No matter where Thea’s thoughts went, they always came back to that fact.
Julian was gone, and she had no idea where he was or when he would return.
Or if he would still want her when he did.
She was no fool, had no illusions about their affair, fully expected that Julian would cut her out of his life once he’d had enough of her. He was not a man known for his sentimentality in regard to attachments. The opposite, in fact. He did not become attached in the first place.
Whereas Thea…
There had been no time for anything as she tumbled in front of the horses and carriage. Only one name had screamed inside her head as she felt the painful trampling of the horses’ hooves.
Julian.
In such a very short time, he had become the pivotal part of her life around which everything else revolved. Where she went. What she thought. Who she spent time with, as well as what she wore and did.
All centered on Julian.
Whether that meant she was falling in love with him, Thea had no idea.
He was a man who was so much larger than life. So overpowering a presence. So commanding that when she was with him—even when she wasn’t—there was no room or time for thought of anyone but Julian and the overwhelming pleasure of their lovemaking.
Was that love?
Or sexual infatuation?
It ultimately made no difference which of those two things it was, when just to think of him now made her chest hurt and her body ache to be with him again.
Obviously, Julian did not feel the same way about her.
Julian was unaware of his surroundings as he sat, booted feet up on the desk in his study at Blackmoor House, the contents of the dinner tray Bradford had insisted on bringing him remaining untouched as it sat on the table near the door.
A single lit candle left most of the room in shadows as Julian gazed bleakly down into the bottom of his almost empty brandy glass. Something he seemed to be doing far too much of late.
His hasty visit to Rome had proved frustrating and unsuccessful. The man who had sent him weekly reports for so long was nowhere to be found. Neither was Jennifer.
Julian did learn, however, that the man Jennifer had been living with in Rome all these years had recently and suddenly died of influenza.
The death of Jennifer’s companion, followed by the coincidence of the disappearance of both Jennifer and the man watching her, and then Thea’s accident four weeks ago was all too much for Julian to be able to dismiss or ignore.
God, how he ached to see and be with Thea again!
But he dared not.
If Jennifer had somehow managed to leave Rome without his knowledge, then there was every possibility she was now in London, seeking ways in which she might hurt him.
Julian had several men discreetly searching London for Jennifer. But until she was found and Julian was able to once more control her, his relationship with Thea Fitzroy must be at an end. For her own sake.
He had been fighting his need for Thea since returning to London two days ago. Fought it while the hunger for her gnawed at his insides.
He knew that this evening she had accompanied Amelia and George to yet another pre-wedding ball, and it had taken all his considerable self-control not to go to the ball himself, just for the opportunity of seeing Thea again. Because he knew seeing her again would not be enough. That he would wish to be with her again too. That he needed the succor, the pleasure only Thea could provide, both with her company and her body.
Spending the evening at his club was also out of the question, when he would more than likely find several of his friends there and no doubt be forced to suffer yet more of their teasing and cajoling in regard to the interest he had previously shown in Dorothea Fitzroy.
So instead of leaving the house this evening, Julian had retired to his study and turned once again to the solace of the brandy decanter—
Every muscle and sinew in Julian’s body tensed, became instantly alert, as he heard first the sound of a bell ringing somewhere in the house, followed by Bradford unlocking and opening the front door, and then the low murmur of voices.
Who on earth could be calling on him at almost midnight?
Jennifer was the instant response.
Julian had his suspicions as to what might have happened to his man in Rome, knew exactly what Jennifer was capable of. Just as he knew that even now she could be thrusting a knife into Bradford’s heart in her determination to get to him.
He rose quickly to his feet and was halfway across the room when the door was suddenly flung open, and a woman stood silhouetted in the doorway.
His heart ceased beating for several seconds as he stared at her in disbelief.
“I believe it is usual for a gentleman”—Thea Fitzroy put special emphasis on that word as she stepped into the study and slammed the door behind her—“to at least do a lady the courtesy of informing her their affair is at an end, rather than leaving her to surmise that to be the case when he chooses to simply disappear off the face of the earth!” She glared her displeasure at him, chin tilted in defiant challenge.
An obviously completely recovered Thea, apart from a slight discoloration of bruising at her temple, where she had received the worst of her injuries.
She was also, he realized belatedly, once again wearing that scandalous red silk gown.
His mouth thinned. “Did you wear that gown in public this evening?”
Blackmoor’s response to Thea’s accusation was so unexpected that for several moments, she was struck dumb.
She had learned from Amelia earlier this evening that Amelia’s father had been back in London for the past two days—without so much as a word to Thea—and Thea had been so incensed at the news that she had taken it upon herself to visit him, as he would not do her the courtesy of calling upon her.
How dare he return to London and simply ignore her!
This evening being the first occasion upon which she had been allowed to leave the house since her accident, her brother Daniel had readily accepted her excuse of tiredness when she asked him to chaperone Amelia and George for the rest of the evening so that she could leave early.
