All telling her that Gideon might wish it were otherwise, but he was as hungry to kiss her as she was to be kissed.
She took a step back. “As it is my gown which so often seems to find offense in your eyes, perhaps I should remove it.” She reached up to unfasten the first of the tiny buttons down her spine.
“No!” Gideon’s fingers reached and crushed hers to prevent her from undoing any more buttons.
Lydia calmly met his fiery gaze. “Then perhaps, as I have decided they offend me, you might do me the courtesy of removing your jacket, waistcoat, and shirt?”
“Lydia—”
“Please, Gideon,” she pressed huskily.
He scowled darkly. “That pretty please might have served in the past in persuading your father into giving in to your every whim and fancy, but it will not do the same with me.”
She smiled at the thought of her father. Of how handsome and kind he had been. Of how he had loved and protected her all her life.
Her smile faltered as she realized how much she missed him.
And remembered how alone she had felt in those weeks after he died, until coming to Cornwall a week ago and meeting Gideon for the first time. His presence was so all-consuming, his nature so arrogant and haughty, there was room for nothing else in her heart but thoughts of him.
Did that mean she was falling in love with him?
She certainly didn’t think of Gideon in a paternal way in the least, or in any other way as being a replacement in her life as a father figure.
Love, then?
If it were, then it was a raw and emotional love, of a kind that could only happen between a man and a woman.
“Please do not cry.” Gideon’s gentle fingertips against her cheek was the first indication Lydia had that she was crying. “I did not mean to upset you with sad memories… Here.” He stepped back to remove his jacket before throwing it onto the bedroom chair. “I am doing as you asked,” he assured as his fingers moved to unfasten the buttons on his waistcoat.
Lydia almost giggled at the haste with which Gideon now threw off his waistcoat and then unfastened his shirt before pulling it over his head. But her laughter died in her throat the moment he put down the shirt and she was able to see the hard, muscular perfection of Gideon’s bare and tanned chest.
The scars from the fire, as she had imagined they would, covered the top of his chest and across his left shoulder. But as had happened with the ones on his face and neck, with time those scars on his torso had faded to a tracery of barely discernable silver.
Again, in Lydia’s eyes, they only served to prevent this man from being too perfect.
His dark hair was disheveled from where he had removed his shirt, lending him a rakish air. His shoulders and chest were wide and muscular, the skin no doubt tanned from working about the estate on a daily basis these past ten years.
Certainly, Lydia had seen Gideon set off into the fields with the other workers a little before seven o’clock each morning. As she had seen him return at nine o’clock most mornings to partake of breakfast before setting off to work again. He rarely returned to the house again until early evening.
His arms were heavily muscled too, and there was a smattering of dark hair covering the center of his chest and across the defined curve of his pectoral muscles. That dusting of hair tapered down across the tautness of his abdomen before disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers.
Merely looking at how magnificent he was literally took Lydia’s breath away, and she was sure she would faint away with the thrill of excitement if she were to actually reach out and touch that bare expanse of tanned flesh.
Yet, the tingling and ache of her fingers to touch said she must.
She was not wearing the lace gloves that matched her gown, having seen no necessity for them when she had spent the evening alone in her bedchamber with Charlotte. She drew in a sharp breath now at the feel of how warm Gideon’s chest felt beneath the tentative touch of her fingertips. Hot and so smooth, apart from those barely noticeable scars, and even they were only slight ridges against that other smoothness. There was far too much more of Gideon to explore for Lydia to be in the least concerned with them for very long.
She used both bare hands now to touch and caress that wide chest and muscular abdomen, noting with pleasure how Gideon groaned or hissed out a breath with each touch.
She wanted to touch him lower still, to unfasten the buttons of his evening trousers and release and caress that noticeable bulge that spoke of his arousal. She had never seen a man’s shaft, and her curiosity to see Gideon’s, so visibly long and fat inside his trousers, was so overwhelming, it made her mouth water to think of touching him there with her lips and tongue in the same way he had made love to her a week ago.
Gideon’s fingers almost crushed hers the moment she tentatively touched one of the buttons on his trousers. “My control, and consequently my strength to deny you anything, is completely gone,” he warned harshly.
She gently removed his fingers from over hers before she slowly but purposefully dropped to her knees in front of him. “Let me see and touch you in the same intimate manner you have touched me,” she pleaded, knowing that if he wished it, Gideon could crush her as easily as he had her questing fingers seconds ago.
His breathing had become ragged, and his eyes were no longer that cold and pale gray but as dark and stormy as a raging sea as he stared down at her. As he fought whatever devil inside him that wished for him to deny them both this singular pleasure.
Lydia remained on her knees as she waited patiently for Gideon to defeat that foe.
As he surely must.
She did not believe she would be able to bear the disappointment if Gideon should deny them both now.
Gideon knew he should never have come to Lydia’s bedchamber, certainly not have remained here alone with her after Miss Babcock had departed.
