The kiss was knee-shaking. He’d kissed her before, of course. So many times in such a short period, and every time she’d been swept away. But this was different. This time when she kissed him, she no longer felt the wheels of his control holding them steady. He was no longer trying to protect her from his desires, from the ultimate end that would involve their bodies merged and their sweat combined as they writhed together.
His purpose was very clear and her knees went entirely weak, as if she were in some fairytale. But this wasn’t a prince with his arms around her. As he tugged her hips tight to his and ground the hard evidence of his desire against her, she realized she was with the beast. A thrill of fear fluttered in her stomach at that thought, but it didn’t make her want to pull away.
She liked it. All those dangerous things this man represented, all the desires he promised to stir with ruthless intent…she wanted it. She wanted him. She wanted it all now.
As if he sensed that, he pulled away from the kiss and stared down at her. His fingers wrapped around the edge of her gown, where she’d begun unfastening herself, and the fabric gaped. He held her stare and tugged, ripping the fabric, sending buttons flying.
“Oscar!” she gasped, half a laugh, half an accusation.
He tugged the fluttering fabric around her arms, twisting it just enough to trap her with it, but not enough to hurt. “I’ll have another made for you,” he whispered, his tone harsh in the quiet. “I’ll have twenty of them made so I can rip them all off one by one.”
She shivered at those words, at the utter disregard for propriety or expense or anything but what he wanted. He hesitated and his gaze softened. “Is it too much?”
She blinked up at him. “Why?”
“There is a strange expression on your face.”
She smiled at his concern, the thing that belied his animal dominance in an instant. “I was just analyzing how much I enjoy having my clothing ripped off, even though I liked that gown,” she admitted.
“Don’t analyze it,” he said, dropping his mouth into the crook where her neck and shoulder met and sucking hard enough that she gasped. “Just give in. Feel it. Enjoy it. You don’t have to do a damned thing, Imogen. Just let me give you pleasure.”
Her knees buckled, but she wasn’t certain if it was because he was doing magical things with his tongue against her skin, or because he offered her a respite from having to manage her entire life. When was the last time someone had taken care of her? When she hadn’t had a thousand duties or fears or obligations?
He was suggesting she could put it all down while in his bed. Suggesting she could be free of everything but sensation.
He reached around, and to her shock, swatted her backside. Hard enough to tingle, not hard enough to hurt through the fabric of her gown.
She jerked her face toward his and he arched a brow. “Stop thinking, Imogen,” he ordered.
For a moment they stood there, eyes locked, and then she couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, Mr. Fitzhugh.”
“Bloody hell,” he muttered beneath this breath. “Be careful with that, Imogen. I want to have a little control tonight.”
He didn’t allow her to respond, but tugged the rest of her torn dress away to flutter around her feet. The chemise beneath was short, just skimming her thighs, with thin straps and an extremely low neckline. She was practically naked now before this man.
And he was staring at her like she was a banquet to be savored. She swallowed hard under his stare. She’d been trained her entire life not to be too showy, that her nudity was a shame except in brief glimpses for a husband. She’d been fighting that as she tried to come to terms with a future as a mistress.
Right now she threw the entire concept out the bedroom window. When he looked at her, she wanted to arch her back. She wanted to let him see it all.
She trembled as she slipped the strap of the chemise off one shoulder. She watched him as she did it, watched his dark eyes dilate. Watched his hands clench at his sides. Heard his breath catch.
She tugged the chemise down, baring her breasts. Lowering it over her stomach. Shedding it at last and kicking it away.
She was naked. With this fully clothed man who looked at her like he could destroy her with a wave of his hand. That wasn’t wrong. She already knew he could make her shatter with a curl of his fingers or a flick of his tongue.
She wanted much more than that tonight.
“Great God,” he whispered, and reached out almost reverently. His fingertips traced her collarbone, crested down over her breast, fluttered against her stomach. His gaze darkened. “Get on the bed.”
She didn’t resist the order, just pushed herself onto the high mattress. She relaxed back on the pillows, watching as he divested himself of his clothing in what felt like lighting speed. She stared as each item fell away, revealing a little more of the man beneath the starched cravats and perfectly laid suits.
He was, in a word, a god. It was the only way to describe that lean, lanky frame, wiry with muscle. The kind of body that had been sculpted for years, art that ladies peeked at and giggled behind their fans, trying to determine if such a man truly existed in the world.
Imogen now knew they did, and bit her lip as he shucked his trousers down his legs and fully exposed himself.
“Oh,” she squeaked, wishing she could be more eloquent, but her mind was addled at present. “That is something.”
He chuckled as he palmed his half-hard cock and stroked it. It immediately came to full attention, curling up toward his belly. “You’re going to swell my head.”
“Which one?” she teased, and got to her knees, crawling to the edge of the bed.
He moved toward her, never looking away as she touched his chest. They both sucked in a breath as she slid her hand down, down over his stomach, down over the vee of his hips, and across the hard expanse of his cock.
