The smile that stretched her cheeks felt very wicked indeed. “That sounds like it might be quite diverting.”
“Diverting.” He gave a short laugh. “I’ll show you diverting. Come here.”
He hauled her up against the breadth of his chest, and his lips grazed a spot just beneath her ear. The tip of his tongue darted out to trail warm dampness over her skin. The flats of his palms smoothed along her spine from her shoulder blades to the dip of her waist and lower.
She gave herself over, let herself feel. How different this experience was from furtive groping in an abandoned corridor. How much richer, how much deeper, how much less fraught with fear. How much more alive.
George had demanded her trust days ago, and she’d given it to him. He’d reached out to her—an essential stranger—and helped. He’d shown her caring when no one else would. He’d refused to let her remain an outcast. And when she was with him, she no longer felt like one.
He awakened in her a sense of belonging that she’d never experienced, ever. Even before her family had repudiated her, they held their members at a distance. The Marshalls existed for gain—power, money, it didn’t matter. What they wanted, they took, and no one dared protest. The reckless fool who possessed the audacity to break free of the rigid mold of their expectations was no longer acceptable.
And if she’d ever stopped to consider the situation, she might have realized sooner that she’d never been one of them. Not really. As she was now discovering, she craved closeness to another. She needed it.
Too many clothes separated her from George, too many layers of cotton and linen and wool. She slipped her hands between their bodies and fingered the horn buttons that fastened his waistcoat. Holding his gaze, smiling, she made fast work of each fastening and parted the fine fabric. Only a swath of linen separated her from his chest. She yanked the cloth free of his trousers, untied his cravat and loosened the closures at his neck. Gathering the crisp linen by the fistful, she pulled the shirt away from his body and tossed it aside.
Who could have imagined such pleasure in the simple act of undressing a man? She loved the expanse of flesh, gilded in the flickering candlelight, thus revealed to her. She reveled in it. She wanted to savor every inch.
The notch at the base of his throat beckoned. She leaned in and drew her tongue through the hollow. His hands found her waist and squeezed as she continued her exploration. She lapped at his skin, kissed, nipped, noting every nuance of his harshening breath, listening for groans, pushing him back toward the bed, one step and one touch at a time.
He collapsed onto the mattress and lay back, his arms bent behind his head, relaxed now. Surveying. He owned that blasted bed the way his body draped across it. His erection strained against the falls of his trousers. A few buttons more, and she could have its velvet hardness free in her hands.
Her mind filled with lust-driven images. He’d kissed her in the most intimate places. Did she dare do the same to him? A wicked urge to attempt an act of wantonness warred with uncertainty. And what sort of woman would he think her if she dared taste him?
“Wait.” He caught her glance, held it, his eyes intense and compelling. “I want to watch you undress.”
Her heart jumped in her chest and pattered against her ribs, but all the same, she raised her fingers to the fastenings of her bodice. Her gown was of the old round style—shoulder buttons to hold up the yoke, and beneath that, ties across her breasts with a free-falling skirt to the floor. She could be out of it in a trice, out of it and on the bed with him.
“Take your time,” he added.
The heat in his gaze told her he wanted to savor, and the thought made her fingers fumble on the first button. She caught her lower lip between her teeth.
“Oh, yes. I like that expression on you. It’s the perfect mix of innocence and assurance.”
“I don’t feel very sure.” She didn’t now. She felt as if she was on display. She’d only ever removed her clothes under the perfunctory glance of her maid or modiste. Certainly not anyone inclined to look his fill. Not someone whose scrutiny fell on her skin as a physical touch, as if he caressed her with reverent fingertips. He’d seen her already, but this disrobing before him was different in its deliberateness.
Her nipples peaked against her chemise as the worn cotton of her dress pooled about her ankles. Yet he stared at her as if she wore the finest silks and ribbons.
“Your stays now.” His hand drifted to the waistband of his trousers. Idly, he fingered the button at the fall.
