Not Wicked Enough (22 page)

There was no telling what she would decide about the two of them.

Without letting go of her he said, “I dreamed about you last night.”

“I’m not responsible for your dreams.”

“No, but that damned medallion of yours might be.” He
reached out and touched the metal. “What if that Gypsy’s magic works and that’s why I can’t get you out of my head or my dreams?”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, it doesn’t, and well you know it.”

“Are you certain?” He dropped the medallion and moved closer. She retreated, but that put the wall at her back.

“Very,” she said. “There’s no such thing as magic.”

Their eyes locked, and he smiled because of the challenge there. Beyond anything, he wanted her in his arms. “Last night,” he said, “my dreams were filled with you.”

“Proper dreams, I hope.”

“Not very.”

“How odd, your grace. For I dreamed of you last night.”

“Was yours a proper dream?”

She lifted her chin. “You kissed me.”

“On the cheek, I presume?” He held her gaze. He wanted to be sure he would leave this room having stripped them both naked and left no passion unexplored between them. The uncertainty of gaining what he wanted aroused him. She was so maddeningly forthright and in control of herself. She might well tell him no.

“No, your grace. That was not where you kissed me.”

“Perhaps it was your forehead I kissed. I might have done that.”

She put her hands behind her back and shook her head. “Not there either.”

He arched his eyebrows. “Your hand?”

“No.”

“I confess myself baffled.” He moved close enough to draw a finger along the top of her shoulder. “Such warm skin, Lily. Soft beneath my touch.” He continued stroking her. Caressing her. He trailed the backs of his fingers along her collarbone. “Yours is skin a farmer or a duke would enjoy beneath his own.”

She pushed away from the wall and walked past him to the table. She turned with a motion that sent the fabric of
her skirts snapping. Her eyes swept over him from head to toe. “I do believe you are being deliberately wicked, your grace.”

“Do you object?” He walked to her, and he took her in his arms and turned so they ended with him backed up to the table and her with a hand on his chest.

“Wickedness does not become you.”

“I think it does,” he said. “But in any event, I cannot help my dreams.” He resisted the urge to pull her into his arms. Lord, but she was astonishingly pretty. “Or what you do in them. And you have done things in my dreams, Wellstone. Such things.”

“Infamous, your grace, that you lay the fault at my feet.”

He gripped the edge of the table on either side of his legs. He was mad. Mad to be pursuing this. He could not imagine doing anything but this. “In your dream, where did I kiss you?”

A grin flashed over her face. “Where else but in the library?”

He’d brought her here, where they would not be interrupted, and if it was not a bedroom, that hardly mattered. They were alone. He leaned forward, still holding on to the edge of the table. He was very much aware that he was responsible for what was happening between them. He wanted to fuck her, and she knew it and had come here with him. “That’s not where I kissed you in
my
dream. Shall I show you?”

She touched a finger to his chin. “Let me guess.”

Once, he thought. Once with her would be enough, though if this alluring, fascinating woman wasn’t averse to an affair, well, then. His life would become much more interesting for as long as they lasted. “Try.”

“Only if it would please you, your grace.”

“I’ll tell you if you don’t.”

She took a step closer and went up on her toes. His stomach bottomed out. He saw her lips part just as his eyes closed. She put her hand to his cheek and slid the cool tips of her fingers across his skin. She kissed his chin and drew back.

He stayed just where he was, leaning slightly forward. He opened his eyes. “How disappointing.”

“In what way?”

“That’s not where you kissed me.”

Her eyes glinted with humor. “I’m sure it’s where I meant to kiss you.”

They weren’t far apart. He leaned forward another inch or two and brushed his mouth over hers. She went still. Only for a moment, but enough that his heart gave a lurch. Then her palm cupped the side of his face, and she kissed him, and he let her. He invited her to kiss him, and she closed the distance between them until she stood between his spread thighs, and her torso pressed against his.

He leaned into the kiss and opened his mouth over hers, and she did reciprocate. Her hands moved to the back of his neck and her fingers pulled his head to hers. Lily Wellstone kissed the way she lived. Boldly. According to her taste. With conviction. Never married, and she kissed like this? Like a courtesan.

For all that she was bold and taking exactly what she wanted, she wasn’t a courtesan or his mistress. He knew better than this and didn’t give a damn.

His hands disengaged from the table, and he was holding her tight against him. Bringing her closer, closer. Jesus, not close enough. The hell with holding anything back. No man in his right mind would hold back with her.

She made a small sound in the back of her throat, and his tongue was in her mouth, and hers met his, touched, swept away, and her hands cupped his face as if he were precious to her, when, how could he be?

She did not break the kiss but gentled it. So tender, and he was content with that, too. Part of his mind was engaged with imagining her naked and accepting the pleasure her body afforded. They’d burn to ashes, the two of them, if things progressed to that.

At last, she drew away. Her hands stayed around his shoulders. He left his arms around her waist. “
Mmm
,” she
said, low and throaty. Gratified. She ran her fingertips underneath his eyes, along the line of his cheek, his nose and jaw. And his mouth. “I suppose your other lovers tell you how much they adore kissing you.”

