The Pursuit of Pleasure (10 page)

Another shock of heat and desire bolted through her. Her eyelids slid down as her head fell back and her body arched helplessly into his palms.

“Oh, yes.” He raised her hands over her head and leaned gently into her, pressing his weight against her. She could feel the heat and power of his body. “Very, very worth your while.”

A high keening cry of surrender flew from her mouth as he dragged her chemisette open. With his other hand he yanked loose the tie of her shift and tugged the edges down to expose the swell of her breasts above the molded confines of her stays. His gaze alone brought her nipples into tight, nearly painful peaks.

“Shall I touch them, Lizzie?”

“Lord, yes.” She watched in fascination as his fingers brushed lightly across first one tip and then the other. Sensation blossomed, rippling along her skin and down, deep into her core. She pressed into his palms, wanting more of the delicious contact, wanting more of his attention. And he gave it to her, lowering his head to lightly lick and suck each pink nipple until she was overwhelmed by need and gasping for air.

Lizzie felt her knees dissolve beneath her. Jamie caught her up and did exactly as he had said. He laid her down across thebed and began to strip off her remaining clothes. His fingers were swift and adept at the side buttons for her riding skirt.

“You really don’t have a maid.” His lazy grin skimmed down the front lacing of her stays.

“And you really don’t have a valet.”

“No,” he agreed conspiratorially. “You’ll have to help.”

Oh, yes. Her fingers itched to feel the smooth warmth of his skin again.

She reached up to untie his soggy cravat as he stripped off her full riding skirt and petticoats. He looked down to see her shod in full-length, gentlemen’s riding boots.

“So naughty,” he murmured.

Lizzie felt some of the awful tension ebb. This was the Jamie she knew, laughing and teasing. “Just your sort of naughty, Jamie.”

His grin spread across his face and up to his eyes, but in another moment he was intent again. He yanked the boots off and tossed them over his shoulder, and his hands, when they slid up her thighs to untie her garters, were rough and urgent. Her flesh quivered against his fingertips as he peeled down her stockings.

Her breath bottled up in her chest when his hands returned to her knees, kneading and pressing them ever so slightly apart. She resisted. If he touched her there, now, she would fly into a thousand pieces.

“What about you?” she asked instead.

“It seems only fair.” His smile was slow and knowing, his piercing, gray gaze never leaving her face. He reached up and stripped his shirt over his head. From where she lay, his chest seemed even broader and more defined than before. She wanted to touch him.

A little gasp of pleasure escaped her as she fanned her hands across the gleaming contours of his chest, marveling at the strength and beauty of his body.

“Lizzie? I’ve taken my shirt off for you before.” He smiled like a hungry wolf, all teeth and gray eyes. “As have you.”

She was sure he could see her nipples’ swift contraction beneath the thin cotton shift, but only she could feel the blissful convulsion deep in her womb. Need pulsed outward from the center of her body.

“You went first.”

“So I did.” He stepped closer and his hands went to the close of his breeches.

“No.”

He stopped, dropping his hands and stepping back a fraction, though the effort cost him something. His hands fisted by his side, the knuckles going white with tension.

“Lizzie?” His voice was both surprised and full of thwarted intent. Full of power he had leashed because she had asked. Power she wanted to fully experience.

She wanted to see him and touch him and feel the loose electricity of his body running under her hands. She wanted him to see her and touch her and make heat and cold pour through her like a sun shower.

But slowly, so slowly she would be able to recall each and every moment like the tastes of a sumptuous meal.

“Well, Lizzie? What’s it going to be?” He stayed there, standing before her with his hands loosely at his side, waiting, like a silent, patient wolf, a pale, half-naked, graven image brought to life. Waiting for her to choose.

The silver-white light of the stormy sky skimmed across his broad shoulders, turning him into a marble sculpture. But he wasn’t made of cold stone. No, he was flesh and blood. He reached out his warm hand and ran a finger lightly along the outer edge of her forearm. A simple touch as intense as his kiss.

“Lizzie?” His low voice hummed through her.

Her throat seemed dry and tight. The words came out on a whisper. “I want to.”

He knew exactly what she meant.

