by Mia Marlowe
She laughed mirthlessly. “When have you and I ever spent much time in conversation?”
“Point taken.” If his body had its way, he’d be swiving her again now instead of all this infernal talking. But even bickering with her made him feel more normal than amiable conversation with anyone else. “We do seem to find other ways to communicate when we’re alone together, ways I thought we both enjoyed. Am I incorrect?”
She shook her head and he thought she leaned toward him by the smallest of degrees. Then she straightened and edged away. “Please, Griffin, I need to get through all of what I must tell you.”
“There’s more?”
She nodded. “Much more, and I ask that you keep still till I finish or I may not be able to.”
“Never let it be said I don’t let a lady finish.” Even though he’d been more than a little foxed, he’d made sure she had a ripping good time last night. Of course, that was as much for him as for her. Giving her pleasure made him feel like Prometheus, stealing fire from Olympus. He lifted a brow at her, but when she didn’t smile at his double entendre, he shrugged and waved her on.
“You are right. We are wanted for fraud on the Continent. And Monty is wanted in New York for forgery.” She massaged her forehead with her fingertips as if she wanted to smooth away her words as easily as she smoothed away the lines on her brow. “But that’s not the worst of it.”
“Most people would find outstanding arrest warrants bad enough. Do tell.”
“You’re not taking this seriously.” She glowered at him. “The truth is we entered your house for the express purpose of swindling Teddy and, by extension, you. The Tetisheri statue is most assuredly a fake, but Monty thought we could convince you to back an expedition to discover her tomb.” She sighed. “Of course, we have no intention of returning to Egypt.”
“Wanted there, too, are you?”
“No,” she said angrily.
“Then don’t discount returning. Seems to me you’re running out of places to go.”
Her face crumpled. “Monty is. That’s for certain. If I don’t find some way to pay for him to go to Görbersdorf sanatorium . . .”
The tears he feared earlier welled in her eyes again. This time she was less successful at suppressing them. Griffin took her into his arms and was strangely grateful when she came willingly.
It occurred to him that now would be the right time to offer to pay for Farnsworth’s treatment. He was inclined to do it, but contrary to what she believed, the earldom was not flush with available blunt. His father hadn’t been much of a steward and when Griffin came to the title, he’d inherited a mountain of debt, the last of which he’d be able to retire only if the Rebecca Goodspeed ever returned to port. Every spare farthing the estate claimed was tied up in plans for repairs, invested in tenant crops and the refurbishing of the mill at Devonwood Park.
Perhaps a trip to the whist tables would provide the needed funds.
He ran his hand down her spine in long comforting strokes while she clung to him. Even knowing she’d come to swindle him, knowing his brother still intended to make her his bride, Griffin felt a shimmering mantle of peace descend over him just from holding her.
It made no sense whatever. It simply was.
“All this subterfuge and conniving. You, my dear, are a proper scoundrel,” he murmured into her hair. “Usually, that’s my job.”
It occurred to him that using his gift to win at cards might be considered as fraudulent as foisting fake reliquaries on a trusting public. He and his lady scoundrel had more in common than either of them had realized.
Her shoulders shook with suppressed sobs. Griffin searched his soul for any sign of the outrage he’d felt before, but he couldn’t find a smidgeon.
He pressed a kiss on the crown of her head. “Is that why you came to my bed last night? So I’d pay to send your father to treatment for his consumption?”
“No.” A real sob escaped her throat. “I thought I was going to Teddy’s bed.”
Griffin whipped her away from his body and held her at arm’s length. “You thought . . .”
Why hadn’t that realization come to him before this? He’d been sleeping in Ted’s bedchamber. Of course, she wouldn’t suspect Griffin had switched rooms with his brother to avoid the events he’d Seen in a vision. She couldn’t have known it was he in the bed instead of Theodore. Once again, he’d tried to cheat fate and only succeeded in helping his vision come to pass.
“So you intended to give yourself to my brother,” he said woodenly.
“Yes.” She pulled away from his grip and found a handkerchief in her pocket with which to dab her reddened nose. “Of the two of you, he’s the only one who offered to marry me. I saw the way Lady Cressida had set her cap for him at Lord Whitmore’s. You told me you wouldn’t cut Teddy off if he married me; I decided I needed to do something to make sure Theodore didn’t change his mind and cry off so he could court Lady Cressida instead.”
“So you thought to settle the issue and make certain of the money for Dr. Farnsworth’s cure in one bold stroke.” Griffin’s voice came out flat and colorless.
A flawless, coldly logical plan. If he hadn’t bedded her and known how passionate she could be, he’d believe her the most heartless person he’d ever met. Her one saving grace was that she seemed to be motivated by the need to help the man she claimed as her father. The realization didn’t make Griffin feel any less gut-punched.
She’d thought she was bedding his brother. God help him if he actually fell in love with her. It would be the cruelest of passions.
“How unfortunate for you that I was in Teddy’s room instead,” he said.
“I told you I owe you the truth and I won’t stop now. The truth is . . . ” She looked up at him, her luminous brown eyes sad and shining at the same time. Her face was taut with suppressed emotion. “I wanted it to be you. Oh, God help me, how I wanted it.”
