With This Ring

by Celeste Bradley

  “And the earl? You could have told him, at least.”

  Aaron tried to smile at that thought, but he feared it didn’t come out quite right. “The earl is not a tolerant man. Wells knew he’d be driven off instead, and Serena was already … well, it seemed better at the time. The damage was done due to the gossip, and I knew I’d played my part with poor Amelia—”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong!”

  He shook his head. “I think perhaps a girl might like to be proposed to properly, not offered a reluctant hand, don’t you? I did a poor job of it. I blamed her for putting Wells into a fix, thereby putting me into a fix by association. I’m sure I didn’t hide it well.” He shrugged. “And I knew that Wells was engaged to Serena, but I thought he was only flirting with Amy. Just having a bit of fun before tying the knot. I was too wrapped up in my own pleasures to see what was going on beneath my very nose. I could have stopped it so easily, if only I’d bothered to pay attention. Amelia needed protecting, but I failed her.”

  “You weren’t her father, or her brother! Besides, if I truly wanted to sneak away with a man, no one could stop me. You carry so much guilt—why, when you’ve done nothing wrong?”

  Wonderful, mad Elektra. After knowing him for less than a week, how could she possibly have that sort of belief in him, when his own family had not—even Serena?

  He smiled sadly at her. “It is harder than you realize, to remember yourself when you have forever lost the good opinion of the world.”

  Their gazes met and held for a long moment. Aaron hadn’t felt so light in years. The relief was amazing.

  Unfortunately, it changed absolutely nothing.

  Suddenly he saw her beautiful eyes fill with tears. She lifted her chin and looked away.

  He returned to her side, kneeling on the blanket. “What is it?”

  She brushed the back of her hand over her eyes impatiently. “It is nothing.”

  Aaron reached for that hand and kissed away the dampness there. “I have split open my soul, Elektra. Time to pay the piper.”

  A small laugh cut damply through the tears. “I miss Hastings! Isn’t that ridiculous?”

  “I am right here.”

  She turned to regard him. Her gaze was unflinching. “You are a stranger to me, Lord Aaron.”

  He gave her a Hastings smile. It did not feel false upon his face. “That didn’t stop you from kissing me before in the ruin.”

  She laughed again, albeit reluctantly.

  Encouraged, he brushed a strand of golden silk away from her face. “Elektra, I think you are wonderful.”

  She looked down at her hands. “Hastings didn’t think I was wonderful.” She sniffled. “Hastings thought I was a spoiled brat.”

  “Hastings—I—thought you were a complete bedlamite, actually. I also thought you were beautiful and fascinating—”

  “And complicated.”

  He tipped her chin up with one finger and smiled at her. “You say that as if it is an insult. I shouldn’t like you nearly so much if you were simple—if you were Bliss.”

  The smile that broke out then was reward enough for days. Then she reached out with one finger and gave him a challenging poke in the chest. “Be careful, my lord. Bliss is a Worthington!”

  Aaron vowed to himself to never, ever bring up Dade in conversation.

  “Now you know everything about me,” he said softly. “So you must realize how alike we are. I know precisely how you can want something so much that you will turn yourself inside out to make it happen.”

  Elektra gazed into the warm gray eyes of the most astonishing man she’d ever met. How could he know what he knew? How could he understand what she barely understood herself?

  He might be impressed with her little game of deduction, but Elektra knew she wasn’t brilliant like Attie, or capable like Callie, or even good-natured like Bliss. She wouldn’t even own the title of family beauty much longer, not with Attie growing up so quickly.

  What she was, the only gift she knew was truly her own, was her strength of mind. Her determination to repair her family. Now that she knew the source of that purpose, she was more resolved than ever.

  She could not part with that goal, not for anything. Not for anyone.

  Not even for love?

  Instant terror swept her. Love?

  She could not love him! She could never fall in love with him!

  Lord Aaron Arbogast was everything she’d ever wanted, and everything she never wanted. Wedding Black Aaron would not bring the Worthingtons up from their disreputable reputation!

