Taken by the Earl (Regency Unlaced 3)

by Carole Mortimer

In truth, Fliss had been hoping that the events of the previous evening had all been a bad dream. The advent of Sin Montgomery into her bedchamber with the obvious intention of keeping his promise to join her for breakfast made nonsense of that hope.

  He seemed even bigger in the clear light of morning, most especially so sitting on the side of her bed as if he had every right to be there.

  And maybe he did after the intimacies Fliss had allowed him the previous evening.

  Either way, his presence in her bedchamber was overwhelming, when not even her own husband had ever done such a thing. Stephen had respected her privacy in a way Sin Montgomery made it clear he had no intention of doing.

  This morning, his dark green superfine fitted perfectly across those wide shoulders, linen snowy white beneath a black waistcoat, dark gray pantaloons revealing the muscular strength of his legs, black Hessians shaped to his calves.

  And listing what he is wearing will not prevent me from being aware of everything else about him.

  Such as the way the sunlight turned his fashionably overlong hair the blue-black of midnight. His face was rugged and handsome: glittering green eyes, sharp cheekbones, aquiline nose, sculpted lips, that square and determined jaw. As for his hands, those large and yet elegant hands that had caressed her naked flesh so expertly the night before, they kept moving in and out of her vision as he continued to raise the toast to his mouth.

  Fliss forced herself to concentrate on the diamond pin nestled within his perfectly arranged neck cloth. “No one calls me Felicity.”

  “Then what should I call you?” His encouraging smile revealed straight and even white teeth.

  Really, was there nothing about this gentleman Fliss could find fault with or dislike? Except for his audacity, of course. “You may call me Mrs. Randall—”

  “Oh-ho, I do not think so.” He rose lithely to his feet to remove the tray from across her knees, placing it on the dressing table before returning to sit beside her. “Good morning, lover,” he murmured as he leaned forward and brushed his lips lightly across hers.

  Fliss was so startled by being called this man’s lover and the kiss that she could only stare at him with wide and disbelieving eyes. She could count on one hand the number of times Stephen had kissed her on the lips, and yet this man, this arrogant earl, took the liberty within hours of meeting her.

  That was not the only liberty he has taken within hours of meeting me.

  Fliss firmly silenced that mocking voice inside her head, straightening her spine against the pile of pillows behind her in an effort to distance herself from him. She did not succeed, as he simply moved back with her. “My friends, which you are not, call me Fliss. Neither am I your lover. And since you have chosen not to heed my warning, it would seem I am not to be your savior either. As such, I would like you to remove yourself from my bedchamber immediately.”

  Sin refused to budge an inch as he continued to lean forward, his face only inches away from hers.

  He had wondered during the long night, when the aching throb of his cock had prevented him from sleeping, whether he might have imagined how beautiful this woman was. His imagination had not done her justice.

  Her hair was loose this morning, a wild tumble of ebony curls that cascaded onto her bare shoulders and the pillows behind her. Her eyes were that clear, dark gray, her complexion as pale and smooth as ivory. Except for her lips. They were a rosy and tempting red. The same color as the nipples he had feasted on the previous evening.

  Sin’s gaze moved lower, down the long arch of her neck to the hollows at the base of her throat, the creamy swell of her breasts revealed above the lace neckline of her white silk nightgown. Lower still, he could see the clear outline of her nipples. Nipples that became hard, swelling in arousal, as he continued to admire them. His cock, still ready and unsatisfied, instantly engorged with that same arousal.

  “Very well…Fliss.” Sin deliberately savored the name on his lips. “I believe I am in the mood for fruit now.” His fingers moved to unfasten the lace ribbon at the front of her gown.

  “What are you doing?” She gasped, her hands moving to cover his and stop him from fully unfastening the top of her nightgown.

  “You are hiding fresh berries from me,” he murmured in reproach. “Ripe, juicy berries.”

