“Whump!” I went down with a thud.’
‘Were you hurt?’
‘No, I came through it marvellously intact.’ Riordan pushed his hair back from his forehead. ‘I got off with a scratch. You can see it here along my hairline if you look.’ He moved closer. ‘Come, Maura, you can look better than that. I won’t bite.’ Definitely a lie. He’d been known to bite.
Maura leaned in towards him, the light floral scent of her intoxicating in its freshness. Her cool hand smoothed back his hair where his hand had been. ‘You were lucky.’ Intimacy charged the air between them, a little of the laughter replaced by something more potent, something akin to what had flamed between them in the study. She was close enough to kiss.
‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, Riordan?’ she whispered with a smile.
Ah, sweet victory. It had taken two glasses to get her to utter his name. She was tipsy with brandy and intoxicated with his stories. He knew what she wanted.
Tonight she was in love with the bad boy, in love with his immature exploits, his laughter.
He wondered what she’d do if he said, ‘Seduced my wards’ governess.’
Technically it would be a lie. He hadn’t seduced her yet, but he would very shortly. He was rock hard with wanting her, wanting to kiss those laughing lips, wanting to caress the curves beneath the brandy-stained bodice. ‘Are you sure you want to know? It’s shocking.’
‘More shocking than riding a horse bareback? More shocking than hosting a party in another man’s house or walking home in a Bo-Peep costume? I doubt anything you could say would shock me at this point.’
It was a testament to how far they’d come in the late hours of the night. He’d never reminisced like this, had never shared these things with anyone. Hadn’t ever made a woman laugh so hard that brandy had come out her nose.
He grinned. ‘Would you care to bet on that? If I shock you, I get to claim a forfeit.’
The brandy had made her bold. ‘All right, it’s a deal.’ Her eyes sparked with anticipation. ‘Tell me. No, wait; let me set the glass down.’
He probably shouldn’t tell her, but he wanted to win, wanted to claim that forfeit more than anything else in the world right then. He leaned close and whispered, ‘When I was sixteen I lost my virginity.’ He paused. She wasn’t properly shocked yet. He added, ‘With my father’s mistress—her idea.’
‘Oh, my,’ Maura breathed, ‘that is wicked indeed.’ Her pulse leapt at the base of her neck, indicating she didn’t know if she should be aroused or scandalised.
‘Yes, it was.’ Riordan kissed the column of her throat. He drank of her scent, the faintest of lilacs, the subtlest hints of honeysuckle and roses, a veritable English spring. Desire rode him. It was late and the day had been hard. He wanted to forget the battles he had fought for Elliott, for the children. He wanted to lose himself with Maura, to let go of his troubles while he watched her passion unfurl; it would be impetuous, like the woman herself if given free rein.
Riordan claimed her mouth in a kiss and let the pleasure come. He wooed her with mouth play, kissing her lips, the tip of her chin, feeling her willing ascension as he laid her back on the sofa. ‘Let go, Maura, and be wicked with me,’ he whispered.
*
Oh, this was madness! Maura answered his kiss with a brandy-born boldness of her own. Riordan was braced above her, all sin and temptation in the lamplight, his dark hair falling in his face. His hips moved against hers in seductive invitation.
She arched towards him in intuitive response.
‘That’s my girl,’ he murmured appreciatively, his mouth finding its way from her neck to her breast where it rose ready for his touch. His breath blew against the fabric, warm and arousing. She gave a little moan, heat gathering in her belly, hot and curious.
Riordan smiled down at her, with knowing in his eyes. His hands, his body, slid to her feet. The air crackled with anticipation. She held her breath, mesmerised by the movement of his hands moving up her legs and disappearing beneath her skirts. Those hands stopped at the tops of her stockings. They began to roll and his mouth began to kiss behind the bent curve of her knee, down her calf to the hollow at her ankle. Her stockings were most happily divested and discarded on the floor beside the sofa. Part of her knew this was wicked—more than that, it was dangerous. This would not end with stockings. Part of her no longer cared.
