Worth Lord of Reckoning (17 page)

He tossed his loin-towel onto the hearth and made a great display of getting comfortable under the covers.

“What am I to be doing, prancing around in my shift while you stay warm and cozy?” She started to unbutton her bodice, back turned to him, when his voice came floating over her shoulder.

“You should join me in this nice, cozy bed. We’ve much to discuss.”

“Such as?” Her impending remove to Dorset wasn’t something she’d bring up unless she was fully clothed and her hair neatly pinned.

“How you like your pleasures, for one thing. How I like mine, for another.”

“I
will not
be your mistress.”

“No, but that leaves sensible alternatives, which I am prepared to offer you. Come to bed, love, so we might discuss them like sensible, if nearly naked, adults. It’s time you had a little of what you want out of this life.”

That was such a startling pronouncement, Jacaranda had no ready retort. With her back to him, she mentally reviewed his words, for a trap lurked among them somewhere—and a truth.

“I have a great deal of what I want in this life,” she said, getting back to her unbuttoning.

“I’m sure you’ve told yourself that.” A pillow suffered a solid blow. “I’ve kissed you, my dear, more than once. You’re hungry for a man, you might as well admit it.”

Love. My dear.
“I’m hungry for a— You are beyond audacious.” Though he was not wrong. She was hungry for one man in particular, drat him.

“Taking you a long while to get out of a simple walking dress, Jacaranda Wyeth.”

“Just Wyeth will do. How can I share a bed with you when you’re talking such rot?”

“How can you not?” She heard the bed creek and suspected he’d rolled over to inspect her progress. “You take a chill easily, and I give off a deal of heat. Come to bed, and we’ll talk.”

“Close your eyes.”

He did, the soul of docility, as she peeled out of her damp dress, hung it on yet another handy nail, got off her damp stays—thank God for old-fashioned jumps—and gingerly lifted the covers to climb in.

“Don’t make me regret this.”

“I said we’d talk, Jacaranda. You know my mouth is good for at least that.”

She saw no point in arguing with him when he wasn’t making any sense, neither did she scold him for the use of her given name.

“So talk to me, my dear.” He rolled to his side, closer to her. She ought to flop to her side, give him her back, and start discussing the Damuses’ marriageable daughters. “Tell me what pleasures you enjoy the most.”

What sort of question was that? “I adore a perfect cup of tea. You?”

“We’re English. Of course we must have our tea. Tell me something you like that you haven’t shared with another, ever.”

His voice blended with the patter of the rain and the crackle of the fire to invite confidences Jacaranda might yield to him, if she could only figure out his objective. “What is this in aid of?”

“Because we’re to be intimate, Jacaranda Just-Wyeth-Will-Do. I’ll not talk of coin, I’ll not pester and flirt, I’ll simply give you the pleasure you want, on your terms. You’ve won, love. I’m capitulating to your very sensible view of the matter. Have your way with me.”

“I’ve won?”

“That’s right.” He traced her hair-line with a single finger. “From this moment forth, my duties include your regular and profound pleasuring, so start my instruction.”

Regular
and
profound pleasuring? “When did you make this decision?”

One moment he was lying at her side, sleepily perusing her, the next he was over her, crouched like a tiger guarding a juicy meal. She had only an instant to meet his gaze, to see the startling heat and purpose in his eyes, before his lips were firmly moving over hers.

He tangled a hand in her hair to prevent her from evading him, but when the first moment of surprise wore off, the worse shock set in: Jacaranda didn’t
want
to evade him. She didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to reason, she most assuredly didn’t want to flirt.

She wanted
him
.

And he was offering himself
on her terms.

His kiss gentled as that realization brought her arms around his shoulders and had her seeking his mouth with her own.

“Better,” he muttered.

It
was
better, better without many clothes, better in a bed, better with the rain pattering steadily on the roof and all the privacy in the world. Her hands went questing all over his back, learning the smooth, warm map of muscle and bone. She curled her fingers over his biceps, holding on hard as his tongue made teasing forays into her mouth.

And legs! A revelation, to learn that a kiss could even involve her longest, strongest limbs. The ones she’d wanted to twine around him on the bridge, the ones she could clutch about his flanks so tightly now.

The kiss built, like a fire finding a nice, cool draft to feed on, spreading out through her body, taking over her reason. She sank her hands into his hair and arched her hips up, only to meet a hard column of flesh against her belly.

“Easy,” he murmured against her neck.

“We have to stop,” she said, even as she got a hand over his muscular backside and clutched him hard.

“We do?”

“We’re not married.”

He smiled against the juncture of her shoulder and her neck. “Then we’ll stop soon, but because we’re here for your pleasure, we’ll see to a few details first.”

Jacaranda had seven brothers. She’d overheard a lot, and she knew there could be pleasure for women, for some women. Wicked, lucky women. She went quiet beneath him and smoothed a hand through his hair.

Worth Kettering would give her this pleasure, on her terms.

She shouldn’t.

She absolutely shouldn’t.

But his discretion was utterly trustworthy, and when would Jacaranda Wyeth, aging spinster, rural housekeeper,
eve
r have the chance to learn of these pleasures, if not with him? It wasn’t that men like Worth Kettering came along so seldom, it was that they never came along.
Never
. Not in Dorset, not in Surrey, not in London’s most fashionable ballrooms, not anywhere Jacaranda Wyeth had been or would be in the future.

She repeated the caress, not for him, though he seemed to like it, but for her. She found pleasure in simply stroking his hair, feeling the silky clean abundance of it slipping through her fingers. He closed his eyes and moved into her hand.

“You will show me these details, Worth Kettering, but we cannot… That is, I don’t see how, without…”

“Bless you. Trust me, we won’t. I won’t. This is for you.”

