by Merry Farmer
A thousand questions flashed through Fabian’s mind. Was something illicit going on between her and George? At the house party, she’d been sweet to the point of girlishness, but a lot could have happened in five months. Perhaps she and George had met and become much closer than they should have. Fabian knew that plenty of married women took lovers when they were bored or felt neglected by their husbands. Perhaps Alice had gotten a head start on cuckolding him.
“How did you like the display?” he asked, pulling himself to his full height and scrutinizing her to see if she showed any signs of infidelity.
“It was lovely,” she answered, glancing anxiously around, as though her lover would pop out of the ferns at any moment. “It’s just that….”
She continued her search but not her words.
Fabian decided to face the problem head-on. “Marriage is a daunting business,” he said. “It would be a shame to enter one ill-advisedly or to start off on the wrong foot.”
To his surprise, she turned her full attention to him and said, “Yes. Exactly. One’s choice of partner can bring joy or utter misery, which is why….” Again, she swallowed the end of her sentence, her cheeks flushing.
Fabian clenched his jaw. She was hiding something from him. It had to be a lover. She wouldn’t have been so short with him if she hadn’t given her heart to another. Practically every woman he’d ever met had fancied him, or at least treated him with the respect his fame brought with it, except those who were already in love with someone else.
“Your father strikes me as a man of exceptionally good taste,” he said, trying another angle. Lord Stanhope was the one who had suggested the two of them marry, after all. Perhaps he knew about Alice’s affair and was in a hurry to palm her off on some unsuspecting suitor.
As if to prove him right, her eyes went wide and she gazed up at him suspiciously. “My father never did anything selflessly in his life, and this…this is beyond the pale.”
Fabian’s frown darkened. From the sound of things, Alice didn’t want to marry him at all. He could see the trepidation in her expression. It only seemed to prove she wanted someone else entirely.
“You think so?” he asked in stilted tones.
She didn’t answer. He didn’t give her a chance to. Whether it was his wounded pride or some other, darker force, he couldn’t let her insolence go unchecked. He stepped toward her, scooping an arm around her waist and tugging her flush against him. With all the power of a conquering general, he slanted his mouth over hers, kissing her mercilessly.
Her body stiffened against his for a moment before relaxing as a deep moan sounded from her throat. His lips devoured hers, and when she parted them, he thrust his tongue along hers, tasting and exploring and taking what he wanted from her. He swore he could feel a shudder pass through her as she clutched his sides, digging her fingertips into his flesh.
As forcefully as their kiss had begun, it was like heaven. She submitted to him fully, letting him ravish her in a way that had him hard in an instant. He shifted one hand to cradle her ample breast, rubbing his thumb over her nipple until it was a taut peak. She whimpered under the onslaught of his mouth but didn’t try to pull away.
Only a hussy would let a man who wasn’t her husband kiss her so thoroughly. An innocent maid would shriek and run screaming from a display of passion like that. She had to have a lover. That was why she’d been so cold to him.
Those thoughts sparked through him in an instant. Before he could act on them or say anything, though, Lord Stanhope stepped suddenly toward them from the end of the aisle of ferns.
“There you are,” he said, a note of triumph in his voice.
Sense and embarrassment closed in on Fabian and he let go of Alice, stepping respectfully away from her. What had he been thinking to kiss her like she was a strumpet for hire?
He’d been thinking she was a strumpet for hire, of course.
“Lord Stanhope. Forgive me,” he said, bowing to the man.
To his surprise, instead of telling him off or demanding the wedding take place that instant to preserve his daughter’s honor, he merely grinned. The expression sent a chill down his back, especially when he glanced past Fabian to nod to his daughter. “Well done,” he said. “I knew you were a good, obedient girl underneath it all.”
Fabian opened his mouth to ask what the devil that meant, but Lord Stanhope stepped around the corner, disappearing as quickly as he’d appeared. He frowned, shaking his head, then turned back to Alice.
His heart dropped to his stomach at what he found. Alice stood with her shoulders slumped and her head bowed, the picture of defeat and misery. Her cheeks were bright pink with shame, and even though he couldn’t see them fully, he had a feeling her eyes were brimming with tears. The pitiful sight had him questioning every conclusion he had just come to.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, sniffled, then launched forward, pushing past him. She clapped a hand to her mouth as she turned the corner in the opposite direction her father had gone.
Fabian was left standing alone, a puzzled frown growing deeper on his brow. Something was terribly wrong. Did Alice have a lover or not? What had her father meant by calling her obedient? Was he walking into some sort of trap that was closing in around him? He couldn’t make heads nor tails of the whole thing. All he knew was that he had to get to the bottom of the mystery, and the sooner, the better.
Chapter 3
Alice was desperate. Try as she did through the afternoon, she couldn’t catch Georgette alone to warn her about her father. Her father had most certainly decided Georgette was the perfect prey…or rather, the perfect wife. Alice stood by helplessly as he courted and flattered Georgette through an afternoon of parlor games, and as he chose a seat beside her at supper. Every time Alice tried to intervene, something had happened or someone had drawn her into a conversation about how delighted she must be to wed the famous Count Camoni.
