Her arm stiffened, one foot moved forward, and she prodded him backward. She repeated the motion until the backs of his legs met the chair. With one final nudge, she pushed him down.
“Even when there’s a bed in the room,” he said, “we can’t manage to use it.”
Another time his words would have elicited a flirtatious response, but not now. Not when the moonlit length of his body offered such exquisite distraction. Defined muscles, at once sinewy and substantial, stretched down him, leading her eye across a man’s body hardened by time and energy. Speaking of hard . . .
Her gaze locked onto his thick manhood. “Hard and true and ever at the ready,” emerged from her mouth. Her eyes startled up to meet his. She hadn’t meant to speak the words aloud.
A knowing smile tipped up the right side of his mouth and sent a shot of lust straight through her. He’d been right: he knew exactly what she wanted and how. There was no use denying herself any longer.
In a pair of efficient motions, she straddled him and the chair. Poised inches above the glistening head of his manhood, her sex throbbed in anticipation of the press of him against her flesh. She leaned forward and braced one hand on the chair back, her loose hair falling around their faces and forming a silky curtain. Her other hand wrapped around the base of him. His pupils dilated, nearly extending to the outer edge of his irises.
Her hips lowered until the crown of his manhood touched the entrance of her sex. A heartbeat later, she began taking him inside her, his length a delicious, hard slide, until, at last, he filled her to completeness.
A breathy, “Oh,” fell from her lips.
Impossibly, he felt better now than he had last night or even this afternoon. He kept getting better and better. She needed him more and more. He was the opiate, and she the addict. She would never get enough.
Her fingertips brushed across the patch of hair at the base of his cock. Lightly, almost reverently, they trailed up the ridged muscles of his stomach and across the wide expanse of his chest. Finally reaching his broad shoulders, she dug in her nails, tilted her hips forward, and ground further down onto him.
Fluttery waves of pleasure and pain shot through her. Nothing beyond the points where their bodies met mattered. This must be how an addict felt the moment the drug filled the lungs.
She wanted to take him in slowly and deliberately, but each thrust of her hips stripped her resolve away until all that was left was an overwhelming urge to feed this desire that refused to be slaked. Still, she would try, her thighs tensing and releasing, sliding her up and down him. Her forehead met his, her hair encircling them, her sweat mingling with his as it dripped between their bodies.
“Fuck me, Mariana,” he whispered into her ear, impossibly notching up her lust for him.
His long, capable fingers reached out and gripped her hips, steadying her before he increased the rhythm of his thrusts. Mariana’s sense of control spiraled away as his body demanded more of her. She was reduced to a raw nerve capable of nothing other than giving and receiving pleasure.
And she cared not.
Not when the pleasure spiked ever higher and higher, winding her sex ever tighter and tighter until she reached the sweetest spot of anxiety.
“Nick,” she cried out, “please.”
His fingers found her face and pushed her hair back. “Look at me,” he demanded. Her eyes found his. “And do not look away.”
His gaze holding her in thrall to him, he returned his hands to her hips and began measuredly moving her atop him as if rationing out his strokes one . . . at . . . a . . . time.
Sudden and unexpected intimacy flared between them as their gazes held fast onto each other. Her sex began to curl inward and tighten. Storm cloud gray held and steadied her as a glorious and unstoppable momentum accumulated in her core and began to overtake her. She reached, she strived up toward a freedom that only he could provide. A few more strokes and her sex shattered in climax, tiny earthquakes of pleasure rippling through her as she shook off the bound world and tumbled into ecstasy.
“Mariana,” fell from his mouth as his hips continued their relentless thrust into her once . . . twice before he shouted out his own release.
All that remained of him and her was a confusion of breath. Lungs expanding, lungs contracting in arrhythmic pants. Her chin fit perfectly into the hollow of his collarbone. She’d known that once. Now she knew it again.
“Mariana,” she heard as if from a great distance. Her eyes squeezed shut in protest. Too soon.
His hands reached up to gently cup her face. She resisted the urge to nuzzle into their warmth and, instead, followed their direction. She shifted her weight back and faced him square.
He pressed forward and touched his lips to hers.
It was an almost chaste kiss—the sort of kiss that shouldn’t follow such an animalistic coupling.
It was a perfect kiss.
It was just the sort of kiss that could weaken a woman’s resolve.
Without deepening the kiss, he broke away, a shy smile on his lips. “It occurred to me that we hadn’t yet done that.”
Mariana felt exposed. How did a simple kiss have the power to shatter her after what they had just done?
Yet it wasn’t simply the kiss. It was the coo of his voice, too. Soft and sweet, she didn’t recognize that voice . . . because she’d never heard it. Nick had never spoken to her thus. Or looked at her thus.
Actually, that wasn’t true. He had the same look earlier tonight. It was a look that could give a woman hope . . . If she didn’t know better.