It had taken most of a fifth of whisky before he could summon the courage to try to avoid his vision. He told himself he’d tried everything to spare his brother pain, but that was a lie. He’d had a choice there in the dark and, foxed or not, half waking or half sleeping, he’d chosen to take her. He’d wanted it to be him, too.
She might be a scoundrel, but he had no stone to throw.
He stepped toward her and she was in his arms again before he could invite her. He bent and kissed her, reveling in the sweetness of her breath, in the way her twisted little soul sent a wave of unexpected freshness through his weary one. It took courage for her to admit to what she’d intended to do and what she’d done.
An honest fraud. She’s a paradox with feet.
But her feet were the last things on his mind, unless he counted how she stood on tiptoe so their mouths could reach each other more easily. He’d never wanted a woman as badly as he wanted this one. When she strained toward him, his desire was honed to razor sharpness.
He cupped her bum and lifted her flush against him. She hooked a leg around his to steady herself as he deepened their kiss.
Her moan into his mouth sent his cock into a granite-hard stand and made his ballocks bunch into a tight mound. His groin clenched when she suckled his tongue. His hands roamed over her body, exploring the tender curves and bends beneath the layers of her clothing. She wrapped her arms around him, her fingertips tracing love spells on his spine.
Griffin kissed his way down her throat, undoing the little seed pearl buttons as he went.
“I wanted it to be you,” she repeated, running a hand over his head. “I pretended it was you.”
Griffin picked her up and set her on the desk. He swiped off the inkstand and crystal paperweight, heedless of the way they shattered on the marble floor. Then he kissed her as she leaned back into a prone position. “When did you know?”
“I didn’t know it was you until you spoke.”
“I was barely thinking at the time.” He slanted a grin at her as he pulled up her skirt. “I don’t remember spea
king.”
“You said, ‘No more pain now.’ ” She cupped his cheek and strained up to kiss him again, her lips soft and pliant under his. “What else don’t you remember, I wonder?”
“Don’t worry. My memories about you are plentiful and vivid.” He smoothed his hands up her thighs, her muscles taut beneath her pantalets. She was as high-strung as a mare in season about to be covered by a stallion.
And Griffin fully intended to cover her.
“You were right, you know,” she said breathlessly as she tipped her head back to expose more of her neck to his nuzzling kisses. Her skin was salty and sweet and she smelled faintly of peaches and the musky tang of arousal. “There wasn’t any more pain at all after that little bit.”
Ironic, since pain was all their joining would bring—to Ted, and to each other.
Griffin shoved the thought aside. For now, he would wallow in this woman, drunk on her scent, lost in her lies, and not caring a whit.
He kissed down to the top of her chemise and corset, frustrated that there was no way to expose her breasts short of disrobing her completely. While the idea had merit, the library in the middle of a rain-soaked afternoon wasn’t the place to indulge in a nude bacchanalia.
But at least there was a way to reach equally delectable parts of her.
God bless the unsung hero who designed pantalets with open crotches, he thought devoutly.
Her hidden valleys were slick and wet with dew, so soft and malleable in his hand. As his fingers slid along her sweet cleft, her jaw went passion-slack and her eyelids fluttered closed.
Griffin basked in reflected pleasure. Her little noises of bliss made his cock throb with heat. He found her most sensitive spot, risen to a hard nub, and tormented it with his thumb and forefinger.
He might not be able to enjoy her bare body at the moment, but he’d see her soul naked or die trying.
CHAPTER 25
I shouldn’t let him do this to me.
Her mouth opened and closed a couple times, but she couldn’t form a coherent word. Emma let her head drop back. It was too heavy to hold upright when all her attention was focused on the heated space between her legs.
She recognized the way her insides coiled. Griffin was sending her to that blissful place again, that inside-out, can’t-give-a-tinker’s-damn-about-anything place that existed in secret inside her own head and heart.
She wondered if she could find her way there without him. No, she decided. She might experience a measure of bliss, but it wouldn’t be the same when she tumbled back to the real world if Griffin wasn’t there to catch her.
How she loved his kisses. His mouth was a world unto itself, all wet and hard and smooth. His shoulders were solid, his arms comforting. And she remembered well the long male length he sported between his legs.
Her insides ached with emptiness. His talented fingers both eased and provoked her. She knew he was going to make it better, but before he did, her need would become much worse.
He kissed her breasts through the layers of her gown and she wished there was nothing separating her skin from his blessed mouth. Her nipples ached, straining against her undergarments for his touch. As tightly drawn as she was, just a suckle or two on a bare nipple would surely set her off like a Roman candle.
His fingers teased her sensitive flesh, drawing circles of torment around the intimate little spot that was the source of so much delight and anguish.
How could something feel so good and so frustrating at the same time?
Then just as her insides wound so snugly Emma didn’t think she had another revolution in her, Griffin dropped to his knees before her. He shoved her gown up so he could look at her.