  “No.” She swallowed, obviously flustered. “I do not—I am not—”

  “Oh, but you do and you are.” He carefully removed her hands and placed them at her sides on the bed. “Do not move them,” he admonished as she would have done exactly that. “We are to eat breakfast together, remember?” he chided as he folded back the unfastened sides of the top of her nightgown to fully reveal her naked breasts beneath, tipped with those rose-red nipples.

  Fliss’s cheeks were aflame. No one had ever… She had never… It had been in muted candlelight when Sin had touched and suckled her breasts the previous evening. This morning, he gazed upon them in the clear light of day. No, he did not gaze upon them, he gorged himself on them, his gaze openly admiring until Fliss began to wonder if there was something wrong, that perhaps her breasts were somehow different from other women’s breasts.

  She looked down at them critically. They were big breasts, to be sure, but they were firm and sloped upwards. Perhaps her nipples were too red? Or too big when they were swollen like this? Perhaps—

  “I intend to make them bigger still before I eat them,” Sin murmured as if in answer to her unspoken question.

  Fliss drew her breath in sharply as she watched his fingers and thumbs moving to squeeze and pinch her nipples, pleasure surging to her core as he pulled on them. Her back arched as he drew them out fully, and then farther still, so that they grew bigger, longer than Fliss had ever seen them.

  The same heat as last night flared between her thighs, the lips there plumping, becoming wet. Then wetter still as he continued to pull and squeeze her nipples.

  The pleasure took her breath away, and she longed to lift her hands, to press those fingers harder against her nipples. Except the challenge in his glittering green eyes dared her to move her hands by so much as an inch.

  Was she supposed to do anything? Fliss wondered. Should she reciprocate in some way?

  She glanced down to where she could see the outline of Sin’s cock, long and thick as it pressed against the front of his pantaloons. Last night, he had freed himself from his clothing, had seemed to want her to—

  “Not yet.” Sin lifted her chin so that she was no longer looking at what was fast becoming the painful swell of his cock. “Right now, I want you to continue looking at your breasts as I play with them.”

  She drew in a sharp breath. “You are very…demanding.”

  Sin laughed huskily. “I have not even begun to be demanding. Look, see how long your nipples are now? How they stand out, so big and juicy, begging for me to eat them?”

  The tip of her tongue ran along the seam of her lips, wetting them. “My parents always told me I should not—should not play with my food.”

  He grinned. “Mine did too. But I am sure when they did so, they were not referring to anything quite so delicious as these.” His nostrils filled with the heady scent of her arousal as he cupped the weight of her breasts in both his hands, capturing each nipple between parted fingers and applying pressure to them as he squeezed and kneaded her breasts.

  Her chest began to quickly rise and fall, her cheeks flushed, eyes glittering feverishly. All indications of her increasing arousal.

  She gasped, her neck arching, pushing her breasts forward as Sin lowered his head to open his mouth wide and draw one nipple and areola into the heat of his mouth.

  Her nipple swelled deliciously as he suckled, hard, one of his hands continuing to pull on its twin in the same rhythm. His other hand threw back the bedclothes to trail down and cup the heat between her thighs.

  “Sin…?”

  His mouth released her nipple, and he pushed her nightgown out of the way, then pressed the palm of his hand against

her moist and silky curls, grinding down slowly on her mound as he felt the pulsing of her nubbin.

  “Oh God…” Her back was permanently arched now, her legs falling apart and allowing Sin to feel the moisture gathered between her thighs.

  He dipped his fingers into that wetness, slicking it around her nubbin and swollen nether lips before slowly entering her channel with one finger. One long thick finger that was the size of some men’s cocks.

  Her channel was tight, the walls contracting greedily about that finger as Sin began to slowly thrust. Each time he did, his finger skimmed across that sensitive knot of nerves inside her that made her clit pulse and throb against his palm.

  “What are you doing to me?” she gasped, her breathing ragged, erratic, fingers tightly gripping the bedclothes beneath them as she began to groan and thrash her head from side to side on the pillow.

  “Pleasuring you.” Sin lowered his head and bit down on her swollen nipple as his finger stroked that knob of nerves harder, longer.

  “Oh God… I cannot bear it,” she choked. “Please. Oh please.”

