Kiss the Earl

by Gina Lamm

  Ella ducked behind the stallion. She wanted to keep watching, but she didn’t want him to think she’d been following him.

  With a large sigh, Patrick sank backward into the water and floated on his back in the center of the pond. Ella’s tongue darted out of its own volition as she eyed the expanse of his chest, laid bare by his open shirt.

  He was so gorgeous. But why was he swimming half-clothed?

  The horse snorted and stamped his foot, and Ella jumped back to avoid getting stepped on. She knocked against a branch, causing the leaves to rustle loudly.

  Patrick stood, his gaze finding her instantly.

  “Hey,” Ella said with a weak smile. “Sorry, I was just walking. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

  Patrick’s expression remained inscrutable, but he waded through the shallow pond toward her.

  Ella’s heart started to beat in triple time. Would he kiss her again? Lay her down in the soft moss and pick up where they’d left off when Iain had interrupted them? Or would he apologize for sending her away so abruptly? Berate her again for snooping in his things?

  There were a lot of possibilities, but only one that she really longed for.

  He stepped onto the shore, stopping when he was a good six feet from her. “Forgive me for my appearance. I did not know you were about.”

  “It’s fine. I kind of snuck up on you.” Why were her cheeks burning? Ella glanced away. It was hard to look at him.

  Standing up straighter, he cleared his throat. “Perhaps it is best that you are here now. I must speak with you.”

  “Okay,” Ella said, rubbing her suddenly sweaty palms on her skirt. Maybe a second kiss wasn’t so likely after all. “What’s up?”

  “I had intended to find you later, perhaps find a better way to say it. But there is no help for it. I shall be leaving on the morrow.”

  Her heart stopped and she looked up at him. “Leaving? What do you mean?”

  His face was blank, and somehow that made her chest ache. “Iain and I will be traveling north to discover what we can of Amelia’s disappearance.”

  She didn’t care that they’d argued earlier. She’d stick with him. “I can come with you,” she said quickly. “I’m better now, and I promised you that I’d help—”

  He shook his head, one damp lock of hair falling over his forehead with the movement. “No, Miss Briley. I do not want you… No. You must remain here. It is better for both of us, I think.”

  “Oh.”

  She didn’t know what else to say. Her heart felt like it was going to thump out of her chest, and the world was fading at the edges. All she could see was him, and all she could hear were the words that had fallen from his lips. “I do not want you.”

  “I do beg your pardon.” Patrick looked down at his wet clothing. “I… I must make preparations for the journey now.”

  He gave her a bow and then walked quickly to his stallion’s side, grabbing his boots and coat before mounting. He must not have noticed that she was still frozen there, because he clicked his tongue and the stallion cantered away.

  “He doesn’t want me,” she whispered. Hearing the words didn’t make them hurt any less.

  Funny, that. She’d never been sure she had a heart before.

  Kinda like the Tin Man, she knew she had a heart now, because it was breaking.

  Twenty

  She wasn’t sure how she held it together through dinner, but she did. Sitting at a table across from Patrick was pure torture, and she avoided looking at him as if he were a Gorgon. Fortunately, Iain was his typical self, joking and making suggestive comments and wriggling his dark eyebrows at Ella.

  The jealousy on Patrick’s face would have warmed her heart if she had seen it, which she totally hadn’t because she wasn’t looking at him. Not even from the corner of her eye, watching as he ate some kind of raisin-filled dessert, his arm muscles flexing as he raised and lowered the spoon from his lips.

  Damn it.

  Ella tossed her napkin onto the table. “I’m heading up to bed. Good night.” She gave Iain a tight smile as she turned to go.

  On the other side of the door, she paused to ease the catch in her throat. Blinking through eyes that were suddenly watery, she looked up at the ceiling.

  Chill out. Come the hell on.

  Before she could move toward the stairs though, Iain’s voice drifted from the dining room.

  “Did you tell her?”

  Patrick’s reply was brusque. “Tell her what, that we are leaving? Certainly I did.”

  “No, about Mrs. Comstock. She deserves to know that she will be here for quite a while, if she is able to return home at all.”

  Ella’s heart stalled out, then started thumping in triple time.

  “No, I have not.” Silverware clattered as if Patrick had tossed his spoon atop the table. “I saw no need to distress her. Once this business with Amelia is concluded, then we shall make arrangements for Miss Briley’s well-being.”

  She had to lean against the wall. Her legs wouldn’t hold her up anymore.

  “I would marry her, you know. She is quite comely; it would be no chore to bed her.”

  Patrick’s snort acted like a gunshot wound to her heart. “You would bed a sow, you randy goat. Neither of us will be forced to wed her, so put it from your mind. Come now, let’s have some port.”

  A hand clapped over her mouth, Ella ran up the stairs. Damn him, damn him to hell and back. Every time she thought she was done being hurt by something he said, he’d rip her heart in two all over again. Eventually they’d have enough for a party, little pieces of Ella-heart confetti everywhere.

  Once the bedroom door closed behind her, Ella stopped—stopped moving, breathing, thinking, everything. Just for a second, she needed to be free. Of everything.

