Heat coursed through her, out to her fingertips as she slipped her hands beneath his coat and shoved it from his shoulders. It coursed down her spine, too, as he slid his hands around her waist and drew her close against him.
“Robert,” she murmured, her voice breathless and throaty and sounding like a stranger’s to her own ears. She sounded like a wanton—but as he slipped her shift from her shoulder, placing kisses down her throat and along her bare skin, she felt wanton. Wanton and wild and on fire. Peace and simplicity could wait until tomorrow.
Lucinda pulled his shirt from his trousers and ran her hands up under it, along his flat abdomen and hard chest. Muscles jumped at her touch. His hands covered hers, drawing her seeking fingers away from him and up over her head again.
As he kissed her mouth and throat he gathered her shift in his fists, slowly raising the hem to her calves, to her knees, past her hips, and on upward. The thin cotton whispered against her skin, and the cool breeze ruffling through the closed curtains felt like more hands on her body. Robert lifted the material further, gathering it in his fingers as he went, slowly and steadily uncovering her waist, her breasts, her shoulders, and drawing it over her head and arms to cast it aside.
For a long moment he didn’t touch her. Hands so close to her skin that she could feel their heat, his palms coursed along her curves, down her back, as though he were memorizing her and sculpting her in his mind. She felt so hot inside that it made her tremble.
“Say something,” she whispered, as breathless as if she’d been running.
Azure eyes met hers. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured. “Warm, and soft, and…a great deal more than amiable. You’re so…real, and I—”
She stopped him with a finger across his sensuous lips. “You’re alive, Robert. You’re allowed to feel alive. Touch me. I am real.”
His gaze lowered again, and feather-light fingers traveled down her shoulders to the curve of her breasts. Slowly, carefully, almost as if he was afraid she might vanish, he ran his thumbs across her nipples.
Lucinda gasped, arching against him. He kissed her again, pressing her back against the wall with the pressure of his mouth and his hands on her breasts.
“I haven’t done this in a very long time,” he said huskily, his nails across her nipples making her moan again.
Oh, goodness. He used to have the reputation of a rake; she knew that. Since he’d come back from that awful place, he’d barely been able to touch anyone. Until tonight. Until her. She kissed him again, breathing him in. “And I’ve never done it at all,” she returned.
Fleeting concern flashed across his face. “I want you to enjoy it. If you—”
“You talk too much.”
His disarming grin made her knees weak. He bent, lifting her in his arms. When he laid her on her bed, made down for the night but not slept in, she kept her fingers locked around his neck. Kissing him, though, wasn’t enough. She wanted more, wanted inside him.
Robert sank onto the bed beside her, shifting his attention from her mouth to her throat, and then slowly trailing his lips down her sternum. When he took her left breast into his mouth, stroking her nipple with his tongue, she bucked. Lucinda reached for his shirt again, wanting to feel his warm skin against hers, but again he took her hands, this time lowering them to his belt.
He leaned over her, sucking her breasts, while she unfastened his belt and opened the buttons on his trousers. Her fingers shook and her mind had closed down completely, but she knew she wanted to see him, and to feel him. This was what it felt like to be alive. Her heart pounding and her breath coming in harsh, shallow gasps, she couldn’t possibly feel otherwise. And as much as she felt it, she hoped he did, too. She would do whatever she could to make certain he felt as…electric and vibrant and excited as she did.
She pushed down his trousers and he came free. Large, erect, and impressive, he was definitely as aroused as she was. “May I…may I touch you?”
“Boots first,” he breathed, sitting to yank them off and set them on the floor. He kicked out of his trousers altogether, then sank onto his knees over her. As he leaned down they kissed again, hot and open-mouthed. “You touch me by letting me be around you,” he murmured, taking her hand to guide her to him.
She wrapped her fingers gently around the warm, hard length of him, noting that he flinched, his jaw clenching. “Does it hurt?”
