Not Proper Enough (A Reforming the Scoundrels Romance)

by Carolyn Jewel

  “Try again. A very small sip this time.” Her eyes were a pure, clear blue. This close to her, he could see her lashes were longer than they looked because the tips were so pale. He lifted his glass. “To my bloody father.”

  “Don’t curse.”

  “We’re drinking together. I’ll curse if I like.” He lifted his glass to her. “So should you.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  He took a slow sip of his whisky, and she did the same, a wisely smaller one than before. “Better?”

  She stared at the whisky. “Yes, actually.”

  “Good.” He took her hand and walked with her to the fireplace. Here, in his home, the servants were instructed not to let the fires go out when he was in London. Still with her hand in his, he put a foot on the grate. “What do you think? Of the whisky.”

  They remained silent while she drank what was left in her glass. He’d not given her much. She tipped the glass and watched the few remaining drops pool. “The taste grows on you.”

  “It does.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think I’m drunk.”

  “Not yet.” Fox let go of her hand to fetch the whisky bottle and pour another finger into her tumbler. He added more to his and set the bottle on the mantel. He didn’t intend to drink much. He needed a clear head. Wanted a clear head, at any rate. “Shall we sit?” He gestured toward the velvet sofa that faced the fire. She frowned in that direction.

  “My lovely, darling Ginny, come sit. You can’t be comfortable standing. Nor warm enough, either.”

  She sat primly on the sofa, not quite in the center.

  “Shall I put more coal on the fire?”

  “Please.” While he did that she lifted her face to the ceiling. “This is a very masculine room.”

  He finished with the fire and walked to the sofa, bringing the whisky bottle with him. “It is. But then, this is my private office, and I am a man.”

  She lowered her chin, and he dragged his eyes upward just in time. Her gown barely exposed her upper shoulders, but there was more than a hint of an inviting roundness of bosom. He did like a woman with an inviting bosom. Everything about her appealed to him. Always had. He stared into his tumbler. He could see parts of the ceiling reflected in his glass as well as orange lights from the fire.

  “You said you’d take scandalous advantage of me.”

  He looked at her, and he could see all her doubt and worry, and it made his heart clench. “Do you want me to?”

  Her smile faded. “I don’t know. I’m here, so I think I must.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to think anymore. It only makes me feel sad.”

  Fox put the bottle and his half-empty glass on a table beside the sofa. “I’m happy to oblige you.”

  “Tell me a secret.” She met his gaze. “Something shocking.”

  “I still want that quick fuck.”

  A smile flashed over her face. “That’s not a secret. I’m not shocked, either.”

  “Others would be shocked if they knew I was saying such things to you.”

  “True. But you might as well tell me the weather is cold. Come now, Fenris. Tell me something that will shock me.”

  “Very well.” He searched her face. “I’ve not been to bed with a woman for nearly a year. Not since before I went to see you at Bitterward.”

  “To see me?” She waved a hand at him. “You never did. You came to Bitterward to propose to Lily.”

  Here he was, alone with a woman he desired, and he was practically paralyzed by the possibility that he’d do something to scare her off. “Did I?”

  She took another sip of her drink. A bigger one than the others she’d taken. “I think I like whisky.”

  “You like excellent whisky.”

  “Yes. I think I do.” She slipped her feet out of her shoes and curled her legs underneath her. She lifted her eyes to his, and he did like the way she smiled at him. “Have you got a cheroot?”

  “I have.”

  “You promised me, after all.”

  “I did.”

  She held out a hand and wriggled her fingers. “You men smoke and drink when you’re alone together.”

  “Among other things.”

  “Robert said you talked politics and mathematics.”

  “He and I did.”

  She settled more comfortably on the sofa. “Once, though, he admitted you talk about disreputable subjects, too. Ballet girls and courtesans and ladies you wish were not ladies.” She gave him a sideways look. “The Incomparable and the like.”

  “The Incomparable has had her congé from me for some time.” He went to the desk drawer where he was fairly certain he had a cheroot. After a moment’s search, he found an ebony socket, and in another moment, one cheroot tucked away in a different drawer. “I’ve only the one here. I’ve more in my private quarters. I can fetch them if you like.”

  She let her head fall back on the sofa. “I don’t mind sharing. If you don’t.”

  “I don’t.” He returned to the fireplace and lit the cigar from a taper. He nodded at her, cheroot in hand, and sent a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. After a bit, she held out a hand. “Fenris.”

  “Fox.” He cocked his head. “When we are private.”

  “You said you’d teach me to smoke. Was that a lie?”

  “Never.” He sat beside her on the sofa and handed her the cheroot. He did not let go, however. “Have you smoked before?”

  “Twice a virgin.”

  He laughed at that, and so did she.

  “I believe I’m drunk enough to try.” Still with her head on the sofa, she blinked at him. “How does one know if one is drunk?”

  “Are you feeling relaxed? That the world is a pleasant place?”

  “Yes.” Her gaze turned inward. “Yes, I believe so.”

  “I’d say you are likely mildly inebriated.” With his other hand, he reached for her whisky. “Let it settle on you for a bit. If you get too drunk, too fast, you won’t remember tomorrow that you’ve seen me naked.”

