Miranda Neville

by The Ruin of a Rogue

  “Do you play chess?” she asked. Perhaps she also sought a distraction.

  “Are you already tired of destroying me at cards?”

  “There’s no luck in chess. We’d be equals.”

  Her care for his self-esteem touched him. “It’s not my best game. I’ve never studied it because there’s little money in it. But the principle of seeing several moves in advance is similar to a number of card games.”

  She went over to the tallboy between the windows. “You’ll probably beat me then. There’s a set in the bottom drawer.” Her kneeling to retrieve it gave him a splendid view of her bottom beneath its soft leather covering. He doubted he was going to be much good at looking ahead tonight. On the chessboard, that was. He gritted his teeth and lined up the pieces. Damn it, why did she insist on helping? Her hands brushed against his and contact wasn’t a good idea.

  Happily, his competitive instincts kicked in. Even severe unresolved lust wasn’t enough to spoil his ingrained habit of playing to win. Or so he thought, until she played him into a corner and forced him to resign in a couple of dozen moves.

  “Has your brain gone the way of your luck?” she asked sweetly. “That was too easy.”

  That was a terrible thought. “Line them up.”

  He kept his eyes off his opponent and his mind on the board, the only sounds the clock ticking and the hissing coals punctuated by the thud of chessmen moved from square to square.

  “Check.”

  He brought in a bishop to foil the attack. “Check,” he said a few moves later, forcing her to sacrifice a rook. A hard-fought game eventually ended in a draw.

  “You held back on me, Anne. You’re an excellent player. At least as good as I.” She looked happily smug. “Your grandfather made a better job of teaching you the game than he did piquet.”

  “Grandfather didn’t play. Felix taught me. He studied the game.”

  The image of her intended husband as a callow idiot wavered. “I never got the impression he was an intellectual sort.”

  “Felix was very clever. He was brilliant at Cambridge and always said he’d like to have been a scholar or a barrister if he hadn’t been heir to the earldom.”

  Marcus didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. “But he never kissed you.”

  “No, such a shame. I think you should kiss me now to make up for it.”

  “Are you managing me, Anne Brotherton?”

  Her eyes widened with utterly false innocence. “Don’t you want to kiss me?”

  “Want has nothing to do with it,” he ground out.

  “Please, Marcus.”

  He was only so strong. Reaching across the table, sending chessmen flying, he snatched her onto his lap and seized her lips. There was neither finesse nor restraint on either side, merely a crazed mutual union of tongues and teeth and saliva. She gave as good as she got, and any doubts he’d harbored that Anne Brotherton was a passionate woman were dispelled forever. Digging her fingers into his skull she demanded ever more, emitting little groans of pleasure that had his cock swelling to the point of pain. His head buzzed and he knew he was losing control. This couldn’t go on, so, once again, he put her aside, inelegantly pushing her to her feet.

  “Why?” She was panting.

  “Sit down.”

  She responded to his sharp command and retreated behind the table. He took a deep breath.

  “Do you know what happens between a man and a woman?”

  “Of course. Caro told me.”

  “And did she explain what happens to a man when he’s inflamed?”

  “With carnal desire, you mean.”

  “Exactly. There comes a certain point when he no longer has the slightest inclination to control himself, and I’m perilously close. My cock is painfully inflamed so unless you intend for me to relieve you of your virginity you should keep your distance.” This was plain speaking but he wasn’t up to euphemism. If his crudeness scared her away, so much the better. Indeed, her eyes widened in shock, then she pursed her lips and wriggled in her seat. “Keep still. You’re not helping.”

  “I think I might be a bit inflamed myself.”

  He hadn’t thought himself capable of mirth in his present state of agony but that made him smile. Damn, she was sweet. And desirable beyond measure. “Tell me about Felix and his brilliant academic career.” That should kill his cockstand stone dead.

  “I’d rather talk about you. Tell me about your education. You know Latin and Greek. Where did you go to school?”

