Ethan: Lord of Scandals ll-3

by Grace Burrowes

  Which earned him more sighing.

  So he shifted around, to explore her breasts, and while she went still at first, she was soon arching into his hand, covering his knuckles with her palms.

  “You like this?” He gently tugged at a nipple while ruthlessly ignoring his own arousal.

  “Oh, that is naughty. Don’t stop.”

  “Naughty” and “don’t stop” were a compelling combination. Ethan eased her over to her back then replaced his fingers with his mouth.

  “Ethan.” It was a groan, a plea for mercy and a plea for more. Alice’s hands winnowed through his hair to hold him to her, and her back arched in offering. Ethan felt her body slipping free of its restraints, even as his own was clamoring to join with her.

  Slowly, so slowly it nigh killed him, he let one hand drift down her sternum, over her ribs and belly, to the curls shielding her sex.

  “Spread your legs for me, Alexandra.” Ethan spoke in a near whisper, savoring every syllable of her true name and every inch of her silky skin. “Let me touch you.” She complied, restlessly lifting one knee to turn her hips toward him.

  “Patience,” Ethan chided, fastening his mouth over her other nipple.

  “Ethan.” Her voice was a little raspy and more than a little urgent. “This isn’t comfortable.”

  He raised his head to consider her expression. “Do you want me to stop?”

  “No!” She sounded sure of that. “But you can’t expect me to enjoy being so… overwrought.”

  “I can.” Overwrought was a mere beginning. He left his hand where it was, his fingers drifting over her mons. “Give me a little more time.”

  “Kiss me.” She glared at him, clarifying that this was an order, not a request.

  “Of course.”

  He treated her to a voracious kiss, not like anything he’d given her before. He consumed her, challenged her, teased and demanded and had her mouth clinging to his, even as her hands tried to map every inch of him. She found his nipples, sending a bolt of arousal straight south through his body. She found his buttocks and made him groan with the pleasure of being pulled close where she wanted him close. She kissed him back, to make demands of her own, only to fall utterly still when Ethan caressed her sex with two reverent fingers.

  “Oh, holy saints, Ethan…”

  He whispered his fingers across damp, intimate flesh.

  “What are you doing?” Alice asked, circling his wrist with her fingers.

  “Pleasing you, I hope.” He leaned in to kiss her, a soft, voluptuous distraction from the lust raging through him, then shifted to take a nipple in his mouth.

  “Ethan, I can’t…” Her chest was rising and falling, but she said nothing more, just panted her desperation.

  “Move, love. Move against my hand the way I’ve moved to your touch. Move the way your body wants to. Move toward the pleasure.”

  She undulated against his hand, taking long moments to find synchrony with his rhythm, and then she still didn’t seem to know how to go on. Ethan realized she’d never trod this path before and was ignorant of the destination—another reason to shoot the leek-loving Mr. Droopyfield on sight.

  Ethan slowed his hand, letting her catch her breath, then abruptly shifted to a fast, light stroke.

  “Let it happen.” Ethan’s voice was urgent as he felt the sensations welling in her body. “Let yourself go. Come for me.”

  She arched into his hand, hard, repeatedly. She called his name, she dug her fingernails into his wrist, and she didn’t stop until her breath was a harsh rasp and her body was a warm, replete bundle of naked womanhood against his side.

  “That’s my lady.” Ethan’s arms came around her, and she clung with surprising strength. His hands stroked slowly over her back, her arms, her shoulders, until Alice’s breathing slowed.

  “What was that?” She sounded bewildered, and a touch disgruntled, no doubt out of sorts to think some parcel of knowledge had been kept from her ken.

  “I hope it was pleasure.” For him, it had been nothing but pleasure, far eclipsing the lust still throbbing in his body.

  “Is that what you feel?” Alice tucked her nose against his throat. “When you…”

  “When you bring me off?” Ethan finished for her. He could feel her blushing against his neck. “Probably, or something very like it.” Except he could do it only once, while she could repeat the pleasure endlessly. He wouldn’t inflict that knowledge on her just yet, not when she seemed almost upset by her experience.

