Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal (24 page)

“Shall I kiss you instead?”

For one dumbstruck moment she thought he meant to kiss her
there
, but then he was shifting over her, working one arm beneath her neck as he settled some of his weight on her.

“Gracious, merciful…” His weight was
exactly
what her body had been craving. She lifted her hips against him, feeling the hard column of his erect flesh pressing down against her pelvis. It helped, even as it increased her frustration.

He braced himself on his elbows. “Not like that.” With one hand, he rearranged billows of skirts and petticoats, and also his own clothing. “Like this, God help me.”

Ah,
God
.

They were flesh against flesh, the hot length of him so close to where Maggie wanted him. He’d said he would not ruin her, but why on earth not? There would be no other lovers, not ever, no one to know, no one to care…

“Please, Benjamin… I want…” There in the bright sunshine and the warm, promising air of spring, she wanted, and wanted, and wanted.

He said nothing, but hitched his body against hers. “Lift your hips. Move with me.” His voice was a guttural rasp near her ear. As he spoke, his erection slid over the damp folds of her sex.

“But that’s not—”

He shut her up with a kiss then paused, his mouth hovering a half inch away. “
Move
with
me
.”

He did it again, used the hot length of his cock to stroke at her sex. Maggie experimentally tilted her hips, bringing the pressure closer to where she craved him. His pace was maddeningly slow, but it allowed her to find just the angle she needed.

“Better?” He’d gotten his arm under her neck again, supporting the back of her head in his palm as Maggie curled up to him. For her part, she slid a hand down his back, under his breeches to the firm, smooth flesh of his buttocks.

“Not… enough.”

He gave her more of his weight, so the drag of flesh against flesh began to drive Maggie toward the dark maelstrom of pleasure he’d shown her once before. She pressed her open mouth to his throat, a low keening emerging as her body grew clamorous for satisfaction.

“Don’t rush it.” If anything, he slowed down.

Maggie seized the moment. At the precise instant he was shifting the direction of his stroke, she tilted her hips just one inch higher, so he slid home in one sweet, burning thrust of pleasure.

“Jesus God in heaven, Maggie…
We can’t…
” He went still then started to withdraw.

“No.” Maggie sank her nails into the flesh of his buttocks, more determined on this than on anything previous in her life. “Don’t leave me. What’s done is done, and I want… I want
so
much
…”

She wanted to weep and to draw him so deeply into her body a part of him would always remain with her. She wanted to make wild promises that would only doom him to sharing her unhappiness; she wanted to bear his children and watch them grow up on that distant, beautiful estate in Cumbria.

For long moments, while Maggie mourned the dreams of a girl who’d grown into a lonely, despairing woman, Benjamin did not move. She stroked her hand down his back, desperate to keep him close.

“Please, Benjamin. This is all I will ever ask of you.” It was all she would ever dare to ask of him.

His whole body underwent some subtle change, became more supple and somehow closer to her. “It shall be as you wish.”

He moved inside her, and the beauty of it robbed Maggie of speech. To be so close, to be held like this, desired, treasured… cherished bodily. Every part of him was attuned to every part of her, listening for her pleasure, listening and straining to please her.

She knew this, felt it physically and emotionally and even spiritually. And now, now when her body was lifting effortlessly toward the pleasure he’d shower on her, she wanted
him
to slow down, to draw out this singular experience for her, for them both.

He wasn’t hurrying, but
she
was. With each slow, glorious penetration of her body, she hastened toward fulfillment. Her breath shortened, her hold on him became desperate, and she became frantic until pleasure cascaded over her in convulsions so intense she lost awareness of all save the man in her arms and in her very body.

When the storm subsided, she was pressed so tightly to him her stomach hurt with the effort and tears clogged the back of her throat. She could feel him hilted in her body, still rigid with arousal, a comfort and a source of renewed longing even as she tried to regain control over her breathing.

“Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head and kissed his jaw. He sighed, his body solid and warm above her. Without thinking, she moved her hips in a languid roll, only to blink up at him as he withdrew entirely.

She felt it as a shock, a grief, reverberating from her womb to her mind to her soul.

“Any more of that, my lady, and this will truly be irrevocable.” He was braced above her, staring down at her intently. He hadn’t spent in her body. Even in her inexperience, she understood that, and he wanted to spend now. She wrapped one hand around the back of his neck, levered up on her elbow, and kissed him.

His return fire was ravenous, though he needed one hand to brace himself above her and used the other to stroke himself. She could feel the slight, rhythmic movement of his hand between them, feel the tension coiling more and more tightly as his moment approached. She wanted to bat his hand aside and impale herself on him, to share his pleasure as he’d shared hers, but then he was groaning softly against her mouth as his hand went still, and a wet warmth struck Maggie’s belly.

He hung over her, breathing hard while Maggie subsided to her back. While she heard him fussing with clothing, her own passion ebbed, leaving a hollow ache in its place. She was casting around mentally, wondering what there was to say at such a time when she felt him dabbing at her belly with a handkerchief then rearranging her skirts to some semblance of modesty.

“We are going to talk, Maggie Windham.”

His tone was truculent—unhappy—as he shifted to sit next to where she lay. She rolled to her side, giving him her back. When she would have shared with him her dim view of the benefit of conversation, his hand landed on her hair. “You’re all undone, my girl. Best sit up and take your medicine.”

He sounded a little less unhappy but still brusque. Maggie wrestled skirts and a dragging fatigue to sit cross-legged beside him on the blanket. He produced a pocket comb and had his dark locks put to rights in a thrice, dratted man.

