Wicked at Heart

WICKED AT HEART

By

Danelle Harmon

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Danelle Harmon

Wicked At Heart

Copyright © 2012 by Danelle Harmon

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~~~~

May, 1802

Prologue

The sex was great.

But that was
about all the University of Oxford offered Damon Andrew Phillip deWolfe, the
sixth Marquess of Morninghall, fourth Earl of deWolfe, and heir to one of the
richest estates in England.

He'd mastered
both Greek and Latin before he'd seen his tenth summer; he yawned through
Aristophanes, Euripides, and even Thucydides, whose supposedly difficult works
on the Peloponnesian War offered him no stimulus or challenge; he knew more
than his Oxford dons, despised his rooms in Peckwater Quadrangle, and made no
secret of the fact that he was bored out of his brilliant young mind.

For Lord
Morninghall was only fifteen years old and, in the several months he'd been
here, had found nothing at Oxford's ancient Christ Church College to interest
him.

Except the dean's
pretty, young niece.

Three years his
senior, she lay beside him in the darkness, golden hair tangled in a pillow of
grass and skirts sliding up her legs with no small degree of help from young
Morninghall's eager hand.  She was oblivious to the magnificence of the Great
Quadrangle which surrounded them, the brilliance of Wolsey and the architecture
of Wren, oblivious to the perfume of the night air, the echoing vastness of the
courtyard, and the music the fountain made as it bubbled and splashed beneath
the quiet stars.  And now Great Tom, that noble old bell in the imposing
central tower, began tolling out the curfew, 101 solemn strokes ringing through
the night.

Bong . . .
Bong . . . Bong . . .

The students
were supposed to be in.

Bong . . .
Bong . . . Bong . . .

A twinge of
warning spread through Damon, but he ignored it, and soon the bell's summons
had faded into the haze of passion that his mind had become, heard but soon
forgotten, no more a claimant to his attention now than the damp coolness of
the earth beneath him, the musky scent of the grass, or the star-shot beauty of
the velvet night above his head.  There was only this strange but exquisite
being beside, now beneath him, only the feel of lace and satin as he anxiously pushed
up her skirts, only the softness of inner thigh and the flimsy barrier of silk
stockings as he hooked a finger atop first one, then the other, and slowly
peeled the filmy garments down each leg.  She urged him on with mouth and hands
and breathy moans, and his heart began to pound with wild abandon.  He buried
his face in the curve of her neck, drowning in the scent of her hair, the musky
perfume of her skin.  Her soft gasps of pleasure feathered the hair at his ear,
and her hands roved encouragingly over his shoulders, his back, his bottom.  He
had a last coherent thought, a terrible vision of his peers spying on him from
a darkened room overlooking the Quad above, but then his searching fingers
found the silken nest of curls at the junction of the girl's thighs, and he
could think of nothing else.

She gasped and
arched against him.

Bloody hell, I
hope I am doing it correctly.

He must have
been, for as he stroked and thumbed her, the girl moaned and shut her eyes, her
nails digging like cat's claws into his back.  Her flesh was liquid heat, and
as Damon eagerly explored these alien folds of damp femininity, she began
squirming and gasping and making little  sobs deep in her throat.  Gaining
confidence, he kissed her neck and the warm, fragrant skin of her bosom while his
fingers caressed her slick petals; then, tentatively, he slid his middle finger
into her, all the way up to the knuckle, and caressed the hard little bud of
her passion with his thumb.

"Oh . . .
Damon," she gasped, seizing him around the neck and yanking his head down
to hers.  She was frantic, writhing, splaying her fingers through his hair as
her lips wildly sought his.  "Yes. . . . Touch me . . .
there
."

Her mouth was
hot and sweet, her tongue bold and thrusting.  He felt his own body responding. 
Yes, he was definitely doing it correctly.  To hell with the classics, with Greek
and Latin, with all that university sought to teach him; such pursuits were
worthless compared to the education that Miss Sarah Cherwell was giving him. 
Oh, this was good; no, it was better than good,
oh, God bless you,
Oxford
.

He broke the
kiss, taking in great gulps of air.  "Am I — hurting you?" he
murmured, barely trusting himself to speak.  How embarrassing it would be if
his voice, still in transition from boy's to man's, decided to crack right now.

"Oh, no. 
Oh yes, my lord — Oh! 
Oh!
  Yes! . . .  There!"

Confusion and
impatience warred with instinct.  Was he or wasn't he hurting her?  "This
way?"

"Harder. 
Deeper
,
Damon . . . oh yes, look at me, I need to see your face —"  She slid her
hands up alongside his jaw, hauled his head down to hers and continued kissing
him hotly, greedily, feverishly.  "Oh, those
eyes
of yours, they
set my blood afire . . ."

