The Heart of a Scoundrel (17 page)

Her body went hot at the husky promise of his question. She managed to shake her head. He placed his lips close her ear. “I would spend my time making love to you.”

Oh, God. She momentarily slid her eyes closed. Edmund expertly righted her as she missed a step, catching her to him in a way that brought their bodies momentarily flush. Wicked warmth spiraled through her; a heady aphrodisiac lent power by the forbidden words he’d whispered here amidst the proper lords and ladies twirling about them. She wanted him. In all ways: in her arms, her heart, her life.

Phoebe could go through her life controlled by the strictures of Society and the expectations placed upon her. She located her mother at the edge of the ballroom talking to her host. Empty. Sad. Alone. Or she could become molded as her mother had been.

Edmund rubbed the pad of his thumb over her waist, burning her with his touch, even through the fabric separating them. “Nothing to say?” Edmund whispered.

As she stared up at his cynical, life-hardened eyes, she saw in their depths that he expected her to be shocked and outraged, as any young lady would.

“I would say I want you to spend your time making love to me,” she whispered in return.

Hunger flared in his eyes.

The music came to an abrupt halt and they stopped amidst the other clapping dancers; strangers unknowing that Phoebe’s world was coming undone before them at the hands of this man’s passionate promise. They stood frozen, their breaths coming hard and fast. The forbiddenness of their exchange only fueled this maddening heat spiraling through her.

“Meet me in Lord Essex’s conservatory.”

His command was spoken so quietly she could have very well imagined it.

Then he dipped a short bow and stalked off. Rooted to the floor, Phoebe stared after him for seconds? Minutes? Hours? Time blurred together at the shocking words that were more order than request, he’d put to her. This scandalous promise of more in his arms was a wicked game she’d never before played and, as such, she did not know the rules or requirements. She only knew she wanted him.

Phoebe gave her head a clearing shake and walked off the dance floor. She located her friends, now locked in conversation with Gillian’s father and another prospective suitor. Shifting her attention away from the two young ladies, she looked about for her mother—and found her. Phoebe’s heart started. An uncharacteristically sad smile wreathed her mother’s lips and reflected back such pain, it stole the air from her lungs. In looking at her, this woman with Phoebe’s hair and eyes, and alike in so many ways, Phoebe saw her future…and wanted more. She wanted control of her own happiness. And sometime between Lord Delenworth’s terrace and this moment, Edmund had become inextricably intertwined with her happiness.

With that, she turned on her heel and attempted to blend with the satin wallpaper along the walls. She took her leave of the ballroom and went in search of Lord Essex’s conservatory. Phoebe lingered at the edge of the hall that would lead her away from respectability and into sin. She curled her toes into the soles of her slippers. To go off with him would mean ruin should she be discovered and yet…she loved him and wanted him. She wanted to know this fleeting happiness, while hoping it signified forever with him. All the while accepting that it might not. Phoebe wanted him, anyway. Through the crowd, her eyes found Honoria. Her friend no longer attended the conversation with Gillian’s father. Instead, she searched the crowd and Phoebe had little doubt she sought out her improper friend on a path of ruin.

Phoebe slipped down the corridor. Her heart thundered and fear stabbed at her. She was one set of prying eyes away from discovery. As one who’d never tasted a hint of impropriety and passion before Edmund, this was a world of sentiments she was unfamiliar with. Unlike Edmund who whispered scandalous words of making love to her amidst the ballroom and then urged a meeting. Such a man was accustomed to these clandestine meetings, but in her heart she knew this was altogether different than the ones to come before. A man of Edmund’s power and passion was not one who dallied with innocents…and she wanted to be the woman who broke through his cold façade and filled him with the warmth he’d lost in life. She stopped at the end of the hall and looked right and then left. Phoebe froze. The crystal doors marked Lord Essex’s infamous conservatory.

She tiptoed down the hall and as her foot depressed a loose floorboard, she jumped and raced the remainder of the way. With shaky fingers, she jerked the door open and all but stumbled inside. Silence served as her only company. She turned and closed the door quietly behind her and remained frozen with her eyes trained on her fingers upon that handle. “You should not be here,” she said softly. Wanting him as she did, and this moment signaling control over her happiness and fate, she could not, however, leave.

“No, you should not.” Phoebe stilled as Edmund’s husky baritone cascaded over her. This must have been the manner of temptation that had driven Adam and Eve to sin. Strong hands settled upon her shoulders and kicked her heart into that increasingly familiar hard rhythm. Edmund lowered his lips close to her ear and his warm breath fanned her nape. “But I am so glad you are,” he whispered. His lips caressed the sensitive skin behind her ear.

Her eyes slid closed as he continued to worship the column of her neck with his skillful kiss. The shock of being pressed against the glass door, on view for any stranger or servant who might steal down this hall and see them so, should have killed this masterful hold he had upon her senses. And yet, there was a shocking thrill at the prospect of discovery. A breathless moan slid past her lips as he turned her around and guided her against the glass paneled door, rattling it in its frame. Edmund took her lips under his in a hard, demanding kiss that she returned with equal degrees of hunger and shamelessness. She opened her mouth, allowing him entry and he groaned his approval. As his tongue found hers, they mated with their mouths in a hot haze of feeling.

Edmund captured her wrists in one of his large hands and brought them above her head, pinning them to the glass door. His kiss and actions were not the ones of a gentleman gently loving a delicate lady, but rather a primitive male who sought to brand a woman forever his. She reveled in his equal need for her.

“You should not be here,” he whispered as he dragged his mouth down her throat to the modest décolletage of her gown.

