Etiquette With The Devil

by Rebecca Paula

  Clara kissed Bly back as if to beg him to stay. It felt as if with him leaving, he would be taking a part of her with him too. She had fought so long to be strong and be her own family—she could not let him take that from her.

  She bent her head to the base of his throat and sucked at the hollow there, drinking him in, memorizing him as if she could ever truly forget. Her hands moved to the buttons on his shirt next and she slipped each free, running her hand over his broad chest until he muffled a moan into her loose hair. His fingers slipped up the curve of her calf, running upward until he met the gathered hem around her knees and hesitated as she drew in a sharp breath at his pursuit.

  They met each other’s stares, his eyes burning with a hardened light she had never seen before. She stared back, her face impassive. He slid his rough fingers higher along the inside of her thigh until he brushed his fingers against her, pushing until he was inside. She never looked away, even as he stretched her, rubbing some part of her that started a strange tightness that pulled across her body. He was doing things she did not understand, but she so desperately wanted to learn them all. She dropped her head into the curve of his shoulder and neck, whimpering as he continued his maddening touch.

  The air in her lungs burned as a strange weight settled over her body. “Bly?” Her breath shortened and she battled to find herself, trying to catch up as he ran ahead, moving his fingers inside her, brushing against her until she felt alive and warm for once in her life.

  “I’m right here,” he whispered, dropping a kiss to the small patch of skin beneath her ear. “Let go, love.”

  There was a question swirling inside her at his request, but its meaning made itself clear before she could manage to ask. A tiny spark grew and flamed, igniting into an inferno, dragging Clara and her damned body through the fires of hell, bursting with pleasure that left her searching for breath. It left her warm, but not nearly sated. It left her wanting more of dangerous unknowns.

  She pressed her face tighter against his shoulder, not certain she could look him in the eye after an act so intimate. Bly pulled her face up to his and kissed her, deepening it as her hands wrapped around his neck, as if to cling to a rock after a shipwreck.

  He drew back, his eyes searing hers as his hands stripped her of her nightgown. She shivered as the fabric slipped over her skin, up over her head. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears as she realized she now sat naked in Bly’s lap. The heat of her blush colored her face as she snapped her hands over herself, looking away, concealing her body from Bly.

  “Let me see you, Clara.” He pulled away her hands, his voice a rough whisper. “I need to see you.”

  She focused on the bed behind him, anything so as not to feel the panic that seized her. Panic that this would be the only night of pleasure she would ever know. Panic that he would walk away and leave her behind. Panic that he did not feel for her as she did for him.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said on a rushed exhalation. Slowly, she drew her eyes back to focus on his face and shook her head. “Yes,” he insisted, dropping a lingering kiss at the freckle on the base of her neck. His hand slide over her breasts, pulling free the small pendant burning against her skin. It felt strange to have the weight of it lifted off her as it had rested there since she was a girl.

  “Saint Anthony?”

  “Yes,” she answered, her voice cautious.

  “Then it worked,” he said, his eyes still heavy-lidded. “You found me.”

  Everything about him was rough and shadowed, but he was never lost to her. She tugged at his shirt until he pulled it over his head and tossed it to the floor.

  “Clara,” he started, but she bravely nipped at the skin of his neck, drawing away the rest of his words. Her hands ran down his muscular arms, tracing their way up his torso then along the hard line of his back and shoulders.

  With each touch, she discovered the untold stories of his life—the storied collection of scars, the hardened muscles of a body that fought to live, the ink etched wickedly into his skin. She wanted him even more for the things that made him imperfect and the stories those imperfections held.

  “I don’t want to stop.”

  She nodded and kissed the rough patch of skin above his heart, the flesh she had stitched together those weeks ago—her wild beast.

  “Do you understand?” he asked, his voice laden with anguish. His arms pulled her so he could study her face.