‘Did you know that in the Far East, there are those who consider the feet to be the gateway to the body?’ Riordan’s voice was a soft rill in the darkness, binding her in intimacy’s spell. His fingers pressed at the sole of her foot, alternately caressing and pushing as they massaged. Never had she felt anything so decadent.
She hadn’t known such a touch was possible.
He pressed the upper portion of her sole. ‘Some healers believe this connects to the lungs. If you massage here, it will clear congestion.’ He pulled ever so gently on her toe. ‘This toe connects to the ear, this one to the eyes. This part of the big toe affects the throat.’
Maura listened, fascinated. ‘What else?’ She hardly dared to breathe for fear of breaking the spell.
Riordan’s mouth turned up in a half-smile. His hand moved to a tiny spot behind her ankle. ‘By feeling here, you can tell how many children a woman has had.’ He winked. ‘You’ve had none.’
He stretched out over her and captured her arms, raising them over her head.
‘How is it you’re so good with them?’
‘I had younger cousins, a pair of twins not much older than Cecilia and William.
When I went to live with my uncle, I helped my aunt with them.’ Maura silently willed him not to ask more. These moments were not for disclosure. With a boldness that surprised her, she arched up and kissed him, pleased to note she was not the only one aroused by their play. Evidence of his desire lay hard against her thigh, obvious but non-threatening, nothing at all like Wildeham’s—another memory to thrust away. There was no room for her past in this night.
His free hand tangled in her skirts, pushing them back until she could feel the coolness of the room against the thin fabric of her undergarments, a contrast to the warmth of his hand where it rested at the juncture of her thighs. She knew a moment’s doubt against the intimate pleasure of his contact.
‘Relax, Maura,’ Riordan whispered against her ear. ‘The best is yet to come, I promise.’ He kissed her against the curve of her jaw, his hand slipping inside her pantalettes, the audacity of his touch lost in the host of sensations that very touch invoked. So intense was her body’s reaction to the intimate caress, there was no time to question, no capacity to question, only to feel the rightness of his presence at the core of her. This was magic indeed and Maura gave herself over to it, arching against his hand, moaning her delight as it grew, and expanded, encompassing the whole of her until she thought she’d shatter from the ecstasy of it all. She was not far wrong.
‘Let go, Maura,’ Riordan’s voice coaxed hoarsely, his eyes blue and burning as they locked with hers. ‘Let go, be my kite.’
She did shatter then, flying, soaring, until she spiralled safely to earth in Riordan’s arms, understanding completely in those moments what it meant to be a kite in a flat turn, what it meant to be a woman in the throes of love.
‘Did you like it?’ Riordan pulled her close against him.
‘What was that?’ Maura asked, breathless. Surely something so wondrous had a name.
Riordan chuckled warmly near her ear, holding her tight. ‘That, my dear, was the most fun you can have with your clothes on.’
Chapter Nine
He wanted to remember the way she looked in that moment; amazed, awed, by what had happened. Suddenly he knew what he wanted to do. ‘Come upstairs with me,’ Riordan whispered. ‘I want to show you something.’ The ‘something’
was a room he hadn’t been in since he’d returned home from Italy. It was a hard room to face, full of memories both pleasant and unpleasant. But tonight, for the firs
t time in five years, he wanted to paint more than he wanted to stay away.
‘Where are we going?’ Maura asked, a little wobbly on the stairs from brandy and fatigue. He steadied her with an arm about her waist.
‘We’re going to my art studio. I want to show you my etchings.’ He chuckled quietly. ‘Actually, I just want to claim my forfeit.’
‘I thought you already had.’ Maura laughed softly in the darkness, a warm rich sound that gave him courage.
They reached the top of the stairs. The studio was at the end of the hall, past Maura’s room and the nursery. Riordan opened the door. The room was unlocked after all this time. He let go of Maura’s hand long enough to light the lamps, illuminating the room in a dim glow, section by section.
Time had stood still here. As always, his Venetian divan dominated the room, his favourite prop long before he’d actually gone to the Continent. Maura let out a gasp at the sight of it. ‘What a wonderful sofa!’ She ran her fingers along the back of it, caressing the wood frame.
