Not Proper Enough (A Reforming the Scoundrels Romance)

by Carolyn Jewel

  “I warn you, you cannot help but see my nether regions.” He was jealous of a dead man. The man who’d been his closest friend until he’d ruined it.

  She gazed at him without smiling. “I’ve seen your parts.”

  “By God, you have. But that was in the heat of passion. This is different. There is a certain intimacy gained once a man allows a woman a close acquaintance with his parts.”

  “Yes.” Her tongue came out and ran the length of her bottom lip, and he was instantly thinking of her mouth on him. “That’s so.”

  He let the silence build, and while he did, she licked the residue of the candy from her fingers. He removed his watch, taking a moment to touch the medallion hanging from the chain. Quickly, he stripped down to his shirt. The clothes he removed, he threw over the back of a chair. Boots next. Then his breeches. He’d always believed in being master of himself, and that meant being master of his body, too. He worked himself hard to maintain that physical control. Clad in only his shirt, he sat on his bed, pushing himself back until he was on the piled-up pillows. He crossed his arms behind his head.

  Eugenia put the supplies on the nightstand by the bed: ink, pen, and the bit of blotting paper he’d taken out. She sat on the edge of the mattress. His cock was hard, tenting his shirt. The idea of her writing on his bare skin was titillating, of course. Even more arousing—and he was certain she understood this—was the implied promise that she would allow him to do the same. Or nearly the same. Another night, when they were more familiar, he would shave her and write his name on her.

  She drew his shirt up high enough to expose his hip and his sex.

  “Have you decided what to write?”

  “I believe I have.” She turned to the nightstand and opened the ink. She laughed. Giggled, actually. “Oh, my heavens.”

  “What?”

  Her eyes twinkled when she looked at him over her shoulder. “The ink is perfumed. Lilac, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Good God.”

  She dipped the pen in the bottle and returned to him. “Be very still, my lord.”

  “I’ve told you before, you have leave to call me Fox.”

  “Thank you.” She put the scrap of blotting paper beside him, then placed one hand on his belly, just to the side of his cock. She bent her head over him. He was, of course, unbearably hard. Her breath warmed his belly and even, once or twice, his cock. He wanted her mouth on him, bringing him.

  He tightened the muscles of his stomach when she touched the quill to him. The tip pulled a bit, and he twitched.

  “I said be still, Fox.”

  “My apologies.”

  She wrote along his midline, from the bottom of his nether hair to the top of his belly so that the letters, whatever they were, would read sideways in the direction of his hip to his armpit. She went back to the ink several times, occasionally pausing to blow on the letters she was writing.

  “Four words so far.” He struggled not to move.

  She touched her tongue to her top lip. “‘I hate the marquess.’”

  “Too short. You’ve written more than that.”

  “‘Eugenia hates Fox most.’ Don’t move. I’m almost done. She took the blotting paper by the edges and placed it carefully over his skin. “There.”

  She removed the paper and twisted her torso to return the pen and blotting paper to the table.

  In the meantime, he pulled his shirt out of the way and read, upside down for him, but in a neat, indisputably purple script, the words For the Lady Eugenia.

  She turned back and smiled at him. “You can’t have anyone else until that’s gone, you know.”

  “I don’t want another woman.”

  “You, Fox? You’re not so constant, I think.” She shook her head. “Robert envied you your ways with women.”

  “Did he tell you that?” He let go of his shirt, but she grabbed a handful of the fabric and kept it off his belly.

  “Don’t spoil it so soon,” she said.

  “Very well.” He pulled his shirt over his head and pushed himself to a sitting position, leaning his back against the headboard. He ran a finger along the bottom of the words. “Dry now.”

  “Is it?”

  “You may have it now,” he said, looking at her from under his lashes. “As much of it as you like.”

  Her gaze traveled from his head to his toes and back. “You’re an impressive specimen,” she said. “Much as it pains me, I must admit I find you physically lovely.”