  Her mouth twitched. “I have not.”

  “Not yet.” He let go of the cigar. “You shall, Ginny. I promise. Don’t try to inhale your first time.”

  “Overbearing man.” She nodded. She put the socket to her mouth, inhaled, and promptly choked.

  “I told you not to inhale.” He reached across her for the cigar and took it. “As with anything worth doing, practice is required.” He inhaled and blew out a smoke ring. They watched it slowly expand and then vanish.

  “That’s very nice.” She took the cigar from him and, this time, took only a puff that she immediately let out. “Observe,” she said, waving the cigar. “I’ve made a smoke cloud better than yours. Mine hasn’t a hole in the middle.”

  “Talented woman.”

  “I am. Very talented.” She stretched out her arm and picked up her whisky, which he had set on a table on his other side. She was, he assumed, unaware that her bosom pressed against him while she did so. She straightened and took a drink. “Did you see the way Dinwitty Lane was looking at Hester this evening?”

  “Not especially.” Christ, he was randy as hell, seeing her with a cigar in one hand and a glass of whisky in the other. “I did see him staring at you, though.”

  “Wondering about buttons I expect.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “He’s jealous he’s not had his hand down your dress.”

  “Neither have you.”

  “No, but he doesn’t know that.”

  She looked at him over the rim of the tumbler and blinked once before wrinkling her nose in dismissal. “Lady Baring thinks Hester should marry her son Edward. Lieutenant Fraser.”

  “Not a bad match, I’d say.”

  She put the cheroot to her lips again with no better result than before. When she’d finished coughing, she blinked several times. “She offered to speak to her son. The lieutenant. But I think it’s because her eldest was interested, too.”

  “I don’t want to talk
about Miss Rendell.”

  “She could fall in love with you, you know. If you tried even a little bit.”

  He took her whisky from her again. “No more for a bit.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I intend to take advantage of you, and I can’t if you have any more to drink.”

  She made a face at him. “Don’t treat me as if I’m a child and you’re a nurse insisting I eat my peas properly.”

  “I have always liked peas.”

  “Turnips, then.”

  He shifted on the sofa so he faced her and draped an arm along the top. “I especially like turnips.”

  “There must be some vegetable you don’t like. I’m that one.”

  “I was a perfect child in every way and ate every vegetable ever to be put on my plate.”

  She let out a breath. “Lord, you would be. You’re perfect in every way.”

  “As I mean for you to discover.”

  “You know what I mean. We do not have a pleasant history, you and I.”

  “I beg to differ. Our recent history is very pleasant indeed.”

  “I’m going to start calling you the Incorrigible.”

  “If you like.”

  She took another drag on the cigar, drew too much, and set off coughing. “Heavens, this thing is vile.” She sat up, head down while she waited for her lung spasms to subside. “You take it.”

  He did so and stood to toss the thing into the fire. When he rejoined Eugenia, he sat closer to her than before.

  “You’ve not told me a single secret about you.” She shook a finger at him.

  “I told you I’d not been intimate with a woman since before Bitterward. That’s a secret only we two know.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “What do you call what happened in the Turkish room?”

  “I call it damned arousing.” He drank half his whisky and then the rest and wished he had more. “I don’t understand why I’ve remained so besotted with you over the years. But I have done so, and here you are, Ginny, in my private home. Quite alone and just drunk enough that you haven’t slapped me.”

  “I don’t like you,” she whispered. “Not even a little.”

  “I know.” He lowered his head to hers, and he thought, To hell with decency. And to bloody hell with caution. “Isn’t it delicious this way?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  EUGENIA HELD FENRIS’S GAZE BECAUSE SHE’D COMPLETELY lost her mental footing. His arm looped around her shoulders, warm and insistent, and he sat so close their torsos nearly touched.

  Fenris had always been fastidious about his dress. It was a habit he shared, unknowingly, with his cousin Lily. Always perfectly put together. One didn’t have to like the man to appreciate his looks. He was a long-legged specimen, taller than average with dark hair that flirted with being brown. For so slender a man, he was impressively broad through the shoulders. His light brown eyes were heavily lashed. His mouth was, she noticed yet again, surprisingly tender.

  He did kiss well, didn’t he? She couldn’t forget that about him. Their position was intimate. When had he moved so close to her? Her stomach dove when she understood he meant to kiss her. Again. Without them being in the heat of mad passion.

  “Ginny.” His hand slid around her waist and settled into the small of her back.

  “My lord?”

  “Mm?” His fingers angled downward. “If you’re not going to call me the Incorrigible, then call me Fox.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you doing?” His palm pressed against her, and she swayed toward him.

  “In the main,” he said with that infuriating calm of his, “I am wondering what you would do if I stripped naked right now.”

  She blinked. “Why would you do that?”

  “For a quick fuck.”

  “Oh yes. I remember that.”

  “And then a long, hard one.”

  “Incorrigible.”

  “You said you’d not seen me naked. I said I’d remedy that.” He shrugged in a way that belied the subject. “What would you do with me if I were naked?” He lowered his head and kissed the top of her shoulder. “What about desire?” he murmured. “And the heat of your dislike of me?”

