A Lord's Kiss

by Mary Lancaster et al.

She started up the wide steps, the fingertips of one hand grazing the carved marble bannister. The evidence of her attempts to dissuade him surrounded her. The ship-themed furnishings and pirate decor might make her laugh were it not for her foolish reasons for selecting them. Her steps slowed. He’d never believe her, never forgive her. What was she doing here? Did she want his forgiveness? Did she want to offer him…

  Of their own volition, her feet had carried her to the library doors. Once she walked into this room, she’d not be able to turn back. If she was wrong, if her heart had played her false, a long life alone awaited her. She might not be certain of anything else, but of this much she was certain. Somehow, in the muck she’d made of her life, she’d managed to lose her heart to the most inappropriate man in England. And she never wanted it back.

  Georgiana, Ethan’s jacket draped over one arm, gripped a library door latch with each hand and pushed them wide. Good heavens! She’d forgotten precisely how garrishly bright she’d left this room. She pushed back the hood of her maid’s cloak. Standing before the hearth, Ethan paused, a glass of what appeared to be brandy halfway to his mouth. In the glow of the firelight, his hair—loose and falling over his shoulders—shone the prismatic hues of gilded frames hung long years in the galleries of stately homes. He wore a banyan of brilliant blue silk, embroidered in patterns of green and yellow thread. Belted at the waist, it fell to the tops of his feet. His long, elegant, bare feet. Her mouth went dry.

  No wonder women accused him of piracy. He was pillaging her every scruple and stealing her every intention of resistance. He’d secured her surrender without firing a shot.

  “Welcome to my lair, your ladyship,” Ethan said darkly. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” He smiled, swirled the liquid in his glass, and downed the remains in one long draught. He placed the glass on the mantel and clasped his hands behind his back. As a result, the front of the banyan parted over his muscled chest. Unless she missed her mark and his intention, the man wore absolutely nothing beneath the erotic dressing gown.

  For a moment, she could only stare at the vee of bronzed, sculpted flesh at the top of the banyan. Raising her head to meet his eyes did not help. The flames of the candelabra on the small wine cask table turned his eyes the color of molten gold. Her body turned heavy. Her blood flowed in thick heated ribbons just below the surface of her skin. The weight of his jacket across her arm reminded her of her purpose.

  She held it out toward him as she crossed the polished wood floor. “I have come to return your jacket. You…did not retrieve it when you left the marquess’s dinner party.”

  He remained as he was. “After I was chased from the premises like a common ruffian? I assure you, my lady, I left nothing behind for which I have any further use.”

  Georgiana forced herself not to flinch. She placed the jacket over the arm of the dragon throne. “This jacket is one of Weston’s. It is very fine, brand new, and looks quite handsome on you.”

  He inclined his head. “I am not so foolish as to think I will be invited anywhere to wear such a fine jacket now that you have given me my congé.”

  His words were like nettles, pushed against her to sting, and burn, and warn. A hard pit settled in her belly even as irritation seethed with her every breath. How dare he paint himself as the injured party?

  “You insisted on courting me. I asked you not to bother.”

  “I should have listened to you. For that, you have my humble apologies, my lady.” He bowed deeply, his face marred by a cynical sneer.

  “I never meant to insult you, Ethan.” This was not how she’d envisioned this meeting. Coming here had seemed a brilliant idea. Now she wanted to leave before she said too much. Or he did. Or they both did.

  “Nonsense. You have refused better men than me. I am in good company. You, however, are not. I will have Townsend fetch a hackney to the back gate.”

  “I can fetch my own hackney. I will leave when I am ready, Ethan. And there are no better men than you.” She sank her teeth into her bottom lip and took a step closer to him.

  His brow furrowed. “I stand corrected. No better men. Merely nobler, better-mannered, more proper, more titled, wealthier. Actually, very few of them are wealthier, but money isn’t everything.”

  “Stop it.” Georgiana stamped her foot. “Stop talking or I shall be forced to smack you. I am trying to apologize.”

  “I accept your apology,” he said dryly, though his voice held a tinge of incredulity. “Good night, my lady.”

