“’Fraid not. You’d better stay by the door, Ellie. That tiny little bow right there”—he pointed to the lovely bare column of her throat—“it’d never survive what I’ve got planned for it.”
Chapter 17
“A debutante who flirts with temptation is as if Eve had said, ‘’Tis only one little apple.’”
—A note for The Marriage Habits of the Native Aristocrat
Ellie didn’t sleep at all. But as much as she wanted to blame it on her aunts’ nocturnal symphony, she couldn’t.
She’d lain awake the entire night thinking about Brandon and wondering why every conversation with him left her with that unfinished feeling. It was as if there was always something just out of reach, and yet she didn’t know what it was.
All she knew was that it made her restless and drew her skin uncomfortably tight and achy over her frame. A dreadful ailment.
The following morning, she repeatedly caught herself staring dreamily out the carriage window, where Brandon rode on horseback beneath an overcast sky. She couldn’t stop thinking about their encounter last night. For a man who was always so steady, self-assured and capable—the ideal for countless young debutantes—it had been shocking to see him jug bitten. She doubted that many others had.
She’d seen George drink to excess on numerous occasions. Whenever he came to her country house for dinner, actually. And he was never shy about relying on one of her footmen to see him home at the end of an evening. In fact, his drunk self wasn’t all that different from his sober self. He was just . . . George, a man who was impulsive and rash and frequently laughed at his own jokes.
But with Brandon, it was unexpected. There was something almost charming about seeing him a bit worse for wear.
She’d wanted to go to him, to untie his cravat, to help him off with his coat and boots, to see that his pillow was fluffed and his linens were cool. And she’d wanted to do these things even after he’d warned her away.
The only thing that had kept her bare feet rooted to the floor was the way he’d looked at her. There was something altogether untamed in his gaze. And she was quite certain that, if she had helped him to his bed, that she would have found herself in it.
Even now, a terrible thrill tore through her at the thought. It was shameless to admit, but he could have easily coaxed her. Especially if he’d kissed her and held her the way he had in the garden at Sutherfield Terrace.
She wanted that again. It made her feel terribly guilty. She should be thinking about George. She could picture their life together so easily it was as if it had already happened and she had the memory of each day tucked inside her heart.
And her heart was filled with George. There simply wasn’t room for Brandon.
Well . . . perhaps a little room. After all, she still planned to be part of his life. His sister was a dear friend. And there was no question in her mind that she would always be his friend, too.
However, once she married George, Brandon would have to stop saying things about little bows on her nightdress, how her blushes tasted, and how a man would surmount any obstacle to win the woman he wants. To make her his, and his alone.
Because then she could stop wondering what it would feel like to be that woman.
Just then, a rumble of thunder called down from the skies, as if heaven were damning her for her thoughts.
Duly reprimanded, Ellie sat up straighter. She forced her gaze from the window and her thoughts on something—anything—other than Brandon.
Unfortunately, in the next minute, that proved impossible.
It began to rain in curtains of diaphanous silver, requiring Brandon to come inside the carriage. Then, by a series of seat changes, choreographed by her aunts, Ellie ended up sharing a bench with him.
At first, Meg was on the other side of her brother, but she complained that his coat was too damp and that she wanted to sleep. Aunt Myrtle, who was looking a bit drowsy herself, invited her to their side. She bid Meg to stack the valises that held their sewing samplers where she had sat. Of course, Brandon could have easily situated the bags between them, but he left it as it was, staying close to Ellie.
It was pure torture. As the rain saturated the road and the wheels frequently slipped in and out of well-traveled runnels, it soon became apparent that they could not avoid touching.
Ellie tried not to think about how warm he was, or how solid his thigh felt whenever the carriage shifted and they bumped against each other. And each time, she heard the subtle intake of his breath, and saw the hand resting on that thigh clenching into a fist as if he was in torment, too.
