Gareth: Lord of Rakes (18 page)

“Merciful everlasting saints,” he muttered, yanking off his boots. His breeches, cravat, waistcoat, and shirt followed, while Felicity hoped he’d locked the door.

“I ought to exercise some damned restraint,” he groused, climbing back onto the bed. “I ought to at least nod in the direction of a little discipline. I’m not a schoolboy.” He came to a stop, naked and directly over her on all fours. “If I must spend the entire day ignoring the uproar created in my breeding organs by the very sight of you, I won’t answer for the consequences.”

He was not happy about that uproar, and Felicity shouldn’t be pleased about it either. But what honest spinster wouldn’t be a little impressed to have such an effect on a mature man of the world?

“You’ve said a couple intent on their objective can fornicate in less than five minutes.” And they’d used at least two minutes getting his clothes off, and hers in complete disarray.

He crouched lower, his blue-eyed gaze boring into her. “When we consummate our dealings, madam, it will require considerably more than five minutes of your time.”

“Then why are you nak—?”

He kissed her soundly, and while it was a kiss to curl a lady’s toes and make her breasts feel heavy and tender, Felicity tasted temper in his kiss too.

And she did not want him angry, because under that anger—under most anger—would be some hurt, some grief, some pain he would not allow her or anybody else to see. She stroked her hand down the plane of his chest, past the flat musculature of his belly, to grasp his erection. When she wrapped her fingers around him, he broke off the kiss and hung over her, his forehead resting over hers.

“Finish me, Felicity. It won’t take much.”

His tone was harsh, though she made her touch gentle. She
toyed
with him, easing up, then bearing down, then easing up again. The pleasure of it—and the power of it—was fascinating. And while she might have spent hours on that bed with him, they had only a little time before the others would arrive.

“I said to goddamn finish me.”

“Hush.” She kissed him, realizing that he wasn’t in a hurry so much as he sought to limit his pleasure to a quick servicing. “I wish we had all day.”

Her wishes went well beyond that prosaic notion, so she put them into her kisses and her caresses, into the way her hand gripped his cock, and her body yearned to share more with him than this.

He reared back with a groan to kneel between her legs and bring himself off in a few hard, jerking strokes. His pleasure was not pretty, but rather, looked more like torment—magnificent, robust, intimate torment.

He opened his eyes. “You will pay for that.”

Unease skittered through Felicity’s vitals. “You would
punish
me?” He’d told her all about people who enjoyed an element of pain with their sexual diversions. She didn’t comprehend it and intended to die in that blessed state of ignorance.

“I would punish
myself
.” He swabbed at himself with a handkerchief, balled it up, and tossed it in the direction of his boots.

“Gareth, that makes no sense whatso—” She fell silent when he put a hand on her knee. Something in the quality of his touch was different, less polite, though no less cherishing.

“Lie back, Felicity, and let me pleasure you.” Then, more softly, “We have time. We have time for your pleasure, too. Damn me if I’ll let you turn me into a selfish lover.”

Comprehension dawned. He was annoyed with himself, annoyed to have indulged himself when they had little privacy and Felicity’s bodily calendar was unobliging.

“You don’t need to do this, Gareth.” The naked, growling man between her legs was surely bent on some mischief that did not comport with a pleasant day among family in the country.

“I will be the judge of what I need, and what you need too. It’s what you came to me for. Close your eyes.”

Felicity lay back and gave up listening for the sound of a carriage on the drive. The Eighty-Second Foot could come trooping up the steps, and Gareth would not let her off the bed until he’d achieved his ends with her.

“You are wearing a red silk chemise. Have I made a strumpet of you?”

The words were meant to be teasing, but something about the way he caressed her breasts through that chemise, and the pain in his question, suggested he felt regret—possibly even shame.

So much for her daring experiment.

Felicity sat up, wiggled, and scooted until she had the little half-length chemise off. “I made it myself. I would not ask a modiste to fashion such clothing for me.”

He kissed her, gently, not like his earlier kisses. “Let me touch you.”

