Seducing Mr. Knightly (31 page)

Yet in the far recesses of his mind, Knightly was aware that this was likely her first time. She’d be shy and uncertain and would need an extra gentle touch.

To even things out, he took off his own shirt, dropping it carelessly on the floor.

Her eyes widened as her gaze roamed over his naked chest. Perhaps that didn’t put her at ease. Knightly couldn’t help it; he grinned. Then he tugged her closer and kissed her some more. Her arms stole around him, tentatively to start.

Slow, he reminded himself,
slow.
He wanted this to be perfect for her. And her hesitant touch set him on fire. Something about being where no man had been before. If he did one thing in his life, it would be to make sure that this moment had been worth waiting for, for her.

When he could take it no longer, he guided Annabelle to the bed; he needed to feel her utterly naked, beneath him. He needed to make love to her. Needed to like he’d been blind, and now had the gift of sight and never wanted to close his eyes again.

W
HEN
Annabelle had thought about this night, in all honesty, this was the part she had thought about most of all. Never mind that it was her first time and her knowledge was limited to the occasionally illuminating conversations of her fellow Writing Girls. She knew what was supposed to happen. She had wondered what it’d be like.

She hadn’t known. Dear Lord, she hadn’t known.

To feel this close to someone and to feel this wanted was to really know, for a moment, how cold and lonely she had been. Then Knightly proceeded to chase that feeling away every time he uttered her name in a husky voice, looked at her with undisguised craving. That was to say nothing of his kiss, which set her body and soul afire, and his touch, which stoked that fire.

Knightly lead her to his bed and together they tumbled down to the feather mattress. His bare skin was hot against her bare skin. She loved it. Loved the possessive feeling of his weight on hers. His fingers threaded through her own. It was the sweetest thing that he should still hold her hand in a moment like this when they were naked and tangled together. She didn’t know quite where she ended and he began.

“I can feel you smiling as we kiss,” he murmured, and she laughed softly. Knightly’s mouth nibbled oh so gently on her earlobe and it sent shivers down her spine.

“I wanted . . .” she whispered, but then gave up. She meant to tell him how she had wanted him, wanted this . . . But Knightly’s palm closed over her breast, gently caressing and holding. He shifted his weight and her protest became a gasp of shock and then of pleasure when his mouth closed around the dusky, sensitive peak.

Knightly did the same on the other side. Annabelle gasped, and Annabelle sighed, and Annabelle took the lesson she had learned from practicing fainting and just
let go.
Those sighs turned into murmurs of pleasure and she writhed beneath him. It was exquisite what he did to her with his mouth . . . leaving a trail of hot, scorching kisses from her breasts down to her belly, across to the indentation of her waist and lower still. The stubble on his cheeks was a wicked contrast to the softness of her own skin.

And then Knightly kissed her
there
. This she had certainly never imagined . . . didn’t even know . . . He licked the bud of her sex, slowly back and forth at first. Breathing suddenly became impossible. And then slow leisurely circles around and around as a particular heat intensified, and with it a feeling of increasing pressure.

Annabelle gripped the bedsheets in her palms. She couldn’t breathe. She felt like she was on fire. Like she might explode. The pleasure was so deep, so intense, so overwhelming, she simply couldn’t fight it. So she didn’t. She let go, cried out from the joyful release and surrendered.

She had risked her life for this. Risked rejection and mortification at the hands of the man she loved more than anything. It had been worth the risk. So very absolutely worth it.

“Annabelle,” Knightly said, his voice rough with desire. “I want you.”

She fixed her gaze upon Knightly. His dark hair fell rakishly down before his blue, blue eyes. How she had ached to hear those words from his lips. She had longed to see him thus: desperate for her.

She grinned wickedly—surely she now deserved to grin wickedly—and kissed him. It was now his turn to sigh.

“Annabelle, I need you,” he murmured. She felt his arousal, warm and hard, pressing at the entrance between her legs. She arched her back, tilted her hips, intrigued by the sensation of it. Knightly groaned, then claimed her mouth for another kiss. She felt the heat surging again. Felt the sparks. Felt like she wanted more.

“Tell me to stop,” he gasped. She wrapped her arms around him, entwined her legs with his. She couldn’t get close enough to him. There had to be more. They had to be closer. She wanted more.

“I want to be yours,” she whispered. “I want you.”

When Annabelle whispered those words, there was no going back. Even if Knightly had wanted to stop, not even the devil and all the angels in heaven could make him. He entered her, slowly, because he didn’t want to hurt her and because he did not want to miss a second of this. This one moment, this once.

She was warm and wet and ready for him. He pushed ahead until he was fully inside of her. Until there was no going back. Until he and Annabelle, at long last, were one.

“Oh, God, Annabelle,” he rasped, and then he thrust gently. She gasped with pleasure. He thrust again, harder, and she moaned with desire. And then again and again. He lost himself in the rhythm, in the scent of her and the sound of her soft cries of pleasure. Lost himself fully in the taste of her skin and surrendered to the overwhelming need to love her completely, to possess her entirely. He cried out, reaching his climax. She did too. He heard her cries of pleasure and felt her contract around him. He lost himself in this moment in which he noticed Annabelle, all of her.

Chapter 36

The Morning After

P
ARLIAMENTARY
I
NTELLIGENCE

There are rumors that Lord Marsden’s Inquiry is about to get worse—much worse.