  But it didn’t last long. Once the need for oxygen burned too much to ignore and her eyes opened, reality crashed down and it motherfricking hurt.

  With tears streaming down her cheeks, Ella stripped out of the yellow dress and tossed it over the chair. She slipped out of the stockings, undid the ribbons on the chemise—as Mrs. Templeton had told her it was called—and finally removed the bandaged padding from her heel. The wound had scabbed over now, the flesh a much healthier pink now that the infection was gone.

  Moving slowly, with a huge dose of trepidation, Ella stopped in front of the full-length mirror.

  There she stood, Patrick’s huge, masculine bedroom laid out behind her. She sniffed as she took in the truth of what she was, who she was.

  She was pudgy, her skin dotted here and there with imperfections—moles, tiny scars from childhood and klutziness beyond. Her breasts were okay, she guessed, but they could be a little perkier, better shaped. She certainly wasn’t going to win any awards for them. Her thighs were too thick, her legs too short, her waist not small enough. Raising her chin in defiance, Ella stared straight into her reflection’s watery eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “None of this matters. Not what you feel, not what you’ve done or what you’ve tried. None of it changed anything, and now what have you got? By the time you get back, there will be no job, no home, no life, and most definitely, no Patrick.”

  Her little speech finished crumbling her insides, and she crawled beneath the covers to vent her feelings. Stuffing the corner of the pillow into her mouth, Ella sobbed.

  It wasn’t because Patrick was leaving, or that he’d lied, or that she really didn’t know what the heck he felt about her. It was that she honestly, really thought she had begun to understand what love was about, what it felt like to have your world revolve around another person and their happiness, because they made you feel so incredible that you wanted to dance and sing and yell in public.

  And now that she knew he didn’t feel that way about her? It was too much. She was stuck here alone, and she
’d be alone forever.

  “So I’ll cry if I want to.” The words came out half-choked, the pillowcase wet against her cheek. Her breath burned inside her lungs, and the rough, ugly sobs shook the bed.

  It took several moments for her to realize she’d heard something. Peeling her cheek from the pillow, she lifted her head.

  “Ella? Are you in pain?”

  “No, Patrick, go away!”

  Whoa, she hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret it. Ella lifted her chin, wiping at her stinging, raw cheeks with the back of a hand.

  The door cracked open and Patrick’s face appeared. “Ella?”

  “I said go away.” She pulled the sheet over her head, hoping that he’d take her not-so-subtle hint. He may not love her, but she hadn’t thought he was cruel. Staying here while she was sobbing classified as cruel to her.

  “You sounded as if you were in pain. You are not ill again, are you? You should not have walked so far this afternoon.” His footsteps came closer until they were right next to the bed.

  In her makeshift burrow, Ella began to bargain with higher powers—anything to get him the heck out of the room and leave her to her misery.

  “Ella?” The sheet drifted downward, and she grabbed it as quickly as she could.

  “I don’t want to talk to you right now,” she said, well aware that her voice was still rough from crying and she sounded like a petulant kid anyway.

  “I am sorry, but I must know that you are healthy before I go. I could not forgive myself if I—”

  “If you what? If you hurt me?” She yanked the sheets down and glared bloody murder at him. “It’s too late for that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Why did he have to look so sincere? She wanted to be angry with him, wanted him to get out of her life without twisting her heart into any more knots. But the way he sank down on the edge of the bed, his eyes saying more than his lips ever had, it made her want to…

  “I never asked you to marry me, you jerk,” she whispered as her tears streamed faster. “I heard you talking to Iain. You hurt me, Patrick.”

  “I never meant to hurt you,” Patrick whispered as he cupped her cheek. “I swear to you, I never meant for this…”

  He leaned forward to kiss her, and God help her, she closed her eyes and met his lips eagerly.

  It was too late for her anyway. She might as well enjoy the fall.

  * * *

  He’d only meant to check on her. Intending only to ensure that she was unhurt, he’d passed by the room, but when he’d heard her heart-wrenching sobs through the door, something inside of him had twisted and strained, forcing him through that door, and now he was kissing her.

  This was too much for any mortal man to bear, and yet he must. There was no choice at this point, only passion.

  He slanted his mouth over hers as she parted her lips, and he plumbed her depths with eagerness. She tasted salty, her tears lending an almost poignant tang to their embrace.

  The sheet slid down between them, and as Patrick’s hands moved down her neck to cover her shoulders, he made a startling realization.

  She was blessedly, totally nude.

  Shifting closer to her, Patrick surrendered to the urges that had been plaguing him since he had first laid eyes on this bewitching creature. Pulling the sheet down, past her waist, over her thighs, he raised his head and feasted on the sight of her nakedness.

  When she drew her hands up to cover herself, her cheeks pinking with embarrassment, he stopped her.

  “No, Ella.” He grasped her hands in his. “Let me look at you.”

  “If you keep doing this, I don’t know that we can stop.”

  “Who told you we should stop?”

  The look that crossed her face was like sunshine after a month of rain. Sudden and beautiful, it sent shockwaves to his heart.

  He would do anything to make her that happy again—including betray his own code of honor and make her his own.