  “I feel empty,” Alice said on a shuddery sigh. “It was pleasurable, Ethan, profoundly, but now…”

  His hold tightened around her protectively. “Now?”

  “I feel lonely and worried,” she said. “Like I could have trouble breathing if I let myself. That can’t be normal.” He wrapped his arms around her and cuddled her snugly to his body, offering her comfort, reassurance, and a different kind of pleasure in the secure warmth of his embrace.

  “Better?” he asked a few minutes later.

  “Better.” She nodded, burrowing against his chest. “So is this what Nick shared with half the demimonde?”

  He let her change the subject but felt a spike of exasperation that Nick—dear, bedamned Nick—should join them in the bed.

  “Not quite. Physically, perhaps something similar, but emotionally, Nick would not have joined with someone capable of admitting the loneliness.”

  So there, Nicholas.

  “He’d want a woman to lie?”

  “I think the point of the kind of dalliances Nick sought was for everybody to lie, to pretend such matters could be undertaken only superficially.”

  “God above.” Alice paused in an exploration of his collarbone with her tongue. “What a lot of poppycock. I’ve never done anything so intimate and lovely and overwhelming in my life. I could not abide the thought of sharing such a thing with a near stranger.”

  And that is a large part of why I love you.

  “I thought I could. I was wrong.” That he could say so to her was another part.

  He held her to him, treasuring the feel of her naked body in his arms, until Alice levered up and speared him with a look.

  “I want you in my mouth.”

  “I beg your pardon?” She was already shifting up and across him, intent on her goal. She curled up at his side, her cheek resting low on his belly.

  “No sass from you, Ethan Grey. We have talked about this, and I have kissed you here.” She took his erect cock in her hand. “Fair is fair. There’s such a lot of room in this bed, too, we shouldn’t let it go to waste.”

  Ethan didn’t even have time to be thankful he’d bathed earlier, before Alice’s lips were closing over him.

  His hand tangled in her hair. “You don’t have to do this. It isn’t a ledger account, to keep balance or score.”

  “Hush,” she admonished, gently cupping his testicles.

  They had discussed this on one of Alice’s scholarly tours of his body; they’d discussed it as something beyond naughty, and moved on to less fraught topics.

  “Naughty” and “don’t stop” collided again in Ethan’s mind as Alice gained confidence in her welcome. She explored him carefully and thoroughly, and tried different touches and approaches, until she found the combination that had Ethan’s hips slowly undulating.

  “Sweetheart”—Ethan’s voice was urgent—“I’m close… Too close.”

  She sealed her mouth around him and sent him past too close to that realm where reason and restraint were dim memories. His body bowed up, and she plied him with ruthless devotion until he was panting and spent, his only movement the caress of his hand in her hair.

  “Everlasting… powers.” Ethan wanted to gather her up, to tug her back over him, like a blanket, like a comforting lemony blessing, but he was simply incapable. Alice remained where she was, nuzzling his parts as she cradled him in her hand.

  “Easy,” Ethan cautioned. “I’m… sensitive. No sudden moves, please.”
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  Alice shifted, sitting up and reaching for the glass of water on the night table. “I was sensitive too. I wanted to cry.”

  He smiled at her admission, misdirected though it was. She offered him the glass when she’d had her fill, and he took it, pleased at the small sharing. When she set the glass aside, she tucked herself against him without him having to ask, and his gratitude for that assumption—that they would want to hold each other—nearly did make him cry.

  “So this was my warning shot?” Alice asked, her hand once again finding his flaccid penis. She held him gently, though not in a casual way either.

  “In what sense?” Ethan liked that she touched him this way, loved it, in fact. There was reassurance in the gesture of insecurities he hadn’t known he still had.

  “Tomorrow night, you’ll come to me again, and it will happen all over, but we’ll be… joined.”

  “I pray to God that’s so. Having second thoughts?”

  Alice gave his cock an admonitory little tug. “Hush with that question, or I’ll make you stand in the corner.”

  “But you’ll spank me first, won’t you? I’ve been very naughty.”

