by Ingrid Hahn
But fill those glasses did, the dark red gone pure black this far into the darkness of the room, where the firelight didn’t penetrate. He was forced to turn, clutching both stems precariously in his right hand, and bringing the wine into enough light that they assumed the appearance of blood.
Miss Emery didn’t seem to be sharing his gruesome thoughts, instead rushing forward to help. She was too close, too fast, and Giles wavered. A few drops of wine spilled over the crystal’s smooth rim. The cat, who’d seemed remarkably sanguine about the rain in which he’d been found, vanished into the deep recesses of the room.
“I’ll see to that.” From the little drawer at the side table she took a linen towel that was used to clean the vessels after use.
She arranged her skirts carefully around her as she lowered herself to the carpet. Giles, setting the wine aside, knelt as if to help.
Instead, he leaned over her slightly and inhaled the perfume of her hair. When she straightened, he had to jump back to sitting on his knees. She folded the soiled fabric into a tidy square of linen.
They were on the floor together. Eyes level.
Without warning, her gaze dropped to his falls.
“Curse me.” Giles vaulted to standing.
A hand fell on the forearm of his unbroken limb. “It’s all right.”
“Hell and damnation, it is not. Nothing has ever been less all right in the history of England.”
Her mouth softened into a trace of a smile. He narrowed his eyes, half expecting to see pity or contained laughter or some other irritating emotion she was trying to hide in that smile.
There was no hint of any such thing, however. Only a little smile. Pure and pretty. A tiny bit hopeful.
Having looked for hints of other things made him the absurd one. Again.
“No, you’re quite correct.” She shook her head, expression melting into bashful contrition. “It’s not all right. I spoke foolishly, and I’m sorry.”
Giles paused, wanting nothing more than to pull her into his arms. A battle raged within him. Swords clashed and deadly spears flew. He wouldn’t be able to resist much longer. He’d pull her into his arms—
He stopped dead in the middle of the thought, the jolt through him strong and icy, as if a thunderbolt loosed from the hand of a Norse pagan god.
Arm. He had but one. What use would he be to a woman? “You need to leave.”
She made no move to obey. “You need me here.”
“I need to be alone.”
“My lord, this is killing you.”
“I rather hope it does.”
“Lord Ashcroft.”
His name upon her tongue was like a tiny wild violet upon a heaping pile of rotted corpses. The corpses were his life, and the violet was the hint that beauty remained in a world where it shouldn’t.
“Yes, Miss Emery?”
“I should never have left you.”
“You were right to leave. Your reputation would be no better than a shattered teacup. And you’d be stuck with me.” His throat tightened. “God, I can’t say how grateful I am you’re not stuck with me.”
She looked momentarily pained. “This isn’t the end for you.”
“I will never paint again. Don’t think anyone can rescue me. Even you.”
She brushed her hand against the front of his falls. An erection he hadn’t known he’d grown strained for another caress from her hand. “I have no intention of rescuing you.”
She stepped closer.
“Miss Emery—” She brushed him again. Giles groaned, trying not to let his eyes close or his body yield to the pleasure. “Miss Emery—”
“Yes, like that. Say it again. Say my name with all that neediness.”
She ran her lips over his.
Fuck. Of course he was hard. His body wasn’t so dead as previously believed. With her around, how could it be?
“Miss Emery.” This time it was needier. Breathier. Huskier.
Her mouth took his in potent possession.
Pain throbbed through his battered body. But pleasure swam below the surface, a streak of glimmering scales a second there, then lost again among the reeds of the murky waters.
And then not lost at all, but very much present and demanding its rightful place in the shattered remnants of his life.
She pulled her mouth from his to whisper in his ear, “I’m wearing the jewel you gave me.”
Fortunately, she was not touching his cock at that moment, precluding the wretched thing from shooting off behind the prison door of his falls. It was a near miss, though.
Careful to keep his left arm still, he raised his right hand and touched her. His mouth found the soft skin of her neck. The scent of her filled his head. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted everything, plain and simple.
“Miss Emery.” His voice was raw. It was one thing to know something. Another to admit it aloud. “I have nothing to give you.”
“I ask for nothing. Except this.” She began unbuttoning his falls. “Sit.”
She gave a sharp nod to the chair by the fire, caramel-brown leather worn with years of use. Giles did as he was bidden. Miss Emery knelt before him, carefully ironed curls arranged to appear artless falling around her face.
Giles tensed. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I want to taste you.” Miss Emery sent him a heated glance. “Don’t tell me I’ve shocked the Marquess of Ashcroft.”
Buttons undone, she pulled down the loose panel and pushed away the heavy layers of thick linen shirttails. Her lips parted. “It is rather a monster, isn’t it?”
“It’s been friend and foe since I was nineteen.”
Her brows rose. “That late?”
“One minute I was a diminutive boy of fifteen, smaller than any of my friends. The next, I was an enormous strapping lad of sixteen towering over the entire village. Ladies who would formerly treat me as a poppet, fussing over me and petting me, suddenly wanted something rather different.” His eyes assumed a faraway look, and his voice went thick. “It was a rather startling transition, to be sure.”
