She flexed out of pure instinct and he made a rumbling sound deep in his throat. A growl, something possessive and animal. Then his mouth dropped between her thighs and he licked her pussy.
She jolted. If it had been a long time since she had a man inside of her, it was even longer since one did that. And her husband hadn’t had the beard, which scraped along her sensitive flesh and brought her to the edge almost immediately.
He swirled his tongue around her clitoris, sucking until she gripped at the edge of the desk for purchase. Then he backed away, teasing and tormenting every fold of her flesh. She found herself lifting into him, sitting up to cup his head, hold him tight to her as she ground against him in desperation. He clenched her backside, rocking her more firmly against his mouth as he sucked and licked, spearing her with his tongue between tormenting her clitoris. The pleasure built, a wall he crafted with every sweep of his tongue. She wanted it. Wanted him to give her that release more than she wanted anything else in the world.
In that moment, nothing else existed but this. That was the true gift. When he did this, she forgot all the rest and surrendered purely to sensation.
“Please,” she heard herself moan as she gripped his shoulders with her thighs. “Please, please.”
He looked up at her without slowing his pace. Those dark eyes snared hers, holding steady, never wavering. She bucked against him, her entire body tingling, her legs shaking. And then he sucked her harder, faster, and the pleasure rocked her. She cried out, jerking against him so hard she feared she’d harm him. But he didn’t slow. He gave her no quarter, tucking her tighter to his mouth, tormenting her even as she quaked and begged and wept with release.
It felt like it went on for a lifetime. That it would never end because he had no desire to end it, and she surrendered, relaxing back, smoothing her hands over her breasts through the silky gown as her moans eased and the twitching spurts of pure sensation slowed.
Only then did he pull away. He leaned over her, caging her in with his hands, his lips and beard glistening with her release. She reached for him, drawing him down to her, tasting herself on his mouth. She had no idea what would happen next, but she didn’t want this to end. Even though she had no idea what that meant for her, for him, and for the future beyond the next moment.
Chapter 9
Oscar had been with a great many women. Sex had never been something he’d been taught to keep as a secret or a shame. When he wanted, he took. He’d kept mistresses and had shorter affairs over the years. He saw no shame in pleasure, as long as it was given and received by both parties.
But he’d never felt so out of control in any of those affairs as he did in this one with Imogen. Even now, as he caged her in on the desk, she didn’t just kiss him. She licked her essence from his lips and his cock jolted. God, how he wanted to fuck her.
Instead, he pulled away, grabbed her hand and tugged her to a seated position. He couldn’t think straight right now. He needed to think.
She shook her head as he reached out to draw her skirt back down over her legs. “I’ve never met a man like you.”
He backed up a step. “I would wager that’s true. You are accustomed to gentlemen.”
“You think you’re not that?” she asked, tilting her head and meeting his stare. There was nothing artful about her, it seemed. She was never trying to gain some advantage by anything she did. That was such a rare thing that he almost didn’t know how to respond to it.
Perhaps that was why it was more prudent to walk away.
“I’m not that,” he said. “I’m the first bastard son of the Duke of Roseford.”
“Roseford,” she repeated, and her surprise was plain on her face.
He tried not to let his pain be as plain on his own. “Ah, yes. The world knows of his twisted legacy. Of the bastard seed he spread all across the country. I am many things, but a gentleman is not one of them.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Is that meant to…to shock me? To make me think differently of you? I really don’t care about your birth, Oscar. And I think a gentleman is more made by his actions than his blood. You have shown yourself to be that by saving my life. And by the way you have pleasured me twice and seem to have no interest in claiming your own release, despite the fact that you are quite clearly…” She blushed and motioned toward his groin. “Aroused.”
He tilted his head. This woman had done nothing but surprise him from the moment she’d careened into his chest and altered the very carefully charted course of his life. She was facing dangerous and terrifying circumstances, and yet she still maintained humor and elegance in their face. It wasn’t out of some blindness to the situation, but it seemed her character was to make the best of whatever would come.
And she certainly confronted him without flinching. That wasn’t something many men did easily. Oscar had ensured that, by creating a persona meant to intimidate. But she was waving at his cock without hesitation and calling him a gentleman of all things.
It was extremely unsettling. Not terrible. Just…unexpected. And it made him want her more, which was outrageous because how was it possible? Wanting her had become a constant drumbeat in his head, distracting him from everything else.
He cleared his throat. “You say I have no interest in fucking you.” He used the lewd term on purpose, and she flushed at it, but didn’t turn away.
“You haven’t, despite multiple chances,” she said. “What else am I to assume?”
“Assume nothing,” he said. “Because you are very wrong. I want you, Imogen. I burn from wanting you. I cannot sleep from wanting you.”
Her lips parted and she sucked in her breath with the same little sound she made when he touched her pussy. God, how he loved that sound.
“Oscar,” she whispered, and he reveled in his name rolling from her lips.
