He shouldn’t have known where he was going, but somehow he backed them up until he landed at her chaise. The same one she’d first felt him on, the same one where she’d held his cock in her hand.
She could come to appreciate a piece of furniture in a whole new way.
He leaned back and draped her over his front. Though his hands smoothed and shaped her body, he seemed content to kiss her that way.
Lottie let herself melt. Her knees found a home between his, and the very top of her thigh came to rest against his particular hardness. Her hands delved into his hair. She loved the silken mass, the way he kept it so tidy and combed most of the time. Leaning up on an elbow, she looked down at him. “You’re a mess.”
His collar had come half-undone, and his skinny ascot was draped around his shoulders. She must have done that. She adored that thought. Her nipples tingled, and her stomach gave a happy lurch.
He chuckled. “While you’re not a mess, you’re a tousled beauty.”
“How well you flatter.” She gave a faux-dramatic sigh. “You have a woman lying on top of you. Seems excessive to continue with gross flattery.”
“It might be, should I be false.” He grabbed her firmly, pulling her leg up over his hips. His cock was hard, insistent and hot beneath her. “But you’re so beautiful that it seems to hurt you.”
Her heart hopped about in her chest like an insistent and injured bird. “What does that mean?”
“If you’d been less beautiful, people might be more willing to believe you’re miserable.”
She froze. All the way down to her toes and back up to her head. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t call up a false smile. “I’m not always miserable.”
“You don’t have to lie to me.” His hands were warm across the back of her shoulders.
The only defense she had wasn’t much in the scheme of things. So she lifted up, her knees splitting to nestle around his hips. She pushed her robe down around her shoulders and let it pool at her legs. The night rail was pure white and edged with lace. She unbuttoned it. Part of her knew she ought to have been more frightened. More nervous about being so displayed.
All she could hear was his insistence that she was miserable. She didn’t want to be sad. No one did, of course, but she had a special terror of it.
She’d push that evil away any way she needed to. Even by using Ian.
Wonder overtook Ian at seeing the mysteries of her body revealed. Her breasts were small but high. Pale skin glowed in the barest tinge of lamplight. The tips of her nipples were tight.
He needed to taste them. One hand flat at her low back, he bent upward. His mouth found her warm flesh. She melted further, as if her bones had disappeared. How right, since he was as hard as he’d ever been. There was nothing between them but cloth, and it was still entirely too much. Heat flared and burned. He needed her clasped in his arms.
Sitting up brought them closer. Pressed mouth to chest to pelvis. He wanted inside her. Wanted to know what secrets she kept.
Mostly, he wanted to make her sadness go away. He needed to know that he could help her. Save her.
Except maybe no one could.
Their hands scrambled and tugged away cloth. She opened his trousers, but then he shoved them down around his hips. She had to kneel upward for him to push them all the way off the end of the chaise. Her flimsy gown was hiked around her hips, but it was out of the way enough for their purposes.
Once she’d yanked his shirt up over his head, he didn’t see where it went. Couldn’t bother when it was in the way of getting his mouth on her skin again. From the freckles across the tops of her shoulders to the pale and curved length of her collarbone to the tip of her breast, he kissed it all. Licked and nibbled. His teeth raked down her flesh, and she only gasped.
Her hands came to rest at the back of his head. She held his mouth to her with delicious desperation that echoed through their every movement. They were frenzied.
Surely that couldn’t last. Surely that would eventually burn away. Beyond that crackling fire, the remaining coals would have to be sufficient to support a lifetime of warmth. How could that be without a family to focus on? What else would be left?
Maybe he only wanted to keep the lithe and dazzling woman in his arms. The sweet taste of her skin was beauty and excitement all in one.
“You treat me like I’ll break.” Her fingers tightened in his hair and held him closer. “I won’t. I can’t.”
“Everyone can break.” He molded his hand to the curve of her breast and the sweep of her ribs. He licked down her stomach toward her navel. “Everyone has a line.”
