Wicked Surrender (Regency Sinners 2)

by Carole Mortimer

  Dante had been sleeping soundly—and giving not a single snore—as she quietly slipped from the bed to carry her overnight bag through to the adjoining room so that she did not disturb him from his slumbers. Dante’s restlessness during the night told her he had not slept well, and so she had remained as quiet as possible as she first washed and then dressed in clean undergarments and a traveling gown of russet red.

  He was still asleep when Bella glanced back into the bedchamber, and she could not resist lingering for a few minutes longer so that she might admire and appreciate his muscular form without having to suffer his usual mask of cool condescension or arrogance.

  His chest was bared where the bedcovers had slipped down to his waist, dark hair tousled against the pillows, and the stubble had grown thicker on his jaw. Bella’s cheeks had warmed as she recalled how the rasp of that beard had added to her pleasure when Dante’s mouth was between her thighs.

  She squirmed a little on her chair even now, hours later, her cheeks blushing a fiery red merely thinking of all that had transpired between her and Dante during the night. She was prevented from dwelling on them any longer by the door opening behind her.

  “Good morning,” a cheery female voice greeted warmly. “Lady Aston, is it not?”

  Bella turned to look at the woman who had just entered the parlor. Her face was vaguely familiar.

  Bella’s brow cleared as she finally recalled who the other woman was. “Lady Monroe. And Sir James.” She stood up as that gentleman now entered the room behind his wife. “Would you care to join me?” she invited with a gesture at the breakfast table she occupied in the downstairs parlor of the inn.

  She could not claim a close acquaintance with the other couple. The Monroes resided in Sir James’s native Scotland most of the year. But she knew them well enough to be nodding acquaintances if they should meet at a social event. It would certainly be rude on Bella’s part not to offer to share her breakfast table with them when they had obviously stayed overnight at the inn too.

  “How lovely to meet someone we know.” Margo Monroe dropped down into the seat opposite Bella’s, a beautiful and vivacious blonde-haired lady. “Did you spend the night here too?”

  “Er— Yes, yes, I did.” Bella resumed her seat so as to allow Sir James to be seated too, her thoughts racing as she wondered how best to explain her presence here.

  As a widow, it was perfectly acceptable for her to travel alone, accompanied by her maid. Except she was not traveling alone, nor was she accompanied by her maid. If Dante remained upstairs in the bedchamber, she might still manage to finish her breakfast and escape the Monroes’ company without awkwardness, but if Dante did not remain upstairs—

  As if she had tempted fate, the parlor door once again opened behind her, and Bella knew, by the widening of Margo Monroe’s eyes as she glanced at the newcomer over Bella’s shoulder, that Dante had just entered the room. Only he had the effect of causing even a happily married woman to blush coyly in his presence.

  Dante paused in the doorway to take in the domesticated scene in front of him.

  Bella was seated at the breakfast table, just as Mr. Rogers had assured him she was. Much to Dante’s relief; he had feared she had taken advantage of him sleeping and left the inn completely, forcing him to hunt her down.

  Seated with her was a couple whom he recognized but could not quite place for the moment.

  Bella rose gracefully to her feet to cross the room to where he stood in the doorway. “Come and say hello to Sir James and Lady Monroe.” Her gaze did not lift high enough to meet Dante’s as she linked her arm through the crook of his. “Sir James, Lady Margo, I am sure you remember my cousin, Dante St. Just, the Duke of Huntley.”

  The other couple had risen to their feet, the red-haired Sir James nodding acknowledgment.

  Lady Margo gave a deep curtsey. “Your Grace. I admit I did not know the two of you were related,” she added, her expression one of avid curiosity as she straightened.

  Dante was surprised at hearing Bella make that claim. It was, at best, a tenuous connection, made even more so now that the dowager duchess was dead. But the fact Bella was touching him voluntarily, for whatever reason, was enough to cause Dante to smile a cool greeting at the other couple.

  At the same time, he wondered what the Monroes’ connection was to Bella. Admittedly, the inn was a popular one, and Mr. Rogers had claimed last night its guest bedchambers were filled almost to capacity. But surely it was more than a coincidence that Bella should be acquainted with two of those guests. Well enough to be sitting down to breakfast with them, at least.

  “It is a convoluted connection, to be sure,” Bella answered the other woman lightly. “But as the only two members of our family now left alive, it is one that Dante and I have decided to make more of.”

  Was Dante the only one to pick up on what sounded like a double entendre? Unless he was the one imagining that double entendre. He and Bella had not exactly gone to sleep last night as the lovers they had just become.

  “My Aunt Agatha, the dowager duchess, has recently died,” he informed the other couple evenly. “In fact, we are on our way to Huntley Park now to take care of the funeral arrangements.”

  “I thought your principal estate was in Huntingdonshire?” The tall Scot frowned.

  “It is.” Dante offered nothing further as he met the other man’s gaze, knowing that if he and Bella had traveled from London, then they were currently going in the opposite direction to Huntingdonshire.

  “We were in Devon visiting friends when we received the news of the dowager’s death.” Bella smoothly stepped in to offer an explanation.

