Price of Desire

by Goodman, Jo

  His kiss was hard with need. He was impatient. Hungry. She was glad of it because it matched something inside of her—a need, an impatience, a hunger that was wholly unfamiliar to her. She was depending upon him to show her the way, and if she became afraid, to make her feel less so.

  She met his kiss, reveled in it. Her arms circled his back as he moved over her. His fingers had tunneled into her hair. She felt the press of them against her scalp. He was devouring her mouth with his own. Their tongues circled, retreated, circled again. They separated to gulp air and when they came together a second time, he was planting kisses on her cheeks, her jaw, and over her closed eyes.

  She fought him a little, but only so that she might lay claim to some part of his countenance. She kissed the corners of his mouth, rubbed her lips against the stubble of his beard, and traced the thin line of his scar with the tip of her tongue. She liked hearing his breath come unevenly and the sensation of his heart stuttering.

  His skin was smooth, his shoulders taut. The muscles of his back shifted and bunched under her fingertips. She had never held a man in such a way before, never as a partner, an equal. The curling of desire was uncomfortable. Foreign. For a moment she felt a little sick with it, then it passed as he cupped her bottom and lifted her. Just then she could think of nothing save the heaviness of him pressing against her.

  He split her thighs. She raised her knees and dug her heels into the mattress. She sucked in a breath, waiting for him to pull back just enough to make his first thrust. She closed her eyes. She could bear this, she thought. With this man, she could make herself bear it.

  “Olivia.” He said her name softly, drawing her out of her self-imposed darkness. “Look at me. It’s Griffin. Do you know that?”

  She nodded. “Griffin.”

  He was absurdly pleased she’d said his name. Not Breckenridge. Not my lord. He kissed her lightly on the lips, surprising them both with the gentleness of it, then he lifted his hips and slowly pushed into her.

  She was better able to accommodate his entry this time. She was damp, if not wet. He measured his thrust carefully, feeling his way by watching her eyes. The centers of them darkened, widened, then remained that way, a perfect onyx stone set within an emerald. Once he was seated, he held himself still. Her lower lip was faintly swollen. His kisses were not entirely responsible for that. She was pressing her teeth into it now, chewing on it. He stared at her, shaking his head slightly, and waited for her to release it before he began to move.

  He willed himself to go slowly, take infinite care with her. Whatever she had known before him, it wasn’t care. Her lashes fluttered but never entirely lay still. She watched him from beneath her shaded eyes, her head tilted back. The exposed, slender stem of her neck beckoned him. He kissed the hollow of her throat, tasted her skin along her bladed shoulder.

  Her fingers tripped lightly down his back, riding the ridge of his spine. When he rocked, she held on.

  “Lift for me,” he whispered. When she did, he thrust more deeply, and then she was working with him, rising to meet his stroke, not merely holding, but participating. He knew the moment she felt the first twinge of pleasure, saw it when the twin creases of concentration disappeared between her eyebrows, heard it when her breath caught.

  He wanted more for her than a hint of what might be, but his own crisis was nearing. He held back as long as he was able, feeling the strain of denial across the taut muscles in his back. His skin no longer fit him but seemed to have shrunk against his bones. When she raised a hand and touched his face, he imagined he might cut her with the sharpness of his cheek.

  Her fingertips grazed his jaw, a faltering siren’s smile edged her swollen mouth, and it was then that his body betrayed him. He ground against her one more time before his strokes came quick and shallow and a shudder took possession of his whipcord-lean frame.

  Olivia skimmed the surface of pleasure; Griffin knew the depths of it.

  He arched, stretching his coiled muscles as she seemed to contract around him. Her arms. Her legs. Even her mouth closed over him. There, where she held him most intimately, she was especially tight, and he was helpless to withdraw even if he had wanted to. He emptied himself into her.

  Olivia expected that he would collapse against her, and she would have to accept the full weight of him. She tensed, preparing herself, then he surprised her again by lowering himself to his elbows and only sheltering her with his body.