Across from them, Meg and the aunts gradually dozed, lulled by the shushing rain, the dim light and the slow rocking motion of the carriage.
It had the opposite effect on Ellie.
With every touch and press, her senses became heightened. The scent of rain and saddle leather and Brandon’s shaving soap filled her every breath. A fine sheen of perspiration collected on her skin, causing cambric and silk to cling and tug with each small shift of her posture. The sensations accumulated into low liquid throbs that compelled her to press her knees together. And by the time they pulled over at the nearest coaching inn for a change of horses, Ellie felt as if she were ready to fly apart.
Thankfully, the rain had passed and they would not be traveling in such close confines for the remainder of their journey.
When she stepped outside, the air was so thick and sticky that the last thing Ellie wanted to do was go inside a stuffy inn. Her nerves were strung tight as harp strings. She needed a moment to breathe, to collect herself.
Making her excuses to her aunts, she walked around the thatch-roofed coaching inn and found a gated kitchen garden, blissfully empty. She stole inside and drew in a deep breath of fragrant herbs and flowers, trying to chase away Brandon’s intoxicating scent.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Her skin was on fire. Unbuttoning her spencer, she parted the fabric to invite a breeze to cool her.
She didn’t expect Brandon to follow.
“Miss Parrish, it isn’t safe to be out here”—his words faltered for an instant when she whipped around in surprise and his gaze darted down to the parted fabric—“alone.”
Ellie didn’t fumble to secure the buttons. Something about the smoldering hunger in his gaze, his heavy swallow that followed, and the hour she’d spent in close quarters with him all burst upon her at once.
She didn’t even know what she was doing when she started to walk toward him, or even when she lifted her hands to his nape and tugged his mouth to hers. But when he caught her and pulled her flush against the wild pounding of his heart, she knew she would find the answer in his kiss and in the feel of his arms around her.
Ellie slanted her mouth beneath Brandon’s, nudging his lips apart with a hungry murmur of insistence. He answered with a gruff grunt of surprise and approval deep in his throat and hitched her higher until the toes of her half boots were dragged over the grass.
She clung to him, her tongue skirting over the edge of the broad, firm flesh of his lower lip to the heated, intoxicating interior. He tasted of the fresh water from the pail and ladle outside the inn’s entrance and she wanted to drink him in. Every last drop.
She felt the inn’s fieldstone exterior at her back. Brandon’s firm body pressed and molded to all her fiery places as he kissed her in slow, deep pulls. But it still wasn’t enough. She was afraid it never would be.
“This is all your fault. Every time I’m near you, I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams.”
“I’ll hold you together,” he rasped, even as he tugged the high collar of her spencer away from her neck. His lips seared the exposed bare skin, burning a path of kisses down to the ribbon edge of her rose pink bodice. He inhaled deeply. “I dream of this sweet clover scent each and every night, then I wake up reaching for you. But you’re never there.”
“You shouldn’t say such things. It makes me dizzy.”
“Then ho
ld on to me tighter and kiss me again. That is the only cure.”
Her lips nudged eagerly against his. She grappled with his shoulders, half-crazed and needing to get closer. Frantic, her hands stole inside his coat to where his waistcoat and shirtsleeves were plastered damply to the broad muscles of his back, then up to his shoulders, gripping him and shamelessly urging her breasts against his chest. And then his hand was there, coasting over the curve of her hip, up the narrow cinch of her waist and corset ribbing to cup the aching swell. His mouth descended down her throat, skimming the fragile column until he breathed hotly over the muslin-clad center, drawing the flesh unbearably tight. And when his tongue laved the pebbled peak through the layers, she gripped the back of his head to hold him there.
His ardent attention turned the fabric a dark burgundy color before he nipped the taut bud of flesh with his teeth. She cried out from the spasm of pleasure shooting deep inside her, clenching where she was warm and wet between her thighs.
