He was going to kiss her. She knew it and wanted it. Desired his mouth on hers beyond anything. Lily tightened her hands on his lapels. His head came nearer to hers, and she made sure to meet him. She closed her eyes in anticipation. But there was no brush of his lips against her, and she looked at him through her lashes.
One of his hands cupped the nape of her neck. So warm. His thumb slid toward her jaw. “Horrible man,” she whispered.
His hand moved along her jaw, and then his thumb brushed the line of her lower lip. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. You’re horrible.” She rolled her eyes. “I shan’t fall in love with you, your grace.”
“I don’t expect you will,” the duke said in a soft voice.
She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Her heart had died with Greer. “You won’t fall in love with me, either.”
“No.” He laughed. “Given our mutual defects in respect of our hearts, tell me, what would you like to happen between us?”
“I’ve been thinking about that these ten minutes at least.”
His arm tightened around her. “Something shocking?”
She leaned closer. “You don’t strike me as a man easily shocked.”
He laughed, low and throaty. “I swoon, Wellstone.” He continued touching her face, but his other hand now rested on her waist, very near her hip. “But I shall endeavor to bear up.”
“I want you to make love to me.”
There. She’d put words to the feelings building in her.
His hand had moved up to cover the side of her face and then angled down until his first three fingers were underneath her chin. His eyes stayed locked with hers. “You relieve my mind.”
“Indeed?”
“I’d begun to think I’d put on this banyan for nothing.”
“You wore this for me?”
A grin pulled at his mouth. “You are welcome to see the matter in that light, yes.”
“Oh, you are horrible.” She tugged on his lapels. “I wish you weren’t so tall,” she said. “I thought I liked that about you, but I don’t. Not in the least.”
“Is this better?” He lowered his head to hers.
At last.
At last his mouth brushed hers.
Lily opened her mouth and kissed him, and he made a sound in the back of his throat and kissed her back. Before she was quite ready for the contact to end, she pushed him back. “Aren’t you worried we’ll end badly?”
“Yes.” He pulled her closer. “But right now I don’t give a farthing for that.”
She didn’t either.
Chapter Eleven
AS A LOVER—POTENTIAL LOVER—LILY WAS UNFA-miliar to him and he was, quite honestly, overcome with sensation. The entire time he was sticking his tongue down her throat and sliding his hands over all the parts of a lady a gentleman never touched, he understood he was crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed. The knowledge aroused him even more.
Her skin was warm and her mouth hot beneath his, the shape of her body against his undeniably feminine. She tasted good and smelled even better, violets again, sweet and delicate.
No, at the moment, he didn’t give a damn that he shouldn’t be doing this. He wanted her, and he meant to have her.
She kissed him just as hungrily as he kissed her, and when both his hands cupped her arse, she tightened her arms around him and pressed harder against him, as if she couldn’t get enough either.
He entertained thoughts of laying her on the table, throwing up her skirts, and getting himself between her legs. Would she object? Would she let him take her right here? Now? With just this desperate kissing and touching before they got there?
Then she moved back a step, not far because she was still kissing him like the angel she resembled. Heavenly. She removed a hand from his shoulders, and he prepared himself for an end to whatever was going on between them. Only he didn’t want to stop kissing her yet. Not yet.
Her hand slipped between them, inside his banyan that she so admired and then along the fall of his trousers. Her fingers, damn the woman, slid very deliberately over the top of his cock, tracing the shape, and it just couldn’t be his good fortune that she was touching him there. Like that.
Miss Lily Wellstone couldn’t possibly be a virgin.
Neither was he.
Wasn’t that a happy coincidence?
Indeed, yes.
Her fingers curved around his cock, pressing gently, stroking up, then down, and he could feel his eyes crossing behind his closed lids. When a woman caressed a man’s prick like that, surely she was at least thinking about fucking him. Please, God, let her want to fuck him here and now. He took her head between his hands and tilted her face toward his to get a better angle on her mouth. There wasn’t anything refined about the way he was kissing her. Or she him.
She unfastened one of the buttons at the fall of his trousers and then another, and the whole time she did that, part of him was thinking he really shouldn’t let his happen, not with his sister’s friend, but more of him was thinking he’d come to the library for reasons that weren’t pure and he was lucky, lucky, lucky for that. Then all such thoughts faded to nothing because now he thought if she stopped he’d go out of his mind.
Mountjoy sucked in a breath when her bare fingers touched his belly and then, God help him, curled around his member. He nipped at her mouth, but his concentration was on what was going on with his prick and her hand. Little else existed. At some point he became aware she was pushing him back, toward the table, and he went along with that, kissing her the entire time.
Out of control. Beyond wicked. Bloody arousing.