  Sin raised his head. “Come for me,” he instructed. “As you did last night.”

  Her eyes were wild with desperation as she looked up at him.

  “Now.” His own gaze compelled her to obey as he increased the thrusting of his finger inside her and the pressure of his thumb and fingers on her engorged nipple.

  She ceased to breathe as she stared up at him, her eyes wide as Sin felt the ripples of her release, and then the strong contractions of the slick walls of her pussy.

  “Yes!” he hissed between gritted teeth, drawing out every last quake and tremor of her pleasure as he listened to her groans and watched her juices flowing out of her pussy. They slicked his fingers and dribbled between the cheeks of her bottom to moisten that other pink rosette.

  Sin ached to go down on her, to drink those juices, lap them all up with the rasp of his tongue over that sensitized flesh.

  Before he could do so, he heard the bedchamber door open behind him.

  “Have you finished with your break— Oh!”

  Sin had no need to turn in order to know this must be Felicity’s maid, come to remove her breakfast tray.

  “Will you cease smiling so smugly,” Fliss snapped her agitation as she and the earl strolled about the garden together. A garden that was completely empty apart from the two of them. No doubt the other guests were still abed after their night of revels.

  “Was I?” Sin raised dark and deceptively innocent eyebrows.

  Fliss had never wanted to hit anyone before, but she wanted to hit him, this man—this seducer of respectable women.

  Would she ever recover from the humiliation she had suffered earlier this morning, when her maid entered the bedchamber and found the Earl of Winterbourne sitting on the side of Fliss’s bed, doing God knows what to her?

  Not that Mary had been able to see that Fliss was half-unclothed or where the earl’s hands were, with his broad shoulders and back blocking her from the maid’s vision. But still, Mary was not stupid, would know exactly what had transpired in her mistress’s bedchamber this morning.

  Well…perhaps not exactly. Fliss was not one hundred percent sure herself what had happened earlier.

  Every time she so much as thought of having Sin’s mouth and hands on her breasts, his finger pleasuring between her thighs, she felt a renewal of the contracting of the muscles inside her channel. Perhaps if she could not still feel him there… But she could, every long thick inch of his finger imprinted on her body and mind.

  She was becoming wet between her thighs again merely thinking about it.

  Last night and this morning, Fliss had found Sin’s height and breadth overwhelming, his lovemaking bone-melting, but he had not seemed the untamed Highlander Society had speculated about. Here in the garden, in the clear light of day, Fliss had reason to change her mind. Beneath the earl’s air of urbanity and the perfectly tailored clothes, she sensed a wildness, something feral, trying to escape. It was a little like spending time with a caged animal, knowing that at any second it could bend those bars around it as if they were made of butter, allowing all that wildness to break free.

  Fliss had never been so aware of a man or the danger he represented to her own respectability.

  “You know you were.” Fliss lifted her parasol and snapped it open overhead. Primarily to keep the sun off her face, but also to conceal the permanent blush she had on her cheeks whenever she was in this man’s company.

  She had agreed to meet Sin for this stroll about the garden only as a way of getting him to leave her bedchamber earlier, something he had absolutely refused to do without first making plans for the two of them to meet up again.

  Ringing for Mary’s return and going through the ritual of her morning bath had been excruciating for Fliss. Mary had been with her for years, even before Fliss’s marriage, and she knew her maid had never seen a gentleman in her mistress’s bedchamber before today, not even Stephen.

  “Perhaps,” Sin drawled, well aware of Fliss’s embarrassment over what had happened earlier.

  As for his own physical discomfort…

  A discomfort added to by watching Fliss between narrowed lashes as she walked beside him. Seeing the way the tops of her breasts were revealed by the low neckline of her gown. Knowing the hidden nipples would still be swollen and red from his ministrations earlier.

  If his cock did not find some relief, and soon, then Sin knew he was in danger of coming inside his pantaloons. And he would much rather see those ruby-red lips wrapped around his cock when he came, and his sac being caressed and squeezed by those tiny hands.

  “Shall we explore the maze?” Sin growled, barely able to restrain his need for physical release.

