“I can guess, Grace.” His lordship prowled toward her, his hip brushing a gilt table and setting the crystal glasses tinkling upon it. She saw from his unsteady gait that he’d been drinking. But then, so had she.
“I know you are afraid,” he said. “I know what you want.” He brushed back the now unruly locks of his white-blond hair.
“You do?” Brandy was hot in her blood. She leaned back against the arm of the settee. “I don’t even know what I want.”
“Yes, you do. But you deny it.”
“I liked you much better when you were direct. What do I deny, my lord?”
His dark eyes—a stunning blend of violet and blue—held hers. He was breathtakingly beautiful. Much more so than that coarse and bold highwayman who was his half brother. “You deny that you want passion. Heat. Fire. You want lusty, sweaty, passionate sexual pleasure. You want to strip away the gowns, the corsets, and the bloody propriety. You want to fuck, sweetheart. And you want to fuck me.”
She was shocked into breathlessness. The most confident, audacious grin turned up the edges of Lord Wesley’s sensual mouth.
“You are drunk.” She set down the glass, her heart like a live bird trapped in her chest. He was right. Of course. His very words had set her on fire. “And your sister warned me—”
“That I’ve bedded a lot of women. So have most of the other men here who act like eunuchs around you. The men who try to treat you like you are sweet and untouchable. Can you imagine a life wedded to one of them?”
“No.” It was simply the truth.
“You don’t want marriage, Grace. You want sex. You have to take marriage to get it.”
She laughed at that, thrown off balance by the entire conversation. Had she already waded in too deep? She could hardly swoon or race from the room now. She had shown him the woman she really was. But she liked speaking this way. Bluntly. Truthfully. It was exhilarating. “And you don’t,” she challenged. “What would ever tempt you to embark on marriage, my lord?”
“Love. Obsession.”
“The desire to possess something precious?”
“Perhaps that.”
“I saw a man tonight. Pru—Lady Prudence told me that he is your half brother. That he murdered—”
“Shh.” He pressed his fingers to her lips. “That is something that I intend to make right. I intend to spill his blood.”
Lord Wesley left her side and he raced over to the desk. She stood, stunned, watching as he wrenched open a drawer. He lifted out a brass box that gleamed in the firelight, laid it on the blotter, and opened it. When he lifted his hands, he held a six-inch dagger poised between the tips of both his index fingers, one pressed to the end of the handle, one pressed to the point of the blade.
Watching her all the while, he dropped the knife to the desk. It landed on its side with a thud. He stripped off his coat and threw it to the nearest chair—a leather club chair. His cravat and waistcoat followed.
There was only his shirt now. Fine linen between her gaze and his skin. “One day I will exact retribution from my damned half brother. But only if you tell me something that I need to hear.”
She stared in confusion as Lord Wesley let his cravat slide off, as he undid the ties of his shirt. As he strode to her he grabbed the knife and he yanked the sides of his shirt apart. He pressed the tip of the blade to his chest, just beneath the plane of his pectorals, on the flesh that covered his heart.
Her heart was in her throat. “What…what are you doing?”
“Marry me, Grace. Be my bride. Fuck me tonight and marry me afterward. I cannot wait another moment to have you.”
“Or you will stab yourself to the heart?” She was eighteen. She was not a schoolgirl—well, since they hadn’t been able to afford schooling, she never really had been, but—
He wasn’t really in love with her that much.
Was he?
“I want you.”
“Why me?” she asked. “Of all the others? Of all the rich beauties, of all the dukes’ daughters, of all the girls who try to move heaven and earth to attract you? No pretty words—the real words.”
“Because you are like me.”
That mystified her. And then he pushed the blade in and she was stunned to see a trickle of blood race down his body. It would ruin his shirt. “This is madness.”
He bent forward, the knife still cutting into his skin, and he skimmed his lips along her throat. She stood, passively, letting the remarkable sensation wash over her. Soft lips—like velvet, like silk. No…more than that. Like the touch of a flame. Or the brush of an angel’s hand.
“Saying no is madness,” he rasped.