  “You are the furthest thing from naughty, but I think you’d like this spanking, wouldn’t you?”

  “Any touch from you would be to my liking.”

  She climbed over him, and while he missed the feel of her fingers around his cock, Ethan enjoyed the press of her breasts against his chest.

  “Don’t be shy.” He caressed her bottom, shaped the smooth, warm female wonder of her. “Cuddle up.”

  “I’m not…” Alice frowned against his chest. “I’m untidy.”

  “You want a handkerchief? Or would you instead let me feel this luscious untidiness that follows when a woman is well pleased in bed?” He patted her bottom again, a more businesslike affection that urged her down against him.

  “Naughty, naughty, naughty.” Alice sighed, easing her hips down. Ethan bumped up, letting her feel the softening mass of his penis against her damp sex. A body kiss, a cozy, intimate kiss of parts that made Ethan ridiculously happy.

  “With you, I’m the friendly sort,” he said, sweeping her braid down her back. “And I like to feel you near me.”

  “Feeling’s mutual,” Alice said, stifling a yawn. “I don’t mean to be rude, but my eyes are heavy.”

  “Go to sleep, love.” Ethan kissed her temple. “I’ll be gone by morning, but back tomorrow night.”

  “I shouldn’t,” Alice protested as Ethan felt her lashes sweep a butterfly kiss to his chest.

  “You should. Sleep in my arms, Alexandra, and dream of me, for I will certainly dream of you.”

  While she drifted into the arms of Morpheus, he was a long time holding her and considering what it meant to love a woman for the first time in more than thirty years on earth. He’d wanted to love his wife, tried to talk himself into believing lust and initial infatuation could mature to something more. He’d wanted to fall in love, to find someone to whom he could entrust his heart, his future, his children.

  Well, he had the children, and now he had a woman to treasure and cherish and intimately appreciate. It was enough; it was more than he’d hoped to have when he’d consigned himself to marrying Barbara—so much more—and it was enough.

  * * *

  Alice awoke the next morning to see her curtains whipping in a damp breeze. The overcast that had rolled in during the night had let her sleep later than usual, so she hurried through her morning toilette, until a slight sensitivity in her private parts had her blushing and recalling the events of the previous evening.

  Ye gods, ye gods… so that was sexual pleasure? That was the great prize given to the married and the naughty unmarried?

  She couldn’t imagine sharing so intimately with any other man, and with that insight, she gained some understanding of Ethan’s claim that he could not make love with her unless desire was mutual. She did not want just the glorious sensations, she wanted Ethan. She wanted his arms around her, his voice in her ear, his scent on her skin, his hands stroking her flesh.

  She wanted his confidences, his dreams, his hopes, and his rare playful gambits. She wanted his headaches, his extended family in Kent, and his stubborn determination to get her back up on a horse. She wanted not just his lovely body, but his entire heart.

  Oh, dear.

  Alice collapsed onto the bed and considered what it meant, when she longed for a man to trust her with his heart. This could not be a good thing, not when the man was a confirmed widower who’d endured one miserable marriage for the sake of his children. Not when he was so wealthy the Regent turned to him for financial advice.

  Not when he’d been so carefully honest with her, assuring her he was beyond ever remarrying.

  Oh, dear. Oh, God. She’d fallen in love with Ethan Grey, and where did that leave her—besides looking forward to the coming night?

  Alice had always thought love could only come to her slowly, a gradual shift in emotions from respect to affection to the kind of abiding regard her parents had had. She had never expected this tumult, this drama of the emotions, would befall her.

  There was no fighting it. Her feelings were subject to neither reason nor logic, and all she could hope for was to keep her sentiments behind her teeth, where she would not embarrass Ethan with them.

  Or herself.

  So they would make love tonight, and in the privacy of her heart, Alice would love Ethan too. When he tired of her, her heart would break, but she’d be prepared for that. Her idea of heartbreak had shifted, though.

  Heartbreak was no longer a vague, bothersome sense that she’d be unhappy for a while. Heartbreak was worse and better, she decided as she pinned up her hair. When Ethan set her aside, she’d be devastated at the loss of him, but she’d also be richer for having shared with him what lovers shared, even temporarily. It would be enough. It was more than she’d thought life would offer her, and it would be enough.

