He knocked his chamber door shut behind him and set her on her feet. She drove him back against the closed door and came at him again, her hands planted on his chest like she meant to have her way with him.
Trevor didn’t know whether to groan or laugh at her ardor. Surely, she did not want him to take her all the way quite yet? Didn’t she want him to marry her first?
It was all the same to him. He cupped her face between her hands and plunged his tongue more deeply into her delicious mouth.
She moaned and curled her fingers round his nape beneath his queue. Perhaps it was convenient that she had found him in a casual state of dress. Expecting to do a hundred tasks at home today, he had not bothered with waistcoat or cravat. She was already pulling his loose white shirt free from the waist of his trousers.
An echo of memory from the first time he had got his hands on her echoed through his mind. Floor or the couch, chérie? “I guess you finally know what you want,” he whispered, panting, when she let him up for air.
She gave him a seductive half smile that rather shocked him, coming from her. Blazes, what had he got himself into? he wondered in delight.
“You,” she answered, then she clutched the crisp lawn of his shirt. “Take this off, Montgomery.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He lifted his shirt off over his head and dropped it on the ground—which made the massive bulge in his trousers all the more obvious, but what could he do?
His battle-ready cock was as hard and proud as any granite obelisk erected by the pharaohs.
A monument to how very well behaved he’d been with her.
She looked at it, then let her gaze climb over his bare torso. Her fingers followed; he twitched with want as they trailed lightly up his belly and over his solar plexus.
He swallowed hard, his chest heaving. Whatever she wanted, he thought as he stared at her in hunger.
“What is this?” she murmured as her fingers stopped on one of his scars.
He glanced down at it. “Beauty mark.”
“It looks like an old bullet wound to me.”
“Or that.” Unable to hold back, he captured her by her elbows and drew her closer. “I’m sure I’ll tell you all my war stories one day, darling. But not now.” Kissing her again, he started undressing her, gently pulling the white fichu away from the neckline of her gown.
He untied the sash around her waist while she stood dreamily, letting him. Leaning closer, he lipped her earlobe, and whispered, “Off with your dress.”
Her lashes flicked upward; she looked uncertainly into his eyes, then visibly remembered that she trusted him.
She made her decision, and as she took off her dress, Trevor went mute with awe at her virginal trust.
Trust, not gold, not silver nor platinum was the rarest commodity on earth. He should know, having tasted betrayal by those who had once mattered most.
Grace turned away and went to drape her walking dress demurely over the back of a nearby chair so it wouldn’t get wrinkled, and watching her, his very heart clenched.
So sweet. So innocent. So good.
Then she turned around shyly, and his eyes glazed over, his mouth watering.
Gorgeous, heavenly tits.
“Good God, Miss Kenwood,” he purred. “What a body you’ve been hiding under those prim gowns.”
“I beg your pardon, my lord?” she cried, turning redder than she’d ever done before.
Trevor flashed a rueful grin. “Sorry. But . . . it’s true,” he added, raking her curves with his dazed stare. Then he met her gaze, and said quietly: “Get over here.”
She approached him warily, her stockinged feet silent over the dusty, hardwood floor. The sunlight teased him, making her chemise slightly transparent as she padded toward him with wide eyes full of nervous desire.
She was devastating, really, he thought, and he could only shake his head in amazement at his sheer luck in finding her. Maybe he should start taking Nick’s place at the gaming tables because he was obviously a son of fortune.
“You are ogling me,” Grace said.
“You deserve to be ogled,” he replied as he took her hand and pulled her closer. “Leered at. Drooled over. Absolutely lusted for. But only by me.”
Then she smiled and brought the very heavens down into his room.
“You’re rather lovely yourself.”
“For an old hunk of Swiss cheese.”
She chuckled. “I get it. Because of the holes.”
He laughed softly. “It’s so nice to be understood.” But he could not stop staring at her chest. “My God, Grace, honestly.”
She frowned at him in self-conscious confusion, but he skimmed the creamy expanse of her chest with one knuckle, taking it slowly. Her firm, round breasts were plumped up on display, lifted for his perusal by the corset that hugged her rib cage and her waist.
But looking was not going to be enough for him. Trevor wanted to taste. So he took her in his arms and kissed her with reassuring protectiveness, while his fingers roamed behind her back and delicately plucked away the lacings of her stays.
When he had freed her from the corset and dropped it on the floor, a very curious thing happened. It was as though by losing that strict, binding garment, the wanton in her was fully unleashed.
He felt the change in her posture, in her touch, in the way she sighed and ran her hands down his biceps while he, in turn, kissed his way down her shoulder. His heart pounded with anticipation as he lowered her chemise on one side, to bare one ripened, beautiful breast.
He went slowly to his knees, his arms around her, as he took her nipple into his mouth. She tipped her head back weakly and let out a groan while he sucked and savored her like she was made of marzipan.
She melted accordingly, stroking his hair, letting him play. “You are absolutely stunning . . . delicious,” he rasped hoarsely as he moved to the other breast.