  An account of his checkered academic history ought to kill her desire too. “When I was eleven I entered Mr. Pinkley’s Academy. Until then, my education had been . . . intermittent. Every now and then my father would hire a tutor, most likely pretending to be a responsible father in order to impress a lady he was trying to cheat.”

  “But he sent you to school in the end?”

  “He left the country and Mr. Hooke—Uncle Josiah—enrolled me.”

  “What was it like?”

  “A small and very strict establishment filled with very unpleasant boys.” So they’d seemed—and acted—but from the perspective of adulthood they’d done no worse than defend their territory from an outsider. “I started by teaching them various games of chance, which they enjoyed until I relieved them of their pocket money. Then they tried to fight me, but I learned self-defense in a hard school and not even a boy twice my size gave me much trouble. Once they discovered they couldn’t bully me, they left me alone.”

  “Did you have any friends?”

  “Not one. They called me the foreigner and avoided my company.”

  “How horrid.”

  “It was for the best,” he said, twisting his mouth. “I had nothing to do but study and it turned out I was good at it. Any semblance of a classical education I retain I owe to Mr. Pinkley and his pupils.”

  “Then you went to Oxford.”

  “I even won a scholarship. I lasted there less than a year.”

  “Oh, I know what happened next. Caro told me the story often. The four of you were sent down for breaking into the Bodleian Library.”

  “Who knew that we were violating a sacred oath? I thought it was a prank.”

  “Whose idea was it?”

  “Robert’s, of course. He was always the leader. That was the end of my formal education. We all took off for Paris together, saw the fall of the Bastille and the Revolution in action. The others came home but I’ve spent most of the ensuing years abroad, living on my wits and my skills as a gamester.”

  “I cannot imagine living anywhere but England. My French is terrible.”

  “Sweetheart, Europe is full of countries. They don’t all speak French.”

  “How many languages can you speak?”

  “I can get by in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. I know enough Russian, Polish, and Portuguese to play cards, order dinner, and make love.”

  “Have you made love to a lot of women?”

  “Hundreds.” He exaggerated. Although he was hardly a model of purity, he’d been too busy for prolonged affairs.

  “It must be hard to know so many languages. Don’t you get muddled?”

  “I have a facility. I had trouble learning Swedish so left after three weeks.” He didn’t add that he’d run afoul of a nobleman whose wife he’d relieved of her virtue and a large sum of money. There was a limit to how much he could bear to blacken his character in Anne’s eyes.

  “Do you miss your life? Do you long to be on your travels again?”

  He shook his head slowly as he realized the question was moot. It appeared increasingly unlikely that he could keep the estate, so Europe it would be, and he’d better pray his luck turned or he’d die of starvation. “I expect I’ll be in Italy by spring. Or maybe Portugal. Very hospitable people, the Portuguese.”

  “I think it’s a shame,” Anne said, “that you met Robert Townsend. If you’d stayed at Oxford you would have done great things.”

  He tasted the notion
with a sinking heart. It was an article of faith that his friendships at Oxford had been the best things that ever happened to him. “Robert was my best friend.”

  “That’s as may be,” she replied. “I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead but from what Caro told me, and now you, he was nothing but trouble.”

  “My uncle disowned me after Oxford,” he said softly, speaking mostly to himself.

  “Yet he left you Hinton.”

  He imagined living at Hinton, leading a useful life as a landlord, improving the estate. He envisioned a wife and children. This wife and their children. His own family. A pain in his heart made him wonder if he was dying.

  “Yes. He gave me another chance. Too bad there isn’t a chance in hell I can make it good.”

  Travis insisted on giving up his room next to Marcus’s, and Anne insisted Marcus take his own. She huddled under the blankets and thought about Marcus in his large bed, just the other side of the wall. Without recalling everything about the night of her rescue, she retained an impression of his body enclosing hers, keeping her warm and safe. Her flesh shivered at the memory, but not with cold. She wore another of his shirts to bed. She now recognized the aching feeling below her belly. She wanted his hands on her skin, not his linen.

