A wicked gleam sparked in his eye—or perhaps it was a reflection of the firelight. Either way, that flash dared her to prod. “I expect no less of you. What did you do? Lead some poor girl astray?”
He drew himself up slightly, surprised, no doubt, that she’d hint at her own situation. And why had she? If he was a seducer of innocents, she was better off remaining ignorant. But part of her already insisted he’d done no such thing. He could have seduced her last night, if he’d chosen, when he had her open and willing on the table. Yet he’d denied himself the ultimate pleasure.
“That wasn’t me,” he said. “That was Revelstoke.”
“What?” She couldn’t fathom the notion. The man she’d met appeared so upright and staid.
“Of course, the poor girl in question is now his wife, so it worked out in the end.”
“And what did you have to do with that?”
“He dispatched me to bring a special license.”
“Your scandal is becoming more respectable by the moment. I’m beginning to think you nearly entered the church.” She couldn’t resist the gibe just to see his reaction.
“Oh, now they definitely wouldn’t have me.” Not with a grin that promised all manner of sin, no.
An answering smile stretched her lips. And yet she wanted to dispute his statement. He might fancy himself sinful and unrepentant, but beneath that front lay an inherently good man. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but a blinding light bathed the cottage in white for an instant. The clap of thunder that followed shook the roof. Her heart jumped a mile or more, and the stab of fear cut the bottom out of her stomach.
George reached for her and pulled her against his chest. “All right there?”
She swallowed her racing heart back into its usual spot. “I will be.”
He settled his arms about her, his fingers tangled in the wisps of her hair. “It’ll be over soon.”
She inched back. “Will it?”
“The storm, yes.”
“But we’re still no closer to finding Jack. The riders won’t have got far. Any clue will be washed away in this deluge.”
He swept his hands to either side of her face, fingers splayed across her cheeks, and forced her to meet his gaze. Sincerity and intensity entwined in the gray depths of his eyes. “We will find him.”
“You cannot promise me that.”
He leaned closer until his breath wafted across her lips. “It’s not a promise. It’s a vow.”
A vow. George caught himself before he shook his head. What the hell had he just done? Sworn to an impossibility, perhaps. Not only that, he’d laid his own plans aside to focus on Isabelle’s difficulties.
He ought to know better, but something about her moved him. Something about her aroused a need in him to protect, and at the moment, she needed protection from her own thoughts and fears. She needed her son back.
She stared at him, unblinking, eyes huge and round beneath the shadow of her brow. When he put his arms about her, his only intention had been comfort and support. Seduction was out of the question. She’d sent him a clear message on that score, and damn it all, he’d respect her wishes.
Still, he couldn’t prevent his fingers from testing the softness of her cheeks, a gentle caress of affection, not arousal.
Her lips parted, and she emitted the tiniest gasp. Good God, she was skittish. Skittish yet vulnerable to his attentions. Try as she might, she couldn’t completely hide her reaction. Images of her response to him the previous night filled his mind. Like a dream, they unwound before him, and he experienced once more her cries, her movement against him, her body’s salt taste, the way she’d opened to him. Trusted.
What he wouldn’t give to witness that again. Here. Now.
“Isabelle.” He touched her again, more boldly this time, the pad of his finger tracing her cheek to skate across her lower lip. “If I kissed you now, would you allow it?” Another pass with his fingertip. The flesh beneath it was warm and moist and invitingly pink. “Would you allow it or would you slap me?”
She did not shrink away. Thank God. “I shouldn’t allow it, but I’d be discourteous to return all your kindness with a slap.”
He inclined his head until his brow rested against hers. “You should allow it.”
“I should?” She wanted to, certainly. Her unwavering gaze, the husky note to her voice, her utter focus on him all indicated he held her in thrall.
