She looked up from their joined hands to his eyes and just barely held back her gasp. There was no misinterpreting the heat in his glance now.
“Call me Marlowe,” he insisted.
She couldn’t contain her smile, and neither could he. They grinned at each other.
“Well, I’d give you permission too, but you already call me Minerva when it suits you, Evelyn.”
He grimaced at the taunt. “I’ll ask for permission properly if you never call me that again. Evelyn is my father’s name.”
Ah. “Well, then I promise never to call you that again. Shall you sack me if I tell you how much of a horse’s arse your father is?”
His eyes practically glittered with amusement. “I’ll give you a raise,” he said, then grew a bit somber. “Though I do regret losing my temper tonight. Minerva, I . . .”
“You needn’t pardon anything, for I would have lost my temper long ago,” she said, and laid her free hand on his cheek, and it was as if that one touch finally burst some dam inside of him, for on a soft sigh, he raised their joined hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles gently . . . then her palm and the inside of her wrist, slowly, painstakingly, as if savoring the taste. If she had any doubts before that he wanted her, or her purpose here in his rooms long after the witching hour, they were erased at the raw hunger she now saw in those intense brown eyes.
When he was done kissing her hand, she cupped his chin and pulled him toward her until their foreheads touched. Their breaths thundered against one another in the meager space between their lips, chests heaving, bodies trembling with electrical current.
She savored the moment of tension, this calm before a storm that she now knew to be inevitable. She took in the scent of him, the heat and strength of him, and knew a desire so profound she thought she might burst from it. No one, not even Essex in his most coy of poems, had ever engendered this want in her, this physical ache. This itch to touch and taste and dig, dig, dig, down to the very heart of him.
That it was the Viscount Marlowe, of all people, who had inspired these appetites was still rather alarming. For the longest time, she hadn’t thought she’d even liked him. But oh, she liked him. More than liked.
“This is not supposed to happen yet,” he murmured against her lips.
Yet? She had no idea what he meant, but it didn’t sound promising. This was definitely supposed to happen.
“What are you waiting for?” She thought she’d been about as brazen as she could get without actually removing her clothing. Though she would consider doing so if it would move things along.
His lips, surprisingly soft and tasting of red wine and mint, grazed her own, and she gasped.
“I need to tell you, explain to you . . .” His brow furrowed, as if he were trying to recall something, but he soon gave up and went back to teasing her mouth. “I can’t even think straight anymore. You’ve mucked it all up in my brainbox,” he murmured. “We are being very naughty, Minerva. Very naughty.”
His voice was as rich and earthy as the sherry she’d drunk earlier, and she shivered from it. “I think you like being naughty, my lord.”
He groaned. “I do. Damn the proper order of things. Damn it all to hell. I want to kiss you, Minerva; I’ve wanted to kiss you for ages.”
She pulled away from him with a frown, and he gripped her hand as if still afraid she would disappear. “Does it look like I am stopping you?” she said in exasperation. “I thought I was the one who was supposed to be the tease.”
After a moment of wide-eyed surprise, Marlowe grinned in that devilish way of his that had started all of this mess in the first place, and her heart went from a gallop to an all-out sprint.
“I’ll show you a tease,” he growled.
That electric current between them traveled down her spine, straight into her lower belly, at the sound of his velvet voice. She was pretty sure that was a threat, but before she could figure it out, his lips were on hers, and there was nothing teasing about what followed.
The one thing that she’d never doubted about Marlowe was that he was a sensualist, but even she was taken aback by his . . . mastery. Just two seconds into the kiss, he’d already surpassed all the passionate moments Arthur and she had ever shared combined.
And that was before any tongue was involved.
By the time he coaxed her lips apart and delved inside, her bones had melted and her skin was humming with pleasure—and he had yet to even lay a hand on her. He was so very good at this that she began to suspect that he’d been the one seducing her all night, not the other way around. Oblivious her foot. He knew exactly what he was doing the moment he’d taken his hand in hers.
Then he touched her waist—her waist, still very much clothed—and her brain began to melt right alongside her body. She gasped against his mouth as his fingers tangled in her hair, pulling it from its pins, then moaned when his hand wandered to the underside of her breast.
Then she was sinking into something soft, though she’d not even noticed she’d moved. She opened her eyes after a few breathless moments, her senses returning enough to focus on more than her body’s reaction, and found herself lying against the pillows of the settee. His face hovered a few inches from her own, his hawkish features thrown into stark relief in the shadows cast by the firelight. She felt his hands on her and looked down to discover he was already halfway through the buttons on the front of her bodice.
Somehow he’d already managed to shed his banyan and cravat, and she ran her hands over his broad shoulders and felt the firm, taut lines of muscle and sinew underneath the loose linen shirt. She shivered at the heat arcing down her spine. Finally she was allowed to touch him, all of him, and it felt even better than she’d ever allowed herself to imagine.
She trailed her hand down his chest, all the way to the hem of his shirt, then underneath to the warm, bare skin beneath, and he sucked in a breath and paused in his work on her bodice. His eyes were practically glittering when they met hers, and his expression was even more intent, though there was a hint of a smirk at the edge of those lips. “Oh, you’d better be sure, Minerva,” he murmured. “The things I plan to do to you.”
