A Spring Deception (Seasons Book 2) (25 page)

She looked up at him, her bottom lip trembling, her pupils dilated. “Yes, you did. You wrote me letters when we were apart, you touched me not just in my body, but in my soul.
Why
?”

He caught his breath. He’d spent his life being a liar. Tonight he couldn’t bear to do it again, even if the truth made him vulnerable.

“Because it was
you
, Celia. You are wonderful and irresistible. I wrote you letters so that I would—”

He cut himself off and she lifted her hands in frustration. “You would what?”

“So—so that I would have your responses when I was gone. So that I would have a piece of you to remember that I had this time. It’s the same reason I did everything else. I just wanted a tiny piece of everything that you are. I know it makes me a bastard, but I stole what I shouldn’t have.”

“You never stole anything,” she whispered. “I gave it all. Freely and willingly.”

The gentleness was back in her tone and he so wanted to sink into it. To forget that she knew the truth, forget everything but that she was here and they were alone and he wanted her one last time.

But that couldn’t happen.

“You gave it under false pretenses,” he said. “With your eyes shut by my lies.”

She stared at him. Truly stared, and in that moment he knew that she saw him. Him, the real him. He was John Dane, not Clairemont, not Aiden, not a spy for the crown, not anything but John Dane. She saw him without knowing his name, and it felt like he didn’t fit into his skin anymore. He felt revealed, defenseless.

They were close already, but she took a small step toward him and ate up even more of the distance. She was almost touching him now.

“My eyes are open,” she whispered. “There are no more lies.”

He could feel her breath and smell her skin as she eased ever closer. It was like torture, but he forced his hands to remain at his sides. “Celia,” he whispered.

She reached for him, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, her thumb smoothing over his lip. Her touch was like silk, gentle as butterfly wings.

“If I’m going to lose you, I want to have you,” she whispered.

Then she lifted up to her tiptoes and kissed him.

Celia sank into the warmth of Aiden’s touch as she traced her tongue along the crease of his lips. He tasted intoxicating, mint and male mixed together. He let out a low groan before he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back with all the passion and fervor she’d come to expect from him.

She hadn’t come here with the idea to make love to him. She’d been too angry, too tangled up in emotion and betrayal and hurt to consider such a shocking thing. But starting the moment she stepped into the carriage, what she
really
wanted had become more and more clear.

Him. She wanted him. Because the love she felt had nothing to do with his name or his title. It had everything to do with the way he looked at her and touched her and made her feel deep within her body, all the way to her bones. Like she was cherished, like she was perfect…like she was
his
.

When he said that he would leave her life forever, that the man she’d known would die, her course of action had become crystal clear.

She had to do this.

She lifted her hands up to wrap them gently around him and tilted her head to deepen the kiss. She molded her body to his, letting her breasts flatten against his chest, her knees press to his legs, let his hardness push against her stomach.

He let out a pained grunt and tried to pull away. “We can’t,” he said, his breath short as he caught both her hands in his and tried to hold her away from him.

“Why?” she whispered.

“You know bloody well why,” he said, his tone raising and his face twisting in frustration. “I
know
you do. Don’t make me say it.”

“Because once you take my virginity, I’ll be ruined,” she said, providing the words he refused to say.

“Yes,” he hissed out, but she could hear the sharpness of need in his tone and feel it in his touch.

She pushed back against him, testing his control by lifting on her tiptoes to brush her lips along his jawline. “I. Don’t. Care,” she whispered. “I want you.
You
. Tonight. Because we both know it’s the only chance we have and I don’t want to regret not taking this moment.”

He turned his mouth into hers and claimed her lips, shaking off her hands to cup her cheeks. He drew her in, sucking her tongue, tasting her all over as if he couldn’t get enough. But once again, he broke away.

“You’ll regret doing this and I would hate that,” he panted.

She shook her head. “I won’t.”

She said nothing else, but began to unbutton his jacket. She held his gaze as she slid the fabric apart and then pushed it from his shoulders. He squeezed his eyes shut, only grunting when she moved her hands to his cravat and slowly unlooped the intricate knots and folds.

“Don’t do this,” he murmured.

She ignored the plea and moved to unfasten his shirt. He didn’t fight her, he didn’t move, he just let her undress him. It wasn’t easy. She had never served as valet for a man before. His buttons felt stiff, the fabric unruly, but at last she tugged his shirt tails free and parted the cotton to reveal a bare, tanned, thickly muscled chest.

Her breath hitched at the sight of him half-undressed. Her hands shook as she reached out to trace the planes of muscle that corded his stomach. He hissed out a breath and she lifted her wide gaze to his.

“You are determined?” he asked.

She nodded. “I
will
seduce you, no matter how poorly I manage it. I want you. I want this. I want tonight. And if
you
want to make up to me all the lies and manipulations, you’ll give that to me. If you want to gift me something to make all this worthwhile, you’ll allow me what I desire.”

He pressed his lips together hard and she could see him pondering her words. Probably trying to find a way to deny them both what they wanted so much.

But in the end, she knew he wanted her. His hard body betrayed him. His hitched breath betrayed him. His dilated pupils betrayed him.

He drew back and held out a hand. She stared at it, uncertain what the offering meant.

“Come, Celia,” he said. “A parlor is no place for you to surrender something so dear.”

Her lips parted. He was yielding?

“Then where?” she whispered, her voice shaking.

“My room,” he said as he drew her from the parlor and into the foyer. She followed him up the stairs, down a short hall and to a door. He sighed heavily before he threw it open and beckoned her inside.

