Francesca pressed her palm lightly into his. “You deserved better. You still do.”
Nay, his fate and future had been destined. There hadn’t been a place for a woman. And if, through his recent work, he managed to secure a place at the Home Office again, there’d be even less of a place for her. “I trust you don’t wish to discuss my rather tedious childhood and existence?”
“Actually, I do,” she said softly. Her eyes went wide.
His lips twitched.
Francesca slapped a hand over her mouth. “That is to say… what I meant to say is that it isn’t tedious. I… like learning about you, Lathan.”
Perhaps warning bells should have gone off. Ones that the Home Office had ingrained into all its staff to trust no one except its members. And yet, the greatest deceivers had come from within those ranks, and for some reason, that should alarm him, and yet, it didn’t. Lathan trusted Francesca Cornworthy.
“Come, there’s still the matter of your apple pie.”
She fairly glowed. “Is that what we’re making?”
“Baking. Yes. We’ll begin with the crust and then see to the apples.” He paused. “You will, anyway.” He motioned her over. “After all, it is your list.”
Skipping over, Francesca stood next to him. “Now what?”
“I’ve started blending your butter and flour. You finish the rest.”
Without hesitation, she dived into the task.
He added some water to the mixture, and the clear liquid sluiced between her fingers. “There, now roll it out on the table.” He sprinkled some flour on the wood surface. “You’ll want a layer as thick as a crown piece.”
Humming a merry tune under her breath, Francesca continued to work the dough.
His gaze caught and held on those eager little movements.
“You’ll want a layer of butter all over.” He gathered up the crust and turned it over and then wished he hadn’t.
He swallowed hard.
How he wished he hadn’t.
These past months, he’d baked breads and cooked beef and boiled soup.
Never once in any of that time had he noted how singularly erotic…
She turned the dough over and over, working the hardening substance with her fingers. Shaping it. Sculpting it. And God help him as the depraved bastard he was, he envied that slab of dough.
“Here,” he said gruffly, his voice emerging more sharply than he intended. “Let me see to some.” Welcoming the distraction, he doubled up the dough and rolled it again with the pin, putting his efforts and exertions and thoughts into flattening and shaping.
Francesca propped her hip on the edge of the table so that her gaze was nearly level with his. “You’re really quite good at this.”
“You sound surprised.” He dusted flour over the tip of her nose, and she giggled.
“Scoundrel.” Francesca swiped a stream of butter down his in return. A slight glob of the butter hung there on his nose. Her mouth formed an involuntary circle. “Oh, dear,” she whispered.
He narrowed his eyes as he grabbed a cloth and ever so slowly wiped his face clean. “You wicked chit.” He lunged, but Francesca, anticipating his move, bolted backward.
A breathless laugh burst from her as she hurried to the other end of the table.
“Are you trying to run, love?”
“I’m certainly not baking.” She feinted left.
Lathan matched her movements.
“You began it all,” Francesca pointed out.
“That’s debatable, love.”
Francesca went right, and he caught her at the corner of the table.
Breathless with laughter, Francesca squirmed and wiggled against him. “Y-you are being unreasonabaahhhhh.” She howled as he tickled her sides.
Both of them went still. Their chests moved in a like pattern, quick and erratic and uneven.
With a hand that shook, Lathan pushed her auburn hair back behind her shoulder. “Francesca,” he whispered, not knowing what he wanted. Or why he’d spoken.
Nay, that wasn’t altogether true. He knew precisely what he wanted—her.
She wet her lips. “Yes, Lathan?”
“You should go.” He’d have rather sacrificed a pound of flesh than given air to those words. And yet, he respected her, cared for her enough that those feelings mattered more than what he wanted.
Her gaze grew stricken. “Why?”
Lathan briefly closed his eyes. When he opened them, he leveled a stare on her. “Because I want to make love to you,” he said bluntly. “And if you stay—”
“What if I said I don’t want to go?”
The earth came to an abrupt stop, leaving them in a powerful silence. Devil that he was, Lathan gladly broke it.
“Then I would say… I am lost.” With a groan, he kissed her.
Chapter 13
Kissing Lathan Holman hadn’t been an item on Francesca’s list.
At least, not on the one she’d written.
But it should have been.
Oh, it should have been.
Because with the heat of his body pressed against hers and his lips ravaging her own, she at last knew what it meant to live joyously and fully, to live for herself and her pleasure.
“Lathan.” She moaned his name, and he slipped his tongue inside, taking it as the invitation she’d intended.
Lathan filled his hands with her buttocks and brought her to the vee of his thighs, and she felt every ripple of muscle and the length of his shaft as it prodded her belly.
Clinging to his shirtfront, Francesca tilted her head back and let herself be devoured by him. He stroked his tongue against hers. Over and over. That flesh twisting and twirling with her own.
“I was wrong,” she rasped between kisses.
He growled and nipped and sucked at the tender skin of her neck. “About what?” he asked harshly, trailing those rough kisses elsewhere, along her cheek, the curve of her chin, the bodice of her gown.
“I-it is p-possible for the t-temperature to get hotter.”
With one effortless movement, he slid that fabric down and exposed her skin to the warm kitchen air.
