An Earl For Hire

by Bethany M. Sefchick

  Miri was panting now, her body hot and aching, and she was desperately trying to figure out how to douse this fire that Will had ignited within her - if it was even possible. As he licked and suckled at her nether regions, his fingers never ceasing their rhythmic pumping, she brought her hands to her breasts, hoping that she could tease her nipples to give her some relief. It occasionally worked with her own hands, but she wasn't as certain she could do so now. Not when a very naked Will was between her legs and giving her more pleasure than she had ever thought possible.

  "Stop thinking," he mumbled as he pulled his mouth away and rose up over her so that he could take one peaked nipple into his mouth. "Just feel, Miri. And let go."

  Then he bit down hard on her nipple and she cried out from the pain - but at the same time, she also stopped thinking. All she could do was feel - his fingers inside of her core, his thumb pressing down on and rubbing that infernal little nub, his mouth at her breast, suckling and biting and sending bolts of pleasure racing down her spine. Her fingers dug into the counterpane again as her hips came off the bed. Over and over, she arched up, seeking something from his body that she couldn't name. She could feel the brush of his erect cock against her thigh, velvet covered iron that she wished to stroke and touch.

  With each touch and caress, he pushed her higher and higher until she could go no further, wiping away every thought in her mind. Then, without warning, the coiled spring inside of her unwound and flew apart, her body arching up hard one last time as she cried out, her release washing over her. Miri felt the flood of wetness between her legs, felt Will drop back to his knees to lap at her feminine juices, and then she came again, a fresh wave of release crashing over her once more, her legs spread wide as Will used his tongue to taste her deeply, coaxing every last bit of release from her body.

  Miri was not at all surprised when the world went black around her as she felt herself begin to crash back to earth. The last thing she remembered before the darkness claimed her was Will grinning up at her, a supremely satisfied smile upon his face and her body feeling far more sated than she could ever remember.

  Miri awoke to Will looking down at her, a gentle smile on his lips.

  "Hullo, love," he whispered as he leaned down to kiss her. "I must confess, I'm rather flattered. I do believe that's the first time I've ever made a woman swoon with my lovemaking skills before."

  "I do not swoon," she replied, though she knew that was a lie. If she had not just swooned when Will brought her to release, then she had no right to call herself a woman. The feeling had been that intense and perfect. No matter how stern of stuff a woman was made of, they would all swoon when given such glorious pleasure. Though not by Will. He was hers. "Though I will admit that was magnificent. Thank you."

  Will quirked an eyebrow at her. "Oh, we are not finished yet, my adorable Miri. Not even close."

  "We're not?" True they had not coupled, but he had given her pleasure. She would not force him to lie with her and debase himself that way if he did not wish to. In the beginning maybe, but not now. He meant far too much to her now for her to allow such a thing. "But I told you I would not..."

  He brought a finger to her lips. "And I told you that I wished to bed you. It's not about some damnable contract, Miri. It is about you and how much I desire you. Had we just met this evening at the masquerade, I would still be devising ways to get you into my bed."

  "You would?" She surprised herself when there was something akin to wonder in her voice.

  He nodded, his eyes dark. "I would. I want you, Miri. I have for a very long time and it has nothing to do with funds." He picked up her hand and brought it down to rest upon his still throbbing erection. "Surely this is proof enough of that."

  "Oh." Unable to stop herself, Miri slid her fingers along his hard length, eliciting a strangled gasp from him. "Oh, Will! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you!"

  "You didn't, love" he managed to grind out as he gently removed her hand.

  Frowning, she looked down at her small hand clenched in his much larger one. "But the expression on your face...you looked to be in pain. But I don't understand. I thought men took pleasure from women this way."

