“Aidan, please,” she moaned, arching her back and thrusting her breasts upward.
He forgot all about his other plans and closed his lips over one nipple while he massaged the other with his thumb and forefinger.
Her hands ran over his head and down his back, grasping his buttocks. She rubbed herself against him.
He raised up to look at her. “Ye’re supposed to lie still.”
“I’m supposed to try.”
His face stretched in a wide smile. “Well, then lass, the time has come. Ye only had to ask.”
He bent his head and claimed her mouth in a deep kiss.
Everything else fled from Rosalinde’s mind. The world was seared away in his fiery kiss and her whole life sizzled down to the wonder of his mouth on hers and his skin gliding smoothly against her skin.
She reached between them to stroke his hard shaft and fondle his balls. He growled with pleasure and a thrill of power surged over her. He brought her to her knees with such ease.
How lovely it would be to make him plead. But the ache between her legs throbbed with a vengeance. Mayhap she’d play at tormenting the man with pleasure after her own need was stilled.
Then Aidan rolled, pulling her on top of him.
“Now, love,” he said, folding his hands beneath his head. “Mount your steed at your pleasure and ride him as you will.”
She sat up abruptly, surprised. “You want me to . . .”
“I want you to take me in to suit yourself,” Aidan said, grasping her hips and positioning her so she was sitting on his groin.
Rosalinde’s face crumpled in confusion. “But what if I do it wrong?”
“Impossible.” He sat up and wrapped his arms around her. “I love you, lass. This is play time for us, a time for our hearts to knit together and find ways to share delight. Only in your case, ye don’t have to fret. Everything about ye delights me. Between you and me, there is no wrong.”
She bit her lower lip in anticipation. “Very well. Lie back, my lord,” she said, giving him a playful push against his chest. “I’m going for a ride.”
The moon dipped below the horizon, darkening the chamber, but the woman astraddle Aidan’s groin seemed to glow like a being aflame. Lust boiled through his veins. For a moment, he imagined tossing her off, dragging her to her knees and mounting her from behind, but he held himself back.
He’d given her the reins. He couldn’t jerk them away without losing the trust he’d gained.
Rosalinde was a quick learner and lost no time repaying him for the way he’d tormented her. She rubbed herself along his shaft. He writhed beneath her, desperate for her to take him in, equally as desperate not to beg her to.
“Now?” The word escaped his lips.
She leaned down and kissed him, raking his chest with her taut nipples. “Not yet.”
She slid down onto his thighs. His cock strained upward and his balls drew into a snug mound. The wiry hairs on his scrotum stood at attention. She traced the centerline between his balls with a fingernail, leaving a line of abrasion on the sensitive skin.
His breath hissed over his teeth. A drop of seed formed on his tip, a milk-blue pearl.
He half-sat up and reached for her, but she straight-armed him.
“Not yet, I said.” She pushed his hand away gently. “You promised to lie still until I give you leave to move. Remember?”
“Aye, lass,” he said through clenched teeth as he settled back into the mattress. “My word is good.”
“I should hope so. If a woman can’t trust the word of the prince of rogues, what’s the world coming to?” She moved up and settled her naked rump on his groin, clearly pleased with herself.
His balls tightened. The tip of him protruded between her legs. She’d obviously been paying attention when he stroked her most sensitive spot, for she’d discovered the bit of rough skin beneath the head of his cock and massaged it with her thumb. He broke out in a sweat, biting his lip to keep from spilling his seed onto his own belly. She leaned forward and kissed him hard.
The need to be inside her was excruciating.
“What will you do if I give you permission to move?” she asked.
“I’ll . . . ah . . . I . . .” He was incoherent with need. “I’ll . . .”
Wet and slick, she slid over the length of him, coating him with her arousal. “Move, Aidan.”
He raised his hips to meet her. She teased him with her soft wet entrance but didn’t let him slip in.
