My Favorite Rogue: 8 Wicked, Witty, and Swoon-worthy Heroes

by Courtney Milan, Lauren Royal, Grace Burrowes, Christi Caldwell, Jess Michaels, Erica Ridley, Delilah Marvelle

  Then he rolled so she straddled him, and he fleetingly considered getting up to light branches of candles.

  She crossed her arms over her breasts, and his momentum shifted.

  He wouldn’t make love to her in the next hour, not as intimately as he wanted to, but they were in new territory, naked, together, and she was trusting him—this far at least.

  “You are beautiful,” he said, meaning it as sincerely as he’d ever meant spoken words. “Please allow me to adore you.”

  “Adore?” Her single word bore a wealth of uncertainty, and she kept her arms crossed.

  “Please.” He levered up and kissed her jaw. “You’ve seen me, watched me lose every shred of dignity and control. Let me see you.”

  Slowly, holding his gaze, she drew her arms down to rest at her sides.

  Never had desire, trust, and vulnerability been as dearly—and arousingly—clothed in nudity. Worth swallowed around the lump in his throat and prayed for…

  All manner of blessings.

  Fortitude, to proceed despite risk to something of greater value than a mere few hundred thousand pounds.

  Worthiness, because Jacaranda’s trust should be surrendered into only worthy hands.

  Gratitude, because she’d chosen to place her trust into his hands.

  “I would like to touch you, Jacaranda Wyeth. I’d like it exceedingly.”

  “I would like that, too.”

  He didn’t use his hands, not at first. He curled up and inhaled the fragrance of her between her breasts.

  “The scent is sweet, Jacaranda. Like your neck or your hands, but more secret.” He ran his nose all over her chest, grazing her collarbones, the soft undersides of her breasts, and around her nipples.

  “I want…” She sighed, tried again. “Will you touch me?”

  “Soon.”

  He rested his hands on her shoulders as he lay back against the bed. Sturdy shoulders, unapologetically solid, and yet still feminine.

  She regarded him solemnly, waiting, and all his frustration, all his missing her was worth the anticipation he saw in her expression. Gently, he settled his hands over her breasts.

  “You’re silky,” he said. “Warm, smooth, delicate, lovely…” With each word, he drew the backs of his fingers over her breasts, her nipples, around the undersides, up the slopes. “I could come simply by touching your breasts, Jacaranda.”

  God help him, he spoke the truth. He could come, compose sonnets, and sing hymns to her breasts, and to the heart that beat swiftly under his palm.

  As much to shut himself up as to gratify them both, he closed his mouth over her nipple. She arched toward him, and his cock leapt as desire rippled out from her to him and back again, ricocheting through him, through her, resonating endlessly.

  “Worth…” Her fingers winnowed through his hair, and she clung to him.

  “Ride me.” He got a hand low on her back and anchored himself while she moved over him.

  He would not, would not, shift his hips to penetrate her heat. She hadn’t given him that permission, wasn’t expecting that intimacy, and no matter how much pleasure he brought her, he’d never regain her trust if he presumed to cross that line now.

  He tipped her so she hung over him, her braid slipping down, tickling his shoulder and arm as he made love to her breasts. The hand he’d used to guide her over him slid around the full curve of her flank, a satiny warm pleasure he’d explore later and thoroughly.

  By slow increments, he brought his hand lower, to draw the backs of his fingers over her curls. He sensed surprise and pleasure vibrating through her, and she didn’t draw back.

  Thank God Almighty, she didn’t draw back.

  He traced her folds with one thumb, pleased to find dampness and heat and more pleased that she went motionless, allowing it.

  “Move, love,” he whispered against her breasts, letting his hand go still, waiting for her this time. Then, a tentative motion with her hips, forward against his hand, back, but not far.

  “Just like that. Again.”

  In the quiet darkness, she found a rhythm—conservative, because she didn’t know her destination yet as well as she soon would, but Worth fell in with it, applying and releasing pressure at the apex of her folds.

  “Worth…what…?”