“I have avoided you these past few days not because I didn’t want you, but because I fear I want you too much,” he continued, because he needed to say it. To lay it out on the line for her so she could make an informed decision about what to do next. He owed her that, especially considering what she’d been through. “I have avoided you because I didn’t want to…bully you into entering into an affair with me that you don’t…want. That you feel you must be party to because you owe me a debt of some kind.”
Her gaze softened and then slid down to look at him. His body. His cock, which was not helping the situation down there in the slightest. He felt hard enough to pound nails, it almost hurt.
“Would there be an expectation that I owed you, that it was a quid pro quo, if you…if you…” She huffed out a breath and her cheeks turned apple red. “…fucked me?”
He gaped at her a moment and then managed to get himself back together. “No. If we became lovers, it would be out of mutual desire. I wouldn’t want anything less.”
“Well, you know I…want you.” Her voice got softer on those final two words. “You must see it. You must feel it. You’re so much more experienced than I am.”
“And I hesitate in part because of that. If we’re to be lovers, you must know that I am intense.”
He looked down at her, his heart throbbing. To his surprise, she tipped her head back and let out a peal of laughter that echoed in the quiet room.
He pursed his lips, even though the sunshine sound of her laugh was fascinating beyond measure. “Are you mocking me, Mrs. Huxley?”
“Not at all,” she said, smiling up at him, as if his stern command meant nothing to her. He’d never met a person who reacted to it that way before. “I only laugh because the fact that you’re intense is fairly obvious. You acted as though that was new information and it is most definitely not.”
He shook his head. “Intense when I look at you at supper and intense when I take you to bed are two different things, Imogen. In bed I like things…rough. I might hold you down, I might scrape my teeth along your skin until you feel the faintest bite of pain along with the pleasure, I might slap your arse until it burns, I m
ight…” He stepped forward and extended a hand, letting his fingers rest against her throat. “I might do this, but a little harder, as I pound into you.”
Her pupils dilated and she leaned into his hand, forcing his grip to tighten that tiny fraction that took it from gentle to something else. Her breath whispered from her lips in a soft sigh, and she nodded. “I…don’t have experience in those things, you’re right about that. But when you say them, I feel nothing but curiosity. Nothing but a desire that I suppose I should be ashamed of.”
He dropped his hand away from her neck and tilted his head. “Why? Why should you be ashamed about wanting the same thing I’ve already confessed I want? Why should you be ashamed about what you want at all? You have as much a right to pleasure as anyone else, Imogen. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”
Her mouth twitched, her expression softened, and for a moment it was quiet between them. He had no idea what was going on in that mind of hers, but at last she stepped forward, closer yet again to him. Almost tight to his chest.
“How long would an affair last if we were to enter into one?” she asked.
He cleared his throat, trying to find words around the lump that had suddenly formed there. “You were looking for a protector.”
She nodded. “Yes. If I survive this—”
He flinched. “You will.”
“When I survive this,” she corrected gently, “my situation will still be the same as it was before. I need a protector, whether that is you or someone else.”
“We could see how we suit while you are staying here,” he suggested. “I’ve had mistresses before.”
“Yes. Louisa,” she said, her tone unreadable.
He ducked his head. “That would be another issue we need to address. Louisa wanted…she wanted something more than I could give. Perhaps it isn’t something I’m capable of giving. And I never want to hurt someone like that again, I’ve seen the consequences.”
“Love,” Imogen said softly. “She fell in love with you.”
He nodded. “Or she convinced herself she did. She wanted me to love her back. And while I was very fond of her, I considered her a great friend…it wasn’t enough. She was hurt. She left. And the rest is…well, we’re here. And she’s gone.”
Imogen reached up, cupping his cheek. God, how he wanted to lean into her fingers, to drown in this comfort she gently offered. Somehow he managed to keep himself still.
“I won’t fall in love with you,” she whispered.
His brow wrinkled at her certainty, and he found himself a little annoyed by the lack of emotion in that declaration. Why, he couldn’t say. Her statement was exactly what he wanted. What he needed. If they were to have an affair, it had to be one that excluded the heart.
“If we try something and you don’t like it, you need to tell me,” he insisted. “If I want you and you aren’t in the mood, you need to tell me. Sex should be something we revel in and celebrate and enjoy equally. Will you promise me?”
“You really are entirely unexpected,” she said with a little laugh, he thought almost more to herself than to him. “But yes. I promise you I will only do what I like and I will only do it when I wish to. Are those all your terms, Mr. Fitzhugh?”
She extended a hand as if to shake on it, and he stifled a smile. Her cheekiness was so wildly attractive. He was pleased she was becoming comfortable enough, overcoming the terror of what she’d gone through enough, to show it.
He took her hand and raised it to his lips, kissing her knuckles before he traced one with the tip of his tongue. “All my terms. So we are agreed then.”
“Are we lovers?” she asked, and looked genuinely confused.
“When we’re lovers, I hope you’ll be very certain of that fact.”
She tilted her head, staring at him so intently that he caught his breath.
“What?”
“You are very handsome, Oscar. Really uncommonly handsome. It’s distracting.”