  Fliss shot him an uncertain glance, her cheeks blushing anew as she saw the way in which Sin’s gaze smoldered down at her. Instinctively, she knew his suggestion had very little to do with exploring the historical maze in Lady Eckles’s garden. It was more likely to be an invitation for her to explore him.

  Just the thought of it made her heart pound, her palms dampen inside her gloves, and caused that wetness to increase between her thighs.

  “If I might have a word, my lord?”

  Fliss had been so lost in her emotions that she had not heard or seen the approach of one of Lady Eckles’s handsome footmen. Young men with whom, it was rumored, that lady amused herself whenever she was here in Kent.

  “Yes?” Sin scowled his displeasure at the interruption.

  “One of her ladyship’s grooms has reported your stallion is unwell, my lord,” the footman related politely.

  Sin’s frown darkened. “Why did my own groom not come and tell me as much?”

  “It seems he is also unwell, my lord.”

  Sin glanced at the woman beside him, remembering her dire warnings yesterday evening and wondering if this sudden illness of both his groom and horse could merely be coincidental.

  Except Sin did not believe in coincidences.

  Chapter 6

  Fliss followed Sin as he strode across the lawn toward the stables at the back of the house, determined he should not leave her behind. There was something decidedly odd about both his horse and groom becoming ill at the same time, and she knew from the look she and Sin had exchanged a few minutes ago, he thought the same.

  She sincerely hoped that neither man nor beast were in serious ill health, but perhaps now Sin would at least believe her warnings that someone here meant to harm him. Quite what his assassin hoped to achieve by deliberately making Sin’s groom and horse ill—perhaps by the administration of poison?—Fliss could not imagine.

  Except the earl was unlikely to leave Eckles Manor, as Fliss had urged him to do last night, whilst his horse and groom were ill.

  She hurried to catch up with Sin as he entered the busy cobbled stable yard, where several grooms carried water and feed to the horses in the many stalls. “My lord.” She rested her gloved fingers on his forearm. “Do you think it possible poison was involved—”

  “We will not discuss this now, Fliss,” he cut her off tersely.

  “But—”

  “I said not now.” He came to a halt as he turned to face her, eyes narrowed in warning. “Nor is this the place for you.” He looked down pointedly at the dirt-strewn cobblestones. “I will come to your bedchamber once I have ascertained the cause of this…illness, and we will discuss the matter further then.”

  Fliss’s cheeks warmed at the knowledge several of the grooms in the yard could not have helped but overhear the earl talk so casually of visiting her bedchamber. As if he did it all the time. Which, considering Fliss’s visit to his bedchamber the night before and his own to hers this morning, would be difficult to deny. Even so, she did not take kindly to being dismissed in such a manner.

  “Very well, my lord.” She gave a stiff inclination of her head. “I am in need of refreshment after our walk in any case, and have yet to meet the Eckles’s other guests.”

  “Fliss.” Sin reached out and captured her arm to prevent her from leaving. “Perhaps we might meet them together later?” He gave her a pointed frown.

  She raised haughty brows. “I am in need of refreshment now, not later.”

  Sin was not a man given to violence, despite his size possibly implying otherwise. But Mrs. Felicity Randall was well on her way to receiving physical retribution from him if she did not heed his unspoken warning. He had made it more than clear he did not wish her to deliberately put herself amongst Maria Eckles’s unscrupulous guests. A lamb amongst wolves. One of which might be the wolf after Sin’s throat.

  He freely admitted to having been skeptical in regard to Fliss’s tale of plots and assassins. But his horse, Dante, had been in perfect health when they arrived at Eckles Manor two days ago, and again when Sin had taken him out for a ride yesterday morning. It seemed suspect that his groom was also suddenly taken ill.

  Sin had persuaded Fliss to remain at Eckles Manor more with seduction in his mind rather than seeking out nameless, faceless assassins. But if there was a genuine threat to his life, he could not allow Fliss to put herself in danger by attempting to pursue the assassin alone. “You will wait until I am free to join you.” His tone brooked no argument.

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