“Maybe.” Her fingers were cool and delicate as they wrapped around his prick. She moved with such assuredness. Taking exactly what she wanted. Bloody brilliant. “But I can guarantee one thing.”
He grabbed her by the hips and angled her up and back enough that his cock notched against her pussy. She was soaking wet and open for him. He ringed his grip around the base of his cock, both bracing as he liked and holding back the hot surge of pleasure.
Some wicked devil took him over. He slid the head of his prick up between her lips, aiming for that twist of special flesh at the top of her quim. Her lips clung and swept over his flesh. Good for both of them. Her little breathy gasps turned into a throaty moan.
“What is that?” she asked. She wiggled backwards. Her grip dug into his thighs. “Oh, right there. What is that you’re doing?”
He grinned. He couldn’t help it. Having a sensual woman atop his lap was awe-inspiring. “I’m playing.”
“Oh my God, why?” The words came out of her mouth, but her wide eyes said she probably didn’t care. She thrust up in tandem with the rhythm as he rubbed the head of his cock over her and through her. The soft wet kiss of her pussy along his length was completely worth it. She shook her head suddenly. “It’s not the same. Not enough.”
He knew. Oh Christ, did he know, but he loved being able to twine her into knots. Send her flying on the breeze. “Enough for what?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and she sounded so very mournful that it took everything he had to not laugh. She wouldn’t like that much. “That thing. That happened last time. I want that again. You called it coming.”
Her nails dug into his thighs. He hissed against the sting. “You want my cock filling you and then you want that explosion, right?”
She nodded. Her hips twisted, seeking further connection. He shifted away. Let her writhe a minute longer. “It felt good. You made me feel good.”
A heavy pulse of satisfaction turned him into a more amplified version of himself. Where he’d been man, now he was beast. His grip could bruise, his teeth could mark. He ought to care. But he didn’t. He only wanted.
With a growl that increased his link to the animal part of himself, he folded one implacable arm around her ass and back. All of her was for him.
He surged up while she found purchase and shoved downward. Her pussy’s tight clasp was enough to drive him mad. Her whimper when her body ground against his hardness rocked through the room.
Immediately they strained together in the give and take of stroke and pull. Her head bent backwards, her body turning into one remarkable arch. He shouldn’t be here. If anything, it seemed cruel to them both. He couldn’t keep her and stay true to his dreams. If Ian understood anything from her mother’s turn for the worse, it was that he couldn’t ask her to change her mind. If she wanted to avoid children, that was her right. But he shouldn’t be here. Every bit of his cock in her risked her decisions.
And yet he’d been unable to stay away.
Their bodies fit together like parts of a whole. She clung to him with every stroke. Bliss sucked at his bones. The only way to keep from going under too fast was to feast on her flesh and subsume his pleasure in her. Every inch of skin he could reach became a canvas for his mouth.
Eventually he returned to her breasts, lifting her small mounds to his mouth. He sucked and licked, much heartened whe
n an extra flood of her moisture dripped over his prick. He liked knowing how far he’d pushed her. How much she enjoyed it. The soft and pleased gasps she gave were excellent rewards.
He wanted her mad with feeling. Wanted her turned inside out for want of him, though he knew that was an unpleasant thought and something he wasn’t proud of. They had want and need. He had to know there was nothing beyond that.
He hitched her higher in his arms, so that her wet sheathe came off his cock. The sudden cold was enough to jar but couldn’t turn his mind away from getting back inside her. She grabbed tight to his shoulders. Her hair tumbled around them in a private, secret cave. They’d have few secrets between them. None, if he had anything to say for it.
Ian flipped them, then wedged her down into the cushions of the couch. She let go of his shoulder, her hands pushing upward toward the arm of the couch.
Then she laughed. Not meanly, not from any cruelty.
She laughed because she was enjoying the moment. Her eyes crinkled at the corners. Her wide, bright smile rocked Ian all the way down to his soul.