  Quickly Will leaned down and kissed her, surprising her once more as he shifted his weight so that he was now over her, his narrow hips between her spread legs. "We do. But, Miri, love? I want you so much that each time you touch me, I am on the verge of losing control. When I spill, I want to be inside of you. I will protect you from a child, of course, but I want to feel you tighten around my cock as you did my fingers. And each time you touch me, though it is a pleasurable pain, it does still pain me to think that I will be denied that pleasure."

  Surprising herself now, Miri laughed. "Can't have that, now can we?"

  "No, we can't." Reaching behind him he selected what she knew was a French letter from the bedside table. He slipped it over his erect cock and immediately, some of the fire inside of her died.

  "No." Now it was her turn to protest. "No French letter."

  Will frowned, his hand stilling at the base of his cock. "Miri, I have to protect you. If I don't, there might be consequences. I would never do that to you."

  She closed her eyes. "There will be no child. There cannot be. According to my physician, the fever that crippled my leg left me barren. I cannot have children."

  It was clear that he didn't believe her but Miri didn't care. If she was going to have Will, she would have all of him. Not just part.

  "That cannot be," he protested softly, reaching up to stroke her hair.

  "It is," she assured him. "My mother's physician is excellent. I trust him." Then she opened her legs wide. "Just as I trust you."

  Will was torn. He did not wish to put Miri at risk in any way, and yet, the idea of lying with her with nothing between them was sweet indeed. In the end, Miri took the lead as she always did and, reaching between them, yanked off the offending thing and slid her body down the bed until the tip of his cock rested at her entrance.

  "Make me yours, Will," she demanded, looking up at him with those incredible eyes. "Now. No more waiting."

  He could no more resist her than he could resist a force of nature and with one quick thrust, he entered her. He had intended to be gentle, but he knew that the first time for her would hurt either way. Better to get the pain over with quickly so they could move on to the pleasure.

  "Sorry, love" he whispered as he leaned down to kiss her quickly. "It would hurt no matter how gentle I tried to be."

  "I know." The flash of pain he had seen in her eyes was gone now, replaced by something akin to wonder. When he withdrew slightly, he could see the confusion on her face which was quickly followed by a look of bliss when he thrust back inside of her again. "Oh, that is lovely."

  Suspecting that he was grinning like a fool now, Will leaned over until he was nose to nose with her. "It is about to get a bit more than lovely, pet," he promised as he thrust again, harder this time. "Come with me, Miri. Don't think and just follow me."

  With each hard thrust of Will's cock inside of her body, Miri felt that delicious pressure begin to build again. Only this time, she did not fight her body's inclination to begin tightening with each stroke. He was so big that she felt almost uncomfortably full, her body stretching to accommodate his almost painfully. However each time she thought she could not take any more of him, he thrust again, just a little deeper, until he was fully seated inside of her.

  Her legs spread wide on the bed, she knew that she must look a fright, like the fallen woman that she now was. However, for once in her life, Miri didn't give a fig about anything. All she cared about was the pleasure thrumming through her body each time Will thrust his cock inside of her so very deeply. She had asked him to teach her pleasure, and he was granting her wish ten fold. At this moment, she felt as if she was the luckiest woman in the world, not just in all of England.

  Then Will shifted her hips to a higher angle before thrusting again and that was the last co
herent thought Miri had. Instead, all she could think of was Will, the way he felt inside of her, how precious and cared for he made her feel and how she wished she could lie with him every night like this for the rest of her life. Then even those few thoughts fell away as he bent down to suckle at her breast, all while continuing to thrust hard and fast into her warm, wet core.

  Will thought he had died and gone to heaven. Miri was just as exquisite as he had hoped and with each little mewling sound that came from her, he drove into her harder until he felt her fingers claw at his back and her legs open even wider, pulling him deeper and deeper into her. He wouldn't last much longer. This was too perfect. Too lovely. Too exquisite.

  He felt the familiar tug at the base of his spine and, though a part of his mind whispered that he should do the right thing and withdraw, he was long past the point of truly rational thought.

