“You,” she answered, then she clutched the crisp lawn of his shirt. “Take this off, Montgomery.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He lifted his shirt off over his head and dropped it on the ground—which made the massive bulge in his trousers all the more obvious, but what could he do?
His battle-ready cock was as hard and proud as any granite obelisk erected by the pharaohs.
A monument to how very well behaved he’d been with her.
She looked at it, then let her gaze climb over his bare torso. Her fingers followed; he twitched with want as they trailed lightly up his belly and over his solar plexus.
He swallowed hard, his chest heaving. Whatever she wanted, he thought as he stared at her in hunger.
“What is this?” she murmured as her fingers stopped on one of his scars.
He glanced down at it. “Beauty mark.”
“It looks like an old bullet wound to me.”
“Or that.” Unable to hold back, he captured her by her elbows and drew her closer. “I’m sure I’ll tell you all my war stories one day, darling. But not now.” Kissing her again, he started undressing her, gently pulling the white fichu away from the neckline of her gown.
He untied the sash around her waist while she stood dreamily, letting him. Leaning closer, he lipped her earlobe, and whispered, “Off with your dress.”
Her lashes flicked upward; she looked uncertainly into his eyes, then visibly remembered that she trusted him.
She made her decision, and as she took off her dress, Trevor went mute with awe at her virginal trust.
Trust, not gold, not silver nor platinum was the rarest commodity on earth. He should know, having tasted betrayal by those who had once mattered most.
Grace turned away and went to drape her walking dress demurely over the back of a nearby chair so it wouldn’t get wrinkled, and watching her, his very heart clenched.
So sweet. So innocent. So good.
Then she turned around shyly, and his eyes glazed over, his mouth watering.
Gorgeous, heavenly tits.
“Good God, Miss Kenwood,” he purred. “What a body you’ve been hiding under those prim gowns.”
“I beg your pardon, my lord?” she cried, turning redder than she’d ever done before.
Trevor flashed a rueful grin. “Sorry. But . . . it’s true,” he added, raking her curves with his dazed stare. Then he met her gaze, and said quietly: “Get over here.”
She approached him warily, her stockinged feet silent over the dusty, hardwood floor. The sunlight teased him, making her chemise slightly transparent as she padded toward him with wide eyes full of nervous desire.
She was devastating, really, he thought, and he could only shake his head in amazement at his sheer luck in finding her. Maybe he should start taking Nick’s place at the gaming tables because he was obviously a son of fortune.
“You are ogling me,” Grace said.
“You deserve to be ogled,” he replied as he took her hand and pulled her closer. “Leered at. Drooled over. Absolutely lusted for. But only by me.”
Then she smiled and brought the very heavens down into his room.
“You’re rather lovely yourself.”
“For an old hunk of Swiss cheese.”
She chuckled. “I get it. Because of the holes.”
He laughed softly. “It’s so nice to be understood.” But he could not stop staring at her chest. “My God, Grace, honestly.”
She frowned at him in self-conscious confusion, but he skimmed the creamy expanse of her chest with one knuckle, taking it slowly. Her firm, round breasts were plumped up on display, lifted for his perusal by the corset that hugged her rib cage and her waist.
But looking was not going to be enough for him. Trevor wanted to taste. So he took her in his arms and kissed her with reassuring protectiveness, while his fingers roamed behind her back and delicately plucked away the lacings of her stays.
When he had freed her from the corset and dropped it on the floor, a very curious thing happened. It was as though by losing that strict, binding garment, the wanton in her was fully unleashed.
He felt the change in her posture, in her touch, in the way she sighed and ran her hands down his biceps while he, in turn, kissed his way down her shoulder. His heart pounded with anticipation as he lowered her chemise on one side, to bare one ripened, beautiful breast.
He went slowly to his knees, his arms around her, as he took her nipple into his mouth. She tipped her head back weakly and let out a groan while he sucked and savored her like she was made of marzipan.
