by Clee, Adele
He gave a weak chuckle, though she sensed his demons prowling, drooling and slapping their chops. “Newberry’s no threat. I could finish him with a shot from a rusty musket.”
“What then? Does it have to do with abandoning the carriage in the woods?”
“Possessions can be replaced.”
“You’re not helping me, Lucius.”
His gaze turned carnal as he focused on her bare toes. “Then let me help by insisting you return to your bedchamber. Return now, before heightened emotions force us to repeat our illicit encounter in the library.”
Was that supposed to send her scuttling back to her room?
Was that supposed to have her hunting for a chastity belt?
“You know I like it when you’re reckless,” she said in the seductive tone of a skilled courtesan. But these all-consuming feelings went beyond the need for physical pleasure. She would be just as happy to sit and hold his hand.
“Damn it, Sybil. We’re on dangerous ground.” He pushed his hand into the opening of his shirt to massage his chest muscle, and she struggled to keep her mouth closed. “What I want, and what is right are two entirely different things.”
“Are you saying you want me?” Never had she been so bold. But life was precarious. One had to grab these precious moments.
His hand stilled on his chest. “In every way a man might want a woman. I’m like a wanderer lost in the desert, so hot, so parched, so damn thirsty. A single drop from the heavens would prove immensely satisfying. There, is that what you wanted to hear?”
It was exactly what she wanted to hear.
The temptation to reach out and touch him proved too great, but he captured her wrist before her fingers made contact. For a few heartbeats, they stared into each other’s eyes.
She gazed deep, willing him to surrender.
Willing him not to predict or plan.
Willing him to be wild and reckless.
Chapter Fourteen
The emptiness he carried in his chest seemed to dissipate in Sybil Atwood’s company. Lucius had been ready to throw on his greatcoat and ride through the thunder and rain until he reached Bideford Park. He was ready to throw Warner against the wall and show him the pencil etching that bore such a striking likeness. He was ready to drag his father from his deathbed and demand to know what the hell had happened twenty years ago.
The mental torment—years of bitterness and anguish—proved too much to bear. But then an angel appeared at his door. An angel in a sumptuous green gown offering a wealth of heavenly delights.
The sensual glint in those emerald eyes told him she had a grasp of the situation. A situation that might begin with raging lust, proceed to immense pleasure, love, marriage. Maybe a full, enriched life beyond his responsibility to the Order.
Lucius brought the lady’s hand to his lips, closed his eyes and pressed a long, lingering kiss on her palm. Instantly, his tense shoulders relaxed.
“I saw my mother tonight.” The words sounded incredulous. Unbelievable. He drew her hand to his chest and placed it over his heart, let her feel its wild uncertainty beating an erratic rhythm. “She was hiding in the carriage house and approached me not long after you left the mews.”
Sybil opened her mouth, but couldn’t seem to speak through her shock. Eventually, she said, “Hiding? Why?”
“Hiding from my father’s spies.” Not that the duke had the power to hurt her anymore. The man couldn’t raise a cross word, let alone his fist.
“So she’s alive.”
“It would appear so.”
“Where has she been all this time?”
He shrugged. “Somewhere north of London.” Imagine if she had lived in Wetherby or a mile from Bronygarth. “Fear kept her away by all accounts.”
Sybil studied him intently. “You don’t sound pleased. I thought you’d be happy, relieved to see her again, to know what happened. Did she say something to cause your distress?”
“I’m not distressed.” Though he still felt the need to keep Sybil’s dainty hand pressed to his heart. “Confused. Sad. Bloody angry.” So bloody angry.
“You’re suffering from every conceivable emotion, then.” She gestured to the chaise. “May I sit?” But before he could move from his lounging position, she promptly dropped down onto his lap.
All thoughts of his parents, of his failure to punish the person responsible for Atticus’ murder, of the stranded carriage, abandoned him.
