The Likelihood of Lucy (Regency Reformers Book 2)

by Jenny Holiday

  “Trevor.” Shw suddenly lifted her head. Her face was pink, blotchy and roughened from his whiskers, and her eyes dark, serious. She had never been more beautiful. He thought for a moment she was going to call a halt to everything, but God must have been smiling on them—even God knew they were inevitable—for she just said, “I need to take off this dress. I need it off now.”

  He could deny her nothing, so he levered her off him. Her skirts had bunched between them, hiding his erection from view and padding it so she probably had not felt its full urgency as she’d sat astride him. But now there was nothing between them, and she caught her lower lip with her teeth as she looked, unabashedly.

  It was a look without shame, and it flipped an unseen lever in him, bringing him with lightning speed to the same conclusion she’d already reached—that dress had to go.

  “Turn around,” he ordered, more gruffly than he would have liked, but it couldn’t be helped. When she did, her fingers were already reaching behind her, at work on the topmost buttons at the back of her neck. Starting at the bottom, he made quick work of the rest and, when his fingers met hers, he hooked his thumbs under the muslin and the thin cotton of the chemise that lay beneath it and pulled.

  Struggling to lift her hips to free her legs from the tangle of skirts, she twisted, turning back to face him.

  His throat emitted a strangled noise that had come from somewhere deep within. “Stop,” he managed. “Just for a moment. Please.”

  Perhaps it was her turn to worry that he was going to halt everything, for her eyes fell to the floor, and she covered her breasts with her hands.

  “No,” he whispered, tugging her arms down so he could look. “Just let me look at you. Oh, Lucy.” She was perfect. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to look away from breasts that managed to be small and lush at the same time, topped with generous red tips. His hands shook with the effort of not touching them immediately, but he forced them instead to reach for her hair which, although it had become quite mussed, was still partly pinned up into a chignon. Using both hands to comb through the long, impossibly soft tresses, he found the pins with the backs of his hands and paused to work each one free. Her nipples hardened beneath his gaze as he took her hair down, becoming stiff peaks—and making him absurdly proud to have affected her so visibly.

  “There,” he said when her hair was fully released. He took a moment just to admire her, as if she were a goddess come to earth, deigning to allow a mere mortal to look on her. But he hadn’t forgotten his task: the dress. He laid her down gently on the rug before the fire and grasped the fabric of her dress where it had bunched around her waist. Understanding his wordless exhortation, she lifted her hips, and he peeled dress and chemise off, then made quick work of her smallclothes.

  “I wasn’t telling the truth before,” he said. She wrinkled her brow, and he was struck with an urge to laugh. Of course she would be confused. How could he expect her to divine what he was talking about, especially when he had hidden so much from her? He stretched out beside her, lying on his side and propping his head up on one elbow. The pose made her laugh, probably because he looked so casual, as if he were reclining languidly at a picnic next to his lady love. In truth, he was shaking with the effort not to set upon her, to devour her, to move inside her, to make her scream. But, he reminded himself, first, a reckoning.

  He slanted his body so the tattoo on his calf was visible. “I said no one has seen this tattoo but my lovers. It wasn’t true. No one has seen it. Well, no one besides Blackstone and a military surgeon.” Closing his eyes for a quick moment, he remembered waking up in a field hospital, sweating and screaming. Blackstone held him down while the surgeon cleaned the bullet wound on his shoulder. They’d stripped him to make sure he’d sustained no other injuries. The shoulder wound had been superficial, but he’d thought he was dying. Trevor could only assume that the earl had seen the tattoo, and wondered if he had been thinking of the name made out of vines when he exhorted Trevor yesterday to be the kind of man Lucy deserved.

  “You haven’t had lovers?” Her eyes narrowed. She was skeptical.

  Oh, how he wanted to rush to assure her that there had been no one else, because in every way that mattered there had not been. But this was about stripping everything bare. This was about the truth, pulsating inside him like an extra heart. “I have had lovers.” He worked to keep his voice even. “But none of them saw this tattoo.”

