“Here. Stop this now,” Ben said, handing her a snow-white handkerchief.
“I cannot stop just because you want me to. I’m not your mistress ready to take your every direction.” Evie hiccupped and blew her nose in a significant blast. Veronique would never have made such a noise, but then her nose was much smaller than Evangeline Ramsey’s.
No point to thinking about Veronique. He was done with that aspect of his life. He supposed he’d have to go to Almack’s when it opened and look for a buck-toothed virgin.
WIFE WANTED
: One reasonably attractive young lady of pleasant disposition and some wit to spend the next three or four decades with a reformed rake in marital harmony if not bliss. Childbearing hips preferred to silence the imprecations of his mama.
Good grief. He was not still tied to his mother’s apron strings. He wouldn’t marry because of his
mother
. Why, just this morning, marriage was the furthest thing from his mind. How had it come to pass that he had dismissed his mistress and was now constructing a personal ad for a publication that he was definitely, definitively removing from breakfast tables across the country?
Ben couldn’t spare the time to think about his life-changing decision now, for Evie was quaking as if she sat on top of a volcano. Her sobs were altogether alarming, far surpassing the dead puppy level. He hated to see a woman cry—it reminded him of all the nights he lay huddled with his mother after one of his father’s rages. Emily Gray had been a brave young woman, but even she had her limits, and was sometimes unable to conceal her marital un-bliss.
“Please don’t cry anymore,” he begged.
Somehow he took Evie up from the chair and in his arms again. She quivered like a willow in the wind. He rocked her as she sniffed and snorted and spread nasal mucus on his second-best jacket. He didn’t care. The press of her fragrant body against his robbed him of all thought. She was wearing a man’s cologne which he found unusually stimulating—sandalwood and spice and something else which filled his senses and made him do a very rash thing.
He cupped one wet cheek and kissed her, tasting salty tears and the lingering taste of cheroot and brandy. By God, she’d been out doing who knows what before she lay in wait to ambush him—smoking, certainly. A filthy habit. She couldn’t keep parading about as a man—his hands told him that she was very much a woman as he brushed down the curve of her back to her pert derriere and held her close.
At first her mouth opened merely in surprise, but soon she returned the parry of his tongue with a tentative riposte of her own. The years dissolved and Ben was once again a twenty-year-old youth, lost in the flush of first lust. His erection warred with the plackets of two pairs of breeches, and the fire became unbearably hot. Wool and linen fell away to their feet, aided by two pairs of scrambling hands, the kiss never breaking but deepening. Ben ignored the feeble warning bell that sounded just beyond sanity. He had kissed dozens of women in the past decade, but none were Evangeline Ramsey. None had touched him, tormented him like she did. None had broken his heart as she had.
Rubbish
. He had no heart to break.
But his desire—now that was a tricky thing. He lifted her shirt—she still wore her cravat, for God’s sake—and skimmed Evie’s white skin. She was chilled again, her flesh speckled with goose bumps. Ben himself was an inferno of heat, the blood rushing to the surface and fairly lifting the golden hair on his arms. Evie’s inky fingers were now entwined with the hair on his head, and he wished she would move them lower. He took a step toward the hearthstone rug and stumbled, hampered as he was by crumpled small-clothes and trousers at his ankles. If Callum came in now, he’d expire of shock. Or laugh—there was no doubt Ben was a semi-naked fool.
But still the kiss went on, a desperate affair now as their bodies slid against each other like raw silk. Ben tugged down the wrapping Evie wore to conceal her feminine charms. Her nipples were diamond-hard from cold. Ben drew a slight breast into his palm, thumbing the pebbled point until she shuddered against him, their unbroken kiss absorbing her sound of pleasure. If they both didn’t topple over amid tangled clothing, he intended to maneuver her to the floor and fuck her senseless. It seemed she had stopped crying, and there was no scruple stopping him from finishing what they had started.
Floors were good. Floors were fine. Floors had been their friend ten years ago, and walls as well. There had been no time for finesse or feather mattresses, or even undressing. He had taken her on a piano bench once as he recalled, with Evie riding him as his elbows rested on the keys and his hands gripped her slender waist. The music they’d made had been jarring, but there had been no servants present to complain of the cacophony. Evie had been unchaperoned, a daring, dangerous girl to a twenty-year-old Ben. Irresistible. Insatiable. Until that last night.