She melted accordingly, stroking his hair, letting him play. “You are absolutely stunning . . . delicious,” he rasped hoarsely as he moved to the other breast.
The moments became a sensual blur of want and bliss and heightened awareness. The next thing he knew, he had her on her back in his bed and was caressing her through her chemise. Her hips and her stomach entranced him almost as much as her wonderful, addictive bosoms.
She held him in her arms as he lay beside her, but when she bent her knee restlessly, he took that as his cue to let his fingertips venture underneath her shift.
Gliding his hand up her thigh, he felt the honeyed cascade of the dew dripping from her core and trembled with need. Somehow, he held himself back, pleasuring her with his hand until she was writhing—but he wanted blindly to devour her. Moving over her with a wholly possessive intent, he swept downward over her silken body to receive her first orgasm on his tongue.
Her clit was swollen, rigid, as his tongue played and stroked, his fingers gliding in and out, her light garment bunched up above her waist.
Grace’s hands rested atop his head, her fingers twining through his hair as he brought her to a silent, heaving climax. He could hear her panting and smiled against her tenderest flesh as he surmised she was biting back a wild shriek. “It’s all right,” he whispered against her belly. “You can scream. Nobody will hear you.”
“But, y-you’ll think I’m a harlot,” she whispered, gasping to catch her breath.
“You silly girl, I could never think that of you. And even if I did, it would be our little secret,” he promised, flicking his tongue into her navel. “Let’s try that again, shall we?”
“Oh, God, Trevor!” she wrenched out as he returned lower and softly kissed her ripe and ready womanhood to the next level of delight. Her hips moved with his openmouthed kiss though he supposed she had never even imagined that such naughty pleasure was possible. Oh, she had much to learn, and he could not wait to teach her. He knew he had been born to love her, in every sense of the word.
No wonder he hadn’t died on his many missions, he thought as he licked and sucked her quivering mound. He knew now that he was meant to die in her arms.
On her second climax, she raked her nails into his shoulders, her head thrashing on his pillow like that of a woman fighting to survive some unbearable tropic fever.
I have got to fuck you soon,
he thought, feeling his own control slipping. “Need a break?”
“No.”
“Good girl,” he purred in devilish approval, abandoning his southward post. She trailed her fingers over his still-wet chin as he rose over her. Trevor dipped his head to capture her fingertip in his mouth. She groaned again as he sucked her fingers one by one and slowly lay between her legs.
Though he wanted her like he’d never longed for any woman before, he still did not
seriously
mean to deflower the pastor’s daughter . . . until she said his name in that particular way.
“
Trevor.
”
It was the most seductive sound he’d ever heard in his life. Breathless wonder. Innocence. Womanly need.
And love.
He heard it in her voice. And he knew that she, of all people, Grace Kenwood, the tower of virtue, would not be here with him in his bed unless she truly loved him.
Struggling with unbearable temptation, he could feel himself losing the battle as he glided his hands down the hourglass curves of her body, then grasped her juicy buttocks when he reached her hips. God, he could explode just from touching her.
You are almost too much for me.
“Please, Trevor,” she begged him in tremulous whisper. “I want this just as much as you do.”
He shut his eyes, shaken by her “please,” and promptly lost the war.
Raw want, rough and primal, flooded into his veins, flowing in from some far deeper reservoir of need than any woman had ever tapped in him before.
“Take me,” she panted, grasping his waist.
“You’ll marry me,” he ground out.
“Yes, yes, of course—just, please . . . make love to me. I’ve needed you forever.” She smoothed her palms down the small of his back, pushing his unbuttoned trousers down over his hips. When she grasped his buttocks, his conscience vanished, his will buckled. So much for good intentions.
This virgin had seduced him. As his lips lingered at her sweat-misted brow, he guided his pulsating member to the teeming threshold of her passage.
She sighed in restless satisfaction as he slowly penetrated her. The velvet welcome of her body made him gasp. Lots of women had wanted him over the years, but never an angel giving herself to him as his innocent bride.
