“Men gossip just like women.” His wide shoulders lifted slightly in a negligent shrug. “I think we just talk about different matters. And don’t act as if the closed ranks among men are any different than between women. I feel confident you know certain things no one will ever tell me.”
“Maybe we could trade information.” She was joking, of course. She would never tell him that the females of her acquaintance twittered over him. It annoyed her enough without
him
knowing it as well.
“I’m not protecting Peter Thomas. I am protecting you.”
An odd notion—Miles protecting her. But, reflecting back, he always had in his own way. “I’ll avoid him,” she acquiesced in quiet retreat from the argument, her smile wry. “Perhaps you should provide me with a list of disreputable gentlemen with sordid secrets currently on the prowl in our social circle. It would make matters much simpler.”
His laugh showed a gleam of white teeth. “And, in turn, you could warn me with some sort of special signal if a female fastens her sights on my bachelorhood as a matrimonial prize.”
“I warned you about Susanna Meyer.” She walked up the steps next to him, her lace skirts slightly lifted in her hands. “But I suppose I could whistle like you taught me if one walks past.”
“Now,
that
would be ladylike.”
“Wouldn’t it?” She shot him a teasing smile.
“I’m sure you’d make quite an impact in fashionable circles.” The remark was dry. “And, yes, you did warn me about Miss Meyer. So now we are even.” He paused to let her enter the foyer first. “And I am grateful, for while she has some admirable . . . er . . . qualities, she makes me want to run the other direction as fast as possible.”
It was easy enough to guess what qualities he found admirable. “Like a true rake,” Elizabeth murmured.
“No,” he corrected, following her down the polished hallway, “like a man with a modicum of self-preservation.”
“Define the difference.” She passed by a painting by Bernini that hung in the vaulted space that accessed the public rooms and idly tugged off her gloves, but remained acutely tuned in to Miles’s answer. The hem of her gown whispered over the polished marble floor.
Had they just quarreled? As usual, it was over like a fleeting summer storm.
“Avoiding the predatory advances of eager young women is not at all the same as seducing them,” he said with a twitch of his mouth.
“I never said those were the ones you seduced.”
“Are you keeping track of my private life? If so, mayhap you should ask me for the details and make sure your information is accurate.”
“I could give a fig about your private
affairs
.” Her wave was deliberately dismissive.
“Yet you seem to bring it up in conversation often enough.”
They crossed the huge, imposing main hall and gained the staircase. Elizabeth was in front as they went up the graceful curve of the steps. “Only because you annoyed me this evening.”
“That’s unusual,” he muttered so low she almost didn’t catch it.
She turned halfway up the staircase and looked him in the eyes, as he was only a step behind. His dark brown hair, glossy in the lamplight, was a little disordered, and he halted with one foot on the next step, his gaze in quiring. For some reason, a flush spread over her skin, the scent of his cologne subtle but tangible at this close proximity, and she was very aware of his height, the ath letic, muscled power of his body, and, even more, of how he looked at her.
Miles.
Elizabeth all of a sudden couldn’t recall the wither ing retort in response to his sardonic observation. They stood there for a moment, until his brows lifted in sub tle question and she realized her heart had begun to pound.
For absolutely no reason.
Then she turned and hurried up the stairs toward her room without saying another word.
Chapter Fourteen
I
t was very late, and the room hung with muted shadows. Madeline’s fingertips drifted down his spine. “Hmm.”
“Is that a compliment?” Luke laughed, his breath stirring her tumbled tresses, content with his pulse slowing now in the aftermath of such strenuous lovemaking. The woman beneath him was soft, perfumed perfection, all heated sighs and sensuous warmth, and he kissed the hollow of her throat in a lingering gesture of affection.
“When I can think again, I’ll answer.” Madeline arched beneath him, her eyes still closed, the dark length of her lashes against her cheekbones.
He eased himself away from her body and rolled over, nude and covered in a sheen of perspiration, his chest still lifting rapidly. “And maybe when the roaring in my ears subsides, I’ll hear you.”
“Is
that
a compliment?” She stirred and curled closer, the provocative scent of sex in the air.
It was—she undoubtedly knew it, despite the teasing way she’d phrased the question—and he deliberately didn’t glance at the ormolu clock ticking on the mantel. There was no question he should go—and, surprisingly, no doubt that he didn’t wish to go. Wanting to wake in her bed and arms was a dangerous indulgence. “It might be,” Luke replied with studied casualness when he didn’t actually feel casual at all about the situation.
“We complement each other.” She touched his jaw in a tentative exploration and then quickly added, “Here anyway.”
She meant in bed. The equivocation made him wince inwardly, not that he would let her see it. Luke caught her hand and pressed his lips to the pad of each finger in turn in a lingering kiss. “Yes, we do.”
She frowned then, just the slightest furrow of her smooth brow. “Or maybe I am being naive. Perhaps all of the women you have bedded feel this way.”
What way?
He actually almost asked the question.
The realm of feelings was dangerous. He smiled and rose on one elbow, lightly running a questing finger down her torso, navigating between her breasts, over the flat plane of her stomach, and lower. “I think you are analyzing what can’t be defined. How much a man and a woman enjoy each other’s company is always a subjective experience. I can assure you I am enjoying myself very much indeed.”
“You
seem
sincere....” She arched as he brushed her thigh with his fingertips.
He was. He also wished he could have forgotten the magical sweetness of her kiss, her unique sigh as he entered her supple body, the warm, fragrant silk of her skin . . . but he hadn’t. He found he couldn’t, and however all this ended, Luke had the fateful sense she would haunt him as much as his past.