  “Why?”

  “It wasn’t for them to see. So I made sure they didn’t.”

  “Why make such a permanent mark on yourself if not for other people to see?”

  “You said it before. I wanted to remember.”

  “You needed a tattoo to remember me?”

  He was on her then, hands and mouth, moving everywhere, down her neck, over her breasts, across her hips. “No,” he rasped, lifting his mouth from her collarbone. He needed to answer while he could still reason through how to explain a sentiment that felt beyond words. And while she could still hear him, because she was whimpering, clutching at him, and he needed her to pay attention. “I remembered you every minute of every day we were apart.” He raked the nails of one hand down over the dark curls between her legs. “What I needed was to mark myself with you.” She gasped and he slipped a finger inside her folds. She was wet, so ready, and it nearly did him in. But he needed her to understand. “After you left, I needed to mark my body the way my soul was already marked—with you.” Her eyes grew impossibly wide, and he watched them closely, looking for any sign of hesitation. He saw only desire.

  He waited a few moments, allowing time for any objections to surface. When she remained unspeaking, regarding him with dark eyes filling with tears, he said, “Do you know what’s going to happen next?” If she would permit it. Please, let her permit it.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “This isn’t a project,” he said, smiling, but needing her to understand. “This isn’t about self-improvement.”

  “Yes,” she said again.

  He replaced his fingers with his mouth then, and she startled a little. He wagered that even if she had a general idea what he intended when she answered his question in the affirmative just now, she probably hadn’t imagined this. He laughed against her curls, inhaling the sweet, musky smell of her.

  He should go slow. Tease. Discover what she liked. Wait for her mind to catch up to what was happening. He knew all this, but there was some other, baser part of him in charge right now. He went right for her bud, licking first and, when she moaned, taking it between his lips and applying a little pressure.

  “Oh!” She inhaled and held her breath.

  She was good at this, if unpracticed. Of course she was. Lucy took life by the horns, made her own luck. He could see her suddenly as a girl, biting into one of the lemon biscuits she loved. Even though life had given her nothing—indeed, had made her fight for everything—she was astonishingly open to experience, to pleasure.

  “Trevor!” she exclaimed, clasping his head as if to move him off her, but stopping just short, as if she’d thought better of it. She struggled up to her elbows then, propping herself up so she could look at him.

  “Shhh,” he hummed, pulling off just long enough to soothe her. “Just let it happen.”

  “This is what happened during the opening party, outside in the garden.”

  “Yes. It’s yours for the taking.”

  She flashed him a small, brave smile and lay back down. Beautiful Lucy. He would make sure she didn’t regret it. Lowering his head again, he had intended to lavish her with attention, to attend to her pleasure absolutely, but after only a few more strokes of his tongue, she began to shudder, coming so quickly it floored him. She was good at this. So good it almost sent him out of his mind with desire. He bit the insides of his cheeks as she rode out the aftershocks.

  Her thighs still quivering, she popped back up on those elbows. “I’m not sure exactly what that was—”

  He started to
interrupt, but she just increased the volume of her voice so as to speak over him. “And I would like to discuss it later, but right now I think you should ravish me.”

  Again, laughter bubbled up through his throat. “Ravish you? I thought I already had.”

  “In the, ah…traditional way.”

  Probably it was not a good idea. There were many reasons not to comply. But then she shifted her weight to one side, which freed one of her arms. “May I touch?” she asked, even as she touched.

  “Oh God,” he gasped as her small hand—Lucy’s hand—grasped his cock.

  “I’m not sure exactly what to do,” she said, but her actions belied her words because she stroked the length of him, practically causing him to black out, and then, suddenly, she sat up, disorienting him. Don’t stop! he wanted to yell, but, sweet Christ, she had rolled him onto his back, straddled him, and her hand had taken up his cock again. “Is this right?” she said, guiding him toward her entrance.