No, he would not think of her bitter, cutting remarks, not while she was soft in his arms, her tongue tangling with his, the tip of her proud nose pressed into his cheek. He angled her face so she wouldn’t suffocate and slowly dropped them both to the floor. Somehow she wound up atop him, her damp curls taunting his flesh. He plunged his fingers up into her center to find the evidence of her desire, a flow of nectar caused by one hopeless, heartfelt kiss. A drunken kiss, but Ben wasn’t particular tonight, not when a decade’s worth of longing was about to be resolved. The taste of brandy and tobacco and yearning coursed through him, sweeter than anything he’d consumed in years. The fact that Evie’s long fingers gripped his shaft to guide it home was only icing on the sensual cake.
Every cell awakened, leaped into the flame. She was so tight. It was nearly painful for him to forge into her, but she must not have minded, as she pushed down against him, ever efficient. He was swallowed up in one fierce plunge, surrounded by hot wet honey. He opened his eyes to see hers—feral, black as printer’s ink—staring straight back at him, too close for comfort, their lips still engaged in the dance. He broke away reluctantly, feeling an absurd need to say something—anything—to her. To stop this madness if he had to, although he was perilously close to spilling himself already. Shaking her head, she placed a trembling finger across his mouth and rose above him, her curls lit like polished ebony in the firelight.
He felt blinded by her beauty, though she was nothing like his recent conquests. He had sought comfort with softer, easier, more pliable women—pillowy women who were paid to keep their tongue, or use it to wicked effect. Wanton women so very unlike Evangeline Ramsey that Ben was nearly bludgeoned by his own stupidity.
He felt something for her still, and had sought escape from that inconvenient emotion for a third of his life. Calf-love, never grown, a great moo-y mess of need and want. Impossible. Insupportable.
But an indisputable fact. And what would happen when Evie sobered up?
But she wasn’t so far gone—two glasses of brandy couldn’t bewitch her into losing all her good sense. She’d not seemed inebriated when she sought to assault him at his front steps. She moved above him now with deliberate grace, twisting and turning until he stopped worrying about their future altogether and concentrated on their present. He was buried deep in the woman he both hated and loved and would not want to be anywhere else but on his hearth rug, tangled up in evening clothes and Evie.
W
hat was she doing? The obvious answer—riding Benton Gray’s cock like a Jane Street whore. She had come tonight to murder him—oh, not with her cane but her words. To tell him she hated him for going behind her back and taking advantage of her poor father, for living a wastrel’s life and robbing her of her own accomplishments. And had anything she’d said stopped her from falling disastrously into his arms again?
She could not blame it on the brandy—she’d drunk far more of the stuff trying to loosen an informant’s tongue on many other occasions. She would blame it on her traitorous tears instead—men never could resist them, which was why she never, ever gave in and let herself weep no matter how many reasons she had to cry. She didn’t need anyone’s pity. Evangeline had taken care of herself her entire life and was good at it. Damned good.
With a few exceptions. Well, one. She’d been unable to guard her heart from a reckless, smiling boy, a boy who played deeper than her father and was therefore a terrible risk. A risk she could not afford then and could not afford now. Ben had done nothing this past decade to indicate that he’d changed one unruly hair on his golden head.
She shut her eyes so she could not see his satisfied smirk as she bounced atop him. No, smirk was not right—he wasn’t smiling as if he’d gotten his just deserts. In fact, she saw as she cracked one eye he wasn’t really smiling at all, but looking as if he was in absolute bliss. Ridiculous. True enough, their coupling did feel good. Extraordinarily good. Evie realized with a start that any gentleman she’d taken to her bed in the last ten years—all two of them—had never managed to breach the chill around her soul like this stupid man beneath her. Whatever one could say about Baron Benton Gray, he was not mechanical or miserly in his attentions.
And he’d only gotten better, judging from that elegant twist that made her flex helplessly around him. He had no further need to hold her in place—his cock did that completely—so his hands moved up to her aching breasts beneath her shirt. Evangeline shivered as he circled and swooped, his fingers causing a flush of swollen pink heat to spread across her skin. She stared down to where their bodies joined, dark curls to golden, an inch or two of his cock exposed each time she lifted—no, flew—up. Higher and higher and faster and faster until she cried out his name and tumbled across his broad chest.
She realized her mistake at once—she’d given him no time to withdraw before she clamped down and milked him. His seed was still spurting within her as he thrashed below, gripping her tight. She was too exhausted to panic now. She’d panic tomorrow. Or later today, as midnight had long since come and gone.