In other words, he hadn’t learned from his mistakes, but compounded them.
This was not at all what he sought when he succumbed to his base impulses and took her to bed again.
A summer night, a chance encounter, a beautiful lady in the gardens when he’d been oh so vulnerable and susceptible, because Spain was like a lifetime away, he was in his new role as viscount, and the jumble of his feelings resulted in a less than polished exchange of commonplace pleasantries. . . . and then—and then—Madeline had looked at him with those gorgeous eyes, and for the first time since Maria’s death, he’d felt a flicker of desire for another woman. She had acquiesced when he’d suggested he might escort her home, and it was only later, after a night of unforgettable passion, that he’d learned the beautiful woman he’d seduced was actually a virtuous young widow who had just recently reentered society. He hadn’t wanted that, had desired just a casual tumble . . .
Or
, an insidious voice in his brain hinted,
maybe it was
exactly
what you wanted
. A casual liaison wouldn’t have left him so shaken. Maybe he was being granted heaven on earth
now
without having to don angel wings. “Neither of us forgot that night long ago,” he said in compelled honesty, “or we wouldn’t be here together. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you aren’t different.”
He wanted to give her that much—the knowledge he had kept his distance from her at some personal cost.
“Am I?” The uncertainty in her eyes told him she was unsure how much to pursue his statement. “Different how?”
He’d said leagues and miles and fathoms deep too much already. Deliberately he twitched his mouth into a smoldering smile. “Where shall I begin? No one has breasts like yours. Womanly, full, but not so abundant as to be too much for my hand.” He cradled her warm, pliant flesh in his palm. “Every man tonight at the ball envied me.”
“And every
ton
beauty must be jealous of me after our arrival and departure this evening together.” Madeline said it lightly, but her voice held a very slight but discernable edge.
He made a derisive sound. “As if every young buck wouldn’t want to carve out my heart because I am here with you.”
“But I wouldn’t.” She looked into his eyes, her voice hushed. “Be with any of them, I mean.”
The trouble was, he believed her. Not that he had enough of a claim to pass judgment, but he
believed
her and was arrogant enough to ask in return, “Why am
I
different?”
“I don’t know.”
Luke ran his fingers through the iridescent runnels of semen on her inner thigh where he’d spilled his seed, the evidence of his desire for her slick on her smooth skin. “I don’t know why I’m here either.” Then he grinned, not wanting seriousness to interfere with his current state of contentment. “Though too much analysis at this time of the morning is dangerous. Let’s just say I find you slightly hazardous to my peace of mind and yet still can’t quite control my carnal urges.”
“That makes two of us. Logic doesn’t apply to our situation, so let’s not waste our time trying.” She smiled back, a hint of mischief in her eyes. “May I add that I like what you are doing with your fingers now, but a few inches higher might be preferable?”
Her willingness to dismiss the discussion was a relief, especially since pragmatic dissection of motives and consequences was impossible when she reclined, lush and available for erotic play, against the fine linen sheets. Her long blond hair, thick and lustrous, reminded him of Chinese silk, the color not gold, not platinum, but an illusive shade between the two, and the unusual shape of her eyes conjured images of harems and exotic, forbidden evenings far away from the world. It was a fantasy, and he was more than willing to indulge her—and himself.
“Like this?” He touched her lightly, stroking the dainty triangle of hair between her thighs before slipping a finger inside her passage in gentle exploration. Naturally, she was slick with the lubricating fluids of her own desire, and so hot and tight that he began to harden once again.
Even he was amazed, for while he’d never considered virility a problem, he would have thought he’d be sated by now.
Supine and languorous, she let her lashes drift downward, relaxing her thighs and opening her legs. “Do you never tire?”
“I am a little tired.” He kissed the underside of her breast, tasting the essence of her skin, the salty tang of it like the most powerful aphrodisiac. “And yet not quite ready to leave, apparently.”
“I can tell.” She gazed at his returning erection through heavy-lidded eyes.
“Are you too fatigued for me to stay a little longer?”
“Absolutely not.” The slumberous tone of her voice supported her sincerity.
“That’s what I thought.” Propped on one elbow next to her, Luke began to mimic the act of love, teasing her, sliding his finger deep into her vaginal passage and then withdrawing slowly, adding a second finger to make her take in a shuddering breath.
“Yes.” Her hips lifted to the rhythm of his penetrating fingers.
“Did I ask a question?”
“I have no idea.” The answer was a gasp as he rotated his thumb between the damp folds of her sex with provocative, slow pressure.
“Do you want me to fuck you again?”
She glanced up at him, startled and obviously shocked at the crude word, uncertain enough that Luke discerned she and her husband had never played games in bed. His grin was slow as he again aroused her. “Forgive the language, but my choirboy status was revoked a long time ago.”
“I’m not surprised. You don’t qualify for anything remotely related to divine works. . . .” Madeline might have said more, but he moved his thumb again and instead she inhaled on a swift breath and began to tremble, her skin exquisitely flushed. “Oh . . . God.”
“Ask me nicely and I’ll finish this for you.”
“Luke . . .”
“A simple
please
will do.” He knew she was close—very close.
“Fine . . . yes, please . . .”
He obliged her, and felt the tightening around his invading fingers with satisfaction. When she climaxed, he kept her there for long, lingering moments until she pushed his hand away and lay in panting dishabille, her luscious form quivering. “Beast,” she said succinctly.
He laughed and stretched out next to her, his erection at full mast again. “
You
asked
me
.”