The Heart of a Scoundrel (32 page)

Then, her wild abandon in Lord Essex’s gardens was proof that there was nothing polite, proper, or decent about her. Phoebe could no sooner tear her gaze away from Edmund as he pulled the white lawn shirt over his head, than she could slice off her smallest left finger. She was a wanton. There was nothing else for it. Edmund tossed his shirt atop the rapidly growing pile of clothes and climbed on the bed, prowling forward much like that sleek, black panther, forever frozen at the oddities shop, back when the world had been right for her and Edmund. Except this man, who now guided her up and set to work unfastening each tiny button along the length of her back. would never be so weak as to be trapped. Not like that poor panther. Edmund, with his strength and power, could reign over even the strongest of those jungle creatures. He slid button after button free of its delicate eyehole. Then the cool air slapped her back through the thin, flimsy fabric of her chemise.

“So beautiful,” he whispered, placing his lips to each inch of skin he exposed.

Tingling shivers of awareness shot down her spine and she arched her neck. “N-no,” she managed to rasp out. “Th-there doesn’t have to be lies in this. Let this be the one h-honest thing between us.” She at the very least wanted this of him. He dragged her hand to his lips and pressed a firm kiss to her wrist, and then placed it on his chest. The rapid pounding beat of his heart thumped beneath her fingers; a testament to his need for her. “My heart does not lie.” Not in this. Just in the ways that mattered. As though sensing the bitter path her thoughts had pulled her down, he claimed her lips once more. There was nothing gentle or apologetic about this kiss. It was a man branding a woman as his, and she pressed herself against him, taking his mouth with an equal intensity, marking him as hers. If just for this moment.

A breathless moan escaped her as he expertly slid the gown downward, moving it past her legs, and leaving her in nothing but her undergarments. That moan became a sharp cry when, through the fabric of her chemise, he cupped her right breast. As he weighed that round flesh in his palm, her head fell back and she gave herself up to the sensation. He captured the swollen peak between his thumb and forefinger and teased the sensitive flesh. Pleasure ran through her and she shot her quaking fingers to his head and gripped his long, dark hair and held him to her. Edmund continued to tease at the tip until a scorching heat spiraled through her and pooled at the juncture of her thighs, filling her with such hunger she’d go mad if he didn’t alleviate the empty ache within.

Phoebe groaned in protest when he pulled away. The tense set of his mouth and the agony reflected in his eyes might as well have been a mirror into this desperate hunger she herself now knew. “From the moment I met you, I longed to have you naked, with your hair draped about our entwined limbs,” he whispered, and disentangled one hair comb from her intricately arranged hair.

“S-surely not the first moment.” After all, their first meeting had been born on the wings of a lie.

“Yes, the first.” He tossed it to the nightstand and then paused to run his gaze over her face. “I just didn’t realize it.” He reached for the other gold comb and freed her hair.

Yet this was not the first time they’d join their bodies as one. “B-but you already had me.”

“Not like this, Phoebe,” he said, his gravelly voice, harsh with desire? Regret? Surely he was incapable of that sentiment.

*

She’d deserved her first moment to be made more than that quick coupling in Lord Essex’s gardens. Edmund swept his lashes low. Yes, that time could not be undone… but he would take his time loving her and learning every contour of her delicate frame.

Phoebe’s auburn tresses tumbled in a shimmering cascade about her naked shoulders and the sight of her, an olive-skinned, lithe beauty to rival those spiteful Greek goddesses, stirred his emotions. Never before and never again would he hunger for a woman more than he did her. His ears filled with the raggedness of his own breath and hers as they joined their hands as one.

With an almost physical pain at his body’s surging awareness of her, he ran a hand down the satiny smoothness of her forearm, lower and lower. With sure movements, he enfolded her hand in his and slid his fingers into hers so they were joined in unison—interlocked in ways he’d never before been. His vision was transfixed by the sight of the union of their hands, her fingers graceful, long, and delicate and his hard, dark, and scarred—an unlikely pairing—and somehow all the more perfect for it.