  As he leaned forward to kiss her again, a sudden doubt crossed his mind.

  What was he doing? He’d told Iain that she was a young lady of quality, not one to be trifled with. Was he no better than the rake Amelia had planned to present him as? Had he lost all his morals, all his breeding?

  “Patrick?” She raised her eyebrows in a worried look. “Are you all right?”

  Could he truly ruin her? Was he that selfish?

  And then her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and at the sight of that tiny, innocent action, all his baser instincts took over.

  He captured her mouth with his own, tongue teasing and lips tugging, advancing, and retreating as she writhed against him, her mouth open and begging for more. He indulged her as his hands roamed the planes of her body, memorizing every curve, dip, and hollow of her flesh. Her pebbled nipples strained against his palms, and she moaned in pleasure as he massaged the turgid points.

  “Please,” she whispered against his mouth. “I want you so much. I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you.”

  Her words woke some sort of masculine pride deep within him, and he bit her neck lightly. She tossed her head back in abandon, her greedy hands tangling in his hair as she pulled him closer, silently begging for more. He indulged her, kissing and sucking and laving her tender neck with his tongue.

  She was so sweet, and she was his. If only for tonight, she would be his.

  “You are wearing way too many freaking clothes,” she gasped as he nibbled her collarbone.

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  His fingers fumbled on the buttons of his waistcoat, but he quickly recovered and made short work of it. Ella helped push it from his shoulders. Whipping the shirt over his head, he groaned as Ella began kissing his chest.

  “Easy,” he warned as her fingers went to the buttons on his breeches. “I do not know how long I shall last if you continue to tease me.”

  “I’m not teasing,” she said with a wicked grin as the fabric loosed enough for her to slip her hand inside. “It’s not teasing if you plan to deliver.”

  She was so wicked in her sweet, shy way, and he could not get enough. In just a moment, he was as naked as she. As he stood by the bed, arms at his sides, he followed her wide-eyed gaze.

  All the way to his groin.

  “You’re beautiful,” Ella said, drawing her knees up. Patrick did not bother to tell her that this position gave him a rather excellent view of her beautiful womanly parts.

  “Men are not beautiful.”

  “You are.” She was looking at his rod, and he was relishing the sight of her womanhood, and he could quite happily expire from pleasure at just the thought of sinking into her glistening, hot flesh.

  He knelt on the bed in front of her and kissed her tenderly, stoking her hunger. Soon she was running her fingertips over his chest, tracing the lines of muscle down his body. And when her hand closed around the tip of him, he nearly shouted with pleasure.

  Not to be outdone, however, he laid her back against the pillows, careful not to discourage her touch. Kissing his way down her body, he stopped at her breasts—light, soft touches of his lips and tongue around the top of her swells, moving down, down, around the edge of her areola, his tongue flicking and teeth scraping ever so gently over her skin, leaving goose pimples in his wake.

  Her hips lifted against him, and she panted, her eyes going wide with want. “Please,” she hissed, her back arching in supplication.

  “Tell me what you want,” he said, intentionally aiming his breath over the peak of one breast.

  “I… I…” She tossed her head back and forth, fighting her own desires and his demands.

  “Tell me, Ella.” His forefinger traced a circle around the edges of her dusky pink nipple, being ever so careful not to touch the straining bud.

  “Kis
s me.”

  Her moan was too much for him to deny. And when his lips captured her hardened peak, he knew he had found heaven.

  Surely nothing on earth was sweeter than this woman’s body beneath him.

  Twenty-One

  As Patrick’s mouth closed on the aching tip of Ella’s breast, she thought she’d died. Stars exploded behind her eyelids and she gasped, her back arching as his hot, wet mouth loved her turgid nipple.

  This was more than she’d ever thought she could feel with another person. And, even more incredibly, it was Patrick doing these things to her—Patrick’s hands traveling the planes of her body, Patrick’s tongue making lazy swirls around her nipple, then nipping it softly. She tangled her hands in his hair, never wanting him to stop.

  Until, that is, his hand splayed across her lower belly, pinky finger tangling in the small triangle of curls that she, quite thankfully, had neatened up before leaving home.

  A girl never knew.

  “Patrick,” she said, hardly able to recognize the throaty, needy voice as her own, “please.”

  Her hips lifted as her core throbbed, aching for his touch. She’d dreamed about this, about a man’s large hand pressing up against her damp heat, his finger dipping inside her, but she’d never dreamed it would be this good.

  But damn him, he took his time. Lifting his head from her breast, he smiled down at her.

  “Please what?”

  “Don’t make me beg,” she gasped as his hand traveled lower, his pinky finger gliding along the inside of her nether lips—just enough to drive her crazy.

  “How am I to know what you’d like if you do not tell me?”

  He was truly the devil. His palm now covered her throbbing wetness, pressing oh-so-gently against her, his forefinger lightly caressing her inner petals. She curled her fingers against his chest, raking her nails down muscled skin lightly dusted with dark blond hair.

  “You know what I want.” Her forefinger rubbed across the masculine bump of his nipple, and she was happy to see that his nostrils flared in pleasure. She’d tuck that information away for use later.