His tongue stroked the length of her neck. Her body became fluid. She was wet—indecently, wonderfully wet between her thighs. The stubble on his jaw teasingly scratched her skin. Her pulse seemed to beat everywhere at once—in her head, her lips, her fingertips, her…her sex.
“You are beautiful.”
How many men had said that? But it mattered, from him.
“Touch me.”
“Only if you take the blade from your heart.”
“I will plunge it in if you leave me now. If you do not touch me. I cannot live without your touch. I could go to another woman. I know you are thinking that. I could bury my heavy, aching cock into her and fuck until my brain explodes and all the while I would be in pain because I wanted you. Do you have any idea what bloody torture that is?”
“I think I know.”
“I want to marry you, Grace. All I need is a yes. One simple word.”
“Yes.” And there was no turning back. She hungered to touch him, and, once she did, she had to go forward.
If she touched him, she had to agree to do everything a husband and wife were intended to do.
Slowly, she pulled off her glove—a white, virginal, and utterly irritating scrap of satin. She reached out, touching her fingertips to his chest, his skin hot and damp beneath her touch.
“Take the knife away,” she breathed. He was drunk and his hand cupped her bottom—a place a man’s hand had never been—but she was afraid he would crush her to him and stab himself by accident.
He was young. Spoiled. Passionate. Wild.
Hers. With one simple word.
“Yes,” she said again, to ensure there was no mistake, and she released a sigh of relief as he tossed the blade back to the desk. But in the next instant, he slid her skirts, petticoats and all, up her thighs. He pulled her drawers down before she could squeak, held her as she stepped out of them.
“You smell of lust, Grace. You stink of it and I love your smell. I want to cover my hands in it, my cock in it.”
His earthy words made her more wet, more creamy and slick, and she could smell herself, flushing as she did so.
“Now, hold up your skirts for me and let me explore.”
She obeyed and his hands slid around her naked inner thighs. His palms were strong, a little rough, and as he squeezed her skin she feared she’d fall to the floor.
“Stand up, Grace,” he commanded in a growl and his hands skimmed higher, up and up to the juncture of her thighs, to her hot and sticky quim. “Part your legs for me a little more.”
She did, aware of the wetness leaking down her inner thighs.
“Ah, yes, good girl,” he murmured, and his look of fierce hunger softened with his heartbreaking smile. “Lovely, soft curls.”
His fingers combed through them and she squirmed. Her quim felt tight and achy and hot and she was wriggling to ease the tension.
“Is your clit hard now? Would it like to feel my fingers stroking it? Would you like me to rub hard?”
She had no idea. A strangled, confused groan slipped from her lips. His bold erotic talk was what she wanted but not entirely what she’d expected. She was to be his wife—she’d thought he would be sweet. It would be sensuous and they would not speak—
Like a statue, she stood unable to move, and his long, strong fingers slid into her cleft. It felt so good, it felt—
His fingers sawed across her sensitive nub and she screamed. Her cry rang throughout the large room and his lordship laughed in response. “I knew you would scream,” he purred, and he suckled her neck, making her cry out again. His lips, his tongue, his teeth—all teased the tingling skin of her throat and turned her body to molten heat.
He fiddled with the buttons of her gown, muttering curses, and she knew then why he had wanted her in something easy to remove. A few gave way, her bodice sagged, and at once his hands were there, lifting her breasts over the ruffled neckline.
She saw the pale curves lift, felt the strain against the silk, then felt her breasts spill out. “God yes,” he groaned. “These tits. These enormous, plump, glorious breasts. I’ve been hungering to get my hands on these for a week.”
His head dropped to her right breast and she moaned at the whisper of his silvery-blond hair brushing her flesh. At once, his firm mouth closed over her puckering nipple and he suckled so hard she dropped her skirts and grasped the back of the nearest chair.
Yes, she had played with her own nipples before, but not like this. He sucked greedily, lavishly, then rolled her free nipple between thumb and forefinger. It was so much—too much! She shut her eyes tight, swamped by sensation. Stars sparkled behind her lids. Something hard stroked her nipple—his teeth, she realized. She was astonished. Shocked. A little scared.