Count Camoni was her other problem. The way he’d kissed her in the greenhouse had driven all sense straight from her mind. His body had enveloped her with heat and power. His lips and tongue had drawn a passion up from her soul that she hadn’t known existed. It could have been August rather than December for all the heat that pulsed through her as he held her, caressing her curves. An ache had formed in an unmentionable part of her body with his kiss. That ache renewed all through the afternoon whenever she spotted Count Camoni watching her. And he seemed to be watching her constantly with a slight frown that left her breathless, with too many emotions to count.
But Count Camoni was a distraction she couldn’t afford. Not when the future happiness of a nice young woman was in danger. Alice lay awake that night, tossing and turning and fretting over what she should and could do. Her bedsheets tangled around her legs and her shoulders bunched with tension as she mulled over the problem. It didn’t help one bit that her concern for Georgette quickly became mingled with memories of Count Camoni kissing her. She could still taste him. His scent still filled her senses. The memory of the way he’d touched her breast was so powerful that she fondled herself to see if she could recreate the sensation.
“It’s no use,” she growled at last, kicking off the covers and twisting to sit. “I have to do something.”
She rose from the bed with a determined huff, crossing to the table and lighting the lamp that waited there. With that light, she found her dressing gown and threw it over her shoulders. Then she fetched the lamp and tip-toed out into the hall.
Holly Manor was silent in slumber. Not a soul was awake, not even the servants. Alice crept down the hall, studying the doors she passed with a frown. Her father had been given a room on a separate hall, but there was no telling who might be behind the doors on her hall. She breathed a slight sigh of relief when she reached the stairs and climbed up a floor. Georgette had told her where the family quarters were located during the brief tour she’d given a group of guests the day before, and she’d pointed out which room was hers when they were outside bri
efly. Alice was confident she could locate her new friend’s room, steal in, and give her the warning that was so desperately needed.
Once she was in the family wing, she stole along, counting doors and making calculations in her head. Georgette’s room had to be the third one on the right. She reached the door, contemplated knocking, but decided that was too risky. Instead, she tested the handle.
The door was unlocked and swung open with a slight creak. The room beyond was dark and the curtains were closed to keep the heat from the embers left in the fireplace contained. With a squeeze of triumph in her chest, Alice hurried inside, then turned and shut the door behind her.
“Georgette,” she whispered, barely audible.
She was greeted by the deep sound of someone breathing in their sleep under the pile of quilts on the bed. She would have to be louder to wake her friend.
“Georgette,” she called, still in a whisper.
She inched closer to the bed as the breathing hitched and the pile of quilts stirred. Relief spilled through her, and she hurried all the way to the side of the bed, setting the lamp on the bedside table.
“Georgette, I must speak with you at once. I—” Alice sucked in a breath as a large form, far larger than Georgette was, twisted under the quilts to face her. “George—”
She yelped and clapped a hand to her mouth as the bedcovers were pushed back and Count Camoni squinted up at her in the dim light. There was a moment of confusion in his sleepy eyes before it resolved into ire.
“George?” he said, his voice louder than Alice wanted it to be. She tried to shush him by touching a finger to her lips and glancing over her shoulder, but he sat and demanded a second time, “George? What is the meaning of this?”
Terror roiled in Alice’s gut, not the least of which was because, as he sat, the bedcovers slumped to reveal Count Camoni’s powerful, naked chest. The lamplight was more than enough for her to see the definition in his muscles and the light hair that dusted his chest. His arms were a sight to behold as well, with a firmness that brought the ache instantly back to her core.
“This is a mistake,” she whispered, barely able to form the words as she drank in the sight of his body.
“I’ll say it is,” he growled. “So you thought you could sneak into your lover’s room for an assignation right under my nose?”
“I—” Alice barely heard his question. He shifted the way he was sitting and a stretch of his naked thigh poked out from the bedcovers, hinting that he wore nothing at all to bed.
“Is this why you’ve been so cold to me these last few days?” he demanded, glowering at her.
Alice dragged her eyes up from his body, but she couldn’t manage to shut her mouth as she stared at him. A riot of feeling played havoc with her senses. His expression was truly terrifying. Like he might punish her for her wickedness. But that didn’t strike her as an entirely bad thing. The words of her section of The Secrets of Love rushed back to her. “Sometimes submission is the most glorious way to move a romance forward. Embrace his mastery of you and pleasures you have never known will be opened to you.”
He was still glaring at her and she hadn’t answered. She blinked, determined to do something about that. “George?” she asked, taking a deep breath that caused an alarming friction between her nipples and the fabric of her nightgown.
“Yes,” Count Camoni said, narrowing his eyes. “You know, the man whose bed you tried to hop into? The man you’ve likely been dallying with all these months of our engagement?”
She didn’t have the first clue what he was talking about. “No.” She shook her head. “I only meant that…I have to warn…she can’t marry him or….” Why couldn’t she think or form words?
A flash of uncertainty filled Count Camoni’s eyes, although it could have been the play of shadows from the dim light. “What does he give you that I cannot?” he asked.