He slid inside her again, taking her harder this time, with mean jolting movement that thrust her hips up off the velvet cushions. She kept smiling, kept laughing, even when he pinched her clitoris between both thumbs.
She came on a gasping cry, turning her face to bury it against the side of her arm. Her pussy tightened over his prick to suck his brains and his soul right out of his body. The tingles started at the base of his spine, gathered in his ballocks. There wasn’t anything he could do, and the fact that he had to remove himself and spill across her thigh seemed like a sin.
A sin he would gladly commit again and again if it got him Lottie.
Chapter Twenty
Lottie usually liked parties, so long as they weren’t held in her own home. What wasn’t to like about balls? She got to wear gorgeous dresses, speak to elegant people and have an evening off from her worries, when she could pretend they didn’t exist. A lovely fictive need. Only the recent evenings spent hidden away with Ian in her room had been more effective.
But standing at the head of the stairs in the Duchess of Marvell’s ballroom this time filled her with a sense of dread.
Her father had arrived earlier in the afternoon. Now, he was being announced behind her. Thankfully her mother had begged out of attending—or rather her nurse had affected the same with a large dose of tonic.
How very backwards the world seemed occasionally.
She smiled. She smiled the best she could as long as she could as she made her way through the packed morass of bodies. From the stairs, she’d spotted Sera and Victoria standing toward the head of the room. They were waiting, and they would be her salvation.
Indeed, when she finally made it to them, Lottie felt her smile waver. Sera took her by the hand and squeezed. “You look unwell.” Her big brown eyes were steady and comforting.
Lottie returned the squeeze. “Father is home.”
Victoria passed over a flute of champagne. They stood shoulder to should and turned to look out toward the majority of the ball’s attendees. Unfortunately their average height meant they saw only those near and encircling them in a wall of silk and lace and beading. Lottie swallowed half the glass of bubbling champagne.
“Isn’t that better sometimes?” Victoria kept her voice relatively soft.
“Sometimes.” There went the rest of the pale liquid, fizzling down her throat. “He hasn’t been home long enough for me to talk with him. I was already getting dressed for the evening.”
She might be the worst, most shallow daughter in the world, but her one thought when the maid had announced Lord Vale’s homecoming had been selfish regret. Her father’s return meant having Ian into her bedroom would be nearly impossible. She smiled at a gentleman who passed by. Obviously he had no idea that she was such a terrible daughter.
She should have been happy for her mother. When she was overly excited, sometimes Mama couldn’t be bothered with Papa, but she always liked having him when she felt saddened.
Instead, all Lottie could think was that she wouldn’t be able to hold Ian tonight. She wouldn’t be able to feel him inside her. Or talk in soft whispers between the burning fires they lit together.
“Is there any more of this?” she asked, waving her empty glass.
Sera passed hers over. “Here.”
“Thank you, lovey.”
“You’re not worried about Henrietta Heald, are you?” Victoria’s brows rose.
“Certainly not.” She was worried about Etta’s brother, the great, gangly lummox. Who entirely did not deserve such condemnation.
When she wanted him so desperately, it seemed rather all or nothing. He had said nothing about the future. She couldn’t blame him. His entire purpose in hunting down Patricia was about creating a future for his family, which his father had fought hard for. Lottie’s whole world was about compensating for her lack of a future. She’d not have children, so she’d create a whole school of daughters. She wasn’t blind. She knew that was part of her reality.
But that didn’t mean she could give them up either.
“She was certainly pleasant the other day.” The trio had joined Henrietta and her mother for tea at their rented townhouse, in order to acquaint them with Sera and Victoria. Sera was always so graceful and kind. It was one of those things that Lottie loved about her.
But she also heard what wasn’t said. That Lady Vale was often less than pleasant. Lottie was saved by the announcement of Sir Ian and his small family. “Smile, ladies. They’re here.”