Her spine stiffened, and her feet hit the floor. When she pushed off him to a stand, her traitorous body experienced a momentary pang for the loss of him. At least, she hoped it was momentary.
Hope. How recently she’d experienced that emotion. How soon it had crushed her.
She moved to the foot of the bed and perched against its edge. Eyebrows drawn together, a bewildered Nick stared out at her.
“What changed between this afternoon and tonight?” he asked.
She should’ve been glad he’d spoken the words first. But she wasn’t. A naïve part of her thought she could seduce Villefranche and leave Paris without an accounting with Nick.
“We must talk about why you are here in Villefranche’s rooms.”
She forced out a dry laugh. “I prefer to be dressed for that particular conversation.”
Drained of the fiery energy that had propelled her through this day and night, she stood heavily and trod to the dressing table where her clothes lay.
He reached for his discarded trousers and proceeded to jerk them up his legs. “Mariana”—
Notes of frustration infused his voice. Good. That was a start.
—“we must discuss your intentions tonight if we are to salvage—”
“Salvage?” she shot out as she swung around to face him, reinvigorated by the coming confrontation. “There is nothing between us to salvage.” A confounded silence stretched between them. “How long have you known Percy is alive?”
The question seized control of the room, sinking in and settling between them where it would remain forever. The flummoxed expression clouding his features told her that he didn’t understand that yet.
“Ten years,” he stated flatly. He sounded . . . unapologetic.
Like that, Mariana’s anger returned like an Arctic fury. It was an anger that would sustain her through this conversation, through this night, and on through to London. “How could you keep it a secret?”
Nick grabbed his shirt and shrugged it onto his shoulders. A pang of loss for the sight of his gorgeous body shot through her. It sank in that this was really happening. Impossibly, a part of her had been hanging on to the hope that there were correct words to fix this situation—that he and she could be salvaged.<
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“It wasn’t my secret to tell,” he said, pitching his body into a deceptively lazy sprawl in the chair opposite hers.
“Olivia is my sister,” she began righteously, “and I am your—”
“Wife? Make up your mind.” His gaze held hers. “Percy was in too deep, and I couldn’t risk exposing him. Then time kept passing, and he kept staying buried. It was never my place to tell.”
“How could you be so ruthless?” she fired back. “Are you so without feeling? Are you so without humanity?”
He pushed to a stand, impatience evident.
“Do not come near me,” she stated, slowly enunciating each word.
He stopped cold. “Percy has naught to do with us.”
“How can you say that? After all the secrets and lies, I could never trust you.”
“Percy was part of a life that had naught to do with you.” He took a step forward. “A life I’m leaving behind.”
“Why bother? You will never change.”
“I’m not saying I shall.” He took another step forward. “You are in my blood, Mariana. That will never change. I’m done fighting it.”
“I’m in your blood? How dare you speak those words to me? That has never been our problem. The problem is that I’ve never been in your heart.”
Another step brought him within a few feet of her. She had only to reach out to bring her body into contact with his. But what would that accomplish?
“You want me, too.”
So bold were his words. She could ignore or deny them, but neither would do. Only the truth would serve this night. “I’ve wanted you too much,” she confessed.
His eyes searched hers. “Is it ever too much?”
“There is nothing substantial about you. Nothing I can hold onto. You always slip through my fingers.”
She stood and made to step past him. She must leave. There was nothing more to say.
Her flight, however, was arrested when he said, “I love you.”
Contained within his gaze was more emotion than she would have thought possible: anger, fear, and love. Yes, love. How had she never noticed before? And now that she had?
It was too late. Sometimes love wasn’t enough.
“I know,” she said. “But here’s what else I know about you: that other life, too, is in your blood, and I can’t compete with it. I leave Paris at dawn.”
“This isn’t what you want.”
“Perhaps not,” she returned, “but it is what I need.”
She turned and strode through the doorway without a single backward glance. She had some packing to complete and a restless night to suffer through. Then it was on to London . . . And on with her life. The same life she’d been leading these last ten years. And if a little voice protested that it wasn’t possible? That Paris had changed her? She would pack that away as well.
What couldn’t be isolated so easily was the wretched feeling that a bottomless void yawned at her feet and would consume her.
She’d survived it once.
Perhaps she would survive it again.
Chapter 26
Kettle of Fish: When a person has perplexed his affairs in general, or any particular business, he is said to have made a fine kettle of fish of it.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose
The Cotswolds
Two Days Later
The carriage veered a sharp right, and Mariana’s eyes startled open. She averted her gaze from Hortense, fast asleep on the seat across from her, and toward the view of an undulant green hillside racing alongside the carriage as it careened down Little Spruisty Folly’s long, straight drive.
The familiarity of the scene released a measure of the tension that had been twisting her insides into knots for two days now. This patch of earth never failed to have that effect on her, even though this visit hadn’t been part of the day’s plan.