  Lady Monroe glanced up at her husband. “Jamie and I have just spent a week in Hampshire with my family and are now on our way back to Scotland for the summer.”

  Bella released Dante’s arm to resume her seat at the breakfast table. “Do come and sit down and stop making the room untidy, Dante,” she instructed lightly before continuing her conversation with the other woman. “Scotland is a place I have never visited. Is it as beautiful as people say it is?”

  Dante hesitated only slightly before stepping forward to pull out the chair at the table beside Bella’s and sitting down. He nodded acceptance of the cup of tea the young maid offered to pour for him as the two women continued their conversation about Scotland.

  All the time, Dante was aware of Monroe’s gaze fixed upon him as the other man now sat silently beside his wife.

  Dante knew very little about the red-haired Scot, but Monroe’s presence at the inn, along with Scotland’s historical ties with France, raised more than a few questions in Dante’s mind.

  Mr. Rogers would possibly be able to answer any questions about the Monroes. Whatever their reason for being here at this particular time, Dante felt that the Monroes were in need of further investigation, which would necessitate he acquire the assistance of one of Rogers’s grooms to relay a message back to Nik in London.

  If it should transpire the other couple had arrived here after Bella and Dante, then the other couple could have followed the two of them here in order to meet up with Bella. It would be a way of giving or receiving information.

  Meeting up with the other couple might also be the reason Bella had left their bedchamber so stealthily this morning.

  Yet more questions for Bella to answer once they reached Dante’s hunting lodge in Hampshire.

  No doubt, after last night, she would have a few questions of her own she wished to ask him.

  “You were exceedingly rude to the Sir James and Lady Monroe,” Bella informed him impatiently a short time later, the two of them seated in his carriage, having now resumed their journey.

  Dante raised his brows. “I barely spoke to them.”

  “My point exactly.”

  He gave an unconcerned shrug. “I did not care for the way Monroe looked at me.”

  “The way he looked at you?” Bella repeated with a frown.

  H nodded abruptly. “A
s if he knew damn well the two of us had shared a bedchamber last night.”

  A blush appeared on her cheeks. “Which we had.”

  “That is for us to know and for others to keep their opinions to themselves. Even silent ones.”

  Bella eyed him pityingly. “Anyone with half a brain would have been able to see through my ramblings of the two of us being related.”

  “Then why bother?”

  “Someone had to.”

  “Why?” He shrugged. “I owe the Monroes no explanation as to my movements or the reason for them.”

  “Are you deliberately trying to irritate me?”

  His lips twitched. “I was not aware I needed to try in order to do that.”

  “No. Well. You do not.” She smoothed the skirt of her traveling gown, a deep russet affair that perfectly suited her olive complexion and black hair. “But you might have at least attempted to act as if I was not talking nonsense.”

  “What the Monroes think of me, of us, is of absolutely no importance to me,” he dismissed in a bored voice.

  Bella’s cheeks became flushed. “Some of us do not have the luxury of a dukedom to protect us from our sins.”

  Dante’s eyes narrowed. “And what sins have you committed?”

  Bella did not care for the way Dante was now looking at her. Nor did she like his aloofness this morning. Wearing a black superfine—in deference to the dowager’s death, perhaps—a dark gray waistcoat and pantaloons, and his linen snowy white, he looked every inch the aristocratic Duke of Huntley rather than the dominating lover who had demanded her responses last night.

  “My most immediate sin was to spend the night in bed with a man who is not my husband,” she came back impatiently.

  Dante’s mouth tightened. “A night you indicated you had every reason to regret even while it was happening.”

  That was not how Bella remembered it. Yes, the passion had been raw, even primal, and definitely overwhelming. But she had also felt more alive than she ever had before. So aware of every inch of her own body. Of the pleasure so generously given to her by Dante’s mouth and hands.

  It was not until Dante had returned to the adjoining bedchamber that she came back to her senses enough to realize he had not taken his own pleasure. Nor, shamefully, had she offered to give it to him.

  That she did regret. Not only would it have pleased her for Dante to have reached a climax, but she would very much have enjoyed seeing Dante less controlled and controlling as he writhed in the throes of ecstasy. Knowing she was the one who had taken him there would have been exhilarating. Instead of which, he had remained in the adjoining bedchamber until he believed she had fallen asleep.

  “You cried.”

  Bella frowned. “I cried for many reasons, Dante, some of which you could not possibly understand. But none of those reasons was regret for what we had done together.”

  “No?” he challenged.

  “No.”

  “Explain.”

  Bella turned to stare out of the window of the carriage, but she did not see any of the surrounding countryside, her thoughts and vision all inwards.

  She told the truth when she claimed to have been happily married to Jeremy. She had not only learned to love her husband, but she had also liked him. Jeremy had been all that was amiable and kind. Always.

  And last night, Bella had realized the love she had felt for her husband had been more that of a sister for a brother rather than the deep and exciting love she had always felt toward Dante. He was certainly not amiable or kind, or comfortable and companionable to be with. Dante was ruthless and demanding. And yet she felt more alive in his arms than she ever had in Jeremy’s. Had felt more passion in a single night with Dante than she had in the six years of marriage to Jeremy.

