by Mary Balogh
Sexually exciting.
“I am tired of this party, Mr. Downes,” she said. “But I am a single woman alone, alas. My aunt, my usual companion, is indisposed, my manservant and maid walked home rather than stay in the kitchen with my coachman, and will not return for another hour at the earliest. Yet I will be scolded by aunt and servants alike if I return unaccompanied.”
He was not sure he understood her. His eyes shrewdly regarding her told her that. She raised her eyebrows, half smiled at him, and sipped her madeira. It was a vast improvement on ratafia.
“I would offer my escort, ma’am, if I thought it would be welcomed,” he said.
“How kind you are, Mr. Downes,” she said, mocking him with her eyes. “It would be accepted.”
“Shall I have your carriage called around, then?” he asked. “Shall I have a maid accompany us?”
She allowed herself to laugh softly. “That will be quite unnecessary, Mr. Downes,” she said, “unless you are afraid of me. We are both adults.”
He inclined his head to her without removing his eyes from hers, set down his glass, and slipped quietly from the room.
She found flirtations exhilarating, Helena admitted to herself as she sipped from her glass and looked about the room without making any attempt to rejoin any group. She indulged in them whenever she felt so inclined—always in private. She scorned the appearance of propriety for its own sake, but how could one conduct a satisfactory flirtation in the sight of others? She did not care if people noticed her disappearing alone with a certain gentleman and thought her promiscuous.
She was not. She had never desired the distastefulness of full physical intimacy—she had endured enough of that during her seven-year marriage. Though of course there had been a time during that marriage … no! She shuddered inwardly. She would not think of that now—or ever if she could help it.
She had never sought to enliven her widowhood with affairs—or even with an affair. But then she had rarely met a man with as great a physical appeal as Mr. Downes.
She would take him home and lure him up to her drawing room. She would find out more about him. She suspected that he might be a fascinating man—perhaps he could fascinate her for an hour or more of the night. Nights were always interminably long. She would flirt with him. Perhaps she would even allow him to steal a kiss—there was definite appeal in the thought, though she normally avoided even kisses.
Perhaps he would not be satisfied with a mere kiss. But she was not afraid. She had never found herself unable to deal with amorous men, though she had known her fair share.
She smiled as her eyes found the Countess of Greenwald.
She set her glass down in order to go bid her hostess a good night.
And perhaps she would not be satisfied with a mere kiss, she thought a few minutes later as she allowed Mr. Downes to hand her into her carriage and climb in beside her.
She had never felt quite so tempted.
How would it feel with him? she wondered, turning her head to smile half scornfully at her companion, though he was not necessarily the object of her scorn. With a handsome, virile, powerful, doubtless very experienced man.
She felt a twinge of alarm at the direction her thoughts had taken. And more than a twinge of desire.
She would talk sense into herself before she arrived home, she told herself. She might even dismiss him on the pavement outside her door and send him back to the soirée.
But she knew she would not do that.
Sometimes loneliness was almost a tangible thing.
3
EDGAR WAS NOT REALLY SURE HE UNDERSTOOD THE situation. Or believed her story. Why would two servants have walked home after accompanying her to the Greenwalds’? And she did not seem the sort of person to tire early when she was at a party. She had been the center of attention in every group gathered about her all evening.
And why him?
He sat beside her as close to his side of her carriage as he could so that she would not think he was taking advantage of the situation. She sat with her back half across the corner at her side, looking at him in the near-darkness, talking easily and quite without malice about the people who had attended the party. She spoke in that low, velvety voice, the half smile of mockery or something else on her lips every time a street lamp lit her face.
He would help her to alight at her door, he thought, see her safely inside her home, and then walk back to Greenwald’s house. It was not very far. He would refuse the offer—if she made it—of a ride back in her carriage. He would go back to the soirée rather than straight home. He had not told Cora he was leaving.
But when the lady had stepped down from the carriage to the pavement and had removed her hand from his, she did not lift her skirt with it the more easily to ascend the four steps to the front door. She slipped it through his arm.
“You must come inside, Mr. Downes,” she told him, “and have a drink before returning.”
Presumably the aunt she had mentioned was inside the house. But was it likely that an ailing lady would be out of her bed at this time of night—it must be well past midnight—and sitting in the drawing room with her embroidery on the chance that she would be called upon to play chaperone? He was not being naive. He was merely unwilling to accept the evidence of his own reasoning powers.
A manservant had opened the front door even before the steps of the carriage had been set down. He took Edgar’s hat and cloak from him, after favoring him with a level, measuring look—he was as tall as Edgar and even broader, and as bald as a polished egg. He looked more like a pugilist than a butler, an impression enhanced by his crooked, flattened nose.
“You need not wait up, Hobbes,” Lady Stapleton said, taking Edgar’s arm and turning him in the direction of the stairs.
“Very well, my lady,” the servant said in a voice one might expect a man to use if he had a handful of gravel lodged in his throat.