He ended up sitting on the reading table with her standing between his spread thighs. She drew her head back from his and looked at the disarray of his trousers. His eyes fixed on the tops of her breasts, and Lord, he wanted to see her body laid bare to his every desire. At the moment, he was perfectly willing to let her take the lead because, damnation, she was good with her hands.
Angelic, oh so innocent, delicate, and fragile Miss Lily Wellstone unfastened enough of his trouser buttons to expose his cock, and he did nothing to discourage her. In fact, he spread his thighs wider.
“My, your grace,” she said in a gratifyingly breathless voice while she put her hand on him. Around him. He threw back his head and concentrated on what she was doing to him. “How beautiful you are.”
Eyes on her face for now, he put a palm on the table and let that arm take his weight while he leaned back to give her better access. Though he had, of course, been complimented any number of times, he could not recall any past lover specifically calling his prick beautiful. If one had, then she hadn’t sounded half as earnest as Miss Wellstone. No one could mistake the look on her face for anything but heartfelt sincerity.
“I adore a man’s body,” she said in that same breathless and admiring voice. Sultry, that was what she looked like and sounded like. Reverent, even, and it made him even harder, even more aroused. Her fingers swept down and caressed his balls before sliding back up his shaft. “But you, your grace, you are simply magnificent.” Lord, but he loved the glitter in her eyes. “Do you find that too wicked of me?”
Once he realized she wasn’t asking him a rhetorical question, he said, “Very wicked, Wellstone. Pray continue.” And she did. God, yes, she did. The first shivers of incipient orgasm built, promising him bliss. He cupped his other hand around her elbow.
He tightened his fingers on her arm, and then around her hand so she’d know what he needed from her. She caught on, and he released her hand to grip the back of her neck. He wanted to kiss her, but he was incapable of anything but pushing his cock harder into her palm. “Jesus.”
“There’s no need to take the Lord’s name in vain,” she said. Her fingertips touched his sac. “Lily will suffice.”
“Lily.” His breath hitched in his chest, caught there as he began to peak. “Finish me.”
She leaned in, her hand gripping him, sliding up and then down his s
haft from the base of him to the crown. He rocked his hips into her hand, and when he was teetering at the edge of spending, with him not giving a damn about the mess or anything but getting to his release, she came in close enough to kiss his throat, just by his jaw.
His hand, still on her nape, gripped her hard, and as his eyes fluttered closed, she said, “I don’t want to ruin that lovely waistcoat of yours, your grace. You’re going to have to stand up.”
He tried to focus on her, but his brain was incapable of thinking of much besides impending orgasm. Fortunately, she took him in hand. Because he was already there, in a manner of speaking. He stood, not really understanding what she wanted from him. “I don’t give a damn about the waistcoat,” he said.
“But I do.” And then she went down on her knees and the next thing he knew her mouth was around him, and her tongue was licking the head of his cock, then his shaft and, hell, just hell, he was deep in her mouth, and he buried his fingers in her hair and held her head. He didn’t need but a few strokes of her tongue along his length before his crisis was on him.
Too fast. He was going to come too fast and not have the time to savor her mouth. God. “Lily.”
One of her hands spread over his belly. The other stayed around his cock. Jesus. Jesus, Jesus. Her fingers curled over the waistband of his breeches, just by the fastening of his braces, and he came. Lord, he came hard, his cock pulsed and he thrust forward and cried out, some incoherent sound, and he had never in his life had a mistress who made him believe without question that she loved having him in her mouth, but he believed it of Lily.
When he had the presence of mind to let go of her head, and he’d withdrawn from her, he slid his fingers beneath her chin and tilted her head so that he could look into her eyes. Her hand remained around him. And then, very daintily, she leaned forward and kissed his prick and proceeded to put his clothes to rights. He let her because he liked seeing her on her knees. Because apparently he was a base rogue without any tender feelings toward a woman, a lady, who was a guest in his house, whom he’d just debauched. And hoped to further debauch in as short a time as possible.
He did, however, extend a hand to help her up when she was done. Except just as she was putting her hand in his to rise, the sound of someone walking down the corridor, humming something out of tune, froze them both before she was on her feet.
Whoever it was came into the library.
“Oh,” said a woman. The word itself was a squeak of alarm.
Mountjoy lifted a hand to Lily, signaling her to stay where she was. The table was between them and the door, and his banyan was open. Chances were good Lily would not be seen if she stayed where she was. His eyes met hers. So dark and beguiling. Hers were wide open, but she crouched down more, making sure her head was not in sight. He turned enough to see the door and the maid who had stopped several steps into the room. She clutched a bucket in one hand.
“You may tend to the fire here later,” he said as easily as he could under the circumstances. The girl curtseyed. From the look on her face she was frightened half to death.
“Your grace,” she said, hardly audible.
