“Please do.” She felt giddy, intoxicated by his nearness and affection in a way no claret could ever match. She hadn’t had a drink in days, and though the ill effects of her abstinence had been heinous at the onset, she was beginning to feel better. Stronger. “I will be ruined otherwise. Labeled a brazen hussy. You must make me respectable, my lord.”
“After I went to such lengths to lure you to sin?”
“I will always be sinful for you.”
He slowed as the music stopped, but her heart still raced. He stepped back and lifted her gloved hand to his lips. “Come. Let me introduce you to my mother and Masterson before you go.”
She nodded and, as always, followed his lead.
Alistair collected his hat, great coat, and cane from a footman, then headed toward the door to wait for his carriage. When Jessica had departed a half-hour before, all the light had left the room with her, giving him no reason to linger.
“Lucius.”
His stride faltered. His back went up, every muscle tightening. He turned around. “Lady Trent.”
She approached, her hips swaying gently, her tongue darting out to lick her bottom lip. “Wilhelmina,” she corrected. “We are much too intimate to stand on formality.
He knew the lascivious look in her eyes. She remained lovely and lushly curved. Wasted on a man far older than she was.
His stomach knotted with shame. He no longer possessed the walls he’d once shielded himself behind. Jessica had torn them down, one by one, opening him to a precious understanding of his own worth. The choices he had made … the things he’d done with women like Lady Trent … They sickened him now.
“We were never intimate,” he said. “Good evening, Lady Trent.”
Alistair left the Treadmore manse in a rush, striding out the door and feeling relief at the sight of his carriage waiting for him. He vaulted into the softly lamp-lit interior and settled against the leather squab. The whip cracked and the equipage lurched into motion, rounding the circular drive. They slowed when they reached the open wrought-iron gate, their way blocked by the clogged lane. It would be this way the entire route home, he knew, as the streets filled with Society carriages conveying their passengers from one event to another.
He exhaled and relaxed, his mind returning to the moment he’d introduced Jessica to his mother and Masterson. All three were so consummate and adept in the social graces that he had no notion of what any of them thought of one another. They’d been smoothly polite, exchanging platitudes and worthless observations, and parting ways at precisely the right moment to avoid even an instant of awkward silence. It had all been far too easy.
The carriage drew to a halt beside one of the brick gateposts bearing a sculpted lion on the top. A dark form emerged from beside it and opened his carriage door. The figure was met with the tip of the rapier hidden within his cane.
A gloved hand moved aside the shield of a cloak’s hood and revealed Jessica’s wry smile. “I was hoping you’d impale me with something more pleasurable.”
The unsheathed weapon hit the floorboards, and he pulled her inside. The door was shut behind them, earning the footman responsible a raise in pay.
“What in hell are you doing, Jess?”
She tumbled into him, pushing him back into the squab. “The dance may have been enough for you, but it wasn’t for me. Not nearly.”
Pushing off his chest, she stooped and tugged the curtains closed. She hunched over him, yanking up her blood-red skirts with frantic impatience. He caught a glimpse of the lacy hem of her pantalettes, and then she was climbing over him, straddling him.
“Jess.”
He breathed her name. His skin felt too hot, his chest too constricted to allow him sufficient air. The feelings he had for her were too volatile to contain. She overwhelmed him. Surprised him. Seduced him with ridiculous ease.
“I have to tell you … you have to know … I am s-sorry.” The cracking of her voice broke him as well. “I’m sorry I was afraid. I am sorry I caused you even an instant of pain or doubt. I love you. You deserve better.”
“I have the best in you,” he said gruffly. “There is no one better.”
Her gloved fingers fumbled with the placket of his trousers. He laughed softly, delighted with her eagerness. Staying her hands by covering them with his own, he said, “Slow down.”
“I’m dying for you. The way you dance …” Her eyes were fever bright in the muted glow of the carriage lamps. “I thought it would ease when I parted from you, but it only worsens by the moment.”
“What worsens?” he asked, wanting to hear her say it.
“My hunger for you.”
His blood thickened along with his cock. “Then I must take you home with me.”
“I can’t. I can’t leave Hester that long, and I can’t
wait
that long.”