Alice gaped for a moment, scrambling to decipher his meaning. He had to be referring to her father. She didn’t know any other men. “He’s…I suppose he’s provided for me,” she said with a frown of confusion.
“Provided for you, has he?” Count Camoni seemed indignant at her perfectly normal response.
“Yes?” She shivered, certain she’d put every foot wrong.
“I suppose he sees to your physical needs as well,” Count Camoni went on in a bitter voice.
Alice bit her lip, knowing she wouldn’t say the right thing. “Isn’t that what he’s supposed to do?”
As she’d predicted, it was the wrong thing to say. Count Camoni looked downright livid. She expected him to start shouting and to either order her from the room or smack her, like her father sometimes did when he was in a particularly foul mood.
But he shocked her by growling, “We’ll just see about that,” and surging toward her.
She barely had time to gulp a breath before Count Camoni captured her and twisted her so that she lay on her back in his bed. He closed a hand possessively over her hip and swooped down to punish her mouth with a kiss that overwhelmed her. His lips played aggressively with hers, and when she parted hers just a little, he took full advantage, plunging his tongue in to plunder her.
She moaned deep in her throat, feeling as though the world had tipped off-balance. He was so powerful and demanding. Her lips felt tender and bruised within moments, but she didn’t want him to stop. She arched against him, but gasped when the fullness of his naked body pressed back against her.
“Are you so voracious that you don’t care who your lover is as long as they pleasure you?” he rumbled above her. His large hand reached down her leg to gather the hem of her nightgown, tugging it up. “If you want it, I’ll give it to you.”
Alice’s mind reeled. Through her shock and fear came the realization that she did want it. She wasn’t sure what it was, but if it had anything to do with the way he caressed her thigh, teasing his fingers toward her aching sex, then yes, that was exactly what she wanted.
“Does he make you feel like this?” Count Camoni asked on, yanking her nightgown up over her hips, then spreading his hand across her belly. It didn’t stay there for long. He traced her navel with one finger, then slid his hand down to the thatch of curls between her legs. He didn’t stop there either, His fingers delved into her folds, stroking her overheated sex.
Alice tried to say something, anything, but all that came out was a sensual sigh. Sharp bolts of pleasure, like nothing she’d ever experienced before, coursed through her as he traced her entrance with his fingers, then thrust one slowly inside of her. Her eyes went wide at the invasion and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath.
“I should have known a hussy like you would be wet and panting for it,” he growled, though there was something warm and teasing in his tone, something beyond anger. “I bet you like cock. I bet you lie awake at night, abusing yourself and dying for a big, thick, hard cock ramming into you until you come so hard you cry.”
Alice tried to answer, but all that came out was a strangled cry as he added a second finger to his ministrations. Heaven help her, but she liked it and she wanted more.
“Does George have a big cock?” he demanded. Her overtaxed mind had no idea what he was talking about. “Is it as big as this?”
He drew his hand away from her, finding her hand where it lay, limp and useless, on the bed beside her, and pulling it toward him. She gasped as he pressed her hand to his cock. Not only did the gesture prove that yes, he was fully naked, it answered the question he’d just asked her. He was enormous. Not that she had much to compare him with. His erect penis was hot and hard, like iron covered with soft leather, and as thick as a tree trunk. Well, perhaps not that thick, but it might as well have been.
He moved her hand so that she stroked him, which only emphasized his size and power.
“Do you like that?” he asked in a tense voice, his eyes blazing with fire in the feeble light of the lamp. “Do you want it in you?”
The very idea made Alice shudder with longing
and fear. Certainly, something that size could never fit inside of her. But the only sound that came from her throat was an incoherent, “Ahmm.”
He braced himself above her, studying her with narrowed eyes, his too-long hair hanging down and framing his face. It took Alice a few moments to realize she had continued stroking his erection, even after he moved his hand away.
“You’re going to marry me,” he said with a note of finality. “And when you do, I don’t want you so much as looking at another man again.”
Alice wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to look at another man, not after what was happening to her just then.
“I want you screaming my name when you come from now on, do you hear me?”
She blinked up at him, only half understanding what he was demanding of her. “Yes?”
Her answer must not have been definitive enough for him. “My name,” he repeated. “I want my name on your lips when you writhe with lust and demand satisfaction.” When she didn’t say anything, he went on with, “Say my name.”
Alice’s lips worked soundlessly for a moment. It was asking too much of her to form coherent thoughts when his body was pressed against hers and his cock rubbed against her hip. “Count Camoni?” she panted at last.
His expression darkened. “It’s Fabian,” he told her in a low rumble.
The sound made her shiver and squirm. “Fabian,” she repeated.
He didn’t look appeased. Not one bit. He moved to wedge the lower half of his body between her legs. “Say it like you mean it.”
She couldn’t imagine what he wanted from her. “Fabian?”
He growled, resting a hand on her belly for a moment before drawing it up to caress her breast. The way he squeezed and kneaded it, brushing his fingers over her nipple until it was a hard point, sent shoots of pleasure radiating through her. Then he pinched her nipple lightly and she cried out wordlessly at the heady combination of pleasure and pain.