  “Come here, Ginny, and let me put this inside you.”

  She smiled, and it was a lovely, and intensely arousing, sight. “I thought you were going to do that against the wall.”

  “I am only too willing to oblige you.” He pushed off the bed and, taking her by the arm, walked her backward to the door of his room, with her protesting in laughter the entire way. “You’re just the right height for this.” He put her back to the wall, planted his feet, and gathered handfuls of her skirt. Their eyes locked. “Do you hate me now, Ginny?”

  “More than ever.”

  Her answer sent lust spiraling through him. “Good.”

  He found the back of her thigh and pulled her leg up. Her breath came hard, and she knew exactly how their bodies ought to fit together because she adjusted herself so that his hard thrust into her was smooth. She tilted back her head and groaned, but he grabbed her chin and said, “Look at me.”

  She did, defiant. “You won’t make me say your name.”

  “I will, I promise you.”

  “Never.”

  He drew back his hips and pushed forward into heat and all that softness, tight around him. Her skirts were in the way, and his fingers dug into the back of her thigh, nearly at her bottom, holding tight, while he pulled the layers of fabric aside. Another thrust, a rock of her hips toward his. Her arms held his shoulders tight.

  Freed now of the obstacle of her bunched-up skirts, he slid in farther this time. He used both hands to hold her now. He leaned in and kissed her, hard, with desperation, with lust. He was nothing but his thrusts into her, the slickness of his slide back before he pushed forward again. He circled his hips once, and she moaned. Not his name, just a sound of pleasure, low in her throat.

  This was Eugenia in his arms. His prick was inside her, and she had come here to be with him. Like this. Eugenia. The woman he’d loved from the moment he’d heard her laugh. Before he was ready, his body raced toward climax. Close. So close and threatening to consume him.

  He pulled out of her and lowered his head while he concentrated on vanquishing his need to orgasm. It was a near thing. When he looked at her, her defiance was back.

  She said, “You’re not Robert.” Her eyes flashed. “It doesn’t matter how good you are with your cock, you’ll never be Robert.”

  Fox released her thigh and turned her around. “No. I am not. Nor do I intend to even attempt to be him.”

  He worked at the hooks of her frock. He unfastened enough of the hooks to loosen her bodice, and really, women wore far too many clothes. He made short work of the remaining fastenings, and before much longer, she was wearing only her unmentionables, then like him, nothing at all.

  Chapter Twenty

  EUGENIA WAS SHOCKED TO SILENCE. FIRST, THAT she’d had the bad taste to tell him he was not Robert, a fact of which he was most assuredly aware, second by the rapidity with which he stripped her naked, and third, by the fact that he was so physically magnificent, her body clenched with longing. Sheer animal lust. She’d give nearly anything to touch him. Caress him. Kiss him. Taste him. Drink him in.

  She’d never been more than slightly tipsy before, but she wasn’t drunk, at least not in the usual way she thought of being inebriated: unable to speak clearly, not in control of her movements, a mind muddled to incoherence. Instead, her emotions lurked just under the surface of her skin and none of them seemed as important as having him inside her.

  His body entranced her. All hard muscles and, Lord, his cock was just so lovel
y. He had surprisingly little hair, and his nipples were darker than she would have supposed. Robert had once mentioned that Fenris was obsessed with his physical conditioning, and the truth of that was quite plain.

  His fingers on her were capable of pulling reactions from her she thought had died with her husband. She resonated with the aftereffects of his touch, with a longing for completion that ached. She leaned against the wall and didn’t even have the wit to be embarrassed that she was naked—my God, naked!—with Fenris staring at her, so yes, after all, she absolutely must be drunk.

  “I want to look at you,” she said.

  His mouth curved, and he took half a step back. “Very well.”

  His belly was flat, his legs long. A purple bruise covered part of his upper arm, and with the tip of a finger she traced a circle around the injury. She had to stretch to touch him. “What happened?”