  The disloyalty of that, the realization that by being with Dante at all she was in effect saying goodbye to Jeremy and her marriage, was one of the reasons she had cried during their lovemaking last night.

  Another had been her wild and uncontrolled response to that lovemaking. At that moment in time, Dante could have done anything with and to her. He had done exactly as he wished with her.

  She had not been tied or restrained in any way, and yet Dante had held her in place, on her back, her arms raised above her head, her legs parted to the pleasure of his mouth. He had done so by the sheer force of his will alone.

  The mild explosions of passion she had occasionally experienced during lovemaking with Jeremy did not compare to the ecstasy she had known last night with Dante.

  “You will answer me.” Dante moved so that he was seated next to her, his hand curling about her jaw as he forced her head to turn so that he might look at her. “You will answer, Bella.” His green gaze glowered into hers.

  Bella ran the tip of her tongue across her lips. “This domination you exhibit was…exciting when we were making love last night, but I will not be ordered about in the same way during the hours of daylight.”

  Dante studied her through narrowed lids. “You thought my method of lovemaking exciting?”

  A frown creased her brow. “How can you doubt it?” She had been as pliable as silk to his every demand, had allowed him liberties no other man had ever taken.

  “You cried,” he repeated harshly.

  “And you did not take your own pleasure.” She felt her cheeks warm as she voiced her disappointment.

  Dante released her to lean back against the seat, lids once again narrowed. “That displeased you?”

  “I should have thought it might have displeased you more than it did me,” she snapped her exasperation.

  Dante felt some of the tension ease from his body. But not all: his already engorged cock had grown even harder. “You could always rectify that omission now.”

  She blinked. “That would please you?”

  He felt the dampness of pre-cum leaking from the slit of his cock. “It would please me very much.” He held his breath as he waited for her to answer.

  Chapter 7

  His breath left him in a hiss when Bella gave an abrupt nod before removing her bonnet and cloak and then sliding from the seat to kneel on the floor of the carriage in front of him.

  “Place your hands on the seat beside you,” she instructed huskily. “There will be punishment if you do not do as I ask when I ask it,” she added with uncharacteristic sternness.

  Dante had wondered if her first instruction had merely been an accidental parody of his own the night before. Bella’s second command, exactly the same as his own, word for word, confirmed it was not an accident at all. “What sort of punishment?”

  She glanced at him from beneath lowered lashes. “I shall squeeze a certain delicate part of your anatomy until you do as I ask.”

  Good God, Bella really was playing him at his own game. A game, a power, he chose to exert over another because it increased his own pleasure as well as their own. It was not a dominion he had ever allowed a woman to have over him.

  “My balls?” he prompted gruffly.

  “Yes,” she answered without hesitation, although the blush deepened in her cheeks. “I repeat, place your hands on the seat beside you and do not move them unless I give you permission to do so.”

  The last of Dante’s tension left him as he realized there was deep pleasure for him in doing as Bella asked.

  “Part your legs. Now,” she added firmly. “Wider.”

  Dante allowed his legs to fall apart until the gap was wide enough for Bella to kneel between his parted thighs. His cock was an aching throb as she began to unfasten the fold of his pantaloons. “You seem experienced at this.” He could not help feeling a small amount of resentment at knowing that experience had to have come from Bella’s husband, when she’d admitted to having no other lover but Aston.

  Her brows rose, all movement ceasing. “Did I give you permission to speak?”

  “You did not instruct me not to.”

  “Well, I am doing so now.” She gave him a frown. “You are not to speak. Or
move—”

  “My cock may have ideas of its own where movement is concerned,” he drawled as his member pulsed eagerly for this torture to begin.

  “Your cock shall do exactly what I decide it shall do. And when I decide it,” Bella added firmly.

  Her dominance sent a shiver of pleasure down the length of Dante’s spine before it settled in those balls she had threatened to squeeze.

  “Please,” he murmured hopefully when she remained unmoving.

  “You have not yet agreed to what I asked.”

  “You are a heartless siren.”

  She gave a mocking smile, brows raised expectantly.

  Dante drew his breath in sharply at that wicked look of seduction. No woman had ever turned his own need for dominance back on him in this way before now. It was…thrilling. “I shall not speak or move if you will pleasure me.”

  Bella had little experience at pleasuring a man. No experience at all at what she was about to do. She had occasionally encouraged and watched Jeremy as he took his cock in hand when she was too tired or perhaps not feeling well enough to perform in their marriage bed. But she had never performed that task for him.

  She was not averse to doing so with Dante. In fact, the anticipation of doing so was causing a prickling heat between her thighs and causing her breasts to swell beneath her gown.

  She better understood Dante’s pleasure in dominance now. It was exhilarating to appear to have him completely at her mercy. To know she could do with him as she willed, merely because she had said that was what she intended.

  Appeared at her mercy, because she inwardly knew Dante had given his permission for her to do these things.

  As she had given him her own permission to do them to her last night.

  It was not dominance over another at all, she acknowledged with a sense of wonder, but the surrender of one’s will to another, in the full confidence they would do you no harm. Indeed, it was the person surrendering who held the power in the relationship, with the granting of that surrender.