She ran her hand up over his chest to cup his nape. “Ashby had the right idea,” she whispered as she pressed her forehead to his, pressed her lush breasts to his chest.
Lucius closed his eyes briefly and inhaled her natural perfume. The aroma teased those deep carnal cravings. It infused his being, touching him in the secret place beyond the material world. A place without maps or coordinates. A place some people denied existed.
“Are you suggesting we follow our hearts, Miss Atwood?”
“That, and I thought you might work your way up to the tops of my stockings while we talk.”
For the first time since devouring her mouth in the library, he smiled. “You’re not wearing stockings.”
“That’s merely incidental.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want Ashby to think he has an advantage.”
They stared at each other as their breathing quickened. Lucius saw his desire reflected in those vibrant green gems, saw hope there, too.
“You spoke of wandering the desert,” she said, and the minx reached for the dirty hem of her gown and bunched her skirts to her knees. “Perhaps I might quench your thirst. Perhaps you’d like to drink.”
Bloody hell!
If he woke to find this was a damn dream, he’d murder someone.
He studied her bare legs, pale and smooth like alabaster, before trailing his fingers slowly from her ankle to her knee. “Convince me this is what you want.”
“Can you not hear my need for you in my voice?”
“Convince me, Sybil.”
Her light laugh lasted for a few seconds before the hazy veil of desire altered her expression. She placed both palms on his chest, leaned forward and claimed his mouth.
Twice she pressed her lips to his. Two sweet kisses, like the nervous dips of a toe in the lake. He let her test the water before opening his mouth and urging her to jump in. He heard the rush of excitement in her throaty gasp, in her pretty hum, felt it in the way she caressed his chest, in the way she struggled to sit still in his lap.
Tempering the urge to rush, he drew back, nipped at the corner of her mouth, slid his tongue along the seam of her lips. His hand slipped to her thigh, and he gripped the soft flesh, desperate to feel it cushioning his hip as he plunged into her wetness.
“Once my hand passes the top of your imagined stocking,” he whispered against her mouth, “I fear I’ll not stop there.”
She placed her hand on his and edged it a little higher. “Don’t stop there.”
He swallowed past the surge of euphoria, past the painful ache of his cock pushing against his breeches. “You wish me to touch you intimately?”
She gave a little shrug and a coy smile.
“Do you want me to pleasure you, Sybil?” Lust had taken command of his voice. “Do you want to feel my fingers moving inside you when you find your release?”
Her eyes widened. “I want you, Lucius.” She edged his hand past the point where her stocking might end. “I want you to ease this deep ache, however that may be.”
God, his tongue was as thick and as heavy as his cock.
“Once we pass this point, neither of us will be thinking clearly. We won’t want to stop.” He needed her to understand. “It’s not too late to say no.”
She sucked on her bottom lip. “May I try something? Something that has my curiosity champing at the bit?”
“You may do what you please with me, Miss Atwood.”
She pinned him to the chaise with her sinful smile and playful gaze, guided his hand to the intimate place betwe
en her thighs where it was so damn hot and wet.
Fuck!
His head fell back in time with hers.
A moan left her lips, and he moaned, too.
“It’s as I thought,” she breathed, her eyelids fluttering. “Please, please continue.”
It took every ounce of control not to spill himself in his breeches. “Say please again, Sybil. Say please in the way that makes me know you crave my touch.”
“Please, Lucius.” She arched her back as his fingers slipped slowly back and forth over her sex, caressing her in the intoxicating rhythm he knew would drive her wild. “Please,” she begged. “Oh, God, please.”
“Touch me,” he whispered. “Touch me. Touch me anywhere.”
Sybil touched him everywhere. Her hands delved under his shirt. She massaged his chest, stroked his nipples. She writhed in his lap, writhed against his hard shaft. Those vibrant copper curls fell about her shoulders as she bent her head, covered his mouth and slipped her warm tongue over his.
Fuck!
