Betina Krahn (13 page)

When her knees buckled, he caught her and bore her back to the bed, never ceasing his attention on her breasts. She welcomed him between her thighs and felt his erection slide into the wet, burning cleft of her flesh. Every motion answered a need she hadn’t realized she possessed. Soon the combination of his mouth on her breasts and the tantalizing
almost
of his sex at the opening of hers had brought her to the brink of climax.

“Jack,” she gasped, clasping him with her legs. “
Now,
Jack.”

Tilting, she urged him inside and moaned with pleasure as he filled and stretched her, pushing deeper, thrusting all the way to her core. As she gripped his shoulders and pulled him still tighter against her, he began to move and give her the pressure and sensation she craved. Soon he was drumming
toward climax, calling her name. When he would have withdrawn, she wrapped her legs tighter and forbade it, holding him inside her. Then every barrier of time and place and sensation burst between them.

She heard a groan through the fury of her own pleasure, and couldn’t tell if it was hers or his. Everything seemed to be happening inside her skin; his release somehow complemented and enhanced hers.

He collapsed over her and she felt a hiss of steam run through her blood. The fire was well and truly quenched. For now.

“Elbows,” she said, smiling at the way he still bore part of his weight on his arms. “You are such a gentleman.”

“The least I could do,” he said with a rueful laugh, “considering my appalling eagerness.” He would have shifted to lie beside her, but she held him for a moment longer, giving him an intimate squeeze with her inner muscles that made him jump with surprise.

“You never have to apologize to me for how you like your pleasure, Jack. Fast, slow, on a chair, against a wall, in a carriage…in nightcaps and flannel shirts or masks and transparent silk…say what you desire. I’ll make it happen if I can. I’m yours.”

He brushed a wisp of her hair back and searched her face with wonder.

“You’re unbelievable, Mariah. What am I going to do with you?”

“I have a few suggestions,” she said with a demure smile.

“Which I’ll be pleased to take…when I come back.”

The bed heaved and he was off before his withdrawal registered.

“You’re going?” She sat up feeling rattled and a little disoriented. “Now? Why?”

He picked up his trousers and came back to the bed as
he dragged them on. Bending down, he kissed her gently on the lips.

“I’m going to bathe. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. And then I expect to continue this most enlightening conversation.”

As the door closed behind him, she lay back on the bed, stretched, and smiled. She’d declared herself, more or less. She was his.

But was he hers?

M
AKE ME YOURS
,
she’d said. He had. And he was going to again, and there wasn’t a second thought or an ounce of regret in his body.

He stared at his lathered face in the mirror, holding his razor poised. He was grinning like a lovesick fool. She made him feel whole and real; grounded him and set him soaring at the same time. She reminded him of the things he wanted and loved and was good at doing. She had become the voice of his hopes and dreams and desires, not to mention his conscience.

What was he going to do with her?

Whatever he decided, it would be better than doing without her. For once, he was not going to be sensible and abstemious and self-denying. For once he was going to do what his heart told him. He was going to make love to her and enjoy her and figure out the rest when he had to. Later. Much, much later.

Hurrying through a bath and a shave, he put on fresh trousers and shirt and a pair of slippers, then wrapped himself in a dressing gown. When he slipped back into her room, he found she had lit a lamp and donned a thin silk dressing gown. She had let down her hair, then looped it up into a soft mass of curls. At his entry, she turned and paused in front of the lamp, unwittingly creating an erotic silhouette of her half-naked body. She had left the corset and stockings on. He smiled.

“I thought you should see what I got today,” she said,
taking him by the hand and pulling him to the stuffed chair by the hearth. “Sit.”

A moment later she pulled a sophisticated little velvet toque from a hatbox against the wall. She donned it and strode back and forth, describing it with clench-jawed hauteur. He enjoyed the mimicry, but appreciated even more the way she forgot to hold her dressing gown together and casually displayed the erotic territory she’d invited him to claim.

Next came a picturebook hat…wide-brimmed, romantic and awash in ribbons and flowers. Her demeanor changed to wide-eyed innocence.

“Please, sir, could you direct me to a reputable boardinghouse? I’m a country girl just come to town, and I don’t know anyone in this big, frightening city.” She fluttered her lashes and made an outrageous moue. He laughed wickedly and grabbed her, pulling her between his knees.

“Just put yourself in my hands, sweetness.” He slipped his hands around her bum cheeks and then ran his fingers through the sensitive muff at the top of her legs. “Uncle Jack will teach you how to get along.”

She giggled softly and shivered. Then she bent to lick his lips with a provocative purr.

“Naughty Uncle Jack.”

She pulled away abruptly, and as he protested, strode to another hat box and pulled out a handsome felt derby and a riding crop. She strutted back and forth, smacking the crop against her palm, staring at him as if she could peel his scruples like a grapefruit.