  “I haven’t apologized yet, you great lummox.”

  “Lummox? A moment ago, I was handsome.” His lips, those lips she knew to cool and gentle, curled into a half-smile. He stared at her. “I’m waiting, Georgiana.”

  How was it possible the more of an arse he was, the more she wanted to…

  “Oh, hell,” she muttered.

  Ethan started to laugh.

  Georgiana grabbed the lapels of his banyan, dragged him close, and silenced his laughter with her lips. He froze, his lips unmoving against hers. His body stiff, hands at his sides. Her heart sank. Her throat burned. She’d misjudged. The heat and nausea of humiliation crept inside her. She tried to step back in preparation to leave, to flee her own folly. Ethan gripped her elbows and held her in place.

  “Georgiana.” A fierce, sensuous hoarseness colored his voice. “I am not made of stone.”

  “Where you are concerned, Ethan, I have discovered that neither am I.” She waited, refusing to look away, in spite of every cowardly instinct to do so.

  “Thank God,” he breathed and seared his lips to hers. He snatched her into his arms with such urgency her feet left the floor. She flung her arms around his neck, gliding her fingers through the long silk of his hair. He bent to sweep one arm behind her knees and lift her onto a table crafted from a beer barrel. Georgiana gasped.

  “This table is very uncomfortable,” she observed as he made quick work of the fasteners of her cloak.

  “Blame my decorator.” Ethan pushed the cloak from her shoulders. The dark fabric fell over the barrel like a woolen tablecloth. She laughed. The sound shook her shoulders and tickled low in her belly. He cupped her cheek and stroked his thumb over her cheekbone. “What do you want, Georgiana? Whatever choice you make tonight, there is no going back. Not for me. What do you want?”

  “You,” her voice nearly failed her. The rasp of his breath. The heat of his gaze and the slow glide of his hands—one to cup the back of her head, the other to splay across the small of her back. Her eyes drifted closed.

  “As my lady commands,” he whispered, his voice a night sky rumble against her parted lips. He kissed her as if they had forever. His lips, warm and firm, touched hers as lightly as a feather’s fall. He dotted tiny touches to the corners of her mouth, to her chin, to the cleft of her top lip. He paused to draw that cleft between his lips and tug slightly. The pulling sensation shot down her body to lodge low in her belly, then lower and lower. A shiver passed through her. He dragged his mouth across her cheek to her ear and captured her earlobe in his teeth.

  Her hair began to loosen from its hairpin moorings and fall across her bare shoulders, down her arms to brush against her hips. Ethan lowered his forehead to her shoulder and buried his face in her hair. She pressed her lips to his temple and sighed. In an instant, he raised his head to capture her sigh in another searing meeting of mouths and then tongues as she opened to him. A sensation of falling came over her. She found herself lifted in his arms again, still being kissed as if her every breath fed him, stoked his passion, made her even more his.

  He crossed the room and lowered her to the low-set bed covered in luminous quilts and pillows. She lay on the exotic pirate’s bed she’d designed and watched as he gazed at her in such a way she feared he might float away on a tide of adoration. Something she’d never known in her entire life. Until this moment, she’d never been the center of anyone’s world. If it was a lie, he was the world’s best liar and she prayed he’d remain so, at least fo
r a little while longer. A woman might feast to the end of her days on such a lie.

  Georgiana tugged the belt of his banyan free and pushed it from his shoulders. She ran her hands over his broad shoulders—sculpted like the hardest marble and warm as a roaring fire. Her fingers wandered down his chest. She traced a puckered scar where his shoulder and arm met. Her palm followed the path of ribs and rippling muscle to a slashed scar at his hip bone. He sucked in a breath and grabbed her hands, bringing first one and then the other to his mouth to press a searing kiss in each palm. He pushed her arms back over her head and slowly drew a line to the bodice of her gown.