He inched closer until his lips were a hairsbreadth from hers. “I believe it’s customary to seal a vow with a kiss.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE WAY he’d been looking at her, she was expecting an assault to rival what she’d lived last evening. But he kept this kiss light and easy, a simple give and take of his mouth against hers. A dance, but not a waltz. No, this kiss was more akin to a reel, meeting and pushing away, together and back again. Not demanding, yet arousing.
Arousing because she now knew what he was capable of.
But then he eased away to tuck her into an embrace. One palm fitted to the back of her head, he pressed her into the crook of his shoulder. Her cheek stuck to his dampened skin.
She breathed in his rich scent and listened to the steady rhythm of the rain drumming on the roof. The fire crackling on the hearth scattered the shadows of the deepening evening and lent warmth. But the true heat in this room emanated from him. It penetrated the thin layer of her chemise and set her nerves aflame.
Her breasts felt heavy pressed against him, heavy and full and sensitive almost as they had when she was expecting. He drew in air, and his hand skimmed along her neck, tracing a deliberate caress to her waist. She quivered.
He shifted slightly, and she raised her head to find him contemplating her. His eyes caught the fire’s glow and reflected it with hunger. The air about them thickened, and her lips parted. He’d lent her comfort, but the atmosphere between them had become charged with a different energy.
One that quickened her pulse and made her breath come in shallow spurts. One that demanded she set her tongue to the notch at the base of his throat and taste the salt of his skin. One that urged her hands to explore the broad planes of muscles that banded his chest, to feel them ripple beneath her fingertips, to search out the places on his body that would elicit a groan, a hiss, a shudder …
“Isabelle,” he whispered, “if you don’t stop looking at me like that, I shall not be responsible for my actions.”
“How am I looking at you?” Her question ought to have been a challenge, but instead, it emerged from her lips in a seductive purr.
He leaned his forehead against hers. His lips hovered less than an inch from her mouth. She could nearly taste his breath. “Like you’re ready to devour me on the spot.”
Dear Lord, was she so transparent? “Oh.”
“Believe me, my dear, I should like nothing more.”
He closed the gap between them all too briefly, his lips a fleeting brush against hers. She tried to follow, tried to prolong the contact, but he eluded her.
A flash of lightning bathed the cottage in brilliance for an instant, followed by a low growl of thunder.
“It seems we shall be stranded for quite a while.” Still that yearning note in her voice. Why couldn’t she be sensible around him? Why must she continue to play with fire whenever he was near? Not simply fall the way she had the first time, but leap into the flame. Already her foot teetered on the brink of a precipice.
“Yes, it does.”
She leaned toward him, caught his lips with hers, but once again, he pulled back before a true kiss could take hold.
“Before we take this too far,” he added, “I need something from you.”
“What?”
“Your assent.” He kissed her temple. “Your trust.” Another brush of his lips against her brow. “I ask a great deal, you see, but never more than you’re prepared to give.”
She lowered her lids against the intensity in his gaze. He wanted her, of that there was no doubt. Seducti
on laced his tones, but it was enmeshed with something else—caution, perhaps. A readiness to stop, should she call a halt. And he was letting her know now, before desire sunk its claws in too far, before lust clouded their judgment and urged them on.
Ironically, the knowledge made her decision all the more difficult. He was placing the power in her hands, allowing her the lead. It was a singular moment in a life that had always been guided by the dictates of others—her family, society, circumstance.
When she’d trysted with Jack’s father, she didn’t know what she was letting herself in for until it was too late. He’d pushed her to the point of lust-fogged judgment all too easily, and then her body had taken over and responded to his and kept on responding until her virginity and her reputation lay in the tatters of her ball gown.
But this was different. George was different. He’d been nothing but a support to her through these last worry-filled days, always there, always solid, always doing his utmost to find her son. And now he’d given this gift, beyond price, to her who had once possessed every possible luxury.
She knew the value now, having lost it all. And she also knew this: She’d willingly trade all of these if it meant getting her son back. She owed George.