“Of course, you realize I brook no disobedience from my mounts,” she said with a velvety roughness to her voice. “I ride hard and long and I expect my horses to be in prime condition to give me pleasure. You think you can remember that, stable boy?”

His jaw dropped. His erection crowned. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t take his eyes from the mesmerizing sway of her hips as she stalked closer and used the tip of her crop to lift his chin. When she lowered her mouth to his, he nearly exploded there and then.

It was a hard, possessive kiss that inflamed every nerve in his body.

“Well?” She stared down into his simmering golden eyes.

“Your mount is ready to ride, mistress,” he said, running a hand up her leg and cupping her buttock. “Anytime you want.”

With a smile that was part triumph, part mischief, she slanted a leg across him and slid down astride his lap. Rubbing purposefully against his erection, she groaned with pleasure. Or maybe he did. It was hard to tell.

A moment later she was kissing him with all the hunger she’d just generated in him. And when she came up for air, she was grinning.

“What do you think of my purchases?”

“I think—” he was hoarse with need “—I’m not ever letting you go shopping alone again.”

He gasped as she peeled his trousers aside and slid her hand up and down the length of him. A moment later she slid her slick, swollen flesh up and down him, too. With a growl of appreciation, he pulled her head down to kiss her long and hard. It wasn’t long before they transferred to the bed and the riding continued in earnest. With her on top.

Later, as they lay together in a sea of feathers and felt and silk and flowers, she pushed up onto an elbow to trace his features with her fingers.

“I don’t think you should get your expectations too high about shopping. Very few milliners are open-minded enough to let this sort of thing go on in their shops.”

He laughed. “I would guess so.” He looked at the hats she’d tried on and thought of the personas that came with them. “Which is your favorite?”

She rolled up onto her knees and sat back on her heels. One by one, she picked up the hats, smoothing a flower here and stroking a feather there.

“I like them all,” she said thoughtfully, dragging a feather down his belly. He jolted, grabbed her hand to stop the tickling, then sought her gaze.

“Which one is the true you?” he asked softly.

She thought about that for a moment, her blue eyes darkening.

“None of them, I think. The true me is what you see before you now. No frills. Just me. Bare head. Naked body.” He saw the moment she dropped the last guard to her heart. It took his breath.

“I love you, Jack St. Lawrence. That’s the real me.”

He was on his knees in a heartbeat, holding her face between his hands, absorbing her words into his very marrow, struggling with and then surrendering to the stubborn, possessive joy in his heart. He couldn’t let clever, adorable, surprising, stubborn, passionate and loving Mariah Eller walk down the aisle and out of his life. He was going to have to be at the end of that church aisle himself. He was going to have to marry her. His heart would refuse to beat ever again if he didn’t.

“That’s a gift more precious than I deserve, Mariah Eller,” he said, refusing to think about the ramifications yet. “But I’ll cherish it for as long as I draw breath. And I pray that someday I’ll be worthy of it.”

C
LARIDGE’S
lobby had indeed been deserted when Jack walked through the front doors, but the bar was not. A second pair of eyes had caught sight of him the moment he entered.

Baron Marchant was making an early evening of losing at his favorite gaming salon. Bertie had asked him to escort some inebriated Prussians back to their hotel and they had insisted he join them for a drink. He thought it only fitting that he accept; it was his damned money they were spending.

One of the Prussians, sunk deep in his cups, began reciting a maudlin-sounding epic about some heroic battle…in German. Marchant was doing his best to enjoy the brandy in spite of the wretch’s blathering, when he spotted a familiar figure entering the hotel.

St. Lawrence. His spirits lifted. The fellow was something of a stick in usual company, but he would be a vast improvement over this gloomy lot. He rose to intercept Jack, but stopped inside the bar entrance when he heard a woman’s voice say Jack’s name. Moving instinctively to the side of the opening, he blinked and put in his monocle to make her out.

Memory and deduction came together to boot Marchant’s brain.

The widow? St. Lawrence had brought her here? To London? His jaw dropped as the Prince of Wales’s latest conquest threw her arms around Jack, and Jack embraced her and whirled her around like a giddy schoolboy. In the middle of Claridge’s lobby!

Marchant’s eyes burned with the need to blink, but he continued to stare at her. Mariah Eller was beaming at Jack with a directness that spoke of intimacy. When she reached up to stroke his face, they turned just enough for Marchant to make out his expression.

Gone were the fierce aura of control, the subtle arrogance, the moral superiority that had never failed to annoy the prince’s other intimates. Iron Jack, they called him behind his back. The standards-keeper. Right now his aristocratic features were filled with the same idiotic pleasure as hers.

