Not Proper Enough (A Reforming the Scoundrels Romance) (30 page)

He removed her garters and stockings, and when she was absolutely bare, he turned her around. Still on his knees he kissed the top of each of her thighs, hands cupping her bottom, then moving around her hips and down. His fingers slid lightly, so lightly between her thighs. “Lovely Ginny.”

Butterflies took flight in her belly, and she looked down, her hands resting lightly on his head. Fenris. A man she had hated for years. His hair was silk against her fingers, thick locks of dark, dark brown settling around her hand and fingers. She was hardly able to believe she felt like this, when for such a long time after Robert’s death she’d thought those feelings had died with him.

This was Fenris, the Marquess of Fenris, on his knees before her, worshipping her with his hands, his mouth, his
eyes and breath. He ran his palms from her legs to her hips and up her back as far as he could reach, and desire snaked through her, twisting her emotions and then pushing out everything but him and what he made her feel.

At last, though, he rose and took her face between his hands and kissed her, openmouthed from the start, savagely even, a deliberate taking of her, a prelude to what would come. Tongues touched, entwined, their breath mingled, and his hands cupped her face. He was breathing faster when, at last, he pulled away from her. He took her hand and guided her to his bed, a monstrous canopied four-poster.

He said, “Lie down. I want to look at you.”

He undressed while she did that. Boots, stockings, his coat and waistcoat. He let them drop where he stood. She caught a flash of the medallion when he put his watch on the chair. Very quickly he stripped himself of everything, and Eugenia’s breath caught, because physically he was shockingly perfect. Sleekly muscled, just as she remembered, and, yes, absolutely as large everywhere. Lord. His cock was erect, and she had an intense longing to touch him, all the girth and inches of him.

From the bed, she held out a hand. “Come here.”

“Ginny,” he whispered as he joined her.

He came over her with no preamble. He nudged a thigh between her legs, and she adjusted. From the very first push of him inside her, she groaned. Her passage was wet for him, ready for his entry, aching for him, and this was a thousand times more intense than before. Pure joy flashed through her. Perfect. So simple, to feel
this
way, to accept a man inside her.

He groaned when he was as far inside her as it seemed possible for him to be, stretching her, filling her, and this was what she’d wanted all those lonely years since Robert. She missed this, a man’s body, his sex inside her, pushing. Thrusting, then the delicious slide away. She missed knowing she was adored.

“God, Ginny, my God, you take my breath.” Eyes locked
with hers, he withdrew all but the head of his cock, then pushed forward again, slowly this time, and he fit so perfectly. She tipped her hips toward him, and he put his hands on either side of her, lifting up enough to see her, and the rhythm began.

Every stroke delicious, the roughness of his thigh against hers, the slide of his belly against hers, skin to skin. The hitch in his breath and hers. His thrusts were harder now, as hard and as rough as before, and she found she did like that. She lost herself to the pitch of her body, the call of her climax, met that, her arms tight around him, palming his backside, feeling the flex and release of his muscles. He was good at this, she realized. Taking a woman. Practiced.

Well. Thank God, for that.

At one point, he paused and took a steadying breath. His eyes drooped half closed, and she had one leg drawn up, and she arched against him, pressing herself to him, and he stared into her face, shook his head once, and grabbed her wrists, pinning them to the mattress above her shoulders, and he pumped hard against her forward push. He put a hand on her breast and curled the other around her head, and he rolled his hips and hit a spot inside that shattered her.

“Yes,” she heard him say. “Yes.”

She was brought to a point where the pleasure reached such a peak she couldn’t move, could hardly breathe, and only moments after she had breath in her lungs, he hit that spot in her, no accident then, and she came apart all over again. He gave her the space of a breath or two to come down before he shifted his weight to one forearm, nearly on his side, and cupped her bottom, bringing her harder forward. The rhythm continued, faster now. Urgent.

