Touch of a Scoundrel (Touch of Seduction 3)

by Mia Marlowe

  Teddy needed to know she could never feel that awful, wonderful emotion for him.

  She didn’t turn at the sound of the latch behind her. It was probably the upstairs maid who’d helped her unpack. She must have forgotten something.

  “I need no further assistance,” Emma said.

  “Then perhaps you can help me.”

  She whirled at the sound of Griffin’s voice and the aching bruise inside her throbbed afresh.

  “You see,” he said, laying a hand on one of the bedposts and leaning against it, “I’ve discovered something rather remarkable and I’m not sure how to tell you about it.”

  There was an unreadable thought sparking behind his eyes, something forbidden and wicked. She decided to erect a barrier of formality between them to keep from launching herself across the room at him.

  “A peer of the realm unsure? I find that difficult to believe, milord.”

  He crossed the room to stand before her.

  “I’ve lost something and I hope you can help me find it.”

  Something inside her wilted. He only wanted her to fetch a misplaced item. Had the man no servants? She gave herself a stern imaginary shaking and answered him with an amazingly even tone. “Of course. What’s gone missing?”

  “I think you know since you have it.”

  All the breath flew out of her lungs in a whoosh and she had to remind herself to inhale. She might be a confidence artist, but she was no thief. Emmaline drew herself up to her full height. “Since I have no idea what you’re talking about, what makes you think I know where it is?”

  “Because you’ve tempted or cajoled or swindled me out of it, somehow. You see, it’s my heart, Emma.”

  She gulped a breath and her palm went to her chest of its own accord. To keep her own heart from leaping out.

  He offered his hand and she stretched out a trembling one to take it. Griffin pulled her close. He cupped her chin and took her lips in a soft, questing kiss.

  “I love you,” he whispered against her temple. “My heart is in your keeping. Now I need to know if you intend to own it or if you’ll throw it back.”

  She pulled away so she could look up at him. “I’ll keep it.”

  She’d be his lover, his mistress, his . . . whatever he wanted her to be. She’d take him however she could have him and worry over the consequences later.

  Emmaline grasped his lapels, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him with a desperation born of frustrated hope. His mouth slanted over hers and the late afternoon stubble of his beard scraped her chin. Her skin rioted in pleasure.

  Their tongues played a darting game of hide and seek. He groaned into her mouth. The riot descended lower on her body to prick her nipples to taut awareness and send tingles to the already moist spot between her legs.

  All impediments to their joining fled from her mind. It was the simplest thing in the world to give herself to this man. She wanted to kiss him for days, to sink into him like a pearl diver and only come up for air when she must. To touch, to tease, to strip off his jacket and work the buttons on his shirt with frantic fingers. She ached to see him in the glorious altogether.

  He must have wished the same thing because he was already unfastening the last in a row of buttons that began at her throat and ended at her waist.

  Then he jerked away from her and held himself at arm’s length. From the stricken look on his face, their joining wasn’t going to be so simple, after all.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “That last button,” he said hoarsely. “It started to send a vision.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Blast and damn, I don’t want my infernal gift to come between us.”

  “Will touching me send you a vision?” she asked, fearing his answer.

  “No. The Sendings only come from things, not people.” His eyes darkened as he gazed at her. “When I touch you, I feel . . . wonderful, normal, as if I never had this bloody curse.”

  “Well, then,” she said as she toed off her slippers and removed her blouse, exposing her corset and chemise. “It appears I shall have to undress myself.”

  Angel woman. Griffin didn’t trust his voice to speak. In the undressing of a lady, there were pleasures aplenty for a man and he was frustrated at being cheated of them. But when she undid the waist of her skirt and bent to pull the voluminous folds over her head, her chemise neckline sagged and he was treated to a glimpse of the sweet valley between her breasts. He decided a man could enjoy watching a woman disrobe almost as much as doing it himself.

