Deceived (23 page)

Her knees went weak and her body woke in that wonderful way she had come to expect since the first time he touched her. Her nipples began to tingle, her thighs parted without hesitation and inside the wetness and warmth of her sex increased. He did this to her with ease, without even trying overly hard at it.

And this was just the beginning.

She turned her face, breaking the kiss, and he leaned away to look down at her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice low and hypnotic.

“Nothing,” she gasped. “I just needed breath.”

“I know the feeling,” he muttered. “Though I rather like taking your breath away, Josie. I intend to do it over and over tonight. Until you forget everything in the world but me and us.”

She glided one hand from his bicep to his shoulder and then down his chest, tracing the muscles on her route. “I already do,” she murmured.

He dipped his head and kissed her once more. But this time he didn’t merely kiss. His fingers danced along her sides to the knot of her robe. With a flick of his wrist, he undid the pretty precision of Nell’s bow and parted the garment. He stepped back as he slid it away and looked at her.

She blushed. This was her prettiest chemise. It was pale blue with fine stitching and soft fabric. It clung to her curves, just as all her clothing did, but for the first time she felt no self-consciousness of that fact.

Because she knew Evan liked her body. It made her more confident about her appearance and she found herself arching her back a little, letting her breasts entice him.

He grumbled out a curse below his breath before he caught the strap of her chemise and tugged. The feather-soft silk glided down her body, catching on the fullness of her hips before a second gentle tug from him made it pool at her feet.

She had been naked with him before, of course. In the cottage, the second time he had brought her pleasure. But tonight it felt…different. Because she was his now. This wasn’t as stolen moment, but an important one. It marked the next chapter in the book of their life together.

And she trembled as he stared at her.

“I’ve dreamt of you like this for weeks,” he admitted, cupping one breast gently, dragging his thumb back and forth over the peak. “And my memory was not as good as reality.”

She blushed at the compliment. “I’ve dreamt of you as well,” she admitted. “And wanted you so desperately.”

“Then let us both have our dream come true, shall we?” He dropped his hand from her, a fact that would have troubled her if he hadn’t swiftly unfastened his trousers instead. He pushed them away, and now they were both naked.

“You are so beautiful, Evan,” she murmured. “So wonderfully perfect.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t that what I’m meant to say?”

“Don’t tease,” she said, dragging her fingers across his chest again, but this time going lower, to his stomach, the trail of wiry hair that guided her to his cock. “I’m not.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain,” he grunted as she took him in hand and stroked him gently. He was already so hard, so ready, and she wanted him to be inside her. She wanted him to take her, to claim her, to be hers at last.

He bent his head to kiss her and broke her hand away as he swept his arm beneath her knees. He lifted her and swallowed her yelp of surprise as he carried her to the bed. He laid her across the pillows, her hair spread around her like a fan, and climbed up beside her to roll on his side.

As he continued to kiss her until she was weak and spinning, his hands smoothed over her. He cupped her breast again, teasing and tormenting her nipple with his questing fingers until she arched against him with a strangled moan.

He chuckled without breaking their kiss and slid his hand lower, leaving a tingling path in his wake. He smoothed the skin of her hip, then touched her thigh. Her legs parted and he took the invitation of her body and cupped her sex.

Her gasp broke their kiss and she looked up at him through a bleary gaze. “What do you do to me?” she murmured as the pleasure of his touch increased. He massaged her sex, thumbing her clitoris and gliding her body’s wetness over her rhythmically.

“I want to do everything,” he growled as he rolled to cover her.

She gasped with pleasure as he settled between her thighs, his naked flesh pressed head to toe to hers at last. The hardness of his erection nudged the softness of her aching slit and she lifted her hips to rub against him in an effort to find relief at last.

“Don’t rush,” he murmured as his mouth covered hers again. “We have all night.”

She moaned at the thought of this torment all night. Of being so ready, so willing, so filled with desire and having him draw out the waiting. She just might combust.

She lifted her hips again and his cock slid along her entrance a second time. He grunted with pleasure and pulled away from her lips.

“You do not listen well, do you, Josie?”

“I just want you so much,” she admitted. “Fast and hard, slow and steady, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t make me wait anymore.”

He nodded and positioned himself differently. She felt the head of him now, pressed to her entrance, pushing in instead of across. Slowly he eased forward and she opened to him readily, accepting his length, his girth, his everything. She waited for the pain, but found he was correct. Unlike in the parlor the week before, there was none. Only stretching fullness and awakening nerves.

He fully seated himself deep within her and let out a shuddering sigh. “At last,” he murmured.

“Yes,” she agreed, holding him closer, their bodies as one. She was his in every way now. Her heart swelled with love for him even as her body ached for more.

And as if he sensed her second thought, he began to move. Unlike the first time, where everything had been fast and blurry, Evan went slowly. He guided back, letting her feel the full length of him, then rolled forward. Their pelvises ground together with the action, her clitoris stimulated by the rocking of his hips.

He repeated the motion as he claimed her mouth, driving his tongue in time to his cock. She melted away under his care, her entire focus becoming the press of their bodies, the rub of his skin on hers. She found herself lifting to him, meeting his thrusts with ones of her own, and soon their rhythm was the same. Take and give, press and retreat, building toward the crescendo of pleasure she felt building deep between her thighs.

It came on slowly, rising with promise until she dug her nails into his shoulders, silently pleading for relief from the mounting sensations.

