Joss and The Countess (The Seducers Book 2)

by S. M. LaViolette

  “Get on the bed.”

  While she obeyed, he opened the drawer in the only nightstand. Inside he had a small leather envelope. He extracted the flattened not-quite translucent rectangle and put it in the washbasin, pouring water over it to turn it supple and soft. He turned to find her watching, her eyes wider than ever.

  Joss lifted the sheath. “You have not seen one of these?”

  She shook her head.

  Joss put the softened tube against his swollen head, wincing as the cool, wet sheep’s intestine touched his hot skin. He began to pull the snug sheath up his shaft.

  “It will protect us both—from disease, from pregnancy.”

  Her creamy skin flushed brick red. “I’ve got no diseases.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “Then . . .”

  Joss tied the sheath tight. “I don’t want to put a child inside you.”

  Annie’s face took on an odd expression and Joss wondered if it wasn’t that of a person thwarted. But then she smiled, her eyes dropping to his erection as she reached for him.

  He brushed aside her hands and took her by the hips, pulling her generous bottom to the edge of the bed and pressing her thighs wide with his knees.

  “Lay back,” he ordered. He dropped into a crouch, parted her lips with his thumbs, and sucked her tight bud into his mouth. She was hot, sweet, and as responsive as hell and it took only moments to bring her to orgasm.

  She came fast and hard, her young body taut and slick with sweat as she thrashed beneath him, grinding herself against him and using him to bring on a second climax.

  He waited until her body went still before he positioned himself at her opening and entered her in one long, smooth glide.

  She cried out and bucked against him when he rammed his length home.

  Joss kept her filled with his cock as he lifted her hips off the bed, his hands beneath her smooth thighs and his knees bent for balance and strength as he began to pump.

  She lay stretched out before him like a banquet and he gazed down the length of her ripe, curvy body, his eyes lingering on her breasts, which were full, hard tipped, and bounced with each savage thrust. He regretted neglecting them, but his balls could no longer be denied.

  He reached down to where their bodies were joined, thumbing her while he watched the mesmerizing sight of her body stretching to accommodate his. He made her come quickly—and then again.

  She shook her head from side to side as her contractions faded. “Please, Joss,” she begged as his thumb began to caress her again. “I …can’t…. Not again.”

  He smiled, both at her begging and at her contractions, which drove him toward the edge of self-control, until all he cared about was his own pleasure and the oblivion it would bring.

  Joss gripped her legs so hard his fingers ached and he fucked into her with brutal stabbing thrusts, until his body stiffened and he held himself deep within her convulsing heat.

  He came until it hurt, until he was drained of everything: everything except futility and frustration. Everything except the knowledge of who he was and why he would never, ever have what he wanted.

  Chapter Three

  Joss wondered if Lady Selwood began talking to him merely to torment him.

  Surely she could have no interest in his reading habits, his family, or his life in general.

  Or perhaps it was because she was bored?

  Whatever the reason, over the coming days she did not miss an opportunity to grill him.

  “Tell me about your family, Gormley,” she asked when he was escorting her home from some gaming party where she’d gone to meet Byerly, but then—surprisingly—left early and without the annoying young lord.

  His family?

  “I expect the courtesy of an answer,” she said when he failed to respond.

  Joss had to look down to hide his smile. For some reason, he enjoyed it when she became starchy with him.

  He cleared his throat and looked up, meeting her questioning gaze. “I have two brothers and a sister who lives with my father.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She is dead.” Joss ignored the hornet’s sting to his conscience.

  “Ah.” For a moment he thought she might be finished. But no. “Your brothers are older or younger?”

  “Older, both of them—my lady,” he added, when he realized his confusion had caused him to momentarily forget himself.

  “And your sister?”

  “She is the baby of the family, my lady.”

  “And are you close to your family?”

  Joss squinted through the dim light. “Close, my lady?”