At the same time as he knew his being alone with Lydia again had been as inevitable as the sun rising to follow the moon’s waning.
In the same way he had begun to emerge from his self-imposed exile the very first time he had looked at Lydia.
When she had become the sunrise banishing the darkness that had for long been inside him.
Lydia looked up at him now with that unwavering and trusting green gaze. She was waiting, willing him to give his permission for her to touch him in the intimate way his body ached to be touched.
“Please, Gideon,” she said again.
How could he possibly be expected to refuse such a heartfelt entreaty?
His fingers shook as he unfastened the buttons on his trousers himself, allowing the flap to fall open. After the swift releasing of the tie at the waist of his drawers, his unfettered cock at last sprang free of its confinement.
Lydia’s eyes widened as she watched his shaft bobbing in front of her, the tip glistening with a sudden release of pre-cum as it bubbled from the slit at the top. Thick veins ran along its length, the mushroomed top flaring out red and glistening above the pulled-back foreskin.
His cock had been a part of Gideon all his life, perhaps not always so long or so thick around, but he still thought nothing of the appearance of his own member. He could see by the widening of Lydia’s eyes that she was not so inured to that wholly masculine appendage.
“Have you seen enough?” His words sounded harsh in the stillness of the room.
“Seen, yes.” She glanced up at him. “But I have not even begun to touch.” A smile of anticipation curved the fullness of her lips as she curled the fingers of one hand about that thickness. “Your skin feels so soft,” she said in wonder. “Like warm velvet wrapped about steel.”
“Lydia…!” He groaned his pleasure as her clenched fist moved lightly up and down his shaft.
“See what happens when I do this.” Her fist both tightened and began to pump faster. “The release from the slit increases.” She glanced up at him. “As evidence that you are enjoying what I am doing to you?”
>
“Dear God…!” He reached out to grasp hold of her shoulders to steady himself as his legs began to shake.
“What about this?”
Gideon glanced down in time to see Lydia’s little pink tongue emerge from between her lips before she leaned forward and began to lick and then lap up the beads of pre-cum emerging more rapidly from the slit.
The visual was enough to cause him to groan, but the feel of the slight rasp of her little tongue against his sensitive flesh was cause for the pulsing release of more pre-cum down the hard length of his arousal. A release that Lydia lapped up as greedily as she had the first.
He knew he should stop her.
That he had to stop her.
But his need for her to continue far outweighed that knowledge.
“Part your lips and open your mouth wide for me,” he instead instructed throatily.
She sat back on her heels to look up at him from beneath long lashes.
“Please, Lydia,” he encouraged achingly. “I’m begging, not ordering you to part your lips wide and take my cock inside the delectable heat of your mouth.”
Her head tilted to one side as she studied him. “Are you going to reject me again immediately afterward?”
“I should,” he groaned.
“But will you?” she persisted. “Because I do not believe I can stand to live for another week of the punishment of your complete silence and absence from my life after sharing another intimacy with you.”
Gideon didn’t believe he could bear to feel the punishment of her absence like that for a second time either.
It had been a very long week. Oh, he had caught occasional glimpses of Lydia, usually looking out the windows of this bedchamber as he and his workers set off each day. But she had been too far away for him to be able to read the expression in the intensity of her eyes or guess at her emotions as she in turn gazed down at him.
“I will not reject you,” he assured gruffly as he touched one of her cheeks with gentle fingertips. “I should, however, like to first rectify a mistake made on my part a week ago,” he added huskily.
Her expression turned to one of guardedness as she continued to meet his gaze. “What mistake would that be?”
Gideon’s chest tightened when he heard the wariness in her tone. As if she feared he was somehow going to hurt her again.
He leaned down to grasp her arms and lift her to her slippered feet before straightening. “I am going to ensure your pleasure first, as I should have done when we were together last.”
Her eyes flared with heat, her cheeks becoming flushed. “I have been in agonies of need since then.” Her breasts quickly rose and fell, and her breathing became ragged.
Gideon stilled. “You have not— You did not— Dear God, can it be, because there has been no mother or other knowing female to advise you, that you…” he broke off the muttering to himself. “Lydia.” He once again grasped the tops of her arms. “Once aroused, a woman and a man might pleasure themselves if they have the knowledge with which to do so.”
Her eyes widened. “Did you do that? After we were together that night?”
“I thought of it. Many times,” he admitted. “But something stopped me from doing so. I realize now that it was you that held me back,” he acknowledged.
She looked confused. “I did?”
“The thought of you.” He considered how best to explain his reluctance. Not in a way that would keep his own pride intact, but with the same honesty Lydia invariably gave to him. “I— It somehow felt as if it would be a betrayal, almost an infidelity, to take my own release rather than wait and have you give that pleasure to me.”
Which, considering Gideon had spent most of his two years married to Harriet doing exactly that, and had not even considered it might be a betrayal to her or infidelity in their marriage, was surprising.
Chapter Nine
“I feel the same way,” Lydia assured him without hesitation.
