Unraveling the Earl (30 page)

“I never would have imagined you’d choose to frolic in a
chapel.” Her voice took on a soft breathy quality, one designed to entice, to
lure the unsuspecting into a dark web of desire. “Even one no longer used for
holy purposes.”

“And I never would have imagined you would allow Jasper
Clive to bind you and ply his crop across your back.”

In the days that followed, as he replayed the scene over and
over in his mind, Henry would wonder which of the two of them was more
surprised by his question, by the fury that shook his voice.

Georgie blinked, the incandescent light in her eyes falling
away and the glove dropping to the floor as she halted midway up the aisle.
“Grasper? You want to talk of Grasper? Now?”

“And I sure as hell cannot imagine how you allowed Clive to
pass you on to Carlton when he was through with you,” he roared, knowing full
well he ought not to travel down this twisted path, not now when his anger was
a living breathing creature clawing at his guts.

“Grasper did not pass me on, I went of my own free choice,”
Georgie replied, setting to work on the second glove as if she hadn’t a care in
the world beyond its removal. “But that hardly matters, not now when we have so
little time.”

“Was it your choice to invite other men into your bed to rut
over you while Carlton watched?”

“I never took another man into my bed while Benedict watched.”
Georgie grasped the white silk by the fingers and pulled the glove down her
arm, unhurried and unconcerned, lending the simple action an erotic edge that
tightened his balls and prodded his barely restrained temper.

“I know all about Lord Carlton’s perverse desires.” Henry
strode toward her, his hands balling into fists. “The orgies he orchestrates
for his viewing pleasure.”

Georgie, bless her or curse her, tossed the glove at her
feet and took three gliding steps, meeting him at the end of the aisle. Tilting
her head back and lifting her chin in the air, she captured his gaze and held
it.

“To be sure, Benedict liked to watch me find my pleasure,
but not with other men,” she said, her voice soft and sultry and edged with
mocking laughter. “I only ever took ladies into my bed for his viewing
pleasure.”

The air left Henry on a low groan and he reached for her,
his hands wrapping around her slender arms. He lifted her onto her toes,
brought her close enough that he could see her eyes darken until they were as
inky as a midnight sky. “You allowed Clive and Benedict to use you, to abuse
your body and poison your heart. And for what?”

“For what I wanted. Tit for tat, my lord,” Georgie drawled
with a smile that held no warmth, only a cold, brittle sort of pride. “I
seduced Grasper and allowed him to play with his whips and cuffs in exchange
for a haphazard education. His games grew too dark for my liking so I sent him
off before I learned to scratch out more than a few simple phrases but I can
read the classics, balance a ledger to the last penny and find Madagascar on a
globe. Benedict taught me to be a lady, to pour tea like a duchess, dance a
waltz and push beef around on my plate with the proper fork. And all it cost me
was the last scrap of my innocence, a price I was more than willing to pay.”

“Damn it, Georgie, you should have told me all of it,” Henry
thundered as the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and the truth of
her past was revealed with startling clarity. “Given me their true names.”

“What difference do their names make?” she asked in the same
cool, sardonic tone. “I never pretended to be an innocent and you never mistook
me for one. What right have you to be angry with me now?”

“There’s a fucking song written about you,” he bellowed,
barely resisting the urge to shake her. “A bawdy song set to the tune of a
nursery rhyme.”

“That silly song is about Grasper’s exploits, not mine.”

“It is about you and it is set to the same fucking lullaby
that was mangled to malign my father all those years ago.”

Georgie let loose an inelegant snort. “That old tune wasn’t
about your father.”

“Of course it was,” he argued.

“It was about your mother,” she insisted with a low laugh.
“Your mother and her lovers.”

“My mother never took lovers.” The idea was laughable but
Henry couldn’t form so much as a chuckle. “Mother detested men.”

“To be sure, she detested men,” she agreed with a sly smile.

“What the hell are you saying?”

“Are you deaf as well as blind, then?” Georgie’s words were
flippant, the gleam in her eyes something else entirely. “Who precisely do you
think the Angels were, my lord?”

“Are you suggesting that Mother enjoyed…that she was a…” he
faltered over the words, his mind refusing to work properly.