  Aaron could not make her a lady of Society who was accepted wherever she went. Aaron could not legitimize her quirky family, nor whitewash their eccentricity. Aaron would only add further gossip and scandal to a family reputation already checkered with madness and chaos.

  No. Elektra needed the Duke of Camberton. She needed him to turn her family’s status to the finest sterling, to wipe the tarnish from the Worthington history, to end the chatter and gossip and chaos once and for all!

  I need Camberton … but I love Aaron.

  I want to be selfish. For just this one moment, I want to be as selfish as people have always believed I am.

  Very slowly and with great purpose, she removed the pins holding her chignon. Ignoring Aaron, although she could feel his eyes fixing on the fall of her hair, she began to unbutton her spencer. She laid it aside. Then she stood and reached behind her. With the ease of a lifetime of looking after herself, she swiftly undid the long row of tiny buttons on the back of her gown.

  Only then did Aaron seem to rouse from his hair-induced daze.

  “Elektra? What—”

  When her gown slid from her shoulders and pooled at her feet, she turned to face him at last. He was staring at the pile of mint-green muslin on the blanket. She watched as his eyes rose slowly and his gaze passed over her pearly stocking-clad calves, over the mint-green ribbon garters tied above her knees, over the hem of the chemise that brushed halfway down her thighs, to the twin points of her nipples, chilled with excitement—and yes, a bit of fear!—and not very well concealed by the filmy, finely woven white batiste.

  Then, with obvious effort, he forced his gaze to her face.

  “I—” He swallowed thickly. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  She lifted her chin. He wanted her. She could feel his desire emanating from him. She thought of the kiss—she thought of each kiss separately. There was the first one, when she’d been so surprised and pleased at the thought of feeling such attraction for her future husband. Her pulse increased at the memory.

  There was the second kiss, when she’d believed him to be a servant and was sure her perfect plan had been ruined, when she’d felt the compulsion to retrieve one good thing from the mess, even if it remain just a memory forever. Her lips parted, her breath coming faster.

  Then … then there was the third kiss, the kiss of a girl in love against custom, against rank, against everything she’d always assumed to be valuable.

  Her heart melted. Her body throbbed in time with her speeding pulse. Her hands began to shake. Her knees, already weakened by the memory of his mouth on hers, gave way. She knelt before him on the blanket, facing him—offering him …

  Everything.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Elektra watched Aaron swallow hard again. He blinked, started to speak, then halted. Then, incredibly, he drew back, practically scrambling backward on the blanket. She bit her lip.

  How sweet. He was trying so hard not to give in. He was trying desperately to remain a gentleman, though he wanted her so badly he seemed beyond speech entirely.

  “Aaron?” she murmured. “What are you going to do—mount your horse and ride away?”

  He stopped his retreat. “No.” His gray eyes went dark then. All gentlemanly reticence slipped away, rolling off him like water, leaving him larger and darker and far more intimidating.

  He reached his long, muscled arm out and caught her
about the waist. In one powerful motion, he pulled her tightly to his body. They remained there for a thrilling, breathless moment, on their knees, chest to breast, hard to soft, caught on the cusp of no return.

  Then he rolled her beneath him on the blanket. She gasped at the weight of his big, hard body on hers. His two days of beard set her skin to tingling and sent shivers down her neck when he pressed his hot mouth to her throat, sucking and nibbling at her most tender spots. Her lips parted in a gasp. His mouth sought hers.

  He took her mouth hard, with all the passion he’d kept so well hidden since the ruins. She willingly let him in, let him dive his tongue into her, let his firm lips mold her softer ones. She wanted him hard, wanted him to want her as fiercely as she wanted him. She’d felt his gentleness. Now she wanted his shadows as well.

  His knee pressed between hers, pushing them apart. She spread her thighs willingly, welcoming him coming to rest with his muscled thigh hard against her mound. Her hands clung to him, moving over him, tugging at the buttons of his weskit, at the studs of his shirt, then wonderfully, miraculously, over the bare hot skin of his back.