  Her smile grew and it made him more than a little anxious. He wondered if she’d been imbibing spirits and sniffed the air as subtly as possible. He smelled nothing but the elusive scent of her undoubtedly expensive perfume.

  “Yes, close.” She said “Do you see them often? Do you enjoy their company? Will you miss them if I decide to move my household elsewhere? Have you ever been away from them? That sort of thing—close, in the emotional sense, Gormley.”

  Joss turned his hat in circles. “I see them every week. I enjoy seeing them, but once a week is usually plenty, my lady.” He stopped and she nodded encouragingly. “I’ve been away before, when I was a lad. I recall missing them, but not, er, over much.”

  “Do you have a favorite sibling?”

  Joss cocked his head.

  “Is that a rude question?” She absently tugged at the fingers of one glove, turning to look out the window as the carriage passed a streetlamp. “I don’t have brothers or sisters,” she said, turning back to him. “So I’ve always been curious about those who do.”

  She was curious about her servant’s brothers and sisters? To say her behavior was odd was an understatement. Lord Easton, for whom he’d worked for almost eight years—and also a man who’d attended every one of Joss’s fights—had never asked him anything more personal than the current odds.

  She cleared her throat, delicately, but Joss got the hint.

  “Ah, a favorite,” he said, wondering just how honest he wished to be with this woman, whose glorious, expectant eyes were focused only on him. He realized, to his disgust, he would do a lot to keep her looking at him that way. “I suppose my sister is my favorite.”

  “What is her name?”

  “Annabelle, my lady.”

  “That’s very pretty—and unusual.”

  He knew what she meant, unusual for a girl of Joss’s class. Well, his mother had been unusual.

  He glanced out the window, relieved to see familiar landmarks: they would be home soon and this exquisitely uncomfortable yet dangerously addictive interlude would be over.

  “How old is she?”

  “She is three-and-twenty, my lady.”

  “Are you a protective older brother? Do you vet and scrutinize all her swains, making quick work of any who are unsuitable?”

  A laugh burst out of him before he could stop it.

  She looked at him as though he’d sprouted a second head.

  “I beg your pardon, my lady,” he said, his face again composed. “When she was little I kept the other children who lived on our street from teasing her. And now? Well, I suppose I am protective of her, but all three of us—my other brothers included—look out for her.”

  Her expression was almost wistful. “She must like that—it must make her feel very . . . safe.”

  Joss had no earthly idea how to answer that. Luckily it seemed she didn’t require an answer.

  “I will be bringing my daughter to stay with me before Christmas.”

  Joss blinked. She had a daughter? This was the first Joss had heard of it.

  “She has been raised in the country and this will be her first visit to London.” She gazed out the window and Joss saw they had turned onto their street. He desperately wished, suddenly, that the journey was not almost at an end. Something about her was so very sad.

  But the carriage rolled to a smooth stop and
Joss helped her out. The only thing she said before disappearing up the stairs was the usual, “Good night, Gormley.”

  She resumed her questions two nights later, when he’d escorted her to Lord Byerly’s; except this time the interrogation topic had been—of all things—how one went about becoming a groom.

  But the return journey from Lord Byerly’s—which had taken place a scant quarter of an hour after her arrival—had taken place in stony silence.

  The interior of the carriage had crackled like the sky before a storm; it had been the first time Joss had seen his mistress discomposed.

  Whatever had happened up in Byerly’s chambers, it hadn’t ended well. Joss had wanted to cheer at her speedy departure from the effete nobleman’s ramshackle and neglected lair. He’d kept his elation to himself.

  Lady Selwood’s jaw had been tight and her beautiful face had worn twin slashes of color when she’d descended the staircase. Byerly had stood at the top of the stairs, clad only in a silk robe that had been open, affording Joss a vision that would require a chisel and mallet to eradicate from his brain.

  “Bloody hell, Alicia! I said I was sorry. What else do you want from me?”

  Lady Selwood ignored the nobleman’s pleading.

  She’d tapped the toe of one foot the entire ride home and Joss had been astounded how such a small, delicate slipper could create such a menacing sound.