The thought of Jessica planning his ravishment in a carriage almost stole every shred of his reason. Alistair was tempted to shove her beneath him and give her the hard, pounding ride she was desperate for, but the circumstances were not ideal. Just outside the curtains, coachmen shouted to one another. Pedestrians laughed and conversed on the street. He and the passengers in the equipages passing them were close enough that their fingers could touch if they reached out to one another simultaneously.
“Shh,” he soothed, his hands stroking the length of her spine. “I’ll make you come, but you must be quiet.”
She shook her head violently. “I need you inside me—”
“Christ.” Alistair’s grip flexed into her waist. “We are moving at a snail’s pace, Jess. Too slowly to disguise any rocking of the carriage. And we are surrounded on all sides.”
Jessica arched into him, her graceful arms encircling his shoulders. “You can think of something. Be inventive.” She brought her mouth to his ear, her tongue tracing the curve. “I am wet and hot and aching for you, my love, and you made me this way. You cannot leave me in this condition.”
A hard shudder shook his frame. She could not have displayed her trust in him more clearly than this, yet her haste and frenzy told him more was at stake than her physical pleasure. Perhaps this was the ramification of meeting his mother and Masterson, who couldn’t accept him, let alone the woman he loved. His familial situation was far different, he knew, from what she’d had with Tarley. Michael’s protectiveness was ample proof of that.
Alistair was infuriated by her disquiet and the possible root of it. She was a brilliant social diamond, her facets perfect in every respect aside from the one she couldn’t control. After all she’d suffered to become a faultless wife for any peer, she did not deserve to be diminished by anyone.
Alistair caught her face in his hands, urging her to lean back and meet his gaze directly. “Jess.”
She stilled, registering the somberness in his tone.
Angling his head, he pressed his lips lightly to hers and breathed the words “I love you.”
Chapter 24
J
ess didn’t move for a long moment following Alistair’s fervent pronouncement, then the tension left her in a rush, the driving need to connect with him receding to a softer, sweeter craving.
“Alistair.”
“I was afraid, too. So, you see, you and I are even.” Her eyes stung. Her throat clenched too tight to allow speech.
“Surely you knew,” he murmured, bringing one hand to his mouth. His even white teeth caught the tip of the middle finger of his glove and tugged.
“Yes, I knew,” she whispered. “But it still means a great deal to hear the words aloud.”
“Then I will say them often.” The glove slipped off his hand, and he released it from his teeth. It dropped to his lap between them.
To her surprise, she found the uncovering of his hand impossibly erotic. He switched his attention to his other glove, tugging on the fingertips one by one until it slid free, his gaze heavy lidded and filled with sensual intent. The sight of his bite gripping the short white glove roused some primitive instinct inside her. There was something primal about disrobing with one’s teeth, which brought to mind the promise he’d made to utilize a similar method on her dress.
The second glove fell to his lap. The carriage made a slow turn.
Lifting her hand, she extended it to him. His bared fingers went to the buttons at her wrist, deftly releasing each one. When her skin was bared, he lifted it to his mouth. The flutter of his tongue over her pulse made her gasp. Her sex rippled with appreciation.
The glove caressed the length of her arm as Alistair drew it off. By the time he’d removed the other one, Jess was breathless with anticipation. He pressed a kiss to her knuckle above his ruby ring, then licked between her fingers. If that stroke of his tongue had been between her legs, it could not have aroused her more.
Boldly, she reached between his legs and stroked the rigid length of his erection. He made a rumbling sound very much like a purr. She loved the way he lounged without affectation, every inch the voluptuary and perfectly willing to let her have her way with him.
“It will take more than a lifetime,” she said, “to have my fill of you.”
His hands slid under her gown and gripped her thighs. She loved that, too. Alistair always began each touch with a firm, possessive squeeze, as if he needed that brief moment of fierceness to attain the control that followed. He watched her as he reached around to cup her buttocks in his hands, then pushed through the slit in her pantalettes to find her slick and scorching.
“You are indeed wet and hot,” he murmured, parting her and stroking a fingertip over her clitoris. “And you make me so damned hard.”
She felt how hard he was. It gave her a wild thrill to be responsible for arousing such a magnificent sexual animal to the highest degree. No longer hindered by her gloves, she freed him with a deftness born of practice. He fell heavily into her waiting palms, so broad and long. His penis was a brutal instrument of pleasure. The wide head stretched her to her limits, while the thick veins coursing the weighty length rubbed every tender nerve inside her.