She tugged on the band of his breeches in lieu of a verbal response—oh, she was very sure—and grazed her fingertips across his exposed hip bone.
He groaned, tore through the rest of her buttons, and jerked her gown down her legs and over her ankles, leaving her in her shift and the pantaloons that had once flown high on Poseidon’s trident. He tossed the gown behind him, barely missing the fire, and then stood up, looming over her as he made quick work of his boots, never taking his hungry eyes off her body.
She tried to stand as well, with some odd notion that she might help him in his haphazard frenzy to undress, but he just urged her back down and fell to his knees in front of her, still half-clothed. In the lust-fueled fog that filled her mind, she was at a loss as to what exactly he was doing until she felt him gripping her ankles and tugging off her slippers. Then her stockings. Then, before her brain could quite catch up, she felt his hot, rough fingers against her bare legs, loosening her pantaloons as he went and pulling them off so that she was totally bare from the waist down.
And for the first time that night, she began to panic. She’d certainly never gotten this far with Arthur—she was not sure Arthur would have ever even known to go this far in the first place. She had a feeling Arthur would have done all of his business in bed, in the dark, and under multiple layers of blankets and nightclothes. But not Marlowe. She didn’t think even she had the imagination for what Marlowe intended to do to her.
She was, however, becoming more convinced by the minute that Marlowe’s breeches were not coming off anytime soon. Instead, he busied himself pushing her knees apart and settling between them, staring at that naked place between her legs currently being highlighted by the firelight as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.
She could feel herself blush from head to toe and attempted to
shut her legs. He wouldn’t let her, instead running his hands up and over her thighs soothingly until she’d no choice but to relax. It felt too good to do otherwise.
The moment he felt the tension go out of her, however, he gripped her naked backside and pulled her closer to the edge of the settee with a wicked grin. She slumped into the pillows at her back with a surprised yelp. “What on earth are you—” she gasped out.
She couldn’t finish what she was saying—couldn’t remember language, really—as his hands wandered down her thighs, to her knees, then traced upward and in, his blunt, calloused fingertips tickling the sensitive skin leading to . . .
He raised his head from his survey of her bare flesh and cocked an eyebrow, as if waiting for her to continue her protest. But all the words were caught in her throat now as his fingers hovered just a hair’s breadth away from that spot.
His devil’s smirk gave him away however. He knew she was beyond speech.
“A third time pass’d my hand on marble turn’d / As warm as woman’s secret flesh interred,” he murmured, breath hot on her fevered skin.
Wait, did he just quote Essex at her naked bits?
“You . . .” she began, raising herself on her elbows, but again she was cut off. By his mouth. And his tongue. On said bits.
Ah, so that was what Essex meant with that line. Though she didn’t know exactly how she felt about hearing her favorite poet quoted to her—such a strange intersection between the man whose words she loved and the man whose . . .
Well, she definitely, definitely loved Marlowe’s tongue at the moment.
Then she stopped thinking of Essex, or anything besides the wet, hot feel of his lips, teeth, and tongue caressing and teasing her in just the right spot. That spot she’d discovered on her own years ago, but never once had imagined having this done to it.
How could she never have imagined such a glorious thing?
She gripped his hair and tugged a little, urging him on, and he moaned in response, apparently liking the rough treatment. He pushed his tongue inside of her and proceeded to tease her in the lewdest manner yet of the evening. She gripped his hair even tighter, and still he didn’t complain. In fact, her abuse only seemed to spur him on, and suddenly one finger, then two, were playing inside of her, and she cried out at the novel sensations.
She’d certainly never done that.
He lifted his head and met her eyes. His mouth and chin were obscenely wet, and his brown eyes were glazed over and unfocused with something that looked very much like bliss. His expression only made her feel even hotter, even with the loss of that lovely tongue of his, but when he licked his lips, as if savoring the taste of her, and did something incendiary with his thumb down below, she nearly tumbled over the edge.
“Tease,” she said, breathless.
He smirked at her and lowered his head once more, licking a long, wet, heated strip up and over that little bundle of nerves at the same time as he sped up the motion of his fingers inside of her.
Minerva came long and hard, back arching and toes curling, her vision going white, letting out a loud, embarrassingly high-pitched wail. He continued to toy with her until she could bear no more. She tugged on his hair to bring him back up for a kiss, and he obeyed with alacrity, licking her lips open the same way he’d licked her . . . well, her other lips open. She tasted herself on him, salty sweet.
She was distracted yet again when she noticed one of his arms reaching inside his breeches. She was unable to see exactly what he was doing down there from her angle on the settee, but the hazy, unfocused look in his eyes, the flush of his cheeks, and his labored breaths gave her a fair idea.
She reached for his falls, but he stilled her hands, a wild look coming over his face. “Not this time, not until . . .” He panted, unable to continue, and instead buried his head in the crook of her shoulder, his hand working himself so vigorously his whole body trembled atop hers.
Seconds later, he stiffened and moaned, sending a renewed spark of heat through her at the raw sensuality of the moment. Then he moved his lips to her ear and whispered, “Then burn’d did she, and follow her I burn’d.”