The muscles of his throat moved in a reflexive swallow. Until Phoebe, he’d never bothered to hold a woman’s hand in bed. There had been no need. Nothing but a mindless, soulless desire had driven his past. Until now. Until her hand. Her fingers.

“What is it?” Phoebe’s hoarse question brought him to the moment.

He gave his head a shake and raised her fingertips to his lips. “You are perfect,” he said again. With swift, sure movements he removed her chemise and the remainder of her undergarments. For every woman who’d come before her melted away into a faceless, nebulous shape so all he saw, all he wanted to see, was Phoebe.

Her cheeks pinkened under his stare. “You no doubt say that to ev—”

Edmund crushed her lips under his once more, swallowing those words, willing her to feel the truth, when her mind could not believe it. In one fluid movement, he laid her down and came over her. He reached between them and teased the damp auburn curls that shielded her womanhood.

Her hips arched off the bed. “Edmund,” she gasped and bucked into his touch.

She might despise him for his crimes against her, but her body hungered for his. That would be enough. It had to be. “Do you want this, Phoebe?” he reveled in her panting, raspy moans of desire. He teased her pleasure nub until she cried out. “Tell me,” he demanded harshly, pressing the heel of his hand into her. “I do,” she moaned, her hips arching back, seeking, searching.

Edmund drew his hand back to her sharp cry of protestation, but moved slowly down her body. He dragged his mouth over hers, trailing kisses down her neck, lower.

Phoebe shot her hands out and clasped her fingers in his hair. With a wanton urging that sent blood racing to his shaft, she dragged his head to her right breast. He hovered with his mouth poised over her soft skin, gleaming with moisture. “Do you want my mouth on you here, Phoebe?” he whispered and brushed a faint kiss over her nipple.

Her thick lashes fluttered open. “I do,” she rasped.

Masculine triumph ran through him and he darted his tongue out teasingly and, to her cry of protest, he continued lower. He lowered his face between her thighs.

She came up on her elbows. “Wh-what are you doing—?” Her words ended on a shattered scream and she fell back on the bed, as he pressed his mouth to her core.

Edmund slipped his tongue inside and caressed her, laving her hot, throbbing center until she thrashed her head wildly upon the pillow. The taste of her sweet and more potent than any spirit he’d consumed drove him to the edge of madness. He pushed his tongue deep inside, working her until she pumped her hips toward his mouth in swift, jerky movements that indicated she was nearing that point of her body’s surrender. Edmund drew back. “Please,” she begged and ran her fingers down his back in a bid to pull him close, but in a frantic need to free himself, he shoved off his breeches and kicked them over the bed.

Her lips parted on a soft moue and with that softening, he drew her up, flush to his frame. A harsh groan escaped him, broken and shattered at the burn of her satiny soft skin against his. With an ache to feel her hand upon him, he drew her small palm to his chest.

She toyed with the mat of hair on his chest and then the same bold woman who’d danced away from Society’s reach at Lord Essex’s rubbed the flat circle of his nipple.

He hissed and she picked her head up. “Did I hurt you?” Several lines creased her brow.

In response, Edmund took her hand and brought it lower, guided it down to the burgeoning member that stood out in reach for her. He paused and studied her; aching to know her touch on his naked flesh, without the barrier of cloth between them this time. But he’d not take his own pleasure at the expense of her uncertainty.

The air left him on a swift exhale as Phoebe stroked the head of his shaft. She looked up quickly, as though to ascertain whether she’d caused him more than this pleasure-pain, and then swiftly returned her attention to exploring the size and feel of him. She ran the tip of her index finger up and down the length of him; that feathery, light caress an exotic torture he’d have given his entire landholdings, his title, and every material possession to forever know. And since he’d already consigned himself to Hell for many sins before this, with his hand, he guided hers about his hardened member and showed her the slow, up and down rhythm.