He was supposed to be doing the pleasuring, and yet he was on the verge of losing control. She seemed to be everywhere. Consuming. Devouring. Filling his head with her beguiling essence.
His free hand tangled in her hair, fastening her tight to his mouth. He swallowed her hum of pleasure as he pushed his fingers slowly into her heat. It took but a few more strokes with his thumb, a few slick slides of his fingers until her body convulsed.
A cry of satisfaction escaped her.
A cry accompanied by the needy whisper of his name.
Damn, but she was majestic in her release—all wild hair, glazed eyes and breathless pants. A siren determined to lure him to sin with her sensual song. A siren luring him to break his oath, to forget his vow.
Was this betrayal? Surely this wasn’t the protection Atticus had in mind. Still, his mentor was a man who lived for the truth. And the truth was Lucius had fallen in love with Sybil Atwood.
“I want to make love to you, Sybil.” He needed to make love to her else he might end up in Bedlam. “But I understand if that’s a step too far.”
She looked at him through drowsy eyes, eyes heavy with desire. “Make love? Hmm, it sounds divine.”
Divine didn’t even begin to describe what it was like to watch her shudder in his arms. What it would be like to watch her come while he was buried deep inside her.
“While I expect the experience will be transcendent, taking your virtue is not something my conscience will allow.”
She screwed her nose in the pretty way that said she found him confusing. “What if you don’t take my virtue? What if I give it freely, willingly? There’s a vast difference.”
“You can only give it once,” he said, touched that she would choose him as the recipient of such a precious gift. “You might meet someone—”
She kissed him again. He was getting used to these sudden bursts of affection. Perhaps she was still dizzy on the heights of her release, for her tongue drove into his mouth with a fervent hunger. Before he could match the voracious movements, she was tugging at his clothes, pushing her hands through his hair, writhing, panting.
All thoughts of vows and blasted promises left him.
I love her, he said silently as if making his excuses to her father, to the Lord, to anyone who was bloody well listening.
“We should return to your bedchamber,” he said, as the last threads of logic considered her comfort. “You should be in—”
“Next time,” she whispered against his neck. “I like it here on the chaise.”
“I don’t think you have the measure of the situation,” he said for the second time tonight.
She pulled back and looked at him. “You’re going to make love to me, here and now. You’re going to look after me, tell me what to do, how to please you. I’m going to experience those delicious tingles again. And you’re going to mutter curses like you do when you lose control of your senses.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good. Now, I’m bound to be nervous. From what Cassandra told me, it might hurt a little, but you’re not to think about that. I’m told it soon passes.”
He fell silent.
She amazed him on every level.
Now he had taken ownership of the emotion he could not stop the warm waves of love rippling through his chest. Love for this wildly vivacious woman who raised another smile when she said, “Do you think you might help me out of this dress?”
* * *
For a man skilled at kissing—extremely skilled at making a lady feel like she is floating amidst the stars—Lucius seemed to be stumbling at the last hurdle. Since kissing him in the library, since feeling the magnetic connection, she knew it was impossible to temper their passion.
Heavens, the man drove her wild with desire. He had seduced her mind from the beginning, seduced her heart with the depth of his devotion, seduced her body with his expert tongue.
Trust your heart, dear girl, her father had said. And her heart said she wanted Lucius Daventry in every conceivable way.
Sybil climbed off his lap, captured his hand and pulled him to his feet. “It occurs to me that the problem is your mind. There’s a host of things going on in there and that is hardly conducive to an evening of seduction.”
Lucius arched a brow. “A whole evening? There are hours until dawn. I fear once I’m buried deep in your sweet body, I’ll barely last a few minutes.”
“You should be optimistic.” She dragged him out onto the landing. “You might make love to me more than once.”
He laughed. “I can hear that damn parrot again, reminding me you don’t have the measure of the situation.”