  “Yes.” Clara understood all too well that she was going to be giving her body to a dangerous man. There could be consequences, but those, she thought as lust pulsed through her, could be faced in the morning. He was as good as a raging fire; she felt the heat and it was consuming her—in the morning she could find herself burned, but she would be grateful for his warmth tonight.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her naked flesh against his. “Kiss me again,” she whispered into his ear. Her body begged for something more, just as she hoped his ached for hers.

  Bly curled his arms under her and carried her to bed, setting her down softly and stepping back. Her body felt flushed, her pulse racing as he studied her. With a quick dart of his tongue, he traced the hard line of his upper lip once he stood at the foot of the bed. “So beautiful.”

  For that brief moment, under the heat of his stare, Clara believed him and the word that had always escaped its connection to her—beautiful. She had never considered herself anything other than plain. Tonight, in the darkness of her attic room, Bly Ravensdale thought her beautiful, and for the first time in her life, she felt so.

  The look in his eyes grew too much to bear. Clara tossed back her head, arching her body, so hungry for his touch. She wickedly used her own hand to trace the ghosts of his handprints over the curve over her hip. A deep-rooted groan sounded as if it was lodged in his throat, bringing a smile to her lips. Whatever possessed her as she dropped her eyes from the ceiling back to Bly receded just as quickly as it came upon her, and she blushed as their eyes met.

  “Where else do you touch yourself?” His voice was husky and caught her from spiraling further away from her bedroom, from the wanton woman she kept secret from the rest of the world.

  “I…” The room grew even hotter as he waited on her answer, his eyes thin slits of hazel.

  He nodded knowingly, giving her a brief reprieve as he lifted her foot into his roughened hands. It was sweet torture as his fingers kneaded her flesh, creeping higher along the length of her leg between kisses until he was levered on the bed, his head bent by her waist.

  “Clara?”

  His teeth nipped at the thin skin over her hip between soft kisses, until the room spun around her. The heat of his hands bracing her hips splayed across the flat plain of her stomach. She stopped breathing as the pad of his thumb brushed against the silky scar across her abdomen. He ran his fingers tenderly across its width, daring her to confess the truth. When she refused, he leaned forward and caressed the scar with his lips with maddening delicacy. The sweetness of it undid her.

  “I…” Again, she tried to speak, but the truth was too much to say. “I want…”

  Bly bent onto one elbow, his body braced over hers. There were words she desperately wanted to say, but she could only think of drawing his mouth against hers, so she bent upward and sipped on his lips. He deepened the kiss into something desperate and hungry. The bite of whiskey on his breath stung her tongue, the taste seeping into her until she felt drunk and hazy.

  Clara raked her fingernails into the corded muscles of his shoulders, eliciting a strangled groan from his throat. She wanted more, that was what she desperately wanted to tell him. Whatever more they could possibly share, she wanted more until this yearning subsided.

  His lips did not still, though she wished he would stop touching her as he did, moving over her body and making her feel as if she were on fire. She arched her back and pulled him against her, her head tossing back to the rusty iron headboard of the bed. His hand brushed the underside of her breast
, his fingers curling over her nipple until that sweet pain from earlier returned. With his free hand, he curled his fingers around her cheek and brought her gaze to his.

  “I know,” he whispered, pulling her bottom lip between his teeth.

  He wore too many clothes if that were true. Her hands pulled at his waistband until her fingers slipped against the warm flesh of his hip bone.

  “Wait,” he hissed. Bly rolled to the edge and stripped bare, his fine body a blur as he crawled back onto the bed and covered her, pressing against, pressing into her until a sharp pain made her buck up, stifling a moan into his shoulder.

  “I promise it’ll only hurt that once.” He brushed his lips over hers as he stilled inside her, the pain a dull shock. His hand traced the length of her neck as he kissed the other side, the paths mirrored. “Easy, love.” Even as he had given her pain, he eased it with a slow, long stroke, filling her completely. It was the strangest sensation and yet, completely wonderful.