  As Miri arched beneath him and gave a strangled cry of pleasure, Will felt his own release rip from him as he spilled his seed into her waiting body. Waves of pleasure rocked both of them, and as he rode out the last of his orgasm, she reached for him, wrapping her arms around his neck so that she could cling tightly to him as her body rocked over and over again with a powerful release.

  "I need you, Will," she gasped breathlessly into his shoulder. "Please don't let me go."

  "Never, Miri," he promised her when he could speak again. "Never."

  It was, without a doubt, the most perfect moment in his life. And in his heart, Will also knew that it could not last much longer.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "Miri are you certain you are well?" Sarah asked for what seemed like the thousandth time in less than two days as Miri picked up her hat in anticipation of Will's arrival to take her for a drive in the park. "Yesterday morning when you returned from Lady Pearl's you were stiff and sore, and now today, you are not acting at all yourself. As if you are in some kind of dismals. Did you catch some sort of ague from the late night at the masquerade? If I discover that Lord Blackthorne has anything to do with this..." Then she stopped abruptly as if realizing what she had just said.

  Clearly knowing when she had been temporarily defeated, Sarah had suspended her campaign against Will, especially as it was clear that Rayne approved of the man courting his youngest sister. That did not mean that Sarah had changed her opinion on the matter. It simply meant that she was using caution now, likely because she did not wish to upset her husband. Still, it was minor victory, and Miri would take those any way she could get them at the moment.

  Wishing she could roll her eyes at her sister in law, but not wanting to arouse any more suspicion, Miri simply leaned a little more heavily on her cane. That was not an act, for her leg did pain her more than usual. "I am well, Sarah. It is merely my leg. It has ached a bit these last few days. I knew I was walking too much at the masquerade and it pained me yesterday. I danced a waltz the other night, which is not something I do often. Not to mention that Pearl's townhome has far more steps than ours, something neither of us anticipated when we made our arrangements. But I assure you that I am otherwise quite well."

  Pearl had, of course, kept Miri's secret, but what Miri hadn't counted on was keeping the secret that Pearl had not returned to her own home the other night either. She would still not reveal to Miri where she had gone, but Miri suspected that it had something to do with the masked stranger who had been watching them at the ball. However, Miri would not press for details. She was confident that Pearl would tell her when the time was right.

  Just as she was confident that in time, the muscles she had used the night that she had bedded Will would recover and no longer ache so pleasantly as they did right at this moment. That was the true reason for her sluggish behavior - not any sort of ague.

  "Or you could be ill," Sarah nagged again, doing everything but wringing her hands with worry. "Perhaps you are coming down with a fever. Lady Pearl has not been seen out in society for several days either. Please let me call the family physician. Or if not him, then perhaps Dr. Hastings?"

  "I am perfectly well," Miri finally snapped with impatience. "Sarah, not so long ago, you were a young woman in love yourself. With my brother of all people, might I add. Do you not remember how that feels? Or has marriage to him somehow managed to negate all of those years of longing between the two of you?"

  Thankfully, that gave the other woman pause. "In love? With Lord Blackthorne? And you are certain of this?" She all but snorted. "Do you not think that this is a little fast? Love is something you must be certain of before you commit. And you hardly have the experience to know what love is."

  "I am certain that I cannot stop thinking about him. Or that I have all but ignored my telescopes and stars as of late so that I might attend entertainments that I despise in order to see him." She gestured to a nearby table where one of her notebooks had sat untouched for over a week. "Am I certain it is love? No, but it is something more than friendship." She blew out a breath, not wishing to annoy Sarah further given her views on the matter but not wishing to lie either. Not about this, about Will. He was far too important for that. "And if it is not love, then what is it?"

  The truth was that Miri's entire world had been upended even more than it already had been after the night in Will's bed. That had made love twice more that first night, each time Will being both more tender and more inventive than the last. It had taken all of her strength to rise from his bed as the first fingers of dawn were breaking and use his family's unmarked coach to return to her own townhome - just as she would have if she had truly been spending the evening at Pearl's since the other woman was such an early riser.