The lady paused on the first landing as if in thought, appeared to come to some decision, and climbed on to the second. Edgar would have had to be an innocent indeed if he had expected to find a drawing room beyond the door at which she stopped, indicating with an inclination of the head that he might open it. This was not the living floor of the house. Even so it was something of a shock to find himself entering a very cozy bedchamber. There was a soft carpet underfoot. The curtains were looped back from the large canopied bed. The bedcovers were neatly turned back. There were lit candles on the dressing table and bedside table. A fire burned in the hearth.
Edgar closed the door behind his back and stayed where he was. It was a very feminine room, warm and comfortable and clean. That subtle perfume she wore clung to it. It was, he thought, the room of a very expensive courtesan. He found himself wondering if he would be presented later with a quite exorbitant bill. He did not much care.
“Well, Mr. Downes.” She had walked into the room and turned to him now, one hand resting on the dressing table. There was a look almost of defiance on her face. She raised one mocking eyebrow. “Shall I ring for tea?”
“That seems hardly necessary.” He walked toward her until he was a foot away from her. But why him? he wondered. Because of her discovery that he was not a gentleman? Would a gentleman have offered his escort? Would he have come inside the house with her? Ascended that second flight of stairs with her?
To hell with what gentlemen would have done or would do. She had made her choice. She would live with it for tonight. He set his hands on either side of her waist—not a slender waist, but an undeniably shapely one. He drew her against him, angled his head to one side, parted his lips, closed his eyes, and kissed her.
And felt that he had landed in the very midst of a fireworks display—not as a spectator but as one of the fireworks.
She moved against him. Not just to bring herself closer to him but to—move against him. He became hotly aware of everything—her warm and shapely thighs, her generous hips, her abdomen rubbing against his almost instant erection,
her breasts, her shoulders. One of her arms had come about his waist, beneath his coat. The fingers of the other hand twined themselves in his hair. Her mouth opened beneath his own and moved against it. He found himself doing what he had not done since his youth, having found it distasteful then. He pressed his tongue deep into her mouth.
And then she withdrew and he withdrew and they stood gazing at each other, still touching from the waist down, their breathing labored. That strange smile lingered about her lips. But her eyes were heavy with passion and excitement.
“I do hope you live up to early promise, Mr. Downes,” she said.
“I shall do my very best, ma’am,” he said.
And then she turned and presented him with a row of tiny pearl buttons down the back of her gown. He undid them one at a time while she lifted her arms and withdrew the pins from her hair. She held it up until he was finished and then let it fall, long and dark and wavy, with its enticing reddish tints. He nudged the gown off her shoulders with the straps of her shift and she let them fall to the floor before turning and removing her undergarments and her stockings while he watched.
She had a mature figure—firm, ample, voluptuous. She was incredibly beautiful. He felt his mouth go dry again as he shrugged out of his coat and reached for the button of his waistcoat.
“Ah, no,” she said, brushing his hands aside and laughing at him with that throaty laugh that now seemed to be in its proper setting. “You have had the pleasure of unclothing me, Mr. Downes. You will not deny me the pleasure of doing the like for you.”
She undressed him while he listened to his heartbeat hammering against his eardrums and concentrated on controlling and mastering the urge to tumble her back onto the bed so that he might the sooner explode into ease. She took her time. She was in no hurry at all.
Not until they were finally on the bed. Then she became passion unleashed. There was no shyness, no shrinking, no ladylike modesty, no taboos. Her hands explored him with frank interest and wild demand while his did the like to her. Her mouth participated in the exploration, moving over him, kissing, licking, sucking, biting. He devoured her with his own mouth, tasting perfume and sweat and woman.
He had never been a man for rough sex. Perhaps because of his size he had always been careful to leash his passions, to touch gently, to mount slowly, to pump with control. But he had never before been with a woman whose passion could equal his own—and perhaps even outstrip it. When he rolled her nipples between his thumbs and the bases of his forefingers, she spoke to him.
“Harder,” she begged him. “Harder.”
And when he squeezed and she gasped with pain and he would have desisted, her hands came up to cover his, to press his thumbs and forefingers together again. She gasped with pain once more.
“Come to me,” she was saying then, her body in frenzied motion. “Give it to me. Give it to me.”
He moved between her thighs, felt her legs lift to twine about his, felt her hands spread hard over his buttocks, positioned himself, and thrust hard and deep. She cried out. He settled his weight on her—his full weight. He knew what she wanted and what he wanted. Neither of them would have it if he allowed her to buck and gyrate beneath him. And he was very aware that she had led the way thus far. It was not in his nature to allow a woman to dictate his every action and reaction.
She urged him on with frenzied words and clawing hands and with the muscles of her thighs and the muscles inside, where he worked. But he took her without frenzy, with deep, methodical, rhythmic strokes. His heart felt as if it must burst. With every inward thrust he felt as if he must surely explode into release. But he would not let a woman master him.