  The wire crinoline looked awkward. But her slender arms were graceful, the skin smooth and supple, as she unfastened the hooks and wiggled out of the contraption. She lowered her gaze when she unlaced her corset and removed it. Her nipples showed dark and taut beneath the thin muslin of her chemise. He was riveted by the sight of them.

  “You could be getting undressed, too, you know,” she said.

  Griffin set a speed record for a gentleman shucking off his clothes without benefit of a valet. He was just tugging off his last stocking when her giggle made him look up.

  While he’d glanced away, she’d dispensed with her pantalets, stockings, and chemise. Venus rising from the waves had nothing on his Emma in nothing but her skin. Surprisingly, she made no attempt to hide herself from his gaze, neither her breasts, nor the neat triangle of coppery curls over her sex, but she did cover her mouth with one hand.

  “Something funny?” He stood and his cock did, too. Before his experiences with Emmaline, it had been a while since he’d had a woman, but the ones he’d been with had all assured him he was remarkably well endowed. Certainly none had ever laughed at him.

  “It’s just that you undressed so fast,” she said slyly. “I hope you don’t intend to be fast about other things.”

  “Don’t worry.” He strode to her and they came together in the hot sweetness of skin on skin. “The dressing bell won’t ring for a couple hours. I intend to take my time.”

  He lifted her and carried her to the waiting bed. She draped her arms around his shoulders and pressed wet kisses to his neck. Griffin was treated to a glimpse of her pink slit as they passed a long looking-glass, her heart-shaped bum riding high with her knees hooked over his forearm. When they reached the four poster, she leaned down, tossed back the coverlet and let him lower her to the cool linens.

  He tumbled onto it after her and even though he’d promised to go slow, he couldn’t help the frenzy of kisses he lavished on her. His mouth was at the sweet hollow of her throat. He tugged on each of her breasts, suckling till she moaned. He ran his tongue over her ribs. He buried his face between her legs, rubbing the damp curls over his cheeks and chin before tonguing her to writhing fury. He lost himself in her soft wet valleys and dark cavern.

  He raised himself over her and covered her, wallowing in the glide of skin on skin, the heady fragrance of her arousal, the ragged draw of her breath.

  “Why did you stop?” she whimpered.

  He kissed her so she could taste herself on his tongue, all musk and salt. She was utterly delicious.

  Then he rolled over, taking her with him, so she lay on top of him. “I’m not stopping. We’re simply taking turns.”

  She sat up astride his hips, the wet lips of her sex kissing his cock and making him grind his teeth to keep from finishing before they’d truly begun.

  “So I should do to you what you did to me?” Her breasts rose and fell with each breath and the late afternoon sun made an auburn nimbus of her hair tumbling over her shoulders. He reached up and squeezed a nipple. She sucked in a shuddering breath.

  “You should do whatever you like.” He laced his fingers behind his head, putting himself completely at her mercy. “And nothing you don’t.”

  “I won’t know what I like till I try it, will I?” She arched a brow at him. “Guess I’ll have to try it all.”

  CHAPTER 29

  There was no wrong way to touch a naked man, Emmaline discovered. Feather-light or firm, ope
n palmed or with her nails dragging, Griffin seemed to love everything she did. There were no limits, no place on his body that didn’t welcome the brush of her fingers or her mouth.

  It was as if no one else had ever had sexual congress before. Emma was inventing it as she moved up and down his body, discovering that his third rib on the right side was ticklish, that his brown nipples hardened when she licked them, that dangling her breasts just out of his mouth’s reach would torment him beyond bearing.

  Their previous coupling hadn’t prepared her for the wonder of knowing each other. She expected to feel embarrassed at being naked with Griffin in the fading afternoon light, but there wasn’t a smidgeon of shame in her. She liked the feel of his skin against hers. Liked spreading her legs over his body and grinding herself against him. Liked the way he smelled, all bergamot and sandalwood and male.