He blinked. He’d certainly been called handsome before, cooed over by women in bed or ones that he wanted to get there. But there was something different about this declaration of his supposed beauty. Something that made him turn away, back to his desk.
“I would like nothing more than to seal our agreement in a far more pleasurable way than with a mere handshake, but I wonder if you have some questions for me about your situation.”
“Because you’ve been avoiding me, you mean,” she teased gently as she followed him to the desk and blushed as he righted the items that had skidded across it while he pleasured her there.
“Yes,” he said, lifting his gaze to hers. “Because of that.”
“Have you determined any course of action that might allow me to not hide out for the rest of my life?”
He tried not to reveal his reaction to that question. She was being playful, perhaps to ease her fears, but the suggestion was a real one. It was entirely possible she would have to leave the city, leave her identity behind and anyone associated with it. It wasn’t the solution he wanted for her, but there it was.
“I’ve been working on background on the players,” he said. “Roddenbury was once a member of my club, so my partner Will White is collecting some information on his presence there. I’ve been working on the woman you mentioned, Maggie Monroe. I hadn’t heard her name before in association with the Cat’s Companion, so I’m trying to figure out where she fits into this mess.”
“What will you do once you have the information you need?” she asked.
He clenched his teeth, because that was a more complicated issue. “Why don’t we cross that bridge when we come to it?” he said.
She leaned across his desk, placing her hands flat on the top. “Oscar.”
He met her stare, saw her fear and her questions. “I’m trying to figure that out, too,” he admitted. “The guard is notoriously bad at what it does. And since we’re talking about an earl in the mix of all this, it’s also entirely corrupt.”
She bent her head. “They won’t care about the murder. Or about me,” she said.
“But I do,” he said, reaching out to trace the line of her jaw until she looked up at him with a shiver. “I promise you, Imogen, we’re going to work this out.”
She smiled at him, but it wasn’t that bright sunshine expression he’d come to crave in the short time he’d been exposed to it. This was false, tight, meant to appease him.
“I know you’ll try.” She turned away and paced across the room to the fire. She stood there, silent, her shoulders rolled slightly forward in a position of defeat. Of exhaustion. Of fear.
He wanted so much to relieve it all. And since the answers he had couldn’t do it, he had to do something else instead.
“Come to my bed,” he said softly.
She pivoted toward him, her lips parting at his directness. “Oscar—”
“I can’t solve the problems of the world tonight,” he said as he crossed the room to her in slow, steady steps. “I can’t promise you how this story will end. But I can ease the fear for a few hours, Imogen. I can give you pleasure. I can make you come until you’re weak. Come to my bed.”
He extended a hand, trying hard not to flex it with excitement as he waited for her to take it. She stared at it a moment, then touched her fingertips to his. She traced his fingers, then the back of his hand. It was all so slow, so gentle, that for a moment he forgot he was trying to seduce her.
Instead, he was seduced. He stared as she caught his hand between hers at last, lifting it. Her gaze caught his, holding steady as she kissed his fingertips, the back of his hand, the inside of his wrist. Then she pressed his hand to her heart. He felt it throbbing under the softness of her breast.
He wanted to make it throb even harder.
“Take me to your bed,” she whispered as she lifted to her tiptoes and brushed her lips to his. “Please.”
He caught her waist then, overcome by the desire she created in him. He dragged her hard against him, his fin
gers clenching against the middle of her back as she arched against him. He dropped his mouth, reaching for control, fighting for it with every part of his body. And then he kissed her. Soft at first, harder, then out of control as he tasted her tongue and felt the need in her grow as fast and as hot as his own.
“Come on,” he gasped as he broke the kiss and threaded his fingers through hers. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 10
Oscar hadn’t stopped touching her the entire time they moved through the house together. His fingers had gripped her hip, he’d pinned her against a wall for another of those drugging kisses, he’d brushed her backside with his hand until she stumbled. But now, as he opened the door to his chamber, he stopped pushing and allowed her to enter the room without him herding her forward.
She took in the room as she did so. Unlike the study, which was done in dark tones, his chamber was unexpectedly light. White linens, lighter woods, like this place was a reprieve from the mask he wore. The one of command and control and dark intentions.
Dark intentions that became clear again as they looked together toward the bed on the wall opposite the door. A very big bed, indeed. Her breath caught as she looked at it, then at him.
“Still like the terms of your bargain?” he asked, arching a brow almost in challenge. As if he expected her to find some means of escape.
Instead she began to unfasten her gown. “I suppose we’ll find out in a moment, won’t we?” she asked.
His eyes went wide. “Far more than a moment, my dear. We really must raise your expectations.”
She laughed and her fingers fumbled against her buttons. She hadn’t anticipated this side of him, playful, teasing…but she liked it. Possibly too much.
Luckily he didn’t allow her any time to revel in it or explore it. He grabbed her elbow and tugged her against him. The playful lover was gone. The dark and dangerous one had returned, and she caught her breath just before his mouth found hers.
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