But he was a master, skillfully using the hard pressure of his teeth to send her soaring. She drank in his masculine scent and it wrapped around her like a magic spell. Letting her lids flicker open, she saw him suck first her left breast, then her right, leaving a trail of saliva between the two. Her nipples were wet, and harder and longer than she’d ever seen.
Lord Wesley glanced up, fair hair dusting his vivid eyes, and her heart gave a pang. His smile was gloriously wicked. “Enough play, love. Let us move on to the main event.”
Grace wanted it to be slow and seductive, but he was far too aroused, she supposed. Tugging at his trouser buttons, he groaned, “I’m too damned hard to get these things off, blast it.”
She giggled at his loud moan of relief as the buttons gave and his placket opened. He shoved his trousers down just past his hips and she saw it—him—for the first time.
Darker blond hair dusted his abdomen, then made a curly thicket around the length of him jutting out. Before her mesmerized eyes, he wrapped his hand around its girth and gave a stroke that made his eyes roll back in his head.
He dropped to the floor and stretched out on his back on the rug. One arm pillowed his head and he held his…his hard cock upright. She stood like a ninny, a little nonplussed by his speed.
“Come here and straddle me,” he rasped. “I want you on top of me, Grace. You can control how hard you want the strokes. How deep you want my cock to go.”
Perched on top of her bodice, her large breasts stuck out, making it difficult to judge where she was as she lowered to the floor. Her breasts were much too big, unfashionably so, but Lord Wesley could not take his eyes off them.
“They’re luscious,” he promised. “Now sit on my prick, love, then bend forward and smother me with those tits for a while.”
She had never thought they would make love for the first time on a carpet in his father’s study. Yet the wickedness of it made it exciting. She was his coconspirator and she liked it. This was what she wanted. This was to be her future.
“Hurry, love,” he urged as she fought to push aside the heavy silk skirt of her gown and the layers of lace-trimmed petticoats. “Though I love watching your nipples jiggle as you struggle.”
Poised over him, she hesitated. Was she allowed to touch him—to hold his staff while she sank down on top of it?
“I’m dying, Grace.” One strong hand clasped her hip through her skirts, and she rubbed her quim along the tip of his cock. The head was wet and smelled lush and primitive, just as she did. She was so slick and he was so hot and rigid that he easily slid into her. Gasping, she lowered and bore her weight on her knees. Her position pitched her breasts toward his face, as he’d wanted, and he arched up with his tongue sticking out. His tongue furled around her nipple as she took his cock deeper. Her walls slowly pushed apart, clenching him tight.
You can control how hard you want the strokes…
He’d promised that but he was thrusting up to her, filling her, invading her. He plunged up and a twinge of pain startled her. Then it vanished and she wriggled on him, glorying in the feel of being completely full. She lifted and lowered, shocked by the wet slurping as she rose and fell, stunned by the pleasure as their hips collided.
“That’s it,” he growled. “Fuck me hard. Pound on me and make your tits bounce. I want to watch them slap up and down—”
Both his hands were on her hips, guiding her to slam up and down on him. Her hair tumbled free of her coiffure. Her breasts wobbled heavily. She panted for breath, getting hotter and hotter. Her thighs were slick, her breasts and back and forehead moist. If she bent toward him, she teased her…her clit with each stroke—
His face contorted. “God!” He pulled her abruptly forward and she sprawled over him, burying his face into her round breasts as he slammed his hips upward. Clamped to him by his strong arm, she dragged in breaths and squirmed on him. She’d felt pleasure but no climax.
She knew of the climax. She’d seen the expressions in her father’s paintings. Of women in ecstasy, melting in pleasure all over a man. Their mouths would be open wide in a scream, their eyes shut, their faces flushed. Sometimes they’d be gouging the man with their fingernails, as though they were fighting for their lives, as though fighting to survive the pleasure claiming their souls.
She hadn’t quite got
there.
Suddenly his arms lifted, and Lord Wesley relaxed back against the rug, grinning, and looking disheveled and gloriously handsome.
It was on the tip of her tongue to say, “I love you.”
But he gave a coarse laugh. “Lord, but you’re a good fuck, as I knew you’d be. Now make yourself decent and get out of here. I’m done with you.”