His voice had changed to a husky whisper, his body above hers became somehow languid, his muscles softer and more sinuously powerful. Under the covers Jacaranda went from warm to hot.

Wonderfully hot with a slow, spreading excitement that started in her middle and had her sighing against his chest.

“I’ll show you.” He sipped at the spot below her ear. “You’ll let me show you.”

She tucked a leg around his hips. “Show me soon, please?”

“Not soon.” He lifted up, and no smile lit his handsome features. “This is for you, and we’ll do it right. I promise you that, and I keep my word.”

She hid her face against his throat as one of his big hands cradled the back of her head.

He held her like that, sheltered by his warm, naked body and tucked snugly against his strength. In the middle of all the pleasure and wonder and curiosity, Jacaranda withstood a spike of…hurt, of loneliness for herself, for all the times she’d needed to be comforted and treasured and
known
thus, and it had been denied her.

Daisy had this precious intimacy. Had had it whenever she pleased for the past five years.

“Hold on to me.” His voice was raspy, and then he rolled them so she straddled him.

She burrowed down onto his chest, for if she sat up, her breasts would be very much on display, despite her shift. “This is novel.”

“You are shy. One would not have surmised this, given how you campaign around the house like Wellington on a forced march.”

His hands moved on her, stroking her hair, her back, her shoulders. God help her, there was pleasure in these simple caresses. Pleasure, comfort, and something soothing.

Caring?

“I cannot help my size. Or my name.”

“What has your name to do with the matter?” He gathered her closer. A hug, but more than a hug, too.

“My brothers are creative little intellects, and my name was an endless challenge to them.”

“So you were Jack the Giant?”

“And Jack Boots. Jackanapes, Beanstalk, and all manner of unflattering appellations. I honestly do prefer Wyeth. Grey says my mother called me that.”

“She called you by your last name? I suppose that’s better than my father’s appellation for me.”

“Which was?”

“Spare. Hess he referred to exclusively by his title, and I was Spare. ‘Spare, why aren’t you at lessons?’ That sort of thing.”

“You have such a beautiful name.” She murmured his name because that was a pleasure, too. “Worth Reverence Kettering.”

He closed his eyes, and she feared she’d misstepped, but then his arms closed around her again. Perhaps the unforeseen spikes of loneliness were not unique to her.

She leaned forward and kissed him, intending it as a comfort to him, to them both, but then his palm cradled her jaw, and he shifted his body, bringing his erect flesh up against her sex. With his tongue and his hips, he started a slow, undulating rhythm, and she fell into it, moving with him, catching his sighs in her mouth, giving him her own.

“Let me touch you,” he whispered, slipping that hand from her jaw to her collarbone. “Lift up one inch, Wyeth. I want to touch you.”

“Close your eyes,” she said, for she knew good and well where he sought to put his hand. She lifted up, letting her own hands trail over his shoulders and chest. “You are beautiful,” she said. “Breathtakingly, unfairly beautiful. Why is such size handsome on a man and ungainly on a woman?”

His eyes opened, and she wanted to cross her arms over her breasts, but she also wanted, more than anything, to not be ashamed.

“Listen to me,” he said, untying the bows down the front of her chemise, even as his gaze stayed locked with hers. “A man of my size can find few women who don’t feel like dolls in my arms, much less in my bed. I’ve tried to find pleasure with the daintier females, Wyeth, but they cultivate an air of frailness that’s at least partly genuine.”

His words were so…so unexpected, Jacaranda didn’t protest at his caresses to her bare midline.

“With a typical woman, I cannot express my passion,” he went on. “I must move about carefully. And at the risk of forever losing your esteem, I have to say the fit with such women is abysmal. One can be joined at the mouth, or elsewhere, but both at the same time without contortions. For a man who takes his kissing as seriously as his swiving, the result is eternal frustration.
You are perfect
. I would not give up one iota of your height and strength, not if God Almighty promised me the earth to see it so.”

He settled one hand over either breast. “You are perfect, Jacaranda Wyeth.”

And then she was perfectly shocked, because he leaned up and put his mouth to one breast, while his bare hand fondled its twin. All the arousal he’d awakened previously danced inside her like cloud lightning on a hot summer night.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, using his free hand to caress her ribs and stomach. “Perfect, marvelous, and lovely.”

He didn’t merely kiss her breasts, didn’t simply take her nipples one by one into the heat of his mouth, he
made love
to her. He pumped fresh air on the internal conflagration of her arousal, then shifted his hand down, and down, and conjured white-hot sparks with just his thumb.

She flinched.

“Settle, love.” He stroked his thumb over a particular knot of feminine flesh again, deliberately, letting her become accustomed to such an intimate caress, though Jacaranda feared there was no becoming accustomed to the sensations he evoked.

Somebody groaned, a soft, tormented exhalation.

“Stay with me, Wyeth.” He tugged gently on her nipple with his teeth. “Let me give you this.”

“Too much.” She hung her head, while moving her hips minutely against his hand.

“Let yourself have this pleasure of me,” he said, his words harsh and soft at the same time. A span of seconds went by, the only sounds the slight creaking of the bed ropes, the rain, the fire in the hearth, and Jacaranda’s breath, coming more and more quickly.

“Worth?”

“Let it”—another delicate nip—“happen.”

“Blessed, everlasting, merciful…
Worth
…”

Her body seized with pleasure, burned with it, consumed her with it. He drove his finger up into her, and the pleasure roared hotter and harder, shaking her like thunder shakes even a sturdy structure.

She might have shouted his name, she might have whispered it.

Jacaranda curled onto Worth’s chest fraught moments later, panting and dazed, grateful for his arms around her and the beat of his heart beneath her ear. She could not speak, and her body still hummed with the sensations he’d caused.