Sweet Scandal

by Scott, Scarlett

  She wasn’t going to take it easy on him. But then, she never had. She was the wiliest opponent he’d faced since the rebs back during the war. Strong and proud to the last. “I didn’t expect anything,” he answered honestly. “Were I you, I’d show me to the door and bar it and never look back.”

  Helen gave him a small smile then. “I ought to. Tell me, Levi, is this still goodbye?”

  Hang it, he had sworn it would be. But he didn’t fool himself any longer. He stepped nearer to her, closing the distance between them. Bergamot and rose teased his senses. Her hair was incredibly long, with a slight curl. It looked soft as goose down. He caught her waist and dragged her against him rather than answering her, relishing the chance to hold her without the interference of corset boning and petticoats. His fingers found the cord holding her dressing gown in place and he wasted no time in undoing it.

  The lace was transparent. Jesus, he could see her nipples quite plainly through it. He eased her dressing gown from her shoulders until she stood before him clad in only the nightdress. For a moment, he could merely stare at her, mesmerized by her lush form and haunting loveliness. Nothing mattered with her standing before him, nearly nude, his for the taking. His, if for tonight alone.

  “To hell with goodbye,” he all but growled. And to hell with obligation. To hell with everything but Helen and her sweetly willing body. He pressed his palm to the lace above her left breast, absorbing the rapid beats of her heart. Just another scant inch and her breast would be in his hand. “Do you know what I think, sweetheart?”

  She stared, looking a bit like a doe startled in the wilderness by the sudden presence of man. “What do you think?”

  “I think,” he began, sliding a slow caress down until the soft curve of her breast scorched him through the lace separating them. He heard her swift inhalation of breath, felt the hardened peak of her nipple, and knew an answering surge of arousal. “I think that you want me very badly.”

  “And I think you must also want me very badly, else you wouldn’t be here.” She caught her lip in her teeth and he almost groaned aloud at the fresh arrow of heat the sight sent straight to his cock. “Why did you come here tonight, after all that happened earlier?”

  “I couldn’t stay away,” he said, the admission torn from him. It was the bitter, absolute truth. She had undone him. In the span of a week, she’d wreaked havoc upon all the plans he had so carefully laid, like Grant had taken Richmond. “If you have even a shred of reason, my lady, you’ll tell me to go now. My intentions are anything but honorable. This is my very last attempt at being a gentleman.”

  “I don’t want you to be a gentleman, Levi.”

  It was all he needed to hear. In the next instant, his mouth was on hers.

  Helen clung to Levi and kissed him back with all the pent-up passion that had been building since she’d met him. She’d thought he was lost to her forever, that she’d never cross paths with him again. But now he was here, and she was in his arms, and for the moment, she couldn’t shake the feeling that all was at last right in the world. Let tomorrow bring with it what consequences it would. Tonight, foolish Helen firmly held the reins, and she relished every second of her power.

  Perhaps she had been too easy on him. Very likely she should have shown him the door as he’d said, and never looked back. But it wasn’t that simple. Nothing between them was, despite their differences and difficulties.

  He dragged his mouth down her throat, nipping and licking a path of fire as he went. His thumb toyed with her nipple, and his other hand cupped her bottom, angling her body against his so that she could feel every part of him thanks to the thin lace of her nightdress. He was heat and muscle and grace, and he was very, very hard. Everywhere.

  Dear heavens. She was not entirely ignorant of the mechanics of a man and a woman making love, and she knew precisely what the rigid length jutting against her belly meant. An answering bolt of pure, molten want shot straight to her core.

  He kissed her again, his fingers going to the line of pearl buttons keeping her nightgown in place. “Last chance,” he muttered against her mouth. “Tell me to go to the devil.”

  She framed his face in her hands, kissing him once more before meeting his gaze. “I’m yours, Levi.”

  Their mouths met in a hungry, possessive kiss before he broke away again. “I want to go slow, but I’m not sure if I can. Darling, have you ever…” He allowed the soft question to hover, half unspoken, between them.

