Rogue for a Night

by Jenn Petersen

  “Wait, Ronan!”

  He froze at the use of his given name. Only one person in the world called him that. Lucinda, and only since he’d kissed her. He’d always hated that name, but when she said it…

  “Please,” she said, softer.

  He slowly turned to face her. She was standing at the terrace door, which she had closed behind herself, her hands folded in front of her and her gaze locked on him.

  “My lady,” he murmured with a proper bow of his head.

  In the combined light from inside and from the moon high above, he saw her brow wrinkle in displeasure. “What happened to Lucinda?” she asked softly.

  He stood very still and didn’t respond. Honestly, what was there to say? Calling her by her given name was highly inappropriate unless they shared a far more intimate acquaintance than just two people who knew Stone. And apparently that intimate relationship was destined not to be.

  His silence, which normally intimidated people of her station, and especially women, seemed to hold no meaning to her. She stepped forward. “I wish to speak to you about what happened between us before you left the shire.”

  Rage closed his eyes briefly. This was not the conversation he wished to have. But Lucinda was a lady and he could find no polite reason to refuse her direct request.

  “Very well,” he sighed.

  She moved closer, close enough that the warm smell of fresh lilacs and summer breeze floated over the night air from her hair and skin. He couldn’t help but take a long breath of her scent… and know that her taste was just as sweet.

  “May we walk together?” she asked, hesitation and uncertainty lacing her words. “I don’t want to talk of something so private where so many ears could overhear.”

  He stared back at the terrace entrance to the ballroom. She was right that they could, and most likely would, be interrupted if they stayed here. And since she was going to be telling him she regretted their kiss, or that it had set her off on a path to find a respectable man, he didn’t want witnesses to that conversation.

  “Yes,” he said. “We can walk down to the garden if you’d like.”

  She nodded, but before he could turn away, she reached out and slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow. Rage almost rocked back at the electric desire that shot from her hand through his whole body. Suddenly his every nerve fired and all his blood settled quite uncomfortably in his cock. What this woman could do… and yet seemed completely unaware of her power over him.

  He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, hoped his erection would not become even more obvious than it already felt and guided her toward the staircase that would take them to the garden. She was quiet as they walked down together, apparently in no hurry to crush his desires with a few pointed words.

  And to be honest, even though he knew that crushing blow was just on the horizon, he was enjoying their time together. Lucinda didn’t feel it necessary to fill every moment with endless chatter, as did so many women of her rank. She clearly knew the value of silence, and that made her all the more attractive to Rage, who preferred silence to pointless prattle.

  But the silence couldn’t last forever. As they wove their way into the garden grounds, Lucinda glanced up at him. “I-I feel you are upset with me. Angry.”

  Rage slowed his stride and shut his eyes briefly. “No, not angry. But I told you after our kiss that we could ignore that it happened.”

  She stopped in the path and turned on him. Her face was suddenly unreadable beyond a brief flash of hurt. “Is that what you want?”

  Rage pursed his lips. Why did she turn the tables on him? Would it somehow make her feel less… accountable if he were the rejecter? She had nothing to be remorseful about. Whether he liked it or not, her decision to forgo an affair for a more appropriate future was perfectly understandable.

  But he wasn’t about to play some kind of game to assuage her misplaced guilt.

  He held her gaze. “Lucinda, I know the truth.”

  She shook her head. “The truth? What truth?”

  Now he pursed his lips. He had not expected this dodging of the facts, this pretending. Not from her.

  “You needn’t lie for my benefit,” he said, his tone harsher than perhaps he had intended it to be. “I know that you are interested in finding a new husband from the ton.”

  Chapter Six

  It took every ounce of control in Lucinda for her not to step away from Ronan in shock at his statement. She wasn’t certain what mystified her most, that he thought she was looking to marry, or that he said such a thing as if it were proven fact.

  “Who told you this?” she asked when she could find her voice.

  He shrugged and though the action was meant to be nonchalant, she could see, yet again, the anger he was barely controlling. He believed this to be true, and was far from happy about it. A situation that would have to be dealt with in a moment, but first…

  “I have a right to know,” she said softly. “Since that person was speaking about me.”

  Ronan pursed his lips. “Stone,” he finally said, his tone clipped and lacking all the warmth she normally liked about his voice.

  “I never said that,” she insisted with a shake of her head.

  “No?” His eyes went wide, though Lucinda wasn’t sure if that was because he was surprised at her denial in general, or that it was Nicholas’s words she denied. She didn’t normally go around calling someone a liar. Especially her brother-in-law.

  “No,” she insisted and reached out to touch his arm. There was a shock of awareness that came with that touch, but she needed him to know she wasn’t lying. To connect with him physically, as if that would somehow confirm everything she said.

  He stared down at her fingers, clenched on his arm. The tension in his muscles, his tendons almost pulsed beneath her touch, beneath his coat. He was warm, so warm.

  “Then where did Stone get such an idea?” Ronan asked after a moment, his voice quiet and nonjudgmental.

  She sighed. When she told him the truth, she would be utterly exposed and at his mercy. She wasn’t certain if she was ready for that or not. But she had little choice.