  So right. Speech was beyond him, but he managed a vigorous nod. There might be consequences. But he didn’t care, was startled to find that he welcomed them. And it wasn’t just because his body was screaming for her, for the relief that she alone could bring after so many years of half suffocation.

  She had stopped, though, poised above him, lips pursed as if trying to solve a puzzle, and he was flooded with tenderness. He guided his hands to her hips. “You’re meant to sink down,” he rasped. “But I imagine it will hurt. At least at first.” Seized with the same desire he’d had in the garden, to flood her with pleasure, and wanting to help mitigate any initial discomfort, he let one hand drift around front to stroke her as he used the other to help guide her down his shaft.

  And, oh, the beautiful torture of it. The exquisite torment of entering Lucy Greenleaf inch by inch.

  “Oh!” she gasped when he was fully seated.

  Fighting the almost overpowering urge to lever her hips up and bring them down again, he forced himself to be still—except for his fingers, which he began moving in ever-shrinking circles, closing in on her bud.

  Her breath hitched, and there was another “oh!” but this one was lower, throaty, covered with honey. She rocked her hips instinctively. There—now she had it. He had only to gently stroke her hip, and she understood. Lifting herself back up on her knees, she raised her eyebrows questioningly at him.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “Just like that. Again and again.” She did as he instructed, and he watched her like a hawk as he kept stroking her, harder now. Assured that her half closed eyes and knit brow signified pleasure and not pain, he allowed himself to give in to the waves of sensation that were crashing in on him. They started in his cock and moved in every direction, heat flooding all four limbs at once.

  “Trevor!” Lucy cried as she began to shudder and clench around him. Not far behind, he shamelessly bucked his hips, rising hard to meet her downward thrusts. Two, three, four pumps, and he was lost in the explosions ringing in his ears.

  Lost in Lucy.

  He wondered idly if he’d regret it later, as he had their previous encounters.

  He didn’t think so.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lucy couldn’t tell if it was really morning. She’d passed the night in Trevor’s bed, drifting in and out of sleep, and the experience had taken on a dreamlike quality. Having always been a restless sleeper herself, she was surprised Trevor could sleep so soundly, so deeply. He hardly moved, except to occasionally wake up enough to notice that she had drifted out from under the covers, and to haul her back against his solid chest once more with a mumbled “No, you don’t,” or a “Stay put, Lucy.”

  She had dreamed in the snatches of sleep she managed. Fragments of the past drifted through her unconscious mind, and when she woke, they mixed with memories from last night. Or perhaps she was dreaming of last night and her awake rememberings were of the past. Everything was so muddled up, it was hard to tell. So she started searching for sensations to anchor her in the present. She was sore—that was one.

  There was another, she realized with a start as she eyed the slices of light shining around the edges of Trevor’s drapes.

  She was happy.

  She wanted to laugh as she shook herself fully awake. She was happy! Not unreservedly, for as her mind emerged from its nighttime haze, it flooded anew with questions and doubts and fears. But still, beneath all that was a contented heaviness, a languid confidence, an unfamiliar thing that a part of her recognized, somehow, as happiness.

  She rolled over, shy but brave.

  She was alone.

  “All of them?”

  No, not alone. The momentary panic that he’d abandoned her abated when she realized the bed was still warm, and he was still in the apartment. She could hear him through the open door of his bedroom. He was in the foyer talking to someone. He would send away whoever it was and come back to her. Heat flooded her face at the thought of what might happen next. Probably they would talk. That would be good—they needed to talk. But she also hoped they would repeat the activities of last night. Catharine had jestingly called it tupping, but such a short, angular word seemed inadequate to describe something so all-encompassing, so…wonderful. Thinking back now, she didn’t know where her boldness had come from last night. Probably from ignorance. She doubted she could summon it again, could just face him in the sunlight and ask for what she wanted. But she would try.