He drew back from her lips and met her eyes instead. “Come for me, Josie,” he whispered, his voice rough. “Let me see you.”

His growled words were enough to push her over the edge, and she let out a keening cry as the pleasure washed over her in never-ending waves. She bucked beneath him, breaking the smooth cadence of their bodies. Not that it seemed to matter. As she cried out his name, his threw his head back, the tendons in his neck straining. He roared out his own pleasure and she felt the hot splash of his seed deep within her.

He collapsed against her still twitching body, holding to her like she was a lifeline. She smoothed his hair, pressing kisses to his neck as her pleasure faded away.

“Amazing,” he murmured, his voice muffled before he rolled away to his side, dragging her against him.

She looked up his body. “Which part?”

“All of it,” he said. “You. Us. It is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”

She sat up slightly to stare at him. “You cannot mean that.”

“Ah, doubting me already,” he said as he reached up to curl a lock of her hair around his finger.

She shook her head, refusing to be distracted. “Evan, you have been with women before. Many, if gossip is to be believed.”

He frowned. “I was no monk before, no. Though I was no libertine.”

“Either way, you’ve been with women of experience, ones who knew what to do, what to say, how to be.”

He leaned up and cupped the back of her neck, drawing her close. As the heat of his breath warmed her lips, he said, “None of them was you. Do not doubt yourself, Josie. You most definitely know what to do, to say, to be when it comes to me. And I do not lie when I say that no one has ever made me burn more, want more, need more.”

“Evan—” she began in further protest, but he silenced her by dropping his mouth to hers even as he cupped one breast. Pleasure overtook her again, passion he could both extinguish and ignite in the same breath.

And she didn’t speak again, didn’t think again until the fire had burned low and they were both spent.

Evan glanced over at the outline of Josie’s sleeping body. In the dying firelight, her skin looked even more like porcelain. Except it wasn’t. She was real and warm and he had made her his so many times that night. A night of new beginnings.

But as he watched her smile gently in her sleep, he was troubled. His thoughts had been so jumbled since talking to Gabriel the day of his engagement. In truth, even before that.

He’d started down this road with Josie only to find out what she knew about Claire. Of course things had become more complicated. Emotions had become involved even if he hadn’t wanted them to. But Gabriel’s words hung in his ears. Taunted and tormented him. Was his brother right? Was he abandoning his lost sister just for his own pleasure?

He pushed out of the bed and found his discarded trousers on the floor beside it. Quietly he tugged them on, and then he paced to the fire to toss a log onto the dying flames. They rose slowly, brightening the room that had gone dim when the candles burned down.

He looked around. This was Josie’s private room. It was filled with her things, knickknacks and clothing and jewelry that said she belonged there, rather than him. They were only sharing it because it was their wedding night. He supposed he could make a case now that they were man and wife that all these little things of hers were now his, including any correspondence between Josie and Claire, but he had never been that kind of domineering man. His father had never forced his mother to report her every move, and he wouldn’t like it if Audrey were asked to do so. Why should he do that to his own wife?

But Claire…it always came back to Claire.

Claire was out there somewhere. And the few reports they had on her told him that she was being misused in far worse ways than merely having her privacy compromised.

“Damn it,” he murmured.

What if he never had another chance to search these rooms? Tomorrow they would not stay here, perhaps they never would again. What if Gabriel was right that if he didn’t do this tonight, right now, that Claire might…might…he couldn’t even think it. It was too horrible to ponder. But if he searched Josie’s chamber tonight and found some evidence,
could
he save Claire?

He found himself gently sliding open the drawer on Josie’s bedside table. Inside was only a book and a stub of a candle, which he took and lit to guide him.

He hated himself for doing this. But he knew he would hate himself tenfold more if his sister was harmed because he hadn’t. With a sigh, he crept to the opposite side of Josie’s bed and found nothing of more interest in the other table.

He looked around the room again. He doubted she kept much correspondence here. There wasn’t a good space to respond to letters. He looked to the connecting dressing room that Josie had stepped from in all her bridal glory just a few hours before. He shivered as he recalled that moment when she’d entered the chamber with her hands shaking in anticipation.

In that moment he’d been so proud to call her his.

And to reward her, he slipped into her dressing area and betrayed her by looking around. Gowns were hung on racks in the tiny room, and her wardrobe was along one wall with likely even more clothing inside. There was a table there, but it wasn’t a desk. From the bottles and brushes lined up along the top, he thought this was likely where her maid did her hair each day. He could almost picture Josie sitting here, smiling and chatting while she was prepared for her activities. He suddenly wanted to watch that transformation.

He shook his head. That wasn’t why he was snooping through her chambers. There was another door here. He pushed it open and found it led to a small, private sitting room. There wasn’t much to it, really. Just a pair of chairs before an empty fireplace, a bookcase—and there, across the room, an escritoire.

He lifted his candle and moved to the little writing desk, his heart throbbing. As he set the candle on its surface, he found himself praying that there would be nothing noteworthy inside. That Josie had left any letters from his sister in London. Then he could report back to Gabriel that he had searched but found nothing. It would buy him time to decide how to handle the situation once they had returned to the city.

He opened the top drawer of the desk slowly and found it to contain only materials for letters. Paper, ink, a quill. He slid it shut and moved on to the second, deeper drawer. It squeaked a little as he opened it and he flinched at the accusatory sound. But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t now. The sin was already committed, now he had to finish what he’d started.