  “The matter wants only patience and determination. You excel at both.” He watched her face in the moonlight, and kept up enough pressure that her arousal escalated toward completion. “I’ll get you there. No risk for you, all reward.”

  She said nothing, no doubt listening with her body for how to find more and more pleasure.

  Worth’s arousal became insistent, but he focused on her, on caressing one breast while he took the other in his mouth, on plying her sex with as much gentle insistence as one half-sane man could muster.

  He sensed when passion overtook her restraint. Her back arched, driving her against his hand and his mouth, and she leaned into him hard, her body begging for what words could not convey.

  “That’s it,” he whispered. “All reward.”

  “Worth…”

  She hissed his name on a rasp of pleasure, and he drove a finger into her heat, her sex gripping hard around him, and that—that was too much. He held on to her like a bankrupt clutches his last, shiny gold sovereign and let the pleasure reverberate through him even as she was overwhelmed by it as well.

  The sounds of their harsh breathing mingled, then eased, and still Worth held on.

  Jacaranda stroked his hair, clinging to him, too, as he relaxed back against the bed.

  “Come here.” He urged her down onto his chest, needing to hold her, needing to keep her close.

  She went easily, despite his spent seed all over his belly, despite the aftershocks he sensed rippling through her.

  What words could he give her now? What could he say, in thanks or reassurance? He was at sea still, for this was an aspect of intimate pleasure he’d not experienced before—the desire to linger and comfort and be comforted.

  He kissed her temple, stroked her back, and prayed for the right words.

  Any right words at all.

  * * *

  Jacaranda tried to get her mind to function, to form sentences, but her body was still too absorbed with marvelous sensations. Her skin buzzed with pleasure, her breasts hummed with it. Between her legs the fire of Worth’s touch lingered, and inside, deep inside where a woman carried new life, bodily exultation had yet to entirely fade.

  What to say?

  “I missed you, too.” The ridiculous words were out without Jacaranda having any idea where they’d come from. They were honest, but ye gods. I missed you?

  After that?

  He came alert beneath her, and it was too late to call the words back. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, I missed you, too.”

  “Good.” His hand started moving on her back again. “That’s good.”

  What did “good” mean? She searched for basic vocabulary.

  “Hold me.” Those words were right, and Worth’s arms closing more securely around her were more right still.

  “Better?”

  She nodded against his chest and wondered what came next, but then the comfort of his embrace stole even curiosity from her grip. Worth knew what came next, and that was all she needed for the moment.

  His lips moved at her temple. “Sleep, love. I’ve got you.”

  “You won’t leave?”

  “Not yet.”

  When she next opened her eyes, she was cast adrift over the great, lovely expanse of Worth Kettering. His hands caressed her back, his chest rose and fell beneath her.

  “I should move.” Straight back to Dorset, and soon.

  “You shouldn’t go far. We could do with a wash, though.”

  So one talked about that. Two did. “I’ll see to it.”

  “You will not.”

  One argued about it, even. She wanted to smile—no, to smirk. She did not want to move back to Dorse
t.

  “You sprawl here in feminine splendor while I see to it,” Worth said, and he was smiling outright, his teeth gleaming in the darkness.

  “I do not sprawl, Worth Kettering.” She climbed off him, an ungainly production, and hit the mattress on her back. Her stomach was sticky, so she didn’t draw the sheets up.

  “You will acquire the knack of sprawling if I have anything to say to it.” He bounced off the mattress, his tone as brisk as his movements. “Sprawling, lounging, reclining, what have you. A well-pleasured lady is entitled to certain privileges.” He came back to the bed with a flannel in his hand, looking her over in the moonlight.

  Jacaranda held out her hand. “I’ll take that.”

  He sat at her hip, ignored her hand, and put the cool, damp cloth on her belly.

  “You sprawl,” he said, tidying her up. “Unless you’d like to perform this courtesy for me?”

  “Good heavens.” So many ways to be intimate, and she wasn’t even truly his lover.

  He rubbed at himself briskly. “Maybe next time. Now we sprawl together. I rather like this part.”

  “You didn’t like the other?”