  “I can’t imagine what they want—and at this hour?” He sounded annoyed. “No, don’t send them away, Davies.” Ah, it was the butler. She sat up so she could hear better. It must be something important for Davies to rouse Trevor from bed. But whatever it was, it couldn’t be as important as…she looked around the room, at the unmade bed she sat in. Well, whatever it was, surely it could wait.

  “No, the investors should be seen,” said Trevor. “I’ve got to speak to them anyway.” Investors. Her skin prickled at the word. “I’ll be right down.”

  She heard him move through the foyer to the library. As she listened to the rustle of fabric, the sounds of him putting himself to rights, the contentment she’d felt in her belly began to dissipate, flying away like smoke on the wind.

  But surely he would come speak to her before he left, even if he assumed she was still sleeping. He wouldn’t leave her to awaken alone in a strange bed—not after last night.

  The click of his boots on the marble floor of the foyer sounded like muffled gunshots in the silent suite. Then the crisp sound of the apartment door shutting behind him, a final blow to her sense of ease.

  She was reminded, suddenly, of that day so many years ago, when he’d shoved her out of the crowd in Seven Dials, toward the woman who would become her benefactress. And in so doing, he had pushed her away—from him.

  Was he doing it again?

  But, no. She was overreacting. They had made a mistake, perhaps. But all that had happened just now is that he’d gone downstairs to attend to the investors. What was the matter with her? Was she a lovesick girl who needed to be coddled even when more important matters beckoned? For heaven’s sake, she was the one who had proposed some carnal experimentation without sentimental entanglement. But even as she told herself to be rational, a gathering dread undid her efforts in that regard.

  She needed to get back to her own room, to her refuge, so she could compose herself. No. She needed to get back to work—that was better. Work was the only thing that would set her racing pulse to rights, that would tamp down this wild uncertainty flitting through her chest, lodging in her throat so she thought she might cry.

  Stupid, girlish tears. No. She would not allow it.

  Downstairs to work. If the staff thought it odd she was wearing the same dress as yesterday, they would not comment on it. So she dressed quickly and moved around putting the room to rights, erasing any sign of her presence. If he could leave the room without a care, pretending as if nothing had happened, so could she. Forcing herself to take the last flight of stairs at a sedate pac
e, she patted her hastily pinned hair one last time and pasted on a smile. A false show of confidence sometimes leads to the real thing—isn’t that what she had always preached to her pupils?

  Masculine voices escaped from one of the small parlors she had to pass on her way to the kitchen. They hadn’t closed the door. Her heart pounded as she slowed. She didn’t want to see him. Not yet, not until she’d had enough time to paper over this unseemly, embarrassing distress. But she could hear animated voices. Some of them sounded angry. Surely they were engaged in a discussion such that no one would even notice a figure walking rapidly past the door. And if they did, as manager she had every right to be here. She straightened her spine and widened her artificial smile, just in case she was seen.

  “The woman has to go, Bailey.”

  Iron turned to jelly in her spine as she stopped just short of the door.

  “He’s right. We appreciate that you are…an unconventional sort.” She didn’t recognize the low, strident, masculine voice. It was less angry than the first, but that was cold comfort.

  “And by that you mean I’m not one of you. I’m not highborn,” came the bitter retort. “Why don’t you just say what you mean?”

  “I’m not talking about rank. I’m talking about you hiring a woman to manage the hotel without asking us.” It was the angry voice again.

  “Without asking you?” Disdain dripped from Trevor’s voice.

  A new voice: “Let’s be frank here. We’re not just talking about a woman. We’re talking about a—”

  “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t finish that sentence.” Trevor’s voice was loud, pitched so as to drown out the murmuring of the other men. When they fell fully silent, he said, “Where is Blackstone? I’m not having this conversation without Blackstone.” Still, no one said anything. “I see. You all decided to ambush me without the investor you knew would take my part.”