by Julia Kelly
Perhaps if things had been different . . .
But there was no use in wondering what might have happened. She couldn’t change the past.
“Tell me your real name,” the earl said, an edge of want in his voice. “I need to know the real identity of the lady who’s captivated me.”
Mary couldn’t help but shiver with delight at his words. So this was what it felt like to hold a man in her sway. After fourteen years of carefully considering her every move and stomping out every desire, she felt powerful for the first time.
She opened her lips to answer, but the music stopped and their fellow dancers began to separate. However, Lord Asten’s grip on her waist only tightened. He scanned the room and shot her a conspiratorial look. “Do you need to be returned to your party?”
She was about to respond that she didn’t have a party, but quickly caught herself. That would look too suspicious. Instead she glanced over to where Lady Eleanora laughed merrily with Lord Blakeney. Lady Laughlin and her daughters stood just a few feet off, their lips puckered up as though they’d just eaten lemons.
Good for Lady Eleanora.
With her charge in the capable—but still chaperoned—hands of Lord Blakeney, she took a breath and jumped into the temptation he offered. “No.”
“Walk with me?” asked Lord Asten, holding his arm out so she could place her hand in the crook of his elbow.
“Do you know, if you’d told me I’d be dancing a waltz tonight, I’d have laughed,” she said with a smile.
“Why?” he asked as they moved to the colonnade that wrapped around the ballroom’s edge.
She shrugged. “No one’s asked me to in a very long time.”
He glanced down at her. “Are you married to a neglectful husband?”
“I’m Miss Falsum, remember?”
“A name we’ve already established is false,” he teased.
She could make this all go away. If she told Lord Asten she was married—even living separately from her husband—he would let her go without a fight. This was a man who believed in duty and family above all else. He’d never encroach upon that.
She couldn’t bring herself to tell the lie.
“No, I’m not married,” she said.
He couldn’t completely hide his relief. “Widowed?”
She shook her head.
“But surely you’re not—”
“A spinster? I suppose some would call me that, although I prefer to think of myself as a woman who’s been busy doing other things with her life.”
“And you still won’t tell me your name?”
“No,” she said, laughing. “I’ve had years of experience resisting even the most persistent people.”
They’d reached the wide double doors leading out to the veranda from where she’d made her entrance. A thought gripped her—something else she’d never done. Something daring and scandalous and just too tempting to ignore, especially on that night when she’d already broken so many rules. Perhaps she was drunk on the earl’s attention, or maybe it was the sultry excitement of so many hidden identities wafting through the air like perfume. Either way, she leaned close to Lord Asten and said in a low whisper, “I think I should like a breath of fresh air.”
It was tantamount to an invitation to kiss her right there in the middle of the ballroom, but wasn’t the risk a part of the fun she’d denied herself for so long? She craved the rush of skirting the rules, and the only man she wanted to be dangerous with was Lord Asten.
“I think that’d be just the thing,” he said with a little conspiratorial smile. He glanced over his shoulder, placed a hand on the small of her back, and led her through the open door.
It had just rained, and the scent of it mingled with freshly cut grass and the early roses that were just beginning to bloom. Her slippers hardly made a sound as she crossed the damp stone of the veranda to a spot where she was well out of the line of sight of any windows. The moon that had guided her path into the ball was now hidden behind clouds, making it even darker in the garden. All the better to do sinful things with a man she wanted but would never be able to have.
“Do you know what they call this time of night?” she asked, trailing her gloved hand along a marble banister.
“Tell me.”
He stood very close behind her. Even though he wasn’t touching her yet, his breath stirred the little curls on the back of her neck. She tipped her head just enough so that she could watch him from the corner of her eye.
“The witching hour,” she said.
The earl raised a hand and drew a finger along the line of her shoulder, down to the little scraps of fabric that hugged the top of her arms. “That’s fitting.”
“Why is that?” she asked.
“Because you’ve cast a spell over me.”
The words sounded as sweet as honey. Intoxicating, seductively simple words. She turned and found herself caged between his strong arms, mere inches of space between the two of them. She sucked in a breath, knowing that something was about to happen. The earl was so focused on her. So intent.
“You still won’t give me your real name?” he asked.
Anticipation raced through her veins and pooled between her legs. “No.”
“Then I’ll have to be more persuasive.” The words were low and gravelly, as though he was holding himself back from the edge of the depths. Once he plunged in, taking her with him, there would be no coming back.
Mary tilted her chin up, perfectly positioning her lips and hoping against all hope that the earl—a man of great character and duty—would decide to be just a little bad this night.
When his lips touched hers, she forgot everything except the sensation of him on her. All at once his hands were around her waist, pulling her to him. Even through her skirts she could feel the hard length of his athletic body against hers, and yet it wasn’t enough. She wanted all of him pressed up against her, skin to skin, with no fabric separating them. She needed him to bend her over the banister and ravage her in ways that a governess wasn’t supposed to know about.