  More wrong words. When would her wits come back to life?

  Worth positioned himself over her, and that was nice, to be gathered beneath him again. Despite her words, Jacaranda felt safe and close to him.

  “I adored the other,” he said, close to her ear. “I adore you.” He climbed off her when she didn’t have the confidence to ask him not to. “Now we sprawl. There’s science to it. First, you get comfortable.”

  “I am comfortable.”

  “You usually sleep on your right side, love.”

  She wanted to argue, but didn’t because she felt rather in charity with him, and with the rest of creation. She scooted to her right side.

  “Just so. Then I get comfortable.” He spooned himself around her, his warmth comfortable and comforting. “Then I tell you how much I enjoyed spending this time with you, more than words can say.” He kissed her nape. “You are truly magnificent, Jacaranda Wyeth. Beyond words, beyond anything in my experience. I am humbled.”

  He sounded humbled, too. Jacaranda was grateful for the darkness, because his words made her blush.

  “Now go to sleep.” He settled a hand around her breast, and even that brought with it emotions warm and dear. “Dream of me, for I shall surely dream of you.”

  She went to sleep and she did dream of him.

  Also of her cottage in Dorset.

  * * *

  Worth lingered in Jacaranda’s bed until almost dawn, passing the night in a pleasurable twilight. He’d wake up, cuddle her closer, stroke his hands over her curves and hollows, kiss her cheek, her hair, her neck, and subside back into dreamy drowsing. He knew for a fact he’d never spent as much of an entire night with a throbbing cockstand, or enjoyed himself so much without having intercourse.

  Before the sun peeked over the horizon, he stole down the corridor, boots in hand, much on his mind.

  Jacaranda probably suspected his latest marriage proposal hadn’t been a joke about raspberry jam. She was deucedly perceptive about things like jam pots.

  The words had come out, heartfelt and sincere. Jacaranda had been surprised and nonplussed, which did not bode well for him.

  As the day wore on, he confirmed his suspicion that part of what ran the household was his housekeeper’s perpetual motion. She came to rest in her little sitting room for tea, but she also held audiences in there.

  Cook joined her for a cup and emerged peering at a handful of menus.

  Mr. Reilly passed the time of day with dear Mrs. Wyeth and then braced Worth on whether the bridle paths in the home wood ought to be cleared to permit access to Hunter’s holding if the bridge should fail.

  Carl disappeared into that sitting room and emerged clutching a list to take to Mr. Simmons, the printing so large and bold Worth could make it out from across the corridor.

  With the head maid, another list of orders was dispatched. Then the vicar called, paying Worth and Hess a few courtesies before rising to go in search of Mrs. Wyeth.

  Jacaranda Wyeth was more than a housekeeper, and not simply in the sense she was the woman Worth wanted for his wedded wife. She had infiltrated his household, systematically asserted her common sense, and made a large, neglected estate into a profitable, smoothly running home.

  She’d invaded and taken over.

  “What has you frowning so?” Hess asked as he ambled into the library.

  “My housekeeper. I’ve been duped, Hessian. I like it not.”

  “By her? In what sense? She doesn’t seem the duping kind.”

  “I only think I own this property,” Worth said, tossing himself into a wing chair. “I’m a guest here.”

  “You weren’t a guest yesterday.” Hess took the other chair in a more decorous fashion. “I was ready to expire with worry, and your housekeeper had reached the end of her tether, too.”

  “She was worried she’d fail.” The words were unfair, also true. Something or someone had driven Jacaranda to impossibly high expectations of herself.

  “She was worried Yolanda had done something irreparably foolish,” Hess corrected him. “Worried the girl was hurt, lost, set upon by ruffians.”

  “Ruffians on Trysting land?”

  “With sufficient quantities of drink and stupidity, ruffians can be found in almost any corner of the realm. The point is, Mrs. Wyeth was beside herself, as was I, and you—Mr. I’m Only A Guest—were the only one with a cool head. You might feel like a guest, but you do own the place.”

  “I pay the taxes. That’s not the same thing.”