Francesca whimpered as he freed her flesh, baring her to his gaze… and his touch. “Beautiful.” The matter-of-fact statement fell sharply from his lips.
Then his mouth was on her.
Pressing her breasts together, he worshiped one swollen, sensitive tip. Laving. Licking. Her nipples tightened and throbbed, pulsing like the growing ache between her legs.
All the energy seeped from her limbs.
She collapsed.
But he caught her. Guiding her down, Lathan made the hard oak table their mattress.
And he didn’t stop his torment.
Or was it bliss? It was all jumbled, with every sensation straddling the line between rapture and torture.
Lathan swirled his tongue around an oversensitized tip, teasing with the promise of more. But how could there possibly be any sensation greater than—
Lathan suckled that pebbled flesh.
A hiss exploded through her teeth, and she curled her fingers tightly into the silken strands of his cropped red hair. She’d been wrong. There was magic even greater than that which he’d already wound about her. “Lathannn.” She could manage nothing more than his name, delivered in the form of a pleading moan.
But apparently, in this, no words were needed. It was a new discovery for Francesca, who’d always used them. More often than not, she’d overused them.
There was, however, something to be said for just… feeling.
Then he stopped.
Francesca cried out at the loss, but he only shifted his attentions to her other breast.
The moment he closed his mouth over her, she let loose a long, keening, animalistic wail of her gratitude. Of their own volition, her legs fell open, the muslin crinkling noisily, adding a layer of eroticism to the other primal sounds echoing loudly in her ears. Lathan’s ragged breaths. Her soft cries. The rasp
of his wool garments scraping her own.
“I want to feel all of you, Francesca.” He punctuated each word with a light tug and suckle of her nipple.
She bit down hard on her lip. She’d never have all she wanted with Lathan Holman, but she’d have this. She’d steal this moment for her own, and when she was hosting dull affairs as the Marchioness of St. James, it would be enough. It would have to be. “I-I want that, tooooo.”
Lathan pushed up her hem, higher and higher, until her skirts were anchored about her waist.
Lathan drew back, trailing a slow, appreciative glance over the flesh he’d exposed. “Beautiful,” he growled, that primitive rasp more intoxicating than reverent awe.
She’d never given much thought to her full frame, aside from how it was different than the majority of slender, narrow-hipped ladies of Society. But never had she felt as this man made her feel—desirable. He searched his fingers up and down her legs, and as he sank his fingers into the flesh of her upper thigh, a pained groan filtered from Lathan’s lips, and Francesca reveled in her glorious womanhood.
Suddenly, he stopped.
“It’s not enough,” he muttered, his voice rough and heavy with desire. Drawing her up onto unsteady feet, he set to work on the buttons down the back of her gown. “I hate this dress.” He wrenched and wrestled.
“I-it is hardly the d-dress’ f-fault—” There was a pop, and then all the buttons went spattering about, tinkling and pinging as they flew throughout the kitchen.
And she didn’t care. She cared only that his mouth and hands were no longer on her.
Lathan pushed her dress down and then worked it past her hips so the heavy garment fell in a clamorous heap at their feet. He wasn’t done. Next, he tugged off her chemise. Her petticoats followed, and then she stood bare before him.
Lathan’s gaze grew heavy. His dark red lashes swept low as he worked his eyes over her.
And mayhap there should have been some sense of modesty or embarrassment at standing naked in front of him… in a kitchen, no less.
But there was only a heady sense of wonderment and a thrill of excitement that it could be like this. That she could know passion, and she wanted it so very much with this man.
Growling, Lathan filled his hands with her buttocks and brought her hard against him so that his hard, throbbing length pulsed against her thigh.
She bit her lower lip at that evidence of his desire for her and her body’s reflexive response to his desire. The ache between her legs throbbed, unbearable, a pulsing that made her want to clamp her legs shut… and move…
And then, as if he’d followed the tortured yearnings she couldn’t make sense of, he inserted a leg between her thighs.
Biting at his shoulder, she rocked against him. And it was everything wonderful and magical. And wicked… it was that, too. She thrilled at lasciviousness of it all. She rode the hard expanse of his thigh, her body taking on undulations of its own as she thrust hard against him. In a desperate bid to alleviate the ache. Sweat beaded at her brow and trickled down her cheek, winding a path all the way down to the crevice between her breasts.
“That’s it,” he praised, palming her buttocks and encouraging those wanton little gyrations.
Only, he abruptly stopped her.
She cried out her agony and scraped her fingers down the expanse of his shirt. “Please.” Don’t stop. Give me whatever it is I need. Something that she’d felt so very close to.
Lathan shrugged out of his shirt, and her breath caught, her yearnings briefly forgotten by the sight of him.
She looked her fill.
It was as though each muscle of his chest and belly had been carved of stone by some master sculptor. Every contour, every sinew, etched, highlighting the beauty of the male physique. Nay, his physique. A light dusting of red curls matted his chest.
She stretched a hand out to feel those tight whorls. To test their texture and softness. As she slid her fingers through them, Lathan pressed his eyes shut.