Robert shook his head. “No. But as I said, it’s been a long time. I want to be inside you, Lucinda. Do you want me?”
So much she could barely breathe. “Yes,” she managed, reaching for his shirt once more.
Again he caught her hands. “Don’t.”
“Robert, I know you were shot. You’re here now, and I want to see you. I want to feel you.”
Swallowing, he sat back a little. For a moment she was afraid that he was going to change his mind and leave. Then he took the bottom of his shirt in his hands and in one swift, violent motion, pulled it off over his head.
White, puckered scars, two on his abdomen and one on his shoulder, immediately caught her eye. Did he think they made him flawed, less than he’d been before? Lucinda ran her hands over his warm chest, deliberately crossing the old wounds and just as deliberately not pausing over them. He sat very still, his eyes closed as if he didn’t want to see the look on her face.
She sat up and kissed him again, hard and deep. “I have a scar, too,” she said, pulling him down over her. “On the back of my right knee, from when my dress got caught in the coach steps.” Her breath quickening, she ran her hands down his back, and along his hard, muscled buttocks. Oh, dear God, she wanted this—she wanted him.
His eyes opened again. “Do you, now?” he breathed, lying full length along her and then sinking down along her body, marking his course with his lips and his tongue and his teeth. “A scar?”
“Yes,” she gasped, as he slowly descended along her body, caressing every inch of her with his mouth as he lowered himself past her waist. “It was quite frightening. The coach dragged me halfway down the drive before the driver heard my governess bellowing at him to stop.”
Kissing her thighs, he slid down father, all the way to her ankle and her foot, and then meandering back up the other leg. At her knee he stopped, lifting her leg a little and bending it. “This leg?”
“Yes, right there. You can feel it with your—oh, my.”
The tip of his tongue flickered along the short length of her scar, then trailed back up the inside of her thigh. Oh, she was going to melt, or to burst into flames. Or both, she decided, as his tongue dipped between her thighs.
“Robert!” she rasped, twining her fingers into his hair. “Please.”
He lifted his head, gazing at her along the length of her body. The small, secret smile was on his lips again. “You do want me,” he whispered.
“Yes, I want you,” she said, beginning to feel tight in her skin and hot and exasperated and expectant all at the same time. “Now, blast it.”
Robert didn’t answer, though, but only lowered his head to torment her some more with his lips and tongue and—oh—teeth. She was panting, moaning helplessly, when his fingers joined in, gently parting her folds as he leaned in again.
Lucinda gasped. “Robert, please stop. I can’t…I’m going to catch fire.”
“You are fire.”
She couldn’t stand it any longer, poised on the edge of this…ecstasy. She grabbed his hair, pulling until he relented, slowly, deliberately making his way back up to suck her breasts again and then kiss her deeply.
He settled over her, nudging her knees farther apart, then sinking down on her. She felt him pressing at her entrance, already exquisitely aroused thanks to his attentions, and she arched her hips. Slowly, very slowly, he pushed inside. The feeling was indescribable. More than she could possibly have imagined. Just as she began to feel a tight pressure, he stopped.
“Lucinda,” he breathed, his arms shaking a little as they held his weight, “this is your last c
hance to esc—”
He was not going to change his mind and leave her feeling…unfinished like this. She lifted her hips, gasping a sharp breath and wrenching her eyes closed as he filled her completely. She’d heard Georgie and Evie talk about it a little, though they hadn’t told her much. It hurt, but no more than she’d expected. Robert held still, his gaze on her face when she opened her eyes again.
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Make me forget it, then,” she said breathlessly, kissing him again.
He began to move, lifting and lowering his hips as he thrust into her. Moaning in time with his movements, Lucinda wrapped her ankles around his thighs, and her arms around his back. She dug her fingers in, unable to do more than keep breathing as his relentless, rhythmic plunging continued.
“Robert, Robert,” she repeated, lifting her hips to meet his downward thrusts. Her skin grew tighter and tighter, the humming in her mind louder and louder, until with a gasp she shattered.