They reached a point where she knew he was close, and so was she, again. His eyes, at this moment, were unfocused, lips parted, and then he whispered to himself, urgent and with shorter and shorter breaths. “Ginny, Jesus, oh, God.”

He threw back his head and let out a low moan as he pressed hard into her. His arms shook and he lowered himself onto her, hips still hard against her, still pushing
forward, head to her shoulder, and she held him while he finished.

When, later, he withdrew from her, he breathed her name again, and for some reason she couldn’t speak for fear she’d cry.

They began again with him exploring her body, his cock soft, and she touched him, too. Eventually, he grinned at her and the light in his eyes was so very smug when he put her on her back and he entered her again. Different this time than before. More desperate now, so that neither of them had time to think. He was rougher than he had been, and that made her smile, because if he thought to master her like this, he was mistaken. She wanted this from him.

She turned her head and bit his upper arm, not hard, but enough that he felt it, and he shouted out. She wound her fingers into his hair until he forced her hands away and spread her arms wide and pinned her. Very different this time, his taking possession of her like this, with both of them aware that she’d both invited him and brought him with her.

“I don’t want to bruise you,” he said.

“I don’t care.”

He bent his head to her breast, his fingers tight around her arms, and closed his teeth on her nipple, enough that she sucked in a breath and then went over the edge without him. The finish this time was sweeter, but no less intense. They lay together for a time, limbs entangled.

“Ginny.” He drew a strand of her hair away from her face. “I have to send you home now.”

E
UGENIA AND
H
ESTER WERE IMMEDIATELY SURROUNDED
when they arrived at Hyde Park shortly before noon. It was their habit on days she and Hester were not at home to walk to the park before making calls. It had been her thought that getting out of the house would take her mind off the fact that she’d heard nothing from Fenris. Nothing but the most awful silence.

A friend of Hester’s, a Miss Lynd, drew them into the midst of a crowd that quickly grew larger and included both genders, though most everyone was Hester’s age or younger. Lieutenant Fraser was among the gentlemen, with his elder brother, too.

“Have you heard?” Miss Lynd put a hand on Hester’s arm.

Hester smiled, but Eugenia’s heart fell to her toes in a premonition of disaster. “Heard what?”

“Everyone’s talking about it.” She fanned the air with a hand.

“About what?”

“Dinwitty Lane and the Marquess of Fenris dueled this morning.”

“Dueled?” Hester shot a worried look at Eugenia. Though her stomach clenched, this was not the news she’d dreaded hearing. The fact of the duel was nothing. “Heavens, why?”

There was a great deal of talking at once with interruptions and fevered speech from the crowd around her and Hester. She saw Lieutenant Fraser pushing his way toward them. Toward Hester.

“Mr. Ellington said Mr. Lane insulted Miss Reade.”

“No, no, it was Miss Rosalyn.”

“No it wasn’t. It was—”

“Fenris insulted Miss Repton—”

“They argued over a horse, is what I heard.”

“—a Miss R at any rate.”

“No one’s seen Mr. Lane.”

“Oh, dear,” Hester said. The crowd around them grew thicker.

“Or Lord Fenris. Has he called on you, Miss Rendell?”

“No.” Hester turned her head this way and that. Baring’s eldest managed to reach Hester before his brother. “Do you think he would? Why?”

“Well he would, on account of Lady Eugenia. She’s a connection of his, after all.”

“No. Not that I know. Camber’s not said a word to me.” Hester turned to Eugenia, eyes wide and concerned. “Surely, Lord Fenris would call to let you know all is well, wouldn’t he, Lady Eugenia?”

Before she could formulate a response to that, more opinions were offered. Lieutenant Fraser inserted himself between his brother and Hester.

Someone said, “My brother says he wasn’t at his office at Westminster.”

“They had an engagement today, and he was not there. He never misses appointments.”

“His secretary claimed he did not know where Lord Fenris was.”