G
race ran blindly down the hallway. She passed a gentleman, but tears of humiliation blurred her eyes and she could not see him distinctly.
Oh God, he would recognize her!
She forced herself to stop. To turn. But the gentleman was not watching her in astonishment, as she expected he would be. He had reached the door of the study and she could only see his back. She shivered at the sight of his raven-black hair, even as Lord Wesley jovially greeted him.
“Wynsome! Come to pay tribute to the master?”
The master? As she tried to absorb what that meant, Wynsome answered, with grudging respect and salacious humor laced in his words, “So, you finally had lovely little Grace Hamilton.”
Grace shrank back against the papered wall of the hallway, fighting the hot bile that clawed at her throat. He’d shared his horrible plans with Wynsome all along. It had been a joke, a wager, perhaps. And she’d stumbled right into it, a stupid, gullible girl.
He’d made it clear exactly how ‘done with her’ he was. She’d whispered, “But m—marriage?” and he’d laughed in her face.
How many other
gentlemen
knew? Did they all?
“She’s a treat,” Lord Wesley said with callous triumph. “Every bit as good as I’d conjectured, given that she was a virgin. And, as you will note, she makes my twentieth virgin of the year. Your blunt is at risk, Wynsome. I’ll have bedded a hundred by Christmas.”
She felt pinned to the wall by their appalling cruelty. This was sport to them.
“The rest of the club will be astounded. There’s many who wagered more than they could afford, certain you’d never claim one hundred gently bred virgins.”
The rest of the
club?
There were others, possibly dozens, of men involved in this? Men who would all talk of her ruination. This would destroy her. Oh God, what had she done?
All of society would know—every gentleman who had treated her as a gently bred young marriage prospect. Wynsome knew—would he tell the Earl of Warren about it? Would the handsome, white-haired earl sneer at her, calling her the horrid names he had used on her mother?
“What have you done, my dear?”
She gave a strangled scream at the deep male voice that repeated the very question she’d asked herself.
Devlin Sharpe had seen many frightened women in his day. Terrified women. Desperate women. He had seen the eyes of women as they stood on the gallows and waited for the platform to drop away.
But he’d never seen such a mix of fear and loathing and anger shooting from such beautiful and determined eyes. Of course, he did not think he’d ever seen such an intriguing woman before—an intoxicating, alluring mix of angelic golden hair, pretty features, and enticingly carnal curves.
He held the lovely blonde’s gaze, aware from the way her eyes darted and her lips trembled that she intended to lie to him. “Don’t lie,” he warned. “Don’t give me a weak story and try to run away. I want the truth. I want to know what—or who—has hurt you.”
She straightened, moving away from the papered wall, and Devlin knew exactly what had happened. Her small fingers were curled around the crumpled sky-blue silk of her bodice, holding it up over her generous breasts. Beneath the light of the wall sconce, her soft hair was gleaming gold and poured in disheveled curls over her shoulders and down her back. A tear still clung to the lashes of her red-rimmed green eyes. She smelled of sex.
Hearing his half brother’s mocking laugh from the study was the final piece of evidence. “Did he rape you? Or just seduce you?”
Furious at his damned brother, he’d let a snarl creep in to his expression and she drew back. “I should go,” she whispered.
“Not through the corridors of a crowded house with your dress hanging off you. Come with me.”
“Why?” Her golden brows drew together in suspicion.
Now
the woman was cautious.
“I can negotiate this house without anyone seeing us.”
Obviously she could not understand why any man would wish to do her a kindness. She took another step away from him. “You…you are a highwayman, aren’t you?”
“Of course I would never admit to that, Miss…what is your name, by the way?”
Since he’d first spotted her startling golden hair in the ballroom and then indulged himself with a good look at the rest of her, he’d wondered who she was. None of his father’s servants had obliged him with a name—they’d been more interested in tossing him out on the gravel drive.
Pity they did not know the secret entrances to the house as he did.
“Your name,” he repeated.
“If I do not tell you, it will be one less man who knows.” Her lips formed a sneer at that, and he knew she meant her anger for herself.
What was it with some women that they absorbed their anger instead of using it for some good? His mother had been like that—taking every blasted insult and slap his father had bestowed upon her and swallowing it up herself.