He lowered his head, kissing her with his tongue matching the rhythm of his hips, faster and harder until with a deep groan he pushed against her and then came.
Breathing hard, she loosened the grip of her limbs around his body and drew him down on her. His weight felt so…comforting on her, his pounding heart beating into her chest, matching the fast rhythm of her own.
“Was it like you remembered?” she finally murmured.
“Better.”
They lay that way for a few minutes, while Lucinda fought to keep her eyes from closing and her relaxed mind from slipping into sleep. She didn’t want to miss a moment of his presence. Abruptly he pushed up on his hands again, pulling out of and away from her to sit up. “I need to leave,” he said.
She would have protested, but as he turned away from her, bending down to grab his trousers, she caught sight of his back in the lamplight. Thin white streaks crossed and crisscrossed his skin from high on his back down to his buttocks.
“You were whipped,” she said, lifting her hand to run her fingers along one of the scars.
As Robert slipped out of the moment, the close contact and the intimacy became too much. He wanted to stay with her, but at the same time he needed a space to breathe. Upside down. Everything had turned upside down tonight.
He lurched upright again, trying to cover his flinch at her gentle touch by shrugging into his trousers and reaching for his boots. “Among other things,” he grumbled.
She hadn’t fainted or screamed or turned away from him, but he knew he was less than a pretty sight. The first valet Tristan had brought in to assist him in dressing, while he was still healing and his wounds raw and painful, had actually vomited. That had been the end of that. No one had seen him since. Until tonight.
“We’ll figure this out, Robert. The talk about you—it’s just rumors,” she said, sitting up behind him and running her fingers along his shoulder again. “They’ll stop when the Horse Guards finds the real thief.”
Except that no one would be looking in any direction but his. “In an ideal world, you would be right. But I happen to think that a little more action on my part will be required.”
“On our part,” she corrected.
What remained of his heart clenched and released again. “I didn’t come here tonight to gain your assistance,” he returned, pulling on his shirt. “And I won’t have my family ruined by rumors that I tried to kill myself. You can’t say anything about that to your father, Lucinda. Promise me.” With the information he’d given her, he was even more vulnerable than he’d been before he’d climbed through her window. And so was his family.
“I won’t say anything.”
“Keep your word this time.”
“I will. I promise.” She stood, slender and beautiful in the lamplight, her long, wavy dark hair partially obscuring her breasts, like Boticelli’s Venus rising from the clam shell.
He wanted her again, immediately. And if he stayed any longer, he would begin babbling that she’d become his beacon, his hope, his obsession, his reason now to stay alive. He needed to leave. But she’d made him human again, so he couldn’t resist her entirely. “Lucinda,” he murmured, stroking her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “The last part of my lesson is very simple. The next time you see Geoffrey, think how amiable he is. And then think of this.” Leaning in, he kissed her slow and deep, floating as her mouth molded to his. God, she made him ache inside.
“Good night, Lucinda.”
“Good…good night, Robert.”
Chapter 16
Thus ended a day memorable to me; it decided my future destiny.
—Victor Frankenstein, Frankenstein
When Robert slipped into the foyer of Carroway House, he immediately sensed that someone else was already there. He raised his arm defensively as a shadowed figure grabbed for his shoulder. “Get away,” he growled, smelling Tristan’s brand of soap.
“Andrew and Shaw were about to pack for Scotland,” the viscount said, turning away to light a candle on the side table.
Despite his brother’s mild words, his face was hard and set. Robert took a breath. He’d left Lucinda’s actually feeling more hopeful, but he also knew that reality hadn’t changed a whit in his favor. “I’m going to bed.”
“First you need to come with me to see Georgiana and let her know you’re safe,” Tristan countered, not moving. “She was worried. We were all worried.”
“I’ll tell her in the morning.”
