Yet there was something very intimate indeed in the way Caroline had stretched out next to him, laid her body across his lap. As if they belonged, intertwined.
As if they were lovers.
Cautiously, he slid his hands from his thighs, where she’d pinned them beneath her ankles. He held them up to the level of his shoulders, half curled, unsure where to place them. He could not, not, stroke her legs through her gown, her stockings. He could not slide her slippers from her feet and stroke their arches to see if she would squirm or laugh.
He could not, because it was new. And unless he knew he was going to do something perfectly, he would rather not try it. Not in front of someone he wanted so much to please, in a moment when so much seemed at stake.
Caroline rescued him, curving forward to capture one of his hands in her own. Grateful, his other one flew to cover hers.
They sat like that for a minute or two, while Michael simply held her hands. Through their gloves, he pressed the graceful taper of her fingers, the rounded crescents of her nails. Hands were so much more than tools, than instruments for pouring out tea or scrawling a letter. Hands were… comforting.
Not an exhausted comfort of the type he felt when he slid into bed after a long day’s work. This comfort was a balm that strengthened him. She chose to be with him; she held his hand. There was nothing small about this small gesture, because it was not despite. And maybe because of that, he didn’t want to pull away. He only wanted to feel her fingers in his and see what came next, and next.
“You are always welcome, Michael,” she repeated, “especially if you are content to sit with me in this way. It is very tiring to constantly convince the polite world that I am delightful and that I find them so too.”
Michael’s hands jerked, surprised. “You do not?”
“I do, usually. I enjoy this life. It’s the same every year but different too, as faces and politics change. But living in society is also a performance. I must be my brightest, my most vivid, my most pleasant.” She wiggled her feet. “Sometimes it is a relief to take off the costume and simply lie down and admit that my feet hurt.”
She grinned: a girlish expression, paired with woman’s words, a woman’s body, lying lush and low before him. Honest and tired from carrying the weight of expectations.
Would she take off the costume too? He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry.
“You don’t have to act a part with me,” he managed. “But I do not think you could ever stop being delightful.”
Her fingers tightened in his. Then she struggled against a cushion and slid herself to a sitting position. Her feet scooted across Michael’s lap, teasing his groin before she folded her legs next to her.
“Why, Michael, that was quite charming of you. Thank you.” She did not smile. If anything, she looked puzzled.
Michael was puzzled too. For the first time in his life, he had managed to be charming. He was not sure how he had done it.
“I do enjoy your company, you know,” she added.
“And I yours.” Was this a flirtation or nothing more than a handshake of friendship? Had he misinterpreted every cue? He had thought they were moving to passion, frantic and hot, but this was slow and rather sweet.
Rather… yes, rather comfortable.
He sighed, letting the bloom-scented air of the room fill his lungs, pervade his body. Seldom did he feel comfortable. There was always something to do, some guard to maintain. But tonight, there was neither. There was nothing he need do but sit and hold Caroline’s hand in his own.
Then she lunged for him, catching his shoulders in her hands, and was on his lap with her lips pressed to his before he could finish his deep exhale.
Just as suddenly, she pulled away and slipped back to his side, demure again. Or as demure as a woman could appear with lips flushed and bodice slightly askew.
Michael moistened his lips. “What…?”
“It was time,” she said. As if in response, a clock on her mantel bonged out the hour. Midnight. If Michael were at all superstitious, he would call it the witching hour.
But he was not. Midnight was only the start of a new day.
He swung her weight from his legs, then stood. With as courtly a bow as any prince could have made his queen, he held out his arm, and she took it, rising to her feet. She stood facing him, waiting for him to make the next move.
He wanted to. But he did not want to move wrongly. He tried something that had worked before: a kiss, a slow brush of lips on lips. His free hand was clenched at his side, an anchor of sanity, reminding him with the cut of fingernails into his palm: keep your wits about you.
Caro pulled back. “I am not a Carcel lamp, Michael.”
He stared. “What are you—what?”
“You’re analyzing me, are you not? You’re holding back.”
He dropped his other hand to his side. “You didn’t enjoy my kiss.”
This was a raw realization. Illogical, since it was only an evaluation of behavior. It should be no more painful to hear than if she informed him she disapproved of the incline he’d chosen for his canal walls in Lancashire.
He could not be offended by the truth—but he could be wounded. Especially when he put something of himself forward, something he thought represented the best of him.
Caroline shook her head. “It was pleasant enough. But I didn’t invite you here to be pleasant. I invited you here so that you might share yourself with me and so that I might share myself with you.”
Michael’s fists clenched tighter.
“If you want to give me pleasant kisses,” Caroline continued, “I will take them, and gladly. But you’ve given me more than that before, and I want to see that part of you again. If you’ll let me.”
She stood before him, straight and watchful. Not touching him, not clasping her hands. Only waiting for him to react or reply.
He felt himself at a crossroads: continue on his cautious road or take a sharp turn. Be daring with his body, as he had with his money.