She arched her spine and let her head fall back, thrusting her breasts forward. His jaw went slack with desire.
Aidan ran his hands up her thighs and spread the lips of her sex. He thumbed her most sensitive spot.
She groaned. She tossed her head and leaned back, supporting herself with her hands propped on his thighs to give him better access to her. Her muscles stiffened. Then her entire body bucked with the force of her release. A long, jagged “oh” escaped from her lips as her insides contracted. Her breasts quivered with each fresh wave.
Finally she raised her head and looked down at him in open-mouthed wonder.
He grimaced, satisfied that he’d brought her to such a spectacular release. His aching erection made a true smile impossible.
“Now?” he asked.
“Yes, now.”
She took him in hand and guided him in. Rosalinde moved slowly, obviously reveling in the power of engulfing him, consuming him. Her insides molded around him like a wet fist.
He touched her as she moved and she started tilting her pelvis into him.
Clever girl. She’d already learned she could control the pressure on her sensitive spot. Judging from her shortness of breath, she was racing toward the pinnacle again.
Her first spasm began.
Aidan went off like a Roman candle inside her until he was utterly spent. Her inner walls clenched once more and then she collapsed on his chest, boneless as a sleeping cat.
He stroked her hair, inhaling its soft floral smell. Glad she’d made no move to separate from him. Her breathing slowed. He felt her cheek twitch in a smile against his breastbone.
She was happy. Warmth flooded his chest. Pleasing Rosalinde Burke was the finest thing he could aspire to in all his living life.
“I love ye, lass,” he whispered, but she made no answer. Then very softly, there came a small, ladylike snore. He pressed a kiss on her tousled crown and wondered how long he could remain inside her.
The way he felt right now, a lifetime would be too short.
Rosalinde woke later to find Aidan easing out of the bed.
“Where are you going?” Aware of her nakedness as she sat up, she bunched the sheets around herself. Aidan made no attempt to cover his glorious body as he stooped to gather his discarded clothing.
“It’ll be dawn in a couple hours,” he said, leaning one knee on the mattress to kiss her. “Surely ye’re not wishing for your maid to discover me under your sheets.”
“No,” she said, not entirely sure it wouldn’t be a good idea to put a simple, if scandalous, end to their improper courtship. They’d marry in haste and the rest of the world could go chase itself. “I suppose not.”
He cupped her cheek. “I’d almost rather stay than keep breathin’, but I’d have ye proud when ye become my wife.”
Her heart swelled. He was right. She’d almost forgotten her duty to marry well so her great-aunt would bequeath her unentailed property and a decent sum to her poor father. Lady Chudderley was just vindictive and controlling enough to slight him in her will if Rosalinde thwarted her wishes. In order for Aidan to meet Lady Chudderley’s requirements that her betrothed be a proper gentleman with the right connections, they couldn’t very well be embroiled in a disgraceful start.
“Never fear. I’ll be proud when I become your wife.” She kissed him and despite his protestations, he climbed back into the bed with her, rolling across the crumpled linens in a tangle of arms and legs.
Then he swore softly. “No more, l
ove. I must go.”
She sighed in frustration as he dragged himself away and gathered up the rest of his garments, heading toward the secret panel. He was still naked and his cock stiff when he turned to look at her one last time.
“What a stubborn man you are,” she said, eyeing him pointedly. She let the sheet fall to bare her breasts. “You know you want to stay.”
He groaned with need. “Sure and ye’re trying to kill me, Rose.”
“No, only to love you.”
“I know it doesn’t seem so, but right now, leaving is the best way for me to love you. But meet me in the stable at dawn, aye?”
Only a couple hours away. She nodded and he disappeared into the darkness. The wall whirred shut behind him.
She sank back into the feather pillows, but her body was too keyed up to allow for sleep. She supposed she ought to don her nightshift so Katie wouldn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary.
Then she noticed a dark shape on the floor.