  Helen hesitated, thinking of a long-ago, awful day. A day she had done her very best to forget each day since. It was as if a bucket of ice water had been thrown upon her. Time did not entirely dull the pain, and to have the ugliness return to her abruptly in the midst of a moment of such beauty reminded her of that.

  “Forgive me,” he hastened to say, pressing another kiss to her lips. “It doesn’t matter. I only wanted to know how slowly and gently to proceed. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  He had obviously misread her silence. Old shame crept over her. She’d done her best to suppress it over the years. In her mind, she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong, anything deserving of embarrassment in the slightest. But reliving what had happened inevitably brought with it a resurgence of painful emotions. After all, theirs was a society in which men scarcely suffered blame.

  “I haven’t,” she blurted, not knowing what else to say. Truly, she wished she hadn’t carried this burden. “That is to say, there was an incident. No one knows of it, not really.”

  He stiffened, searching her gaze, too perceptive and clever for her liking. “Don’t tell me some bastard mistreated you.”

  She swallowed, wishing she hadn’t chosen this moment to reveal to him what she had not divulged to anyone in all the time since. Not even her sisters, who were her dearest and best friends. “Please, think nothing of it. It happened a long time ago.”

  “What happened?” He caressed her cheek, the gentleness he exuded making her heart ache. “You can tell me, sweetheart.”

  “My parents were hosting a country house party,” she began. Her vision blurred with tears despite her best efforts to keep them at bay. “I was young and quite naïve, and when my brother’s friend happened across my path while I was out riding, I thought it a coincidence.” She knew now looking back upon the entire scenario that he must have intentionally followed her with the sole goal of leading her somewhere no one would ever hear. She had been lucky indeed that her brother had accidentally stumbled upon them.

  “Did he hurt you?” Levi’s tone was lethal.

  “Not as badly as he could have.” An image of the Earl of Wainross crept into her mind. He had been dapper, friendly. She had seen him many times as he was a good friend of her brother’s. She had trusted him when he had encouraged her to ride into the woods with him, had been charmed all too easily. But what had begun as a lark quickly devolved into a situation she hadn’t been equipped to handle. He’d grabbed her in his arms, not listening when she told him to stop, tearing at her dress, pinning her to the ground. “My brother stopped him before he could do worse.”

  “I’ll imagine your brother tore the son of a bitch limb from limb.” There was a fierceness in Levi’s expression she’d never seen before, a barely leashed violence. She realized he very much wanted to do harm to Wainross himself.

  “Actually, quite the opposite,” Helen said, unable to keep a trace of bitterness from her voice as she recalled. “My brother defended his friend.”

  He went still. “Your brother came upon you being attacked by his friend and instead of delivering a slow and merciless death to him, he blamed you for what had occurred?”

  “Yes.” She had not understood Bingley’s actions that day. Indeed, she had come to realize that she likely never would. He had been beloved to her out of her three brothers, and she’d been shocked and wounded when he had gazed down at her with contempt and blamed her for luring Wainross into the forests at Harrington House. “Perhaps I was to blame in part,” she acknow
ledged. “I was too foolish and trusting. I should never have gone into the woods alone with anyone.”

  “The fault is not yours but the monster who led you into the woods with the sole intention of misusing you. My God, Helen. Who is he?”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me, damn it.”

  Helen was taken aback by the vehemence in his tone. Would he think her damaged now? Would he no longer be attracted to her because of what she’d revealed to him? Perhaps she should not have been so honest. Heaven knew she had never been so before. In all these years, no one other than Wainross, Bingley, and Helen knew what had happened in the woods at Harrington House. Bingley had helped her to get back to her chamber without detection. Wainross had been relieved not to be held accountable for his actions. Helen had simply done her best to work through the shame, had kept her secret, and had devoted herself to a life of helping women less fortunate than she had been.

  It took all the strength she had to meet his gaze. “If my shame repulses you, I understand. If you don’t want me—”

  “Of course I want you,” Levi interrupted. “How could you doubt it? The man’s name only matters to me because I want to make him pay for what he did to you.”