  Joss thought about her name—one delicious new piece of information to come out of the aborted evening—while she stewed: Alicia. It gave him the shivers just thinking it. He hadn’t spoken it aloud; not even when he was alone.

  He was a pitiful fool.

  She hadn’t used him for three nights after that.

  But tonight, he was accompanying her in her own carriage rather than a hack. Their destination was Lord Delmore’s rambling mansion on the other side of the river, far beyond the fashionable part of town. Joss had been once before, but Byerly had been there that night to escort Lady Selwood so Joss had stayed with the carriage. Tonight Joss would be her guardian.

  “Do you gamble, Gormley?”

  The question came from the darkness of the coach. As usual, she’d not wanted the inside lanterns lighted and the streetlights had become scarce as they left the City.

  “Do you mean cards, my lady?” Joss still didn’t find it easy to talk to her—to ask her questions—but he had come to realize she enjoyed these brief têt-à-têts. And so did he.

  “Cards, horses, anything.”

  “I occasionally wager on a mill.”

  “Ah. But not cards?”

  “No, my lady, I like better odds than a game of cards can offer.”

  She chuckled in a way that gave him goosebumps. “There speaks a man who does not understand the game.”

  Joss shrugged, and then remembered to whom he was speaking. “I am sure you are correct, my lady.”

  “Take the game of vingt-et-un, for example. Do you know it?”

  “Yes, my lady.” But he’d only ever played it with his family, and for pennies.

  There was gambling at The White House, but that was on the male side of the business, and Joss would not have been welcome at those tables, even if he’d wished to play.

  “While there is still an element of chance involved, sticking to a consistent system will yield results that might surprise you.”

  “Of course, my lady.”

  “I believe you are patronizing me, Gormley.”

  Joss coughed to cover a laugh. “I would never do that, my lady.”

  She laughed, not bothering to hide it. “You are a clever man, Gormley, but not clever enough to deceive me.”

  Joss was gob-smacked. She thought him clever?

  “Tell me, what book do you have in your pocket tonight?”

  “What makes you think I have a book in my pocket, my lady?” Joss felt foolishly proud when his rather cheeky retort elicited another laugh.

  “Oh come, you must think me terribly unobservant if you believe I have not noticed you always have your nose in a book while you wait for me.”

  Joss had thought her unobservant, at least when it came to him.

  “It is Henry Neele’s Odes and Other Poems.”

  “Ah, you are partial to poetry.”

  The carriage, as well-sprung as it was, jolted violently as it passed over a particularly poor segment of road. Lady Selwood was thrown to one side and began to slide forward. Joss saw a flash of wide-open eyes and blindly reached forward. As it happened, one hand ended up on her shoulder, the other on her very generous bosom. He righted her quickly and yanked back his hand, as if burned.

  “I beg your pardon, my lady.” Joss wondered if his face glowed red in the near darkness.

  She gave a breathy laugh. “Thanks to your quick thinking and even quicker reflexes I am not on my knees, Gormley.”

  The picture her words evoked was like a roundhouse to the jaw and Joss was grateful he was seated. He tucked away the erotic image for later, when he was alone and could take it out and examine it more fully.

  ∞∞∞

  Alicia didn’t want to consider her reasons for driving all the way out to Delmore’s house, which was really more of a high-stakes gaming hell than merely the earl’s house.

  The earl had been an associate of Alicia’s last husband. She’d never liked him, but she had to admit he knew how to assemble some of the most skilled and outrageous gamblers in Britain.

  She’d made the mistake of introducing Byerly to the exclusive group some weeks earlier, when she arranged to meet him here and then had been forced to watch him lose repeatedly. The man was a horrid card player and also addicted to the pursuit.

  She hadn’t made the mistake of inviting him again. The only reason to ask him along the first time was because showing up unescorted was problematic.