His hand rested on her bare calf, and Felicity realized that once again, he was asking permission. She lay back and let him arrange her skirts so she was bared to him from midthigh down.

“This time, I want to see you,” he said, easing her skirts higher. “I want to feast my eyes on you.”

Felicity endured his inspection by virtue of keeping her eyes closed. He stroked and petted and caressed and generally acquainted himself with her most intimate anatomy, while she…

Thought.

About the frustration she’d sensed in him earlier, about the pain in his words, about the red chemise.

He kissed her sex. A shocking, soft application of his mouth to the bud of flesh that had some Italian name Felicity could not recall. She stroked a hand over his hair, felt the way the sunlight warmed it, and knew an urge to weep.

“We have time,” Gareth said again, nuzzling her palm before renewing his attentions to her sex.

Within moments, her body was quickening with arousal, the yearning becoming a writhing beast beneath the pit of her belly.

They did not have time. They had nothing but an agreement of some sort, and that would soon be concluded. “Gareth, stop.”

Perhaps he didn’t hear her. Perhaps he didn’t want to hear her.

“Gareth, stop
now
. I am not asking.”

He eased up so his cheek lay against her breast. “Why in God’s name are you unwilling to let me give you this pleasure?”

His question was bewildered, his hand on her breast exquisitely gentle.

“This is not the time, Gareth. When I have my pleasure of you, it will require considerably more than five minutes.” And it would take her considerably more than five minutes to recover from the experience.

He didn’t immediately leave her, but remained resting over her, a comfort against the throb of unappeased desire and impending heartbreak. “I do not understand you, Felicity.”

What he did not understand was that a woman might want to give him pleasure, that she might enjoy providing him a few moments of indulgence for no reason except that it gratified her to so do.

She caressed his hair, letting her fingers trace the shape of his ear. “Then ascribe the hesitation to my nerves. I am a fully articled spinster, I’ll have you know.”

He closed his eyes, so she felt the brush of his lashes against her breast. “And I am a confirmed rake. I’ll thank you not to forget it.”

They remained like that for a few minutes longer, until Gareth rose and dressed, Felicity watching as he buttoned himself up into the marquess once again. He laced her up and hooked her dress, the consummate lady’s maid—or rake—and even tidied her hair without her having to ask.

“I hear a carriage,” Felicity said, wondering why the thought of their families arriving brought no joy.

He glanced around the room and frowned at Felicity’s red silk chemise on the floor. When she thought he’d hand it to her, he instead kicked it under the bed and offered her his arm.

***

For Gareth to have his paramour underfoot at his private estate, along with their families, ought to have been awkward as hell. When the scheduled picnic was cut short by an abrupt shift in the weather, Gareth comforted himself that his mother had not asked for the worst details regarding the folly he’d embarked on with Felicity.

Which did not explain why seeing Felicity and Lady Heathgate, heads bent over the same embroidery hoop, both pleased and pained him.

Dinner had been an interesting exercise in playing lord of the manor, and in watching Andrew gently flirt with young Astrid—and wouldn’t that be a lovely complication if those two took a fancy to each other?

“Do you require solitude while you brood the night away,” Andrew asked, “or might I have the pleasure of watching you?”

“You may build up the fire if you’ve come here to nag and gloat.”

Andrew’s smile was sardonic, very different from the teasing smiles he’d offered Astrid, but he did add a pair of logs to the fire. “Mother likes her, you know.”

“Astrid?”

Andrew came down beside him on the couch. “Her, too. If this scheme does work, and you can sell the damned brothel before anybody’s the wiser as to its ownership, then Mother will likely present Astrid at Court.”

God in heaven. If that came to pass, Gareth could well find himself sharing a coach with Felicity on the appointed day.

Gareth put his book aside, a particularly pompous translation of Marcus Aurelius. “I might develop a pressing need to inspect the properties in Scotland, should Mother remain determined on that objective.”

“You haven’t been back up there since the accident.”

The word
accident
rattled off the windowpanes, like a gust of cold, wet wind. “Neither have you. I send Brenner when needs must.”