Throat dry, unable to look away from his lap, she reached behind her back and tugged at the knot in her lacing. The stance pushed her breasts upward.
“There is nothing lovelier,” he drawled, as his fingers worked the fastenings of his trousers, “than a woman readying herself for my bed.”
Such cheek, and he wasn’t finished. She watched in fascination as he released his erection and took it in hand. He stroked from base to tip and back.
Never before had she been so aware of her skin—the way it enveloped her body, the way it tingled, the way it warmed. Every sweep of his hand along his length set off an answering throb deep, deep in her midsection, a beat that at once made her melt and made her thrum with rising tension. Liquid heat poured through her, and she pressed her thighs together lest it escape.
She couldn’t tear her gaze from the sight. Her fingers itched to replace his. Her tongue darted from between her teeth to wet her lips. His eyes narrowed over a gaze, intense in its focus. On her. Yes, he’d said a woman, as if to indicate any woman, but he meant her. Isabelle.
Fingers shaking, she pulled at the spiral lacing at the top of her spine. She couldn’t drop her stays fast enough.
“Now come here.”
She locked eyes with him and approached, step by measured step, sensing he wished to draw out the anticipation until it strung taut enough to snap. She reached the side of the bed, and he leaned forward to skim his hands along her ribs, up, slowly up, until he cupped her breasts. He pulled her to him, his lips closing about a hardened nipple, his tongue moistening the fleshy bud through her chemise.
Closing her eyes, she arched her back and moaned, the sound low and throaty.
“Are you ready for me so soon?” He did not give her a chance to reply in words, but suckled harder until her breath rushed through her teeth.
His hands stole beneath her chemise, whispered up her thighs. She shivered in anticipation of his fingers on her, in her, pressing and probing until they coaxed from her that vivid rush of ecstasy.
He dipped into her and groaned. “Good God, you’re responsive.”
“To you.” She shouldn’t admit so much, but the words slipped out.
“Raise your arms.”
She obeyed, and he whipped her remaining garment from her body.
“Now come here and respond.”
The command in his tone sent a pleasurable shiver straight to her core. She climbed onto the mattress next to him, and he pulled her down into a frenzied kiss. The contact of his bare flesh against hers sent heat tingling through every nerve ending. Sloughing his trousers, he rolled on top of her.
Now. Yes. Now.
He seized her thigh by the fleshy outer edge near her hip, hard enough that she felt the bite of his fingers. Tomorrow, she might well find bruises. The passion driving that grip made her melt.
She needed, oh, she needed. Never had she experienced such depth to her desire. Never had she known such fierceness could exist within her, as if the wildness in him reared up and drew forth an answering force in her.
She reached for him with her arms and legs combined, wrapping herself around his flanks, his hindquarters, his back. Anything to bring him closer. Anything to merge them into one.
He drove into her in a single, smooth stroke, and she clung. She would not let him abandon her. Not this time. Again and again, he filled her, in a frenzied rhythm as if neither of them had been sated but a few hours before.
“Oh, God.
” She pushed her hips against him, meeting his every thrust. “Oh, God, yes.”
She spiraled higher with the building pressure, the building pleasure. Somewhere paradise lurked. Somewhere close. Sometime soon. All she had to do was reach out and grab it.
George seized her hips, slid his hands beneath her, lifted her to him. His breath tore from his lungs in harsh spurts, his expression focused, intense. His gaze riveted on her, a silent plea, or perhaps a command.
She inhaled his scent, combined with the heady musk of their joining, and her breasts pressed into his chest. Her nails dug into the muscles at the tops of his arms.
Closer, yes, closer. She could never be close enough, not to him, not to the ecstasy mounting within.
“Yes, please. Soon.”
He dropped his head to the crook of her neck, nuzzled with his lips in a gentle counterpoint to his deep pounding thrusts. She wrapped her arms around him, clasped him near, and let the storm take them both.
