The Earl She Should Never Desire, page 17
She tasted of peaches and blackberries plucked from hedges by the stream. And he was ravenous.
He broke free for a moment, his mouth against her cheek as he struggled to find his balance, his control. Slow, don’t hurry, don’t scare her. Slow...
She made a sound, between a mewl and a moan, and an answering groan rose up in him like the cries of souls trapped in purgatory. To hell with slow.
He raised her on to the table, his fingers pressing into the soft skin at her waist. Her eyes were half-closed, slumberous and distant, the grey misty and blurred. He couldn’t seem to look away.
His hands weren’t frozen though—they slipped from her waist to her hips, his fingers pressing into the lush curves as he moved closer, his thighs pressing against her knees and suddenly...oh, miracle...they parted, slipping him between them until her skirts held him at bay. Her hands moved up his chest, leaving shimmering trails of jealous need in their paths until her fingers left linen behind and found flesh.
She stopped, catching her lower lip between her teeth.
He stopped as well. The sensation of her fingers resting so lightly on the taut muscles of his neck, just brushing the hair at his nape... She was branding him, his skin absorbing her mark for ever. She licked her lip and continued, her fingers slowly threading into his hair, retreating, then deeper. His scalp tingled and vicious streaks of heat coursed down his back. With each stroke she pulled him deeper into a warm ocean and it was frightening and wonderful.
Her lashes rose and she smiled up at him, pulling him under completely. He groaned and leaned down to press his mouth against her neck, the peach-soft lobe of her ear, his teeth scraping the skin below it.
‘Yes.’ She breathed the word, a shudder rising through her, her hands pulling him closer. When her mouth returned to his, he gave up whatever resolution he’d formed that morning of a slow, clever seduction, spaced out and rationed. He sank into her, gathered her hard against him, her skirts running up to bunch between them, and kissed her again.
Her mouth was silky warmth, those little moans demolishing him. Her tongue played with his, her lips brushing up against his when he pulled away, parting when he sank back in. She opened with a totality that was exhilarating and horrible because he knew it might be up to him to stop and he wanted everything.
When he finally brought himself to a halt he was one big, pulsing mass. He was hard against her skirts, his heart thudding like a great gong.
Being right had never scared him so much in his life.
‘Lily.’ He breathed her name against the warm perfume of her neck. ‘Lily...’ He closed his teeth hard on the need to say her name again and again and again.
It could not have been more than five minutes, perhaps ten, but he was a damned wreck.
He moved away, looking back from a safe distance. He’d tumbled her hair. It lay in a soft mass of waves over her shoulder. Her mouth was parted and reddened and her eyes...
Another step back put more distance between them and the need to do something very, very foolish. Thirty-five was far too old to be impulsive.
He held up a finger, reminding them both.
‘One.’
Chapter Twenty
Second
Noon
Today
Black carriage
Corner of St George and Maddox
M.
Carriage?
Lily folded the note with a faint huff. She had hoped for something more...well, something more. She’d waited almost two days for this second note, turning over her resolution so often she’d churned it into butter, and this was the best he had to offer? A carriage?
Well, he might be setting the terms, but as he’d pointed out it was her prerogative to accept or reject. They would see about this carriage business.
* * *
As promised, a black-panelled carriage was waiting at the corner. A footman stood by and when he saw her, he gave a slight bow and opened the door. Casting caution to the wind, she hurried inside before she could reconsider.
Lord Sherbourne was seated at the far end, a dark form in the gloom that settled on them the moment the curtained door shut behind her. He made no move towards her and she slipped into the opposite corner and crossed her arms, inspecting her nemesis.
In repose his face looked precisely as his reputation would have advertised. Harshly handsome, with sharp-cut lines, a sensuous mouth that served his sardonic smile well and eyes that always seemed to say I know you and I know you are hiding something.
Well, after well over a month watching him with Annie, Lily felt she knew him rather well, too. And she knew he was most definitely hiding something under all those urbane layers. Something definite, powerful and very private. Something she quite desperately wanted to reach.
But that was her foolishness.
‘I thought you said you were too old to collect kisses in carriages,’ she said, breaking the silence.
He smiled, his eyes lighting with an amber-gold light that shone in the gloom like a great cat. ‘I wouldn’t waste one of your kisses on a carriage ride, Lily.’
Oh, hell. She was melting again. How was she ever going to find any equilibrium if he kept doing that? She wanted to tell him she didn’t mind at all if he kissed her in the carriage. In a bookshop. In the street. In the middle of Almack’s. Everywhere and anywhere.
No, she didn’t want him to kiss her yet, because then their peculiar pact would be more than half over.
He moved a little towards her and held out his hand and she laid hers on it. He threaded his fingers through hers and warmth wove itself up her arm and cocooned her whole, tingling along as it went, like a series of feathery kisses.
‘You came prepared,’ he murmured.
‘I did?’
‘No gloves.’