  But now she had Gormley and he was enough to deter anyone from bothering her; not that being bothered was much of a concern. Delmore’s was a fairly respectable house—as such things went.

  Alicia told herself she’d only brought Gormley as a deterrent, but that was a bald lie. She found the massive, reserved man interesting. Indeed, she found him too interesting.

  Her body, in particular, appeared to find him most interesting. She shivered at the memory of his powerful hands on her side—and breast.

  He’d moved like lightning and lifted her onto the seat with an ease that had sent heat arrowing to her sex. It had been—

  “I understand you’ll be staying in town all winter, Lady Selwood.”

  Alicia looked up from her lustful musing to find the Honorable Ronald Skipton looking at her. She wanted to ask him how he knew about her private business, but guessed the source was most likely Byerly.

  She nodded at the dealer who gave her another card. It was a four, which brought her to twenty.

  “I’ll stick,” she said, before turning to Skipton and saying, “Yes.”

  He looked nonplussed at her brief and very uncommunicative answer and then opened his mouth.

  The Duke of Beckingdon, a man famous for his hatred of small-talk at the card table—one of the main reasons Alicia enjoyed playing with him, the other being he was a fine card player—cleared his throat and glared at the younger man. Skipton shrank back into his chair and the play continued in silence.

  Alicia could not see Gormley as he stood behind her, beside the door where he could keep an eye on her but not assist her playing—although nobody had dared suggest such a thing.

  She felt a brief pang of remorse—no doubt he would rather be sitting somewhere with his big, bent nose tucked in a book.

  The play continued deep for the next hour.

  Skipton threw in his cards and shook his head as a new banker came to their table. “That’s it for me, too rich for my blood.”

  Beckingdon merely grunted and turned to Alicia, his obvious dismissal of the younger man causing Skipton’s face to burn a fiery red.

  The duke smiled at her, a rare, and rather ghastly
sight with his yellow, snaggled teeth. “I read about your triumph in the last paper from New York, Lady Selwood. Congratulations.”

  Alicia smiled. “Thank you, Your Grace.” She could guess what was on the wily old bird’s mind.

  “What triumph is that, Becky?” Lord Grimsby asked, his hands trembling with a palsy Alicia had heard was from syphilis.

  “Lady Selwood had enough foresight to purchase land from Albany, New York to some lake in the back of beyond. Coincidentally, the same route as the new canal that is to be built.” The duke didn’t take his eyes from her.

  Grimsby barked a laugh, signaling the hovering waiter for yet another brandy. “Lord, a canal? What the devil for? Selling goods to savages?”

  The other two members of the table, men Alicia had never played with before, chuckled. But the duke did not.

  “It is some three hundred and sixty miles in length, is it not?”

  Alicia smiled. “Three hundred and sixty-three miles.”

  The duke’s eyes kindled and Alicia knew it was not for her smile. The man needed money, just like every other aristocrat in Britain. “I should love to hear more about this engineering feat, Lady Selwood.”

  “You must come to dinner sometime, Your Grace.”

  “Her Grace and I will be staying in the city over Christmas.”

  Alicia almost laughed at his blatant invitation. She could just imagine the reaction of his high-stickler wife when she learned she would be dining with Lady Selwood.

  “I am having a dinner party Christmas Day; you would honor me with your presence.”

  “Here then, what’s this?”

  Alicia sighed at the sound of the slurred, familiar voice that came from behind her. The duke looked over her shoulder, his habitual frown back in place. He grunted and turned back to the table.

  Alicia looked up to find Byerly beside her, and none-too-steady. He stared at her through bleary eyes and then nudged the man who’d taken Skipton’s seat.

  “Move over, Kingston, I wish to sit next to Lady Selwood. It’s been ages since we’ve last chatted.”

  “Byerly,” the duke barked.

  All heads turned to the duke.

  Beckingdon had upgraded from a frown to a scowl. “This is a card table, for playing cards. If you wish to chat I suggest you pay morning calls. No doubt my wife would be thrilled to oblige your chatter.”