So the way she saw it, she could either relinquish the hope of ever experiencing physical love with a man, or she could have a brief affair with Morgan that might end in nothing but ruination and heartache.
Then again, it might not. She’d wager every pound of her newfound fortune that he felt more for her than mere desire. Why else would he take such risks to shelter Johnny on her behalf? Or threaten death to the man who had accosted her tonight? Or teach Samuel how to protect her?
No, he cared for her beyond the physical. And that was enough hope for her. She’d gone a little insane tonight when she’d thought he was dying. It had changed everything, shown her how short life could be, how recklessly he lived, how little time they might have together. She didn’t want to waste that time with a man who might be perfect for her reforming aims and bad for her heart. She wanted to spend it with a man she cared for.
She wanted to spend it with Morgan. Any way she could get him.
“Well?” he demanded, as impatient in his desires as he was patient in his spying. “What’s it to be? Will you flee to somewhere safe, somewhere you belong? Or will you stay and let me ‘ravish’ you? Because those are the only choices I’m giving you.”
And there was only one choice she wanted.
She slid her arms about his neck and pressed her body against his, delighting in his sharp intake of breath and the fullness she felt swelling against her thighs. “Ravish me, Morgan,” she whispered. “Ravish me tonight.”
Sheer fierce desire leaped in his eyes as he caught her head between his hands. “Taunt me at your peril, angel. I’m only a man. So before you tumble from heaven into my bed, be very sure it’s what you want. Because once I’ve got you where I want you, nothing on earth or heaven will save you from me.”
Her mouth went dry as anticipation blazed through her body. “Then it’s a good thing I don’t want to be saved, isn’t it?” Stretching up on tiptoe, she placed a tender kiss on his unsmiling mouth.
It was like waving Red Riding Hood’s basket right in the Wolf’s face. His eyes glinted dangerously seconds before his mouth seized hers with a ravening fervor she’d only imagined she’d seen before. He kissed her deeply, greedily, sweeping the breath from her with the vastness of his need. He gave her no quarter, demanding a response from her that she was only too glad to give.
A fierce triumph possessed her when his arm manacled her about the waist and anchored her to him, belly to belly, breast to chest, soft loins to hot, hard groin, as if to stake his claim. He would make her his now. And oh, how she wanted to be his.
She slipped her hands up beneath his shirt and spread them over the warm contours of his chest. She wasn’t at all surprised to find it sculpted and firm, the chest of a man who’d known physical labor in his time.
A choked groan erupted from him, and his mouth left hers to rain kisses over her cheeks and nose and eyelids. “So you want to be ravished, do you, Clara?” he rasped against her ear.
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“You tend to say what you don’t mean to provoke and distract me. But you always manage to escape before I get what I want.”
“You see how hard I’m trying to escape.” Taking her hands out from underneath his shirt, she lifted them to unfasten his buttons, but he was too impatient for that.
With a growl of satisfaction, he ripped open the vee of his shirt, sending buttons flying, then tore it off over his head. “Ah, Clara, you don’t know what you do to me,” he whispered as she stroked the hair-roughened skin of his bared chest, marveling at its fine texture and wondering at the scars scattered here and there.
She glanced up to see him watching her with an avaricious wanting so intense that it unfurled her own want, bringing it fully into the open. She couldn’t deny it and didn’t want to. She was as wicked as he, aching with desire, eager to have him take her.
And worst of all, entirely unrepentant.
He reached behind her to unbutton her gown so recklessly that she wondered if she’d have any buttons left when he was done. Nervous at being undressed by a man, she fingered a thin scar across his breastbone, too near his heart. “How did this happen?”
“I don’t know,” he murmured, fully absorbed in getting her out of her gown. “Some sea battle or another, I expect.”
That he could have been hurt so often he didn’t remember the origins of his scars astonished her. No wonder he was “uncivilized.” Who could remain civilized in the face of such savagery?
