“I do,” she said.
Val dipped his head and pressed a kiss to the dark curls that shielded her sex. She made a sound, part shock and part pleasure. Then he parted those tender folds and tasted the sweetness of her. Her body tensed, her head fell back and she arched toward him. And then he devoured her. He was relentless as he teased her, tasted her and drove her toward the edge of pleasure, only to halt and ease her gently back from the precipice.
“Are you trying to kill me?” she asked.
He smiled against her skin and then nipped at her thigh. “Pleasure is even sweeter when you’ve had to wait for it.”
“I’ve waited, Valentine. Who’s the virgin here?”
He laughed at that. “I may not be virginal, Lillian, but this is different for me, too.”
“Why?” she asked with puzzlement.
“Because it’s you… and because it matters so much more.”
She gripped his arms then, tugging him upward. Against his better judgment, he allowed it. “Then make me your wife… in every way. I want to know how it feels.”
It was impossible to resist that sweet plea. Val left her only long enough to shed his breeches and then rejoined her on the bed. She welcomed him eagerly, wrapping her arms about him and parting her thighs so that he settled easily between them. He could feel the heat of her. Closing his hand around the base of his shaft, he guided himself to her entrance and then slowly pressed into the softness of her body. He was attuned to her every sound. Each soft sigh, every startled gasp, and breathless moan were a map to the thing he sought most—to bring her release before finding his own. Pressing deeper, he breached the fragile barrier of her innocence, and then he stilled completely.
Jaw clenched, every part of him tensed, he struggled to go slow, to fight the instinct that urged him to simply claim her. But he could not fight her, and when she gripped his hips and arched upward, taking him deeper, he was lost.
*
In all the whispered exchanges between the girls at school, when they’d all discussed in the vaguest terms that represented the sum total of their knowledge what that moment would actually be like, nothing could have prepared her. The slight stinging pain had been only momentary. And with the overwhelming sensations of him pressing deeper inside her, it was easily forgotten. Nothing had ever felt so wondrous or so right. Had she been able to think clearly at all, it might have frightened her how much she needed him in that moment, how much she craved his touch. The intimacy of it transported her to some other plane it seemed, where nothing existed but the two of them and the glorious points of contact between them.
As he began to move, setting a gentle rhythm, it robbed her of even the hint of thought. She was reduced to pure sensation. He’d given her pleasure, but the intensity of what she felt in those moments was incomparable to anything that had come before. It consumed her and she could do nothing but cling to him, wrap herself about him and hold him close as he took them both to the edge.
The gentle pace quickened and she could feel his muscles clenching beneath her hands as she touched him, smoothing her palms over the hard planes of his back and along his sides. The heat of him, the rawness of him in that moment, drew her like a moth to a flame. She moved with him then, matching the rhythm he’d set and arching upward to meet him stroke for stroke. His head dropped forward, his forehead resting against her shoulder and her name escaped his lips on a ragged breath.
Then the tension that he’d built so perfectly inside her simply shattered. She cried out with it, unable to stop herself. And then she felt him shudder against her, felt the rush and heat of him as he stilled against her completely. Then he kissed her. Not the drugging, heated kisses that had brought them to that point, but the sweet brush of his lips, featherlight and achingly tender. In a matter of days, not even the course of an entire week, she’d done the one foolish thing she’d thought herself above throughout her life—she’d fallen in love. But he had not. It was a terrifying prospect to know that her heart was engaged and the state of his was yet unknown to her.
Chapter Seventeen
“Where are you?”
The question, asked softly and with gentle amusement, pulled Lilly from her thoughts. At some point, Val had moved to her side and they lay together in a tangle of limbs and discarded clothing. “I’m right here.” She’d been replaying the moments in her mind. Down to the second, she could pinpoint when she had lost all control and had all but begged him to make love to her. Not verbally, but she’d certainly communicated her desires clearly enough. She’d been wanton enough that even she was shocked at her behavior. And yet through all of it, he’d appeared to be in complete control. That left her wondering if perhaps her desire, because of her newly-discovered feelings for him, if in fact they were real and not simply a product of her own imagination and lust, somehow surpassed his. Did he want her as much as she wanted him? Or would he soon grow bored with her and move on?
He touched one finger to her forehead, smoothing the worry lines that formed there. “Only partly. If you can be so lost in thought at such a moment, I have clearly failed in my duties of seduction.”
“I didn’t think it was supposed a duty,” she replied with a laugh, striving for a bit of levity and failing.
“If it is, I’ll sign up for it every day,” he offered and rolled to his back. “What troubles you, Lilly? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No,” she said honestly. “Not at all. It was… it was perfect. So much more than I ever imagined it could be.”
She sat up and looked at him over her shoulder. It was easier than meeting his gaze directly. There were things she would admit, and others that she was not yet ready to. Perhaps it wasn’t even love, after all. Perhaps she was simply so consumed with lust and the glorious pleasures he’d shown her that she wasn’t able to think clearly. “I didn’t know I would lose myself to the moment so completely. I was a bit caught off guard by that, I think. Is it always like that?”
