Nicholas let out a groan, his eyebrows knitting together as he rolled to his back, covers tangling around his legs, and threw one arm over his eyes. Jane frowned. Now there was even more of this man to see, and it was clear from the bare hip that peeked out from a gap in the sheets that he wasn’t wearing anything under those tangled bedclothes.
She had two options. To run away and let him wake on his own time. Or to do her duty and forget that he made her lose her breath whenever she was near him.
She straightened her spine and came closer to the bed. Drawing in a breath to steady herself and readying for his grumpy response, she leaned down to give his shoulder a shake.
The instant her hand touched his skin, Nicholas was moving. Jane didn’t have a moment to respond before he caught her wrist in a viselike grip and tugged. She found herself falling over him as he rolled and yanked at the same time.
She hit the mattress hard, but before she had time to say or do anything, Nicholas’s heavy, hard body moved over her, pinning her arms at her sides and keeping her from moving any more than a slight squirm. She gasped as she felt the heavy length of his erection pressing against her belly.
He stared down at her, face a frightening mask of anger and power, but then recognition seemed to dawn. Jane realized, with a start, that he hadn’t even been awake when he moved so forcefully. His thrusting her into her current position was all done on instinct. A protection.
“Jane?” he said, his face softening a little, though there was still enough anger there to make her shiver. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She stared up at him. God, he was so close and so beautiful. She wanted nothing more than to lean up and kiss him. The press of his body didn’t hurt her or frighten her, it only continued that excitement she had felt when she looked at him as he lay sleeping.
“Jane!” he snapped.
She shook away her reactions and began to struggle. “Let me up,” she whispered, but the sound of her plea wasn’t believable even to her own ears.
“Do you know I could have killed you before I even recognized who you were?” he asked, his anger still bubbling at the surface. “What were you thinking, coming into a man’s chamber?”
Jane’s body was completely out of her control now. With their chests molded so tightly together, Jane could feel her nipples swelling, and between her legs a shocking, heated wetness had begun. It was madness.
“My lord,” she panted, squirming harder against him, but still unable to free even an arm from beneath his hard and heavy weight. “Please let me up.”
“You must know how foolhardy it was—” he continued, seemingly unaware of her distress and arousal.
“Nicholas!” she finally cried, her voice cracking.
That stopped him. He stared down at her for a long moment, finally truly taking in their positions. He adjusted himself against her, allowing her arms to be free, but he didn’t move off her. She dragged her hands to his chest and pushed, but he was as unmovable as granite.
Through now heavy lids and eyes dilated with what she recognized was desire, he watched her.
“But you did know better, didn’t you?” he asked, his voice silky and seductive. “My servants must have told you I was abed. I might not be an expert in the actions of a gentleman, but I am willing to wager most would not see it as ladylike for you to come up here alone”—he cast a glance over his shoulder—“and with the door shut behind you so we would have no interruptions.”
“Please,” she whispered, hating that he was exposing her every desire.
She had tried to convince herself of a dozen “good” reasons to come into this room, but he was right. She had ached for this moment without fully recognizing it.
But he would not be stopped. “What did you want when you came here? Do you even know?”
She turned her face away from his, but he was so close to her now that there was no escaping him, or his pointed questions. He was stripping her bare, her raw emotions and uncharted needs out for him to see. And for her to finally admit.
Despite what she had said about their differing classes yesterday…or maybe because of what she had said…there was still a part of her that longed for the emotions he had roused when he kissed her. When they touched, she forgot every other painful thing in her life and only focused on him. It was selfish, but she craved it nonetheless.
She blushed. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your apologies,” he said softly, his breath stirring her skin and lighting her on fire even as she fought to break free of his spell. “I want you to tell me why you came up to my room.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to regain control. To remember herself.
“To talk to you,” she choked out. “I’m only here to make you a gentleman. That’s the only reason.”
The lie didn’t sound believable in any way. And when Nicholas responded by arching his body into hers, letting the harsh ridge of his erection press into the soft flesh of her belly even further, she moaned.
“This is not gentlemanly,” he whispered.
She opened her eyes, shaking her head with effort. “No.”
He smiled. “So how should a gentleman touch a lady if not like this? This could be a very important lesson for me.”
Jane gasped for air. She had to get away from this situation immediately because in a few moments she wasn’t going to be in control of her body anymore. She was going to beg for things she didn’t fully understand.
“A gentleman would…he would remember he was with a lady,” she gasped, trying to press him away, but not quite able. “He would think of her and—”
He cut her off by leaning down to nuzzle his lips against her neck, and any thoughts and words Jane had left faded as she moaned again.
“Quite right.” His tongue darted out to flick along her suddenly sensitive skin. “He would think of her, wouldn’t he? This is an easy lesson, then.”
Jane arched, helpless, all her protests gone. She didn’t care anymore if she broke that code that a lady should not allow a gentleman to take liberties. She wasn’t a lady anymore. And she wanted this man, she craved his touch with a desperation that terrified and thrilled her at once.
