The soft scrape of her fingers against his shadow beard froze him in place. She watched her own hand with a dazed, almost unfocused gaze as she discovered the line of his jaw with a featherlight touch before cupping it in her small palm.
The tender curiosity demonstrated in the motion unstitched something hard within him.
“No…” she whispered. “No, you’re no hero.”
He could do little else than hold his breath, his every sense hanging upon her next words. What would be her verdict, he wondered? Would she compliment or condemn him?
“You’re an angel, aren’t you? An archangel, perhaps. Or a fallen one? A warrior…” she decided. “But… for which side?”
“I’m no angel,” he warned. “I’m nothing but a shadow.” Morley hated to disappoint the fanciful woman, hated to dispel whatever magic she was weaving through him with her touch. But it was better he told the truth. Better for them both.
“How ridiculous of me, I beg your pardon. I’d like to say that I’ve been caught up in all this fantasy, but it’d be a lie. I’m like this all the time.” At this she gave the ghost of a giggle, and the sound was more pleasant than the rush of the fountain beneath which they’d fallen. “You’re a very solid shadow, sir, if I may say so.” Her gaze finally focused to resolute. “How much?”
He frowned. “How much?”
“How much?” she encouraged meaningfully with a thrust of her sharp chin. “For you? The—er, footman told me to select any one of the Stags of St. James who were not previously engaged. And I’ve decided upon you. I want to make love to you—or rather, I want you to make love to me. But only i-if you don’t have other women—er—plans. I mean, that is, prior engagements.”
“Prior engagements?” he echoed.
Her hopeful features fell into a petulant pout. “Did someone already make an appointment at Hyde Park for tonight?”
“No,” he said carefully, wondering what to do next.
She brightened immediately. “Excellent. Then…tell me how this works. I’ve never…hired a man to make love to me before. And I confess I’m ignorant of how else to proceed rather than plainly. So, would you do me the kindness—er—the honor?”
Morley blinked down at her as three things had just become inexorably clear to him.
The first was this woman talked incessantly when nervous, and her babble was oddly endearing.
Second, she was from a wealthy family, likely blue-blooded and likely married.
And tertiary…he’d lived probably nearly forty years and had never met a woman he’d so keenly desired to fuck.
A hunger awakened within him with all the ferocity of a hibernating beast. It had teeth and claws and tore his decency to shreds before going to work on his restraint. His heart kicked at his ribs, which restricted in turn, relieving him of breath.
He was a moral man, goddammit. Lawful and without prejudice or vice. He’d lived as a veritable monk for more years than he cared to admit, and there was good reason for it. He should bloody well stand up and take his leave of her. Right now.
Except, what if she didn’t go home? What if she lingered in search of a different stag?
That wasn’t going to bloody happen. He wouldn’t let it.
He could throw her over his shoulder and return her to her father. Her husband. Or whatever woebegone individual had the responsibility for her safekeeping.
He made to do just that when another variable struck him.
What if she returned tomorrow night? What if she took her pleasure with another man?
What if… he missed his chance?
The hungry demon within him snarled at this, raked his claws and expelled scalding fire through his veins like a hell-spawned dragon until Morley had to force himself to inhale and expel a protracted breath.
He was no kind of man to consider such a proposition. He was neither starving for coin nor lacking in romantic prospects.
No, this was ludicrous. Nothing more than a flattering fantasy.
He opened his mouth, preparing a gentle rejection. “What do you want me to do to you?”
His lips slammed shut. The question had ricocheted through his mind since the moment she’d asked him to name his price. But it’d been the last thing he’d expected to escape his lips.
Blotches of color stained her pale cheeks, but she didn’t look away. “I-I’d like you to do…whatever it is women pay you for the most often.” She reached into her hooded pelisse and retrieved a satchel of coins. “The skill you’re most proud of. The thing that makes them come to you on a night like this.”
Morley didn’t know what women paid for sexually, but he knew enough about people to reply. “A bird like you knows her mind. She don’t come looking for a man like me ‘less she has some idea of what she intends to get from the encounter.”
What the bloody hell was he saying? He wasn’t even considering this… so why—
She made a wry sound. Half laugh, half gasp, as she reached up to smooth at the collar of his shirt, which had bent when he’d torn off his cravat. Something in the nervous gesture touched him. Something that had begun to unstitch him the moment she’d fallen, and now was quickly unraveling.
“My fiancé. He’s a selfish lover. I don’t think he’d ever…” She trailed away for a moment, before imparting information about a man Morley hoped to never meet, lest he murder the bastard. “I found out that he—well, he’s not faithful. And understand he doesn’t have to be—that most men of my class aren’t. But I will be. If I take a vow of marriage, I shan’t break it, but I’ve said no vows yet.” She tilted her head to look back up at him, a defiant little furrow appearing beneath her dramatically arched brows. “He does not own me yet.”
Tears colored her voice, though none had fallen, and something inside Morley twisted. Pain did not sit comfortably on features such as hers. She’d a visage that glowed with an inner light, even in the sinful dimness of this lusty place.