  She ran her hand down the center of his back and rubbed her leg against his, anything to feel his flesh against hers, the coarse feel of him against her. She wanted to erase the distance between them and vanish in that intimate closeness.

  “Shh,” he said, rocking against her. Clara did not recognize the strange sounds escaping her throat. He sealed his mouth on hers, drinking in those pleasured mews as if he was drinking his favorite whiskey. It was all beginning to make sense now. She understood. Her body naturally finding its rhythm against his, until that strange pressure built within her, drowning her as it broke over her body. His lips moved over hers with bruising force as he rocked faster, her mouth taking in the strangled noises of his pleasure, until Bly reached his own end, shuddering as his body tensed, then slowly melted against hers.

  Bly dropped his head to her chest, resting there for a time, as she slowly fell back into the world, pinned to the mattress under his weight. His fingers twined in her hair as the scruff of his face scraped against her skin in the ragged rise and fall their bodies. Clara ran her hands down his each of his arms, waiting, unsure of what to say or do. She drew in a sharp breath as he pulled away, feeling the cold of the room seep into the narrow distance between their bodies and erase his heat from her skin.

  He pushed up onto his elbows, looking as though he would speak before he tipped forward and kissed her roughly until he uncoupled from her. The protest was there on her lips; he must have anticipated it as he pulled her to rest on top of his body and pulled the blankets over them both. “Rest,” he whispered, kissing her forehead.

  For a time, they did.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Barely awake and half sober, Bly felt as if he had been tossed by a horse. The air squeezed from his lungs as he gazed upon Clara bathed in early morning sunlight. He had wished for this, hadn’t he? This sweet torture of exploring her, bared and naked only to him.

  Freckles dotted her arms, swept over the curve of her shoulder, and graced the valley of her spine. She was made up of constellations. Clara was full of everything pure and heavenly while sleeping peacefully in the tattered sheets of her bed in the attic.

  His stomach sank. She did not belong sleeping in the attic, nor did he belong in her bed. She belonged in his, as his wife.

  In three short months, he had fallen for this woman wrapped up in stars. And not simply fallen, but had become consumed. For all her effort in trying to fade away, she burned with a fire only Bly recognized. It simmered behind those brumous eyes of hers. Clara was a woman made to survive an unending winter, only to harbor away the light of summer in her heart.

  He wished to bask in that light, in that warmth. He wished to wake her and share what they had shared just a few hours earlier. He wish to lay his lips upon her and fall, fall, fall…

  Bly lifted her hand stretched over his chest and lightly kissed her fingertips. He sucked in a breath as her eyelashes fluttered, threatening to break whatever dream he was in. He didn’t wish to wake. Not if he could keep her beside him and bask in the gentle warmth of her soft skin next to his.

  The world waited for him outside this room. Life outside of England, his old life in fact, beckoned. But this morning, a thought teetered in his mind. If he refused to answer, if he focused his attention on Burton Hall, and being a good guardian, and earning Clara’s love, what would happen?

  The notion ate away at his nervous stomach, yesterday’s whiskey still burning through his veins and fogging up his mind. He did not deserve the goodness of what waited for him here. Nor did he wish to remain in a village which so thoroughly hated him and his family for abandoning them all. His mother’s death was a tragic mark against him and this house. With her passing, gossip had spread that he had driven her to her death. He was a hellion in their eyes. What the village did not know was that his mother had well and gone mad before he had even been kicked out of his boarding schools to live at Burton Hall.

  The village had settled upon a story, and he was the villain.

  He dressed, standing beside the bed. A glint of gold caught his attention on the floor, so he bent to retrieve it and was met once more with the figure of Saint Anthony.

  Burton Hall had hollowed out what little remained of him when he arrived earlier this summer. And somehow, this woman who gave everything to him and his family had kissed and touched and coupled with him as though she too had discovered home after a long, aimless life.

  He moved to place it on her pillow so she could find the necklace when she woke, but the clasp had become broken and wouldn’t close. He tucked it into his trousers’ pocket, then leaned over and kissed her nose.