  “I did speak to Nicholas,” she admitted. “But I only asked how he would feel if I developed an interest in a new man.”

  Both Ronan’s eyebrows lifted slightly.

  “I never said marriage,” she whispered. “He did.”

  He stared down at her, utterly still and so damned unreadable. But he said nothing. He only looked at her with those bright blue eyes that seemed to see to her very soul. In the moonlight they were even more pale and piercing.

  In that moment, a fissure of intense desire rocked her body. She wanted this man so much that it was dizzying. Terrifying. And undeniable.

  She eased a little closer. They were out in the garden, in the open where anyone could see how close she was if they came looking for them. But so far away from the house, where she couldn’t see prying eyes, where she couldn’t hear their whispers, she felt protected by the night.

  “Ronan,” she whispered. “You told me before you left that I could have anything I desired.”

  He caught his breath and then nodded once. “I did. And what do you want?”

  His voice was so low, so gravelly and seductive. She felt it drag along her spine, draw heat from her entire being and pool it between her legs. Her knees shook with it and she could barely breathe, couldn’t speak.

  So instead, she reached up and gently cupped the back of his neck. She drew him down toward her and pressed her lips to his in the kiss she had been aching for since he left three days before.

  If Ronan had been holding back during their walk or while she made her confession, his hesitation was wiped away in an instant. He crushed his arms around her, dragging her body flush to his as his mouth parted over hers. Lucinda parted her lips and allowed him access with a deep, low moan that she hardly recognized as her own, it was so wanton. But she couldn’t help it. This felt so right, so utterly,
wickedly, completely right.

  She dug her fingers into the lapel of his coat, lifting herself closer, flattening her body to his to be as near to him as possible. In fact, there was only one way they could be closer.

  As if he sensed her thought, he drew back and stared down at her. Without a word, he took her hand and guided her backward, further from the house, away from all the light but the moon. He didn’t stop until they had reached a gazebo far at the edge of the garden path.

  He backed inside, drawing her with him.

  “Tell me you don’t want this,” he murmured. “And I’ll stop.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t stop.”

  He moved with the crouched power and speed of a jungle cat and suddenly she was in his arms a second time. But this time, there was a desperation to the way he held her, a wild desire-fueled need that she recognized could only be quenched in one way.

  And she couldn’t wait.

  Desperate, she grabbed for his cravat. The sloppy knot slipped loose with little urging and she tossed it away and worked next on the buttons of his shirt. One by one, she tore them free, revealing more and more tight, muscle rippled, tanned skin. Skin she wanted to feel against her own. Skin she wanted to taste in the most shocking ways.

  “Slow down,” he urged as he caught her fingers in his.

  She shook her head. “Everything in my life has been slow,” she whispered. “For two years, I’ve been walking through water, wanting to move and being held back by expectation and pain and grief. I don’t want to be slow now.” She blinked, for she had never said these things to anyone else. She had hardly allowed herself to feel them. “I want to be free. I want to be alive.”

  She pushed his jacket off his shoulders and it hit the ground with a soft crumple of heavy fabric. “Make me alive.”

  He growled low in his throat and then his mouth was on hers, hard and heavy. He pushed her back further into the gazebo until her backside hit the low wall. He lifted her onto the narrow expanse of wood and cradled her back with one hand as he cupped her neck with the other. He wasn’t wearing gloves and she realized, through her fog, that this was the first time she had been touched so intimately, a man’s bare skin on her bare skin, in a very long time.

  She arched into the touch with a keening moan of pleasure that turned to a cry as he dragged that same hand lower, over her bare collarbone, down to the sloping neckline of her silken ballgown. She thought he might stop there, but he didn’t. His fingers dipped under the hem of the fine fabric and he found one rigid nipple with his rough knuckles.

  Lucinda shivered, her knees shaking as he pinched and plucked the nub of sensitive flesh. And held her gaze with every wicked touch, almost daring her to be as bold as he was. All propriety told her to look away from him as he did these things to her, but she tossed that propriety aside and held his gaze, lost in the intensity of his stare and his hot, skilled touch.

  “I want to see you,” he whispered. “In the moonlight.”

  She swallowed. She had born two children and while Anthony had always complimented her body, she wasn’t sure a stranger, one without the feelings that had blinded her husband to her faults, would look at her with the same eyes. But she had moved onto this path. There was no going back.

  She stepped away and turned her back to him. “Will you unbutton me?” she whispered, her voice shaking with the question.

  He leaned forward, his body curving around hers from behind until his hot breath tickled her ear and she lifted herself into him without even thinking of the action. She felt the hard ridge of his erection against her bottom and shivered at the feel of it. He groaned against her skin and then his fingers came up to the tiny, pearl buttons that ran along the back of her delicate gown. One by one, he freed them, taking his time, pressing the fabric aside with each button… and finally leaning down to press a hot, wet kiss along the skin he revealed there.

  She gasped as the tension built in her, rising to a level of heat that was close to painful. She needed… well, she wasn’t quite sure how to articulate it in language that would convey the intensity of her desire. Words a man of his dangerous past would take seriously. But she wanted him. In every way.