But she shouldn’t do this because she owed him. She should do this because she wanted. Because she cared, and how could she not? Cared because he’d given, yes, but more than that. His charm, his wit, his nonchalance, his willingness to tell the rest of society to bugger themselves. How she wished she possessed such courage.
And that was just on the surface. He possessed a depth, one he kept well hidden, but she’d witnessed it that evening in the ballroom when he’d sat at the pianoforte and let the music flow through his fingers. He’d let her in that night and shared with her a secret piece of himself he shared with no one. Not even his longtime friends.
He caught her chin in the palm of his hand, his long fingers splaying about her jaw. Her heartbeat raced onward. She’d waited too long to reply.
He would withdraw now. He’d leave her untouched, and when the rain let up, they’d each return to their separate worlds—she to her empty home in the village and he to the crowded manor where he felt utterly alone.
Where had that thought come from? It had popped into her mind, but her gut reacted to it, and she knew it for the truth. This charming wit of a man who easily surrounded himself with family, friends, acquaintances, who eased through life with a smile and a snappy rejoinder, was essentially alone in the world, because none of that was him. None of the façade he presented to the ton was real. It was armor, a shield to protect his essential self from ridicule.
“Wait,” she whispered.
“I am waiting, waiting for your reply.”
She swallowed. “Yes. The answer is yes.”
That one word sent a jolt through him. She felt its tremor beneath her thighs. “Yes what?”
Still wary. Still ready to withdraw before they got carried away. She wanted to be carried away—with him. Only with him.
“Yes, you have my assent.” She leaned close and pressed her lips to his. “You have my trust.” Another kiss, this one longer, more lingering. “You have me. For as long as you want me.”
With a groan, he tightened his embrace and drew her into a devouring kiss that stole her breath. His tongue swept between her parted lips, and she gladly responded. Too long. Too long her feelings had been deadened. What joy to discover them once again, and so much more intense than she recalled. Each thrust of his tongue, each brush of his fingers against her throat, her temples, her nape elicited a pulse of pleasure that rivaled what she’d experienced last night.
A growl emerged from deep in his throat, and the sound released an answering throb in her belly. Not close enough. Not even with the negligible barrier of her thin cotton chemise between them. She wanted his skin against hers.
All of it.
She wanted to wrap her arms and legs about him and pull him into herself. She wanted to be filled with him, to merge so completely that both of them ceased to exist as separate entities.
His insistent tugs at her hips sent her scrambling, and somehow she landed in his lap without their lips breaking contact. Her fingers plunged into his hair, and beneath her bottom, the hard length of his arousal pulsed insistently through his breeches.
Her core throbbed in response, aching for him. She pressed her thighs together in a vain effort to ease the delicious discomfort, and he groaned into her mouth. He tore his lips from hers, leaving them swollen and tingling, while his breath puffed warm and shallow against her cheeks.
“If you don’t sit still,” he rasped, “I shall go quite mad.”
She grinned. She couldn’t help it. The sheer need driving those words unleashed a torrent of utter wickedness. Slowly, deliberately, she canted her hips. “Perhaps I want to drive you mad.”
His breath released on a hiss, and his eyes seemed to roll back for a moment. Then he seized her by the hips and turned her until she faced him. Somehow, he wedged her knees on either side of his flanks so that the delicious, hard length of him pressed just where she wanted it. “Then let’s do it up right, shall we?”
He shifted his hips beneath her, a thrust that sent a spark of pure pleasure arrowing from the apex of her thighs to her womb. Heat radiated through her limbs. She dug her fingernails into his bare shoulders, closed her eyes and arched her back.
“God, so beautiful,” he muttered, the sound a low rasp in his throat. “Just as you were last night.” He set his lips at the base of her neck and gathered her close. Through the thin layer of her cotton chemise, her nipples peaked against his chest. Warmth and power welled from him to her.