  She pressed her hands on his shoulders and managed to put a few scant inches between them, and then she wondered why she’d done that when his lips on her skin felt so lovely.

  His mouth left her shoulder, and he lifted his head just enough to look at her. Her skin tingled where his lips had been. He’d managed to bring her closer again. This time he kissed the side of her throat. And she let him. She wasn’t dizzy, not exactly, but she wasn’t entirely herself. The whisky had relaxed her, but she did not feel in the least addled. Merely that the world was a very pleasant place. He nipped her earlobe, then drew back to look into her eyes. The backs of her legs went a bit wobbly. How did he do that?

  “Shall I tell you another secret?”

  She laughed. “Do, please.”

  “I’ve never been intimate with a woman who professes to dislike me.”

  “Well. Why would you be?”

  “Indeed. It occurs, however, that there is much to say for strong passions in the bedroom.” He curled a lock of her hair around his finger. “What would happen, Ginny, if we did this deliberately? No blaming the heat of the moment. We simply decide that we will enjoy each other? Physically. And learn where your dislike of me takes us.”

  Once again, he’d snatched the world out from under her. “We are in your study. Not your bedroom.”

  “Ginny, my dearest, we can indulge anywhere we find a few moments of privacy.” He dipped his head again and pressed his mouth to the top of her shoulder. “I assure you, we are very private here. But would it not be novel for us to do this here?”

  “Strictly speaking, it would be novel for us to do this anywhere but the Turkish room at Bouverie.”

  “You’re right, of course. My excuse is that I am drunk.”

  “You are not.”

  “Not with drink. With desire. For you.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake.” She turned toward him, sitting so she could put her folded arms atop the sofa and her chin atop her arms. “Not even a turnip would believe that.”

  “Mm. My delectable little root vegetable.” He mirrored her position on the sofa, except that he had only one arm on the sofa. The other was on her hip. “Let’s formalize our serendipitous and mutual physical lusts.”

  She squinted at him. He looked perfectly serious. “Formalize.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you asking me to become your mistress?”

  “I can’t keep you. Not in the usual sense. Your brother would have my head. We’d agree to exclusivity, naturally.” He slid his hand over the curve of her hip and then to her flank. It felt lovely and wicked all at the same time. She gave him a lazy smile, but at the edges of everything, she smoldered.

  “Are you teasing me?”

  “No.” His hand wandered again, this time along the neckline of her gown where it showed above her folded arms. “There seems little point in offering you a house, though I will buy you one if you like. You could tell your brother you leased the house from a fool who didn’t ask a decent rent of you. But I’d have the deed made over to your name. I’d keep a key for as long as you and I last. You could change the locks whenever you like.”

  “You’re serious.” She felt she was mentally three steps behind him, but she was floating, rather deliciously, and so decided she didn’t care.

  His eyes snapped to hers, alert instead of that lovely, sleepy honey brown. “If all I can have from you is an affair, I would certainly agree to a formal arrangement, yes.” He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “And if all I may have is the shameful advantage I take of you tonight, I’ll have that, too.”

  She smiled again. “There’s something wrong with that. I just can’t think what. Aside fr
om my not liking you, I mean.”

  “Understood. I’m not sure I understand entirely, either. Whatever happens, I hope you know it doesn’t mean you don’t love Robert anymore.” He trailed his index finger downward over the curve of her breast. A shiver followed in the wake of his moving finger.

  “I’ll always love him.”

  “As you should.” He reached for the whisky and their glasses again and poured them both more. When she’d taken hers from him, he lifted his glass. “To Robert. The best man I never knew.”

  She tapped her glass to his and drank. Afterward, his gaze locked with hers and for a moment all the air vanished. She’d been a married woman and she knew full well what that look meant. Her body responded.

  He put down his glass. “Come to bed with me, Ginny. For the night. A week. A year. For as long as it takes you to decide if you really do hate me.”

  “What possible reason would I have to accept such a proposition from you, of all men?”

  “I can think of several.” His hand was back at her hip, then lower, to her calf.

  She could scarcely breathe and tried to cover by taking a sip of whisky. She must be drunk, she thought. Why else would she enjoy this state of arousal? Why else would she flirt with him like this, not anywhere near safe. And yet with him, she could be whatever she wanted. “Name one.”

  “Revenge.” There was no other description for his smile but silky. “Imagine, my dear Ginny, bringing me to my knees. Using me as well or as badly as you wish. Breaking my heart, even.”

  She snorted and with the hand holding her tumbler tapped his chest where his heart ought to be. “There’s a block of ice in there, Fenris. Not a heart.”

  “Melting what chip of ice resides in its place, then.” He leaned away from her long enough to pick up his glass. He took two swallows then regarded her with a look that sent a chill down her spine. “You might find sex, deliberate sex, I mean, with a man you hate to be…stimulating.”

  She gripped the top of the sofa with one hand. When he used that voice, she couldn’t help but think he must be right. “Do you think so?”

  “Think of the power you’d have over me. All the ways you might make me pay for my wrongs against you.”