  With each roll of the carriage wheels that carried her farther away from him, Miri had felt like crying, which was not at all like her. She wanted to be with Will, to greet the dawn with him and then roll him over onto his back and ride him like a stallion again, just as he had taught her the night before. So no, she was not acting at all like herself, but not because she had come down with any sort of ague.

  Though she had a deep sense of foreboding about the entire situation, Miri had done her best to push all thoughts of love, marriage, and entanglements from her mind the morning she had returned home. Which had lasted all of about a day. Then, she had met Will last night at a small dinner party hosted by Lady Fitchly, and all of her good and sensible reasons regarding why these feelings could not possibly be love flew from her mind.

  As Miri saw Will standing there wearing the same evening attire as the previous night, drink in hand, her heart had flipped over in her chest and the realization that she might have actually been stupid enough to fall in love had come crashing down upon her. Hence the reason for her bit of melancholy today. Because if she was in love with Will? Then things would change. Not much, but some. And that might be enough to truly upset her neatly ordered world.

  Miri was the current keeper of The Letter for Aunt Beanie - even though she granted wishes to young women when her own desires were likely to go unfulfilled. Unlike most Society women, she was wealthy beyond what most titled gentlemen could even hope for - something that even Will didn't know. She had her stars and her telescopes to fill her nights - no matter that those became a little lonely at times.

  She despised dancing and other popular entertainments - even if she thought that some of those events, not to mention waltzing, might be tolerable as of late. She was independent and answered to almost no one - save for her mother and brother and, perhaps to some extent, Will as well. She was also lame and unable to bear children - two qualities a man like Will who needed an heir and a spare would not find attractive.

  Miri had also discovered that she liked people - certain ones and to a certain degree, anyway. Not everyone was cruel. She had learned that too, though whether it was because people liked her or they liked Will, she could not be certain. What was certain was that Will did not care about her vast fortune - though to be fair, he didn't exactly know about its existence either. Miri was also certain that Will liked her
- without reservation. More than that, he had taught her that she was capable of feelings and emotions, that she wasn't some sort of frigid ice princess. It was a whole other part of herself that she had never known.

  And yet...whenever she wasn't around Will, it was as if still another part of her was missing. One more piece of herself that Miri had been blissfully unaware of until recently. She wondered what he was doing and if he was well, if he had received any more salacious offers from Society women to bed them and what she would do if he had. In fact, at the thought of Will in another woman's bed, Miri felt a spark of ire that might just have been jealousy if she did not know any better. If that was not love, or at least the beginnings of it, then what was it?

  It was certainly not any sort of ague.

  "Are you listening to me, Miri?" Sarah all but demanded her hands on her hips. Just then, Miri understood why this woman was a perfect match for her hard-headed brother. Though she did not care for the glare Sarah was shooting in her direction.

  "I'm sorry. I wasn't." Miri hadn't been paying attention to much of anything at all lately. The fact that she wasn't listening to whatever Sarah had just said was hardly new behavior.

  "Then perhaps it is love, unfortunate as that might." Sarah studied Miri for a long moment before shaking her head. "Though I just don't know. Love makes no sense, at least not for you. Your brother insisted you had an ague and, given your behavior, I tended to agree. Whatever it is you feel or think you feel, the emotion simply cannot be love."

  Miri fiddled with the ribbons on her bonnet, doing her best not to become angry with Sarah once more. "Because you both believed it was impossible that I have truly come to care for Lord Blackthorne and he for me. And because for some reason I do not understand, you do not like him simply because he is poor. Which makes no sense at all because you like Lord Hunt well enough and he is just as poor as Will." If there was one thing Miri was certain of this morning, it was that Will cared for her without hesitation or reservation. His disregarding the French Letter when she had all but begged him had proven that much.