“I know my half brother,” he stated, determined to place blame where it lay. “What did he promise you?”
She shook her head. “It hardly matters what he promised me. I should have known he did not mean to stand by his words. I, of all people, should know that—” She stopped abruptly. “Did you murder Lady Prudence’s lover, or is that something you will also not admit to?”
Murder? Hell, so that was the way the gossipmongers had described it. Since that had been his reason for returning here, it struck him on the raw. “I shot him in a duel,” he said brusquely. “It was all damnably honorable—and I lay stress on the word
honorable
. It was also deserved. Not legal, of course, but I doubt that will be the crime I’ll ultimately swing for. It was not murder. I am not asking you to follow me for nefarious reasons, love—and I do need a name to call you, or you will have to listen to endearments all the way up the stairs.”
She goggled at him, as young women so often did, but from the slight curve of her lips—immediately quelled—he knew she’d followed his quick speech. “Hamilton. My name is Grace Hamilton.”
Devlin took a step backward and crooked his finger. “Trust me, Miss Hamilton. You cannot stay out here with your gown half off. And even if I button it for you—”
“I know. I look far too obviously like a harlot.”
She’d tried his patience too far. More roughly than he should, he caught hold of her wrist and forced her to follow him down the hallway. She dragged her heels but had no choice. A thump of his fist against the appropriate molding gave a
snick
and he pried up the secret panel. “In there—there’s a hidden staircase to the upper floors. I apologize in advance for the cobwebs and the dust.”
Plain fear showed in her large, round eyes.
Blast.
“I have no intention of hurting you, Miss Hamilton. But I promise you, if Wesley took your innocence, he’ll marry you.”
She paused at the foot of the stairs. “You cannot force him to.”
Devlin waved his hand to encourage her to get up the stairs. “A man with a knife at his back can be forced to do anything.”
She laid a slender bare hand on the rickety balustrade. “I don’t want that. I don’t want to marry him. I just want to…to turn back time.”
“Sweeting—”
She stomped her slipper on the worn floor, the thump swallowed up by the stale air. “Don’t. My name is Grace. I told you what it was and I want you to use it. Don’t call me names like that.”
A strand of a spider’s web dangled in front of her face, and she flinched as he brushed it away. The way she’d recoiled made him want to rip out Wesley’s sorry guts. Gently, he shook his head, wearing what he hoped was a soothing smile. “I cannot call you Grace. That is an intimacy a man like me is not allowed. I can call you ‘love’ or ‘sweetheart’ and live up to my audacious nature, or I can call you ‘Miss Hamilton’, showing you due respect.”
He’d hoped to relax her by making her laugh but she threw up her hands, which made her bodice gape. He caught a glimpse of lush ivory curves with a deep shadowed valley between. His throat dried and his blood rushed down to his cock, making it instantly as hard as iron.
“I don’t want due respect!” she cried. “Nor do I want to be an anonymous ‘love’. I want—Oh, this is ridiculous. What does it matter what you call me? I can imagine what everyone else will call me.”
With that, she turned and began to clomp up the stairs.
“A little quieter, Miss Hamilton,” he advised, though he hated quenching her spirited anger. It was just what she needed—the best remedy for humiliation. “A little discretion will keep our secret a secret.”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered ahead, to the dark and the cobwebs. “Why would you help me?”
“I might be a highwayman, but there are certain things I do not steal.”
“Like a woman’s virtue?” Disbelief rang in her voice.
“Like a woman’s heart. Now tell me your story. All of it.”
When it began with, “I should have known better—”, he growled, and she tried again.
“Lord Wesley has pursued me for a week. He’s found ways to get me alone, to be suggestive. I knew he desired me, and I…I cared for him. I should have known that lust might not mean his heart was engaged, of course!” She turned, as though to ensure he was not laughing at her. He was not. And he never would. His heart hurt for her.
“I would not have let him…well, I was not going to meet him after all. I knew I should not. But he found me, and he told me he wanted to marry me. He asked me what my answer was. And I said yes! And then, it seemed so right to…well, to…I should have known better.”