  He slid one hand beneath her and raised her enough to undo the fasteners at the back of the dress. All the while, his lips breathed a scorching trail from one shoulder, along her collarbone, down to the swells of her breasts and back to the other shoulder. Her body trembled with one continuous shiver, hot and then cold, and constantly moving to parts of her body asleep all her life, but wide awake and wanting now. Ethan lowered her against the cushions and pulled at the waist of her gown until the bodice and negligible sleeves slid to her hips. He made quick work of the minimal stays she’d worn, there only to push her small breasts up over the neck of the dress enough to draw a gentleman’s eye. Ethan flung them behind him with the barest hint of a grin.

  Then his grin faded. Georgiana moved to cover herself. The heat of a blush raced up her body. He gazed at her, reached to draw one roughened finger over the curve of her breast, then under it and finally across one painfully and exquisitely taut nipple. He covered them with his hands, cupped them tenderly and bent his head.

  “What are you…” She pushed up slightly on her elbows.

  “Shh,” he breathed across her sensitive flesh. He raised his eyes to hers. “You are the most beautiful creature I have ever known. And I, my lady, am a great worshipper of beauty.” He dropped his lips to her breast, drew her nipple inside the heated cavern of his mouth and suckled in long, tender strokes. Georgiana fell back to revel in the overpowering sensations his erotic worship drew from the burning place between her legs up her body to where his mouth moved from one breast to the other and back again. She stroked his hair and gasped as he nipped and licked his way across her chest. She nearly cried out when he finally moved his worship down her body, across her belly from one hip to the other—nipping, kissing, suckling—and all the while the quickening push of his breathing against her grew faster and faster.

  She’d done that. She’d caused him to gasp and groan against her skin. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined she had the power to drive a man to such passion. Never had she dreamed she might feel it herself. He slid her gown from her body and tossed it aside. He did the same with her petticoats until she lay across the decadent bed in naught save her silk stockings. He ran his finger beneath the tops of them, taking care not to dislodge her garters. He lifted her legs one at a time to remove her slippers, but he left the stockings. Somehow it was far more wicked to be naked save for those flimsy garments than to be completely naked. The look of feral desire on his face told her he was thinking the same thing.

  He ran his palms up her calves, over her knees and inside her thighs. He stared at the place where it seemed every ounce of heat in the room had pooled. She thought for a moment to cover herself, but something in the way he looked at her told her no. Georgiana was no ignorant miss. Thanks to Alma, she knew what came next. In theory, at least.

  “How many of those wicked books did you read, Georgiana?” He crept between her legs, dropping kisses on her knees and thighs as he did. Her legs began to move restlessly. What was he doing?

  “Wicked books? I…” She glanced at the stack of books, half of which had tumbled onto the bed, or been placed there deliberately by a certain rogue of a gentleman. “I didn’t look at any of them. I… Why would you… Ethan, what are you…” her voice trailed off in a sharp shriek, followed by a moan as she sank into the bed, her hands grappling in his hair. He was kissing her. There. Not kissing exactly. Licking. And suckling. Her mind roiled. She alternated between scooting away from his wicked, seeking, plundering mouth and pulling him closer. He chuckled against her body. The vibration sent a blinding wave of pleasure over the most sensitive spot on her body. And he knew it, the devil. He returned to the spot over and over with his clever tongue, his fingers holding her thighs in place.

  Georgiana had no choice but to lift her body into the rhythm he set up. Her breath came in gasps. The room began to spin. She closed her eyes but it did not help. Lights burst over and over behind her clinched eyelids. The pleasure rose higher and higher. She dug her heels into the quilts. Her body locked in a long wave of pleasure and, for a moment, she knew neither where she was nor where she was going. Ethan crawled up over her body. He shrugged his way out of his banyan. She opened her eyes in time to see it fly overhead. He framed her head between his hands. Something hard and not lay against her thigh.

  “Tell me now, Georgiana. If we do this now, I will never let you go.” He pressed a tender kiss to her lips. “I will be yours and you will be mine. Our course will be set forever.”

  Georgiana allowed herself to dive into the depths of those amber eyes. She ran her fingers over his arms and chest. When she tried to go lower, he shook his head. A lifetime of no choices. A lifetime. She leaned up to whisper in his ear. “Weigh anchor, Captain. We sink or sail together.”