His head fell back on a pained groan as she began working him with a seductive hold both innocent and brazen that he nearly spent in her hands like some inexperienced youth.

He wrenched away and she furrowed her brow. “I’m sorry—”

Edmund kissed her hard, momentarily silencing her and then pulled back. He ran his gaze along her face, memorizing the delicate planes as well as the faint birthmark on the lobe of her right ear. In an imperfect world, she was the only piece of perfection. “You never have to be sorry for anything that happens here in this bed, between us. Ever,” he said on a gruff command and then closed his mouth over the turgid bud of her breast once more.

Phoebe cried out and tangled her fingers in his hair, holding him in place, and urging him on with her pleading moans. Gently, he drew the swollen tip between his lips and then swirled his tongue over it until the room filled with her cries. Passion licked away anything but the feel, scent, and sounds of his wife in her unrestrained pleasure.

Guiding her down onto her back once more, he came over her, and parted her thighs with his knee. Edmund worked his eyes over her flushed cheeks and then locked his gaze squarely with hers. “I have ached for this moment since Lord Essex’s. I will never have enough of you.”

Those were the closest words of endearment he could or would ever give her. In response, Phoebe splayed her legs open. A wall of emotion slammed into him, humbling him with her unwarranted offering in light of his betrayal. Her arms came up and she wrapped them about him, holding tight.

Then with a groan he slid himself into her welcoming, wet heat.

Phoebe cried out and wrapped her arms about him.

This meeting was not the gentler, more tentative meeting when he’d last joined his body with hers in Lord Essex’s gardens. Now, they moved with a primitive savagery. He thrust himself hard and deep inside her. Over and over again. And she lifted her hips in perfect rhythm to his body’s movements.

Low, hungry moans slipped past her lips. “Edmund.”

Sweat beaded his brow and dripped into his eye. He fought the surge of desire threatening to take him under and urged her onward to her pleasure. “Come for me,” he demanded. “Come.”

Phoebe’s body went still and then her eyes flew wide. “Edmund?” His body stiffened as he crested the precipice of release and then he was hurtling forward, careening in a blinding flash of light and color, and Phoebe was coming with him. He stiffened, his shaft spurting his hot seed deep inside her womb, filling her.

Dragging in great, gasping breaths, Edmund collapsed atop his wife. He lay there, eyes closed, relishing in Phoebe’s own shuddering breaths.
I will never have enough of you…

Phoebe’s gentle caress up and down his back brought his eyes slowly open. “Edmund,” she whispered.

“Yes, love?”

She stilled at the endearment that had slipped out unheeded, unchecked. A slow smile formed on her lips, terrifying him with the emotion there. “You are crushing me.”

With a curse, he immediately rolled off her. He pulled her into the fold of his arm and drew the blankets over them. There would be time for the resentment and anger that had brought her to this union later. For now, there was peace. With Phoebe’s auburn tresses a silken curtain wrapped about them, Edmund closed his eyes.

T
he faintest rumble at her back penetrated Phoebe’s slumbering. Her body hot like the kiss of a sun on a summer’s day, she wanted to close her eyes and lose herself in that soothing warmth once more. Then a loud snore filled the room. Her lids fluttered open and she stared at the pale yellow wallpaper—the unfamiliar pale yellow wallpaper. She tried to make sense of her surroundings: the heat, the snoring, and then she remembered.

God in heaven. She was married. To the notorious Marquess of Rutland, who’d only begun a false courtship to bring him closer to Honoria and who’d threatened to destroy her family if she did not wed him. That truth still ran through her heart with the same raggedness as the moment she’d overheard him speaking to her father yesterday morn. Had it only been yesterday?

She scooted out from under the fold of his powerfully strong, well-muscled arm and turned on her side to look at him. Something pulled inside at the peaceful, unguarded evenness of the chiseled planes of his face. A loose, black curl tumbled over his brow, softening him. She propped her head in her palm and continued to examine this man she’d married.