Gideon didn’t need to explain to her any more than he already had. Not now that she knew he had been suffering, through choice, that same burn of need inside him for her this past week that she had been feeling for him.
A need that had only been reignited as she touched and stroked the sleek, velvety bareness of his engorged shaft. When she touched it. Tasted him. The sweet and the slightly bitter. Both were the very essence of Gideon, reflecting as it did the sweetness he tried to hide and the bitterness he showed to the world in general.
Lydia was determined that with her, he should know only the sweetness mixed with the heady spice of awareness which flared between the two of them whenever they were together.
But she also needed him to understand that she wanted all of him, what he considered to be the bad, as well as the good.
“Come with me.” She held out her hand to him.
Gideon eyed that hand warily. “I am not so old I cannot find my own way to the bed.”
She smiled. “You are not old at all. But we are not immediately going to the bed.”
“Then where— No!” He came to an abrupt halt, putting his cock away in his drawers and rebuttoning his evening trousers the moment he realized her obvious intention was for them to stand in front of the cheval mirror in the corner of the bedchamber.
Lydia lamented the disappearance of his cock and the refastening of his drawers and trousers. But it would be easy enough to unfasten them again when she was ready to do so.
“Please, Gideon,” she beseeched as she reached up to gently touch his clenched jaw. “My only wish is for you to see how beautiful we are together.”
He gave a harsh snort. “The beauty and the beast!”
“Never.” She moved up on tiptoe to lightly kiss his scarred cheek, then the filigree of silver scars down the length of his throat and across his left shoulder and chest.
He closed his eyes. “You are being unfair,” he groaned.
“You told me that life is unfair.” Lydia could sense how much his need warred inside him against what he believed was the reality of his scarred body. “I only want you to see the two of us together,” she encouraged. “To find the same excitement and pleasure in us that I do.”
His breathing was uneven and erratic. “I never look at myself in a mirror. I have not done so in the ten years since the fire.”
“Then do it now. For me,” she encouraged softly. “I think when you do, you will find that your scars are no longer as unsightly as you must once have thought they were.”
Gideon had never thought his scars to be monstrous. He knew they were.
Or had been?
Lydia seemed to think that was no longer the case.
He fought a war inside himself for several more seconds before allowing Lydia to once again take his hand and lead him the few more steps to the cheval mirror. It took several more long seconds before he could actually look at his reflection. Seconds when Lydia waited patiently for him to turn his head toward the mirror.
He was prepared to recoil, as he always had in the past, at the sight of the horrific scars upon his face and body that proclaimed him to be the monster Society had called him.
Instead, he stared at what were now, as Lydia had told him, only a web of silvery lines where once raised red ridges had puckered and distorted the skin down the left side of his face and body.
“I decided when we met”—Lydia smiled as she stood at his side—“that these silly scars are what prevents you from being just a little too handsome for any woman to resist you.”
Gideon glanced at her. “Even then you were not repulsed by my appearance?”
“I admit my pulse quickened and my body sent out messages of a reaction to you, but they were of arousal, not repulsion.”
He turned to face her, his arms moving about her waist to pull her closer as he gazed down at her. “You are a remarkably honest and beautiful young woman, Lydia,” he said admiringly. “Which is why I do not understand why some lucky young Society gentleman did not make you his wife long ag
o.”
She reached up to smooth the frown from between his eyes. “The reason for that is not because of a lack of offers. I do believe my father turned down at least a dozen proposals of marriage on my behalf.”
Gideon felt what was becoming a familiar tightness in his chest, this time at the thought of Lydia being married to one of the young gentlemen who had offered for her. If she had accepted one of those proposals, then it was unlikely the two of them would ever have met.
“Why did he?” he prompted curiously.
Lydia smiled. “Because he loved me and knew that I would not be happy married to someone with whom I was not in love and who did not love me in return. We both knew that as the only child of an earl, with a personal fortune left to me separately by my mother and father, I would one day be a very wealthy young woman and so obvious prey to the attention and machinations of fortune hunters.”
Gideon wished now that he had kept up his friendship with Michael Montague. Not only had the other man served as an exemplary member of the House, but he had also successfully brought up his beautiful motherless daughter to be a confident young lady who knew her own mind and was not afraid to speak or act upon it.
“Why do you think he chose you to be my guardian rather than any of his friends or acquaintances in Town?”
Gideon stared at Lydia’s reflection beside his own in the mirror, as if he would learn the answer to her question that way.
Instead, she simply smiled at him with mischief openly shining in her expressive green eyes. “I was surprised by it too at first.” She nodded. “But I have had time since arriving here to reconsider the question.”
“And your answer?”
Her smile widened. “That no fortune hunter would dare to suggest marriage with, let alone ever consider compromising, the ward of the Duke of Esher.”
Gideon eyed her quizzically. “You really think that is why he made me your guardian?”
Wayward (Regency Scandal 3) Page 7