He had always meant the best for those who depended on him; he had tried to do well by them. But he had not done well by himself. He was tired and pinched, and the solitary road was narrow and cheerless.
He did not know what the other path held, but he wanted to try it.
He took a step toward Caroline, his feet noiseless on the fine carpet that stretched across her floor.
She smiled at him as he stepped closer, and he forgot that he possessed feet. He forgot everything except Caroline, face to face with him. Her eyes were the color of a tropical sea. She was an escape, a haven, warm and bright. With her, he could shed the cold of this unnatural summer, shed the wintry isolation in his heart.
He took her face in his hands, and she blessed him with a smile. “What a relief.”
His mouth covered further words; he stilled her tongue by brushing it with his own.
He was blasted by a lust all out of proportion to the chasteness of her embrace.
This was the Venturi effect in life: the speed and pressure of rushing heat. As his awareness contracted, he felt he would burst with the unfamiliar, perfect dissolution of Caroline’s mouth on his, her tongue tasting his, soft and hot and fiendishly wet. She seemed to be licking his whole body with that tongue; his muscles knotted and bunched, and his cock pressed against his trousers, wanting release.
There was no release, not from this anguished ecstasy. Michael would not have it so. She wanted him, and he would have every bit of her. He would understand a woman’s body; he would bring her so much pleasure that she would never be able to give him up.
Dimly, he realized the illogic of his thoughts. The unlikelihood of bringing Caroline to ecstasy when she’d had many lovers and he’d had none. What did he know about giving a woman pleasure or gaining her heart? He had never experienced either.
Silence, he t
old those doubting thoughts. He had always been a fast learner.
Against her neck, he tested the pressure of each kiss, noting the reactions it evoked. Light, and she shivered under the brush of his lips. If he touched her skin with his tongue, she laughed, a low, smoky groan. And if he sucked at the fragile skin… good God, she fell apart, sagging against him, her eyes falling closed as if drugged by the sensations of her own body.
Each moan, each caress, was a triumph. He had waited a lifetime for a woman who would touch him not despite but because. A woman who cared nothing for his title, yet wanted him all the same. A woman who knew his fears and faults.
Who thought he had a remarkably fine arse.
The thought made him laugh. Caroline’s eyes fluttered open. “Something funny, Wyverne?”
“Michael,” he reminded her in a gruff tone. Sliding his hands around her, he cupped her own pliant rear and pulled her close. Chest to chest, heat to heat, they fit together. He had never felt anything so wonderful as Caro in his arms, filling his sight, her cheeks flushed and her lips red from the abrasion of his kiss, intoxicating him with her faint floral perfume and a muskier smell that must be desire.
She pulled back just enough to slip free the buttons of his waistcoat, then slide her hands beneath his shirt. His coat bound him tightly as she explored his chest with eager fingers, and Michael was glad for the lean muscle he’d earned through years of riding, walking, surveying, digging. Through much work, he had built this body, and she liked it. Her gloved fingers brushed across his chest, and his knees buckled before he locked them, his breathing shallow and quick.
Thank God, it had all been worth it. Eleven years as the duke of huge, troubled holdings, and it was all reduced to these minutes, or hours, in her arms.
The linen of his shirt was a delicious agony, teasing nipples he had never known could grow so sensitive. His body was painfully alive and aroused, and he no longer knew anything except the feathery pressure of Caroline’s fingers on his skin.
“Come to my bedchamber.” Her voice vibrated against his chest, a kiss in itself. “If you want to, that is.”
“God, yes,” Michael said.
She pushed back, cradled his face with one hand, and smiled. “You know this will change everything.”
Out of habit, Michael stopped, considered. What would that mean if everything changed?
He was a duke with a dying dukedom. He was a man who had always denied himself a woman’s most intimate touch. He had too much control, too many worries, too few friends.
Since coming to London, he had already become a man with whom women flirted, a man who could hold a woman’s hand, kiss her skin, bring her pleasure and gain pleasure in return. A man who accepted the help of others and was neither shamed nor lessened.
All things considered, it was time for change. Past time.
“I hope it will,” he said, then followed her upstairs.
Thirteen
He had never seen a woman’s bedchamber before.
The sight was strikingly exotic, like the Taj Mahal—yet like that structure born of love, it was instantly familiar. Caroline’s most intimate room held a mahogany wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a dressing table with a shield-shaped tilt mirror, a small tamboured desk on castored legs, and a bed. Save the dressing table, the same essential furnishings were in Michael’s own chamber.
But there was something unmistakably feminine about this space, besides the heavy weight of green damask bed coverings. Maybe it was the frippery of bottles and jars scattered across every flat surface. The discarded fan that had been cast onto a chair. The faint floral scent that perfumed the air.
Take it in, he told himself. You might never be here again.
Michael felt a clutch of the familiar distress pumping his heart. This night was irrevocable.
She must have felt him grow rigid, or sensed it. “What is the matter, Michael?”
He only shook his head. His tongue was locked; his head, light. “I…” His voice trailed off.