  She wondered for a brief, silly second if Levi would beat Wainross to a bloody pulp. He was strong and broad and untamable enough to do just that. But while seeing the earl get his comeuppance would be incredibly satisfying on some primitive level, Helen knew it wouldn’t solve any problems. It certainly wouldn’t erase the wrongs that had already been done. It would only reopen wounds she had tried with all her might to heal.

  “It was many, many years ago, Levi. I’ve had time to move past what happened.”

  He framed her face in his hands, staring hard into her eyes. “You damn well shouldn’t have had to go through that, sweetheart. I’m so very sorry.” He kissed her softly, almost chastely, then.

  “You may kiss me harder,” she told him with a smile. “I won’t break. What happened that day made me stronger.”

  “You are strong,” he agreed, kissing her more lingeringly this time. “And kind, and good, and so damn beautiful. Far too good for the likes of me.” He gripped her waist and held her away from him. “I don’t deserve what you’re offering me. I don’t deserve you, my lady.”

  “You needn’t deserve anything.” She caressed his whisker-stubbled jaw, loving the freedom to touch him as she pleased. “What I have I give to you freely. If you still desire me, that is.”

  “Stop saying that.” He reeled her back in, her body pressing against his hard muscles from top to bottom. “Stop thinking that. I desire you more than I desire breath in my lungs.”

  “Then why do you hesitate?” Her gaze slipped to his mouth, so often stern and forbidding, set in hard lines. Now it was soft. She knew how it felt against hers. Possessive and altogether wonderful. She grew bold and ran her thumb lightly over the seam of his lips.

  “I can’t offer you marriage, and you deserve nothing less.”

  “It isn’t marriage that I want.” She understood that he had his business and his life in American to return to, that everything they shared was fleeting. But she didn’t care. She had long ago accepted the fact that she would never wed, never bear children. She’d made peace with it. Now, it seemed that there was a fleeting opportunity for her to at least taste passion. If only for a night. “All that I want is you, Levi.”

  Before he could exercise any more gentlemanly inclinations, she undid the remaining buttons on her nightdress and shrugged out of it. The lace fell to her feet with a whisper of sound. She stood nude before him, and it was apparently enough for him to overcome any niggling sense of honor restraining him. Tonight, she regained the power that had been taken from her all those years ago. She would no longer allow the past to haunt or curse her or make her fear. Tonight, she was Helen and he was Levi, and she wanted him atop her, inside her, touching her, kissing her, taking her. Everything. She wanted everything.

  “My God, Helen.” He picked her up in his arms as though she weighed no more than air and carried her to her bed, laying her gently upon it. He joined her in an instant, his big body against hers, his hands on her, tracing her curves. “We will go very slowly, my darling. As slowly as you need. Tonight, I’m yours to rule. We won’t do a thing you don’t want, do you understand?”

  His tenderness tugged at her heart. He had no way of knowing that there had never been another man since that awful day, that she had never wanted anyone until he had appeared in the offices of the London Beacon, hell bent on throwing her out on her ear. But as always, he was incredibly observant. He could be painfully kind when he chose to, and she was grateful for this side of him now. Somehow, he was precisely what she needed.

  He caressed her waist, the soft roundness of her hip. “You are so very exquisite. I’m sorry that I was rough with you earlier. If I had known, I would’ve damn well controlled myself.”

  “Hush.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “You were never rough. You couldn’t be. And I’ve already told you that I’ll not break. Make love to me, Levi.”

  He kissed her deeply, passionately. Together, they tore off his shirt so that his bare chest was at last revealed. It was a thing of beauty, sculpted and hard, stippled with just the right amount of masculine dark hair. His arms were muscled in a way a gentleman’s were not, and a long, jagged scar marred the otherwise perfect flesh of his left arm.

  She touched him there. “What happened?”

  “A minié ball during the war. I’m damn lucky it grazed me or I’d have lost my arm.”