  After half an hour or so, she left her bed and the room and opened the door to his, driven by wishes that overcame doubt and reason. Was she foolish to offer herself to him? Probably. Rejecting every precept of her upbringing, she surged forward to take what she wanted. Darkness, leavened only by the glow from the fireplace, lent her courage. She tiptoed up to the shadowy mound of bedclothes, assessing his breathing. Unaccustomed to sharing a room, she couldn’t be sure if he was asleep. Closing her eyes, she lingered for a moment, not from fear but to enjoy the intimacy of sharing this little dark corner of the world with the man she loved, and the anticipation of uncharted joys.

  As she slid under the covers his heat welcomed her and his scent enveloped her senses. She reached for him, tentatively exploring the firm contours of his arm and shoulder, the texture of skin beneath the scanty hair on his chest. Desire pooled below.

  His muscles tensed under her fingers. “Anne?” He wasn’t asleep now.

  “Were you expecting someone else?” she asked with a nervous laugh.

  “I wasn’t expecting anyone. Were you cold in your room?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “If you came in because you were cold, I am sorry,” he said, as though suffering strangulation, “but you’ll have to leave.”

  “What if I wasn’t cold?”

  “Then you have precisely five seconds to change your mind or it’ll be too late. Think about it.”

  She let her heart and her body do the thinking. “One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five,” she counted. “Too late. I wasn’t cold. I want you, Marcus.” There, she’d said it.

  He muttered something that sounded like an oath, a whisper of resignation as though tried beyond all bearing. A final stab of uncertainty melted into relief when he rolled over and gathered her in, so they lay on their sides, face to face. Thank God. She’d been waiting for this, wanting this, forever. It was like being home in a strange place, setting out on the most thrilling adventure without a single qualm.

  “Anne.” He drew out the syllable so that her plain name became a lyric of a beautiful song. His hands stroked her head. “My Anne.” The use of the possessive thrilled her to the core. Then he took her mouth in a deep kiss that lasted an age. Nothing had ever been so delicious or so right. With every nerve and instinct she owned she knew she was in the right place doing the right thing. The universe shrank to two joined mouths.

  Just as she began to want more, he read her mind. His hands—how she loved his hands—pushed up her shirt, caressed her ribs, and found the breasts that longed for him. She arched forward, demanding more, and meeting the hard evidence of his desire.

  How he managed to remove her garment she couldn’t be sure. They must have stopped kissing but the separation was mercifully brief and within seconds they were skin to skin between the sheets, a tangle of linen and hands seeking each other’s touch. Being under cover in the pitch dark dispelled any inhibitions. She discovered how different and how wonderful the male body was, hard and a little rough. She traced the central ridge of his back, pressed the ticklish center of her palms against his hips and around to the taut hills of his buttocks.

  Her breasts felt huge under his fingers and her nipples glowed like burning candle flames when he pinched them, not enough to hurt, merely sending sharp spirals shooting down her torso.

  He picked up on her pleasure. “You like that? You’ll like this more.” It was even better this time. Who would have thought the graze of teeth would feel so good?

  Her eyes shut tight and she floated in a starry sky, lost to terra firma. Her head fell back, and her body, so she lay supine with her legs parted in mindless invitation.

  His hand covered the entrance to her sex. It was too much and not nearly enough. She’d never known anything better or felt such urgency for something more. She was filled with joy and maddeningly empty.

  More. Whether she said it aloud or not, Marcus understood. Clever fingers soothed the slippery cradle and it felt right, not embarrassing, for him to penetrate the most private part of her body. He found the little knob of flesh that she’d occasionally shamefully explored. Finally she was certain of its purpose. His male member, grown hard and hot, knocked against her thigh.

  “Aren’t you going to . . . ?” Eager for his ultimate possession, she hadn’t the words to complete the question.

  “Hush,” he murmured against her breast. “You’ll enjoy it more this way.”