He didn’t answer immediately, but took his time, obviously considering his words carefully. Yet, the entire time, he touched her. His hands stroked over her back or traced delicate patterns along the crest of her hips. Finally, he said, “It’s different every time, I think. The mechanics of it might be the same, but the feelings, the sensation, the significance of it—that varies.”
“And with the partner, I presume. That would have some effect.”
His hand stilled, resting on the curve of her hip in a manner that felt possessive. “Are you asking if it’s different because we’re married or because it’s you?”
She cocked her head to one side, and considered her answer. “Both, I think. I am not experienced the way your other lovers have been… and while I was thoroughly lost to the moment, you were not. You maintained control to the very end.”
He rose up and rested his weight on his elbow, then twined his free hand in her hair, urging her back to him. “Is that what you’re worrying about?”
“Not worried. Curious,” she answered.
“Then let me ease your curiosity. There is nowhere and no one I would rather be with than you. From the moment I saw you, I smiled,” he said. “And I don’t do that really. In two days, I’ve laughed more, smiled more and been happier, even with all that has occurred, than in the last decade of my life. Sometimes, Lilly, you just meet people and they change you… or they guide you to rediscover the parts of yourself you thought lost. You reminded me of who I was before I went to war. Before I came home and began all my clandestine activities.”
“Spying, you mean?”
He grinned. “You just like to say that word, I think. I didn’t spy. I listened.”
“Which is rather what spies do. They observe, without letting on they are observing, and then they report back to people in authority. That is what you do, isn’t it?”
“What I did,” he corrected. “I’m done with that now. Highcliff knows I’m out.”
“Are you certain you want to give it up?”
“I’m certain I never wanted to start it to begin with,” he said. “But I’m good at cards. Better than good. I have a knack for knowing what has been played, what hasn’t and for predicting, with a high degree of accuracy, what cards others are holding. I can’t explain how I do it, only that I do, and that it’s impossible to cheat me or anyone else at a table I’m playing at. But I don’t like it. I never have.”
“So you’re happy with me… and that’s why I lost all touch with reality and you were still thinking to the very end?” The doubt in her tone was quite clear.
He huffed out a breath, half-laugh and half-groan. “I wanted it to be good for you. No. I needed it to be perfect for you. There is only one first time, Lilly. And bad or good, it sets the tone for our relationship moving forward… add to that the fact that it was your first time ever and not just with me, it was even more important. When the two of us are on more even footing in terms of knowledge and experience, I promise you, you may drive me as mad with lust as you wish.”
Could it be that simple? She certainly hoped so. “I rather like the sound of that,” she said.
He eyed her for a moment, seeing far more than she wished for him to, she was sure.
“What’s really bothering you? Do you regret our marriage? I know it was hasty and I know that we likely both went into it for the entirely wrong reasons. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make it work, that we can’t make it something extraordinary for both of us,” he said.
Hating her own neediness and craving for reassurance, Lilly lay down next to him. Immediately, he pulled her close and held her against his chest. “I am afraid to expect anything,” she admitted.
“Because you think I’ll disappoint you?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps I will disappoint you,” she admitted. “I know nothing of marriage. I’ve lived my whole life in a house full of unmarried women. The men of my acquaintance, including my father, do not inspire faith in your sex, I’m afraid.”
“But I’m not them,” he said.
“No,” she said. “You’re not. You’re very different from them. But that gives you a power over me that they’ve never had. You can hurt me, Valentine, and they cannot.”
“That is the last thing I want to do,” he said gruffly.
“Then don’t.”
*
Val hoped it would be that simple, hoped that they would be able to avoid the fate so many did not. The last thing he wanted was the cold and loveless marriage his parents had, or his grandparents for that matter. In truth, the Somers’ track record was less than stellar. He couldn’t name a single happy union in the whole of his family, extended or otherwise.
“I think I’m hungry now,” she said.
He laughed at that. “Of course, you are. Get your lovely and rather perfectly-formed arse out of bed and into something resembling clothing and we’ll go below stairs and try to cajole Highcliff’s cook into feeding us something.”
He lay there for a moment longer, watching her get up and cross the room. She’d managed to restore some semblance of order to her chemise, but her hair, a mass of dark and unruly waves, was beyond all hope. She looked like a woman well and thoroughly ravished and he was more than happy with his handiwork. And as soon as they’d gotten some food into the both of them, he fully intended to have an encore.
Lilly opened the armoire where the servants had indicated that items had been placed for her. As their own bags still sat unpacked by the door, he didn’t know what was in there. But he heard her gasp as she opened the doors.
“Oh, I really do like your friend, Highcliff,” she said.
A spurt of jealousy hit him squarely, prodding his temper to life, but he quickly squashed it. “What sort of silk or velvet has he lured your affections with?”
She laughed delightedly and pulled out a lovely confection of silk that would simply skim over her figure and reveal far more than it concealed. There was a wrapper of the same shade lined with velvet. It was an extravagant purchase. The only thing preventing Val from calling him out was the knowledge that Highcliff had likely sent around a note to the very same dressmaker he himself had obtained for Lilly and instructed her to send something “suitable for romance”.