“Thank you. Stay there,” he said to Lily in a soft voice when the servant had gone.
Mountjoy adjusted his trousers then walked to the library door and closed it. He did not think the maid had seen Lily. The girl hadn’t looked scandalized, only shocked to have come across her employer. But what if she had? He didn’t care to think of making a spectacle of himself in front of the servants, and even less about publically compromising Lily. Privately, of course, the deed was done.
When he faced the table, Lily was standing up, and she looked…stunningly pretty. Her hair was disheveled, but in a way that made him think about her mouth on him again. Or him covering her while he fucked them both out of their minds. He wasn’t engaged yet, he told himself. He’d made no promises to anyone yet, not to Jane and not to her father.
Her eyebrows drew together. “That was…more excitement than even I had anticipated.” She cleared her throat. “Perhaps I ought to retire, your grace.”
He nodded, but didn’t move when she walked toward the door. He caught her arm as she passed. He had no idea, none at all, what this meant to her. An interlude she’d sooner forget or one she wanted again?
“Yes?” she said coolly.
“Lily.”
“Lily,” she said with a frown.
“Am I not permitted to call you Lily?”
“You may, certainly. When we are private. But isn’t it odd that I prefer when you call me Wellstone?”
“It’s what I call you in my dreams.”
“How odd.” She tilted her head. “It’s what you call me in mine.”
He drew her close and kissed her again. Just once. But it was a kiss that curled his toes. And she did respond to him. He drew away, not much because she looped an arm around his neck and then her hand slid into his hair. “Thank you.”
“Lovely, lovely man.” She pulled away. “We must do that again.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good night, your grace. Or, rather, good morning.”
“Sweet dreams. Wellstone.”
He watched her all the way out the door and wondered how his dreams would change now that he knew for certain what her mouth was like.
Chapter Twelve
MOUNTJOY HAD NEVER BEEN MORE VISCERALLY AWARE of a woman than he was of Lily Wellstone at this moment. This morning he’d awakened having dreamed even more scandalous things about her than he’d yet done so far. Shocking dreams that had him satisfying his lust on his own.
He hadn’t explicitly intended to see her so soon. This morning, he could have left the house as he did most days. He hadn’t. Even before Eugenia had asked him to drive her and Miss Wellstone into town, with Miss Wellstone standing quietly to one side watching him as if she expected to be disappointed, he’d known he would agree.
Of course he was going to agree. She wasn’t going to be here much longer, after all, and it would be a shame if they did not explore more of what had happened between them in the library while they could.
Besides, Lily believed he neglected his sister, which he did not do any more than could be helped given the demands on his time; and in the time remaining for her stay, he intended to prove to her that he didn’t. He also wanted Lily’s company, and that meant that the words I would be delighted, Eugenia had actually passed his lips despite a long list of appointments and tasks he had before him.
Even though he wasn’t delighted. At all. He’d said so anyway. He could ill afford the time away from the management of his estate. His state of anxious desire was nigh onto intolerable and all he wanted was to have Lily in his arms again. To be in her arms again.
“Eugenia,” he said when the two women came downstairs. “I don’t recognize you. I surely do not.” He bowed. “I’d forgotten what you look like in colors.”
Lily speared him with a meaningful gaze. “She’s lovely, don’t you agree, your grace?”
“Yes, Miss Wellstone. She is.” It was true. His sister was transformed. “That shade of green looks very well on you, Eugenia.”
“You see, Ginny? I told you so.”
He helped the two into the carriage and frowned as it occurred to him, now that he was actually looking at Eugenia, that his sister was only a year or two older than Jane. How odd that he’d come to think of her as a matron of no particular interest to men, when she surely would be. Surely must be. It did not speak well of him that he’d allowed that conviction to creep into his mind and stay there.
Was there some truth to Lily’s accusation that he overlooked or even neglected Eugenia?
When they reached High Tearing, Lily walked at his side, her hand on his arm, as cool and collected as if last night’s encounter had never happened while he could scarcely think of anything but that. He told himself that one encounter between them could be blamed on the lateness of the night, or on his poor judgment, or his moral weakne
ss. He could not, however, say he hadn’t seduced her, because, in point of fact, he had. He’d done nothing to avoid their meeting or what happened afterward and a great deal to bring it about. All of it.
Her visit to Bitterward would soon be over, but as long as she was here and there was this heat between them, why not indulge? Why not? While they walked, his mind was occupied with all the ways he might get his sister’s friend on her knees again. And then on her back with him driving into her. Lord, he hoped she wanted more of what had happened between them because it would be a crime against nature to leave that passion unexplored.
How soon? became a drumbeat in his head. How soon could he get her alone? Eugenia waved and the motion jostled him out of his thoughts. Thank God.
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