HEART still hammering in his ears, George braced himself on his elbows. Beneath him, Isabelle still hummed, lost in her pleasure. He couldn’t remember a more satisfying bout of bed sport, couldn’t recall ever delighting in a partner’s satisfaction the way he’d delighted in hers. How her hot little passage had gripped him. How she’d pulsed about him when she’d reached her peak. Wave after wave rippling along his length until he could hold off his climax no longer.
Climax? Bugger and bollocks! A sudden stab of horror turned his insides to ice, and he rolled off her. His prick, limp now, slid free of her body. Good God, he’d finished inside her.
He’d never meant to lose control like that. He’d intended to pull out, should have pulled out the moment he’d felt the burn at the base of his spine, the instant his bollocks tightened. He was not some green schoolboy, and she would have taken no precautions if she’d known any.
They hadn’t planned any of this. In spite of the damnable attraction between them, he would not have predicted this night would end in the most phenomenal swiving of his life. The least he could have done was spend into the sheets like a respectable gentleman.
Isabelle let out a whimper and curled into a ball on her side as if she missed his warmth. His heart thumped in his chest, slowly now, each beat loud in his ears, each beat contributing to the knot of terror in his gut.
She didn’t deserve this. Not when her trust was so hard-won. And what did she get in return, but the risk of finding herself, once again, with a swollen belly and no husband to show for it, no protector, no provider?
He’d intended to help her find her son, to comfort her when the search proved fruitless, and instead he’d betrayed her.
He watched the steady rise and fall of her chest as she dozed on, oblivious. Long eyelashes fanned across rosy cheeks. Her slender body belied its true strength. Twice now, she’d borne his weight without complaint. She’d downright reveled in the pounding he’d given her. Reveled and begged for more.
He tried to picture her heavy with child—his child—imagine her holding a tiny babe in her arms, and he felt … He wasn’t sure what it was, but he could name several things it wasn’t. It wasn’t revulsion; it wasn’t annoyance; it wasn’t disgust. It wasn’t impatience that here was another drain on his overburdened finances. It wasn’t a desire to empty his liquor cabinet. In short, it was the opposite of everything he’d felt when Lucy had announced his impending fatherhood.
Oh, God. Lucy. What was he going to do about her? And, more importantly, what was he going to do with Isabelle? His head whirled with solutions where she was concerned. Socially acceptable solutions—duty, even. The acquisition of a special license. His conscious thought admitted them all without hesitation, accepted them as the right thing to do.
God help him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JACK!
With a shiver, Isabelle blinked awake to an unfamiliar chamber. Slowly, she breathed in. She’d been running in her dream, chasing her son who eluded her at every turn. He still eluded her in reality.
The glimmer of dawn filtered through a window in the far wall, casting the space in monochromatic grays. The mattress she lay on was far too comfortable, the sheets that wrapped her too luxurious. As she shook away the cobwebs of sleep, memories of the previous night came flooding back. George kissing her fiercely, filling her again and again, wild and impassioned.
She rolled over and found him lying beside her, his hands tucked beneath his head, staring at the canopy. She had little enough experience with waking up beside a man, but she wasn’t completely green. Something wasn’t right here. Shouldn’t he have cradled her through the night, matching his breathing to hers, sharing a pillow? Shouldn’t he have woken her with a gentle kiss, or perhaps a bold caress someplace scandalous? She’d have preferred either to discovering him lying unmoving and silent, like a stone—if stones could generate tension.
She reached for his arm, but her hand lost its courage halfway across the sheet. “Did you not sleep at all?”
“No.” A single, frosty word, after all they’d shared.
“Oh.” She pressed her fingers to the base of her throat. “I see.” She tried to keep her tone flat, but she suspected he caught the waver at the end.
“I wonder if you do.”
That did it. If she was cold before, she wasn’t now. Impossible to feel the chill with rage erupting inside her. Of all the insufferable, arrogant rakes, she’d fallen in with the worst. And she knew arrogant and insufferable. She’d grown up surrounded by those traits. She’d adopted them herself. She’d been expected to marry someone of like temperament and pass that superiority down to her children so they could perpetuate the myth that they were so much better than everyone else, merely because they’d been fortunate enough to be born into the right family.