Her gown fell open, and he shoved it off her shoulders with impatience, then went to work on her corset ties. She kept exploring the many scars on his chest, finding a particularly deep one across his ribs. “And this one? Another sea battle?”
His face grew shuttered. “No. Geneva.”
“But I thought you were only a child then—”
“Turn around,” he commanded, ignoring her comment. “Bon Dieu, you women and your corsets. The man who invented the corset never tried to get one off a woman, I suspect.” Nonetheless, when she did as Morgan bade, he made short work of removing hers. She tried not to think of why he knew his way so well around a corset.
But the realization made her peevish. “We wear them for you men, you know. You’re the ones who want the perfect figure, the tiny waist and—”
“Don’t lump me in with those society idiots,” he broke in. Her corset dropped to the floor, and he swept his hands up to cup her breasts. “I’m just ungentlemanly enough to prefer a woman’s real flesh, angel. I like the softness, the fullness of it. If I wanted to feel whalebone, I’d fondle a whale.” He bent his head to nip her ear, his whiskers scraping the soft flesh beneath it. His hands kneaded and teased her breasts through the chemise, making them ache for his touch. “I much prefer to fondle you.”
His breath wafted over her, fragrant with brandy, and his face smelled of bay rum. Over all of it drifted the musky scent of their desire. The longer he fondled her breasts, the more she swayed, drunk with the pleasure of having his hands on her. And when he slipped one hand down to rub between her legs with an uncanny ability to know where she wanted to be touched, she nearly cried out aloud.
Her own hands itched to fondle him, too, but it was difficult with her back to him. Feeling the hard bulge of him press against her derriere wasn’t enough, so she caressed the only thing she could reach—his thighs. She stroked the rigid muscles, dragged her fingers up them eagerly. Until her left hand hit his bandage and he groaned.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, jerking her hand away.
He caught it in his. “No problem. Just move your hand higher past the bandage, cherie.” He laid her hand on the bulge in his drawers, and when she closed her fingers around the thickness there, a shudder rocked him. “God, I’ve wanted you in my arms like this for so long…ever since I saw you in that alley with Johnny and knew I could never have you.”
“You have me now, don’t you?” she whispered, caressing him as best she could through the stockingette.
“Not quite.” Pushing her hand away, he turned her around to face him. Hunger shone stark in his face as he reached up to unfasten the ties of her chemise. “Let me see you. Let me see what I’ve only been able to imagine all this time.”
She dropped her gaze, a sudden shyness assailing her. “Aunt Verity says that a woman should never be naked with a man. Not even with her husband.”
Did she imagine that his hands hesitated on the ties of her chemise at her mention of a husband? If so, it wasn’t for long. Before she had time to protest further, he was drawing her chemise down her body.
“Much as I like your aunt,” he murmured, “I don’t think you should rely on her for lessons in how to behave when you take a lover.”
A lover. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed that “a lover” was all he meant to be to her. Or heartened that he would want her for more than one night.
“Besides,” he went on, his voice husky, his hands roaming freely down her belly to her drawers, “no s
elf-respecting ravisher would leave all this beauty covered.” He unfastened her drawers and slid them over her hips. Only her stockings remained, but he left those on.
Still, she was mostly naked. With him. The thought sent a hot blush flaming her skin…and excitement trilling along her nerves. Nor did it help when he stepped back to look at her.
His gaze seemed to eat her up, to drag greedily over her as if storing up her image for future spells of hunger. “No man—even a gentleman—could see you like this and not want to have you. And since I am by no means a gentleman…”
Stepping in to cover her mouth with his, he took greater license with her body than he had earlier at the ball. The fiery fondling of her breasts and thighs and belly, the intimate strokes between her legs…they all marked her as his as surely as if he’d slapped chains on her wrists. Because the thought of ever letting any other man touch her like this revolted her.
She even reveled in the swell of his hard flesh against her belly, the promise that it offered. It made her want to touch him everywhere—his broad chest, his wiry arms, his thick, well-wrought thighs. She delighted in the exquisite firmness of his muscles, the hairy skin like rough velvet beneath her questing fingers, the flat male nipples that tightened to knots when she thumbed them.