He was a man—raw and primal—casting off the bounds of duty and restraint and taking exactly what he wanted without excuse. Didn’t she owe it to herself to do the same?
She opened herself to him almost without understanding what she was doing. All she knew was that when she parted her lips, he traced them with his tongue and it felt good. Better than good. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, driving all common sense out of her head and with it, every concern about being caught. It didn’t matter who he was or who she was or where they were. The only thing that mattered was that he not stop.
Too soon, Lord Asten broke their kiss. She whimpered in protest, but then his lips were on her neck and desire blanked her mind once again. The sensation of his soft, needy lips on her neck was delicious. Her entire body seemed to tingle with the delight of him playing over her skin, licking, sucking, and biting at the sensitive spots that made her knees buckle and her stomach flip. He slid his lips over her collarbone and the broad sweep of her chest exposed by the off-the-shoulder style she wore. When he kissed her dress’s neckline, she gasped.
“Too much?” he asked, lifting his head but not relinquishing his grip on her waist.
“Not enough,” she breathed. “Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”
She gripped his biceps, holding on with everything she had as he slipped a finger under each of her delicate sleeves and slid them farther down her arms. She looked down and saw that he’d exposed the top of her corset. It was plain and serviceable against the richness of her dress, but the earl didn’t seem to notice. Instead he skimmed his fingers along the edge and yanked the garment down in one smooth movement. The tops of her breasts—already straining to be free—sprang out of their confinement.
“So beautiful,” he murmured against her skin, p
ressing a kiss to the cleft between her breasts.
His hand slid up, molding to the shape of her. His thumb skimmed over one of her exposed nipples, teasing it so that her hips canted up and pressed against his hard cock.
“What I want,” he said, casting his eyes up her half-bare body, “is to take you in my mouth and tease you until you can’t stand it any longer. Do you want me to do that?”
“God, yes,” she begged.
And he did exactly as he promised. He slid her peaked nipple between his lips and sucked hard. A bolt of desire rocked her. Her fingers dug into his arms as she pushed her breast farther into his mouth. She’d been a fool when she thought she’d be able to resist this. She was a fool now if she believed that she’d be able to do this only once. He was opening up her world, unleashing her pent-up passion that she’d never be able to forget. But none of that really mattered—not while this sensation rolled through her body. Not while he was sucking and teasing and taunting her nipple until she felt as though she might expire on the spot.
He sucked hard one last time and let go, pulling a mewling sound from the back of her throat. But instead of moving back, he merely sought out her other breast, sharing the sensation that spread through her body, consuming her.
The flick of Lord Asten’s tongue over her nipple was almost enough to distract her from the feeling of his fingers creeping down her legs and under her skirts. Almost.
“My lord,” she gasped out as his inquisitive fingers reached her knees—knees that had never been touched by a man before.
He jerked his head back as though he’d been pulled from a daze. “You’re right.”
But before she could protest that he’d stopped, he swept her up in his arms. She yelped in a most undignified manner and clung to his neck as he strode for the stairs and carried her farther into the garden.
“I wouldn’t want anyone else to enjoy the sight of you. That’s just for me,” he murmured against her ear.
Lord Asten carried her to a marble bench and sat her down carefully. But if she thought they might resume kissing and a little touching, she was sorely mistaken. Instead the earl dropped to his knees on the damp paving stones.
“Let me taste you, my lady. Please.”
She stared at him. The fourth Earl of Asten, one of the most powerful men in England, was begging to kiss her. It was unfathomable, and yet it was happening.
All she could do was nod.
His deft fingers lifted her skirts and circled her ankles. She trembled at his touch, bracing her hands behind her on the bench as she watched. His hands skimmed up her calves. She hoped he didn’t notice her stockings were plain cotton rather than silk, but as soon as his fingers reached the simple scalloped edging of her garters, she found she didn’t care any longer. Her head fell back as his touch played up the inside of her thighs, tempting her. She whimpered and tried to scoot closer to the edge of the bench.
The earl chuckled. “Eager?”
“Yes,” she managed to say. The desire he stoked in her burned so hot she could barely utter one word, let alone an entire sentence.
He rucked up her skirts so they bunched around her waist and drew down her drawers. Then he spread her legs wide. “So am I.”
Mary’s head fell back as the earl’s tongue touched her there. Her hips would’ve bucked except that his arm lay firmly across her waist, holding her down so that he had full access to her. He ran his tongue along her, outlining her lips only to come back to the sensitive bud and flick his tongue across it. Then he sucked and didn’t stop.
Her breath came in fast, shallow pants now. She could hardly think except to focus on the extreme pleasure of whatever it was the earl was doing to her. With every stroke of his tongue, every murmur of pleasure from the back of his throat, he pushed her higher, higher into the moon-drenched clouds.
She almost couldn’t stand it and yet she wanted more. She wanted to yank him up and wrap her legs around his waist, inviting him into her with such wanton fervor that even she would never have imagined she had in her. Every fiber of her being screamed that there could be more—she could have more pleasure than this.