She didn’t belong here in the dark, committing sins on the ground. Hers was a face for the sun. She was a spoiled woman experiencing her first heartbreak. Learning her first terrible truth about the world of men in which she lived.
She didn’t know the first thing about pain.
And yet…the courageous way she fought her threatening emotion, tied him up in knots.
Christ, this shouldn’t be happening. That he was even entertaining such an idea was lunacy. This woman was obviously an emotional disaster he didn’t need and there was a killer to find.
And yet…she was warm and fragrant, and they were surrounded by sensual indiscretions, the sounds of which glided through this infernal glade with increasing intensity. She smelled like a delicacy waiting to be devoured and his mouth would not cease watering.
So he held her, his cock hard as a diamond, and Lord save him if her eyes were not dilated black with passion. He knew he could give her what her fiancé would not, and that knowledge ate him up inside.
Inflamed as his body was, as hungry as the demon within him seemed to be, he gave one last feeble resistance.
“Making love to me won’t make nights with him any easier,” he warned.
“I know,” she whispered, dropping the coin purse on the ground next to him so she could trace the hollows beneath his cheekbones with those soft, questing fingers, angling down toward his lips.
Morley’s terse mouth softened involuntarily as her featherlight touch sensitized the rim of his upper lip as she charted whatever curve she found there.
“I—overheard tell that there are those of you who can bring a woman to completion with—with your mouth. I find I’d—very much like to know how that feels. And then… I’d like you to…” Her lashes swept down again as she battled with her own breath for a moment. “Lady Westlawn told me that some of you could make a woman come for you more than once…”
Morley swallowed twice before he could bring himself to cede defeat.
Of all the injustices and indignities he’d encountered in his long, lonely life, th
e one chewing at his soul was the idea that either of them would live one more night without knowing what it felt like for her to orgasm against his tongue.
And then again against his cock.
Though he cradled her as one would an invalid or a child, his fingers curled around her limbs as the hunger tore through him, spilling hot and victorious through his veins.
Sweet Christ but he was going to devour her.
And she knew it as well as he did.
He saw it in the slight widening of her eyes, in the parting of her lips. In the way her body stiffened a little, and then slackened, settling into his arms with a sigh of submission.
That sigh was his ultimate undoing.
He lowered his head, lifting her to meet him. He didn’t so much kiss her as consumed her, his searching, burning mouth parting the pliant pillows of her lips, delving into the honeyed depths he found there.
If this was Elysium, then she was ambrosia. And with her in his arms, he felt like a god.
He broke the kiss before long to cast about for a place for them to go.
“The fountain,” she panted, sliding her hands to lock behind his neck so she could pull him back down to her mouth, her eyes homed in on his lips.
“You’ll be exposed,” he pointed out, realizing how ridiculous he sounded even as he said it. But now that he’d decided to have her, he was jealous that even the stars would have the chance to see her beauty, let alone anyone who should happen by.
“Only to you,” she whispered, sliding out of his grasp and lifting herself to perch on the wide stone ledge.
The path with the row of dim lamps ended at the far side of the Italian style stone, leaving their side of the fountain cast in shadow. He could barely make out her features, but she must have been able to see him plainly enough.
She might have been a sea goddess commanding the stone deities behind her to spout her element into the night, anointing her wealth of carefully arranged dark hair with little gems of mist.
“I’m… I don’t know if I can bring myself to disrobe,” she said in a small voice.
“I’ll do it.” He lifted onto his knees and reached for her, but she intercepted his hands with hers, lacing thin fingers with his own.
“I mean to say, I’m too reticent to do this in the altogether.”
She wanted to keep her fine silk dress on… and he’d be goddamned if he didn’t find that oddly arousing.
And helpful. His lust had teeth, and something told him that if he were to unwrap this woman, he wouldn’t last long enough to fuck her well.
She was too beautiful, her scent too alluring, and that look on her face. That coy mix of vulnerable vixen was going to drive him beyond all control.
God help him, he was doing this. With her. To her. A part of him knew he’d live to regret it, and he couldn’t bring himself to care.
A hard life had turned him into a hard man. Harder and colder with every lonely year that passed. And all he did was work and fight. Work to keep the hard man from becoming an evil one, and fight the evil he recognized in others. Fight to keep it from devouring his city, as it had his family.
And here was someone soft. Soft and…beleaguered by a familiar loneliness. Asking for him to share a few moments of pleasure.
He was too soul-weary to resist such an enticing bargain.
Releasing his hands, she curled her fingers in her lap, bunching her skirts and lifting the powder blue hem to uncover lace boots and stark white stockings.
It was an invitation not to be denied.
Morley plunged his hands beneath the folds and frills, drawing them up shapely, silk-covered calves until he reached her knees. He parted them, filling the space he made with his body.
With her sitting up on the ledge, and him on his knees, their faces aligned. He claimed her lips once again, marveling that there was a mouth on this earth that tasted like hers.
He delved into the warmth, a velvet intrusion. A parody of what he would do to her elsewhere. Her little, warm tongue made gentle slides against his, tentatively testing his restraint.
Finding the edge of it.
