Lorelie Brown (25 page)

He traced bold fingertips over her jaw and down her neck. She’d let her maid undress her and put her in a thin white night rail, but she’d drawn on a robe much too thick for the warm weather. She’d nestled into its heavy fabric for comfort. Now she regretted the choice.

When he drew a single fingertip down the folded lapel, she couldn’t feel it. Her head lowered to watch. It wasn’t the same thing. She wanted his touch on her, not on the fabric around her.

“I came,” he agreed. That active, mobile mouth of his that she keenly appreciated was still. She thought he might give his reason, but maybe the way his hand slipped around the back of her neck was purpose enough. “Where is your mother now?”

She sighed. “There’s a tonic she takes that helps her sleep through the worst of it. With her nurse overseeing, sometimes she sleeps for weeks at a time.”

“Straight through?”

“More or less.” She made herself smile. The front of her hair was pinned back enough to stay out of her face while she worked on the school’s needs. A few locks fell forward over her shoulder. She pushed them away. “It’s the best for her.”

He framed her face between both of his warm, strong hands. “Don’t do that.”

Her eyes stung with tears that she held back through pure will alone. “Don’t do what?”

“Prevaricate. Lie. Don’t be false, not with me.” He stared at her so intently, as if willing her to see beneath the surface.

Not with him, indeed. As if he were special. As if he hadn’t withdrawn in the face of her mother’s unrelenting and frankly terrifying emotion. She didn’t want to look at that. She didn’t want to
think
about any of that.

The only time lately she’d been fully without thought had been when she was wrapped in his arms. Reveling in him and the magic they made together.

She laid her hands carefully on his shoulders, enjoying their firmness. She lifted up on her toes until her mouth was within a fraction of his. She knew his scent and his truth. “Make me forget, please. Make it all go away.”

“You think I can?” His forearms lowered to the glass, so that the cage he’d made of his body came closer. She breathed him in.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” she teased. “But at the very least, you ought to try.”

“Gladly.”

The way he kissed her was magical, and he scooped her up. His hands went straight to her derriere as if drawn by magnets. Her toes dangled in the air for a moment, but she wasn’t exactly the dangling sort. When she lifted her knee, it gravitated toward his hip. They fit together.

Her hands kneaded across the back of his neck. With her eyes closed and her mouth fused to his, her body draped along his, they were one. Maybe that would be enough. Maybe they could hold off the other, sticky sort of darkness. She’d never felt so alone before, but he made it go away. Made her stop thinking about her drugged mother, two floors below, or the fact that her father hadn’t been home for weeks.

He shouldn’t have known where he was going, but somehow he backed them up until he landed at her chaise. The same one she’d first felt him on, the same one where she’d held his cock in her hand.

She could come to appreciate a piece of furniture in a whole new way.

He leaned back and draped her over his front. Though his hands smoothed and shaped her body, he seemed content to kiss her that way.

Lottie let herself melt. Her knees found a home between his, and the very top of her thigh came to rest against his particular hardness. Her hands delved into his hair. She loved the silken mass, the way he kept it so tidy and combed most of the time. Leaning up on an elbow, she looked down at him. “You’re a mess.”

His collar had come half-undone, and his skinny ascot was draped around his shoulders. She must have done that. She adored that thought. Her nipples tingled, and her stomach gave a happy lurch.

He chuckled. “While you’re not a mess, you’re a tousled beauty.”

“How well you flatter.” She gave a faux-dramatic sigh. “You have a woman lying on top of you. Seems excessive to continue with gross flattery.”

“It might be, should I be false.” He grabbed her firmly, pulling her leg up over his hips. His cock was hard, insistent and hot beneath her. “But you’re so beautiful that it seems to hurt you.”

Her heart hopped about in her chest like an insistent and injured bird. “What does that mean?”

“If you’d been less beautiful, people might be more willing to believe you’re miserable.”

She froze. All the way down to her toes and back up to her head. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t call up a false smile. “I’m not always miserable.”

“You don’t have to lie to me.” His hands were warm across the back of her shoulders.

The only defense she had wasn’t much in the scheme of things. So she lifted up, her knees splitting to nestle around his hips. She pushed her robe down around her shoulders and let it pool at her legs. The night rail was pure white and edged with lace. She unbuttoned it. Part of her knew she ought to have been more frightened. More nervous about being so displayed.

All she could hear was his insistence that she was miserable. She didn’t
want
to be sad. No one did, of course, but she had a special terror of it.

She’d push that evil away any way she needed to. Even by using Ian.

Wonder overtook Ian at seeing the mysteries of her body revealed. Her breasts were small but high. Pale skin glowed in the barest tinge of lamplight. The tips of her nipples were tight.

He needed to taste them. One hand flat at her low back, he bent upward. His mouth found her warm flesh. She melted further, as if her bones had disappeared. How right, since he was as hard as he’d ever been. There was nothing between them but cloth, and it was still entirely too much. Heat flared and burned. He needed her clasped in his arms.

Sitting up brought them closer. Pressed mouth to chest to pelvis. He wanted inside her. Wanted to know what secrets she kept.

Mostly, he wanted to make her sadness go away. He needed to know that he could help her. Save her.

Except maybe no one could.

Their hands scrambled and tugged away cloth. She opened his trousers, but then he shoved them down around his hips. She had to kneel upward for him to push them all the way off the end of the chaise. Her flimsy gown was hiked around her hips, but it was out of the way enough for their purposes.

Once she’d yanked his shirt up over his head, he didn’t see where it went. Couldn’t bother when it was in the way of getting his mouth on her skin again. From the freckles across the tops of her shoulders to the pale and curved length of her collarbone to the tip of her breast, he kissed it all. Licked and nibbled. His teeth raked down her flesh, and she only gasped.