Francesca drifted her search lower, stroking his muscles, learning the feel of him as he had her. Then, with the pads of her thumbs, she teased the flat coinlike surfaces of nipples that were so very different than hers.
He sucked in a shuddery breath, and she glanced up.
At some point, he’d opened his eyes, and now he gazed down at her, those dark eyes a mirror of her own desire and yearning.
“Does it feel the same?” she asked softly. “As when you touch me there?” She trailed a nail around the perimeter of one.
A pained grin brought his lips up. “I cannot say—”
She touched her mouth to one of those disks, and he quietly groaned. Just as he’d worshiped all of her, Francesca moved her lips over Lathan…
And then stopped.
Unmoving, she stared at the small puckered scar just above his hip. Her fingers shaking for reasons that had nothing to do with desire, she lightly touched the jagged scar. “What…?”
“I was shot,” he said simply, his voice still roughened with passion.
I was shot.
Only, there was nothing simple or casual about those three words.
Straightening, Francesca examined his body in a new way. Still glorious in his beauty, and yet, scarred in a way that marked a very real pain he’d known. She ran her palms searchingly over him, moving around his body.
“Francesca,” he said gruffly.
She gasped. “Lathan,” she whispered.
Angry scars crisscrossed his back, these less faded than the one near his hip.
“It doesn’t hurt.” He caught her hand, but she’d not be deterred.
Resisting his efforts, she ran an agonized gaze over his marred flesh. Those angry imperfections didn’t detract from his beauty, but they added a layer of heartbreak to his story. “But it did.”
He didn’t protest, confirming that which she’d already known.
Then she found a circular scar to match the one above his hip.
“It’s the exit wound,” he said, following her thoughts. “It’s where the bullet traveled out and the reason I live.” Bitterness filled that last word, cleaving her heart in two. “A gift left by Rowley.”
Oh, God. “And the reason you limp?” Her teeth caught the inside of her cheek.
He nodded once. “It hit some muscle that connects to my left leg. It is nothing more than I deserve. An eternal reminder for betraying my superior.”
“And the lashes?”
“A gift left by my brief impressment.”
He’d been impressed. Her heart spasmed. “I didn’t know.” She spoke in soft tones, more than half afraid he’d pull away from her, physically and emotionally.
Lathan chuckled and flicked a finger over her nose. “Then you are the first.”
There was an air of teasing to his tone, and yet, how could he? Tears pricked her lashes, and she forced her attention to his chest lest he see those drops and take them as evidence that she pitied him. Which she didn’t.
She continued to lightly caress her fingertips over him, and he stiffened, but did not pull away.
What hell he’d suffered. What misery he’d endured. And for reasons that had nothing to do with her own heartbreak for him and everything to do with a hungering to drive back the demons she’d inadvertently invited in, Francesca dropped to her knees. She touched her lips to the angry scar left by a man’s bullet.
Lathan went motionless, and then he lightly tangled his fingers in her hair, saying nothing as she kissed a path over the lone scar at his front. Then the back. She kissed each mark left by the lash. “There,” she breathed against his back. “Perhaps when you think of those scars now, you might think of me instead.”
He groaned, and turning quickly, he lifted her into his arms.
There was nothing tender or gentle about this embrace.
They battled in their need. His mouth came down hard over hers, again and again, as he lay her down upon the table. Lathan paused to shove his trousers down, and
he kicked them aside.
Her breath caught and held somewhere between her chest and throat.
His length stood out long and proud, pressing against the flat of his stomach.
She sat up so that her legs hung draped over the side of the table. “It is magnificent,” she whispered, stretching her questing fingers for him, needing to feel him as he’d felt her. She closed her hand around the satiny-soft shaft. “You are,” she corrected.
An eternal grumble rolled from his chest.
She immediately stopped. “Have I hurt—?”
He closed a hand over hers, stopping her before she pulled free of him. “No,” he rasped out. “Don’t stop. Please.” Lathan guided Francesca’s fingers over him. In an up-and-down rhythm, he set the motion until she’d learned it, and then he removed his hand and let her freely stroke him.
Eyes closed, he lifted and moved his hips in time to her touch.
She thrilled at each groan and incoherent utterance her touch pulled from his lips.
“I’ve never done this. I take it I’m not awful?” she ventured.
A sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh left him. “You are the opposite of awful.” He groaned, and his hips moved with a greater sense of urgency. She dropped to her knees. “And if I could properly think, I’d know a proper word for thissss,” he hissed as Francesca pressed a kiss to the mushroom tip of his shaft.
She glanced up to assess whether she’d hurt him. Emboldened by the pain-pleasure contorting his features, she closed her mouth around him.
“Francescaaaaa,” he moaned, stretching the syllables of her name into six.
Francesca paused, and a blush burned her cheeks at her boldness. “I’ve done something wr—”
“Don’t. Stop.” Those two clipped, desperate words filled her with that same womanly pride of before, at her power… at his weakness for her. Tentatively at first, she worked her mouth up and down his length.
There was a faintly musky and entirely masculine taste to him, more intoxicating than the wine she’d accidentally overindulged in at the first ball her friend Genevieve had hosted two years ago.
The Spinster Who Saved a Scoundrel (The Brethren Book 5) Page 13