  He looked at the bruise. “That? Boxing match.”

  “Did you win?”

  “That was the judgment.”

  Her eyes traveled down his body. She refused to think of him as Fenris. He was merely a man whose body aroused her and to whom she wished to engage in any number of unspeakable acts. Whatever went on in his head, whether he liked her or disliked her was not presently a concern of hers. His penis remained erect. The purple lettering on his belly remained. For the Lady Eugenia. “You didn’t finish,” she said.

  “No.”

  She lifted her gaze and their eyes locked and she was lost in a haze of honey brown depths and physical desire. And now she saw Fenris standing before her, and she did not have to think of anything but his body and hers and all the ways they fit together.

  “But then,” he said softly, “I did not finish you, either.”

  “True.”

  “Will you allow me to remedy that?”

  “I think you’d better.” It was as if some other woman were speaking. The words were true. Truer than anything.

  He closed the distance between them and put his hands on hers, lifting her arms over her head and pinning them to the wall. His eyes darkened, and she drew in a breath. Slowly, he drew his hands down, along her forearms, to her upper arms, her shoulders, and then, he sank to his knees before her, his hands sliding down her body, over her breasts, down her stomach. His tongue dipped in and out of her navel. He kissed her belly then lower, lower. His fingers pushed through her hair there. “I will write my name here,” he said.

  “So you say.”

  “I do say.”

  She shivered once, right before he put her thigh over his shoulder, and he settled his mouth over her. He kept one palm on the inside of her thigh, but mostly she couldn’t think of anything but his mouth on her and the sensations sizzling through her. For three or four minutes, she fought her reaction because in the back of her mind she thought it would serve him right if he didn’t get what he was after.

  But who, after all, would she be punishing? She wanted that orgasm. She wanted to come.

  Besides, the Marquess of Fenris proved himself to be a relentlessly talented man. Her body simply reached a point where denial did not work. All that desire found its way through the breaks in her determination to see him suffer. He pulled her forward without mercy; she slipped under the spell of her own body and her utter dependence on him to, as he’d said, finish her. He made her quite selfish, and when he stopped before she was quite there, she protested.

  He gathered her into his arms and kissed her once. “A bed. I want us in bed, Ginny.”

  “Hurry.”

  He carried her to his bed, and when he’d put her down, he lay on his side, a palm resting on her upper chest. She would have protested, but the reverent hunger in his eyes as his gaze traveled over her stilled her voice. “Let me look at you,” he whispered.

  She would have told him no, but his palm glided over her, along the curve of her breast, very lightly, bringing her nipple to a peak just from that slow, deliberate motion. She felt the pull of that all the way to her sex, and that was precisely what she craved from him. He leaned over her and dipped his head to the aching peak of her breast. His tongue flicked out and upward, and she arched with the movement. He sucked, once, his tongue dragging upward, then his mouth, too, releasing her at the last moment to the sudden chill.

  Again. Again he repeated his devotion. Recognition that this was Fenris lavishing such intimate attention on her rippled through her, deep and fierce, an undercurrent that heightened her physical response. His hand smoothed down the other side of her body, fingers curving over her hip, around her groin, and then between her legs. His mouth left her breast, and he trailed kisses down her body until he was at her sex again.

  And, oh, Lord, he finished her, and though she didn’t scream his name, she cried out because she hadn’t felt that rise to passion in far, far too long. She didn’t care in the least that she was undignified, because the only thing she lived for was what his tongue was doing to her and the sexual peak that was out of reach until it wasn’t.

  Fenris didn’t wait for her to relax or come back to herself. He pulled himself over her and thrust inside her in one smooth stroke, and she rocked her hips toward him because he felt so good inside her. So good. There wasn’t any way to describe what he did with his body except to say that he devoted himself to fucking her, and he did it very, very well. Part of her hated him for making her feel like this. She hated him for reminding her that Robert was gone and she could still feel.