It was the most erotic—and bewildering—thing that had ever happened to her in her life. She wondered for a moment whether she was stuck in a dream only Lady Hedonist could have scripted, but then she felt Marlowe shift her on top of him, his arms warm and strong around her torso, his breath ragged and sweet against her ear, and she knew this was too real to be a dream.
She lifted her head. He was watching her, his expression still dazed and perhaps a little wary. She almost laughed at the bird’s nest he’d—she’d—made of his hair and the look of lazy satisfaction on his countenance. God, he was rather beautiful like this, even with the bump on his nose, and she wanted to say a thousand things, ask him a million questions—especially the ones that mattered most at the moment.
What did this mean? Was he in love with her? Because she was rather horrifyingly certain now that she was in love with him.
But all that came out of her mouth was, “We didn’t even make it to the bed,” for surely she wouldn’t be expected to be able to think straight after that.
He just laughed as if she’d said the most delightful thing, and pulled her down for a kiss. Then another. And another.
She definitely stopped thinking at all after that.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IN WHICH MISS JONES FINDS OUT
IT TOOK SEVERAL more kisses, the promise of a long talk on the morrow, and finally a threat or two before she’d convinced Marlowe to let her return to her room alone. He’d wanted to accompany her across the house, but she’d thought it a terrible idea. Neither of them looked anywhere near presentable, and if they were intercepted together by anyone at such a late hour, there would be questions they couldn’t answer.
Better for her to go alone. They’d already risked too much in coming together to his rooms in the first place.
This dalliance business was certainly not for the faint of heart. He was right to want to talk the next day—even though he’d been strangely cagey when he’d suggested it—but she was too tired and too bewildered to undertake the endeavor at the moment. She needed time alone to sort out in her mind what had happened between them before she saw him again. She’d hardly thought the consequences of her brash actions through, and she desperately hoped she’d not come to regret them.
He’d stopped short of fully taking her, and she didn’t know whether to feel relieved or worried about the implications. But she was confused. Neither of them had made any declarations, and though she suspected he might be in love with her, she couldn’t be sure. She needed to hear the words. More than that, she needed to know his intentions, for even if he did love her, she feared that might not be enough for this to end in anything but complete disaster.
They definitely needed to talk. But she wanted to be fully conscious for such an undertaking, in case—when—he said something she didn’t like. She didn’t want to leave him, or the children, or Lady Elizabeth . . . or even Mrs. Chips. She’d grown to love not only the viscount but also every aspect of her life here. For the first time in her life, she felt as if she were part of a family, and it was going to break her heart if she had to say goodbye.
But she would if she had to. Marlowe had a dim view of matrimony at best, and even if that were not the case, it seemed presumptuous of her, even now, to think that a penniless woman in her position could ever even hope to marry a nobleman, no matter how unconventional he seemed to be. And contrary to what had just occurred between them, she was not prepared to be his mistress, no matter how much she wanted him.
So caught up in her increasingly uneasy thoughts, she almost shrieked when she rounded a corner and collided with Lady Elizabeth, who dropped the books in her hands to the floor with a gasp.
Glad for the shadowy hallway, Minerva could feel her face flame scarlet as she crouched down and scrambled to gather up the fallen books. She’d thought that by now
she’d be well beyond mortification, considering what the viscount had just done to her, but running into his sister after hours spent in his arms had not figured into her plans.
She straightened, shoved the books back into Lady Elizabeth’s arms, and tried to make a quick escape before the girl could realize how untoward it was for the governess to be skulking about the hallway near the viscount’s rooms before dawn.
But of course she’d never be so lucky. She could tell the moment the girl figured it out, for her eyebrows almost disappeared into her hairline. Even worse, only seconds later, Lady Elizabeth’s expression of shock quickly metamorphosed into a cross between a knowing smirk and relief.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh!”
“Lady Elizabeth . . .”
“But this is brilliant,” the girl whisper-cried, looking as pleased as when she’d discovered Christopher Essex had published a new poem. “Finally! I avow, I was about to resort to extremes if something didn’t happen soon.”
It was Minerva’s turn to be shocked. “You know?”
Lady Elizabeth gave her a look of incredulity. “Darling, you are both as transparent as glass.”
“But . . . we are always fighting . . .”
“You mean flirting, don’t you? Good grapes, it’s been absolutely painful to watch the pair of you. Thank heavens my brother has come to his senses and seduced you as he should have months ago.”
“Lady Elizabeth!” Minerva cried reprovingly.
She shrugged, unrepentant. “As I said, it’s been excruciating. I didn’t think Evie would ever tell you the truth. I assured him it would all work out if he did, and see how right I was? I would write a torrid novel about Essex’s happy ending if Evie weren’t my brother.” She shuddered. “I have definitely learned my lesson on that score. Lady Hedonist is on permanent holiday.”
It was probably the late hour, Minerva’s troubled thoughts, and the rather mind-altering bliss the viscount had given her not too long ago that were making it so difficult to follow the thread of Lady Elizabeth’s ramble . . . well, more difficult than usual. “What are you talking about?”
Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip Page 20