His mouth returned to hers. And he fed his patented cure to her, dose by dose, searching the inner recesses with his tongue. His hand cupped her breast with tender possession as his thumb spurred the tip and her hips tilted involuntarily. She startled at the feel of the heavy shape she met and the instant spark of pleasure that flared through her. It was in her nature to be wary of new discoveries, and yet, an age-old instinct compelled her to press closer.
Confusion and passion warred within her, but she didn’t shy away. She kept him there, her body cradling the hard, imposing ridge of flesh. He growled deep into her mouth, rewarding her with the slow grind of his body against hers.
A shaking moan left her throat and she knew she was no longer in control of her senses. Perhaps she never was. And worse, she was starting to suspect that only Brandon could make her feel right again.
They were friends, after all, she told herself as they consumed each other. And friends helped each other find answers to mysterious ailments. They soothed each other when their every nerve was frayed and eager for something undefinable.
“Oh, please,” she whispered. “Please, Brandon.”
His grip descended down her rib cage, splaying possessively over her hip as he rocked against her, over and over, until her head fell back on a whimper of surrender. He rained hot kisses down her throat and murmured, “Tell me your symptoms, my lovely valetudinarian.”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t . . . they’re just too . . . wicked . . . to speak aloud.” Embarrassed and panting, she pressed her lips to his cheek, to his jaw, to the curling tendrils at his temple that were damp and salty with perspiration.
“I think I understand,” he said, shifting slightly. His movements tugged at the length of her skirts, inviting a cool breeze against the thin cambric of her drawers. And then his large hand found her hip beneath the fabric. She jolted at the feel of his warmth so near her flesh.
“Shh . . .” he whispered in a brush against her lips, soothing her with tender passes. “I just want to touch you, that’s all. I can’t leave you like this.”
Powerless to resist the potency of this terrible yearning, she gave him the barest nod. He kissed her again, his hand cupping the throbbing private place. She gasped, shamelessly arching against his palm. His fingers delved through the lacy slit to brush the damp curls, deftly navigating the secret recesses of her sex. He took her mouth again as he caressed and coaxed his way through her swollen folds to circle the tight, pulsating pearl. At that first scintillating touch, a helpless mewl tore from her throat. She held him tighter, her fingertips digging into the seams at his shoulders, her spine bending in a supplicant arch.
She couldn’t stop the motion of her hips, pushing against his rhythmic strokes, sensations collecting and coiling in tight spirals behind that heavy throb. Her heart thudded thickly, rushing in her ears. She felt ripe and tender all over, a sense of desperation and imminent death building.
The world around them disappeared. And her entire focus centered on the heat between them, the sweet musky fragrance in the air, the taste of him on her lips and tongue, and his slow, circular caress.
“Just give yourself to me. That’s all I ask.” His voice was gravelly and strained. And it seemed as if there was something left unspoken, something urgent and all-encompassing that she should understand, but she couldn’t think of what it might be. She couldn’t think at all. Not with his hand on her, his tender rotations narrowing by degree, intent and unyielding. “Let me have you, Ellie.”
Her heart lurched at the gruff command. And, all at once, she cried out on a sudden explosion of rapture that tore through her body in gushes of molten heat. She hunched into his embrace as blinding sparks lit the darkness behind her closed eyes for endless minutes, and she clung to him in shuddering, soul-splintering spasms that left her weak-kneed and exhausted.
Supporting her limp body, he lowered her skirts and smoothed his hands over her back, shoulders and arms, his lips pressed to her hair. She could still feel the hardness of him through the layers of their clothing and her body issued a sweet clench in response, like the last shard of glass to fall after a window had been shattered.
As he held and caressed her in slow passes, she gradually became aware of their surroundings—the nearby buzzing of a bee, the scent of tarragon and mint, the distant sounds of horses and rigging, the murmurs of indiscernible conversation interrupted by the clatter of pots and pans.