“And waited until he put a ring on your finger to discover he’s a piece of shit? Far better you find out now.”
She gasped. “It wouldn’t have come to that. He never intended to—”
“Stop interrupting my attempt to make the appropriate point, Miss Hamilton. The mistake isn’t yours. It’s his. Now let us get you to your room and I’ll take care of his bloody lordship.”
She stopped on the stair and turned again, brow furrowed with worry. “What do you intend to do?”
“I will ensure they do not ruin you. I can ensure this is kept a secret. I promise you that.”
“Why would you do that for me? When it’s my own fault.”
“It isn’t your fault. You’re human. You believed a blackguard.”
She sagged against the banister. “I’ve ruined everything. I can’t marry. I—”
“There are men who aren’t so worried about having a virgin. They’d rather have a woman they enjoy spending time with. They’d rather have love. Now, which is your bedroom?”
That startled her, but she dutifully answered. “The green room. It overlooks the west pond.”
“It’s at the end of this hallway, then.” He urged her up to the landing, knowing he should open the door and let her go. But he bent over her hand, pressing his lips to her fingers, just a brush, and then he rose. “You gave your heart. It is and always will be the most precious gift.”
“One I gave to the wrong man.” She gave a laugh, a soft, wild laugh. “I gave my innocence to the wrong man.”
She was vulnerable now. And enticing, even in the faint light glimmering in from the hallway, even when surrounded by creaky wood framing and a few centuries of dust. She was pink and gold, the sort of treasure that tempted men to madness. He’d faced down pistols, but it took all the courage he had to abruptly turn her by her slim shoulders. To not take advantage and press his mouth to those soft pink lips.
“Slip out into the hallway and go to bed, Miss Hamilton. Bathe yourself, slip into your warmed silky sheets—” He almost stumbled over that image. “Close your eyes and sleep, love.” He whispered it. “Do not worry about tonight. I will take care of everything.”
“It is not so simple as that,” she declared, showing a flash of pride that he could have applauded. “I have no idea what to do when I wake up tomorrow.”
“Go on about your life, Miss Hamilton.” He thought of all the times he had thought he could not bear to see the sunrise, the nights he thought he couldn’t stand to live another day. But he had.
“My life is about marriage, Mr. Sharpe,” she whispered. “That is the direction of my every day.”
He wanted to say that it still could be, but instead he said, “Then perhaps you should find a new direction for your life, Miss Hamilton.”
Then he opened the door, checked the hallway, and watched her go.
This was what she got for looking to a man to rescue her.
Grace threw her crumpled satin gloves to the smooth counterpane covering her bed and she stalked to the bellpull to summon one of Lady Prudence’s maids. Unlike all the other women here, she could not afford to bring her own.
A rich, earthy, unfamiliar scent touched her nose and she panicked. She released the tasseled rope before she gave the tug that might ring her death knell. She smelled of
him.
She could not be attended by a maid. Not when her dress was a wrinkled disaster, her hair was a mess, and she wore the undeniable smell of a man. But she could not take off her own gown and corset. And she needed washing water.
Struggling with the buttons, she stalked to the ewer and basin. There was some left, cold, but it might be enough to rid her of this smell. She could sleep in her corset—well, not sleep, just wait for dawn—but there was still the matter of her dress.
As she struggled with the buttons she could reach, then wriggled and jumped and grunted to get the dress off, Grace muttered aloud, “Lord Wesley is a lily-livered rodent who is not worthy of licking my boots. Horse droppings are more noble than he!”
It might have been silly, but it made her feel better. And as she gave a final push and stepped out of her gown, she sighed with relief. She left her dress in a puddle on the floor, hoping that might explain away the wrinkles, then grimaced as she poured the last of the water into the basin.
She supposed it was punishment for being a fool. She dampened the washcloth and shivered.
Marriage was to be her salvation—it was the only way out—and now she’d thrown that away. As penance, she scrubbed herself hard with the cold washcloth.
What was she to do? She had inherited none of her father’s talents, unlike Venetia who could paint and her sister Maryanne who was a gifted author. She was not in the least bit artistic, unless one counted a flair for throwing herself into dramatic disasters.