When a soft sigh spiraled out of her, he turned his lips to the base of her throat. “Or this?” He skimmed his mouth along the smooth hollow as if seeking the pulse that jumped in a frenzy beneath his touch, and when he found it he kissed that, too, then followed it up the arch of her neck.
By the time he lifted his head, his eyes smoldered like barely banked embers in the flame that was his face. “No, I’d forgotten. Those are kisses, and ‘too far’ is more than a kiss or two, isn’t it? ‘Too far’ must be enough to make my childhood friend doubt my good character. Now, what could that be?”
With his gaze still fixed on her face, he caught one sleeve of her chemise in his fist and inched it down past her shoulder. Color flooded her cheeks as she grabbed his hand at the wrist to stop him, but then he brought his mouth down on hers and she forgot why he shouldn’t be here with her alone…why he shouldn’t touch her like this, kiss her like this…why she didn’t trust him…everything.
His kiss was deep and immediately possessive, his tongue entering her mouth before she even realized she’d parted her lips. The table edge dug into her palm where she gripped it in an attempt not to “draw him back” as he’d accused her of before.
But that was only a small victory, for she couldn’t keep the rest of her body from responding, from straining against him, from welcoming his mouth as it urgently explored hers…or his hands as they worked the sleeves of her chemise over her shoulders…or his knee pressing in to part her thighs within the muslin prison of her scanty clothing. She even helped him by angling her head back as his lips kissed a path down her throat.
When he loosened the ties of her chemise, however, she came briefly to her senses, catching the muslin’s edge before it could gape open and reveal her bare breasts. “Stop it! What do you think you’re doing?”
“Determining my limits,” he said in a husky voice. “How far is ‘too far’?”
“This most certainly is!”
“Oh? But you said you didn’t lie to Sara about my ‘assault’ that night, and I definitely don’t remember doing this.” His night black gaze locked on her face, but his hand cupped one muslin-covered breast in a bold caress that made her suck in a breath. “Then again, my memory is sometimes faulty. Perhaps I should refresh it.”
“No, you…you…” Her mind went blank when his hand moved on her breast. It was exquisitely shameful and very delicious. “Oh, my word,” said a throaty voice that surely belonged to someone other than her, the voice of a wanton.
“Did I touch you like this that night, Felicity?”
She closed her eyes to keep from witnessing his triumphant expression. He flattened his palm against her breast and began a rotating motion that made her nipple tighten into an aching kernel.
At her sharp intake of breath, he leaned close, his own breath beating a hot tattoo against her cheek. “Tell me, querida. Did I do this?”
The foreign word caught her off guard until she remembered that he was half-Spanish. And she was too embarrassed to ask what it meant.
“Answer me,” he commanded in a harsher tone.
“No,” she blurted out, heedless of her pride. “You know you didn’t.”
When she forced her eyes open to face the gloating expression sure to be there, she was shocked to see he wasn’t gloating.
Raw need fractured his normally controlled features. “It’s a miracle I didn’t,” he confessed raggedly. “Because I wanted to. God, how I wanted to.”
His assertion salved her wounded pride. He hadn’t been merely manipulating her that night—he had felt what she’d felt. And the things he did to her now—the kisses, the caresses—were more than one of his cursed stratagems.
The realization renewed all her repressed longings, and they gusted through her like an errant wind, blowing away any thought of modesty or maidenly restraint. She leaned eagerly into his hand. With a groan of pure male satisfaction, he caressed her in earnest…plucking at her nipple through the muslin, gently pinching it with obvious expertise, finding the other breast and submitting it to the same torturous, glorious fondling.
To her shame, his caresses roused a most deplorable curiosity. How would it feel to have his bare fingers against her skin? Or even his mouth? Scandalous thought!
But one he must have sensed, for he slid his hand inside her chemise to cup her naked breast. The ensuing whirlwind of pleasure made her close her eyes and sigh aloud. Good Lord, it was better than she’d imagined. Skin to skin, his hand intimate with her flesh. Any lingering objections faded until the only thing remaining was an urgent need to know more, feel more, have him touch her more.