He took a step forward until he was close enough for her to touch. And then she set her hands to the smooth polished buttons, easing them through the buttonholes slowly. And every time she undid another one, the sculpted muscles of his flat stomach jumped in anticipation and impatience. She did that to him. That was her power, the power to give him pleasure just as he gave it to her, freely, openly. She felt a surge of joy, a low heat that began in her chest and flushed out across her skin as she dipped her hands into the waistband and began to slide both his breeches and smallclothes down over his hips, until he was naked before her.

He stepped back and let her look her fill. He was a study in supple tension. Her gaze skimmed over his long, lean, beautiful body and down to his rampant erection. He looked so intent, so potent, so overwhelmingly male.

She blurted out the only thing that came to mind. “I don’t want a baby.”

C
HAPTER 6

“H
ush, I’ll take care of that. There are ways …” Marlowe found himself laughing to cover the savage, possessive thrill in his gut at the thought of putting his seed within her. He reached for her, to bring her back within the persuasive circle of his arms and give her a reassuring smile. He felt surer of himself when he was touching her.

Lizzie was having none of it, damn her eyes. Stubborn, provocative chit. She somehow kept herself just beyond his reach.

“What ways?” Her look was a combination of ardent curiosity, skepticism, and trust. She was relying upon him to act like a gentleman. She always had.

He had acted the gentleman at fourteen. Barely. He’d been too frightened by the power of his own monstrous need for her to do anything else. But what would have happened to them, to Lizzie, if that hadn’t been the end of it? What if the squire hadn’t sent him away? They had been inevitable, he’d told her. What if they had gone on the way they’d begun? By sixteen there would have been nothing, no conscience strong enough, no punishment harsh enough, to have kept him from taking and using what she so trustingly offered.

Inexperienced and overeager, he would have made a hash of it.

For all his ruthless interference, the squire had been right to ship him off to the Royal Navy. Without his profession, Marlowe never would have become the man he was now, the man who could do more than just tempt Lizzie Paxton. He was the man who could, and would, keep her.

And so he would be a gentleman again. He had already waited nearly half his life to have her. He would steel himself to resist the temptations of her lush little body for a least a few more minutes. A very few. Because he could barely wait another moment to have her. To taste her. To feel the exquisite softness of her pearly skin against his mouth. To see her naked and writhing in ecstasy beneath him.

Instead, here he was, as hard as a keel and aching for her touch, while she waited impatiently for him to explain his intimate knowledge of contraception. It was going to kill him, letting her choose.

It was also taking every ounce of self-restraint he possessed. Because he wanted. He wanted her so much it set his teeth on edge. He wanted to kiss her and love her and command her to need him and love him and lie down on that bloody bed and open her endlessly long, lithe legs and let him sheath his aching cock inside her sweet, tight …

God help him.

Marlowe took a deep, fortifying breath.

That would never work. Not with her. Virgins, especially eager, curious, clever girls who ought not still be virgins, like Lizzie Paxton, couldn’t be ordered. She needed to choose. And he needed to know she had chosen him.

She would need to remember that, sometime in the future.

Even though, as far as she was concerned, there was no future. He would leave and that would be an end to it. His Majesty’s Navy would see to that.

So in the meantime, honor demanded he grant this one request. It was only fair. It wouldn’t be fair to leave her alone with a brat. She was hardly more than a brat herself. A brat with lovely, pale breasts and deliciously long legs.

Marlowe moved to kiss the sweet, soft corner of her mouth. “I’ll take care of you.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me.” She reached for her shift. “I’m perfectly—”

“No.” He stayed her hand. He liked her naked. Besides the fact that she was startlingly beautiful, it gave him an advantage. And he needed all the advantage he could get with Lizzie. “I meant I know what to do.”

But he was not, as it were, prepared. He had French letters in his trunk at the Red Harte, but he didn’t want to admit to Lizzie her new husband had such supplies as part of his normal kit. It seemed, at best, unflattering to his character. So he closed his eyes to the disheveled beauty before him and yanked his breeches back on over his rampant cock.

“Stay right here. I’ll be right back.” He padded out the door and down the stairs on bare feet, hoping to God that Mrs. Tupper, if she was still about downstairs, was still enough of a navy wife not to have a fit at his appearance.