“A sapphist,” she supplied. “A lady from Lesbos.”

Henry did chuckle then, in fact he barked out a laugh that
rushed, raw and painful, from his throat as he recognized her ploy. “Oh no you
don’t, my pretty little liar. You’ll not be inventing ridiculous tales to
divert me from the truth.”

“What truth would that be, Lord Hastings?”

“The truth that you have not only bargained away your body,
you have traded bits and pieces of your heart until there is likely nothing
left worth claiming.” Henry hurled the words at her, undone by the revelations
of the past minutes, unbalanced by the speed with which everything he’d
believed of the woman he’d pledged to marry had been revealed to be lies and
half-truths, fabricated from his naïve desire to see the world as he wanted it
to be rather than as it truly existed. Just as she’d said all those weeks ago.
“You warned me. Christ, you warned me time and again that your heart was
nothing more than jagged shards of regret.”

“I regret none of it.” A mottled flush crawled up Georgie’s
neck, spread over her jaw to settle on the hollows of her cheeks and it
occurred to Henry that she was in a temper to match his own. “I do not regret
my time with Grasper or Benedict, or even Jacob who was too naïve to comprehend
the bargain we made until it was too late. I do not regret the lies I’ve told
or the mistakes I’ve made to become the lady I am today.”

“The damaged lady you are today.” The words were out before
the thought had fully formed and through the haze of fury surrounding him,
Henry saw Georgie flinch, felt the shudder that racked her slender form.

“Oh, to be sure I am damaged,” she replied, her voice
dipping into the lyrical cadence of her homeland. “But, make no mistake, I was
damaged long before I took those three men to my bed. I was damaged the moment
Connie named me a boy and sent me off to live as one at River’s End. Only I
didn’t know it, not until…”

Henry did shake her then, his hands hard on her arms, his
panting breath blowing over her upturned face, sending a wayward curl dancing
across her forehead. “Until when? When did you realize you were so damaged you
would willingly barter away every last part of you that was good and clean and
whole?”

“I was never good or clean or whole, my lord,” Georgie
answered in the same lilting burr. “I have always been wicked and broken and
dirty. I am vengeful and covetous and impulsive and selfish, and I like that
about myself. I like my murky morals and my stubborn streak and my dubious
loyalty and my greedy desire to claim what I want, no matter the cost. I like
it all and what’s more so do you.”

It took Henry a moment to process her words, so caught up
was he in the decadent sound of her voice, in the twin spots of color cresting
her cheeks and the sensual light in her eyes.

“No.” The single word left him on a groan as he released her
and took one unsteady step back.

“Liar,” she whispered, following his retreat, coming up on
her toes, her lips hovering just beneath his. “You like me, as broken and dirty
and wicked as I am. You like me and want me and mayhap you even love me.”

He wanted to deny the truth, to claim he did not want her,
did not love her at all, but the words, the lie would not form.

“Shall I prove you a liar?” Georgie’s breath was warm on his
lips.

“Damn it, Georgie,” he growled, lifting his head just enough
so that her lips found his chin, trailed along his jaw.

“You want me,” she purred, her hands coming up between them
to push beneath his open jacket, her fingers spreading over his chests.

“I did not bring you up here to…” His words left him on a
hiss of breath as she dragged one hand down his abdomen and between his legs to
cup his shaft, her fingers cradling his balls.

“To fuck in a chapel?” Georgie’s finished for him on a dark
laugh. “Your cock tells me otherwise.”

Henry knew he ought to stop her, stop the madness that held
him in its grip, but her fingers were plucking at the buttons of his placket,
dancing over the ridge of his cock and her lips were traveling down his neck,
burrowing beneath his cravat, teeth nipping, tongue caressing.

The last button came free and her hand drove beneath his
loosened trousers and smallclothes to wrap around his shaft as she clamped her
mouth around the sensitive skin of his neck, sucking and biting down.

Pleasure and pain, lust and fury coalesced into a
treacherous vortex of seething need.

