was novel to a lady who’d worked at Mrs. Parrish’s, and she’d encountered more than one man who liked to have his crisis denied. If he wanted her to—

  “I shan’t take, this time.” Along her jaw his finger went, from under her ear on out to her chin. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “You shall give.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  HE WAS challenging her, as surely as if he’d bid her name her friends. The back of her neck prickled. “Do you think I cannot?”

  “I don’t know.” Brows straight and serious, he let his hand fall from her face to the pillow. “I expect I’ll find out.”

  Oh, he’d find out, to be sure. “I can give you anything you want.” Likely he thought he’d seen her at the height of her powers in the gaming hell. He hadn’t seen the half of what she could do. “I can give you things you didn’t even know you wanted.” Her voice was sloping into its duskiest timbre, thick with promise and potency. In one smooth motion she rose above him and pushed his shoulder down to make him lie flat. “I can leave you begging for mercy and begging for more.”

  “No.” With a granite grip he halted her as she was halfway to straddling him. “No arts. Save your showing-off for the card table. That’s not what I want.”

  Not what I want. For Heaven’s sake, not again. Did he prefer a mediocre fuck, perhaps? She fixed him with exactly the blank look such sentiments deserved.

  “I want you.” The more gently he spoke, the more resolute the pitch of his brows. “The Miss Slaughter with whom I’ve grown acquainted.” He eased her down so she sat across his thighs, just back of his erection. “I don’t want to spend myself in a stranger again. I want to do this with the woman for whom I’ve come to care.”

  “Don’t.” He’d turned into a bright sun of a sudden, or a blazing fire threatening to leap the hearth. “Don’t say that.” She had to angle her face away.

  “Don’t worry.” His hands stroked up her arms. “It needn’t be tender. It can be a good rollicking fuck. We can say as many filthy things as you like. Only it needs to be you here with me.”

  “It was, last night.” Her eyes stung and she was blinking. “That was me too.” She ought to have known he wouldn’t truly accept that part of her.

  For a moment he was silent, and finally she had to risk a glance. His eyes had gone slightly unfocused. He was busy with his own thoughts. “Of course,” he then said. “Forgive my mistake. I just … want all of you this time.”

  “I can’t.” He had no idea what he was asking of her.

  “Most of you, then. More of you. Lydia.” He would have an answer for her every objection. He would prevail no matter what she did. “It needn’t be so difficult. Trust me. Trust yourself. We’ll find our way.”

  His soft exhortations kindled a memory: that night at the gaming hell, when he’d called her out to the hallway because he wanted to retreat, and she’d willed the necessary confidence into him. Now she was the one wrestling an urge to flee, and his were the steady hands holding her in place.

  She could do this. She’d writhed and wailed and come for him already this morning without anger. She could meet him on what ground he liked, and she could do it without betraying herself.

  She grasped his cock, rose up on her knees, and slid down hard until she had him to the hilt. That meant yes.

  He closed his eyes and exhaled forcefully. “Yes,” he said in his turn. “Good. Just like that.” One of his hands left her arm to claw up a fistful of the rumpled sheet.

  He didn’t need her to be careful, then, or warm. “Open your eyes.” She could command him without shoving him away. “Watch me fuck you.”

  A spasm shot through him, feet to scalp. His eyes half-opened and his hand trailed from her arm to her waist, settling there to ride her movement. “You are wanton beyond my wildest dreams, Lydia Slaughter. You are the lewdest, filthiest, most irredeemable …” His paean ended in a curse as he succumbed to another bolt of pleasure.

  “You make me that way. I’ve wanted to see you naked since the first time we spoke in the dark upstairs at Beecham’s.” That was a confidence, not altogether easy to say. But it was what he wanted, so it was what he would have, in a caressing whisper, with her fingertips wandering through the hairs on his chest.

  “Only since then? I think I wanted you on sight.” He was addressing her bosom, watching, unabashedly, the bounce with which it echoed her every movement on him. He nudged her arm aside where it blocked his view. “Damnation, but your tits are exquisite,” he growled.

  “Would you like to watch me touch them?” />
  “Hell. What do you think?” His voice was hoarse and his eyes burned with appetite.

  She lifted her hands, slowing her movement to a delicate writhing, and crossed her arms in front to cover her breasts with her palms. This might be more interesting if she played the shy virgin lured into lechery.