She rose from bed. All her joints felt loose and achy, but it was the good ache of having been well loved. She stooped to discover one of Aidan’s stockings next to her discarded nightshift. She quickly pulled the shift over her head and tried to find the secret entrance in the wall.
“Bother!” she muttered after she ran her fingers over the place where Aidan had magically appeared without finding a way to open it. Evidently the lord of Stonehaven only wanted a secret entrance between his chamber and his lady’s if he was the one who controlled access to it.
After the debacle with Aidan’s button in Bermuda, she shuddered to think what might happen if the man’s stocking were discovered in her chamber here. She padded to the door and peered into the hall, hoping to skitter to Aidan’s room and back without being seen.
Rosalinde opened her door a crack. The swish of kid soles on hardwood made her stop. She put an eye to the slit in the door and saw a woman in a maid’s mobcap and apron moving furtively down the hall. Buxom and bold, she fit Katie’s description of Lily Wade, the upstairs maid.
Lily stopped and scratched on one of the doors. Someone opened to her and she slipped into the chamber, silent as a wraith.
But in that slice of a moment, Rosalinde saw the face of the man who opened the door clearly.
All the air whooshed out of her body in a single rush. Shakily, Rosalinde pulled her door closed and sank to her knees beside it because she no longer had the strength to remain upright.
How could she have been so stupid? So gullible as to believe protestations of love from the admitted prince of rogues. She was never going to read another sonnet as long as she lived. Poetry and iambic pentameter had obviously turned her brain to pudding.
The chamber Lily had entered in the middle of the night without so much as a “by your leave” belonged to Aidan.
Chapter 9
I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you, as ’twere any nightingale.
—SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Songbirds put the finishing flourish on their pre-dawn hymn to the sun. They’d escaped the night terrors of the fox and owl, and the eastern sky wavered in shades of pearl. It was worth singing about.
Aidan knew exactly how they felt as he crunched across the graveled exercise yard toward the stable. When he’d emerged from Royal Dock with his health and sanity intact, he’d thanked God. Then he swore he’d discover who really should have taken berth on that prison ship. He owed Peg Bass that much.
He was close to knowing. He felt it in his bones. In the green morning air. In the heady joy of Rosalinde’s love.
He hoped to choose a suitable mount for her and have it saddled and ready before she appeared.
He found his groom already up and mucking out the stables.
“Where is Balor?” Aidan asked when he noticed the empty stall. Named for a Celtic god with a venomous eye, the beast was only a small step up from Beelzebub himself. Balor was a looker, sleek and black, and in all that horse’s vice-ridden life, Aidan was the only one who’d ridden him successfully. He suspected the Knack deserved most of the credit.
The groom sprang to attention and tugged his forelock. “Miss Burke’s riding ’im, m’lord. Picked him out herself, she did. Ye must admit ’e’s a prime bit o’ horseflesh.”
“And you saddled him for her?” The wee fool. Didn’t she realize her equestrian skills weren’t up to this challenge? Not without Aidan to Knack the beast for her. And even then, with Balor, it didn’t always work.
“I didn’t want to, but she insisted.” The man twisted his cap in nervous hands. “Beggin’ your pardon, your lordship, but you told me I should honor the requests of your guests. I thought ye’d be along direct like, so I saddled Camlan for ye.”
Aidan swung onto the back of his preferred mount. Camlan, a big bay, was less wily than Balor, but he was deeperchested and willing and would run himself to death if Aidan demanded it. “Did you see which way she went?”
“She asked the way to the ruin.”
Aidan swore with vehemence and Camlan leaped forward, barreling across the exercise yard and into the open meadow beyond, hooves digging into the black turf. The ruin of the old tower was overgrown with tangled brambles and blackthorn. If Rosalinde’s mount threw her on one of the narrow game trails in the wood surrounding the ruin, she could be seriously injured.
He caught sight of her dashing across the meadow ahead of him. When a hedgerow rose before her, she took the jump in a glorious bound and landed safely without Balor breaking his headlong stride.