As though reading her mind, Lord Asten lifted his arm from her waist and slowly, tantalizingly, slid one finger inside her. Her hips rose, her head shot up, and she clenched the edge of the bench. Looking down her body, a disarray of exposed skin and crumpled silk, she watched as he moved with her, his tongue flicking at her in the same rhythm as his finger slid in and out of her body. Then, when she almost couldn’t stand it any longer, he cast a devilish gaze up at her, and Mary shattered like a bulb of glass blown too thin.
A strangled cry rose up from her throat and she shamelessly moved against the earl’s mouth, wordlessly begging him never to stop.
But as her body came down from the impossible heights he’d pushed her to, she became aware of what this all must look like. There she was, a masked woman laid out on a bench in the middle of a stranger’s garden, her skirts around her waist and her bodice half down her chest.
She unlocked her stiff fingers from around the edge of the bench. A lady would cover herself and run, fleeing from her ruination. But Mary couldn’t seem to muster the energy to care. She’d felt real pleasure for the first time in her life, and now that she had a taste for it, she didn’t know how she’d ever go back.
It was Lord Asten who finally began to set her to rights again. He drew her drawers back up her legs and smoothed down the tapes and wires of her crinoline, laying her beautiful, borrowed dress down over it. He slipped her corset back up and pulled her sleeves into place. Then, slowly, he pushed up on his knees until he could kiss her again.
It was a sweet kiss this time, but it smoldered deep inside her nonetheless.
“Thank you,” he murmured against her lips.
“I didn’t do anything,” she said with a little laugh.
“You did more than enough.” His arms went around her waist and she scooted to the side so that her hip pressed up against his stomach and she could lay her head on his shoulder. He kissed her hair just above where her mask was still snug in place.
He tucked a finger under her chin and tilted her face up. “I want to see you again,” he said, his low voice reverberating through his chest.
But before she could answer, a distant bell began to toll. Midnight. She had to leave or risk being locked out of the house. Then she would have to appear on the front step, asking to be let in while wearing her distinctive dress, mask in hand. The earl would know exactly who she was and that she’d pretended to be something she wasn’t. A woman of quality. A woman of standing. A woman who could have walked right into the marquis’s ball without a second thought because she’d actually been invited.
The bell tolled again, and she jerked away.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a rush, gathering her skirts in her hands. “I must go. It’s better this way.”
“Wait! Your name!” he called as the bell tolled again, but she could hardly hear him. She was running as fast as her feet could carry her through the marquis’s garden, trying to ignore the four words that raced through her head over and over again: What have I done?
Asten watched the woman run away from him in a flurry of star-strewn silk. He sat down heavily on the bench that was still warm from her body.
What had he been thinking? He’d tempted a woman out into a shadowed garden only to lift her skirts and lick her until she fell apart in his arms. He didn’t do those sorts of things. He was a solid, steady man, not some rake who bed-hopped around town with willing widows and married ladies whose husbands had long neglected them.
And yet he couldn’t bring himself to regret what he’d done. For the first time in years, he felt truly alive. His mystery woman was like a dream—a temptress sent to pull out a side of him he hadn’t indulged in a very long time. She was pure passion and pleasure. The way she’d cried o
ut when she climaxed—he was still hard thinking about it. He wanted that in his life. It was as though she’d pulled the black cloth from over his eyes and shown him the truth.
He’d accidentally fallen into a sort of monklike life nearly devoid of passion. All of his efforts focused on the things that gave him honor: his daughter, his work, his estate. But then—with all the subtlety of a hammer swinging through a pane of glass—Miss Falsum had gone and smashed that all to bits.
Of course, now he had to go back home and see the woman who’d prompted this streak of wildness in him. His mystery woman might be fantasy, but Miss Woodward was as real as could be. He’d hoped to distract himself from the beguiling governess with a kiss, but even in the midst of passion she’d never been far from his mind. He’d tried to lose himself in this mysterious woman for a moment, but there Miss Woodward was in little gestures and quirks of tone. The two women were inextricably linked in his mind, and it was bound to drive him mad.
Asten’s head fell into his hands, and he gave in fully to his frustration. But then something caught his eye—a scrap of white lying innocently on the gravel of the path. He picked it up. A lady’s handkerchief. He ran his fingers over the lawn and the embroidered edge. Around the outside of the scrap of cloth ran an elaborate vine stitched in green. The design came together in one corner, ending with a large pink flower—Hedera helix and Pelargonium quercifolium. Ivy and geranium. It was unusual and distinctive and he had no doubt in his mind that it was hers.
A smile slid over his lips as he climbed the stairs to return to the ballroom. She hadn’t given him her name, but she’d left something of herself behind. He toyed with the handkerchief when he made his way through the crowd, hardly seeing the crush of people around him. It wasn’t until he came upon his daughter that he realized his dreamlike state.
“There you are, Papa,” said Eleanora.
Realizing he still held the lady’s handkerchief, he gripped it in his balled-up fist and shoved his hand behind his back. “Where is Lady Laughlin?”