“Christ, Georgie,” Henry growled, thrusting his cock against
her hand. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“I ask for nothing.” There was anger and an odd sort of
triumph in her voice as she dropped to her knees, her hands tugging at his
garments, pushing trousers and smalls past his hips.

His cock sprang free and she was waiting, her lips closing
around the engorged head, licking around and beneath before pulling him into
her mouth.

And Henry was lost to the agonizing pleasure, lost to the
hum of satisfaction that vibrated on Georgie’s lips clasped around his pulsing
shaft, lost to the feel of her hands gripping his hips, fingers digging into
muscle, nails biting into flesh, lost to the sight of her mouth taking him
deep.

He made an effort to remain still beneath her ministration,
to hold his passion in check, but she would have none of it, pulling him hard
into her voracious mouth with each wet stroke down his rigid length, pushing
him back with each gliding withdrawal, until he was thrusting and lunging in
time to the rhythm she’d set.

Henry could not think beyond the anticipation of the next
foray deep into her wet heat, the next tight, wet stroking retreat of her lips,
the next swirl of her tongue around the fat head.

“Jesus,” he groaned, clasping her head in his hands, his
fingers driving into the coils and braids, intent upon pushing her away before
he spent, instead pulling her to him as he thrust into her mouth, holding her
close, forcing her to take all of him.

With her lips stretched around his shaft, she shifted,
changing the angle of his penetration, and the tip of his cock prodded the back
of her throat before the way opened, pulling him deep, closing around him in a
tight clasp.

Georgie peeked up at him through her golden lashes, her eyes
heavy with desire, her fingers flexing on his ass and he nearly climaxed then
and there.

“Enough,” he ordered through clenched teeth, battling back
the clawing need and taking one stumbling step back, his hands holding her in
place as he retreated.

Georgie released him, her mouth sliding wet and hot down his
length and her hands falling to her to her thighs for balance as his clock
slipped from her mouth.

Before he could offer up so much a single word, be it a
prayer or a curse, she fell onto her back and lifted her skirts, exposing long
legs beneath gossamer-thin stockings, pale thighs open in invitation.

“Fuck me,” she begged, one hand dipping between her legs to
stroke her folds as she swiveled her hips and arched her back, as sinuous as a
serpent.

Oh, he would fuck her, but not on the floor.

Henry bent over her to grasp one slender arm, lifting her to
her feet, smiling grimly at the huff of surprise, or perhaps anger, that fell
from her lips.

“You can’t mean to walk away from me,” she hissed, prying at
his fingers on her arm. “Not yet.”

“I’ve no intention of walking away.” He strode down the
aisle and she had no choice but to follow him, no choice but to allow him to
lift her and place her on the dais before the medieval throne.

Georgie’s mouth fell open, but whatever words she might have
spoken, be they protest or demand, were lost as he wrapped his arms around her
slender back and yanked her hard against him, claiming her parted lips.

With a groan that came from some secret, starving place
within him, Henry abandoned all pretext of decorum, of decency and restraint,
thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth and driving one hand up into her
coiffure, sending emerald-tipped pins falling to the floor with soft pings that
echoed off the stone walls. A coil of hair slithered over the hand he pressed
to her spine and he grasped the silky strand and wrapped it around and around
his fingers, pulling her head back and angling it just so, aligning their lips
until he had her precisely where he wanted her.

A puff of warm, minty breath was the only warning Georgie
gave him before she twined her arms over his shoulders, fingers sifting through
his hair, nails scouring his scalp, and curled her tongue around his, joining
in a kiss so carnal, so voluptuous and abandoned and downright decadent, his
head swam. Caressing, suckling, parrying and retreating, Georgie lured him into
further madness with only her sinful mouth and her fingers tangling in his
hair.

There was no finesse to the kiss, no grace, no elegance. It
was a torrid mating of mouths, a clash of teeth, a mingling of breath, a chorus
of murmurs and soft sighs that soon escalated into dark groans and throaty
moans.

Henry broke the kiss to race his lips down her arched neck,
to latch on the tendon at the juncture of her shoulder with teeth and lips.
Georgie let loose a whimper and bowed her back, brushing her breasts against
his chest and he imagined he felt the hard points of her nipples clear through
all of the layers of clothing that separated them.