Well, it wasn’t a good fortune, not when those traits became weapons when one failed to measure up. As she had.
“Oh, yes.” The dead calm of her words betrayed nothing. Her fingernails bit into her palms to calm their shaking. “Oh, yes, I see. You’ve taken what you want of me and now you’ll toss me aside.”
He snapped his head toward her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He rolled to face her. The breadth of his shoulders blocked her view of the rest of the chamber. “For one thing, I never intended to cast you aside.” He bit off each syllable.
She suppressed an urge to shrink toward the wall. She must not back away or cower. Not now. She’d never liked the simpering ton girls who fainted at the mere suggestion they’d displeased someone. She would not do it, would not play that game.
“You’ve an odd way of showing it. What on earth was I supposed to think?”
“You’ll think whatever you like, of course. I thought we’d moved past this matter of you mistrusting me.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Isn’t that rich? Turns out you were right, in any case. I can’t be trusted when it comes to you.”
She pulled a long draught of air in through her nose while she tried to make sense of his ravings. Somehow while she’d dozed away the effects of his lovemaking, he’d managed to go mad. The only experience she’d had with madmen was her Uncle Erasmus, but he usually reacted well to a calm voice and a stiff shot of spirits.
She laid a hand on George’s arm. “Why can’t we talk about this?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to. Not here, where there’s nothing to drink.” He rubbed his forearm across his brow. “God, I need a brandy.”
Wonderful. Now he’d all but accused her of driving him to drink. If they had a bottle of brandy, she’d be tempted to break it over his head. “It’s nearly daybreak. You can’t drink brandy for breakfast.”
His shoulders drooped, and she took that for relenting, but then he rolled to his back, one arm cast over his eyes.
Isabelle bit her lip. What on earth was she to make of his behavior? She was still trying to work out what to say when he scrubbed a hand down his chin and caught her eye. Held it. “You realize I must make you an offer of marria
ge.”
She gaped for the space of several blinks. “You hardly have to go to such lengths,” she said weakly. “I’m not some young miss you’ve just ruined.”
“No, but you are of good family.”
“Not anymore.”
He held up a hand, and she bit back the rest of her protest. “You may live under diminished circumstances, but it has not always been that way. Your breeding shows, whether or not you realize it. The way you lift a teacup. The way you sit in a chair so properly, back straight. The way you lean forward and attend whoever’s talking, even if they’re boring you with the details of their fourth-cousin-twice-removed’s fascination with hieroglyphics. My own mother doesn’t carry herself so well.”
Heat crept up the back of her neck, and she grasped handfuls of the sheets. “No matter my origins, sir, I could hardly expect an offer of marriage from you. What’s transpired between us does not signify.”
“And if you find yourself with child again?” His eyes never left hers.
She rubbed her palms against her thighs. “That is the risk we took.”
Or she’d taken. She’d gone to his bed, wholly prepared to face the consequences, even if it did result in another child. Oh, God, not just any child but his child. She closed her eyes against the image of a bright-eyed boy with an impish grin. George’s son would get into twice as much trouble as Jack.
“I didn’t mean to take such a chance. Not with you. I … I lost control. I did not intend to …” He shifted on the sheets and cleared his throat. “At any rate, I ought to do right by you.”
She pulled in a breath. She ought to be flattered at his offer. It was far more than she’d ever gotten from Jack’s father.
But something was missing. He’d said all the right words, but they lacked the force of conviction. His offer was made out of duty and perhaps a desire to compensate for her current circumstances. Whether or not he’d had anything to do with them. And that wasn’t enough—certainly not for Isabelle Marshall.
Diminished as she was, it wasn’t enough for Isabelle Mears, either. She’d managed just fine on her own. She would continue to do so.
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