His hand tightened on hers as he moved even closer, resting their joined hands on his thigh. Just like that day she’d first danced with him her hand looked dainty in his. She smiled at the sight and he raised their linked hands and brushed his mouth along her knuckles.
‘This doesn’t count,’ he murmured, turning her hand over and touching his lips to the inside of her wrist. ‘I like that you hate gloves, Lily. You smell like orange blossoms.’
She gave in and moved a little closer, too. Her other hand clenched against the need to touch the dark head bent over her hand.
‘You smell like the forest I used to run away to when I was little,’ she whispered, leaning towards him. His breath huffed against her wrist and his mouth moved up her arm, pressing the pelisse before it.
‘That may not be a good thing,’ he murmured against her skin, his voice warm with laughter.
She gave in and lowered her head to brush her cheek against the dark silk of his hair and breathed her fill.
‘It is an excellent thing. I can’t describe it—pine and earth and freedom and sunshine and...’
He drew back and for a moment she wondered if she’d said something wrong. Then she was pulled on to his lap, his arms hard around her, his body as tense as if he was bracing for a crash. The carriage rolled on sedately, but he still sat there, his cheek against her hair, breathing carefully, his arms caging her, but warm and comforting. Finally, the tension eased, his hand smoothing the fabric of her dress against her waist.
‘You really ought to take up boxing, Lily. You have a way of popping a facer over one’s guard.’
‘Is that what I did? Just by telling you how wonderful you smell?’
His laughter rumbled against her. ‘Apparently. Damn, we’re here already.’
‘Here?’ The carriage made a sharp turn and through the crack in the curtains she saw a stone wall and iron gate. Marcus slipped her off his lap and when they stopped he jumped out and helped her down. She had a swift glimpse at a grey stone façade and tall trees before they stepped inside.
‘Where are we?’
‘Chiswick. A place I come to when I need quiet. You are perfectly safe here.’
‘I know,’ she said without thinking.
No one came to greet them, but when they entered a large room that looked to be a cross between a study and a library a tray of tea and cakes was waiting on a table.
She walked along the shelves, alight with book envy, and stopped before the window. A wide lawn rolled down to a sheltered stream lined with willows that spread their roots and dipped their leaves into the water. In the middle of the lawn was a wide-boughed plane tree under which a table and two chairs faced the water.
‘This is lovely! Do you often come here?’
‘Not as often as I would like.’
‘Pity. But those chairs don’t look comfortable enough for that view. You need a deep armchair with an ottoman and plenty of cushions.’
He laughed. ‘I’m not in my dotage. Yet.’
‘It has nothing to do with age. It has to do with indulgence.’
‘There is your answer, then.’
She shook her head, watching him as he poured the tea, his hair falling forward to cover his brow. Her hand tingled with the memory of it slipping through her fingers, but she tried to concentrate on the man, not his undeniably attractive physique.
He was a puzzle. She’d known that from the day they’d been introduced upon her arrival in London. She still wasn’t certain what to make of him and now it mattered more than ever.
‘Do you know,’ she said, turning to look out at the calm and calming view of the willows, ‘I thought you disliked me from the outset. You never tried to charm me as you did my family.’
She felt rather than heard him come up behind her.
‘Do you know,’ he replied, turning her towards him, ‘that you are not always as clever as you think you are?’
‘I don’t think I’m clever.’
‘You are convinced you are. You are accustomed to out-thinking those around you and you’ve developed a bad habit of assuming you know people better than they know themselves.’
She wanted to be offended, but there was a smile in his eyes that took the sting out of his damning assessment. ‘Guilty as charged. What has that to do with you disliking me?’
‘You are clever. Figure it out.’ He touched a finger to her temple. His hazel-gold eyes narrowed against the sun, but she felt the same sensation of being seen. She’d felt it from the first day she’d met him. Even when he was across the room when he looked at her she felt...this. It was as unsettling as those dreams where one realised one was walking through the centre of town stark naked.
‘When did you first think of kissing me?’ she asked abruptly and his eyes narrowed further, flickering down to her mouth. She swallowed.
‘At Lady Sefton’s ball.’ His tone was abrupt. ‘I had no choice but to dance with you. A damned waltz. I could tell you didn’t want to either, but we did our duty and halfway through you looked up at me and laughed. That was not a good moment.’
She stared. There was no laughter in his eyes now. His face was stripped of the veil of humour, his voice divested of its careful drawl, revealing the hard-cut base beneath.
‘I was nervous,’ she admitted. She remembered that moment all too clearly. ‘I didn’t even understand why. You made everyone else around you comfortable, but you made me nervous.’
‘Now you know why. I didn’t want to make you comfortable and you certainly made me as uncomfortable as hell. It is generally not good form to want to bed the sister of the woman you have committed to marry.’
‘You wanted to bed me?’ Her voice wobbled between croak and squeak.
‘Want.’
She held still through the chaos that single word unleashed.
Want.
She wanted it, too. Desperately.
She swallowed, preparing the words.
‘Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to,’ he said abruptly, returning to the tea tray. ‘Come and have your tea.’