When Aidan and Camlan sailed over the same hedgerow, she glanced back. But instead of slowing to allow him to join her, she leaned forward over her horse’s head and urged him to more speed. Aidan gained on her over the uneven ground, but he held his breath lest her mount step into a coney hole and send her flying.
When she turned Balor’s head into the wood, he called out to her to stop. She ignored him.
He dogged her into the dense overgrowth, ducking under low hanging branches and dodging whippy tendrils of woody vines. When the weathered gray stone of the tower rose before her, Balor reared, screaming his wicked head off.
Rosalinde dropped the reins and clutched the gelding’s black mane. Aidan rushed forward and snatched the dangling lines.
“Down, ye big bastard!” Aidan bellowed and splayed his fingers toward the beast, sending the full power of the Knack roiling toward the horse. Balor dropped his front hooves to the ground in a heartbeat and stood still, quivering but compliant.
“Give me those reins,” Rose demanded.
“Well, now, if ye want them so badly, perhaps ye shouldn’t have dropped them. Are ye trying to damage yourself?”
“Why should I do that when you’re so very willing to do it for me?” She narrowed her eyes. If she’d been a cat, she would have hissed at him. “Leave me alone.”
She unhooked her knee from the sidesaddle and slid off Balor’s back without waiting for his help. He dismounted, looped both horses’ reins around a hawthorn trunk and followed her into the tower ruin.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong, he says.” She lifted her hands in a gesture of frustration as she stomped through the overgrown grass amid moss-covered walls pocked with arrow loops. “I suppose you expect me to be grateful you managed to drag yourself away from your bed so you could keep our dawn assignation. Honestly, Aidan, I don’t know where you find the stamina. Katie said that woman looked the sort who could wear a man slick and I quite agree.”
“Who are you talking about?”
She rounded on him. “Lily Wade.”
“Oh,” he said slowly.
“Yes, oh. I know men expect to keep light-o-loves, but by God, what woman would put up with one under the same roof? Or did you think me too besotted to notice?”
“Ye’re mistaken, love. My dealings with Lily Wade are nothing of the sort. She’s merely performing a service for me.” He reached out and grasped her arm. “And
not the one ye think.”
She yanked her arm away. “Believe me, you don’t want to know what I think.”
He grabbed her and pinned her between his body and the stone wall. She struggled, but he didn’t release her.
“Will ye stand still so I can explain?”
She stopped trying to jerk away from him, but just to be on the safe side, he pressed his body against hers. A man was never kicked by a horse if he walked close behind its rump. He’d only feel the hooves if he gave the animal room to maneuver. He didn’t dare give Rose any space at all or he suspected she’d put a knee to his groin. She finally stilled when she realized she couldn’t wiggle free, but turned her head to the side to avoid his gaze.
“Lily Wade is not a serving girl,” he explained. “She’s an actress.”
“Oh, that makes it so much better. And just what service is it this actress performs for you?”
“It could compromise matters for me to say.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Rose, ye must understand. I don’t want to involve you because the less you know, the safer you’ll be.”
She shot him a venomous glare. “You mean the safer you’ll be. And whether I like it or not, it seems I’m already involved.”
He sighed. “She’s helping me discover who really killed Peg Bass. Last night, she came to my room to report that she’d done as I asked and set the trap for the real killer.”
Her features softened. “Why did you confess to the murder in the first place?”
“They arrested Liam for it,” he said, easing his hold on her somewhat. “He’d never have survived prison.”
Her brows knit together as she digested this bit of news. “Are you sure he didn’t do it?”
“Sure as I’m holding you. Liam is odd, I’ll grant ye, but he’s not at all violent. They arrested him because he used to leave orchids for Peg Bass and moon about over her a bit. She was always kind to him, but that was as far as it went. He’d never have hurt her.”
Improper Gentlemen Page 25