“Say something, my dear, or I will think you have sense enough to regret what just happened on this blanket.” He started to work on her hair while she tried to think of an appropriate reply.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” she said, plucking at the grass beside the blanket. “And I do not regret what happened.”

“No.” His hands were gentle as he drew her unbound hair over her shoulders. “But you’ll regret what will happen now.”

She tried to twist around to see him, but he had her by the hair. “What will happen?”

He dropped her hair. “This is my handkerchief, Maggie Windham. My formerly snow-white handkerchief.” He tossed it over her shoulder so it landed in her lap. At first she didn’t see anything except that the thing had been crumpled with recent use, then her eye caught the one faint pink streak cutting across the fabric. She smoothed out the little formerly snow-white square to see a few more streaks of pink.

“This means nothing.” She lobbed the offending linen back over her shoulder. “Not one blessed thing. What happened here was of no moment whatsoever.”

“I beg to differ. Hold still.” He used the comb to restore her part, while Maggie could do nothing but allow him. “When a man has proposed to you and then gains intimate knowledge of your person—and he is the first to have such knowledge, I might add—you are accepting his proposal.”

She was glad to be facing away from him, for the pain his words caused was stunning. “I was doing no such thing.”

“Maggie.” He bent over her from behind, speaking very softly while he held her by the shoulders. “I did not spend inside you, but you might have conceived nonetheless. Do you want our first child to be a seven-months babe?”

A
baby
. Maggie’s hand went to her womb while a pang of nigh unbearable longing shot through her. “Unfair. I am not likely to have conceived.”

“You don’t know either way.” The comb dragging through her hair was applied with a careful touch, systematically working through one skein after another. “And while you’re hesitating, waiting to be sure, you’re going to give fodder to any gossip ever to take tea with Her Grace.”

The idea that Her Grace might find out what Maggie had been up to was disquieting in the extreme. “You don’t kiss and tattle.” Her voice shook a little, so disconcerted was she.

“I won’t have to say a thing when your body is great with our child. We can be married quietly if you prefer, though Their Graces will likely be puzzled by such a choice.”

He sounded so damnably sure. Maggie seized on the resentment that engendered and clung to it fiercely. “Stop bleating about marriage. You don’t love me, and we’re not getting married just because we shared a little pleasure on a blanket behind some secluded bushes.”

She could feel him beginning to braid her hair, feel him rearranging arguments like so many longbows poised above a battlefield.

“A
little
pleasure, Maggie?” The pitch of his voice had her insides fluttering in remembrance. “I gave you only
a
little
pleasure? Imagine what I could do if we had the privacy of a locked chamber, hours of solitude, no clothes, and a large bed with lots of pillows. Imagine getting your hands on me. You could tie me hand and foot, explore to your heart’s content, put your mouth wherever you pleased, and I’d be helpless to stop you.”

“Oh,
hush
.” She closed her eyes against the weakness his words provoked. “You are naughty, Benjamin Hazlit.”

Though she was one to talk about being naughty.

“I am determined.” He began to pin her braid in a coil at her nape. He was a more efficient hairdresser than Alice, and Maggie had to drag her mind away from the idea of having him tend her like this for years… much less the idea of that other nonsense.

“Why won’t you marry me?”

“Gracious, you are persistent.” She patted the bun he’d so expertly fashioned. “Has it occurred to you if I marry you all my wealth and independence would be forfeit?”

“If you don’t trust me to leave your fortune in peace, transfer your wealth to your brother’s name. He’ll steward it as you direct.”

Gayle would be more conscientious with her money than she was, which was saying something. “And what of my freedom, my independence?”

How such a big man could move so quickly was beyond her. One moment Maggie was looking around for her boots and stockings, the next she was flat on her back with fifteen stone of determined earl poised above her.

“You call it independence, but you never so much as go for a drive in the park, Maggie Windham. You do not make social calls except on your family members, you do not entertain, and you do not permit yourself even a dog for companionship. As my countess, you’ll have the run of the society functions, your invitations will be accepted by all and sundry, and you will have my charming and devoted company at your beck and call, even and especially in your confinements. Plural, God willing. Marry me.”

Devoted was a daunting thought, particularly coupled with beck and call and confinements—plural—and most especially when he emphasized his point by lowering his mouth to hers.

This was not a pillaging or plundering kiss, it was a
convincing
kiss. Slow and sweet, mesmerizing in its tenderness. Gracious God, the man was kissing her witless. Maggie raised a hand to cradle his jaw, thinking only of how badly she was going to miss him, when an outraged whiskey baritone cut through the haze of pleasure clouding her mind.

“Magdalene Windham, I cannot believe what my eyes are seeing!”

***

Benjamin Portmaine’s reflexes had stood between him and severe bodily harm on more than one occasion. He was used to the narrowing of vision that came with extreme peril, the electric jump in his system’s level of alertness.

“Lady Dandridge.” He rose to his feet and extended a hand down to Maggie. Thank God and all His angels they were more-or-less properly attired. “Apologies for my lapse of discretion, but a pretty day and the company of my intended overcame my better sensibilities.”

Maggie’s head came up, and he could feel a contradiction boiling forth from her, so he leaned over to kiss her cheek.

“
Not
now
.” In addition to the warning growled in her ear, he squeezed her hand then turned a fatuous smile on Lady Dandridge. “I’m sure you’ll congratulate me on winning Lady Maggie’s hand.”