The moments became a sensual blur of want and bliss and heightened awareness. The next thing he knew, he had her on her back in his bed and was caressing her through her chemise. Her hips and her stomach entranced him almost as much as her wonderful, addictive bosoms.
She held him in her arms as he lay beside her, but when she bent her knee restlessly, he took that as his cue to let his fingertips venture underneath her shift.
Gliding his hand up her thigh, he felt the honeyed cascade of the dew dripping from her core and trembled with need. Somehow, he held himself back, pleasuring her with his hand until she was writhing—but he wanted blindly to devour her. Moving over her with a wholly possessive intent, he swept downward over her silken body to receive her first orgasm on his tongue.
Her clit was swollen, rigid, as his tongue played and stroked, his fingers gliding in and out, her light garment bunched up above her waist.
Grace’s hands rested atop his head, her fingers twining through his hair as he brought her to a silent, heaving climax. He could hear her panting and smiled against her tenderest flesh as he surmised she was biting back a wild shriek. “It’s all right,” he whispered against her belly. “You can scream. Nobody will hear you.”
“But, y-you’ll think I’m a harlot,” she whispered, gasping to catch her breath.
“You silly girl, I could never think that of you. And even if I did, it would be our little secret,” he promised, flicking his tongue into her navel. “Let’s try that again, shall we?”
“Oh, God, Trevor!” she wrenched out as he returned lower and softly kissed her ripe and ready womanhood to the next level of delight. Her hips moved with his openmouthed kiss though he supposed she had never even imagined that such naughty pleasure was possible. Oh, she had much to learn, and he could not wait to teach her. He knew he had been born to love her, in every sense of the word.
No wonder he hadn’t died on his many missions, he thought as he licked and sucked her quive
ring mound. He knew now that he was meant to die in her arms.
On her second climax, she raked her nails into his shoulders, her head thrashing on his pillow like that of a woman fighting to survive some unbearable tropic fever.
I have got to fuck you soon, he thought, feeling his own control slipping. “Need a break?”
“No.”
“Good girl,” he purred in devilish approval, abandoning his southward post. She trailed her fingers over his still-wet chin as he rose over her. Trevor dipped his head to capture her fingertip in his mouth. She groaned again as he sucked her fingers one by one and slowly lay between her legs.
Though he wanted her like he’d never longed for any woman before, he still did not seriously mean to deflower the pastor’s daughter . . . until she said his name in that particular way.
“Trevor.”
It was the most seductive sound he’d ever heard in his life. Breathless wonder. Innocence. Womanly need.
And love.
He heard it in her voice. And he knew that she, of all people, Grace Kenwood, the tower of virtue, would not be here with him in his bed unless she truly loved him.
Struggling with unbearable temptation, he could feel himself losing the battle as he glided his hands down the hourglass curves of her body, then grasped her juicy buttocks when he reached her hips. God, he could explode just from touching her. You are almost too much for me.
“Please, Trevor,” she begged him in tremulous whisper. “I want this just as much as you do.”
He shut his eyes, shaken by her “please,” and promptly lost the war.
Raw want, rough and primal, flooded into his veins, flowing in from some far deeper reservoir of need than any woman had ever tapped in him before.
“Take me,” she panted, grasping his waist.
“You’ll marry me,” he ground out.
“Yes, yes, of course—just, please . . . make love to me. I’ve needed you forever.” She smoothed her palms down the small of his back, pushing his unbuttoned trousers down over his hips. When she grasped his buttocks, his conscience vanished, his will buckled. So much for good intentions.
This virgin had seduced him. As his lips lingered at her sweat-misted brow, he guided his pulsating member to the teeming threshold of her passage.
She sighed in restless satisfaction as he slowly penetrated her. The velvet welcome of her body made him gasp. Lots of women had wanted him over the years, but never an angel giving herself to him as his innocent bride.
“Oh, Trevor,” she groaned his name again. “I thought it was going to hurt. But it’s wonderful. It’s so deep.”
“I told you I’d never hurt you,” he whispered, and he was glad then that he had taken the time to make her fully ready, kissing away every last inhibition. Now that she was open to him in every regard—her lush body, her sharp mind, and her honorable, compassionate heart—he was glad for every day, every hour that he had restrained himself with her. It had been so deliciously worth it.
She wrapped her legs around him with an instinctual knowing and chafed his chest, up and down, maddeningly with her palm. Her touch made him have to fight not to go insane. Patience, patience. She seemed game for whatever he wanted to do, but nevertheless, it was only her first time.
He cast about for some way to hold back, his chest heaving. How easily she could have made him lose control.
Somehow, he held himself in check and kissed her over and over again as he rocked her tenderly, making her utterly his own. He fondled her thigh and slipped his middle finger into the top of her stocking when he came to it. Grace hugged him with her legs and draped her arms around him drunkenly, perhaps intoxicated by pleasure.
They moved in unison, as naturally attuned to each other as they had been from the first night they had danced together at the Lievedon Ball. She hugged him hard in her embrace; he knew she was close and fought for all his worth to hold back just a little longer.