  Sixteen

  “How old is Uncle Dolph?” Jeremiah posed the question to his father as their horses walked back to the barn at the end of the one weekly ride that did not include Joshua.

  “Nineteen, maybe.” Ethan realized he wasn’t quite sure. “Or maybe eighteen. I don’t know. Why?”

  “He’s still at school. He’s been at school a long time.”

  “Not so long. Dolph spent only a couple of years at public school, and he’s been up at university for two years, I think. Before that, he was tutored at home, as you and Joshua have been.”

  “You went to public school,” Jeremiah said, his tone diffident.

  “I did, for a few years, as did your uncles Nick, Beck, George, and Dolph. Do you want to go to public school?”

  Ethan’s tone was equally casual, though a cold knife of anxiety sliced at his guts. Children did go away to school as young as six, and Ethan wondered at their parents for allowing it. Was Jeremiah somehow so unhappy he wanted to leave home?

  “A young man goes away to school,” Jeremiah said, his gaze even more intent on his pony’s mane, “and you said I’m on the threshold of young manhood.”

  “I did say that. Give me your reins, Jeremiah.”

  Jeremiah looked puzzled but complied, and watched as his father tied the reins to a ring on the front of Waltzer’s saddle.

  “Up you go.” Ethan grasped Jeremiah under the arms and lifted him from the pony’s back to the front of Ethan’s saddle. Waltzer paused, adjusted to the new load, and sauntered on while the pony obediently trailed beside the horse.

  “You might have asked.” Jeremiah looked down at his pony and reminded Ethan for all the world of Alice Portman when she was displeased with her high-handed employer.

  “I might. I’m sorry. Next time I will. What is this interest in public school? Are you ready to leave your papa and strike out on your own?”

  “Soon. Joshua should come with me, and he’s still too young.”

  “I’m glad he’s too young.” Ethan had one
arm around Jeremiah’s waist, which meant he could feel the tension in his son’s body.

  “Why would you be glad about that? Miss Alice says we’re growing like magic beanstalks,” Jeremiah said, fiddling with the horse’s mane.

  “Why?” Ethan paused and tried to find words to explain the hole in his heart, in his life, in his soul, that would result if his children left his household now. He was just coming to know them, to be a father to them in any meaningful sense, and here his six-year-old—his six-year-old—was calmly suggesting Ethan abandon them to the likes of Stoneham and Hart Collins.

  “Because, Jeremiah Nicholas Grey, there is nobody I love the way I love my sons, and I would miss you very, very much.”

  Before him, Jeremiah stopped fiddling with Waltzer’s mane. “You would? You’d miss us?”

  “Because I love you.” Ethan emphasized the words Jeremiah had tried to ignore. “Because you are my family, and too soon you will grow up and become a young man who wants to make his own way in the world. Then I will have to let you go, but I won’t like it then, either.”

  “Even when we’re old, like Uncle Dolph or Uncle George?”

  “Even when you’re old like me. I didn’t go to school until I was fourteen, Jeremiah, and then only because my father thought Nick and I should be meeting other boys our age.” This was a lie, but Ethan forgave himself for it before the words had left his lips.

  “Fourteen? That’s twice as old as me, and more.”

  As I, Ethan thought with a parent’s inherent need to edit grammar. He kept his parental editor quiet and hugged his son instead. “It’s forever from now, and there are plenty of young men who go to university without ever having gone away to school.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Jeremiah said on a huge sigh. “Mr. Harold said we ought, because we were an embarrassment and gutterswipes.”

  “Guttersnipes. It means orphans or little criminals in the making. Children who have no supervision or manners or home.”

  “I have supervision and manners and a home,” Jeremiah said with a touch of defiance. “Mr. Harold was wrong.”

  “Very.”

  And when Jeremiah might have burdened his father with yet more memories of the execrable Mr. Harold, Ethan chose that moment to tickle his son gently. “Are you ready to return to your own saddle?”