They met Henrietta in the middle of the ballroom, making a happy and unavoidable knot of womanhood. Lottie held out both hands to Henrietta as if greeting a long-lost friend, dramatically enough that all would take note. Indeed, she did like the girl. She particularly liked the honesty in her face and the way she lit up. “Miss Heald. It’s so very good to see you.”
“And I the same.” She took both of Lottie’s hands and gave a small curtsy toward Victoria, then nodded toward Sera. “Lady Victoria, Mrs. Fletcher. It’s a relief to have friendly faces in such a crowd.”
Ian stood behind her. “Ladies. I’m much relieved that my sister is privileged to enjoy such lofty friends.”
Lottie smiled. Really she wanted to throw her arms around Ian and beg him to take her away from the crowd, from the eyes that watched her without watching. So very public, and she was so very tired of it. They were working society’s strictures to their advantage.
They’d arranged this greeting in an open manner, designed to garner the most attention. In a moment they’d take Henrietta over to meet their host. Lady Marvell would be instantly smitten with Henrietta’s charm and openness. Combined with her friendly good looks, she’d instantly be an accepted member of society. She’d go about making friends as she seemed to do without thinking.
All of it the truth and all of it manipulated in a most base manner to go marvelously according to plan. Lady Marvell loved Henrietta, of course. Positively beamed at her when Henrietta complimented the particular arrangement of flowers at the lady’s elbow. Naturally it turned out that Lady Marvell had arranged them herself and gone against her friend’s advice to do so.
“See there?” she crowed, turning to the Marchioness of Ashbury. “She’s a girl with lovely and remarkable taste.”
Marchioness Starr cut her eyes toward the ceiling. She fluttered her fan made of white fluffy feathers. “As you like. But you’re still wrong.”
Lottie smiled as she snuck away toward the refreshment table. Everything was working as she’d hoped.
“Should you have abandoned her so quickly?”
She gathered up a glass of champagne and kept walking as if Ian at her side hadn’t made her heart leap. “It’s best I leave her to Victoria’s clutches. She’s impeccable.”
He looked handsome in evening clothes and fairly pleased with himself. He kept his hands loosely folded behind his back. “You’ve done a good thing tonight.
”
“I know.” She had a bit of self-satisfaction going on as well. Her chin lifted. “It’s a good night altogether, I believe. Finna remembered a clerk Patricia was interested in. He’d even slipped her funds last time. I sent him a note, and he intends to come to our next event. We’ll have a good chance at catching her.”
Ian smiled with a hefty measure of satisfaction. “That’s the makings of a good night indeed.”
Except the next time they shifted around a knot of people, it became entirely less so. Her father stood there, which was well enough. She’d missed him. He was relatively handsome, though tired-looking. Deep bags sagged under his eyes and pushed his cheeks into hanging jowls adorned with wiry muttonchops.
“Papa,” she said, and she could hear the uncomfortable edge in her voice. After all, she knew the man at his side as well. “And Lord Cameron.”
Lord Cameron, her father’s most harped-upon choice for marrying her off. He owned the estate next to theirs in Derbyshire, but it was actually the smallest of Lord Cameron’s properties. He also owned estates in Kent, a townhouse in London and a villa in Italy. If it didn’t come with the man, Lottie rather thought she might enjoy an Italian villa.
Her papa preferred men who invested in land. He said it demonstrated a belief in the future of England.
“Miss Vale,” said Lord Cameron. He had dark brown hair with fat curls. “It’s lovely to see you again.”
Lottie wanted to melt through the floor. Her throat clenched in a sickly fist. But she managed to smile as always, and it certainly seemed as if her father accepted it as true. He beamed back at her. “Lottie.” He pressed one flat hand to her shoulders. “You look lovely.”
She felt like hell. “I sent for you five days ago,” she said quietly. She was shaking, all the way through. If it got any worse, her knees might give way. “Five days ago.”
Lord Cameron had the grace to look away across the room toward the dancing couples. Ian stepped nearer to her. Quiet support, she supposed. She hardly knew what to do about that.
An Indiscreet Debutante Page 19