  “Georgiana.”

  He propped himself on his elbows and moved against her entrance. The waves of pleasure, echoes of the crashing explosion of passion, began to recede. Ethan kissed her, feeding his passion into her body. She wrapped her arms around him and gripped the tight muscles across his back. An odd sensation moved slowly, gently into her body. A sense of fullness, invasion, but not violent.

  “Stop thinking,” he said, his voice a strained whisper. “Relax and feel.” He took a breath and stared into her eyes. “You are beautiful beyond measure, Georgiana. I adore you.”

  She gasped at the slight pinch and the stretching pull within her body. He kissed her again and his long groan as their hips met sent fissures of heat down her legs. His lips slid across her cheek to rest against her ear.

  “You are wondrous, my lady. And you are mine.”

  He withdrew a bit and then thrust home once more. Her body bowed toward him. Ethan worked with her, guided her until their bodies moved as one. Impossibly, the same climbing pleasure started where they were joined. With each pulse he drove it higher and higher. Through the fog of sensual sensation, Georgiana heard the crackling of the fire in the hearth. A light rain pattered against the windows. His skin was incredibly hot and slick and beautiful. She wrapped her legs around him trying to pull him ever closer. Her breasts were heavy and full and shot through with darts of lightning each time his chest brushed hers. The heady scent of his cologne mixed with her perfume, and sweat, and the musk of their joining until it seemed the room was filled with it.

  Their movements increased in speed and power, dancers in a passionate waltz, the music the beating of their hearts. Georgiana wanted to laugh, to cry, but most of all she wanted to live in this moment, in this man’s arms, in the light of his eyes which saw beauty when no one else did. The Catherine wheel of lights burst in her eyes as her body tilted up into his, her fingers digging into his arms. Ethan threw back his head, a half groan, half shout torn from his lips. He braced himself on shaky arms before slowly lowering himself on top of her. She tightened her arms around him.

  “I should move,” he said, between short breaths. “I am too heavy.”

  “Don’t you dare. I am cold and you are warmer than any counterpane.”

  He laughed. “I am happy to be of service, my lady.” He wiggled around to rest his head against her breast.

  “Do you think you might be of service again before I must leave?”

  “Hmm. Perhaps. I need a nap if I am to do you justice.” He rooted around absently and drew several blankets and articles of clothing over them.<
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  “I suppose I can allow you a short nap.” Georgiana kissed his hair and marveled at the incredible torrent of emotions washing over as she held him in her arms.

  “And then you can tell me why you really showed up in my pirate’s lair and when you intend to marry me.”

  Chapter Nine

  Ethan propped his head on his elbow and allowed himself this moment to commit to memory the sight of Georgiana in all her sated, sleeping glory. Even the little snores that escaped her lips from time to time were beautiful in his mind. Her hair flowed around them like a flamelit river, darkest chestnut, save for the reflection of the candlelight and the glow from the fire in the hearth. Her skin was every bit as velvety soft and heavenly as it had been in his dreams. And her passion had shaken him to his core. The years of standing apart, of wondering should he meet his end at the point of a sword or at the bottom of the ocean with no one to mourn him had receded in his mind’s eye like a distant shoreline put to his rudder by a fast ship.

  She’d appeared tonight as a fiery, avenging angel determined to make him accept her apology.

  The most idiotic grin pulled at the corners of his mouth. She’d certainly convinced him of the sincerity of her words in the best possible way. A woman like Georgiana did not give herself to a man she didn’t intend to marry. What had changed her mind? What had he done right, and how the devil would he manage to give her whatever she needed to stay with him without regrets? Her laughter, her happiness, her belief in her own beauty—more than money or prestige or any of a hundred things he’d once considered important—these things suddenly became the most important in his life. His breath caught. His heart stuttered. She was the most important thing in his life.

  Fiercely gentle fingertips brushed his hair from his face and lingered to stroke through the strands down his back. “Do all men scowl so fiercely after having pillaged a woman’s treasures?” Georgiana asked, a deliciously wicked smile playing about her lips.