  He stared, and swallowed. “Touch them.”

  “I am.” Her eyelids fluttered modestly down.

  “You ruthless, pitiless tease. Stroke them.”

  She couldn’t help smiling. This was art, and it was showing off, and despite what he’d said he wanted it. She let her smile tell him so, and he understood precisely. He smiled in answer, making it a sweet shared joke that sent currents of warmth through every part of her.

  She dragged her fingers, one after the next, hesitant as a maiden in her bath. His throat rippled with a harder swallow. His smile evaporated and his gaze sharpened until it was fit to cut diamonds.

  “What else would you like me to do?” She half-whispered the question, eyes averted to his chest.

  “Put your fingers in your mouth. Make them wet.”

  Not bad, Blackshear. But she could do better. She met his gaze. Then she sent her hand down and slipped her fingers in between her body and his, between her legs, and brought them back wet.

  His chest gave a quick heave as he sucked a breath in through his mouth.

  She fetched her wet fingers back to one nipple, and the slick contact was almost as good as his tongue. Better, when you factored in the heat of his stare. She let her head fall back—why not?—and moaned aloud.

  “Lydia.” He near-strangled on her name. His solid hands landed on her hips, where they shaped her movement. Harder. Tipped back ten degrees or so. She’d remember. She was a quick study. Then his thumb was roaming down through her curling hairs, and then it was upon her, stroking nefarious circles. “Lydia,” he said again. “Let me see you come.”

  She quivered. But no. Her eyes came to his and she shook her head. “Your pleasure first.” She put his hand away from her.

  Give, he’d said. She could do that. She kept hold of the one hand and reached for the other, lacing her fingers through his, palm to palm. She leaned forward, pushing his hands back down to the pillow, bringing her face nearer to his, thrusting on him all the while.

  “Talk to me,” he murmured, in such a voice as the serpent must have used with Eve.

  So she told him a few things. Regarding the broadness of his shoulders, and the superiority of his cock, and the way his eyes alone could make her feel naked. And when his hips began to rock roughly under her and his face went grim with concentration, she told him more. How she’d worn the plum-colored sarcenet only for him. How the scent of bay rum would forever bring him to mind. How she’d never slept beside a man until two nights since.

  Fraught confidences these were, requiring all her nerve. But how could she regret them, seeing their effect? His hands slipped free of hers and groped for a hold on her waist. His breath came in harsh pants. He was on the doorstep of delirium, and she would push him over the threshold.

  She touched herself. He was close enough now that she might risk it. She wouldn’t go ahead of him but she wouldn’t be far behind.

  He watched her fingers slip in between her thighs and he swore, thrusting up with furious strength. His teeth showed in all their imperfect glory as his lips pulled back in a grimace. His brows, like inky scrawls on his taut face, drove down and his eyes shut hard. His grip convulsed at her waist.

  Climax took him like a lightning strike, all in one bright instant. He arched up from the bed and went rigid, gasping for breath, holding her hard to him that he could stay deep inside. His fingers would leave bruises. She didn’t care. She stroked herself harder, faster, riding the wave of his pleasure, welcoming the bruises, claiming the fierce grasp of his hands right alongside the shudder of his release inside her. I did this. I gave him what he thought I couldn’t. His seed and his cock and his climax are mine.

  Then she was shuddering too, the back of her free hand pressed to her mouth against a squall of desperate sounds. Everything shuddered: the bedposts faltered in her vision, the wallpaper swam, the walls themselves lurched out and away. Nothing remained but pleasure, and rightness, and then nothing at all. A perfect void cradled her, or cradled what would have been her but that she’d shed her self to fuse with this perfection and now she need never come back.

  She did come back, though. She always did. And this time she was lying naked atop one man when within hours she must make account to another. Claret and drowsy waking lust had obscured the outlines of her predicament—of her brash and profitless transgression—during all the hours before. Nothing remained to obscure those outlines now.

  HIS BREATHS demanded a certain effort still, partly because he’d got out of practice with such exertions and partly on account of a singularly agreeable cause, namely the weight of the woman collapsed over his chest.

  Will inhaled, and settled his outspread hands carefully on her back. She’d worn herself out with him. Let her take as long to recover as she liked.