His eyes came partly shut as she stroked him from root to tip and repeated the action a few times. He rocked into her, low, needy sounds coming from deep within his chest. She gobbled his reactions up greedily because they meant she had power. Power to move this remarkable man the same way he moved her. She wanted that tonight after twice having received pleasure without giving it.
She wanted so desperately to unwind this man, to shatter him like she’d been shattered. So she bent her head, letting her dark hair fall around them, letting it tickle his cock before she darted out her tongue and stroked him with it.
Immediately he made a hissing sound that sizzled like hot grease in the room. His fingers came into her hair, wrapping the long locks around his fingers and tugging gently. She felt him watching her as she sucked him, reveling in the warm, clean scent of him, the hard thrust of him as she drew him deeper into her mouth, the way he bucked when she swirled her tongue.
“Bloody fucking hell,” he grunted as he began to thrust into her mouth. Slowly, gently, but enough to graze the back of her throat and trigger a slight response in her throat. She backed off, drawing away with a soft pop to look up at him as she continued dragging her hand over his now wet cock.
“Oscar,” she murmured.
She didn’t get to continue. He stepped forward, pressing his hands to her shoulders and making her fall back on the bed. She pulled her legs out from under herself and he collapsed over her, his mouth hungry for hers as he kissed her so hard and heavy that it felt like the ribbon of his control was stretched far too thin. Almost ready to break.
She wrapped her arms around him, letting her nails scrape his arms, his back, as she lifted up against him so that her pelvis ground against his.
He yanked his head back, and there was the snap of the ribbon. There was the beast hidden beneath control and cravats and careful planning and management of everything around him. She shivered to see that unleashed, shivered at what he might do.
What he did was devour her. He pressed her breasts together and bent his head to lick between them, scraping his teeth against the tender flesh as she writhed wi
th the sensation of pleasure balanced on the edge of pain. He held her down as he dragged his mouth lower. He pushed her legs wide and found her center again, driving his tongue inside as he ground a thumb against her still-sensitive clitoris. She gasped, digging her fingers into his thick hair, grinding up to find pleasure.
But unlike before, he didn’t give it to her. He knew how, he’d proven that, but as he smiled up at her, that didn’t seem to be the purpose. What he was doing with his tongue, with his fingers, was drawing her up to the very edge of the pleasure. She shook with it, keened for it, her feet flexed as she reached for it.
And then he backed her away from the same edge until she was clawing at him, begging him, wanting what he could provide more than she wanted anything in the world at that moment.
He laughed as he licked her one final time, still not allowing the release. He caught her behind the knees, his fingers tracing patterns there as she writhed, and tugged her to the edge of the bed. He loomed over her, this naked man, his face cloaked in dark shadows that made his dark beard even more of a mask. He stared down at her with wicked intent as he aligned his cock to her ready sex.
He claimed one inch and she clenched at the coverlet with both fists. He was thick, and he stretched her, but it was such a delicious sense of sensation. He claimed another and another, and she lifted toward him, forcing yet more. She wanted all of him. All of him and then she wanted more still.
His expression shifted as he acquiesced. He was watching her so intently, his dark gaze flitting on her face, almost reading her or memorizing her in this moment when she was so damned vulnerable to him.
He dug his fingers into her hips as he fully seated himself, and shuddered out a sigh. The connection of their bodies was perfect, and she gave a sharp cry at how instant and heated the pleasure became. She could come in less than a minute if he kept doing that.
So of course he didn’t. Still teasing, he ground against her, then pulled back for deeper thrusts. He fell into that rhythm. Grind, grind until she was desperately on the edge, then long thrusts. She was sweating, panting, calling out his name.
“What do you want, Imogen?” he asked at last, his voice impossibly rough and dark. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want to come,” she admitted. “I want to come and then I want to make you come.”
His eyes widened slightly at the second declaration. As if she’d thrown him off his plan. But it gave her what she wanted. He braced himself on the bed, one hand on either side of her head. He never broke eye contact as he stopped the deeper thrusts and merely rolled his pelvis against hers.
She slid her hands along his spine, down to cup his hips, increasing the pressure of her fingers as if she could control what was happening. The pleasure was right there, so ripe for the picking, so close. But it had been close before and he’d denied it. Would he now?
He answered her question by grinding even harder, and the molten pleasure finally peaked. She jerked against him, her body clenching at his as she came. He continued to work at her, his gaze so focused on her face that she almost got lost in him as the sensation overwhelmed.
It was only when she relaxed back, sated, that he drew almost all the way from her and then took her with a full thrust again.
“You want my release?” he growled. “You want to make me come?”
She nodded. “I do. I want to see it.”
He leaned farther over her, threading his fingers through hers as he held her down on the bed. His mouth claimed hers, punishing and hard and filled with all that passion he normally restrained.
And he took her. She’d heard the act described as that before, but had never experienced it in those terms. He took with hard and heavy and never-ending thrusts. She gripped her legs around his hips to find some purchase, angling her mouth to suck his throat as he grew more wild and needy.