  Golden eyelashes, long and whisper-soft, fluttered open. As if a cloud had drifted its away across the sky, clearing the way for the sun to shine upon him, he was met with two bright and sleepy eyes.

  “I have to go,” he whispered into her hair. His lips kissed the edge of her forehead, then lower. His tongue swirled over her collarbone, eliciting a soft sigh from her lips. “The day’s begun and even I know I can’t be found in your bed.”

  Her hands threaded into his hair. He wished for nothing more than to undress and spend hours upon hours with her, discovering the lines of her body, those places where she would moan and sigh. He wanted to know all of her now that he had tripped over his resolve.

  “Nonsense,” she said with a warm timbre.

  He stood, licking his lips to taste her. Clara rolled over and smiled into her pillow. She was porcelain in that bed—fragile and cream. Her long golden hair tangled over her shoulders and swept across her back. She made no movement to cover herself up.

  Propriety and etiquette were forgotten here between them. At long last.

  “Clara Dawson.” He traced her shoulder with the tip of his index finger. A storm had taken hold of him inside, one that threatened to sink the Devil for good. Words that he never thought he would ever say to a woman sat on his tongue. He swallowed them back. “What a remarkable woman.”

  She bit on her lip, gazing up at him if he had become God himself. She should have known better. He might be quickly tumbling into changing his life for her, but he would never be a good man.

  “Friends do not leave friends behind,” she teased, tugging on his arm.

  He wrinkled his nose at her, and chuckled. “I’ll do it again if you keep making protests.”

  “Very friendly indeed.”

  It was then that the weight of what they had done struck him. It was then that the early morning hours darkened and despair clutched at him once more. He shrugged on his shirt and began to button it, avoiding her pleading eyes as she sat up and clutched the sheets to her chest.

  “Please stay.”

  He feared that he would become a villain to her as well. He feared his leaving would shatter her, and for that matter, him as well. He feared it was too late to reverse the course of his heart. He had fallen in love with Clara Dawson weeks ago over a dusty crate.

  Falling in love, it seemed, was an endless drop. He fell quicker and harder, wh
irring ahead in the dark without any sign of stopping. But he knew the ground was quickly approaching, that at some point something would break his fall. He never handled the unknown well.

  “Get some sleep before your day must start as well. It’s time for me to leave, I’m afraid.” He leaned over the bed and kissed her, his fear pouring forward from his mouth in such urgency.

  Why did it feel as if everything had ended when they had just begun?

  *

  Since her arrival, his aunt insisted upon formality. He was to eat breakfast in the breakfast room even though a leak had collapsed one corner of the ceiling. Repairs hadn’t been made because breakfast was eaten in the kitchen or the nursery before she and her servants conquered Burton Hall.

  A footman waited by the table for him. Bly asked for some coffee, then walked to the sideboard he remembered his mother had loved. The panels were pained in pastoral murals. She had told him once it was gift from the empress of Austria. She had told him a great many grand tales while she was wrapped up in silks and pearls. The crown she had insisted on wearing was once of paste gems Bly had bought for her. Two days after she had received it, she insisted it was made of rare diamonds and was a gift from his father in India. His father hadn’t written his mother since Bly had moved with him to India twelve years earlier, never mind sent her gifts.

  He grabbed an apple from the sideboard, then grabbed the coffee from the table, and bolted out the rusty-hinged French doors out into a jungle of dying weeds before the footman could protest.

  Why his aunt fired Ned Nash was beyond him. The park of Burton Hall needed the attention of a fleet of men, never mind one gardener. Between the gardens and the lawn, there was months and months of work to do to restore it back to the vision it once had been.

  The bricks underfoot wobbled as he pushed through the overgrown tangle. Stalks of sunflowers stood sentry, blackened by the frost that claimed the early mornings now. He should have grabbed his coat before walking out. The cold stiffened his hand and seeped into his skin, sinking deep until he remembered England was always cloaked in the miserable weather.