That command was so out of place she couldn’t help laughing. His shoulder twitched, but he didn’t turn from his task of filling the two cups. She went to him and touched his arm.
‘Not yet.’
He looked at her and she hurried on, throwing caution to the winds.
‘I thought of kissing you before that. Which is far worse. Annie is my sister, after all.’
She braced herself on his arm and rose on tiptoe to brush a quick kiss over his cheek. His arm came around her, holding her there. She let her eyelids sink closed, cloaking herself in darkness as she absorbed him with her other senses. She’d been right about the forest, mysterious but familiar, and his warmth that wrapped around her even when she was several feet away. This close it was like sinking into a warm bath. She sighed and slid her palm up his chest, finding the line between his waistcoat and the linen shirt.
‘I meant to wait, take you down to the willows...’ he murmured and she shifted, touching her mouth to his.
He froze, a deep, almost audible reverberation coursing through him as his arm tightened around her, his hand sinking into her hair, clamping about her head as if he would pull her away. She rested there for a moment, absorbing the texture of his lips, the sensation of waves and eddies of electric need pulsing through her. The anticipation was sweetly painful.
‘Marcus,’ she murmured against his mouth, touching her tongue to the tense line of his lips.
That broke him.
The kiss at Hilliard’s had been a revelation. Like growing up thinking the full range of blues was limited to the pale shades of dawn, only to find oneself by the seaside on a clear summer day facing a whole universe of blues, bright and muted, dark and jewelled, all just waiting to be experienced.
That had been marvellous enough, but the second kiss was a completely different kind of revelation.
She owned this kiss. She owned the feel of his skin on hers. His taste, that distant and familiar scent that reached up through her roots. She was right at the centre of the fire with him, like a phoenix resurrecting herself against his body.
Want. She wanted, wanted, wanted this...him. Marcus.
Three kisses were nowhere near enough.
She moaned, pressing herself harder against his length as his hands moved over her, caressing her back, her hips, his hand closing on her backside, pulling her up against him, his legs parting to accommodate her. She wished she were taller or he shorter or...
Her thoughts stuttered as she was lifted off her feet again and she found herself on the table, the tea tray shoved aside. Her eyes opened to the brown-gold fire in his, like a sunset striking amber.
‘This kiss isn’t done,’ he muttered, his hand still tense on her nape.
‘We’re merely getting comfortable,’ she agreed in her primmest voice and he gave a little choke of laughter as he ran his hands from her waist down her thighs, easing them apart.
‘Very comfortable.’
She smiled back and he groaned and gathered her against him, moving between her legs which opened all on their own. The table was thankfully quite tall and her legs clamped shut against his. She could feel them shake, feel his breath uneven against her neck as he held her for a tense moment. Then he breathed in and softened his hold, his hands resuming their exploration, his lips touching her temple, her cheek, pausing for a moment on her jaw.
Her scars...
She froze.
‘No.’
He drew away slightly, but his breath was still there, warm, comforting.
‘Does it hurt?’
She shook her head slightly, her hair buffing his cheek. Somehow, she knew he’d know where she’d gathered those scars. He would tie them to her reaction back in his study, linking her story together like daisies in a chain and there was nothing she could do to stop him.
‘Don’t hide yourself from me.’ He touched his mouth to them again, resting there, warm and soft and devastating.
Something awful was happening inside her, not an episode, a beast climbing out of a pea-sized pebble, growing and stretching and pressing everything out of its way, laying claim. Taking her over. Relentless. She could barely breathe.
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he whispered, melting her.
There was pity there, and heat, and she didn’t know what to do with it. She wanted to pull away, but she didn’t want to waste this kiss on sadness and pain so she wrapped her hand around his nape and brought his mouth back to hers.
He wasn’t gentle this time. He all but crushed her against him, his mouth devouring her as his hands roamed at will. She’d worn a simple muslin gown in a pale peach colour, wanting as little as possible in the way if he touched her as he had at Hilliard’s, and he made full use of the thin fabric.
This time he didn’t wait for her to unbutton her pelisse. She barely noticed when he slipped it off, but she noticed when he eased one sleeve off her shoulder and released her mouth long enough to trace that curve, his breath slipping down her arm, over her chest, into the darkness between her breasts. His mouth just brushed the embroidered ribbon along the line of her bodice, heat shimmering through the thin fabric.
She wanted it off. She wanted... Suddenly it was absolutely clear she’d come for far more than kisses. Here where they were completely alone, an island apart from her life.
‘More...’ she whispered. ‘Please...’
He stopped and leaned his cheek for a moment against the hard curve of her shoulder, then turned his head and pressed a light, butterfly-wing kiss against the side of her neck and withdrew.
Her hand slipped off his shoulders, over his chest, and fell into her lap.
He was breathing hard and for a moment they remained side by side in silence, she seated on the table, he leaning back against it. His hand was a mere inch from her hip, but it felt very far all of a sudden.
‘I went beyond our agreement. I’m sorry, Lily.’