He groaned and tore his mouth from hers to whisper, “You’re not at all what I expected, angel.”
“How so?”
Eyes gleaming, he caught her hands, then held them out to the side and pushed them back until she felt the rough wood of the banister bars against her knuckles. “All this time I thought you were meddling in my affairs because of your high moral sense. But that’s not the only reason, is it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He closed her fingers around the bars with a knowing smile. “In your soul, you have a secret craving for wickedness. You enjoy the thrill of danger, don’t you? It’s like those children who tweak the nose of a sleeping beast, then run as fast as they can. You enjoy tweaking the nose of the beast to catch his attention.”
She started to protest, then hesitated. Was he right? Was it only some combination of her Doggett blood and the influence of working in Spitalfields for so long that had attracted her to him?
Perhaps that was part of it. But not all, not by any means. “Yes, I do enjoy tweaking the nose of the big bad wolf,” she whispered. “But yours is the only wolf’s nose I’ve ever wanted to tweak. You’re the only rogue whose attention I’ve ever wanted.”
He stared at her a long moment, his expression giving nothing away, though she thought she glimpsed satisfaction in his eyes. “Then hold on to the bars, ma belle ange. Because you’ve certainly captured this big bad wolf’s attention. And I won’t rest until I’ve satisfied every craving for wickedness you’ve ever had.”
Fear mingled with feverish expectation to course through every vein, every muscle, every nerve as she did his bidding. Her position thrust her breasts out boldly toward him, but any embarrassment faded when he began lavishing hot, open-mouthed kisses over each one. He tongued the nipples erect, then sucked until they were tight, aching kernels. Both breasts received his attentions for what seemed like endless moments before he dropped to his knees and buried his face in her belly.
How strange to have him at her feet. To have him kiss circles around her navel as his hands reached behind to cup her buttocks and pull her into his kisses. Oh, Lord, what he could do with his mouth. His teeth grazed her skin, his tongue darted into her navel, and his lips tantalized her quivering flesh. He made her squirm and—shameful thought—want his mouth lower still.
Suddenly, he drew back to cast her a mysterious smile. When his hands forced her legs apart, her mouth went dry. Still clinging to the bars, she felt exposed…flagrant…embarrassingly wanton.
“Morgan?” she whispered uncertainly when he parted the curls in the juncture between her legs and eyed the soft flesh there with lascivious intent. A warm gush of fluid right in the spot he was contemplating made her swivel her hips back instinctively to hide her shameful reaction.
But he caught her hips in his hands to stay them. “Be still, angel, and let me taste you.” Then he put his mouth right on the source of her shame.
He gave her no chance to be mortified, for he began to caress her with his tongue in such an astonishing manner that she could do no more but sway there, intrigued.
Good Lord in heaven. How utterly wicked. How utterly delightful. His mouth devoured her, his tongue lapping at her as hungrily as a wolf at his last meal. She clutched at the bars as heat spiked through her, consumed her.
Then his tongue was inside her as his finger had been earlier, a devilish invader stroking where it should not, making her ache where she ought not. She writhed against his impudent mouth, wanting more, needing more.
Soon the same sensations that had overtaken her in Merrington’s library were rushing her toward the conflagration, making her groan…then utter a keening cry…then scream out his name as the fire consumed her entirely.
As the flames licked at her, she shook uncontrollably. Somewhere in the midst of his attentions, she’d released the bars. Her hands now clasped his head to her thigh as her breath fell slowly to a normal pace.
“You are…very good at this business of ravishment, aren’t you?” she whispered. Twice in one night he’d shown her the stars without yet reaching his own fulfillment. “I fear I may disappoint you with my inexperience.”
He rose to cup her head between his hands. “As if you could ever disappoint me.” A rakish grin split his face. “Besides, the cure for inexperience is practice. And I look forward to hours of practice with you in the months to come.”