  Dear God. Helen tentatively traced indented, smooth skin. “It would seem we’re both revealing our scars tonight.”

  “Does it offend you?” he asked, a note of hesitation in his voice that told her it had offended someone else before her.

  She kissed the imperfect flash, thankful he hadn’t suffered worse. “It’s a sign of bravery. How could it be anything but beautiful?”

  She raked her fingers up past the scar, across his broad shoulder, tracing the line of his clavicle and then down over his taut belly to his trousers. She wanted them off as well, until there was nothing between them. No more barriers.

  Levi caught her fingers before they could investigate the length of him, the very part of him she was so curious to see and touch. “Slowly, sweetheart. Slowly.”

  His mouth was on hers. He kissed his way down her throat to her breasts as she settled for resting her hands on his shoulders instead. His skin was sleek and smooth and hot. He sucked her nipple into his mouth, teased it with his tongue and teeth. She rocked into him. The hand on her hip dipped between her thighs, touching her as he had before with the perfect balance of pressure and skill. Pure pleasure shot through her, beginning in the center of her body and radiating outward like a shining sun, every bit as white hot. As he moved to her other breast, nipping and sucking, his fingers slid over her slick folds and then a lone finger dipped inside her ever so slightly. She bucked against him, wanting more.

  “Slowly,” he reminded her, kissing the valley between her breasts and then down her belly. “Tell me what you need, sweetheart.” He kissed her hip bone and glanced up at her, so sinfully good-looking the sight of him made her weak.

  “I don’t know,” she confessed, breathless. “You.”

  He gave her a wicked smile before lowering his head and kissing her there, where she wanted him most. Shock warred with need within her. Dear sweet heavens. Breath hissed from her lungs and she arched into him. Surely what he was doing to her was incredibly indecent, and yet she had never experienced anything so wildly wonderful in her life. He sucked the sensitive nub hidden in her folds into his mouth, worked it lightly with his teeth. Then his tongue slid straight across her aching seam.

  She cried out, unable to stop herself despite the danger of being heard. He continued doling out his torturous pleasure, not once stopping. The rational part of her reminded her that s
he ought to protest, that surely it was wanton and depraved of him to do such things to her.

  “You shouldn’t,” she tried to protest. He worked her nub again, playing his tongue over it. A quiver went through her. She felt as if her entire body were a spring, coiling ever more tightly. Something would break. She would break. The pleasure was mind-numbing. “Really, Levi. You ought not…”

  But his fingers had now joined his tongue, and she was robbed of speech entirely. Her hands sank into his thick, dark hair and her hips pumped into him. She had never felt more thoroughly, wonderfully alive. And then it came, swift and sudden upon her, a release so forceful that she swore she’d broken into a hundred pieces. She arched into him as his mouth absorbed the ripples of her pleasure. Another cry escaped her as aftershocks rocked her body. Nothing could have prepared her for this. For him.

  Slowly, he had said. Perhaps he intended to kill her with pleasure.

  He made a deep, low sound of appreciation in his throat and kissed her one last time before dragging his wet mouth back over her skin, across her belly, back to her breasts. He sucked first one nipple, then the other. His fingers were between her legs again, working the hungry, slick flesh that had so recently capitulated.

  “I’m going to kiss every inch of you,” he murmured against her skin, and then he proceeded to do as he’d promised. Random, decadent kisses rained across her naked skin. Her breast, her stomach, her elbow, the curve of her knee, her inner thigh. Until she was nearly out of her mind with wanting him, more of him.

  All of him.

  When she swore she couldn’t stand another moment more, he kissed a path from her throat to her ear. His breath was hot upon her as he kissed her earlobe first and then the shell above it. His touch dipped back between her thighs, a slow and steady caress.

  “Are you absolutely certain, darling?” he asked, still leaving her in control of everything that happened between them.

  It was precisely what she needed, and it stirred her even as she knew she must guard herself against falling for this man. He was not of her world, nor would he remain a part of it. He was a temporary distraction with unknown obligations half a world away. Falling for him would simply not do.