This evening was the worst night of her life. She’d gotten nothing that she’d come for—not job security for Frank or opportunities for the countless desperate people whose letters arrived on her desk daily. Her recent life’s work was in ruins, as was her resolve. She was at the mercy of a useless lord, a typical female who’d fallen for a pretty face and pulsing cock, heedless of the consequences. Evangeline felt like punching someone—herself, really, although Ben’s firm chin was so very tempting.
They lay in silence, covered in sweat and the scent of sex, the only sound the crackling fire. His arms did not relax but instead held her firmly against him. He was still seated within her, still hard, still hot. Another frustrated tear escaped from Evangeline’s eye and dripped onto his shoulder, lost in the slick sea between them.
She couldn’t blame him. It had been she who kissed him back. It had not occurred to her to draw away and slap his face or stomp his foot. Her fingers had fumbled with his cravat and his falls and the two of them had been so precipitous their limbs were still partially strangled by their garments. She still wore her stockings, for goodness’ sake.
And one evening shoe.
Evangeline had had an appointment this evening with the reclusive, stammering Lord Maxwell. She had gone to his modest home to assure him that his quest for the next Lady Maxwell was fully in train despite the fact that her ownership of
The London List
was now in question. She had given her word—her
gentleman’s
word—over a Spanish cigar that the poor man would be married by Christmas. The terms of his great-aunt’s will were quite specific—it was either marriage for him to inherit or continue on as a bachelor in less-than-genteel poverty. He was in such despair he had not noticed when her voice had faltered and became more feminine. If he had, no doubt he would have turned scarlet and bungled his words.
Lord Maxwell was not at ease with the fairer sex. Unaccountably, he became so tongue-tied that a complete, comprehensible sentence was impossible for him. When Evangeline finally got him married off—and she would no matter what Benton Gray had to say about it—she planned to reveal to him he had been negotiating his future with a female all along.
Maxwell deserved his chance at happiness, unlike the vexing man beneath her. Benton Gray had squandered any right he had, fornicating his way through society and frittering away his income.
Courtesan races
. Contemptible.
Ben seemed unaware of her current scorn. His shaggy tawny hair haloed his too-handsome face, gleaming against the dark threads of the carpet. His eyes were closed in repose, thick fringes of eyelash shadowing his skin, the quirk of his lips proof that he was satisfied indeed. The man didn’t have a care in the world now, did he? Spent, satiated, smug in his mastery of her. Damn him to everlasting hell.
Evangeline elbowed him. “Let me up, you brute.”
His arm did not relax even fractionally. “Not yet. Don’t spoil this, Evie.”
“Spoil it! This whole evening is rotten to its core.”
“Yes, you did try to kill me. Or at least incapacitate me in some way.” He didn’t sound the least troubled by her earlier assault upon him.
“You deserve death, not that I wish to hang for removing a feckless boil upon society such as yourself.”
One clear green eye opened. “Feckless boil? What a wordsmith you are, Evie. Surely that’s something of an exaggeration.”
“Is it? What have you done to earn respect from anyone who’s not a libertine? Your drinking, your gambling, your whoring—why, you’re legendary.”
Ben shifted underneath her but still did not let her go. “And you and your silly paper have made me so. There’s not a literate soul in London who doesn’t think they know everything about me, but they don’t.
You
don’t know me at all, Evangeline. You never did.”
“Don’t know you?” Evangeline sputtered. “I only wish I didn’t! I can’t believe—” She broke off, too disgusted with herself and her current situation. To her dismay, Ben gave one more thrust to remind her exactly where she was and whom she was with.
“Now, no regrets, sweetheart. You wanted this as much as I did.”
“You flatter yourself. I was drunk.”
Ben raised an infuriating golden eyebrow. “On two glasses of brandy?”
“I—I had been drinking before I got here,” she admitted.
“Smoking, too, I’m sorry to note.”
She felt her cheeks grow warm. She’d had a few sympathetic tots of Lord Maxwell’s inferior brandy and a fairly vile cheroot when the idea came to her to confront Ben. And then she’d been forced to take a nip or two from a small flask of equally tepid stuff to keep herself warm on the frigid December night as she waited for him to come home. Who knew what licentious activity he’d been participating in? She thought she’d fall asleep on her feet on the street.
“So, your inebriation explains your clumsy aim. At least you’ll have no more excuse for your unnatural adaptation of a man’s worst habits. Lovely as you look in breeches, Evie, it’s skirts you’ll be wearing from now on.”