“No, you’ll tell her now. She’s not asleep. None of us is. Her maid’s upstairs with her, trying to keep her calm.”
Robert’s fleeting sense of satisfaction fled. His trouble hadn’t ended just because he’d gone to see Lucinda. And as usual, he seemed to be hurting his family in his quest to escape his own pain. “Is she well?”
“So far. But don’t you ever…” Tristan swallowed, equal parts anger and concern shredding his voice. “Don’t you ever disappear without a word like that again.”
Robert started up the stairs. “I told you I went to run an errand.”
“That was fifteen hours ago, Bit. If you’d vanished, no one would need anything more than those damned rumors. You would have been ruined.”
“And you would have been ruined. Unless you started spreading talk that I’ve been unbalanced since I returned from the Peninsula. You might try that.”
Tristan grabbed his shoulder, yanking him around and nearly sending him back down the stairs on his head. “You are my brother,” the viscount growled, his expression dead serious. “None of us will distance ourselves from you. So yes, if you run, we’re all ruined. I suggest you think about that next time.”
For a long moment Robert stared at his eldest brother. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he finally said in a low voice, resuming his ascent.
“I know that. We all do.”
“The rest of London doesn’t. Don’t be noble on my account, Dare. For your sake, and especially for Shaw’s, if this gets worse I want you to stay clear of me. I mean it.”
“We’ll discuss that later if we need to. At the moment it’s just nasty talk.” Tristan gestured at the half-open master bedchamber door. “Go on.”
Robert pushed open the door. “Georgiana?”
She was propped up in bed, surrounded by pillows and reading a book while her maid sat darning socks by the window. The viscountess looked up at the sound of his voice, a smile wiping the concerned, wan look from her face. “Bit. Thank God. Are you well?”
“I’m fine,” he answered automatically. “I apologize if I upset you.”
“Come here,” she demanded, holding out her arms.
Suppressing a shudder, he did as she asked, letting her wrap her arms around his shoulders and place a sound kiss on his cheek. To his surprise, the close contact didn’t bother him, and after a moment he returned the kiss with a light one of his own.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
Behind him the rest of his brothers began trooping into the room
. Shaw and Andrew were both dressed for riding; they had been about to track him to Scotland. He wasn’t certain whether that information made him feel better or worse.
“I went riding,” he said, straightening again. He couldn’t very well tell Georgiana that he’d been in her dearest friend’s bed, or that he’d taken what he wanted—what he needed—and then left her to contemplate Lord Geoffrey and their simple, amiable match.
“Riding where?” Edward asked, stumbling sleepily into the room.
Shaw put an arm around his shoulders. “Go back to bed, Runt. Everything’s well.”
“No, it’s not,” the boy insisted, pushing free. “You left.” He jabbed a finger at Robert. “And you didn’t tell us where. We were worried.”
Wonderful. Being chastised by a ten-year-old. “I know, and I’m sorry.”
“Where did you go?”
Obviously no one was going to shut Edward up, because he was asking the questions they wanted answered. Tristan only lifted an eyebrow, looking at Robert expectantly.
“I started north,” he said. “I thought things would be quieter at Glauden.”
“But you came back.”
He shrugged. “I’m tired of running. I’ve done nothing wrong, and I think I can stand a few rumors.” His ability to withstand innuendo, though, wasn’t the entire issue. “If you can tolerate them, that is.”
His gaze went to Bradshaw, the one besides himself who had the most to lose from this. His older brother smiled, though his eyes remained somber. “As long as you stand, so will I.”
Robert understood the sentiment, and the warning. If he ran again, it was every Carroway for himself. He nodded. “Fair enough.”
Tristan stirred in the doorway. “Now that we’re all back where we belong, everyone will please get out of my bedchamber. Except for you of course, Georgiana.”
“But—”
“Tomorrow, Andrew,” the viscount interrupted, though his attention remained on Robert. “Get some sleep. If we need a strategy, we’ll figure it out in the morning.”
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