She resisted the urge to pull her knees together. Modesty over her body seemed ridiculous after she’d bared her secret life to him. Still, she held her breath as he scrutinized that intimate part of her.
“You’re beautiful, Emma,” he said. “In every way.”
He thumbed her little spot and her body tensed for release. Then he leaned toward her so close she felt the heat of his exhalation on the damp curls between her legs.
No, he couldn’t possibly mean to . . . He wouldn’t . . . Oh, mercy! He would.
She’d thought his fingers were talented, but they were nothing compared to the raw delight of his mouth on her. Wet and soft, but with his tongue giving her spot the same lover’s service his thumb had.
She crested quickly and unraveled under his intimate kiss. Her thighs shook, her insides bucked, and she dug her nails into the aged walnut so hard, she was sure she was leaving tiny curved marks in the wood under the lip of the desk.
She tried not to make any noise, but her release flowed out of her in a strangled sob.
If she expected Griffin to give her time to recover, she was mistaken. He stood and undid the buttons over his hips to drop the front of his trousers, then entered her in one quick thrust before her last inner contraction stopped pulsing.
Emma urged him in with murmured endearments, wrapping her legs around his waist and hooking her ankles together at the small of his back. She needed him so. The glory of her climax was one thing. Connecting with this man was quite another. Nothing assuaged the yawning emptiness inside like having him fill her with himself.
He drove into her with no gentleness at all. She kissed his throat in gratitude and he answered her with a feral male growl. She nipped him on the neck and he quickened his pace. Her heart bounded up to the distant ceiling. She couldn’t bear tenderness from him now. Not after what she and Monty had meant to do to him and his family.
This bone-jarring swive was what she deserved.
What her body demanded.
His, too, if his desperate lunges into her were any measure. His scrotum slapped against her with such force, she wondered if he was hurting himself.
Griffin cupped her cheeks and made her meet his gaze as he plunged in and out. No pain showed on his features, only a hungry, intent determination to create another connection with her, something beyond the physical.
He wants to see me, she realized. To know me. Oh God, given what I am, how can he bear that?
But Griffin didn’t look away. He watched her as she came again in joyous spasms and didn’t turn his eyes aside when his own body stiffened and arched before spilling into her.
He wants me to see him. To know him.
She wondered what secrets an earl might have and if he’d be ready to share his truths with her as she’d shared with him. Whatever they might be, she’d accept them. She’d even admitted she thought she was giving herself to his brother, for pity’s sake, and it hadn’t seemed to make a difference.
Spent, Emma let herself settle back onto the desk and Griffin laid his head between her breasts.
“I can feel your heart,” she whispered. It hammered solidly through the layers of clothing that separated them and pounded through the length of him still inside her. She drew a ragged breath.
“And I can hear yours,” he said.
Emma ran her fingers through his hair, reveling in the way their bodies were still connected and wondering how long they’d manage to keep it so. She began to notice her surroundings once again as her body settled—the hard, smooth walnut beneath her, the musky sweet smell of arousal and fulfillment wafting around them.
The storm outside had subsided to a gentle shower. Rain-washed air lifted the drapes to sough into the library. On the ceiling above them, Cupid and Psyche indulged in their chaste kiss.
Emmaline had been so moved by the fresco when she’d first seen it. Love in its first blush was the finest thing she could aspire to. Now it seemed pale by comparison with the force of the passion unleashed on the sturdy desk.
Was the bond between her and Griffin love? She didn’t know. But shared pleasure certainly bound them together.
Why did such pleasure have to start with pain? she wondered absently. Her thoughts darted about like a school of minnows, too quick for her to snatch one up for any length of
time. Then suddenly one leaped into her net and refused to budge.
“No more pain now,” she whispered. Emma struggled to sit up, which was difficult since Griffin still rested his head on her.
He straightened and kissed her forehead as he smoothed her skirts down and fastened his trousers. “I’m glad I didn’t hurt you this time. I was rougher than I intended.”
“Never mind about that,” she said, kissing him back, then pulling away before she allowed herself to be distracted again by his mouth. “You said, ‘No more pain now’ before.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I was three sheets to the wind when I tumbled into Ted’s bed.”
“No. I mean, you said it then, of course. But you also said it in the hansom on the way to Lord Whitmore’s when you had that . . . episode,” she said. “I thought at the time you meant you’d been in pain and weren’t any longer. But now, I wonder if it was something else.” She laid a hand on his cheek, the prickly late afternoon stubble of his beard rough on her palm. “Is there some truth you owe me?”
Griffin inhaled deeply and lifted her down from the desk. He’d known someday he’d probably have to share the secret of his “gift” with someone beyond the confines of his immediate family. He never dreamed he’d unburden himself to a professional trickster.
It was the kind of secret that made blackmailers’ mouths water, especially the bit about the way he occasionally used his abilities to win at gaming tables.
He decided to skip that part as he led her to the settee and settled beside her before the cold fireplace. Trust was earned and while she obviously trusted him, he still wasn’t sure he could return the favor.
So he started with his father’s death and his unwitting part in bringing his own vision to pass. To his great relief, she listened without interruption and seemed to believe every word.