Her breathing grew labored, as if the insolent motion of his hand—no, his hands, for both of them were now inside her chemise—worked a magic that siphoned the very breath from her body. She’d never guessed her body possessed such an astonishing capacity for enjoyment or that a man could discover it with unerring ease.
“Ian…” she murmured, not even knowing what she wanted to say.
“Yes.” His voice sounded hoarse and far away. “My God, you feel like heaven in my hands…so good…so sweet…”
He knelt on one knee and drew her chemise down so he could seize her breast with his mouth exactly as she’d imagined. Shocked as much by his uncanny ability to know her body’s longings as by what he did, she clasped his head between her hands. He must stop this. She should make him stop this.
Yet she cradled his head closer, breathing in the scent of pipe smoke that clung to his hair. He made a growling noise in the back of his throat and slid his free hand around her thighs, then pulled her forward until she fell onto his bent leg, straddling it as she caught at his shoulders for balance. Her chemise bunched up her calves to accommodate the awkward position and exposed the buttoned bands of her drawers just below her knees. As he settled her more firmly astride his thigh, the slit in her drawers gaped open so that her most deeply private part pressed directly against his leg, with only a whisper of kerseymere separating his skin from hers.
Shock kept her motionless for a moment. This was a most decadent position. But when she squirmed in a vain attempt to sit more decorously, she found only more decadence. The intimate pressure was delicious. Indeed, whenever she squirmed away, the juncture between her thighs began to throb with an unseemly ache that only eased when she pressed herself against his thigh again.
She’d felt this ache before, late at night when she was half-asleep and dreaming of her sultan. The only thing that satisfied it, she was ashamed to admit, was pressure. She’d resorted to it once or twice, secretly, guiltily. And now she resorted to it again, rocking against his leg.
“That’s it,” he murmured against her breast. “Ride me, querida. Yes…yes…”
Though she didn’t entirely understand what he meant, she needed no more encouragement to rub her most private place along his thigh. She clutched his head close again, leaning into him, straining to press more of her breast into his boldly sucking mouth. Thick strands of his hair spilled over her hands. The inky threads tickled her splayed fingers, sprouting up between them like wild rushes.
He made her feel wild—this rampant yearning between her legs, the delight of satisfying it by undulating on his thigh. His mouth was almost savage at her breast now, rousing such sinful responses in her that he had to be the devil.
She rocked forward on his thigh, a purring sound erupting from her when every shift of position sent glorious sensations through her lower limbs. He tore his mouth from her flesh, only to seize the other breast with equal fervor. His hand took over on the first breast, caressing the engorged, damp nipple while his mouth and tongue pleasured the plump curves of the other breast.
She was drowning, pleasure lapping over her in waves, the tobacco scent and the hard feel of him rising around her like floodwaters, threatening to engulf her, dissolve her.
A fierce urge to know more of him assailed her. She tugged restlessly at his lapels, and he shrugged his coat off, tossing it heedlessly
to the floor as he returned to laving her breast with his tongue. She molded his muscles through his shirt, relishing the way they flexed beneath her fingers. He ran his large hand up her calf, then her knee and inside the leg of her drawers until the curve of her bare hip filled his fingers, his wondrous, caressing fingers…
Abruptly he stiffened and dragged his mouth from her breast, though his hand still cupped one naked buttock.
“Ian?” she questioned in disappointment.
“Shh,” he cautioned, his head cocked as if he were listening.
Then she heard it, too, sounds of female conversation and meandering footsteps in the hall. She froze, her throat burning with raw emotion. Surely he hadn’t planned for them to be caught again. And in a much more compromising position. Oh, Lord, if he’d done all this purposely to shame her—
He jerked his hand out of her drawers, his eyes an inky black as he met her gaze. The concern in them reassured her that he hadn’t planned this. He gripped her upper arms. “It’s Sara and Emily. Are you expecting them?”