  At one point, when she was on the edge of tears, she put her hands on either side of his face and said, “You’ll never have me. Not ever. No matter how good you are.”

  He dipped his head and his hips continued the thrust and withdraw, and she thought she might never have experienced anything quite so worth her immortal soul. His breath came hard, but he spoke, low and hard. “Do you think so?”

  And he was so smug, so absolutely certain of himself that something inside her snapped. “Yes. I do think so.” She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed. His skin was warm underneath her fingers. “On your back, you hateful man.”

  His smug smile broadened. “Whatever you desire.”

  When he’d complied, she straddled him and watched his eyes widen. “Did you really think you were going to teach me what this is like?”

  “My apologies. School me, then.”

  “Were you so sure of yourself that you actually thought there wouldn’t be things I want from your body?”

  “Lord, I hope you do.”

  She lifted her hips, and he was quick to adjust himself, and the plain truth was that the sensation of his cock entering her at this angle felt better than she would have believed possible. She circled her hips and clenched around him.

  Fenris sucked in a sharp breath.

  For this moment, their physical joining was about her and her pleasure and making certain the man understood he wasn’t going to have the upper hand just because he was Fenris and he lived a charmed and perfect life. She found a rhythm that kept her on the edge, a slow and steady undulation. He set his hands to her hips and left them there, just touching for now. He let her continue to lead them, though from time to time he rocked his hips. His timing was exquisite.

  “Beautiful Ginny,” he whispered. “Beautiful, beautiful Ginny.”

  She dragged her eyes open and focused on him, and all she could think was that this was the man who’d tried to destroy her happiness, and here she was. Here they were, and she could take whatever she wanted from him. Anything at all. She took one of his hands and placed it over her breast. He spread his fingers, pressing, cupping, then catching her nipple between his first two fingers. Still rocking her hips, she placed her hand over his and showed him what she wanted. “This,” she said.

  He complied.

  “Yes. God, Fenris, yes.”

  His other hand slid back to her hip, fingers closing on her, increasing the motion of their joining. He shifted his hips and slid into her at an angle that sent her out of her mind with passion
.

  They ended up with him sitting with his back against the headboard and her tight against his lap. His mouth took hers, his hands explored and delved, and he was astonishingly good at finding places that wonderfully concentrated her mind on their bodies. At one point, she tensed her inner muscles once more and he said, “Do that again.”

  She did.

  “I am your slave,” he ground out. “More.” He got a hand between them and found the exact spot that sent her hurtling away from herself. She came hard, and if she said his name, she didn’t care. When she opened her eyes after that, it was to lock gazes with him.

  “My turn,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He put her on her back, and she concentrated on his reactions, his breathing, the change in his thrusts into her, and she wound her legs around him and met him, and stroked her fingers down his back, and she could feel the tension in his body. The sex was hard and fast now, and Fenris’s breath was hot against her skin, near her ear, along her throat.

  She held him as if they really were lovers, and when he came, his shout was half groan. She watched the way his expression changed, that inward look while he was in the grip of his climax. She drank it all in, and a part of her adored this, him coming into her like this, so fierce. And just before he was done, when he’d pumped hard once, buried himself in her, and trembled in her arms, she put her mouth by his ear and whispered, “I hate you, Fenris. I hate you beyond life.”

  He stayed in her, but pushed up, keeping his weight on his palms to look into her face. He thrust one more time, with a low, soft moan as he shivered. Their mutual stare continued. “I can only think, my darling Ginny, that if you loved me I’d be a dead man right now.”

  “Awful, awful man,” she said.

  “You’re sublime. I’ve never had a better fuck.”

  “Toad.”

  “Goddess.” He withdrew from her and lay on his side again, a hand on her belly.

  “You’re no god, Fenris.”

  “I don’t have such aspirations.” He pressed his mouth to her stomach. “Do you think it will be as good the next time? Because, I tell you, Ginny, my love, I came like a bull.”