She felt him close to the edge. His neck strained, his legs shook, and then he pulled out of her and stroked himself once before he came, his come splashing across her stomach as he called out her name into the quiet like it could somehow bring him home.
He collapsed over her, his mouth finding hers as they scooted up the bed, their arms and legs tangling. She cuddled into his side, reveling in the warmth of him, in the strength of his arms around her. In these moments, both the pleasurable and the quiet, it felt like she could be…still. Safe.
Even though she wasn’t. She wasn’t safe. This thing between them was an illusion in the end. Something temporary, something that would never involve heart or feelings or anything more than this magical meeting of bodies.
She couldn’t ever let herself want for more. She’d learned the hard way what kind of pain that brought.
“Your thoughts are so loud,” Oscar said, his fingers threading through her hair, stroking against her scalp. “Was I so terrible at bringing you pleasure that you immediately go into analyzing your next move?”
She rolled partially over, her hip thrown over his, her arms against his chest and her chin resting there as she looked up into his face. Good Lord, but he was handsome. Even more so with his hair mussed from sex.
“It certainly isn’t that I wasn’t well pleased,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt something like that before. Ever wanted release with such a keen sharpness. And when you gave it? I was floating, utterly weightless.”
He arched a brow. “But?”
She sighed. “But the facts of my situation are still the facts, aren’t they? I’ve been almost…avoiding thinking of them the last few days. Because when I did, I had the physical sensation that I could start screaming and never stop.”
He frowned. “I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault,” she whispered. “However, after that…after what we just did, it’s almost like the edge has come off the fear. I’m sure it’s not permanent. I’m fairly certain that orgasms cannot heal all things.”
“I’m willing to test the theory,” he teased.
She smiled. “I look forward to that.”
“I know what you mean, though. That physical jolt of pleasure…” He shook his head. “Sometimes it feels like it resets everything. If only for a moment. And if that means you can look at your experience without as much fear, then I’m glad of it. And what are your thoughts?”
She brought her attention away from his face for a moment, watching her fingers as she drew patterns across his chest. He was silent as she did so, not pressing her for answers, not demanding she give what she couldn’t yet. He just…waited for her.
She appreciated that more than she might have been able to say out loud. To do so felt more vulnerable than spreading herself wide for him had been.
“I am grateful what you’re doing for me,” she said softly. “Using your time and resources to look for some solution to my predicament. But it is my life, isn’t it? And since we have established that you and I can only be lovers, probably only for a short time, I can’t just hide in your house waiting for you to sweep in like some hero in a story and save the day. It isn’t fair to either of us.”
He wrinkled his brow. “What are you suggesting? You can’t do this alone, Imogen. You can’t go home. It isn’t safe.”
She felt the harsh edge of panic thrum through her veins and drew in a deep breath to ease it. When she could find her words again, she said, “But I can help you, can’t I? I must have a part in what you’re doing, Oscar. I can’t just wait and trust and hope.”
She waited for him to dismiss that thought out of hand. That’s what Warren would have done. Had done many times, when she dared to ask for a greater role in her own life. In his.
But Oscar seemed to be truly pondering the suggestion. She could see he was troubled. Of course he would be. The danger he spoke of was real. She’d seen its ultimate consequence.
At last he let out a long, low breath. “What you want is a fair request,” he said slowly. “And having your input will likely make navigating this situation easier. I was…” He broke off an
d his lips pursed. “I have an appointment with a contact tomorrow. I’d like you to come with me. Would that help fulfill your desire to be a part of your own situation?”
She nodded. “Yes. I’d like that.”
His hand had been resting against her back as they talked, and now he began to swirl his fingers against her skin in slow circles. She hissed in a breath at the gentle reawakening of her body.
“And now may I fulfill a few more of your desires?” he whispered.
She leaned up his frame, drawing her lips close to his without kissing him. “What did you have in mind?”
He didn’t answer with words, but by cupping the back of her head and drawing her in for a kiss. She lost herself in him, forgetting her troubles once more. They would be there tomorrow. Tonight she just wanted pleasure.
Chapter 11
Oscar smoothed his jacket for what felt like the tenth time since he’d entered the parlor less than five minutes before. It was the most foolish thing, how nervous he was in this moment. He was never nervous with the person he’d come to meet.
But then again, he couldn’t think of a time he’d ever brought a lady with him to this place. Not that Imogen was with him in this particular moment. He wanted a chance to speak to his contact before she joined them, so she was out on the terrace, enjoying a breath of air before he called her in.
Before he opened her up, and himself up, to all the curiosity he knew would follow.
The door behind him opened, and he turned to face the person entering the room. She was lovely, always so lovely. A regal woman who maintained every ounce of her beauty, even as her hair went gray with the years. She had high cheekbones, the kind of skin women in the ton fought for and bright green eyes that at least one poet had written a popular sonnet about ten years before.
Oscar had always wished he’d inherited those eyes rather than his arse of a father’s.
“Mama,” he said as he crossed to Joanna Fitzhugh.
The Redemption of a Rogue Page 9