“Nothing about you is smooth or easy, is it?” She wrapped a hand around his cock as best she could with her prettily plump hands. “Except this.”
“Easy?”
She smiled. “Smooth.”
Giles leaned back, giving himself over to the sensations. She applied firm pressure and steady rhythm. His eyes fluttered shut. Her mouth found his bollocks, and she gently sucked one testicle into her mouth, swirling her tongue around once before treating the other to the same. The next thing he knew, she went down over the head of the shaft, her tongue warm and wet. He hissed in a sharp breath, body tensing.
Miss Emery was everything he wanted. Now she was everything he couldn’t have.
For this one stolen moment, it didn’t matter.
She took him more deeply between her lips. Hell and damnation, but he wanted to come in her mouth. He started to reach for her but forgot about the break and used his left arm by force of habit. Pain burst over him, and he cried out.
Miss Emery startled and drew back, her eyes wide. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” He winced. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
“Do you want me to stop?”
Oh, for God’s sake, no! “You ought to. You belong at home with your family.”
She pushed to her feet, gaze averted, but with a lost quality to her expression, as if she didn’t quite know where to look. For a horrible second, it seemed she might actually go.
“You don’t know what this is like.” The blackness that sucked him below the surface, beating him down every time he tried to gasp for breath…he wouldn’t wish it on anyone. The crushing weight of knowing, to the finest particulars, every last detail of his sins. He wouldn’t wish this anguish on anyone. Not even his father.
Instead of pleading with him that she did know, Patience surprised him. “I rather think you’re right about that. I don’t.”
He opened his mouth.
She rushed to speak first. “What I do know is that you need temperance. And ironically, it’s patience I don’t have and temperance I have in spades.”
Giles scoffed. “I’d rather die.”
“I know.” Again, she surprised him. He’d braced for her to argue that he wouldn’t rather die. Instead…instead…
God, could it be that she actually understood?
“What?”
“I know you’d rather die. You live in extremes. I don’t. We balance one another. Which is why you need me. I can be a buffer between you and the world.”
“Don’t be absurd. All you do is excite me.”
“In those few spare moments during the week when you’re not painting or fucking, I will be invaluable. I can take you.”
“I know you can.” He shook his head. “But I can’t ask this of you.”
“You’re not asking, though, are you? I’m offering. It’s what I want to do. I want to be with you and…and, well, it’s not just you who needs me.”
The hush in the room threatened to suffocate him. A myriad of foreign sensations took wing within the cage of his chest. If wasn’t only him who needed her… “You might think you need me, Miss Emery, but you don’t.”
“The funny thing is, my lord, you aren’t allowed to decide what I need and what I don’t.”
Caught in the vise grip of fierce possessiveness, he fought against grabbing her and kissing her until they were both dizzy and breathless. The inner turmoil had no way of processing through his body. Not without a brush in his hand or his cock inside a woman.
Except, for the first time since he’d discovered how he lived and breathed for sex, he didn’t want just any woman. He wanted her.
Hell, she could have been a slip of a thing, and his predilections would have fallen to the wayside. Giles didn’t want her because of what she was or was not on her exterior, beauty incarnate though she was. He wanted her for what she was on her inside.
That was the most frightening thing of all.
“I wish the world were worthy of a strong and decided woman like you, Miss Emery.”
Her strength of character. The way she knew her own mind and was not afraid to speak it. The cool mastery she had over herself that vanished completely the moment he touched her.
Her. That’s all he wanted. All he needed. Just her.
Oh, hell. He shouldn’t have spoken. He should have let her go. That would have been best…because he cared about her more than he cared about his foolish, broken, worthless self.
“My lord, I think you ought to reconsider.”
In an unusual nod to decency, he tucked his cock away. “Reconsider what?”
She watched his movements intently, gaze never leaving his barely useful right hand as he fumbled to do up his falls again. Her voice emerged, rough and needy. “Fucking me again.”
He froze. Their gazes met. She didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
Miss Emery went to her knees, bent her body over the ottoman, then reached back to lift her skirts. Her stockings were tied at her knees with pretty ivory ribbons embroidered with pink roses. Bottom exposed, every tiny white line and dimple visible in the slanted firelight, she relaxed into the position. Each of the cheeks was a round globe of perfect beauty. Between them, sure enough, as promised, she wore the jewel. It sparkled in the dying firelight.
The sight was his undoing. He was no longer good enough to fuck her, but there was a part of him he hadn’t yet been able to shut away, leave behind, and leave to rot, forgotten and mourned—the part of him that couldn’t say no.
Giles eased gently off his chair and positioned himself behind her. She tilted her bottom up, so that below the jewel stuck in her backside, the lips of her quim spread slightly to reveal the pink skin glistening with wetness. He’d have bent to push the lips wider with his fingers and stuff his tongue into her if he thought for a second he could manage without his left arm.
Instead, he focused on the one basic sexual mechanic left to him at this turn—his cock buried snug and warm in her quim.
Carefully, he positioned the blunt head of himself against the opening. And groaned. He nudged, watching himself disappear inside her slowly…oh so slowly. Pushing his hard penis into Patience was like coming home. How could he believe he could live without this? Without her?