And she knew, in that wicked moment, that she was going to let him do anything.
Chapter 12
Jane’s hips lifted, rubbing against Nicholas’s as his mouth dipped lower to the rounded neck of her plain gown. Shivers and sighs escaped her, ones she couldn’t control and no longer tried to do so.
“You are sweet, Jane Fenton,” he whispered as his hand drifted down and cupped one breast.
Her eyes fluttered shut at that intimate, shocking touch. It was abundantly clear that she had been asleep before this moment, before this man. And now, just as she had tried to awaken him moments before, she was being awakened, but from a very different kind of slumber.
He massaged her breast, infinitely gentle despite his big, rough hands. His thumb strummed across her now distended nipple, rasping the thin fabric of her gown across the sensitive peak with a rhythm she feared would drive her mad.
And all the time he watched her, looking down at her through hooded lids as she arched and moaned with pleasure at each new sensation. Under any other circumstance, she would have been embarrassed to have such intimate reactions observed, but she was too far gone with desire to consider that now.
All she could think about was the stunning, tingling pleasure that eased its way through her aching body as he touched her. No wonder women threw away everything, wrecked themselves, for this. It was too powerful to deny.
His hand drifted lower now, skimming over her belly and then resting on her hip as his mouth followed the path. Through her gown, she felt the humid heat of his breath against her nipple, and she cried out, wishing her skin was bare like his. Knowing instinctively that the pleasure would be magnified if nothing stood between them.
But he didn’t seem to be interested in removing her gown. Instead, he cau
ght the hem with one roving hand and pushed it up, lifting it higher and higher until it was bunched around her hips. He found the slit in her drawers and then his hand was inside, and this time there was the touch of bare skin on skin.
Jane bit back a cry when his palm rested against her thigh. Rough fingers smoothed up the hot skin there, questing, reaching until they found the juncture where her legs met. She found them parting in some ancient give-and-take.
And then he touched her. Intimately. His large palm cupped her sex. She turned her head away, blushing at the wetness he found there, burning with desire for more and hating that she didn’t know what more meant.
Until he gave it to her. His fingers spread her folds, opening her hot flesh so he could stroke across the entrance to her body. When he touched her, his eyes shut and he seemed to be as lost in this moment as she was. As caught up in the pleasure, though certainly he had done this before. Many times.
She put that thought out of her head as she arched helplessly, her body begging for what her mind did not yet fully comprehend. And then one of his thick fingers slipped inside her.
She gasped at the fullness, the unexpected and pleasurable invasion of his body in hers. He held still, staring down at her. Waiting, it seemed, though Jane felt she would burst if one more second passed without something happening.
Without breaking the intensity of their stare, Nicholas began to move his fingers within her, curling the digits, thrusting in and out of her questing body. To her shock, Jane found herself arching with each thrust, her reactions as natural to her as breathing.
As heavy and full and magnificent as Nicholas’s touch had been before, now the pleasure he brought was wildly out of control. She rode out every wave and tensed with delicious anxiety as she reached for the next one.
Just when she thought the pleasure could get no more intense, no more powerful, Nicholas stroked his thumb across a bundle of nerves hidden within her folds and Jane found herself falling. Falling over an edge she hadn’t seen coming, falling into the warmth and power of a pleasure more intense than any in her life.
She cried out despite her attempts to bite back the sound, and her hips thrust wildly. But Nicholas did not slow in his ministrations, continuing to urge her, drive her through wave after wave until she collapsed back against his pillows, utterly weak and spent with pleasure.
Gently, he withdrew his fingers from her still clenching body and carefully smoothed her gown back over her legs. He still half covered her, and Jane felt a powerful urge to wrap her arms around him and hold him against her. To cling to this moment between them, even though what had just transpired was exactly the opposite of every lesson she had been teaching.
And yet it didn’t matter. Jane had spent the last year regretting any moment of pleasure she experienced. But she refused to regret this. It could very well be the only taste of passion she ever had. And there was no better teacher for her than her own wayward student.
Nicholas reached down and brushed a few stray locks of hair away from her face. He stared at her intently, and for the first time Jane felt the true ramifications of what they had done. She hadn’t exactly been ruined, but this was the kind of thing that led to forced marriages and duels at dawn.
Nicholas leaned in close, yet didn’t kiss her, as she ached for him to do. His breath brushed sweet against her skin, and Jane was shocked that the desire he had awakened and then quenched rushed back in full force.
“Oh, sweetling,” he all but purred. “I fear you and I are going to be involved in a battle of temptation for as long as we are near each other. The only question is if you will succeed in corrupting me…or if I will corrupt you.”
Jane shut her eyes at his statement. It was not said cruelly, of that she was certain, but there was a harsh truth to it. Every time she surrendered to Nicholas, each time they shared a stolen moment like this one, it was a risk to her. Corruption to a woman of her station meant shunning, loss of reputation and employment, perhaps even a life on the street.