Sweet Jesus.

Jack was bedding the prince’s light o’love! The one he and Jack had been charged with marrying off. From the looks of them, there was more than just a bit of slap-and-tickle going on. It was a full-blown
romance.

He watched them walk toward the stairs, Jack holding her adoringly, the widow gazing up at him as if he were the blessed Second Coming.

Iron Jack was in love.

Marchant leaned against the door frame and scoured his face with his hands, trying to sober up enough to figure out what to do. There would be hell to pay when Bertie found out about this. Bertie liked St. Lawrence—liked the whole damned St. Lawrence family. He’d want to blame someone else. Someone charged with securing the widow’s cooperation. He felt his collar tighten.

Somebody had to talk to Jack, make him see the error of his ways—and soon, before hints of this reached Bertie’s ears.

Inspiration struck.
Family.
That was what St. Lawrences prized above all else. Jack’s eldest brother Jared lived just west of London.

If he left first thing in the morning he could be there by noon.

O
NCE THEY
were married, he was going to have to foot these bills, Jack thought the next morning as he stood in a shoe shop, watching her wade through a sea of shoes: house slippers, day boots, pumps, slides, walking shoes, riding boots…French heels, wedges…kid, satin, brocade and patent leather. It was sobering, even worrisome in light of the fact that his family would likely disown him. But the sight of her shapely ankles burned itself into his brain and he soon was aching to carry her back to their hotel and ravish her within an inch of her life.

Colliding with Mercy’s glare doused that untimely ardor. The salty old servant was looking at him as if he had grown a second head.

Was it his imagination that the head porter at the hotel had stared at him oddly, too? And that the waiter in the breakfast room seemed to find him suddenly amusing? He checked his trouser buttons, collar and glanced at his hair in a lobby mirror. Finding nothing amiss, he’d shrugged it off.

Then there was that officious wretch at the linen draper’s shop, who kept ogling Mariah as if she were made of sugar. That he could understand. She was pure honey-blond radiance. Sunlight trapped in human form. He found himself smiling wistfully at her and feeling a little foolish…but only until she smiled back and he felt his heart swell.

Things improved after a bracing cup of tea and some sweets and savories in a Knightsbridge tea room. But they were soon off to the dressmaker’s to check on the progress of her purchases, and he was back to holding packages and nodding politely. She insisted he see every style she chose, which meant he had to sit idly in the close, over-perfumed fitting room with Mercy…who kept looking askance at him.

Something was bubbling to the old servant’s surface. He tried to ignore it, but she dropped the carpet bag she habitually carried and a thimble rolled out and across the polished floor. He was forced by both breeding and conscience to retrieve it…which brought him face to face with her.

“Don’t think it ain’t writ all over ye,” she whispered with a scowl.

“What is ‘writ’ all over me?” he said, under the misapprehension that she wouldn’t dare raise a truly personal topic with him.

“How ye spent last evenin’,” she whispered, eyes darting at the fitting-room doorway. “I ain’t blind, ye know. I just got the lumbago.”

After a week closed up in a coach, train and sundry cabs with her betters, familiarity apparently
had
bred contempt.

“How I spent the evening?” He stiffened, gripping the knob of his walking stick. “I worked at the Stephens factory until nearly midnight.”

“I heard ye, late, in th’ hall.”

“I have no idea what you’re on about.”

“Shame on ye, sarr. She be a decent woman havin’ to get married ’cause o’ money troubles.” She squared her shoulders, looking as if she’d just eaten a sour persimmon. “Ye want her carryin’ a bundle to th’ altar?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He could feel himself paling.
A bundle?

“Plain as th’ hair on the old Queen’s chin, it is. Yer glowin’ like daisies, the both of ye.”

“Really, this is
most
improper,” he said, trying for the glower that had never failed to put servants in their place, until now.

“Marry the lass, sarr. Make a honest woman o’ her.” Her tone was sharp enough to draw blood. “Or make yer John Thomas happy yerself.”

Jack froze, hearing the first words echoing in his head and telling himself surely he had mistaken the last. Make an honest woman of her.

Marry the lass, sarr.

Hearing those words spoken outside his head was jarring.

The harsh light of logic fell on the sweet, irrational hope of his heart.

Marrying Mariah. The whole of his life was weighted against it. His family expected him to turn Bertie’s favor and influence into a marriageable asset. But he’d failed to carry out Bertie’s special mission and—worse—usurped Bertie’s pleasure. He’d seen how the prince cut off men and families who failed to show him proper respect. He didn’t want to
imagine the prince’s outrage upon learning that Jack had wedded the woman he had claimed as his mistress.

The day’s bright prospect suddenly dimmed.

There was no way to have both her and the prince’s favor.