A fire of anticipation immolated in his loins, and he suddenly ached to taste every part of her. To rip her dress open and see if she was as pale as the night suggested. If iridescent veins adorned her breasts and the thin, tender skin on the inside of her thighs. He wanted to mark her with little bites of his teeth, to show the man who had never pleased her that someone was able and oh so willing.
He hitched her skirts higher, hands venturing from her knees up her thighs, finding curious frills, silk garters bedecked with lace and little bows attached with delicate stitches.
His hands played there, plucking at things and testing textures while he savored her mouth for as long as his inflamed body would allow.
Her hands didn’t remain idle.
They rested on the buttons of his coat, releasing them with jerky, uncertain motions until she could wrench it open and slide her hands inside. She explored the width and breadth of him until her arms locked around him.
The uncertain tenderness in the embrace was too much for him to bear.
Morley broke the kiss, pulling back to assess her. To watch her widening eyes as his fingers threaded higher, following the silken expanse of flesh until he met the barrier of her thin cotton drawers.
She tucked her lips between her teeth and trembled, but didn’t look away.
“Tell me again what you want.” He hardly recognized his voice, the dark, growling street accent, the insolence and lust.
She gave a delicate swallow before answering. “I-I can’t say it.”
“You want me to kiss you?” he prodded, covering her mound. “Here?”
She gave a little jump, and her knees clamped his hips, as if they might have closed had his body not impeded it.
“Yes,” she replied with a bashful whisper.
Feminine heat radiated from beneath the thin barrier of her undergarment, and Morley leaned in to lift her hips and draw it down to her ankles.
He wanted to kiss her again. He never wanted to stop kissing her, and because of that, he didn’t allow himself to do so.
Kissing her was dangerous. As was the sweet detention of her arms.
A man could find himself a willing prisoner of such shackles, and he hadn’t the inclination. He hadn’t expected such sweetness. Hadn’t been prepared for the answering emotion evoked in his body.
Best he keep this carnal.
Lowering himself down, he ducked his head beneath her skirts. His shoulders widened her legs and she leaned back, giving him the sense she’d rested her hands on the stone.
In the pure black beneath her skirts, he used his other senses to guide him.
He breathed in the scent of her. Fresh floral soap, feminine musk, and something that reminded him of ripe, summer berries.
He stilled for a moment, just feeling the sensation of what he’d cupped in his hand. The slight tickle of soft hair. Warm, pliant flesh, which parted in a seam of liquid heat.
He separated her folds with a slow slide of his finger, and she clenched around him with surprisingly strong legs.
“Already so wet,” he murmured, delighted.
“Er—should I—?”
“Should has nothing to do with this.” He pressed his shoulders forward, fighting the reflexive tightening of her trembling thighs. “Relax.”
She gave a tremulous sigh, but then she obeyed, her thighs going slack and her heels returning to the ground.
He moved his finger then, wondering if any woman had been quite so soft, so small, so incredibly hot. He allowed himself a gentle, caressing exploration as he pressed a worshipful kiss to her thigh.
She was highly responsive, this woman. She twitched and tightened to his every motion, her breath hitching over little catches in her throat. His finger drew from the well that sprang from the center of her and painted gentle wet swirls on the little nub of engorged flesh.
Christ, she was
so ready.
He wouldn’t even have to work for it.
Unable to wait any longer, he lowered his lips to hover above the very core of her.
“Whatever I do, do not scream,” he warned.
In an instant she was tense again. “S-scream?”
But he did not answer her question.
Because he’d parted her sex with one long, powerful lick.
Chapter 3
Pru screamed.
Or, at least, she threw her head back and opened her mouth, but somehow her throat closed over the sound, releasing a choked whimper instead.
Dear God. This was happening. The most beautiful man she’d ever seen up close was now beneath her skirts.
Licking her.
There.
One of her hands clamped over her mouth, trying to contain the scandal of it all, the pure, wet, unadulterated wickedness.
A sound from beneath the silk of her skirts and petticoats filtered through the night. A growl, or a groan, she couldn’t tell.
She couldn’t listen. She could only feel.
After that first sinuous lick, he paused. His breath a warm devastation against her sensitized flesh. His shoulders wide against thighs that had never parted before tonight. Beneath skirts that had never lifted.
She bit into her finger, forcing herself not to ruin the moment with incessant, anxious questions.
Was he uncomfortable under there? Did he have one taste and decide against more? Was she different than other women, or boring and the same? Better or worse? Did he want to stop? She’d understand, of course. Perhaps she hadn’t prepared properly. She’d bathed and used the finest perfumes and lotions, but what if such an act took a preparation she’d not thought of?
He was doing his job, she reminded herself. This was his vocation… and people often found parts of their jobs distasteful.
And did them regardless.
But the very idea painted her entire self with mortification. Because, dash it all, despite her intentions in coming here, she couldn’t help but want to please him. Because that was who she was. She wanted him to like what he was doing to her.
She wanted him to like… her. This masked man whose name she did not know. Whose eyes were as wintry as the Arctic and hot as blue flame.
Seducing a Stranger: Goode Girls Book 1 and Victorian Rebels Book 7 (A Goode Girls Romance) Page 4