Jess fisted him with both hands and pumped, priming him to proceed to the point where he lost all restraint and bared himself to the soul.
He groaned, his head falling back into the high back of the squab. Two long fingers pushed inside her and began to thrust, preparing her for the deep slide of his cock.
She was ready. Had been from the moment he’d turned around in the ballroom and looked at her as if she were an oasis in the desert and he’d been lost in the dunes for days. She had been just as parched for the sight of him, withering with every day that passed without his presence.
Rising onto her knees, she pulled free of his working fingers and angled his cock. The moment the flared crown notched against the clenching entrance of her sex, she began to tremble. He caught her hips in his hands, steadying her, but allowing her to set the pace with which she took him into her.
Wanting to feel every inch of him, Jess lowered herself slowly, a soft keening cry accompanying the deliberate, relentless impalement.
She reached up and gripped the narrow lip where the upholstered back gave way to lacquered wood, sinking down on him with a leisurely measured pace. He bruised her with his grip.
“Jess. Wait!” His thighs were rigid between hers. “Give me a moment. You’re squeezing me like a fist. No. For God’s sake,
don’t move
… Ah, Christ!”
He climaxed with a primal groan, his teeth grinding audibly, his cock jerking inside her as his semen spurted in thick, creamy pulses. He was only halfway in her, but the sudden flood of lubrication gave her no traction to delay further. She sank onto him to the root.
Her toes curled; her nails dug into the leather and wood. He came hard and long, trembling beneath her. She watched him, awed by the ferocity of his pleasure and how erotic she found it. He was a man who knew sex in all its extremes, and she’d brought him to a raging orgasm with just her love and enthusiasm.
“Jesus.” Alistair wrapped his arms around her, bent her backward, and buried his damp face in her cleavage. His laugh was sharp and humorless, derisive. “You went to all this trouble … for this.”
She pushed her fingers into the silk of his hair, understanding that he’d learned to place literal value on the pleasure he could give; it would be a hard lesson to unlearn. “I would circle the world, barefoot, for this.”
He looked at her, his face flushed and eyes gleaming. The carriage swayed as it moved at a crawl over cobblestones, the sounds of the city filtering into the hushed and humid interior. His jaw clenched as he rocked deeper into her.
“Your pleasure is mine, Alistair, my love. I would have none without yours. I would be empty without you to fill me.” She kissed the tip of his nose and smiled. “And you’re still hard inside me, with stamina to spare. You’ve never left me wanting.”
He moved in a burst of graceful physical agility, lifting her and carrying her to the opposite squab. Everything shifted as she found herself beneath him, pinned to the seat by the relentlessly hard, thick length of his penis. Her back was cushioned by her lined velvet cape; her front was mantled by his large, powerful body. He braced himself with one palm against the backrest and the other above the armrest near the door. He held her open by planting one knee on the squab and pinning her leg to the back. Her other leg dangled off the edge, her foot flat to the floorboard next to Alistair’s.
She was completely vulnerable, her shoulders curved in the corner in a manner that gave all the leverage to Alistair, who used it to his advantage. With a practiced roll of his hips, he massaged her with his cock. Heated pleasure spread outward from her sex, making her moan.
“You must be quiet,” he whispered, then made that impossible with another devastating stroke.
Jess gripped his hips, achingly aware that they were both fully clothed except for where they were joined. His pelvis lifted, dragging the furled underside of his cockhead across quivering tissues. He paused with only the tip of him inside her, watching her as she writhed, his gaze darkening as her nails dug into his flesh. Then he sank into her in a long, deep plunge. She bit her lip but couldn’t contain a plaintive whimper.
“Shh,” he admonished, his eyes gleaming wickedly. He knew damned well what he was doing to her by setting this torturously slow pace. His hips lifted, then fell again. Shallower this time, a short fierce dig.
“Alistair …” She clenched tight around him, the tiny muscles rippling greedily.
“My God, you feel good,” he breathed. He ground against her, teasing her clitoris with fleeting pressure, his cock so deep in her that she was utterly possessed. “I can feel my semen in you. You’re soaked with it. But I have more to give you.”
She was panting now, maddened, misted with perspiration. She needed hard, driving strokes, a deep relentless pounding that would give her the friction she craved. What he gave her was painstakingly slow withdrawals and leisurely surges. Like a liberally oiled apparatus, tireless, his hips smoothly pistoned, shafting her tender sex with his iron-hard cock. In and out, the rhythm so fluid and precise it rivaled Maelzel’s metronome.