“Oh, Trevor,” she groaned his name again. “I thought it was going to hurt. But it’s wonderful. It’s so deep.”
“I told you I’d never hurt you,” he whispered, and he was glad then that he had taken the time to make her fully ready, kissing away every last inhibition. Now that she was open to him in every regard—her lush body, her sharp mind, and her honorable, compassionate heart—he was glad for every day, every hour that he had restrained himself with her. It had been so deliciously worth it.
She wrapped her legs around him with an instinctual knowing and chafed his chest, up and down, maddeningly with her palm. Her touch made him have to fight not to go insane.
Patience, patience.
She seemed game for whatever he wanted to do, but nevertheless, it was only her first time.
He cast about for some way to hold back, his chest heaving. How easily she could have made him lose control.
Somehow, he held himself in check and kissed her over and over again as he rocked her tenderly, making her utterly his own. He fondled her thigh and slipped his middle finger into the top of her stocking when he came to it. Grace hugged him with her legs and draped her arms around him drunkenly, perhaps intoxicated by pleasure.
They moved in unison, as naturally attuned to each other as they had been from the first night they had danced together at the Lievedon Ball. She hugged him hard in her embrace; he knew she was close and fought for all his worth to hold back just a little longer.
A crazed cry broke from her lips. When she came again, with his cock buried deep inside her, it was more than he could bear. She had barely finished screaming out when the storm broke from him, so long and carefully pent up.
He took her like a wild man, forgetting all his thoughts about patience, holding back. He was swept away by blind, raging hunger that only she could fill. Braced on his hands above her, his hair falling in his face, he ravished her in a blaze of savage pleasure, deaf to the slams of his bed frame pounding on the wall.
All he could hear were her sharp, crazed moans of delight.
A low shout of release tore from his lips, as well, and when he finally stopped, he was shaking and covered in sweat.
Careful not to crush her with his weight, he shuddered with a belated throb of sensation as he withdrew from her body and eased back a bit. He lay atop her.
“Oh,
Trevor.
”
“Oh, Grace.” He smiled drunkenly, then kissed his way up her throat, rounding the angle of her chin. When he looked down into her eyes, they were sparkling like a thousand stars above the sea.
She bit her lip against a shy, girlish grin.
Trevor stared down at her, utterly in love.
She wrapped her arms around him. “Are you all right? What is it, darling?”
“Nothing. Well—actually, I have a confession to make.”
“You do?” she whispered tenderly, caressing his bare back in long, slow, languorous strokes.
“Everything I did in this town,” he told her softly, “it was for you. But surely you already knew that.”
Joy misted her blue eyes. “I suppose I had my suspicions, but I never would presume. I just thought since you’re a hero—it’s true, you are—and that’s what heroes do.”
He looked at her with a rueful smile, uncomfortable with that term.
“You’re
my
hero,” she amended, seeing his hesitation. She cupped her hand against his cheek. “And I’m going to love you more than any other woman ever could.”
“I trust you, Grace,” he whispered, holding her gaze.
It was the biggest compliment he knew how to give.
She took his face gently between her hands. “I will never betray that trust. I’ll never hurt you, either, darling. I’ve waited all my life for you.”
Words failed him at her earnest stare. He couldn’t speak, so he merely nodded, then smoothed her hair and kissed her once again.
When she smiled at him so warmly, so intimately, Trevor was amazed to realize that at last, he had truly found the place where he belonged. Whatever he’d done for this village, it was nothing compared to what she’d given him. Love, acceptance.
And a home.
M
eanwhile, on the other side of town, alas, things were not working out half so well for George.
He flinched as Callie Windlesham laughed in his face.
“Marry
you
? After what you did to me? You must be joking. Go away with your boyish games. I’m tired of them and tired of you!”
He strove for patience and humility, though heaven knew neither were his forte. “Callie, I made a mistake. I admit that. I was wrong, and I am very, very sorry.”
“That’s not nearly good enough!”