She shook her head wordlessly, and he dug his fingers into her skin, every muscle of his face taut as he glanced back to the door.
The nursery lay across the hall from her room, and she wondered if that were their destination. The footsteps stopped outside her doorway, but the voices quickly lowered. They thought she was asleep. Little did they know.
Only when she heard the door across the hall opening and closing could she breathe again.
Ian’s grip on her slackened. “Felicity.” Though he merely whispered the word, it seemed to echo in the silence of her bedchamber.
“Yes?”
“This is ‘too far.’”
She squelched her mad impulse to laugh. “I do believe you’re right, my lord.” She should get off his knee, thrust him away, take her fingers out of his hair. But she couldn’t do any of those things.
He bent his head to tug at her nipple with his teeth, eliciting a gasp from her. Wanting him to do it again, she clasped him close. Her body wanted more from him, though she didn’t know what. If he would only kiss her, suck her breast again, lay his hand upon her hip…His mouth did close urgently over her breast, sucking and teasing it until her yearning turned to an ache that was almost real pain.
But when she groaned and swayed against him, he went still. Laying his cheek against the nipple he’d just been devouring, he pressed a kiss to the inside curve of the opposite breast. “Make me stop this,” he demanded, his tone harsh and guttural, his words an earnest plea.
It took a moment for his meaning to penetrate her dazed state. “Why?”
There was a long pause. He propped his forehead against her chest and after a second, she saw his head shaking. When he lifted his face, she realized he was laughing—mirthlessly, silently laughing.
“Trust you to be the only virgin in the realm who’d say that.” Giving her breast one last tender kiss, he lifted her off his thigh and set her on her feet on the floor. Then he rose from his kneeling position.
Her wobbly legs threatened to buckle beneath her weight. When he caught her by the shoulders to steady her, then released her just as quickly, shame suffused her cheeks with scarlet.
Too late, much too late, she realized how far she’d gone. And that he’d been the one to stop it, not her. Yanking up her chemise, she fumbled awkwardly with the ties. “Good Lord in heaven, you must think me the most wanton creature—”
“No.” He laid his index finger against her lips to silence her. “No, I don’t. But you’re the last woman on earth I should have touched like this.” His thumb outlined her lips in a sensuous stroke that made her heart race.
Her fingers stilled on the ties of her chemise. She stared up into his unreadable face, hoping shamelessly that he’d kiss her again. When he dropped his hand instead, the intensity of her disappointment surprised her.
“Yet I cannot regret it,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
Nor could she. She felt like a deaf-mute suddenly given the gift of hearing and speech. All those times she’d railed against men for using women to satisfy their passions, she hadn’t dreamed women had passions, too, that could be as powerful, as devastating as this. It cast new light on all her assumptions.
When she dropped her gaze to where the ties of her chemise still lay half-knotted in her hands, he extricated them from her suddenly inept fingers and deftly finished tying them.
“One thing is for certain,” he said in a low voice. “This time, you have every right to complain of me to Sara.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” she whispered, hurt that he could even think it.
“Why not? Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed.” She didn’t know why, but the entire world was different now. He was more moral than she’d expected, and she wasn’t moral in the least. Indeed, she’d become a creature she didn’t recognize, all in the space of a few heart-stopping kisses and caresses.
He tipped up her chin, his gaze boring into hers. “You don’t think I’m a snake for trapping you in your room and taking liberties with you?”
She shook her head. “You stopped yourself, even though you could have done as you wished with me and I would have…would have…” She turned away from him with a choked sob, unable to finish the shameful statement.
When he’d kissed her on the balcony, she’d convinced herself that her dreamy capitulation had been a momentary and perfectly understandable reaction to a rake’s charms. He’d kept her there by force, she’d told herself. He’d taken her off guard.