Her brother had assumed she would be going straight back to Latham House, of course, and Thea had not corrected that assumption before leaving the ball and instructing the coach driver to take her to Blackmoor House instead.
If Julian would not come to her, then she would demand answers from him.
“Well?” he barked.
Thea glared all the harder. “Don’t you dare take that dictatorial tone with me, you—you arrogant, unfeeling bastard!” She spat out the worst word she knew.
Julian’s condemnation was just too much, when the only reason she had requested her maid clean and press the daring red gown, in order that she might wear it this evening, had been in anticipation she might see Julian again. In the hope the gown might have the same effect on him as it had the last time she’d worn it.
A pathetic hope.
Caring for Julian Remington had reduced her to behaving like one of those women she so abhorred, yearning and chasing after a man and doing anything she could to attract his attention.
Well, not anymore. In future, she would please herself, and at the moment, it pleased her to tell this man exactly what she thought of him.
“You will answer me, Thea—”
“I will do no such thing.” She stepped farther into the dimly lit room, head thrown back, and she could only hope her eyes were glittering her defiance. “If I choose to wear this gown in public or privately, that is my affair. If I choose to take a lover, a dozen lovers, that is also my affair—Blackmoor!” she barely had time to scream his name before she suddenly found herself unceremoniously bent over the front of his desk, held there by one of Blackmoor’s hands placed firmly in the small of her back as he threw up the skirts of her gown, and no doubt discovered her lack of undergarments, before administering a painful smack to her bare bottom.
“You will never—”
He spanked her again.
“—again wear this gown in public.”
And again.
“Nor will you go without drawers anywhere—”
Then another.
“—unless I am by your side!”
And another.
“Nor shall you take any lover—”
And yet another.
“—but me!”
The sixth smack was harder than the rest and stung Thea’s already sensitized and throbbing flesh.
“Do you understand me, Thea?”
God, her bottom felt so hot and stinging, and she was so wet between her thighs.
Because Julian had spanked her?
How shameful was that? How utterly, utterly—
“I will not ask again,” he warned through what sounded like gritted teeth.
Delicious.
So wickedly delicious, Thea did not want it to stop.
“Very well.” There was the rustle of clothing behind her. “It seems that you are in need of further demonstration as to whom you should obey!”
Having Julian push her feet apart, and then to feel him step in between her parted legs, the material of his pantaloons against her burning flesh telling her he was still fully dressed, was the only warning Thea had before he placed one of his hands on her hip to hold her in place as the other positioned the moist head of his cock against her channel. He thrust fiercely as he entered her to the hilt.
“Sweet fucking hell!” he groaned behind her, both hands on her hips now as he held her in place in front of him.
Thea would not have expressed her joy at this pleasurable invasion with quite those words, but she had to acknowledge that it aptly described the rapture she was currently feeling from having Julian’s cock buried so deeply inside her, she felt impaled.
Claimed.
Whatever his reasons for staying away from her since his return to London, it was most certainly not because of a lack of desire on his part.
“You will promise me all those things before I am finished with you,” he warned harshly.
His cock, as he began to thrust fiercely in and out of her hot and weeping channel, was every inch as long and wide around as she remembered. It impaled her, filling her completely as she was thrust forward against the desk with every claiming stroke, and caused her to stretch her arms across its width as her fingers curled about the desk’s edge for greater purchase.
“Mine,” he growled as those thrusts became harder and faster still. “Say it, Thea. Mine!” He pummeled into her wildly.
“Yours,” she complied breathlessly, pushing back against him when she felt her release approaching.
“Again, damn it. Say it again!” His fingers bit into the flesh of her hips and he thrust harder.
“Yours,” Thea groaned as the pleasure reached a crescendo and then exploded inside her. “I am yours and no one else’s,” she sobbed, her greedy channel continuing to grasp and clasp at his thrusting cock. “Only yours, Remy!”
It was as if the sound of that name on her lips added tinder to the wildness that drove him, his fingers digging into, bruising her hips when he began to thrust into her more fiercely still.
The room became filled with the sound of flesh slapping against flesh and the scent of their mutual arousal as Julian pounded into her harder, and then harder still.
Thea’s second climax was even fiercer than the first, a shock wave of pleasure that consumed her with the force and burning heat of a forest fire.
“Fuck!” Julian groaned hoarsely when he felt Thea’s channel squeeze and stroke his cock in rhythm with her orgasm. “Dear God, I am about to— Thea…!” He only just pulled out in time, erratically continuing to thrust the length of his throbbing cock along the crease of her bottom, gasping when he felt his seed burst and pulse in a wild spray over the base of her spine and lower back.
He managed to place his hands either side of her on the desk and take most of his weight on his arms before he fell forward weakly.
Which was when sanity returned to him and he realized exactly what he had just done.
Where he had done it.
Worst of all, whom he had done it to.
Thea had come here tonight to upbraid him for his shabbiness in ignoring her existence these past four weeks, and he had first spanked her and then fucked her over the top of his desk.