A glance along the inn’s stone facade showed a cloudy diamond-paned window opened on a pair of hinges like the wing of a dark moth. She went pale, her hand flying to her mouth to stifle a sound of distress.
“No one saw,” he assured her quietly. “The window is facing the garden, not us.”
“But surely they . . . heard . . .” Mortified she buried her face against his shoulder.
He pressed a kiss to her temple, his lips curving in a grin. “I think we were both lost in the moment.”
She peered up at him, uncertain. “This cannot happen again. I don’t even know what came over me. Perhaps it was the heat of the day that put a fever inside me. Fevers are never good, you know. It made me feel so . . . And then suddenly you were there and I . . .” Recalling every moment, she turned poppy red. “We’ll have to avoid carriage rides together and . . . and gardens . . . and . . .”
“And the inevitable?” he asked dubiously, brow arched. “We’re right for each other, Ellie. I think you know it, too.”
She shook her head, adamant, and issued a panicked pointing gesture between them. “No. We’re just friends. Friends who”—she swallowed—“shouldn’t be kissing each other.”
He expelled a slow breath and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Very well, Ellie. We’ll avoid carriages and gardens . . . for now, if that suits you.”
An acceptance, but one with conditions.
She didn’t want to think about what for now meant. So, instead, she simply agreed with a nod and tried to button her spencer.
Chapter 18
“A marriage-minded gentleman isn’t above resorting to murder.”
—A note for The Marriage Habits of the Native Aristocrat
Well, hell. Brandon hadn’t meant to lose control like that, or to rush Ellie.
But after enduring the agony of the longest carriage ride of his life—most of which was spent with his hat on his lap to hide the unmistakable outcropping of his erection beneath his buff riding breeches—he hadn’t expected her to launch herself at him.
Knowing that she’d done so out of her own desire for him, he’d temporarily lost the ability to think. And, damn, it had felt so good to have her willing body in his arms, her eager, searching mouth beneath his.
But now, she was skittish. She wouldn’t even meet his gaze as her fingers fumbled with the fastenings of her little jacket.
Knowing Ellie as he did, he feared that a declaration from him would surely send her into a panic. She was like a rabbit that twitched at the hint that any man other than George might have an interest in her. And since rabbi
ts tended to scamper off in the opposite direction, he would have to proceed with care.
But proceed he would.
He’d been scorched by love before and he hadn’t found anyone he’d risk getting burned over . . . until now. He had every intention of wooing her by slow degrees, so that by the time he proposed there would be no question in her mind. No George. Only him.
Brushing her hands aside, he deftly put her in order. He paused, however, when he noticed how her pretty blush had spread to the upper region of her chest, like rose-colored paint, sponged on a porcelain canvas. Understanding the cause made it impossible to resist pressing a brief kiss to that bare flesh.
She gasped, her lips parting—doubtlessly—to scold him.
Before she could, he secured the last two fastenings and said, “Just a taste to tide me over until next time.”
“There isn’t going to be a—”
He cut her off with a kiss. With his hands at her nape and hip, he eased his mouth over hers, proving that there was no denying the palpable force between them. He was rewarded by the feel of her arms around his neck, her body arching against him as she welcomed the tender plunder of his tongue into her sweet mouth.
He wanted her, all of her. Wanted to taste every inch of her petal-soft flesh. To lay her down in the grass and strip away all the barriers between them, exposing her fair skin to the sunlight and then to the shadow of his body over her, inside her, thrusting deep as she shuddered and rasped his name.
On her whimper of surrender, he realized he’d forgotten himself again. Lifting his head, he looked down at her plump lips and flushed skin, and felt the heat of her sex against his thigh, braced between hers. The swelling of his cock would never subside at this rate.
He kissed the tips of the sooty lashes resting on her cheeks and carefully set her apart from him. Her gaze fluttered up to his, her breaths shallow and quick. She looked so passion-drugged and confused that he was almost sorry for what he’d done. But not quite.
The Wrong Marquess Page 20