As he tugged her away from the stairwell and headed for the bed, she pondered his words. Clearly, he didn’t see this night as a single occurrence for them. But what did he see it as? The beginning of a short affair? Or something more? And did she really want to know?
He pressed her down onto the bed, halting only long enough to strip off his drawers before kneeling between her legs.
She gaped at his loins, unable to tear her eyes away from the thick, erect flesh jutting proudly from a nest of dusky hair. “That’s a rather…um…sturdy-looking instrument,” she said shakily.
He chuckled. “Sturdy enough to pleasure us both, I should hope.”
Sturdy and pleasure were not words she would have used in the same sentence just now. Sturdy and battering ram seemed more apt. She began to question the wisdom of allowing that…that thing anywhere near her tender parts.
Sensing her hesitation, he leaned down to brace one hand beside her shoulder. The other reached between her legs to fondle her. “Do you like it when I put my finger inside you, Clara? You seemed to like it earlier.”
His finger stroked inside her, and a blush rose to her cheeks, which was utterly absurd given that she lay naked beneath him and had just been pleasured by his mouth in the most intimate manner imaginable. “Yes, I…I like it.”
“And two fingers?” he rasped as he delved a second finger inside. “Do you like that?”
Already the heat was building again between her legs, that astonishing heat he always roused. “Y-Yes,” she murmured, wondering where this was leading. “Oh, yes.”
“My ‘instrument’ isn’t much bigger, cherie. But I promise I can give you ten times the pleasure with it if you’ll let me.”
She felt the tip of his “instrument” graze her flesh, then felt him guide it between her slick nether lips. Panicking a little, she whispered, “Bigger isn’t always better, Morgan.”
He gave a strained laugh. “We’ll see if you feel that way in a week or two.” As he entered her, slowly, surely, inexorably, he bent to brush a kiss against her mouth. “I want to be inside you, Clara. Open and let me in.”
“How?”
“Just relax, ma belle ange.” His hand left the juncture between her legs to fondle her breast. “I know you can take all of me if you’ll only relax.”
So sh
e relaxed. To her surprise, what he was doing wasn’t so bad. Indeed, it grew less bad the farther he inched in. It was a bit uncomfortable, but the remarkable sensation of having him inside her compensated for that. The sheer intimacy of having him fused to her did funny things to her, made her crave more, made her open her thighs and arch up to meet him.
He groaned. “For a virgin, you have good instincts.”
“I have a good teacher.”
A weak smile tipped up his lips. “You won’t think so in a minute, I fear. I’ve never ‘ravished’ a virgin before, but I know it hurts the first time.”
She swallowed. “So I’ve been told.”
The strain of easing into her showed in his taut lips and rigid jaw. “If I could take you without hurting you, angel, you know I would.”
“I know.” She stretched up to kiss his mouth.
He returned her kiss greedily, his tongue stabbing deeply with the urgency he couldn’t show elsewhere. Then he halted his movements abruptly and tore his mouth from hers to whisper, “If you want me to stop now, say so. Because after this, your virtue will be irretrievable.”
“It became irretrievable the first time you kissed me,” she admitted. “And some things are worth any hurt.”
A fierce satisfaction leaped in his face. “I’ll make it worth the hurt,” he vowed, then lunged deeply into her.
At her involuntary cry, more of surprise than of pain, his eyes darkened, and he caught her mouth in another long, aching kiss. He lay still inside her a moment, as if allowing her time to adjust to him. Then he began to move. To ravish her.
There was no other word for it. The powerful drive of his flesh within her, the hot probing of his tongue in her mouth…they were meant to overcome her, to conquer her, to make her so vividly aware of him that she couldn’t do without him.
It was certainly working. Every thrust seemed to provoke the next until she was straining against him, writhing beneath him, craving the same sweet satisfaction as before, the release he always gave her.
He tore his mouth from hers to drag it over her cheek and her neck, his teeth grazing the skin, nipping her earlobe. “I could eat you up, angel…and still not be satisfied. God help me…you’re in my blood.”
Dance of Seduction Page 23