“Perhaps,” she admitted. “Now, you’re to wait out here and empty your mind. Then you’re going to count to twenty before slipping into the room as if this were a ball and you’re about to make love to your mistress.”
“I have never made love to a mistress,” he snapped.
“Then you’re going to sneak in here to save my reputation, but you’re going to lose your mind like you did in the library.”
“Sybil, there’s no need to stage a scene,” he said, pulling her back into the attic room and closing the door. “Just kiss me, and I’ll soon forget the rest of the world exists.”
“Oh.”
His mouth curled into a sinful smile. He gathered his shirt, drew the garment over his head and threw it to the floor. Heat flooded her sex at the sight of his muscular arms, the hard planes of his chest, at every carved contour.
“Impressive.” She followed the teasing trail of dark hair leading from his navel and disappearing below the waistband of his breeches. More than impressive.
“Thank you.” He gave a confident wink.
Pushing nerves aside, she reached behind and unfastened the small row of buttons securing her gown. Once undone, she tugged the sleeves off her shoulders, shimmied until the silk slipped over her hips to pool on the floor. Her petticoat followed.
Lucius massaged the muscles in his chest and moistened his lips. “Front fastening stays.”
“Without the luxury of a maid, it pays to be prepared.”
She tugged on the ties, shrugged out of her short stays until left standing in just her chemise. Lord, her body burned. Yet her erect nipples pushed against the delicate fabric.
Lucius grinned. He unbuttoned his breeches and pushed the garment past his lean hips to reveal his jutting erection.
Holy Lord.
“It usually takes me a little time to rise to the occasion,” he said, palming the solid length. “Yet I was hard the second you entered the room.”
Curiosity had her staring, wondering how she was to take the whole length of him into her body.
Sybil arched a brow. “Equally impressive.” Magnificent, to be exact. “Though I have but a pencil sketch as a comparison.”
She wished she hadn’t mentioned what they’d found in Sir Melrose’s library. The last thing she wanted was to remind him of their mounting pr
oblems. And so, she swallowed the last remnants of her modesty and pulled her chemise up over her head.
A husky curse escaped him when she threw the garment to the floor. Nerves might have had her covering her breasts with her arms. But she recalled the salacious conversation he’d had with Benedict Cavanagh.
“I heard tell that you’ve longed to fondle my breasts.”
He stared beneath heavy lids, grinned through a mouth made for wickedness. “I’ve imagined holding you, touching you a thousand times or more.”
“Then hold me, Lucius. Touch me.”
He closed the gap between them in an instant and claimed her lips in a fierce open-mouthed kiss. Despite the chill in the air, his skin was hot against hers, warming her core. He smelled of leather and soap and spice. Manly. With every deep plunge of his tongue, the fire between her legs flamed.
He broke contact, glanced down at her breasts pressed against his bare chest. “If this is a dream, don’t let me wake now.”
Sybil slipped her arms around his waist, gripped his buttocks and gave one cheek a pinch.
“Ow!” He laughed.
“If this is a dream, that would surely have woken you.”
“You want to play, is that it?” His hum spoke of sensual power. “You want me to torment you, tease you.” His velvet voice fanned lust’s flames. “You want me to tell you all the things I want to do with you, Sybil.”
Excitement flared. “Tell me.”
“By now your sex is throbbing, aching for my touch,” he said, taking hold of his erection and pushing his member between her legs. “It’s all you can think about, me stroking you, me thrusting hard into your tight body. Us moving together. Us panting and writhing.”
Sybil grabbed his shoulders to steady her balance. Oh, she loved the feel of his erection sliding over her sex. Her head fell back, and she moaned. “Don’t stop, Lucius.”
“I’m going to make you come like this.”
“Yes,” she breathed.
He gripped her buttock with his free hand, continued to rub the head of his shaft over her sex. Oh, she was getting closer to that delicious peak. Closer. So close she was about to topple off the edge. And then her world shattered into a million sparkling pieces.