Speculation continued in this manner with stories about other duels interspersed with appeals to Eugenia for any scrap of information, since, after all, Fenris’s cousin was her sister-in-law.
There was nothing she dared offer, no knowledge she could share. Silence seemed by far the safest response.

A young man came blowing up to the group, out of breath as he greeted the others. Lieutenant Fraser put his arm around Hester’s waist. Silence fell. “I’ve just come from St. James’s Street.”

“What?”

“Pray tell, what have you heard?”

He took off his hat and put it over his heart. “There were bets at White’s that Lane would kill Fenris at five to one odds.” He waited for the gasps to subside. “Three to one Fenris would be wounded.” He looked around the gathering, expression grave. Eugenia’s heart stopped beating. “I’m told someone’s just paid out fifteen thousand pounds.”

Hester frowned. “For which wager?”

The young man’s gaze settled on Hester and with apparent reluctance he said, “That Lane would kill Lord Fenris.”

One of the young ladies let out a shrill scream that descended into tears. “No, no. Not him.” She swooned and was only just caught by one of the men. Amid the rush to restore the girl to her senses, Eugenia stood immobile, numb to all reaction. Baring’s heir stood beside Hester and had bent to whisper in her ear.

Her heart beat once, but surely never would again. This was Robert’s death all over again, with her not where she ought to be and having to hear the news from strangers.

“Three thousand pounds?” Hester tapped a foot. She gave Lieutenant Fraser a push. His brother, too. No one was listening to her. That girl, whoever she was, continued to sob as if she had a right to such heartbreak. “That seems a great deal of money to wager on something so uncertain. Even if you’d win fifteen thousand.”

“Wait! Wait! Wait!” The gentleman who’d brought the news lifted his hands and obtained enough silence to be heard over a raft of desolate young ladies. “At Brooks’s they’re saying it’s Lane who was killed, and that Fenris is even now on his way to the Continent.”

Conversation, if at that point it could be called any such thing, degraded into babble. Eugenia worked her way free of the crowd, leaving Hester to the cluster of young men and ladies. She found a place in the shade of an ash tree, and there she stood attempting to make sense of her feelings. Of course she did not wish for Fenris to have been killed or injured or, God forbid, be on his way to Italy or Prussia or some such nation. Or for Lane to have been killed, for that matter. She did not want anyone to be injured. But that sentiment did not explain the fact that, for a moment, her heart had stopped beating, or that she’d thought,
not again.

A commotion near the street distracted her. Lord Aigen this time. The gathered crowd saw him, and even before he dismounted he was mobbed, absolutely mobbed. A woman near him cried out, a high, keening sound that struck cold fear into her heart. Eugenia’s knees turned to water.

She started toward the others, meaning to rescue Hester, but Aigen, standing at the curb, scanned the throng, searching for someone. Baring’s sons remained with Hester. When Aigen saw her, he nodded without his usual smile. Just a single motion of his head to signal that he hoped to speak to her as privately as possible in this public place. Her stomach clenched with dread, and she squeezed her closed parasol in one hand. She leaned against the tree, not out of sight of the crowd, but far from its siege. Even she, in her state of shock, knew she ought to stay where she was. Aigen would come to her with his news.

By the time Aigen arrived, she was composed, though, as she discovered, she could barely speak. “Fenris?”

“Is very much alive.”

“Oh, thank God,” she whispered. Aigen held her elbow, and she leaned into that firm grip. “Mr. Lane?”

He looked over his shoulder to be sure they’d not be overheard. “Under a surgeon’s care.”

She drew in a breath. “How badly was he injured?”

“Worried for his health, are you?”

“One needn’t like a man to hope he’s not been killed or badly injured.”

“True.” He considered her. “You don’t seem the sort of woman to involve herself with the likes of that fool.”

“I didn’t.”

Aigen straightened. “Fenris sent his personal surgeon to him. I’m told it’s not considered serious. Missed his heart, but one never knows with a wound of any sort. Infection is always a risk.”