  She was pure energy, pure hunger, pure curiosity.

  Emmaline slid down to investigate his most male parts. “Such a study in contrasts,” she murmured as she stroked his length and fondled his scrotum. “The hardest part of you is next to the very softest.”

  “They aren’t always soft,” he said. As if to prove his point, his testicles drew up into a taut bunch.

  “Magical,” she said. “There’s no place on me that changes shape like that. Or grows like this.” She leaned down to press a shy kiss on the smooth hot skin of his penis. A tiny pearl of moisture formed at the head.

  “Yes, there is,” he said, reaching between her legs to stroke her. She bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out in pure joy. “Just there. Feel the swell. It’s a smaller change than mine, I grant you, but I love it. I love that you change there for me.”

  Her insides spiraled, turning back on themselves in convoluted twists to rival the Gordian knot. That place, that blessed place where she ceased to exist in her body and was nothing but light and heat and pulsing limbs, was rushing toward her again.

  Was there a way for her and Griffin to go there at the same time? With effort, she moved away from his talented fingers. Then she leaned down to rub against him, his hard length fitting snugly between her breasts.

  His body arced and he fisted the sheets.

  So the unflappable earl can be surprised. Now to see if I can totally unravel him.

  She bent and took him into her mouth.

  He froze.

  She swirled her tongue around the head and he made a sound indistinguishable from a growl. She took the rough bit of skin near the head between her lips and sucked.

  “Are you trying to kill me, woman?” he said through clenched teeth.

  She sat up. “Don’t you like it?”

  “I may never let you stop.” He sat up and cupped her cheeks. His chest heaved. “My self-control is hanging by a thread. I don’t want to scare you.”

  “Normally . . . I . . . admire . . . self-control,” she said, kissing him between each word to give them emphasis, “but I would count it a favor if you’d chuck yours out the window right now.”

  “At your word.”

  To her surprise, he flipped her over on her stomach, lifted her bum in the air, and slid into her aching channel in one sudden thrust.

  Emma’s mouth gaped like a sunfish on the riverbank. Her cheek pressed against the linens. Griffin held himself motionless and she felt the throb of life flowing through his penis.

  It was different holding him inside her from this angle. Deeper. More invasive.

  That was it.

  She’d been invaded. Conquered. Vanquished.

  He withdrew and thrust into her again. Her insides tightened, pleasure sharp as a blade making her press back against him.

  “If I hurt you, tell me. I’ll stop if you say so,” he said, his tone passion-rough. “But not for anything else.”

  Emma was dazed. A tear squeezed from her eye but he wasn’t hurting her. It was from joy. She would trust this man with her body, with her life. She loved him. She would join with Griffin; let all the world slide by. She could do nothing else.

  “Don’t stop.”

  Friction is a drug, she decided a few moments later. A hot, wet, illicit drug.

  She and Griffin slammed against each other with jarring force. She neared the special place again. In another few moments, her body would pump like a butter churn. Her mind would drift away to a state of complete lostness that meant she’d been found.

  She was ready to go there. Almost there. Only a little more and . . . Griffin suddenly pulled out of her.

  She made a bereft little noise as they rolled together in a tangle of arms and legs.

  He was on her again in a heartbeat, but moving with slow purpose this time.

  “Not until I say, Emma,” he whispered. “Then you’ll come with me.”

  “Oh, yes.” She wrapped her arms and legs around him, and tried mightily not to hurtle toward that place without him. Each long stroke sent her closer to the edge. Holding back was an impossible task. “Griffin . . . I’m . . . I can’t—”

  “Now, love.”

  They crested together in an alternating rhythm, she contracting around him, he pulsing inside her, holding himself motionless, thrust as far in as he could.

  When it was over, he relaxed onto her, careful not to crush her under his weight by supporting himself with his forearms. He kissed her softly and then laid his head beside hers on the same pillow. As Emma remembered to start breathing again and settled back into the usual expansion and contraction of her chest, she realized what she’d been given was nothing less than a blessing.