And now he had to send her away again, cast her off as if she meant nothing more to him than the fierce fucking the two of them had just shared.
For Thea’s own sake, Julian knew he had no other choice but to push her away.
He peeled himself away from the stickiness covering her bottom and thighs. His stickiness, from the prodigious amount of cum he had produced at the pleasure of at last being inside her.
Staking a claim he had no right to.
“Do not move,” he instructed. After straightening his own soiled clothes, he crossed the room to shake out and then use the water jug to dampen the napkin from the untouched dinner tray before returning to Thea. He gently cleaned and dried her bottom and lower back before throwing down the back of her crushed gown so that he no longer had to look at that bared and delectable flesh.
His cock, rebellious as ever, stirred once more inside his pantaloons, ready to go again if he would let it.
“You should not have come here.” Julian stepped back.
Thea slowly straightened from bending over the desk to turn and face him, her cheeks flushed, eyes fever bright. A brightness that dimmed, the color draining from her cheeks, as she saw the harshness of his expression.
Julian hardened his heart against her obvious distress. “A lady would not have forced her way into my home as you have just done. She would also have known when to accept that an affair is over.” He looked down the length of his nose at her.
All the color had leeched from her cheeks, her eyes pained green pools. “I… But… You were obviously not—not disappointed to see me.”
Julian’s nostrils flared at the smell of sex that still permeated the room. How could it be otherwise when, despite his efforts, his cum was all over both of them? “What man would say no to what you so obviously offered? You deliberately used the name Remy as further encouragement,” he reminded her coldly as she would have spoken. Possibly to protest.
She looked at him in bewilderment for several seconds.
Long seconds, when Julian had to fight within himself not to get down on his knees and beg her forgiveness for deliberately hurting her, as well as himself. To reassure her that what they had just shared had been more, so much more, than anything he had known with any other woman.
Instead, he watched the light die completely out of Thea’s eyes as she straightened her shoulders and stood at her full height, chin raised proudly high. “I apologize. It will not happen again.”
He gave a haughty nod. “Now, if you will excuse me. I wish to go upstairs to my bedchamber to bathe and change out of this soiled clothing.” His nose wrinkled with distaste.
Thea gave him one last pained glance before turning on her heel and fleeing from the room.
Julian only allowed himself to breathe again once he heard the slamming of the front door as she left the house completely.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do about the pain in his chest as a result of knowing that Thea must now hate him with every fiber of her being.
Chapter 11
The past four weeks had been frustrating ones for Jennifer.
Dorothea Fitzroy, having unfortunately survived the carriage accident without serious injury, had also remained within the safety of Latham House ever since.
Blackmoor had also disappeared for almost a month, and even the tediousness of seducing one of his footmen had not revealed to Jennifer where the duke had gone.
Instead, there had been long and tedious weeks of simply waiting.
But finally, finally, Dorothea Fitzroy had left the house earlier this evening,
and with Blackmoor also back in London, Jennifer had not been the least surprised when the other woman left the entertainments early before traveling to Blackmoor House to see and be with him again.
Only for the other woman to leave just minutes later.
Jennifer once again sat in the shadows of her cab and watched as Dorothea Fitzroy dashed down the steps from the house before climbing into her waiting carriage, moonlight revealing the track of tears cascading down the paleness of her cheeks.
The stupid little fool had obviously cast herself upon Blackmoor’s mercy and been cruelly rejected.
Jennifer could have warned the younger woman of how it would be once Blackmoor tired of her.
Blackmoor had never cared for anyone apart from Amelia.
The child.
A child who was a child no longer but was instead about to be married.
Jennifer had given Blackmoor her word long ago never to speak to or harm Amelia in any way. But with Dorothea Fitzroy so obviously removed as a possible means of retribution against Blackmoor, what other choice did she have?
Chapter 12
“The Duke of Blackmoor wishes to speak with you, my lord.”
Thea’s eyes fluttered closed in response to Cross’s announcement of Daniel’s visitor.
Blackmoor was here.
Now.
The two of them had parted so badly following that wild coupling in the duke’s study four nights ago—
Parted badly?
Julian’s dismissal of her had been devastating.
Cruel.
And final.
But with only days to go now until George and Amelia’s wedding, it was to be expected that Julian would call upon Daniel to ensure all the arrangements had been made for the smooth running of the happy event.
Unfortunately, Thea’s own unhappiness was currently such that the last thing she wished to do was sit and discuss her nephew’s wedding, which had already taken up so much of her time for so many weeks.
Any more than she wished to see or be in the same room as Blackmoor.
It had been relatively easy to convince Daniel, after having left the ball so early that evening four nights ago, that she had suffered a relapse in health from going back into society too quickly after her accident. That reason had allowed her to be excused from all social engagements these past four days. She had refused all visitors too, could not bear the thought of even attempting to put on a brave face in front of her friends, in regard to her unhappiness at Blackmoor’s callous treatment of her.
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