She was pleading with him. She was swearing at him, he realized in some surprise. And then she lost her own control and came shuddering and shattering about him. He continued to stroke her while it happened and then, when she began to relax, he drove to his own release, growling out his pleasure into her hair.
He was not quite sure he was going to survive, he thought foolishly, relaxing downward onto her damp and heated flesh. He felt her legs untwine themselves from about his and somehow found the energy to lift himself off her and draw her against him before closing his eyes and sinking into sleep.
SHE DID NOT sleep. She lay relaxed against the heat of his body. She tried to summon the energy to wake him and dismiss him. She would have to dismiss him. She needed to be alone.
She needed to digest what had just happened—what she had caused to happen. She had not even taken him as far as the drawing room. She had scarcely even paused on the first landing.
She had seemed to be led by a power quite beyond her will to control. A ridiculous notion—though it had happened before. She had chosen to bring him to her bed, just as she had chosen that other time.…
She breathed in slowly—a mistake. She breathed in the smells of his sweat and his cologne, of his maleness.
Her earlier curiosity at least had been satisfied. She knew now how it felt with him.
It had felt frightening. The pleasure—oh, yes, there had been an overabundance of that—had got far beyond her control. It had been in his control and he had held it from her—quite deliberately, she would swear—with his weight holding her immobile and with his insistence on setting the pace himself. Having made the decision she had made, she had at least wanted to command the situation. She had wanted to protect something of herself. He had not allowed it.
She had been frightened. All she had was herself.
He had the most magnificent body she could ever have imagined. It seemed all massive, solid muscle. And that part of him … She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. She had been stretched and filled. For one foolish moment she had felt the terror of a virgin that there could not possibly be room. She rather believed she had screamed.
He was a man who expected and got his own way. He was a businessman. Clearly a very successful and wealthy one. A man did not achieve success in the business world unless he was firm and controlled and even ruthless, unless he was well able to make himself undisputed master of any situation. She had sensed that on her first sight of him, of course. It was not his looks alone that had prompted that rush of lust and the growing temptation. And then she had had her intuition confirmed at supper when he had told her, a look of cool defiance on his face, that he had been a lawyer and was a merchant. Lustful words. She wondered if he had realized that she found them so.
She should not have chosen to break her own—and society’s—rules with him of all people.
She wanted him again, she thought after a while. She could feel her breasts, her womb, her inner thighs begin to throb with need. She wanted his weight, his mastery. No, she did not. She wanted to be on top. She wanted to master him. She wanted to ride him at her own speed, to drive him mad with desire, to have him shatter past climax so that she could feel she had avenged what he had done to her.
She wondered if she would be able to master this man if she woke him and aroused him and got on top of him. Would she win this time? Or would he merely resume that alarmingly controlled stroking and endure long enough to send her headlong again into release and happiness—and weakness? It would be humiliating to have that happen twice.
And wonderful beyond belief.
She did not want anything wonderful beyond belief.
And then, while she was still at war with herself, the decision was taken out of her hands. She had not noticed that he was awake again. And aroused again. He turned her onto her back and came on top of her. She found herself opening her legs to him, lifting to him, letting her breath out on a sighing moan as he came, hard and thick and long, sliding into her wetness. And she found that she had his full and not inconsiderable weight on her again and that she did not fight either it or him. She lay under him rather as she had always lain beneath Christian—but no, there was no comparison. None whatsoever.
She observed their coupling almost like a spectator. Almost. There was, of course, the throbbing desire she
had felt even while he still slept, and the crescendo of desire that built there, where he stroked relentlessly, and spread upward in waves, through her womb, up into her breasts, into her throat, and even behind her nose. He found her mouth with his and she opened to his tongue and did not even try to fight the total invasion of her body—or even the frightening sensation that it was her whole person that was being invaded.
She was, she thought a moment before she burst past control to another of those intense moments of something that felt deceptively like happiness, though it was not that at all—she was a little frightened of Mr. Downes, Bristol merchant and cit. And that was perhaps a large part of the attraction. She had never felt frightened of any other man. His own climax came a few moments after hers, as it had the first time. He was, then, in perfect control of himself, even in bed.
She had made a mistake. Of course she had made a mistake.
They lay beside each other, panting, waiting for their heartbeats to return to normal. The backs of their hands touched damply between them. She wondered if he had set out to make a fool of her, or if mastery came so naturally to him that he did not even think of her as a worthy adversary. She hated him in that moment, quite as intensely as she had earlier lusted after him.
She got off the bed, crossed the room unhurriedly on legs that shook slightly—the candles, though low, were still burning—picked up her night robe, which her maid had set out over the back of a chair, and drew it about her as she went to stand at the window, looking out on the deserted street below. She drew a deep, silent breath and released it slowly.
“Thank you, Mr. Downes,” she said. “You are superlatively good. A master of the art, one might say. But I daresay you know that.”
“I can hardly be expected to reply to such a compliment,” he said.
She looked over her shoulder at him. He was lying on the bed, the covers up to his waist, his hands clasped behind his head. Even now, sated as she was, he looked magnificent.