Beneath her fingertips, the muscles of his shoulders bunched. His lips slid along the column of her neck, his tongue tracing a path to the spot where her pulse raced. He nibbled, and she jerked against him. The movement elicited a groan, while sending another jolt to her midsection. Her inner muscles clenched on nothing, and her ache for him expanded.
Lord above, it would take so little to complete their joining. Nothing but a couple of flicks to release the fall of his breeches, to release him. A slight adjustment, and she could sink onto him, letting her weight multiply the sensation of being utterly filled with him.
And she was ready. Heavens, she was ready.
She slid herself along his length and felt the moisture seeping from her. She repeated the motion, gasping as the knot of desire tightened in her midsection. She thought of that wonderful rush of ecstasy he’d shown her with his tongue and his fingers buried deep. It lurked within once more, elusive, but each movement brought her closer.
“Please.”
She buried her face against his chest, breathing in his scent, panting. A thin sheen of sweat coated his skin, stuck her to him. She closed her eyes and let herself feel. Experience. Surround herself with him. With George.
This was nothing like some hasty encounter in a darkened drawing room, each movement furtive, each sound from without like an alarm that they might be caught at any moment. Here, the world receded until only the pair of them existed, only, soon, they as a pair, as separate man and woman would cease to exist altogether.
“Please, please.”
His hand slipped along her thigh. She drew in a harsh breath in anticipation of his touch just there. Yes, there. Oh, yes. Oh, God, yes. His fingers parted her flesh, explored among her folds until his thumb grazed the spot.
She turned her face into his shoulder, pressed her lips against his heated skin, tasted him. He moved with her, his thumb on that bud of flesh, his erection beneath, thrusting in a mimicry of their ultimate joining. The pleasure rushed in on her, a great wave that rose, crested, and crashed until it engulfed her. Its salt filled her mouth. It tore the air from her lungs and left her gasping on a wordless scream of joy so powerful, so all-encompassing she could die of it.
Part of her, in fact, just might have.
He’d taken her fear into himself, taken he
r need, and now he’d taken another, far more essential part of her. Joy, pleasure, and pain combined, and she gave it. She gladly gave it for him to possess as long as he would.
And they were, as yet, clothed after a fashion. She opened her eyes. Her mouth was plastered against his shoulder, agape, her tongue tasting his skin—and something coppery. Blood.
She jerked her head upright. “Heavens. I’ve bitten you.”
His laughter vibrated through his chest. “That you did, but I believe you might still make it up to me.”
He took her hand and pressed her palm to the spot. Beneath her fingertips, his heart beat, rapid and powerful.
“Better already,” he whispered. “Just keep touching me.”
The note of harshness in his voice, the insistent thrust of his erection between her legs reminded her they weren’t finished yet. Not tonight. Tonight he wouldn’t be content with her pleasure alone. He was about to demand his due.
A tremor of renewed desire thrummed through her. Oh, yes, his pleasure would be hers, as well, the ecstasy shared and redoubled. She watched from beneath half-lidded eyes as her fingers traced along the plane of his chest, swirled a pattern through the crisp hair scattered across it.
His breath hitched. She glanced up to find his eyes closed. His fingers curled into her waist, holding her steady in his lap while she explored. Her nail grazed the raised disc of his nipple, and his grip on her tightened. She circled the tiny peak, marveling at its soft texture.
A tremor passed through him—it passed through her as well, shuddered through her core, where they were pressed so intimately together. She thought of his tongue on her nipple when he’d kissed her breasts last night, when he’d drawn her into his mouth and suckled. Such exquisite pleasure. She tapped the tiny knot beneath her fingertip. What if …
Before her mind could complete the question, she dipped her head and licked. His entire body jerked beneath her, and a groan burst from his lips. She kissed the spot again, allowing her tongue to circle and savor the taste of him, the musky scent of his arousal. His fingers threaded through her hair, holding her in place, while she grazed the sensitive flesh with her teeth. His breath rushed between his lips in shallow pants, as if he’d run five miles.
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