Just this morning, after a breakneck journey by land and by sea, Mariana had arrived in London with Hortense in tow. She’d immediately called upon the children’s schools: first, the Westminster School to apprise Geoffrey of her return and deliver the box of French bon-bons. Then she was off to see Lavinia at the Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds, where she was greeted at the front doorstep by Mrs. Bloomquist.
A minor rat problem—as if there was any such thing as a minor rat problem—had been discovered, and the students sent home a few days ago. The rat catchers and their terriers would have the run of the building for the duration of the week. Mariana thanked Mrs. Bloomquist for her dedication to the cause before making her way to the Duke of Arundel’s mansion where Olivia had occupied a wing since her marriage.
Once there, she discovered that Olivia had decided to take advantage of the surprise holiday and whisk their daughters away to the Folly for an impromptu visit. Geoffrey had chosen to remain at Westminster and try out his bribe on the unsuspecting cook.
“Well, I’m off to the countryside, it would appear,” Mariana had informed Hortense, unable to hide her annoyance at the inconvenience of it all. “You are free to stay behind in London, if you like.”
“I was instructed not to leave your side until I receive explicit notice that all the loose ends of the French business are tied up.”
Mariana wouldn’t ask from whom this directive originated.
“Besides,” Hortense continued, “I wouldn’t mind seeing more of the country of my birth.”
Mariana experienced a jolt of shock at the girl’s revelation and immediately upbraided herself for it. Nothing should shock her anymore.
Now gazing out the window, she allowed some of the weight from the last few days to slide off her. She was arriving at the golden hour of dusk when the countryside, from gently rolling hills to the crowns of stately horse-chestnuts, burnished bronze in the warm glow of the setting sun. This was the most beautiful hour at the Folly, aside from dawn, of course. Where dawn bloomed with a dewy, yet crisp, clarity, dusk stole in with a still seductive softness irresistible to her.
Soothed by the subtle rocking motion of the carriage, she allowed her eyes to glaze over and her mind to drift back to the previous morning. She’d been on the road as soon as dawn had allowed enough light for travel, the previous night’s sustaining, and protective, anger having left her numb, yet determined.
Once in Calais, she’d wasted no time locating Captain Nylander. True to his word, he was willing to make a quick detour and transport her back to England before making his way to more exotic locales.
Nylander. She’d been right not to involve him in her marriage woes. On the surface—his powerful, sun-kissed, tempting surface—he was exactly the sort of man a woman would use to forget another man.
But a closer study revealed vulnerability cloaked within his impenetrable reserve that most surely missed. She intuited that he’d been used by a good number of women in his life, and she wouldn’t add herself to their number. He would want more of her than her body, and she couldn’t offer him that. And why not?
Her eyes fluttered shut before flying open. Closed eyes only emboldened the memory of her and Nick’s last time together. How had she allowed herself to fall in love with her husband . . . again? And now the inevitable emptiness was beginning to expand within her . . . again.
Nick’s words would return to her in counterpoint: she was in his blood . . . he loved her. She could almost convince herself that the words were enough. But they weren’t.
Nick was a man who bent circumstances and people to his whim and will. She refused to be bent any further. One more fold, and she would surely break.
Her fingertips brushed across her sternum where her beloved locket once lay. Now it was gone, forever. In all honesty, it was better this way. The locket had been
yet another excuse to hold onto a past that held no future—a phantom lacking all substance. And yet some phantoms had felt so substantial, so real . . . The Woolly Mammoth. She mustn’t allow herself to consider the Woolly Mammoth.
Nothing with Nick was real. The man told lies for a living. Take Percy, for example. Percy was alive. She wished she wasn’t riding out to the Folly armed with that particular knowledge.
Stay dead.
Those had been her parting words to him. A few days ago, she’d meant them, but now she saw the matter differently. To keep quiet about Percy would betray all she and Olivia meant to one another. It would make her no better than Nick.
Olivia had come to her with the news of Nick’s “affair” before it reached her ears any other way. She would do the same for Olivia. It was only a matter of time before the gossip rags caught wind of Percy. She only hoped she could find the right words. Whatever they might be.
The carriage hooked another right, offering the first full view of the Folly’s mish-mash of a house that sprawled too haphazardly to be called beautiful. Yet now it felt somewhat stripped of its usual welcome warmth.
Uncle Bertie had been in some way involved with the French assassination plot. It was her prerogative to avoid the issue and pretend it never happened. After all, their only discussion about it had been veiled. But it wasn’t her nature. When she next saw Uncle Bertie, which could be in minutes as the carriage was now slowing to a stop, she would have to confront the issue straightaway. She suspected him as guilty as Nick, perhaps more so, in the Percy business. But she would hear it from his lips before she jumped to any rash conclusions.
Hortense’s coal black lashes fluttered open, revealing eyes the opaque and striking blue of a stone from the Americas that she’d once beheld. Turquoise. How was it she hadn’t noticed before now that the girl was quite a beauty?
Three Lessons in Seduction Page 26