Andrew stretched his feet out toward the fire, though upon those feet were a pair of Gareth’s riding boots. “I get drunk each year on the anniversary.”

Which would come up in a few weeks. Rather than put an arm around his brother’s shoulders, Gareth rose. “I leave the brooding to you, little Brother, and my thanks for keeping the ladies smiling at dinner.”

“You’re managing all right, then?” Andrew’s question was casual, and quite personal.

Personal enough that Gareth could have left the library without answering it. Instead, he returned to the sofa, retrieved old Marcus, and shoved the bastard between two volumes on French cuisine.

“I am losing my goddamned mind, Andrew. What is wrong with me, that I want Felicity to see I’m a cordial host, a dutiful son, a decent brother, a conscientious landlord? She knows exactly what I really am.”

Andrew tugged off his boots—Gareth’s boots—and tossed them toward the door, then stretched out full length on the couch and folded his hands over his stomach like some carving on a royal tomb. “What’s wrong with you, that you’d try to hide all those parts of yourself from a woman you’re going to great lengths to help?”

By
swiving
her?
Because he was going to. When the time was right, very soon, he’d take what she offered and then turn his back on her, just as she’d asked.

“Good night, Andrew. Pleasant dreams.”

Andrew snorted, blew Gareth a kiss, and closed his eyes.

***

To be around Gareth’s family was perilously nerve-wracking, though his lordship’s savoir faire appeared easily sufficient for the challenge. Felicity punched her pillow up against the headboard and debated whether she respected Gareth’s sophistication in this regard, resented it, or lamented it.

Probably all three. He was so handsome in his country gentleman’s attire, so patient with his mother and Astrid.

And probably sleeping so soundly a few doors down the hallway, while Felicity—

Her door eased open, a familiar shape looming in the meager light. “I suspect you’re awake, Miss Worthington. Are you receiving callers?”

He used that ironic tone when he wanted her to think he was teasing. “Assuredly not. I am fast asleep and dreaming peacefully.” Though she really did not want him to go. Now that he was here, she could acknowledge that she’d been waiting for him, hoping he’d wander into her bed, where they’d…

Not be able to indulge in her wildest fantasies.

“And I am sleepwalking,” Gareth said, his weight dipping the bed. Felicity heard fabric rustling and caught a scent of sandalwood and spices on the cool night air, suggesting he’d used his scented soap before he came calling.

“I have not invited you to stay.”

The rustling paused. “I thought we’d talk, Felicity. Simply talk.”

Perhaps they were going to indulge her wildest fantasies after all. “What shall we talk about?”

“You were upset at what passed before us in this bed earlier today.” The mattress rocked, and Felicity felt the covers lift, her only warning before Gareth tucked himself in beside her. “Tell me why you were upset.”

He used the same tone he might use to ask for a report from Brenner, suggesting he was honestly in want of an explanation.

So she’d give him one—as soon as he finished draping himself around her from behind.

“I cannot comprehend, Gareth, that this whole business is so casual to you, while to me it is overwhelming, lovely, and so very intimate. That you don’t find it so only makes me sad for you. I wish I could restore…” She fell silent as Gareth stopped fussing the covers and rearranging pillows.

He pulled her into his arms and fitted his chest to her back. She might have been a pillow for all the delicacy he used, though the man gave off heat like a toasted brick. “What do you wish you could restore?”

“Whatever it is that has been taken from you, Gareth. I don’t know exactly what it is. I lack the sophistication to put a name to it, but that you have lost it, or let it be taken from you… it isn’t fair, or right.”

He made no reply, but after a few minutes, his hand began to wander, kneading her breasts, flowing down her back, over her hip, her shoulders. She suspected he was trying to distract her, was desperate to distract her, so she wouldn’t have the mental fortitude to wonder what he was thinking.

What he was
feeling
.

“Don’t waste your concern on me, love,” he said at length. “I cannot afford the luxury of the sentiments you allude to, but I appreciate you would want them restored to me. I, for one, do not miss them.”

He rose over her and rolled her onto her back, then wedged himself between her legs and took the weight of his upper body onto his forearms.