‘You can sit on it.’ Riordan laughed at her delight. ‘My father was furious with me for buying it. I spent a large chunk of my quarterly allowance on it. I found it in a second-hand shop in Cheapside and I knew I had to have it with or without parental approval.’
He moved to a stack of canvases leaning against the wall and sorted through them, plucking out a fresh one for his easel. It was easy to move about this room, assembling his equipment. Everything was in its place. One could almost believe he’d never left. His favourite brushes sat on a small table near the sofa in a glass jar, waiting for him to pick them up again. Completed canvases leaned against the far wall covered with tarps.
He knew what was beneath each of them. There was a painting of Chatham Court he’d done one summer, and a landscape of the Tower Bridge and Parliament. Nostalgia swept him. He blamed it on the brandy. That was how the brandy worked when he had enough of it. First came the euphoria of escape, then the sad nostalgia and finally the anger, the regret. He pushed it all away. Tonight was different. He thrummed with energy and purpose.
‘You paint?’ Maura broke into his thoughts. She studied him with her green eyes, a soft smile on her lips as if she’d just received a treasured gift. ‘I think that’s the first significant thing you’ve ever told me about yourself.’ She glanced about the room, taking in the details. ‘This room is important to you, isn’t it? It’s not just a place.’
It was an important room to him. This room contained his soul, all that was truly him was in this room. He rummaged through a drawer for paints, trying to give the thought words. How could he explain it to her? ‘This room is me, the person I want to be. When I pick up a brush and put it to canvas, I’m free. I can re-create the beauty around me or create new beauty from the pictures in my head. I can imagine anything.’ He wasn’t doing a good job of explaining. His words sounded foolish and fanciful. He stopped to stroke a brush, its fine tip still supple. ‘I haven’t been in this room since I came back from Italy and yet nothing has changed. Everything is as I left it.’
‘If you loved painting so much, why did you stop?’ She was too insightful by far.
He was used to being the insightful one, the one who could read people’s characters. It was unnerving to be on the other end.
Riordan pushed his hands through his hair, surveying his supplies one last time to make sure he had everything organised. ‘My father hated it. An earl’s son, second or not, should not dabble in the arts.’
‘You must have done more than dabble,’ Maura insisted. ‘There are plenty of noblemen with hobbies.’ Her colour was high. She was nervous or excited, or perhaps both. She was not entirely distracted by the conversation. She’d not forgotten what they were here for. Neither had he. There was a forfeit to claim and he knew exactly what it was going to be.
‘We fought about it. A lot.’ Riordan sat beside her. ‘My father died while I was in Italy.’ There’d been no chance to make reparation. Much had been left unsaid and undone between them. ‘I’m not proud of how I left things with him,’ Riordan said quietly. ‘I don’t fancy myself a vicious person by nature and yet I was cruel to him in my own way.’ To her credit Maura only nodded. She didn’t try to make excuses for him or justify his choices.
‘I’m ready to claim my forfeit, Maura.’ He reached a hand up to her hair. ‘May I?’ Riordan gently dislodged the first pin.
‘You brought me up here to take my hair down?’ Maura quizzed.
‘No, I brought you up here because I’m going to paint you.’ He plucked out a second pin and set it aside. He shot her a sidelong glance. ‘What did you think I was doing?’ He knew what she’d thought. She’d thought he’d intended something more decadent. ‘How wicked of you, Maura,’ he murmured, unable to resist a little teasing.
He set the last of the pins aside and combed his fingers through her hair until it was loose and spread across the arm of the sofa. ‘You’re so beautiful, Maura, a veritable Titian. Your hair is the red-gold he favoured. He would have loved you.’
He breathed. ‘You look like a well-pleasured woman. I could make you famous.’
‘Scandalous is what you’d make me,’ Maura replied, shifting ever so slightly on the couch.
‘No, don’t move. Stay still, absolutely still.’ Riordan backed away from the couch, moving to his easel. She was lovely in the shadows thrown by the lamps.