  Now.

  Her dress gaped in the back and she stepped away from his teasing fingers and turned to face him. Slowly, she pulled the gown down her arms, pulling her flimsy chemise away in the same action. Inch by inch, she revealed herself until the gown dangled uselessly around her waist and her breasts naked in the moonlight.

  The cool air brushed her bare flesh and it was a sobering reminder of their precarious position. If she listened closely enough, she could actually hear the light sounds of the orchestra inside the ballroom. Anyone could find them. Anyone could see.

  And yet that idea of being caught didn’t discourage Lucinda from this course. If anything, it thrilled her all the more.

  “My God, you are more beautiful than in any of my dreams,” Ronan murmured.

  Lucinda stared. “Your dreams?”

  “Oh yes. I have dreamed of you since we kissed, sweet,” he purred as he inched closer. He reached out and tugged at the dress still tangled at her hips. “Like this.”

  The gown fell away and she was suddenly utterly naked beyond a silken pair of stockings and a pair of high heeled slippers.

  She lifted her hand to cover herself out of instinct, but Ronan caught her fingers and kept her from her modest impulse. Instead, he lifted her hand and slid it into the opening in his shirt that she had created. To her surprise, she felt the pounding throb of his heart against her fingertips, and it beat as wildly as her own.

  He smiled, then his head dipped and he pressed his mouth to her throat. His tongue burned her sensitive flesh, branding her in a way she feared she would never recover from, even after this… affair, she supposed one would call it, had ended. In some way, though, she welcomed the branding touch. So she wouldn’t forget it.

  His mouth moved lower and all thoughts emptied from her mind.

  Rage was having a hard time controlling himself. Everything in him screamed that doing this outside, in a gazebo, was not how he had pictured making love to Lucinda the first time. Though they were away from the house, they weren’t so far that someone couldn’t stumble upon them if they came deep into the garden. They should have been in a soft bed, with a locked door.

  He should have been protecting her more.

  But once she groaned, once she told him to make her feel alive, all semblance of the gentleman he had been trying to be fled. He was pure animal instinct now, and that instinct drove him to take, claim, brand, taste… to do it all before Lucinda returned to her senses and told him to stop.

  He sucked her nipple between his lips and stroked his tongue over the turgid tip. Lucinda’s cry echoed in the night and she arched toward him, her nails combing over his scalp as she held him closer to her. He obliged her silent request… or was it an order? Either way, he sucked harder, tasting her, responding to her responsiveness and knowing that with every stroke of his tongue, he was driving her past a point of no return. And closer to the moment when he would drive his body into hers and claim her for once and for all.

  But that moment was still some time away. It had been a long time for Lucinda and he wanted her to be completely ready, on the edge, trembling with anticipation.

  He dragged his mouth lower, pressing hot kissing to the side of her breast and then to her belly. As he did so, he moved her once again. There was a low bench in the gazebo and that would be the perfect place for what he had in mind.

  He urged her to sit, and she did so without argument. She even left him room to sit beside her, but that wasn’t what he had in mind. He stripped his shirt off, reveling in the way she caught her breath. The way she stared up at him like she had never seen a man before.

  “Great God,” she whispered, more to herself than for his ears. “You are unlike anyone I’ve ever seen before.”

  Rage knew she meant that reverent whisper as a c
ompliment, but there was some part of him that was still self-conscious. Of course she hadn’t seen anyone like him. He had scars from fights, both fair and decidedly unfair. He had a tattoo on the bicep of his right arm, which only the lowest of men possessed. It meant something to him, but it had to be quite shocking to a lady like her. He was rough in every way that she was refined. He didn’t belong with her, but he was here.

  And he was going to take full advantage.

  He dropped the shirt in front of her and dropped to his knees on the soft fabric. With her seated and him on his knees they were eye to eye and as he slipped his arms around her and dragged her forward on the bench, the intensity of their gaze was almost unbearably intimate.

  “Ronan,” she whispered, and her voice trembled.

  “Are you afraid?” he murmured.

  She blinked. “I-I suppose I am. I almost feel like I’ve never done this before. Like I might fall if I’m not careful.”

  “I won’t let you,” he whispered and in that moment he meant that promise like none he had ever uttered. “I’ll catch you. Just trust in me.”

  She swallowed and both of them knew what he was asking. Trust him, a man unlike any she’d ever known. A man who until a few days before had been little more than a vague acquaintance with a scandalous past. And yet she nodded regardless of those facts.

  “I trust you.”

  Rage’s heart swelled, but he tamped emotion aside. Emotion only complicated these things, it was best to go by desire and touch… those things were more reliable.

  He broke the far-too-intense gaze and returned his lips to her breast. Immediately she relaxed back on the bench with a broken sigh. Her body went limp and he actually felt her surrender.

  Lucinda was weightless, boneless, as Ronan dragged his mouth down her body. He seemed intent on tasting every inch of her flesh and the very thought of that made her weak with anticipation. She wanted to open herself to him, to drag him inside her waiting flesh, but there was too much propriety ingrained in her to do something so wild and uncharacteristic. She could only hope that he would feel her unspoken needs and tend to them.