And Nicholas would suffer, too. The more conservative mamas would steer their innocent daughters away from him for fear of his seduction. His choices on the marriage mart would be severely limited by such an action.
Reluctantly, she pressed her hands to his chest and shoved gently. “Please let me up.”
This time he did as she asked, rolling over on his back. She got to her feet and smoothed her wrinkled skirt as she turned to him. With a start, Jane realized the blankets had fallen away from his body when he moved, and now he was utterly naked. She blushed, but couldn’t keep herself from staring.
His hips and legs were as muscular and well-formed as the rest of his fine body. But they were of less interest to her than the harsh thrust of the erection she had felt pressed to her belly a short time ago.
Jane had never seen a naked man before, and it was a shocking sight. He seemed so big, so hard and so…so…male.
When he didn’t make any movement to cover himself, she turned her head. But that didn’t change her shameful urge to move closer, to stare, even to touch him as intimately as he had touched her.
Trying to ignore all those confusing desires, she said, “I came here today, so much earlier than normal, because Lady Ridgefield was—”
She broke off, recalling that it was Nicholas’s own mother who had helped arranged for this day together. What that lady would think if she knew how Jane had started it…well, it was too much to consider.
“Lady Ridgefield gave me a day off while she went to visit a friend,” she finally finished, avoiding the direct lie. “I hoped that you and I could share a luncheon to discuss table etiquette and perhaps review some of our earlier lessons. I would also like to see any clothing you ordered from the tailor.”
“Is that all?” Nicholas asked, his lazy posture and drawl taunting her. He was shameless, never once moving to cover himself.
She nodded and kept her stare away from him. “If you would ready yourself and join me downstairs, I would…I would appreciate it.”
He sat up a little, and she couldn’t help but look at him from the corner of her eye. Lord above, he was temptation and sin embodied, just as she’d thought the first night she saw him.
“Your wish is my command,” he said.
Her hands shaking, Jane turned away and staggered downstairs to wait. And try to forget what his touch had awoken in her. And how much she wished she could have more.
As soon as Jane closed the door behind her, Nicholas flopped back on the bed and covered his eyes with his forearm.
“Fuck,” he muttered, though the salty curse didn’t manage to sum up his feelings on what had just happened.
He hadn’t meant to take the encounter so far. That was the root of the problem. He had been angry with her after what he felt was her dismissal the day before. And that anger had grown when he woke to find her pinned and struggling beneath him.
Great God, he could have killed her out of pure instinct before he was fully awake! That had shaken him. To be honest, it still shook him.
His touch was meant to be punishment. A way to prove to her that when it came to desire, she couldn’t deny that he held sway over her. That he was the master and she the student.
And then she had moaned. She had been so wet. She had been so sweet. And he hadn’t been able to stop himself until he felt her sheath flutter with an orgasm.
Worse, he had been less than a minute away from burying himself to the hilt in her wet, willing body and ruining her entirely. Only a tiny part of him that was beginning to remember what it meant to be a gentleman had stopped him.
And now he was lying in his rapidly cooling bed, his cock as hard as granite, and Jane was downstairs waiting to torment him. In more ways than one, for he knew every time he looked at her, for as long as they continued this arrangement, he would always see the look of pure rapture on her face when pleasure washed over her.
That was a moment he would never forget.
He slipped his hand
down, squeezing his eyes shut as he recalled, in perfect detail, every moment with Jane. He caught his cock in one hand and began to stroke as he pictured her trembling body. Heard her cries.
And imagined what it would have been like to finish what he started. Her body had been so tight around his fingers, around his cock it would be like a wet, hot vise. He bucked against his palm as he thought of spreading her wide, slowly breaching her inch by inch, her nails digging into his back, her moans and gasps encouraging him.
He wanted to take her. Claim her. Own her in a way no other man ever had or ever would. To take her so slowly that she begged for more. To claim her so fast that she whimpered with weak pleasure when it was over.
Suddenly his cock erupted, and Nicholas let out a low, harsh groan of relief. Wiping his hand on the bedclothes, he settled back against the pillows.
Pleasuring himself was only a temporary relief. He had to get dressed, go downstairs, and face the woman who had begun to take center stage in every fantasy he wove. Now that he knew the feel of her body, it was only going to get worse.
Chapter 13
When Nicholas opened the door to the parlor across from the dining room, he was almost surprised to see Jane pacing the floor. Although she had said she would wait while he readied himself, and Gladwell had informed him she was, indeed, inside, he had still had doubts. There were very few women of her rank who would be able to face a man they had just surrendered to so fully.
But Jane stopped her restless movements as he entered and smiled at him as if nothing had transpired at all. Except, as he closed the door behind him and moved a step closer, he saw a flicker of desire and wariness still in her eyes.
Which gave him a bit more pleasure than it should have.
He cleared his throat. For his own sanity, he needed to regain a little distance. A little control.
“Last night I went to the underground,” he said with no preamble.
Jane’s expression changed instantly. The desire faded away, and wariness became a fear of a deeper sort. Her spine straightened with anxiety and anticipation.
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