“Please! Can’t you see I’m trying to grovel here?”
“As well you should! Listen to me and listen well, Lord Brentford: You are a very bad young man.”
“I thought that was just part of my charm,” he muttered under his breath.
But Callie stalked across the drawing room toward him, counting off his failings on her dainty fingers. “You are addicted to gambling. You chase after inappropriate women. All you care about is yourself, your own pleasures. Having fun!”
“We could have fun together, don’t you see?” he attempted.
“There’s more to life than that! Aren’t you ever going to grow up? If you weren’t so distracted with all your pleasures, you might have noticed that you are needed here in Thistleton—but I suppose you are too spoiled and selfish to care.”
“Oh,
I’m
spoiled and selfish?” he shot back, stung sharply enough to retaliate. “Are you sure you aren’t talking about yourself, little princess?”
“Don’t come into my house and insult me.”
“It’s not an insult if it’s the truth,” he retorted.
She folded her arms across her chest and glared at him, but George scowled back.
“Stop trying to act like you’re so perfect. You just merrily assume that everyone else’s world revolves around you, including mine!”
“It ought to if you loved me.”
“God, give me patience!” He dragged a hand through his hair, fighting the urge to throttle her. “What do you want from me, Callie? What is it going to take?”
She looked at him for a long moment, thinking it over, apparently. “That’s a good question. Frankly, you deserve to suffer, George. You cheated on me with a harlot—”
“Here we go again,” he huffed, dropping his head back.
But his lapse in groveling clearly enraged her.
“You had my heart, and you threw it away! I loved you—”
“You did?” he asked in astonishment.
“But not anymore!” she bellowed loudly enough to be heard in the next county.
George felt his heart crumple. “Oh, Callie, please don’t say that. I didn’t know how much you cared at the time. You hid it!”
“I had to! That’s how a young lady is trained!” she wailed. “She has no choice but to be coy until the ring is on her stupid finger!” Tears flooded her eyes. “God, I hate you! Why did you come here, just to rub salt in the wound?”
“You know why I came here. Because I love you.” Gathering up the full measure of his courage, he suddenly dropped to one knee in front of her and tried again to take her hand. “Callie, I’m telling you, that night with Marianne meant nothing to me. How do you think a young gentleman is trained? When you have—certain feelings, you go to a girl like Marianne. Not a lady! Not your future wife. It isn’t proper! Should I have come to you instead? Your father would’ve shot me, and I’d have ruined you.”
“Humph!” She turned away, pivoting on her heel and pouting at the wall, arms crossed.
“Humph, what?” he asked, bewildered. Then it dawned on George that she wanted his kisses.
And possibly more.
He was so shocked he could have fallen over.
“You must think I’m an empty-headed fool.”
“O-of course I don’t think that,” he sputtered, still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Callie’s rage at him might actually be born of passion.
“Yes, you do. You must think I’m a nitwit if you’re actually trying to claim you only slept with her to protect me from your—manly impulses.”
He rose again, still dazed. “Every member of White’s has got a mistress, married or not,” he mumbled.
“Well, I will never have that kind of marriage, George. Never, ever, ever,
ever
! It’s awful and it’s wrong. And what about your gambling? Have you got excuses for that today, as well?”
“Callie, I’m not addicted to gambling. It’s just something to do! I have no talents. How do you want me to entertain myself? I’m an heir to a marquisate. I’m not allowed to do anything useful, remember?”
“You could have helped your father’s tenants. He doesn’t even notice the sort of shape they’re in, as long as their rents are paid—”
“Believe me, you won’t get any argument from me that Father has all the warmth of an iceberg, darling.”
She turned, eyes narrowed. “And you’re too much of a coward to stand up to him.”
George froze as though she had just slapped him across the face. “What did you say?”
“It’s not an insult if it’s the truth, isn’t that what you said?”
“I am not afraid of my father. You know it’s just that I have to dance to his tune, or he’ll cut me off.”
“Exactly. You’re a child. Not a man.”