  If only there were some way … but he wouldn’t spend these few glorious minutes thinking of that. There wasn’t any way. Beyond this bed lay cold realities woven out of his small means and prior obligations, and her wish to be independent of a gentleman’s protection.

  Never mind. Nearly a year he’d waited for such a night and morning, and this moment alone was worth every minute of the wait.

  Her ribs expanded against him with a sudden sharp breath. Oh, hell. She was crying.

  “Lydia.” One stab of disappointment would not be denied, but quickly enough solicitude slipped into its place. “What is it, sweetheart? What’s wrong?” He wrapped his arm across her and put his other palm to the back of her head.

  For a few awful seconds she couldn’t shape her breath into words, and he must wonder at what thoughts possessed her, in this moment when he’d believed her to be as contented as he. “I don’t want to stay here,” she finally said. “I want to go home to London.” The admission apparently taxed her to the limit: she fell into soft hopeless sobbing, her muscles against him all wracked with misery.

  “I’ll take care of it, then.” He could make no other answer in the world. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you home. Today, I will.” A deep, deep breath was needed for the next words. “I promise.”

  MR. BLACKSHEAR proposed to speak to Edward, that she would not have to. “I’ll tell him you fell ill, and that the viscount had already meant to return home today and offered to convey you. I can say your illness prevented anything improper from transpiring here.”

  But Edward was not so gullible as to credit such a tale. And even if he could be convinced that she and Mr. Blackshear had failed to consummate matters, he would still hold her guilty of the intent. She had defied him before the company. He would not soon forgive her for that.

  Indeed the machinery of her punishment seemed already to be set in motion: when she rang for a maid, and sent her to Mr. Roanoke’s room to fetch her burgundy muslin and a clean chemise, the girl came back empty-handed. Her clothing had all been banished from Mr. Roanoke’s room. She was to dress in yesterday’s gown and wait upon Mr. Roanoke in his study.

  Her stomach wrung itself as she made her way to that room. Mr. Blackshear had dressed and gone ahead of her to effect the necessary persuasion on the viscount and then, presumably, to notify Edward of their departure. He might himself be in the study at this moment, ready to brace her up with his own unswerving resolve.

  But no. She passed through the open study door to find Edward in consultation with some gentleman who had the appearance of a steward. He glanced up as she crossed the threshold and, without any interruption in his conference, gestured toward a chair where she was presumably to sit and wait her turn.

  She moved near the chair, but stayed standing. To sit at his command felt like the action of a penitent woman. And she might be apprehensive, and a bit aghast at her reck
lessness of the past fifteen hours, and utterly unable to imagine how she and Edward could ever mend matters between them after the betrayals of these few days—but one thing she was not, was penitent.

  Some five more minutes he and the steward conferred, and when the man had gone on his way Edward got up from the desk where he’d sat and strode to a window, not sparing her so much as a look. He settled there, hands clasped behind him, feet planted apart. “I trust you had a pleasant evening?” he said in an acid-laced voice.

  “Just as pleasant as yours, I hope.” If he expected her to act like the only guilty party in this drama, then he was in for a disappointment.

  “My congratulations. Now listen.” His chin lifted slightly. He didn’t turn. “Your things have all been put into your trunk. You have twenty minutes to eat breakfast and make what good-byes you wish. You and your trunk will go in a cart to Witham, where you may catch the mail coach. At the end of this week, when I return to London, you will have removed yourself from the house in Clarendon Square. Is all that quite clear?”

  Half her innards dove downward; the other half twisted themselves in knots. Of course she’d known this might be the price of her indulgence. More than that: she must have known, if she paused to consider, that she could not go to bed with him again regardless his sentiments on the matter. And still, to hear it as an edict both chilled her and sent a warm flush of anger to her face.

  “I see.” She clasped her hands behind, like his, and advanced several steps toward him. “I’m a commodity to be wagered and passed about to other men when it suits you, then? But I’m to be chaste otherwise, and silent when you fling your own transgressions in my face?” She would gain nothing from this mutiny—even if he could be made to acknowledge his injustice, she would not go back to him—but the words poured forth nevertheless. “You’re free to amuse yourself with other women as they catch your eye, even on a night you were to take me to the theater, and I must sit and wait and never ask you to account for yourself when I see you next?”