  Hess’s lips quirked at this pouting. “You are decidedly grumpy, brother. To what do we attribute your foul mood?”

  “Hess, I want to marry her.”

  Hess’s smile became sweet rather than teasing—and God above, that smile would bring the ladies of Polite Society to his side at a dead, panting run.

  “Then procure a ring, take a knee, and be about it. We’re not getting any younger, in case you hadn’t noticed, and neither of our nurseries sports an heir.”

  “Hang the nurseries.” Worth abandoned his chair to study the outdated maps of the enormous atlas. “She won’t have me.”

  “Have you asked?”

  “More or less.” Mostly less. “She scolded me for being so forward the first time. The second time we made a raspberry joke of it. She natters about her family and some cottage in Dorset.”

  “I have no idea what a raspberry joke is, Worth, but the lady fancies you.”

  Clearing the bridle path would also create a shortcut into town—and let a closer eye be kept on Thomas Hunter.

  “Has Jacaranda told you she fancies me?”

  Worth understood about money, and all the ways human nature and money fit together, but Hess… Hess had been married. For years. Hess had dallied. Hess had a child, and he was the only sympathetic ear Worth was likely to find.

  “Your housekeeper is an attractive female. My notice has been drawn to her, but every time I behold the lady, she’s busy beholding you. And Worth, she has this wistful gleam in her eyes when she does. I do not think she’s contemplating dusting you, either, or adorning you with a lace runner.”

  A smile threatened at the image of Jacaranda Wyeth using a feather duster on Worth’s naked parts. He flipped the page of the atlas to find an elevation of Trysting before the conservatory had been added.

  “Women like to hear the words,” Hess said. “I haven’t any pretty words for them, hence I am a non-competitor in the courting stakes.”

  “So stay here in the south with us.” Worth left off perusing familial ancient history to regard his brother. His only brother, his only adult family in the entire world. “Get some practice, or at least get your ashes hauled regularly. Most women I know, the married ones anyway, are long past the need for any words besides ‘faster,’ ‘harder,’ and ‘aren’t you ready to give it another go yet
?’”

  “You poor abused old thing. No wonder Mrs. Wyeth has her doubts. What do we know about Mr. Wyeth?”

  “Who? Oh, Mr. Wyeth. Not a thing. I doubt there was one.”

  Though there had been somebody, or no way on God’s earth would Worth be pursuing Jacaranda in the manner he was.

  “Many housekeepers make diplomatic use of the married form of address,” Hess said, rising and coming to stand beside Worth. “I told Yolanda I wouldn’t drag her north against her will. I’m not sure where that leaves us, when Grampion is the only roof I can afford to put over her head. She assured me she hadn’t been running away.”

  As changes of subject went, Hess’s gambit lacked subtlety, but Worth had gone over Hess’s finances. The lesser holdings were either let out or soon to be rented, that much was fact.

  “What about spending the winter in Town? Your vote would be an asset to your party.”

  Hess drew a finger along the façade of an older, more stately Trysting. “Winter up north is long, cold and harsh, but it’s also beautiful, peaceful, and I’m used to it.”

  “We’re both in a contrary mood, though that parade of footmen across yonder terrace means we’re once again to be picnicking. Perhaps I’ll go north with you, where the picnic season is so much shorter.”

  Where housekeepers were less likely to drive a man to unrequited longings that had him up most of the night, in more ways than one.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jacaranda managed to avoid her employer—Worth was still that—for most of the day, and she told herself that for the best, also necessary, because she needed to compose herself.

  Or appear to compose herself.

  She’d forgotten today was the day for Vicar’s call and had nearly forgotten between a morning note and an afternoon response, that she’d asked for a moment of Mr. Reilly’s time. If Cook hadn’t come bustling by, Jacaranda would have neglected a week’s worth of menus as well.

  This was all his fault.

  Jacaranda would never grow accustomed to spending the night naked and entwined in a man’s arms. The pleasure was heady, wonderful and, when that man was Worth Kettering, overwhelmingly sweet. The caring and tenderness he was capable of in the simplest, fleeting touch—