Other lovers.
He wanted that to mean she now considered herself a member of that cadre. “Not in so many words.”

She smiled. “Well, you’re a lovely, lovely man, and I adore kissing you.”

“But not enough to make you lose your head?”

“Or you yours,” she said.

“It was a near thing, I promise.” He lowered his head to hers, his lips hovering above hers. “Perhaps we ought to try again. See if we can discover where we went wrong.”

“Perhaps we should.” She drew away, but he closed his thighs, trapping her gently between his legs. She could move away if she wished. “I wanted to kiss you tonight, and now I have.”

“And?”

Her eyes lost their glitter of humor, but he didn’t dare ask her what made that vanish. Not yet. “And,” she said, “I quite enjoyed it. Did you?”

“You know the answer to that.” He brought her close. The smile that curved her mouth made him mad to know what she was thinking, what she intended. Had she decided what would happen here? Between the two of them?

“I don’t think I do.”

They ended up looking at each other, and Mountjoy didn’t know what to do or say in response. So he kissed her again, and she melted against him and damn him to Hell if he wasn’t even more aroused. He took the lead this time and, yes, her kisses drove him mad. Wonderfully mad.

When they broke apart again, his brain must have been addled because he heard himself say, “Have you been to bed with a man before?”

That pert smile of hers danced on her mouth. “Have you been to bed with a woman?”

He stared at her lips and then looked into her eyes. She
was a passionate woman, but unmarried, and whatever else had happened between them, she might not be as experienced as he’d assumed. “Several times. Have you? Been to bed with a man?”

“Of course.”

“Your soldier.”

“Does that bother you?”

He brought her closer. “That you’ve been with a man before? Not at all.” A half-truth. He was jealous of her previous lover, of the way he’d captured her heart. “But if this was to be your first time, I’d be more careful. That’s the only reason I asked.”

“How thoughtful.” She leaned closer. “If this were your first time, I promise I would have been gentle with you.”

She never failed to amuse him at the most unexpected times. “Thank God I’m no virgin.”

“I should say so.”

He touched the medallion around her neck. “In my dream,” he said, “you wore this.” He smoothed a finger over the scrollwork etched in the metal. “Strange that I recall that detail so vividly.”

“You have a labyrinth of a brain, sir.”

“I parted ways with my mistress before I came here from London.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “No reason other than she no longer interested me, and I had a friend who was enamored of her. As well let her move on to a lover inclined to be more generous than I was.”

“Are you stingy with your lovers?” Her smile knew too much, but then Lily was unique among the ladies he knew. “That surprises me.”

He traced the line of her lower lip with his finger. “I am generous. But not as generous as a new lover is apt to be.”

“Did you enjoy making love to her?” Her voice was languid, warm silk, inviting, appreciative, and underneath a taste of need that resonated in her words, her half-shuttered
gaze, the curve of her body against his. He brought his hands to the side of her throat and slid them down, fingers spread over her skin, along the curve of her bosom. She tipped her head back, and he wanted to bask in his reaction to her. He understood the mystery that was Lily, knew the contradiction between the sweetness of her face and the sharp wit behind it.

“I did. But then as you know, I am a man of country appetites.” He dropped a kiss at the corner of her mouth. He kissed her again, and she melted against him. She responded with a soft moan and a step forward that brought her torso even closer against his. His hands wandered down her corseted back to the softness of that dip of her spine just before the swell of her bottom. The contact turned raw and needy, and he was halfway to climax already. The tingle of arousal centered in his nether parts, and he wanted that climax, the sweetness of completion in a woman’s body.

Lord, but this was the kind of kiss that led to naked bodies. He drew back, but kept his arms around her and only enough to say, “How far. How far are you willing to let this go? More than just a kiss? More than your mouth on me or mine on you?”

Her eyes fluttered down, lashes dark against the pale skin of her cheek. “Two kisses, I think.” She looked at him through her lashes. “Someplace convenient.”

“Two kisses seems a paltry number on which to decide.” He tightened his arms around her. “There ought to be a third, don’t you agree?”

“There ought to be a sufficient sample.”

“Four?”

“Four seems excessive to me.”

“Wellstone.” He trailed his thumbs along the inner curve of her breasts then pushed his fingers into her hair. A few pins came loose and he picked them out and kept going until her hair fell around her shoulders in golden waves, and it was wicked, seeing her with her hair down. Forbidden. As
if she’d stepped from her boudoir. And not one word of protest passed her lips. “I’ll take whatever you offer me.”

He waited while she drew in a breath and slowly let it out. He stood straight, moving them away from the table but still holding her head between his hands.

“Tell me what you want, your grace. Is it only a few kisses? Or is there more?”

“I want to see you in your bare skin. Lily. Will you do that for me? Every inch of you nude for my eyes to devour?”

W
OULD SHE? LILY COULD SCARCELY THINK, SO DRUGGED
was she from his kisses and the wicked promise of his voice. Lord, what wouldn’t she do for him? His request was outrageous. Brazen. If she were a proper sort of woman, she’d swoon with outrage. If she were a proper sort of woman, she wouldn’t be here with him. Alone.