  He kissed her on the mouth, slowly, deeply, nudging her lips apart, tickling them with his teeth and tongue. It was the sweetly lazy kiss of a sated man, but it was outside Olivia’s experience. When he drew back, she stared at him, wondering what was required of her now.

  Griffin sighed, made regretful by what he saw in her face. He smoothed the worry lines across her brow with his fingertips. “There is nothing you must do,” he told her. “Save sleep, if you like.”

  He watched her nod and felt her relax a fraction, though her eyes remained alert and mildly wary. Easing out of her, Griffin rolled to one side and lay on his back. He placed a forearm across his eyes and allowed himself a moment to bask in the lethargy that came after such intense pleasure. Almost immediately he felt her stir beside him. Without lifting his arm, he asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for my nightgown.” Unaware of his scowl, she continued patting down the covers in search of the article. When she didn’t find it, she slid to the edge of the bed and groped outside the covers along the floor.

  “Why do you need it?”

  The question seemed absurd to her, the answer obvious. “I am naked.”

  With his free hand, Griffin found the curve of her hip under the bedclothes and laid his hand there. “So you are, as am I. I fail to see that it presents a problem.”

  Olivia sat up, dragging the blankets with her. She noticed that her movement did not dislodge his hand. The shaft of rosy dawn light that slipped between the drapes was sufficient for her to look about. She spied her shift on the floor, most of it bunched under the bed. Conscious of Griffin’s hand, she managed to slip one leg out of bed, snag the gown with the toe of her foot, and kick it high enough to snatch it out of the air.

  “Impressive,” Griffin said dryly.

  Olivia glanced over at him, but his forearm was once more in place like a blindfold. As soon as she began to raise the shift to slip it over her head, she felt his hand leave her hip. It snaked outside the covers and was presented to her palm up like a platter.

  “Give it to me.”

  “I did not perform the acrobatics for your amusement,” she said. “It was all in aid of recovering my gown.”

  “I’m quite sure it was. Nevertheless, give it to me.”

  That he expected she would surrender it so easily galled her. That she did so, galled her more.

  He pitched the nightgown over his side of the bed, well outside her reach, then he put out his palm again. “Your robe, also.”

  She had hoped he’d forgotten it. It lay bunched at the foot of the bed where he had tossed it after helping her out of it. She did a little flutter kick under the covers and managed to make the robe jump in her direction. When it was close enough, she caught it with her fingertips and dragged it toward her and passed it directly on to him.

  With his forearm still in place, he did precisely the same thing with it as he’d done with her nightgown. “Come,” he said, patting the space beside him. “Lie down.”

  Olivia was not so quick to obey this time. “You said I might sleep if I wished.”

  “Of course.”

  “But I prefer to do so in my own bed.”

  “That presents a bit of a dilemma, don’t you think?” Now he lifted his arm just enough to give her the benefit of his darkly wry look. “Since I prefer that you do so here.”

  Unhappy, and too weary to shield it from him, she asked gravely, “Am I to have no say?”

  Griffin would not allow himself to be swayed by what he glimpsed in her face. She did not need to b
e alone just now, no matter that it was her preference. He knew the look of someone bent on tormenting herself with second thoughts and recriminations. He’d seen it often enough in his own reflection. “You have had your say, have you not? And I have had mine. It is a disagreement, but given the fact that I have already confiscated your gown and your robe, I think it will be settled in my favor. Now, lie down, close your eyes, and appreciate your own victory.”

  “My victory?” She burrowed under the covers, though not in the space just beside him. Turning on her side, she drew up her knees protectively. “What nonsense.”

  Griffin finally let his arm fall away from his eyes and cast her a sideways glance. “If you will but recall, it was you who wanted to have done with it. And so we are.”

  She was glad for the relative darkness that concealed the heat in her cheeks. Still, she heard herself remark with considerable coolness, “It was you who put forth the terms, I believe.”

  “So that a small measure of dignity might be preserved.” Olivia flushed more deeply, remembering how she’d grasped his cock and parted her thighs for him. He must be referring to his own dignity because she’d already proved she had none.