  He pulled her chemise off in one motion, leaving her in nothing but stockings and garters. Pulling away from her for a heart-stopping moment, he came back stripped of his clothing, hot and hard and naked against her.

  He began to enter her. She squirmed above him, and he realized after a moment that she squirmed with discomfort. Not precisely how he would prefer her to squirm.

  “Sh. Wait.” He withdrew from her, although it made him ache to leave even this small amount of her warmth that he’d enjoyed. He kissed her softly. Then he rolled over, pulling her on top of him to sprawl across his chest. As her golden hair fell in a veil around them, he decided he liked this better anyway. She pressed against him invitingly, soft yet lithe and strong.

  He pushed the hair back from her face and smiled up into her scowl. “Don’t worry. Nothing has to be perfect, my darling. We are here to touch, kiss, and to love. You don’t have to get this right. You don’t have to be perfect.” Even though you already are. Born perfect, he thought. Perfect for him.

  His chest ached with the expansion of his heart as he watched the concentration and worry ease from her expression. She even gave him a small rueful smile, an easing of the tension she wrapped herself in like a suit of armor.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  He could tell she hated admitting any such thing. It was incredible how well he could read her eyes and the tilt of her head and the lift of her chin. The language of Elektra. He wanted to spend the rest of his life reading and rereading this book.

  “Do whatever you wish to do.”

  Aaron slid his hands up smooth thighs and wrapped them around the curve of her hipbones, which fit into his palms as if they were made just for him. With a single gentle tug, he positioned her in a straddle with her hot damp center pressing his aching erection down on his belly. She gasped in surprise, and then sighed with pleasure when he tilted his pelvis to slowly slide his cock along her slick, aroused slit.

  She had braced her palms on his chest, and now her hands tensed. Aaron moaned at the bite of her nails on his skin and the heat of her on his cock. It took every thread of concentration he could summon to keep his movements slow and careful. As much as he wanted to possess her, to lose himself in her, he wanted even more to please and satisfy her.

  What man would not want such a delicious creature to come back for more?

  He watched her eyelids drop as she took over the rhythm from him, arching her body to attain even more contact as she slid faster against him. He slid his hands up her waist and ribs to cup her full breasts in his palms. “Yes,” he urged softly. “Feel my hardness.”

  Elektra lowered herself down onto his erection, feeling his hardness pressing into her. How could someone be so hard and so gentle at the same time? She paused, her breath catching as she stretched painfully. This was it. If she did this, she would have done something irrevocable.

  Worthingtons weren’t terribly respectful toward the irrevocable. Worthingtons believed it was better to apologize than to authorize.

  Abruptly, she lost patience with herself. She lost patience with this gentleness and this tenderness. Blast it, she lost patience with her fear!

  Taking a deep breath, she drove her body down onto his. Ignoring his gasp, ignoring the burning of her own body its most tender point, she bloody well got it over with!

  The pain was actually rather shocking. Her breath left her completely in a ragged gasp. Beneath her, Aaron writhed. “Oh, you little fool,” he gasped. “Why did you do such a thing?”

  He tried to withdraw from her, but even in her distress Elektra could out-stubborn any male of the species. She gripped him with her knees and fisted her hands in his hair and held him tight as the uneven gasps tore from her throat.

  Giving up on wresting her impaled body from his erection, Aaron settled for wrapping her tightly in his arms and pulling her down to his chest. “You’re entirely mad, Miss Elektra Worthington!”

  She shook her head, rolling her cheek against the hard plates of his pectoral muscles. “Me?” she panted. “I’m the sane Worthington! Ask anyone!”

  Aaron gave a resigned sigh. “A question of relativity, I assure you.”

  Elektra hid her smile beneath her fallen hair.

  Then, just like that, her body took over. She melted around him, relaxing, wrapping him snugly within her. The fullness made her want to move, to slide up the hard rod of him, then slowly ease back down.