Her hands came to rest at the back of his head. She held his mouth to her with delicious desperation that echoed through their every movement. They were frenzied.

Surely that couldn’t last. Surely that would eventually burn away. Beyond that crackling fire, the remaining coals would have to be sufficient to support a lifetime of warmth. How could that be without a family to focus on? What else would be left?

Maybe he only wanted to keep the lithe and dazzling woman in his arms. The sweet taste of her skin was beauty and excitement all in one.

“You treat me like I’ll break.” Her fingers tightened in his hair and held him closer. “I won’t. I can’t.”

“Everyone can break.” He molded his hand to the curve of her breast and the sweep of her ribs. He licked down her stomach toward her navel. “Everyone has a line.”

“Maybe.” Her fingers were cool and delicate as they wrapped around his prick. She moved with such assuredness. Taking exactly what she wanted. Bloody brilliant. “But I can guarantee one thing.”

He grabbed her by the hips and angled her up and back enough that his cock notched against her pussy. She was soaking wet and open for him. He ringed his grip around the base of his cock, both bracing as he liked and holding back the hot surge of pleasure.

Some wicked devil took him over. He slid the head of his prick up between her lips, aiming for that twist of special flesh at the top of her quim. Her lips clung and swept over his flesh. Good for both of them. Her little breathy gasps turned into a throaty moan.

“What is that?” she asked. She wiggled backwards. Her grip dug into his thighs. “Oh, right there. What is that you’re doing?”

He grinned. He couldn’t help it. Having a sensual woman atop his lap was awe-inspiring. “I’m playing.”

“Oh my God, why?” The words came out of her mouth, but her wide eyes said she probably didn’t care. She thrust up in tandem with the rhythm as he rubbed the head of his cock over her and through her. The soft wet kiss of her pussy along his length was completely worth it. She shook her head suddenly. “It’s not the same. Not
enough
.”

He knew. Oh Christ, did he know, but he loved being able to twine her into knots. Send her flying on the breeze. “Enough for what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and she sounded so very mournful that it took everything he had to not laugh. She wouldn’t like that much. “That
thing
. That happened last time. I want that again. You called it coming.”

Her nails dug into his thighs. He hissed against the sting. “You want my cock filling you and then you want that explosion, right?”

She nodded. Her hips twisted, seeking further connection. He shifted away. Let her writhe a minute longer. “It felt good. You made me feel good.”

A heavy pulse of satisfaction turned him into a more amplified version of himself. Where he’d been man, now he was beast. His grip could bruise, his teeth could mark. He ought to care. But he didn’t. He only wanted.

With a growl that increased his link to the animal part of himself, he folded one implacable arm around her ass and back. All of her was for him.

He surged up while she found purchase and shoved downward. Her pussy’s tight clasp was enough to drive him mad. Her whimper when her body ground against his hardness rocked through the room.

Immediately they strained together in the give and take of stroke and pull. Her head bent backwards, her body turning into one remarkable arch. He shouldn’t be here. If anything, it seemed cruel to them both. He couldn’t keep her and stay true to his dreams. If Ian understood anything from her mother’s turn for the worse, it was that he couldn’t ask her to change her mind. If she wanted to avoid children, that was her right. But he shouldn’t be here. Every bit of his cock in her risked her decisions.

And yet he’d been unable to stay away.

Their bodies fit together like parts of a whole. She clung to him with every stroke. Bliss sucked at his bones. The only way to keep from going under too fast was to feast on her flesh and subsume his pleasure in her. Every inch of skin he could reach became a canvas for his mouth.

Eventually he returned to her breasts, lifting her small mounds to his mouth. He sucked and licked, much heartened when an extra flood of her moisture dripped over his prick. He liked knowing how far he’d pushed her. How much she enjoyed it. The soft and pleased gasps she gave were excellent rewards.

He wanted her mad with feeling. Wanted her turned inside out for want of him, though he knew that was an unpleasant thought and something he wasn’t proud of. They had want and need. He had to know there was nothing beyond that.

He hitched her higher in his arms, so that her wet sheathe came off his cock. The sudden cold was enough to jar but couldn’t turn his mind away from getting back inside her. She grabbed tight to his shoulders. Her hair tumbled around them in a private, secret cave. They’d have few secrets between them. None, if he had anything to say for it.

Ian flipped them, then wedged her down into the cushions of the couch. She let go of his shoulder, her hands pushing upward toward the arm of the couch.

Then she laughed. Not meanly, not from any cruelty.

She laughed because she was enjoying the moment. Her eyes crinkled at the corners. Her wide, bright smile rocked Ian all the way down to his soul.

He slid inside her again, taking her harder this time, with mean jolting movement that thrust her hips up off the velvet cushions. She kept smiling, kept laughing, even when he pinched her clitoris between both thumbs.

She came on a gasping cry, turning her face to bury it against the side of her arm. Her pussy tightened over his prick to suck his brains and his soul right out of his body. The tingles started at the base of his spine, gathered in his ballocks. There wasn’t anything he could do, and the fact that he had to remove himself and spill across her thigh seemed like a sin.

A sin he would gladly commit again and again if it got him Lottie.

Chapter Twenty

Lottie usually liked parties, so long as they weren’t held in her own home. What wasn’t to like about balls? She got to wear gorgeous dresses, speak to elegant people and have an evening off from her worries, when she could pretend they didn’t exist. A lovely fictive need. Only the recent evenings spent hidden away with Ian in her room had been more effective.

But standing at the head of the stairs in the Duchess of Marvell’s ballroom this time filled her with a sense of dread.

Her father had arrived earlier in the afternoon. Now, he was being announced behind her. Thankfully her mother had begged out of attending—or rather her nurse had affected the same with a large dose of tonic.