  Griffin reached for her, laying his fingertips across her cheek. Her skin was warm. “You’re blushing.”

  She flinched, trying to escape his touch. He was already too often plucking the thoughts from her head; she did not appreciate him testing the waters by touching her face.

  Griffin withdrew his hand but only reluctantly. He would have liked to drag his thumb across her lower lip. He turned fully to face her and punched the pillow under his head to find the most comfortable incline. Once he’d settled back and his eyes could rest on her again, he found himself moved by the sorrow of her expression. “What is it, Olivia?”

  Afraid she might weep, she sucked in her bottom lip and shook her head.

  “Will you tell me nothing?”

  This time when she shook her head, she was able to offer a brief, watery smile.

  “Poor Olivia,” he said gently. “It has all been rather too much, has it not? Or perhaps in some manner, not nearly enough.”

  Confused now, the space between her eyebrows bore twin creases. He posed a riddle she could not hope to answer. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  That did not astonish. “You gave a great deal and received nothing in return.”

  Olivia recalled the sweet, swift pleasure that had slipped under her skin and made every part of her tingle. Just thinking about the sensation brought it flooding back. “Hardly nothing,” she whispered. Her eyes darted away from his as she pressed her legs together. She could still feel him there, inside her. Involuntarily, she contracted as though to hold him, and her eyes closed briefly as an echo of pleasure shivered through her.

  Watching her, Griffin felt a powerful surge of lust. He pressed his hands into fists to keep from pulling her to him. He did not trust himself to take her with the regard she deserved, not when his blood was hot and his cock was once again at a full stand. What he wanted was her and his own satisfaction. They were irrevocably joined in his mind, one with the other. Neither alone.

  “You should sleep,” he said when he could trust his voice.

  Olivia nodded, but when Griffin turned over, giving her his back, she simply stared at him. She had been so certain he wouldn’t leave her alone, and yet that seemed to be precisely his intent. What purpose, then, was served by remaining in his bed?

  She had only begun to ease herself out from under the covers when his rough, rumbling voice came to her.

  “Don’t do it.”

  Olivia fell asleep entertaining the rather odd notion that Griffin Wright-Jones possessed eyes at the back of his head.

  Griffin tossed a few coins onto the street and watched the children scatter before he drew back from the window. It was a cold morning, with a brisk wind, and he’d already let too much it into the room. When he glanced at the bed only the ginger crown of Olivia’s head was visible outside the covers.

  He snapped open the paper young Fitz had thrown up to him. The boy had a good arm, and given a chance at a proper education would make a fine bowler. Fitz, though, like all of his friends, was unlikely to ever walk the cobbled paths at Hambrick Hall, Eton, or Harrow. The one time Griffin had suggested such a thing to the boy’s whore-mother, she’d accused him of being a pederast. Apparently she could not fathom his interest in her child as being other than the most perverse.

  It had been his last attempt at social reform.

  He sat at the table, opened the Gazette, and lowered it just enough that from time to time he could observe the shifting lump in his bed that was Olivia Cole. It was considerably fortunate that she was not in need of social reform. He’d already proven by making her his mistress that he hadn’t the least notion of how to go about it.

  He began to read, starting with the news out of the parliament, then to the murder du jour, a particularly nasty piece of work perpetrated against two prostitutes in a Holborn hovel. He turned to the editorial page before his appetite was completely disrupted. Folding the paper in quarters, he laid it down beside his plate and uncovered a platter of toast and bacon. He helped himself to both, poured some coffee, then set a soft-cooked egg in a cup and gave it a satisfying thwack with the bowl of his spoon.

  He peeled back the shell and dipped a finger of toast in the warm, viscous yolk. “Was it the smell of the bacon or the coffee that roused you to wakefulness?”

  Olivia peered at him over the top of the blankets. “It was the crushing blow you delivered to that egg.”