He stared at her in shock, insulted to the core.
“As selfish as you are, George, you see, that’s not even your worst fault,” she mused aloud, gloating at him. “You could have helped the villagers. In fact, it should have been you, and that’s why I’ll never love you again, because
you don’t care
about anyone else.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You don’t even notice that other people exist. You’re too much of a
coward
to let yourself care.”
George drew in his breath and turned away. If a man had dared to call him that most unacceptable of names, the one label that spelled destruction to any gentleman’s honor, it would have meant bloodshed.
But since she was a lady, he could do nothing but stand there, futilely, impotently, and take it.
So the girl he loved thought he was a coward.
It went against everything in him, but he tried to grovel one last time, just to prove her wrong, recklessly putting his heart on the line to a degree he never thought he would’ve dared. “Callie, I do care. Why else would I be here?” He swallowed hard. “I’m in love with you.”
“Well, you’re too late,” she said in cold satisfaction, reveling in her moment of revenge. “I’ve found someone better than you.”
George went motionless, frozen to the core.
“Someone brave, kind, strong, noble, and unselfish. A man, George. Not a boy like you.”
“Have you, indeed?” he forced out, scoffing outwardly to hide the fact that, inside, he was crushed.
“Yes, I have,” she flung out, lifting her chin. “And there’s nothing you can do about it! All I have to do is bring him up to scratch.”
“Please, tell me his name, by all means. Who is this paragon of manhood?” he bit out, already suspecting.
And there it was.
“Lord Trevor Montgomery!” she answered with a flourish, and then it was George’s turn to laugh.
Coldly.
Callie furrowed her brow. “Why are you laughing? You look down on him because he’s a younger son?”
“I’m not laughing at him, my dear. I’m laughing at you.”
“What? Why?”
George didn’t even try to fight it. All he wanted was to hurt her in some small measure, just like she had hurt him. “He has no interest in you. He’s in love with someone else. Someone far more deserving, actually.”
Callie looked shocked for a second, then scoffed with indignant denial. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, yes, I do. I suspect they are together even now. I’m sorry, does that hurt your precious feelings?” He ignored a twinge of conscience; after all, he hadn’t mentioned Grace’s name.
Callie gave him a withering look. “Honestly, George, for all your many flaws, at least you’ve never been a liar until now.”
A liar and a coward?
he thought, stiffening. It was not to be borne. “Fine, don’t believe me. I wasn’t supposed to tell you, anyway. If you’ll excuse me, Miss Windlesham, I’ll take my leave of you and don’t worry, I won’t darken your doorstep again.
Adieu.
”
“George!” she snapped after him as he walked toward the doorway.
“What?” he growled, pivoting.
She studied him in suspicion. “Surely you weren’t referring to Grace Kenwood?”
He could not resist goading her. “Hmm?” he asked innocently.
Her eyes narrowed to fiery blue slashes. “That’s ridiculous! Lord Trevor cannot possibly prefer a plain, boring spinster over me!”
“Ouch,” he said with a wince. “You really can be quite a harpy, Callie dear. If that’s how your treat your friends, no wonder my life’s been hell being your enemy. Thank God I don’t care anymore, as of this moment. But, consider this: Maybe it takes a paragon to love a paragon, and a sinner to appreciate a sinner. Which reminds me. I think I’ll go and visit Marianne.”
“Oh! You’ll never change! Fine! Go! I still know you’re lying!” she yelled out the door after him.
“Am I?” he called back easily as he jumped up into his phaeton.
With a final cold glance at her, swallowed up in defeat, George slapped the reins over his horses’ rumps and left.
“Vermin!” Callie said under her breath after he had driven off.
Well!
she thought.
I’m going to get to the bottom of this.
Then she yelled at the groom to ready her pony gig and soon went barreling off to get some answers for herself. With her carriage wheels throwing up a furious dust cloud behind her, Callie headed for the Grange like a young Athena in her chariot, off to war.