The London Weekly

A
NNABELLE
awoke in Knightly’s embrace. He held her close and her head rested on his bare chest. She heard his heartbeat, strong and steady. She held him, too, with one of her arms flung over his chest as if to say
mine.

She thought she might have been having an extremely vivid dream in which she could experience the scent of him and the glorious sensation of his bare skin against her bare skin. But it was real.

This was real.

The world must have altered its course sometime in the night. Perhaps it started spinning in the other direction or started to orbit the moon instead of the sun. The world as Annabelle had known it ceased to exist.

Good riddance, she thought.

And to this wonderful new world, she practically purred good morning.

She didn’t often feel contentment. Usually she woke up slightly disappointed to open her eyes to her attic bedroom and to the chores and drudgery of the day that awaited her. But she summoned her hope and sunny disposition and dared to dream perhaps that day would be different.

The word,
contentment,
now had a new definition, and it was Knightly’s arms around her. It was this feeling of nothing between them, not even so much as a chemise or a bedsheet.

Or perhaps, Annabelle thought with a smile as she happily drifted from deep sleep to fully awake, perhaps this was joy. To waken in the arms of the man you loved. What could possibly be better than that?

Hmm . . . She smiled bashfully and blushed. They had made love. She’d had no idea. None at all. He’d teased and seduced New Annabelle to heights Old Annabelle never could have imagined.

Annabelle sighed, and this time it was a sigh of absolute and utter pleasure.

“Good morning,” a man’s voice greeted her. That never happened in her old world. And it was Knightly’s voice, still rough from sleep.

“Good morning,” she replied. It was a good morning indeed. She stretched and yawned and nestled closer to him. She loved him, and they had made love. Her heart had always belonged to him, and now the rest of her did, too.

“You are trouble, Annabelle,” he said, turning on his side to gaze down at her. He brushed her hair out of her eyes, away from her face. Her hair was surely in a state. But she didn’t care, not when he was looking at her like that.

“No one’s ever said that to me before,” she replied. “I like it. I probably shouldn’t but I do.”

“Good,” he practically growled. But he grinned, too, and claimed her mouth for another kiss. He clasped her breast and she arched her back, pressing herself closer to him, to encourage him to that again, and more.

“You are absolutely trouble,” he murmured as he feathered kisses along her neck. “For the first time in history, I will be late to the office.”

“At least you don’t have to worry about losing your position,” Annabelle said, and wrapped her arms around him and pulled him even closer.

“And I have a very good reason for being late,” he murmured as he rolled atop her. She parted her legs and felt him straining against her, ready. Oh so ready.

They made love again, trading in the cool glow from the moon for the softness of morning light.

“Annabelle,” he whispered, holding her close after they had both cried out in pleasure and lay for a while in each other’s arms. “Oh Annabelle.”

It was inevitable that reality would intrude. It took the precise form of Knightly’s valet, who discreetly entered the bedchamber with a tray of steaming black coffee and a thick stack of newspapers, which he set down on the bedside table before disappearing into what must have been the closet. Not once did he seem to register Annabelle’s presence in his master’s bed. Naked. Covered only by a bedsheet.

“I would feel better if your valet seemed to find this unusual,” Annabelle remarked.

“Part of his job is to maintain an inscrutable expression at all times. At any rate, rest assured that I do not often have women sneaking into my bedroom in the middle of the night.”

“I hope you don’t mind I did that,” Annabelle said bashfully, and Knightly laughed. She loved his laugh. Couldn’t believe she was in bed, naked, with Knightly. And they were laughing. Dreams she hadn’t known to dream were now coming true.

“Oh, Annabelle,” he said, still laughing but pausing long enough to drop a kiss on her nose. “Oh, Annabelle.”

“I’ll take that as a no, you don’t mind,” she said with a touch of laughter.

“Good,” he said . . . but all trace of laughter was gone from his voice. She peered over his shoulder at the newspaper he picked up and recognized the large masthead of a certain rival paper.

“
The London Times,
Knightly?” she said. She supposed he already knew every word of
The London Weekly.

“Hell and damnation,” he swore.

“What is it?” she asked, peering over his shoulder. She read the headline:
THE LONDON WEEKLY UNDER INVESTIGATION.
“Oh. That’s not good,” she said, which may have been the biggest understatement of 1825.

He scanned the lines quickly.

“I have to go,” he said, tossing the paper aside, right into Annabelle’s lap. He rubbed his eyes and the stubble on his jaw. She saw him glance around the room, bewildered. Worse, she saw that any lovely magical interlude they had shared was over. Knightly might still have been right next to her in his own bed, but in his head he was already at
The Weekly
.

He located his breeches and pulled them on before strolling off toward what she presumed was a dressing room of some sort. When he emerged a few moments later, he was dressed and groomed and looking like the Knightly she had known for years. Perfect, aloof, commanding, and ruthless.

“Stay as long as you’d like, the servants will take care of you,” he said, quickly dropping a kiss on her mouth. Her lips were still parted and wanting when he pulled away and headed to the door.

He paused for a second with his hand on the doorknob and glanced at her over his shoulder. His blue eyes focused on her for a moment, as if committing the sight to memory. As if he wouldn’t see it again.

“Damn,” he said softly.

The door clicked softly shut behind him. Like that, he was gone.

What did
that
mean? She pulled the sheets up higher, as if to comfort herself and ward off the growing cold, which had nothing to do with the temperature of the air, only an unfortunate feeling inside. When Knightly left, it was like the sun stopped shining.

And now he was gone and she was still naked in his bed, alone.