When he withdrew again, the stiff length emerged with a light sheen of dampness from her wet depths. He inhaled, savoring the scent of her arousal and ran his good hand over the surface of her skin, worshipping every inch. He squeezed. Her flesh was satiny soft and welcoming as he handled her.
Belonged with her family, indeed. What a bloody liar. He began to move, body bumping against her softness as his cock squeezed into her tight opening. What a pussy. What an ass. What a woman.
Nothing he could ever paint—ever had painted—would ever match the beauty of what they could do together.
Remembering that he could never again attempt another painting released a hot flood of bitterness.
Giles pushed harder, his thrusts turning demanding. His strokes deepened and took on a new urgency. Became angry. And desperate. As if he could work hard enough to erase the horrors in which he now lived. As if this could save him.
“Touch yourself, woman.” He could barely growl the words from between clenched teeth. “Damn you, touch yourself. Make yourself come.”
Patience reached between her legs and began working on herself with an urgency that matched his own. Her back arched. She threw her head back and opened her mouth to emit a wavering cry as she came. Inside her body, her orgasm clenched and unclenched around his cock in hard waves. His bollocks tightened, drawing up against his body, and his stomach muscles went taut.
He withdrew just in time, coming all over her fair skin.
With the discarded linen she’d used to dab the floor clean of the wine, Giles gently wiped away what he’d spilled upon her. “Thank you.”
“Thank you?” Clean, she stood and started working on making her skirts presentable.
“I needed to temporarily forget. Pretend I was what I used to be.”
Miss Emery stopped brushing the wrinkles from the fabric of her gown and gave him an odd look. “But you haven’t changed.”
He snorted. He put his poor devil of a cock away again, this time for good. “I’m nothing. I’ve gone down in flames.”
“Then you’d better rise from the bloody ashes.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
When, an hour and some later, Patience slipped back into her room, she was too deep in thought to notice she wasn’t alone. Until the visitor cleared his throat.
She started, clenching in a way that made it all too obvious she still wore the jewel tucked away in an unspeakable place.
“Father!”
Recognizing him—and all it implied that he waited for her in her room at such an hour—the damn thing was nearly pushed right out. Trying to explain where it had come from and how it came to clatter on the floor from under her gown… No. She wasn’t going to imagine the scenario.
Thank goodness he’d made himself known. She’d been about to flop back onto her bed, flip up her skirts, and carefully extract the jewel, unwittingly doing so in full view of a most unwanted witness.
If she hadn’t been acutely aware of needing to fly the nest before this moment, there could be little question about it now. She was far too old to be living under her parents’ roof. There would be no peace for her, all because she was unmarried and—so far as they knew—a tender maid requiring careful sheltering from all the aspects of life she most burned to embrace. In short, she needed privacy.
“What are you doing here?”
Patience settled herself on the bed in a genteel fashion, hands carefully resting atop one another in her lap, palms up, while sitting on the very place the marquess had lately fucked. This way, though, the jewel remained safe.
“There seems to be an unfortunate rumor circulating about you.”
Her mouth went
dry, and her heart picked up a panicked pace. This was not how it was supposed to happen. But what had she expected? Of course they were going to be found out. They hadn’t been careful enough. And now her life would be ruined.
“Your mother went to bed with a sick headache after discovering you’d gone, which only seems to confirm it.”
“Confirm what, exactly?”
“Patience, don’t toy with me. I love you more than anything, I always will, but there are some lines that must not be crossed.”
The new rebelliousness in her reared, and resentment lodged in her chest. “Forgive me, Father, I do wish to honor you, sincerely I do, but whatever lines might or mightn’t be crossed, isn’t it for me to decide whether or not to cross them?”
He looked taken aback. “Absolutely not. You’re my daughter. You’re unmarried, and until you take a husband, you’re my responsibility, mine to protect, and what you do reflects upon all those around you.”
The truth stung. Rightly or wrongly, her actions did reflect upon those around her. Especially her family. But as to needing protection… “You’ve always said I was clever, Father, so why must I be anyone’s responsibility but my own?”
His eyes shut, and he rubbed his brow. “Oh, heavens. Heavens. Heavens. Heavens. What are we to do?”
“Do about what? I appreciate that I needed protecting when I was younger, but I haven’t been a child for a very long time, Father. There is no reason why I can’t have some measure of independence.”
The volume of his voice rose. “So you can willfully ruin us all by this dalliance with the duke?”
At “dalliance,” Patience’s stomach had rolled. But by the time her father reached “duke,” everything else had peeled away in favor of pure, raw shock. “Duke? What are you talking about?”
“The Duke of Silverlund, of course.”
“Of course? Why of course?”
“Is he not your lover, Patience?”
On second thought, she should have excused herself to extract the jewel before they’d delved into this ridiculous conversation. Trying to execute this rocky terrain while wearing it was nothing short of excruciating. Too late, though. If she’d known, she could have extracted it in the hack on the ride home. At the time, she hadn’t felt the interior was clean enough to so much as expose a single stockinged ankle, but she might have gritted her teeth and done the deed if she’d known what awaited her.