G
race lay in Trevor’s arms, savoring their closeness, though by this point, they had put on at least some of their clothes again. With their passion spent for now to a state of peaceful, warm contentment, it seemed as good a time as any to tell him what she had heard.
“Trevor?” she spoke up uncertainly.
“Hmm?”
“I have some news from London that I think you’ll want to know. But it might upset you . . . unless, of course, you’ve already heard. But I don’t think you have.”
Lying on his side, his cheek propped on his right first, he paused in drawing little circles on her chest with his fingertip and frowned. “What is it?”
She hesitated, scanning his face. The hard planes and angles of his countenance had softened with tenderness after their lovemaking. She did not want this intimacy between them to be strained, but she had to give him the news. “George told me your former fiancée has now married her new beau.”
“Oh, that,” he said absently, to her relief.
“I’m sorry,” she offered.
“I’m not,” he replied.
Grace was pleased but did her best to be sympathetic. “It must have been difficult to lose her.”
“Ah, I think I came out all right in the end.” He stole a kiss.
“It really doesn’t bother you?”
“No. In a way, it’s a relief.”
She looked at him in puzzlement.
“Grace—” He struggled visibly for how to put it. “I was never as close to her as I am to you. Perhaps you find that hard to believe, given all the time we were officially a courting couple. But I’m afraid our failed alliance had more to do with ego than affection.”
“Really?” she asked in surprise.
“Mm-hmm. I’m afraid we saw each other as an enviable catch with which to impress our friends. And our families approved, as well.”
“So you didn’t ever really love her?”
He gave an idle, one-shouldered shrug. “I thought I did at the time. But now, in hindsight, I think that simply knowing I had picked out a wife and had my future plans all sorted out made it easier for me to put that part of my life in a box—mentally speaking—and set it aside, so I could concentrate on my missions for the Order.”
“Ah,” Grace nodded, contemplating this. “Did you tell her about the Order?”
“A bit. Given the risks, I didn’t expect her to go into it blindly. That wouldn’t be fair to anyone. I never shared specifics, but I at least wanted her to have an idea of what she was getting into.”
“What did she think about it?” she asked as she ran her hand lovingly over the broad angle of his shoulder and traced the hard sinews of his arm.
“Oddly enough, she wasn’t really curious.”
Her roaming hand stopped its explorations as she looked at him in astonishment. “Not curious!”
“I don’t think she really cared, to be honest with you.” He hesitated. “Truth is, I don’t think she ever really cared that much about
me.
She fancied my friend, Beauchamp.”
She shook her head. “Then why on earth get engaged to her?”
“Eh, every woman wants Beauchamp. You probably will, too, when you meet him.”
“No, I won’t!” she said indignantly, but he just chuckled.
“The point is, Beau saw through her, while I was dazzled by her looks. She was a trophy that other men would envy, that is all. I’m not proud of my motives. But her shallowness, her superficial attachment to me, her lack of curiosity, indifference—all of it actually made my life much easier, and there it is.”
“I see. So you could have your cake and eat it, too?”
He nodded. “A suitable betrothed by my side when I had need of her for family occasions and the like, then I could set her aside and simply go about my business. Damned cold of me, wasn’t it,” he stated.
She gave him a rueful half smile, but she wasn’t about to convict him, considering that Lady Laura’s loss had been her own most splendid gain.
Trevor sighed and rolled onto his back, gazing at the ceiling for a moment. “Well, I hope she will be happy with the dragoon. Because I intend to be very happy with you.”
With that, he pulled her on top of him and began kissing her with renewed intent. Grace laughed breathlessly between kisses as she felt his body respond beneath her as she straddled him.
But then, all of a sudden, the sound of Nelson’s barking outside alerted them to the arrival of some visitor.
“Oh, be quiet, you silly mongrel!” an angry voice outside yelled at the dog.
Grace and Trevor looked at each other in sudden shock, recognizing that voice.
“Calpurnia!” Grace whispered, leaping guiltily out of Trevor’s bed.