  She had the rhythm of it now. She rose and fell on him, each slide taking him deeper, each withdrawal teasing her. She made it last. The world might think her impetuous, but she had an instinctive knowledge that if she hurried it would be over too soon. She moved slowly and purposefully until he moaned and bucked and sweated beneath her.

  He didn’t speak, didn’t urge her to go faster. She understood that he liked it, that he wanted to be teased to an unbearable level. She waited until her own body began to ache and long and shudder. She could not bear it any longer. She had to know what was at the top of this mountain!

  She dug her fingers into his biceps and she rose and fell on him in a rhythm as old as time. He held her breasts in his hands and called out her name as his body convulsed between her thighs. She felt him as he hardened even further and enlarged even more inside her, throwing her from the heights into a final tailspin of ecstasy.

  Aaron had lost thought, had lost all shred of civilization. Without restraint, he plunged deeply into her. She was everything he’d ever dreamed. Her ardor moved him, driving him higher than mere sex, than mere satisfaction. There was no other woman like Elektra. She was a creation of fire and spirit that he’d never known before.

  She met him, gasp for gasp, thrust for thrust. Her hands slid around his back, tightening on his shoulders, her fingernails digging deep, driving him higher. Her sighs blended with his moans. One breath, one body, one heart.

  God, how I love her.

  He could not tell her that now, not while he was deep inside her body, not while his release built within him and the blood left his brain and there was nothing in the world but sweet, wild, hot, slippery Elektra.

  He considered her wary heart and knew she likely wouldn’t believe him anyway.

  So he loved her as best he could—with his hands, with his mouth, with his open heart and his every thought. I love you.

  She cried out, calling his name—his real name. Then she came around him, her body tightening around his cock, pulsing her ecstasy around him. His release overwhelmed him, and he exploded inside her as a deep, choked roar was torn from his throat.

  The mad pleasure vibrated through Elektra, exploding the very center of her outward, sending light and heat and chills throughout her entire body. She knew that she made noises. She could hear her own animal cries but she could not control them and furthermore she could not care about them. At last she slipped and fell, and fell.
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br />   And then drifted like a feather down to lie upon his chest, sweating and panting and finally truly understanding what it was. The great mystery of taking a man inside her wasn’t just about skin and flesh and hardness and softness.

  This man inside her, this was the man she loved.

  Aaron wrapped weary arms about his woman and held her close. He had thrown it all away for this single moment with her. There was no going back now to that man who first stepped upon this shore but a week ago. That man could think of nothing but regaining the past.

  Now all Aaron could see was the future, his future. A future full of fire and light and love and sweetness and arguments and more relatives than he could count, because they seemed to be increasing.

  There was no other in woman in the world but Elektra. Even as she relaxed upon him, his body between her thighs, her forehead resting on his shoulder, his face buried in the damp sweet-smelling crevice of her neck, fear grew within him.

  What if she didn’t love him?

  What if she never loved him?

  He rolled with her in his arms until she lay limply beside him, her head upon his chest, her long legs tossed over him coltishly, her hair a tangle that blocked his vision. His expanded heart beat a new rhythm, with a resonance that shook into his soul.

  Elektra sleeping was a wonder of softness and sweetness and pliancy that anyone who had bounced up against her razor-edged exterior could not imagine. At least, he would not have imagined it if he had not seen her gentleness with her little sister or the delicate respect she had for her mother.

  Elektra was not insensitive. If anything, she was too aware of others. She cared too deeply for their good opinion, even more when those others dared judge her mad family.

  This scheme of hers, this quest for the Perfect Bachelor, was merely her way of trying to protect that bunch of deliriously lovable oddballs—Aaron allowed a single exception to that lovability in the person of Orion, who clearly possessed nothing even resembling a heart!—but now he hoped that they could put the matter of the Perfect Bachelor behind them. He would die to keep her—but losing her would kill him as well.