  A languorous lick of her nipple calmed her and she sank back trustfully, letting him lead the way with a rhythmic stroke that concentrated all her nerves, her entire existence, into one little spot until she felt herself let go and her limbs collapsed into a lyrical, boneless state of total relaxation.

  “Goodness,” she said when she emerged from her ecstatic haze. His arms were about her, one leg entwined with hers, his lips on her temple.

  “That was beautiful,” he said, and took her mouth in a shallow, tender kiss, a long mingling of breaths. “You’re beautiful. I’ll try not to hurt you too much.”

  “Will it hurt?” She found it hard to believe and wanted desperately to find out.

  “Only the first time, so I’m told.”

  “I don’t mind. I want to belong to you. I love you.” She’d never have dared say it in the light.

  His breath caught sharply. She was glad she couldn’t see his face, in case it showed discomfort, or worse still cold triumph that he’d finally conquered her. She relished her submission, her final surrender. Later she might regret it but now she wished to make him happy, even if only by the selfless giving of her body to his pleasure. It was a novel idea and one that stirred a new excitement in her.

  “Please, Marcus. Take me.”

  It did hurt a little. Not a sharp pain so much as a relentless stretching of her never breached passage, followed by a glow of satisfaction as he slid all the way in.

  “All right?” he asked.

  “Perfect.”

  “Liar,” he said with a little laugh, and started to move.

  The sensation was too odd to take her out of herself again. Instead she concentrated on him and his reactions: the bunching of muscles beneath her hands, the quickening of his breath, the increasing pace of his thrusts. When instinct told her to wind her legs around him she felt the connection deepen. Raising herself to meet his forward drives drew growls of approval. His obvious satisfaction when she clenched her inner muscles more than made up for her own lingering discomfort, which gradually faded, leaving only a lovely intimacy. “I love you,” she told him again, and was rewarded with an unruly kiss. That he was carefree, uncontrolled, lost in his own gratification, brought her fierce satisfaction. When he sped up and raised his head for an incoherent shou
t, nothing had ever brought her greater joy. She felt a warm gush inside her, the loosening of tension, and a delicious weight as she sensed him drift to earth and lay his head on her breast.

  Wide-eyed in the darkness, she stroked his hair, heard his breathing calm, sensed his chest rising and falling against her skin and his perspiration cooling in the chilly air. She drew up the disordered blankets and tucked them over his shoulders. She would swear he was smiling.

  Chapter 21

  Marcus smiled into Anne’s collarbone, her skin silk beneath his cheek. He wished he could stay silent and replete, entwined with her like a pair of wintering creatures, forgetting the world outside. But he’d done what he swore he would not and the piper needed to be paid. It would be easier for him if he were the one who would be doing the paying.

  Reluctantly he withdrew from his happy berth, sliding onto his side and keeping Anne soft and warm in his arms. She’d told him she loved him. Twice. It made him feel ten feet tall and the world’s worst villain. And painfully, ludicrously hopeful.

  “Anne,” he said, loving the sound of her name, drawing out the syllable to a semibreve. “How do you feel?” He’d tried to be considerate, introduce her to love the way a virgin required, not that he had any experience in the matter, unless he counted his own initiation at the hands of an Oxford barmaid. That had not been gentle, though he’d enjoyed it in a terrified kind of way.

  “Wonderful. You’re wonderful.” Her unshadowed trust made his heart thud. It would be so easy just to declare love and leave it at that. It wouldn’t be an utter lie but neither would it be the whole story. He owed her the truth.

  “No, Anne, I am not. I’m a villain to have taken you like this.”

  “I think it was my idea.”

  “I should have resisted you.”

  “You find me irresistible?” She sounded adorably pleased with herself.

  “Completely. I can refuse you nothing.”

  “How powerful I am. I wonder what I should ask for.”

  He procrastinated by finding a breast and conjuring up the vision communicated by his slow, questing hand. He couldn’t wait to see her in the light. “You like that, don’t you?”