Lovely and intoxicating, as if the brandy weren’t enough on its own. She made him forget himself. He’d babbled on about things he’d never mentioned, weaknesses in himself he never exposed. And dark stories told in a dark room led to dark pleasures; he would make love to her with his brushes and his voice, and her pleasure would be immortalised on canvas for him to remember for ever.
Riordan selected a brush and began to paint. He’d always had the uncanny ability to paint without drafting or days of sketching and he painted that way now, letting his fingers remember the feel of a brush in them, letting those fingers convey on to canvas the image of loveliness that lay spread before him, her lips still plump from kisses, her expression still dreamy from her pleasure. Yes, that was what he wanted to capture, the essence of a woman freshly satisfied.
‘Raise your arm, curve it under your head like you’re using it for a pillow,’
Riordan instructed softly, not wanting to break the magic of the lamps and the intimacy of their setting. These were magic moments. ‘Part your lips just a little more, yes, like that, like you’ve just been kissed. Take your other hand and put it at the base of your neck as if you want to play with the necklace there. Now, turn your head slightly and look at me, just look at me.’
*
She should stop this. She shouldn’t let him paint her or whatever it was he was doing with those decadent brushes on the canvas. Every stroke he took, every word he uttered, telling her to move this way and that, were a seduction all its own. He wasn’t even touching her and she felt about ready to explode, to shatter as she had downstairs. There were a million reasons to stop this, but nothing as compelling as the pleasure riding her now. It was clear he had no intentions beyond this night. He was bride-hunting. There could be no intentions beyond this night. But she could have no intentions either. She was in hiding. Even if governesses married earls, she couldn’t. She couldn’t have anything beyond this night any more than he could. But then, they’d already sinned. It could hardly hurt to move a little further down that path. He wasn’t even touching her. And yet, she burned.
‘Don’t move,’ Riordan whispered, moving from the easel after a while. ‘I just need to get a brush.’ He stretched over her for a brush from a jar by her head, letting his body gently press against hers.
She arched her neck to see him withdraw a fan-shaped brush. ‘What’s that for?
I’ve not seen a brush of that shape.’ Her voice sounded dreamy, otherworldly.
He ran the soft brush along the curve of her jaw. ‘It’s for blending. Every brush has a purpose.’ His own voice was hoa
rse from the brandy, the late hour or something more potent, like the heat pulsing through her at his nearness. Perhaps he felt it, too. He reached for another. ‘This is a filbert. It’s good for painting figures.’ He swept the bristles slowly down the column of her throat, his eyes holding hers.
She knew what he saw there; he saw her arousal, her irrational want, all that he’d awakened in her. He kissed her then, a long lingering kiss that tasted of brandy and sadness, dispelling the last of her doubts, passion’s logic reigning supreme in that moment. There was intensity, too, as if this kiss could drive back the darkness. This Riordan, the one she’d discovered tonight, the darker one haunted by regret, was just as heady as the Riordan full of laughter and light. He was pressed against her, hard and aroused, and it occurred to her that she might be able to pleasure him as he had her. Maura reached for him, tracing his length through his evening trousers. ‘Perhaps I could paint you as well.’
‘Then take me, Maura.’ He growled his desire, low and deep, a most primal sound. His hand moved to help her with the fall of his trousers, his usually fluid gestures fumbling in his haste and need. ‘Take me in your hand, Maura. Please.’ It was a prayer, a plea, and she was caught up in the madness of his desire, delighting in the ability to bring him closer to completion with each stroke. He felt alive in her hand, hard along the length, tender at the tip. He pulsed and she instinctively increased the speed of her strokes to match until finally Riordan groaned, bucking in her hand, stiffening one last time, spending his release.
It might well have been the most intimate moment of her life. Was there anything more intimate than watching a man achieve his pleasure? That it was Riordan made it more so. Riordan pulled her to him, after that, and they lay on the divan in quiet for a long while, his arm about her, caressing lightly, her head on his chest, rising and falling with each breath until she slept.
How to Sin Successfully (Rakes Beyond Redemption) Page 9