  Griffin tapped his left ear with his fingertip as he bit off one end of the toast. He chewed with obvious relish, swallowed, and then spoke. “I can’t hear you if you don’t speak up.”

  Olivia poked her chin above the covers. She didn’t repeat herself because she didn’t believe for a moment that he hadn’t heard her. Her eyes fell greedily on the spread before him and her stomach actually growled. She caught his grin because he made no effort to suppress it. “You heard that easily enough,” she said.

  He shrugged. “I am more attuned to some sounds than others. Would you like something? You will notice that there is a place set for you.”

  So there was. She had only seen the food. “I need a moment.”

  “Have as many as you like.”

  “No, I mean, mmm, I need…a moment.” She glanced significantly toward his dressing room. “You’ve been awake longer than I have.” Indeed, he looked rested and very much in his element. Although he still wore his nightshirt, he’d covered it with a loosely belted silk robe, the silver-blue color of a frozen lake. He’d had time to shave, wash the sleep from his eyes, and brush back his hair—though the effect of this last was mostly gone as he’d plowed it several times with his fingers. “Please?” she asked when he continued to regard her blankly. “A moment?”

  God, but she was lovely. Sleep-tousled. Flushed. Wide, imploring eyes almost too big for her face. Griffin blinked. “You want privacy,” he said flatly. “Of course. Make free with my dressing room.”

  His obtuseness compelled her to point out, “I want privacy to get to your dressing room.”

  He looked from the bed to the dressing room door and back to the bed again. Mrs. Christie would have been pleased to parade her particulars twice that far. It was borne home to him that he had not clearly seen any of Olivia’s particulars, and the stubborn set of her features warned him that he would not see them now.

  “Your nightgown and robe are beside you,” he said, pointing. He reached for a rasher of bacon and his cup of coffee before he pushed away from the table and turned his chair to face the window. “Run. I cannot promise I will avert my head for more than a few seconds.” Grinning, he heard her scrambling to throw off the covers and retrieve her clothes. There was a small, one-two thump as her feet dropped over the side of the bed. The rush of those same feet across the floor could only be described as a scamper.

  Oh, but he was te
mpted. He held himself in check until he judged she had almost reached the door. Swiveling, he caught sight of a deliciously naked back and the upper curve of her bottom before she disappeared into his dressing room dragging most of the bed linens behind her.

  “I peeked,” he called to her.

  Olivia poked her head out as she made a grab for the door handle. “You have no shame.”

  “I never said I did.”

  She blew upward, targeting a strand of fiery ginger hair that had fallen diagonally across her forehead and right eye. It fluttered to one side and revealed her determined gleam as she hitched the blankets around her and lunged for the door again. She might have closed it on this attempt if it hadn’t been thwarted by her own trappings. Ignoring Griffin’s chuckle, she yanked on the blankets blocking the door, sweeping them aside, and slammed the thing shut.

  “Temper, temper.” He thought she might have sworn at him, but the sound of it was muffled by the door and the fact that he was chewing on a crisp bit of bacon. He was glad she had recovered her wits. She would need them about her for what he had planned.

  Breakfast first, though. It was only fair.

  Chapter Nine

  Griffin waited until Olivia finished her cup of hot cocoa and daintily dabbed at the faint chocolate outline that defined her upper lip before he bore her off to bed. He had never before experienced breakfast as foreplay but that was what it was. It occurred to him belatedly that he may have been the only one to realize it, because when he seized her by the arms and hauled her out of her chair she was struck dumb.

  She recovered by the time he tossed her on the bed and followed her down with his own body. Her accents were charmingly outraged. “My lord! It is daylight.”

  He did not so much as glance toward the window where earlier he’d parted the drapes. “You cannot object to daylight. It is the natural order of things.” He rubbed his lips against hers. “Night followed by day. As clever as it is simple.” He kissed her, first attending to her bottom lip, then repositioning his mouth and giving equal attention to the upper one. Somewhere during the transition she’d stopped squirming and sighed a bit gently. He was pleased when her arms came around him, though he had liked the squirming well enough.