“How dare you tell me what I may or may not do!” Truly furious now, she struggled in his arms, but he effortlessly flipped her onto her back and nuzzled her throat. His weight was not quite crushing, but she was pinned beneath him. She slapped his back with all her might, which only drove him deeper.
“Your movements are having the exact opposite effect of what you seek, my dear. You’re not going anywhere, and neither am I.”
“You would rape me? I’ll scream the house down!”
“No one said anything about rape. Don’t lie and say I forced you.” The breath of his words buzzed against her neck, and she shivered.
No, he had not forced her. She had been completely complicit.
“Please stop.”
“I admit I do not want to.” He raised himself and looked into her face. “There is still something between us, Evie. I don’t like it any more than you do.”
He was so very beautiful. Too beautiful. Even more handsome now that he’d grown into his height and breadth. He’d been rangy and a bit gangly at twenty when she’d let him seduce her.
No, she’d seduced him, more fool she.
“How very flattering. At least we can agree on something. We hate each other.”
“I don’t hate you, Evie,” he said with sad softness. “I make it a practice not to hate—it drains one so. Think of the last two years you’ve wasted hating me in print.”
“You made it too easy, my lord,” she snapped. And he had—she’d almost pushed him out of her mind until she’d returned to London to man the paper her father had won. But there was Baron Benton Gray, the ultimate libertine, cutting a sexual swath through the ton with cheerful, heedless grace. His antics had infuriated her and roused a need for some sort of retaliation. He seemed to be managing his life quite nicely without her, even after his pledge of enduring love. Rubbish. She’d known the emptiness of his words then, and knew it now.
“I’ve done nothing more than what most men of my acquaintance do. Could you not have been seeking some other kind of amusement rather than vengeance? A vengeance I didn’t deserve, by the way. It was
you
who rejected
me
.” As if to take the sting out of his words, he tapped her nose with a forefinger. Ben looked completely at ease hovering over her, untroubled by the heat and scent between them.
“My stories had nothing to do with our misbegotten past. I need to get home,” she ground out. “My father . . . I never know how his nights will be.”
“So how then have you managed to spy on me? I hate to think I’ve kept you from being a dutiful daughter.”
“Some things are worth doing.” Pointedly, she turned her head and counted the crammed shelves that lined one side of the little room. Most of the books had not been covered in tooled leather and gilt, and showed obvious sign of wear. Of someone reading them many times over. Benton Gray? The idea seemed absurd. When would he have time when his every waking moment was spent in debauchery?
“Whose books are these?” she asked.
“Mine. I told you that. And if you want to be seriously impressed, I could escort you upstairs to the true library in the house, but then we’d have to get dressed.” He nibbled all too casually at her earlobe. For once Evangeline wished she had all her hair back so she could cover that sensitive spot. Most of the time she did not miss the snarling mass of coarse black hair that had defied taming, but right now she wished she could veil her face with it and shut herself off from Ben.
He still pressed her into the soft carpet, the quality of the weave so high she could not complain it was making her bare bottom itch. Ben seemed enamored now with the spot just under her ear and was giving it altogether unwelcome attention. Evangeline swallowed a cry and sank her fingernails into his shoulders. “Get off me.”
He lifted with lightning-like speed, withdrawing his cock from her passage with ruthless efficiency. Her damp skin puckered with the loss of his body heat as she struggled to sit up. He remained on his back, staring at the pattern the fire left on the ceiling.
“This must not ever happen again, Ben. I cannot imagine why I was so foolish to let myself be taken in by you.” Her voice wavered, diminishing the intensity of anger she surely felt, mostly at herself. She might even be pregnant, and then her life would be ruined for sure.
“Whatever you say, my dear.”
His drawling words infuriated her further. “You could be pox-ridden for all I know.” She tugged up for the crumpled strip of cloth she used to bind her breasts, not that she needed it.
His hand stayed hers. “Evangeline, I urge you to examine me,” he said, each word dripping ice.
Her eyes darted to his cock, curled now in its nest of golden hair. There were no blemishes to be seen, but that meant nothing. She was about to tell him so, but he squeezed her hand, causing her considerable discomfort.
“Do you really think I would bring you to harm if I were diseased? What kind of man do you think I am?”
“I know what kind of man you are! You—you—”
He pulled her down so they were virtually nose to nose. “I have had my share of fun, but have been very careful. Careful with my person as well as preventing any unwanted issue.”
“You forgot yourself tonight!” she snapped.
“Yes, I did. And for that I am sorry. Sorrier than you know. Imagining being tied to you for the rest of my life is enough to make me long for a quick death. The pox would be too slow.”