“No, I should not be,” she managed to rasp as he lowered the fabric of her gown, exposing her skin to the cool night air. “We’ve already a-ascertained as much. But I want to be.” And that is what truly mattered. In a world where she dreamed of passion and life through some other long dead hero’s travels, she would take this journey for her and she wanted Edmund as her guide. Her eyelashes fluttered wildly open and shut. This she would take for her. Her love for him fueled her need to know him in this intimate way.

Edmund released her arms and they fell limply to her sides, but he caught her hips in his hands and dragged her to the vee of his thighs. His manhood thrust at her belly; his hardness a tumescent sign of his own need. She moaned and with a wantonness she’d not believed herself capable of, reached between them and ran her fingers over the length pressing at the front of his breeches.

An animalistic groan worked up his throat and she reveled in the helplessness of that sound. Emboldened she continued to tentatively stroke him when he suddenly caught her hand once more.

She shot a questioning look at him. For the first time, the insecurity of being with a man who knew all in the art of lovemaking, a man accustomed to equally knowledgeable partners slammed into her. “Did I do something—?”

Edmund kissed the question from her lips and in one effortless movement, swept her into his arms. He stalked through the length of the floral haven. The sweet scent of peonies and roses filled her senses. So this fragrant, floral heaven was Eden. He paused momentarily at the back of the conservatory and then pulled a door open. The crisp night air enveloped them in its fold as he stepped outside to the walled-in garden. Edmund adjusted her bodice and then set Phoebe on her feet.

She blinked, as though dazed at the abrupt cessation of his caress. “Why did you stop?”

*

Why
had
he stopped?

Somewhere between the short walk into the gardens and this moment, the small, honorable sliver of a man who still existed hoped Phoebe Barrett would come to her senses. Hope that she’d realize he was a cad undeserving of the gift she offered with her eyes, kisses, and breathless moans.

But that sliver of a man was just a fragment of who he was. The dark, selfish, hungry bastard that he was only knew he wanted her. Wanted her and planned to take what she offered.

He shrugged out of his jacket, snapped the fabric once, and then deliberately set it down beside him. A wide-eyed Phoebe followed the garment as it sailed to the ground at the side of a rose brush, taking down with it several silken petals in its fall. “You will not leave?”

She hesitated and then slowly shook her head. “I would have you take me on this journey.”

Oh, God. He focused on his ragged breathing to keep from the innocent allure of that misplaced trust. Edmund stared at Phoebe through his lashes. “I am not so honorable that I will urge you to run. I have warned you, but your decision is yours.”

Phoebe wet her lips. “I know that, Edmund.”

That intimate use of his name on her lips drove him mad with desire and he closed the distance between them with a speed that brought a shocked gasp to those same lips. He settled his hands on her rounded hips and pulled her close. What hold did she have over him? As he took her lips in a demanding kiss, she met his desire with her own heated ardor. Edmund guided her gently to the ground and brought her down upon the fabric of his jacket. He came over her, taking in the rapid rise and fall of her chest. “Then come with me,” he whispered. “I will give you your journey.”

In one fluid movement, he shifted her gown and chemise down to expose her breasts once more to the moon’s glow. The pink tips of her nipples puckered in the cool of the night. On a groan, he closed his mouth around the pebbled flesh and worshiped the bud. A shuddery gasp exploded from her lips and then she fisted her hands in his hair and held him close.

Encouraged and afire with a hungering need for her, Edmund continued to lave the swollen tip. He blew faint puffs of air onto her nipple and then claimed it under his lips. Over and over he repeated the patterned movement until Phoebe splayed her legs open. “Please,” she begged.

Every other woman to come before Phoebe had merely been an object with which to slake his lust. There had been no bond. No connection. But rather a cold, emotionless meeting of two like beasts. He’d given pleasure and gained pleasure, but there had been none of this fiery ache inside and out to possess a woman in any way and every way she could be possessed.

Now, as he rucked up her wrinkled skirts and slid his hand between her legs to find her hot, wet center, he confronted the truth that she was different. Like a siren, she’d shaken down his defenses and tossed him onto the rocks, dazed, enraptured by her. With his hand between them, he teased the damp, auburn curls that shielded her womanhood.

Her hips shot off the ground. “Wh-what are you doing?” she gasped, but her legs fell open in an unwitting invitation.

With a slow grin, Edmund slid one fingertip into her honeyed warmth, relishing her broken cry. “I am exploring you, Phoebe. Learning what makes you cry with desire, tasting you so I never forget the taste and texture of you.” He toyed with the slick, wet nub of her center and she shot a hand out, covering his with her own, holding him in place.

“D-don’t stop,” she pleaded, her words a breathless entreaty.

“I do not intend to, love.” Fueled by the gripping need and an equal panic, he slid a finger into her dripping folds.

“Oh, my,” she cried out. “Edmund.”

He continued to work her, readying her for his entry and with each deliberate touch her cries took on a keening desperation that drove him to a frenzy.

The unrestrained sounds of her desire, headier than any other moment that had come before this, made every woman of his past melt away. Phoebe’s innocence was an aphrodisiac; a drug he’d consumed and now it possessed him. Once he had her, he could, at last, be free of her maddening, witches hold.

He parted her thighs with his knee and palmed her center with the heel of his hand, knowing just the pressure to drive her to madness. Phoebe screamed to the skies and he swallowed that unrestrained sound with his mouth. Sweat beaded the top of his head as he warred with the unholy need to thrust himself deep and pump into her over and over until he found release. His eyes slid involuntarily closed as she raised trembling fingertips and brushed back the sweat from his brow.

Edmund reached between them and released his erect shaft from the confines of his breeches. He forced his eyes open and held her passion-glazed stare. “This is going to hurt,” he said gruffly as he laid himself between the sweet envelope of her silken thighs.