A crazed cry broke from her lips. When she came again, with his cock buried deep inside her, it was more than he could bear. She had barely finished screaming out when the storm broke from him, so long and carefully pent up.
He took her like a wild man, forgetting all his thoughts about patience, holding back. He was swept away by blind, raging hunger that only she could fill. Braced on his hands above her, his hair falling in his face, he ravished her in a blaze of savage pleasure, deaf to the slams of his bed frame pounding on the wall.
All he could hear were her sharp, crazed moans of delight.
A low shout of release tore from his lips, as well, and when he finally stopped, he was shaking and covered in sweat.
Careful not to crush her with his weight, he shuddered with a belated throb of sensation as he withdrew from her body and eased back a bit. He lay atop her.
“Oh, Trevor.”
“Oh, Grace.” He smiled drunkenly, then kissed his way up her throat, rounding the angle of her chin. When he looked down into her eyes, they were sparkling like a thousand stars above the sea.
She bit her lip against a shy, girlish grin.
Trevor stared down at her, utterly in love.
She wrapped her arms around him. “Are you all right? What is it, darling?”
“Nothing. Well—actually, I have a confession to make.”
“You do?” she whispered tenderly, caressing his bare back in long, slow, languorous strokes.
“Everything I did in this town,” he told her softly, “it was for you. But surely you already knew that.”
Joy misted her blue eyes. “I suppose I had my suspicions, but I never would presume. I just thought since you’re a hero—it’s true, you are—and that’s what heroes do.”
He looked at her with a rueful smile, uncomfortable with that term.
“You’re my hero,” she amended, seeing his hesitation. She cupped her hand against his cheek. “And I’m going to love you more than any other woman ever could.”
“I trust you, Grace,” he whispered, holding her gaze.
It was the biggest compliment he knew how to give.
She took his face gently between her hands. “I will never betray that trust. I’ll never hurt you, either, darling. I’ve waited all my life for you.”
Words failed him at her earnest stare. He couldn’t speak, so he merely nodded, then smoothed her hair and kissed her once again.
When she smiled at him so warmly, so intimately, Trevor was amazed to realize that at last, he had truly found the place where he belonged. Whatever he’d done for this village, it was nothing compared to what she’d given him. Love, acceptance.
And a home.
Chapter 22
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, alas, things were not working out half so well for George.
He flinched as Callie Windlesham laughed in his face.
“Marry you? After what you did to me? You must be joking. Go away with your boyish games. I’m tired of them and tired of you!”
He strove for patience and humility, though heaven knew neither were his forte. “Callie, I made a mistake. I admit that. I was wrong, and I am very, very sorry.”
“That’s not nearly good enough!”
“Please! Can’t you see I’m trying to grovel here?”
“As well you should! Listen to me and listen well, Lord Brentford: You are a very bad young man.”
“I thought that was just part of my charm,” he muttered under his breath.
But Callie stalked across the drawing room toward him, counting off his failings on her dainty fingers. “You are addicted to gambling. You chase after inappropriate women. All you care about is yourself, your own pleasures. Having fun!”
“We could have fun together, don’t you see?” he attempted.
“There’s more to life than that! Aren’t you ever going to grow up? If you weren’t
so distracted with all your pleasures, you might have noticed that you are needed here in Thistleton—but I suppose you are too spoiled and selfish to care.”
“Oh, I’m spoiled and selfish?” he shot back, stung sharply enough to retaliate. “Are you sure you aren’t talking about yourself, little princess?”
“Don’t come into my house and insult me.”
“It’s not an insult if it’s the truth,” he retorted.
She folded her arms across her chest and glared at him, but George scowled back.
“Stop trying to act like you’re so perfect. You just merrily assume that everyone else’s world revolves around you, including mine!”
“It ought to if you loved me.”
“God, give me patience!” He dragged a hand through his hair, fighting the urge to throttle her. “What do you want from me, Callie? What is it going to take?”
She looked at him for a long moment, thinking it over, apparently. “That’s a good question. Frankly, you deserve to suffer, George. You cheated on me with a harlot—”
“Here we go again,” he huffed, dropping his head back.
But his lapse in groveling clearly enraged her.
“You had my heart, and you threw it away! I loved you—”
“You did?” he asked in astonishment.
“But not anymore!” she bellowed loudly enough to be heard in the next county.
George felt his heart crumple. “Oh, Callie, please don’t say that. I didn’t know how much you cared at the time. You hid it!”
“I had to! That’s how a young lady is trained!” she wailed. “She has no choice but to be coy until the ring is on her stupid finger!” Tears flooded her eyes. “God, I hate you! Why did you come here, just to rub salt in the wound?”
“You know why I came here. Because I love you.” Gathering up the full measure of his courage, he suddenly dropped to one knee in front of her and tried again to take her hand. “Callie, I’m telling you, that night with Marianne meant nothing to me. How do you think a young gentleman is trained? When you have—certain feelings, you go to a girl like Marianne. Not a lady! Not your future wife. It isn’t proper! Should I have come to you instead? Your father would’ve shot me, and I’d have ruined you.”
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