A fire burned within and he took a moment to light a few lamps. She looked around. Like the rest of the house, there was nothing in this room that said Aiden. At least not the Aiden she knew. Everything was crisp and metal and hard edges. It wasn’t inviting.

Well,
almost
nothing was inviting. There was a bed facing the fire, a big bed that was inviting, indeed. She was taking a step toward it when he turned back to her and shook his head.

“Oh no, not so fast.”

She blinked. “Why? Isn’t this…I mean, I know I don’t have much experience in these things, but isn’t it traditional to do this on a bed?”

“We’re going to do a great many things on that bed,” he reassured her, crossing back to her and placing his warm hands on her shoulders. “But if tonight is all we have, we’re taking our time. I want to remember this when I’m—”

He cut himself off abruptly and she frowned. “When you’re gone. When you’re no longer
my
Aiden.”

He nodded as he slid a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face up. “No more thoughts about that. I want to give you pleasure, Celia. I want us both to forget tomorrow, at least for now.”

She drew in a long breath to calm herself and nodded. “Forget tomorrow. I can do that. Especially since I want tonight so very much.”

He turned her gently, forcing her to face away from him, and leaned in to kiss the back of her neck even as he began to unfasten the buttons along the back of her dress. A thrill worked through her as his fingertips brushed her spine, her shoulders, through her fine chemise. He parted the fabric and gently pushed, gliding it down her arms until it hung around her waist. Only then did he turned her back to face him.

She blushed. She was standing in front of him and he could see her chemise. No one but her maid or her sister had ever seen her this way.

“You are shifting your weight back and forth ever so slightly,” he said with a soft smile. “Are you reconsidering your decision?”

“No,” she croaked out. “I’m just hoping you aren’t disappointed with what you see.”

His eyes widened slightly. “With you? Never.”

He took a step closer until he crowded into her space and lifted his hand. Slowly he traced the back of it over her shoulder, her collarbone, and finally over her chest. His knuckles slid back and forth over her nipples, and they immediately hardened as she hissed out a breath of unexpected pleasure.

Then he turned his hand, flattening it back against her shoulder, and slid it beneath the flimsy chemise strap. She held her breath, watching as he glided the scrap away and down her arm, bearing first one breast, then the other.

“You are,” he whispered, leaning down to brush his lips just across the top of the swell, “so exquisite.”

She took in a great gulp of air as she tangled her fingers in his crisp, short hair and held tight as his lips opened and he began to gently taste her exposed flesh. Lower and lower he swept his tongue until he brushed it over one nipple.

Electric heat flashed through her, and she found herself arching against him. He smiled against her flesh. “Since the first moment I saw you, I have longed to see you like this,” he admitted.

She drew back. “You—you wanted me from the first moment you saw me?”

He swallowed hard before he nodded. “Yes, Celia. And that had nothing to do with my case. Nothing to do with anything but you. The more I grew to know you, the worse that ache became. And no amount of distraction or self-pleasure could make it less.”

Tears suddenly stung Celia’s eyes and she blinked them away so he wouldn’t see how much his words moved her. Since his confession the afternoon before, she had been wondering how much of their connection was real and how much had been manufactured by him for the sake of his case.

Now his words freed her from the doubt that had plagued her. Slowly she hooked her fingers into her drooping chemise and gown and shimmied the entire contraption down her hips. She stepped out and stood before him in only her drawers and stockings.

“Would touching me make it less?” she asked, shocked by her own boldness and yet thrilled with how the erection hidden behind the placket of his trousers seemed to swell even larger.

“More at first,” he said, reaching out to place a hand on her hip and draw her closer. “But then your body will be the only thing that can cure the need.”

“And what of my need?” she asked, blinking up at him now that their faces were mere inches apart.

He kissed her gently. “I intend to take care of that as many times as you can bear.”

Without another word, he swept his arm beneath her knees and lifted her. He pressed a kiss to her mouth as he carried her to the bed that had so fascinated her a moment before and laid her down. Her heart was beating like hummingbird wings as he tugged her drawers away, then her slippers, then unrolled her stockings.

And then she was naked, sprawled on his bed, his gaze burning into her.

“I do not deserve this,” he muttered, she thought more to himself than to her.

She might have argued that point, but he didn’t allow it. He bent to kiss her stomach and all her thoughts emptied. His mouth moved along her skin, down her abdomen, across her hip, and she tensed. He was going to kiss her sex like he’d done at the ball a few nights before. Her body contracted at the memory of the pleasure that had rushed through her when his mouth took her.

“Aiden?” she whispered.

He lifted his head from her thigh and said, “Did you like it before?”

She nodded immediately. “Y-yes. Very much. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

He chuckled, a masculine, possessive sound that rumbled through her whole body and made liquid flood the very sex they were discussing so intimately.

“And that was when I was rushed, knowing we had to get back to the ball. Tonight I have endless time to…” He looked back down, leaning in until his breath steamed across her sensitive flesh. “…explore.”

She gripped the coverlet with both fists as his mouth lowered and at last he covered her in an open-mouthed kiss. Pleasure immediately burst there and she lifted into him with a wordless sound of relief and need. Unlike the last time, when he’d held her steady through his ministrations, this time he let her move and arch into his tongue.

He swept across her entrance, licking away the wetness that had gathered there and creating more through his wicked mouth. She turned her head into the pillow, gasping and groaning, but never more than when he let his tongue flick across her clitoris and a jolt of intense sensation would render her moaning and liquid.