But although tonight had begun as before, it hadn’t ended the same. She’d reveled in her sin, had welcomed each caress. In short, she’d behaved like a wanton. Only his presence of mind had prevented her from giving herself to him.
Lifting her head, she caught sight of her image in the mirror. She even looked the part—her lips were reddened, her hair mussed, and she wore only her chemise and her drawers. With an anguished moan, she snatched her dressing gown off the floor and shoved her arms back through the opaque sleeves.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he reassured her, laying his hand on her shoulder. “Everyone has desires, and women can control them no easier than men. If anything, it’s harder for women. Society expects men to sate their desires at will, but respectable women are expected to suppress theirs, even with their own husbands. It doesn’t make for easy relations. Or fair ones.”
The observation astonished her so much that she forgot her guilty thoughts. She faced him with widened eyes. “That’s a very progressive opinion, you know.”
“I’m a very progressive man,” he said dryly, “despite what you think of me.”
Her gaze locked with his. Yes, she’d begun to realize that. Certainly he wasn’t the dissolute rake she’d thought him to be. But what was he? What kind of man restrained his urges when he had both the opportunity and the motive to take advantage of a woman? Lord knows she’d been too swept up by his expert seductions to quibble over niceties like reputation, honor, and chastity.
“You are progressive,” she acknowledged. “And you’ve shown me mercy when I didn’t expect it. Or…deserve it.”
“Mercy?” He gave a hollow laugh. “Is that what this is? Strange, but it feels like insanity.” He cupped her cheek in his hand. “No man in his right mind would turn you away when he could bed you. I must have lost my wits.”
This time she couldn’t doubt his sincerity, and his fervent words made hot desire bubble up inside her once more. She forced it down firmly. “No. You simply exercised restraint, which demonstrates that you’re indeed a gentleman.”
With a curse, he dropped his hand and pivoted away from her. “Don’t fool yourself. I didn’t do it out of any gentlemanly impulse, I assure you. I merely can’t afford too many more of your damned articles in the paper.”
She didn’t believe him. Maybe she was fooling herself, but she doubted he’d drawn back out of fear of her articles. The man feared nothing und
er the heavens, and certainly not her.
He stared across the room at the closed door, tucking his thumbs in the waistband of his glove-tight pantaloon trousers. “So are we even now? Or shall I expect more reports of my activities in the Gazette?” His face was rigid, expectant, as if he wouldn’t be surprised to hear that she intended to continue her attacks on him.
It shamed her that he could think she’d go on writing about him after what they’d done. “Shall I expect more of your attempts to expose my identity to your friends?”
He shot her a solemn glance. “I’ll keep quiet if you will.”
“Then we’re agreed. Lord X no longer has any quarrel with the Viscount St. Clair and vice versa.” Nor any reason to speak to him, she thought, an inexplicable pain gripping her chest. No connection to him now whatsoever.
His jaw went taut. He faced her fully, trailing his gaze down over her trembling body, then back up to her face. He now wore an expression of resigned acceptance. “That’s probably best. After all, it wouldn’t do for the viscount to quarrel with his fiancée so publicly.”
She gaped at him. “Fiancée?”
“Our encounter here this evening has brought me to a decision.” He cleared his throat, his gaze sweeping over her once more. “Felicity, you and I should marry.”
Chapter 10
Colonel Shelby informed his long-suffering fiancée that due to his injuries during the war, he did not think it fair of him to hold her to their engagement. But when the faithful woman said she loved him for his heart alone, he gladly relented. The wedding will take place on Candlemas at St. Martin-in-the-Fields.
LORD X, THE EVENING GAZETTE,
DECEMBER 13, 1820
Ian could tell from Felicity’s incredulous expression that he’d surprised her. What else could he expect? He’d bloody well shocked himself.
“Wh-What did you say?” she stammered.
“I said we should marry.”
He hadn’t meant to be so blunt. He certainly hadn’t intended to propose when he’d come up to her room an hour ago. He’d meant only to scare her a little, make her see she couldn’t continue this battle between them.
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