“If I thought for a moment he picked that out himself, I’d blacken both of his eyes,” Val said without rancor.
“Well, I’m sure he didn’t. That would be scandalous, indeed. Actually, it’s still scandalous, isn’t it? But it’s so pretty,” she cooed. “I don’t even care.”
Val watched her stroke the velvet in a way that made him reconsider the notion of letting her out of the bed, much less out of the room. “Stop that. If you want food… if you want anything other than to be back in this bed, you’ll put that wrapper on and find yourself some slippers.”
“Slippers? Even my feet need to be covered?”
“The floors are cold,” he said, and reached for his own breeches. He pulled them on quickly, then his shirt. “Food. And then back to bed.”
“Fine,” she said and reached back into the wardrobe for a pair of slippers.
When they were both at least somewhat decent, they went downstairs and found the house all but empty. Even the live-in servants were out. Only a note had been left for them, along with a hamper of food. It stated that per Lord Highcliff’s instructions, the two of them were to be granted run of the house and complete privacy for the duration of their stay.
“What were you saying about blackening both of his eyes?” Lilly challenged.
“I stand corrected. He is a god amongst men. If there’s a bit of ham and some fresh bread in that basket, along with some good wine, I may very well kiss him myself the next time I see him.”
“No doubt, that would go over well at your club,” she said.
“Hardly that. The members of Brooks’ will not turn a hair if you gamble away your fortune, place bets on a lady’s honor or even duel over it, but there are some things even they will not turn a blind eye to,” Val said.
“And is that your club? With your remarkable skill at gambling? Brooks’?” she asked, dishing things up from the hamper.
“I’m a member at Brooks’. I’m also conditionally permitted in White’s and Boodle’s, so long as I’m accompanied by a member. Generally, the play I was involved in happened in less reputable establishments,” he admitted ruefully.
“Brothels,” she surmised.
“Is that ham? It smells divine,” he said.
She laughed at his blatant attempt to change the subject. “Don’t think I don’t know. The Darrow School is in a very fashionable section of Mayfair… and there are quite a few houses on our block that are… well, not simply residential. I’ve seen you and your carriage coming and going from Number Thirty-seven Cavendish Place. I shall simply knock on their door and inquire as to what sort of establishment it is.”
Val choked on the grape he’d just eaten. Coughing, sputtering, eyes watering as he wheezed for breath, he had a moment of truly wondering if he might die before the object was finally dislodged. “Do… not… ever… knock… on… that… door,” he said gasping.
“Good lord, you act like they’d haul me in and put me to work!”
“They might. I gamble there, because that’s where the sharps congregate and where they fleece the unsuspecting. But it’s run by very unscrupulous people, Lilly. Do not ever go there. Dear God, do not even walk on that side of the street if you can avoid it.”
“Surely it cannot be so terrible if you’ve frequented the place without incident?”
“I never said it was without incident. In fact, your association with me could potentially make it a greater danger to your… have you ever heard of the Hound of Whitehall?” he demanded.
“No. What a strange name! Should I have?”
No, he supposed, she should not have. A sheltered young woman living in a school of other young women and none of them associating with foolish men who played foolish games, why would she have? “Well, you do not wish to
know more about him. That I can promise you. Just stay away from there!”
She eyed him while considering the order for a moment. “I will agree on one condition. You must stay away, as well.”
He had no wish to go there again unless absolutely necessarily. The Hound was ruthless and his people were quick and sometimes too eager with their dirtiest work. Not to mention that he was already in deep with him for the favor he’d asked earlier. “I will not go there unless I absolutely must… and if I do, I will not do so without telling you. That is the best I can offer.”
“Then I will avoid it on the same terms,” she said. “And we will not argue about it.”
Then he would simply break his word and never tell her, because the thought of what might happen to her in such a place terrified him. The very idea of her facing off against a man as ruthless as the Hound left him feeling weak in the knees and in the gut. “Fine. Let us eat and then let us return to our newly-wedded bliss upstairs. After all, tomorrow we go back to the dragon.”
She laughed. “You shouldn’t call her that. She loves you very much, you know. Even if she does try to manage you.”
“She didn’t try. She succeeded. You do realize that the two of us being here is entirely at her hand, don’t you? She put us together and somehow knew exactly what I would do!”
Lilly smiled again. “Then perhaps you know where your uncanny ability with cards came from, after all.”
Chapter Eighteen
They returned to the family’s townhouse the following day and were met with disapproving glares and stony silence. Stepping into the drawing room, wearing a sprigged muslin morning dress that had mysteriously appeared by courier just before breakfast, another gift from Lord Highcliff who seemed to have thought of everything, Lilly prepared to face her former employer. She had the feeling it would require a dramatic mea culpa and profuse apologies to even begin to set things right.
“Your grace, I understand you must be so very disappointed,” Lilly began.
Barefoot in Hyde Park (The Hellion Club Book 2) Page 15