He cursed his own hesitation. This might be new to him, but he was a grown man, for God’s sake. A duke. He had handled any number of unpleasant tasks that would have overwhelmed his peers. Surely he could manage this exceedingly pleasant one: to divest himself of his virginity with a beautiful woman.
“I have never done this before.” His voice was not as loud as he would have wished, but it was clear enough.
Caroline unbuttoned the pearl closures at the wrist of her right glove, then tugged at it, finger by finger, until it slid over her elbow, down her arm and hand. A long glide of creamy flesh shone silvery pale in the moonlight that filtered through the draperies.
“You’ve never come to a lady’s room?” She began on her left glove, and Michael’s throat clutched tight at the unbearable, unbelievable pleasure of Caroline, revealing her skin to him alone.
But she had revealed it to others too. He knew this. He could never matter as much to her as she could to him, for he was virgin territory. He would fall under her dominion as soon as she brought her body onto his.
“I’ve never come to a lady at all.” He straightened his shoulders.
Caroline stared at him, her left glove only half shed. “You’ve never… ah. I see.”
After an agonizing pause, she shook her glove to the floor. It lay coiled, like a discarded French letter. “I am very honored, Michael. Very, very honored. And I shall do my best to ensure that you are glad you placed your trust in me.”
Trust. Yes, he was trusting her with a great deal—he, who for so long had trusted no one but himself. She’d been insinuating her way through his guard since he came to London. How glad he was, finally, to have a companion in the solitude of his keep.
Then she grabbed the hem of his shirt and slid her bare hands beneath it. Under her touch, he shuddered, all tremulous sensation. Her hands were cool and gentle as they stroked over his chest, his abdomen. For an instant, they slid to grasp him below, and he could only shut his eyes and pray that she would continue.
But her hands lifted, left him, and Michael opened his eyes, half expecting she would laugh and order him out of her bedchamber—half expecting… he did not know what.
The unexpected.
Even so, she surprised him. She pecked his cheek, chastely as the clergyman’s daughter she had once been. Then she turned her back to him and kicked off her slippers before the fire as though ready to turn in for the night.
She turned her head, peered over her shoulder. In the warm light of the coals, she appeared as the devil’s most beautiful temptress. “Will you help me remove my gown?”
“Of course.” He cast an eye down the garment’s heavy red length. It was fastened up the back, but did it pull over the head or slide down? “Only you must tell me how to operate it.”
She laughed. “One operates a lady’s garments in this way.” And she instructed him in solving the puzzle of buttons and laces, plucking pins from her heavy weight of hair, sliding an expensive gown from a woman’s form without damaging its fabric.
And then she stood before him… actually, still quite clothed.
There was something exciting to the point of breathlessness about helping a woman take off her clothing, but Michael had not known there would still be so much of it once the gown was removed. If he had, he would have calmed his nerveless fingers until Caroline was divested of another layer; he would have postponed his dry mouth until they had removed the corset, perhaps, or the… were those petticoats? A chemise? He didn’t know what they were all called. There was so much fabric still swaddling her body, and he could not take any more of this tension. If it did not snap, he must either slide into her at once or spill in his trousers.
Both were unthinkable. So Michael snapped the tension instead and distanced himself.
He had often done this during unpleasant tasks; he had never before done so d
uring a pleasurable one. The concept was the same, though. When the body became too oppressive on the mind, the mind silenced it. He often did sums in his head; compiled a list of native plants; considered improvements, cottage by tenant’s cottage. He kept his mind busy and so silenced his body—whether mucking through knee-deep mud or making a muck of Caroline’s corset strings.
He calmed his breathing with slow, practiced inhales. With every breath, the warm smell of skin and the fading sweetness of flowers filled his senses, but the discipline of rationing the very air in his lungs also calmed him.
There. He could study her again without becoming overwhelmed by his baser urges. He could examine every swell of her body as dispassionately as he would a… a… a bridge. Yes. Excellent notion.
The catenary curve of her neck was beautifully constructed, graceful and sloping under the weight of her fine-boned head and long tumble of hair. The trusswork of her corset was an intricate architecture of laces and nodes preventing her from torqueing. His fingers traced the stiffened fabric, marveling that it should shape a body yet cover it so unfeelingly. The laces were tight and scratchy beneath his fingers, rough as cast iron, and as difficult to untie.
“Haven’t you a maid for this?” Michael asked, growing impatient with his own ineffective fumblings.
Caroline coughed. “Well, yes. But do you really want me to summon her right now?”
Michael had a vision of a young woman in a mobcap picking apart the knotted laces of Caroline’s corset, then curtsying politely to him as he covered the bulge of his rampant cock with a bolster from the bed.
“Best not.” He studied the corset again. “Are the laces valuable?”
“You’re welcome to cut them, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Do you have a knife?”
“I hardly keep weapons in my bedchamber. But I’m sure I can find something that will answer the purpose.”
She stepped out of his reach and slid back the tamboured lid of her desk, then sifted through a litter of writing paraphernalia. After studying then rejecting a letter opener, she laid hands on a penknife.
To Charm a Naughty Countess Page 13