He slid his
finger in deeper, his thumb caressing her flesh, finding and rubbing that
curious little bud of hardness until she was sobbing and gasping and moaning
his name.  Her reaction excited him and made his rod swell and strain and want,
and soon the breath was roaring through his lungs, mingling with the damp heat
of her skin and releasing the scent of roses from her hair, her skin, her
clothes.  How different the female body was from his own, how delicious the
sensations just touching it evoked.  And now, finally, Miss Sarah's fingers
were unfastening his trousers with quick and skillful surety and pushing them
down his bottom, his legs.

Cool air swept
over his backside.  And then she reached for him.

Damon froze,
suddenly unsure.

But she
persisted, wrapping her fingers around him, squeezing gently and lightly
stroking him until he groaned and pushed himself against her, into her hand. 
Oh, sweet agony.  She was relentless, her fingers and voice guiding him,
encouraging him, reassuring him.

"Come, my lord,"
she breathed, "let me pleasure
you
."

Under her
skillful ministrations, Damon felt like he was dying and late for an
appointment with heaven.  He surrendered to her clever fingers, her caressing
hand, and with a harsh groan, moved over her, covering her and pressing her
down into the spongy, manicured grass with the adolescent impatience of his
passion.  Her pale hair haloed her head, and he buried his face in the silky
tresses, then the curve of her neck, heatedly kissing, licking, and tonguing
her ear, her arched throat, her swollen, hungry lips.  She moaned softly, urging
him on, and now her thumb and fingers were swirling around the tip of his
erection, bringing on savage bolts of sensation that made the sweat break out
all over his body, made all human reason flee his head, made him think of
nothing but — but —
damnation, I cannot hold on like this, oh hell, oh hell
— and now she was guiding him toward that hot junction between her legs and
arcing her body so as to better accept him, her hands fluttering along his
back, over his bottom, positioning him where she wanted him and initiating him
into this age-old act with deft and knowing skill.

Skirts and
tangled petticoats bunched beneath his torso, but Damon knew the moment he was
inside that forbidden, dark center of her, knew the moment when all was lost. 
With a groan, he sank into her, feeling himself sliding inch by glorious inch
into that deliciously wet, deliciously hot cavern his fingers had just
sampled.  Her hands cupped his straining backside, urging him in deeper,
further; her body writhed beneath his, a wild, hot thing that sought to be
tamed, inciting him to begin the act he'd witnessed countless times in species
other than his own, heard about from the ribald tales of his peers but had
never experienced himself.  His elbows dug into the grass, but he cared not
that stains would blemish his fine shirt, cared not that she was all but
shredding it with her nails, cared not for anything, for all that was in his
world was her, her,
her
—

He felt the
rushing maelstrom of his first release before he actually cried out with the
violent force of it.  Her nails dug into his back, her face split in a grimace
of anguished ecstasy, her body arched, and then she too was bucking and crying
out beneath him, her inner muscles squeezing and contracting and draining the
last of his strength, the last of his seed, from him.

It was over. 
Damon's arms tightened around her, and he dropped his sweating brow into the
cool grass behind her shoulder, his breath coming in panting, labored gasps as
he sought to make sense of all that had just happened to him.

"Oh, Sarah
. . ."

"Lovely,
wasn't it?  You did admirably well for your first time."

He was beaming,
knew he was grinning like a fool.  "You — it — was brilliant.  Positively
brilliant."

She giggled.  He
ran his hand along her jaw and turned her head so he could kiss her.  Already,
his rod was stirring again and he wondered, vaguely, if once activated, it ever
stopped.  He dragged his hand through her hair, anticipating a repeat of what
they'd just done and silently thanking Lords Wycombe and Evesham for provoking
him to commit this act as his initiation into The Circle.  Not only was he a
man
now, but for the first time in his life, he had friends.  Good friends, too —

A shoe came down
on his back, squarely between his shoulder blades.

"If it
isn't young Morninghall.  Enjoying a new
curriculum
, my lord?"

Damon froze, and
the world swung into sharp focus.  In the space of a heartbeat, he felt the
summer breeze on his bare arse, the girl stiffening beneath him; he knew the
dreadful silence of the night, the horrible taste of fear, and the sickening
plunge of the stomach when one has just been caught doing something dreadfully,
unforgivably, wrong.

Whooping
laughter erupted from one of the darkened rooms above, echoing over and over
again through the vast courtyard.

Wycombe,
Evesham, and The Circle.  Laughing at him, every one of them.

He'd been set
up.  Betrayed.  Deep, crushing hurt had barely reared its head before it was
smothered by rage and then, humiliation and embarrassment that must, like
everything else, be concealed properly behind a mask of cool difference, for he
was the Marquess of Morninghall and there was no room for dread, no room for
excuses, no room for being only fifteen years old when you've just been
initiated into the act of maturity and now must pay the consequences for it.