He must be mad. He must love her if he was running around an empty house, half dressed, with what felt like a loaded pistol shoved down his pants, looking for contraception.

The startling thought yanked him to an abrupt halt in the middle of the stairway. Did he love Lizzie Paxton?

It was hard to say. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t feel … well, what he felt, for Lizzie Paxton. And he admired her, this newly grown woman, from a purely aesthetic point of view, of course, with her sinuous curves and her vivid colors. He liked her, even. She was amusing and never, ever boring. And he loved being with her and watching her doingwhat only she could do—collect the world to her with her always curious, watchful eyes. As a child, she was always observing and thinking, soaking in experiences and opinions. Holding it all behind those green cat eyes until she made something new, something entirely her own. She was unique, his Lizzie.

And she was his, wasn’t she? For better or for worse. Poor girl. He’d have to remind her of that later too, no doubt.

But they had unfinished business between them, he and Lizzie Paxton. And he was going to do whatever it took to bring it to a satisfying conclusion, even if it meant hunting up something in the way of a vinegar-soaked sponge.

Ah, the stillroom. Bound to be some vinegar there.

The housekeeper’s stillroom was tucked between the empty larder and the laundry at the back of the kitchen wing. A few neglected bunches of dried flowers still hung from hooks and racks hanging from the rafters, and the room still held a lingering scent of once pungent herbs. But Mrs. Tupper had been busy. Though there was no current housewifery on display, the counters and tabletops were all free from dust and debris.

Marlowe began to pull the corks out of the few remaining bottles clustered in the cabinet, muttering vile imprecations against demanding, provocative, lovely ginger-haired women under his breath.

“What are you doing?”

Lizzie nearly startled him out of his pants. Except what was in his pants got even bigger at the sight of her. She’d retrieved his damp coat jacket and wore it over her nearly transparent shift. She’d taken off her stays, and her ripe little breasts were just barely hidden beneath the edge of the fabric. Sweet God above, give him fortitude.

“God, Lizzie.” He didn’t care if it sounded like a groan. She was far too provoking a creature. She seemed to have no earthly idea of how beautiful she appeared, or how she affected him. How the sight of her pale, apricot tinged skin made him ravenous with want.

But before he cast his gun loose, he needed to solve the dilemma at hand. Please God, let him find what he needed. Quickly.

He hunkered down in front of a cabinet to ease the tightness in his breeches. “Looking for vinegar. I told you, I’ll take care of it.”

“I told you, I’m not useless. I want to help. Is this what you want?” She hauled up a labeled earthenware jug from under a counter.

“Bravo, Lizzie.” He should have known she’d never stay where he put her, but she was nicely useful, as well as easy on the eye. He rummaged through a cabinet and found a mortar and pestle. He took out the pestle and filled the bowl with vinegar.

“And now we need something to absorb the vinegar, like a rag or a sponge.”

“Like for cleaning?” She was nosing in close behind him, watching his preparations with all of her natural curiosity on display.

He took advantage of her closeness and dropped a kiss on her nose. And when she didn’t protest or pull away, he had to slide his fingers through her soft hair and inhale her light, citrusy fragrance. And kiss her on her soft, jam-colored mouth, and run a finger down the sweet valley between her breasts. Oh God, she was heaven.

“More like for bathing.” The thought of that—having Lizzie pink and wet, steam whispering off her delicately glistening body—blanked his mind. His lungs felt tight and full at the same time. His only recourse was to share the erotic thought with her, to see if it could affect her in the same way. “Think of that, Lizzie,” he breathed into her ear, “of all the things wecan do. I’d like to bathe you. Draw a damp cloth all over your lovely, warm, wet body.”

He could see her eyes widen and her nostrils flutter as he wove his hands into her hair, drawing the ginger silk back over her shoulder and tugged gently, just enough to nudge her head back. The curls leapt and tangled around his hand like a vine, as if even this part of Lizzie could not remain still. He ran the backs of his fingers lightly down the curve of her exposed neck to the delicate hollow where he could feel the hectic beating of her pulse. The contrast between the porcelain fragility of her body and the formidable strength of her will was endlessly fascinating.