  She deserved prison for her crimes. She deserved to be shunned by society for the way she’d misled Theodore. Instead, she’d found love.

  Emma turned her head and kissed his cheek. “Griffin Nash,” she whispered. “I’ll love you till I die.”

  “Careful. That’ll be a long time,” he said with a lazy grin.

  She stroked his hair. “Do you know that for certain? Have you seen a vision about it?”

  “No, just hopeful. You’ll grant there are certain things about the future no one should know,” he admitted, raising himself up and searching her face. “In any case, my visions come with a limited time for fulfillment. Twelve hours is the furthest extent of my reach.”

  She knew he didn’t like that part of himself, but she loved all of him. She was determined to love this about him, too. “You started to have a vision earlier when you touched a button on my blouse. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “I released the confounded thing as soon as it started to Send.” He slid out of her and rolled onto his side, splaying a possessive hand over her belly. “I saw a flash image, nothing more.”

  What on earth could a button have to say to him? “What did you See?”

  “If you must know, I saw Theodore and me. We were in a small clearing ringed with trees. Morning fog swirled about our knees.”

  “What do you suppose it means?”

  “I don’t know. I was trying to undress you at the time and I didn’t want to think about my brother, much less see a vision about him.” He flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “But we have to think about him now.”

  “Before you came to me, I’d already decided to tell Theodore I was declining his suit tonight,” Emma said with a sigh. She wished they’d been able to savor the sweetness of their joining a bit longer before the world came crashing back on them. “I’ll be as gentle as I can. We started as friends. I’ll try to see we end as such. And of course, I will not tell him about us.”

  “He’ll have to know, sooner or later.” Griffin pulled her close to his side and tipped her chin up so she had to face him. “I don’t intend to lose you now.”

  Her heart warmed to his words. “We’ll have to be discreet for a while to give Theodore a chance to heal. Monty and I haven’t any money to speak of. Perhaps”— she hesitated to ask, but she had no other option—“you could set us up in a quiet little place nearby.”

  “So I can court you properly with
out rubbing Theodore’s nose in it.” He nodded. “Yes, that’ll do.”

  “Court me?”

  One side of his mouth lifted in a smile. “I love you, Emma. What did you think would happen?”

  “You didn’t think I was a decent match for Teddy. Remember? I believe your exact words were ‘the brother of an earl and the daughter of a scholar are fundamentally ill-suited. ’”

  “Lord, I can be a pompous ass sometimes.”

  “Yes, you can, but I love you in any case,” she said as she teased the dark hair that whorled around his brown nipple. “Especially since in this case, you’re probably right. Your Polite Society won’t accept a match that bridges such a wide gap. Given the difference in our status, I assumed I’d become your mistress.”

  He covered her hand with his. “You assumed wrongly. I intend to make you my countess, and to hell with what Polite Society thinks.”

  His words stole the breath from her body. To be his before the world. Of course, there’d be endless tongue wagging, but eventually, they’d be accepted. Monty had told her once that titled lords could get away with anything short of multiple murders. The thought of marrying Griffin made her feel a bit like Cinderella.

  And surely an earl could afford to send his father-in-law to a sanatorium, whether it was in the Alps or the Andes or Timbuktu!

  “You may live to regret this,” she said.

  “A wise woman once told me regret is a waste of time.” He rolled her over and covered her body with his penis hard against her belly again. “Especially when there are far better ways to waste it.”

  Kingsley wandered the labyrinth of the Tudor wing searching for the blasted library. He’d been to Devonwood Park a number of times before, but this section always bumfuzzled him. The way the rooms wandered into each other with few proper corridors between made no sense to his mind. For tuppence, he’d abandon the search and retire to his chamber till the dressing bell rang, but he itched to finally see Tetisheri with his own eyes.