Arching, she fought to quicken his pace, her body strung tight as a bow. He covered her mouth with his hand, muffling the sobs of pleasure she couldn’t contain.
With his lips to her right ear, he murmured, “We are surrounded by dozens of people, and I’m fucking you.”
She shivered, her passions raging beyond all reason. In a distant part of her mind, she heard the voices of pedestrians just outside the carriage. She heard the rolling of passing carriage wheels and the laughter of the passengers within. The very real threat of discovery was akin to throwing kerosene on an already raging fire. She was insensate with lust, reduced to a primitive state in which only the quest for orgasm mattered.
“If only they could see you as I do,” he purred, “sprawled across a carriage squab with your skirts around your waist and your sweet, slick cunt drenched in my ejaculate and crammed full of my cock.”
She met his gaze over the hand covering her lips, seeing a fierce love and aching tenderness in the aqua depths that belied the coarseness of his speech. There were so many sides to the man she loved—some smooth as river rock and others rough as gravel; some innocently vulnerable and others wickedly depraved. She couldn’t imagine living without any of them. Together they made up the whole that completed her.
He rocked his hips, touching the end of her. “Your wantonness is a gift to me, Jess.
You
are a gift, and I know it. I know the breadth of trust and love required for you to give of yourself in this manner.”
A lush, expert stroke took her to the edge. She hung there, arched and rigid, breathless.
“And I love you for it,” he growled, taking advantage of a rut in the road to deliver a hard, ramming thrust that hurled her into orgasm. “I love you too much. More than I can bear.”
Jess quaked violently beneath him, her sex clutching and sucking at his throbbing erection. He climaxed with a serrated groan that he muffled in the sweat-slick curve of her neck. They clung to each other, grasping and writhing, straining for the closeness they required but couldn’t attain while dressed.
Lost in each other while surrounded by the teeming city.
My sympathies to the debutantes hoping to snare the magnificent marquess. The previously icy
Lady T, now widowed and ablaze in red, drew the mesmerized Lord B to her like a moth to a flame.
Dear Readers, the heat was palpable.
So scandalous. Now infamous. Decidedly delicious …
Michael finished reading aloud and lowered the paper, staring at Alistair with brows raised.
“What?” Alistair asked, before enjoying a long drought of ale.
“Don’t be coy. I saw Jessica last night. That dress … What have you done to my sister-in-law?”
“Why don’t you ask what she has done to me? That answer is far more profound, I assure you.”
Alistair’s gaze swept over the great room of Remington’s Gentlemen’s Club. His casual perusal was met with many nods and smiles. He now understood the interest that had baffled him the week before. Everyone had known of his change in circumstance before he did. He was still catching up. Still reeling.
He’d called on Albert’s widow earlier in the day, attempting to ascertain her circumstances and offering whatever assistance she required. She had been left with a large bequeathment, but she’d loved his brother and she would need more than coin and property to see her through the immediate future. She would need a strong shoulder to lean upon, and he offered his to her, knowing how vital a loved one could be to the simple acts of rising in the morn and breathing. In return, she had given him something that could change so many things. He held her gift close to his heart, debating what to do with it.
“Your name, paired with Jessica’s, is all I have heard all day,” Michael groused.
“The announcement of our engagement will appear in tomorrow’s gazettes, smothering all prurient interest with the blanket of propriety and respectability. The notices would have appeared today, but I was … detained last night.” Alistair had decided he was going to keep that carriage for the rest of his life. He and Jess would christen others with their passion, but that one would remain in his carriage house forever, waiting for him to ravish Jessica in it long after the equipage lost its usefulness in serving its original purpose.
“What of your parents?” Michael asked. “They looked less than ecstatic.”
Alistair shrugged, feeling a sharp pang of regret but no responsibility for it. “They will manage.”
The crumpling of the newspaper drew Alistair’s attention to Michael’s clenching fists. He wondered what he’d said to elicit such a response. Then he noted that his friend was looking beyond him. Following the line of Michael’s gaze, Alistair glanced over his shoulder and saw the Earl of Regmont enter the room with a boisterous pack of cronies following swiftly on his heels.