She was sin and innocence combined just as she was all spit and fire on the outside and vulnerable underneath. Aylesbury’s blood pounded in his veins at the sight of her poised in the dim light of the single lamp. But when she leaned over to untie her garters, hair cascading over her shoulders, giving him a perfect view of her cleavage swelling over the edge of her corset as she bent, the moan of pure animal desire that escaped him was beyond containment.
Freezing at the sound, Fiona looked straight at him though he couldn’t think that she could see him in the darkness. He also couldn’t bear to have her performance come to an end.
“I beg of you,” he rasped out. “Please, don’t stop.”
“Harry?”
Aylesbury stepped from the shadows. “Were you expecting someone else?”
“I-I thought you went home.”
“I could not.”
* * *
She’d never been so surprised in her entire life as she was when Harry emerged from the darkened corner of her room. Her first impulse was to snatch up her petticoats and cover herself but she resisted the urge. She had done that once before and she wouldn’t do it now. This was her room, after all. Instead, she laid her hands on her hips and squared her shoulders as if she hadn’t a care.
But she couldn’t stop the questions that raced through her mind.
How had he gotten there? When? What was he doing there? But then she saw the look on his face, the raw hunger more voracious than it had been in the alley that afternoon. It held the answer to one question at least. Still she voiced it, anyway, wanting to hear the answer for herself.
“What do you want, Harry?”
Her voice was breathless, unwittingly provocative and he smiled wolfishly, raking his eyes down her half-clad body. Her flesh burned under his gaze but oddly rippled with gooseflesh in its wake. As her drew closer, every nerve in her body tensed.
Fiona knew she could deny many things but not this. Never this.
When he was but a hair’s breadth away, he reached for her, running a palm over her corseted ribs. She drew in a deep, fortifying breath and heard his catch as well as his eyes returned to the swell of her breasts against her corset.
“You are every man’s fantasy,” Aylesbury whispered huskily. “Where did you get this?”
Fiona licked her lips. “Paris.”
“Vive la France.”
He lifted her hair from her shoulder and letting the length of it through his fingers before he ran them up her bare arm, over her shoulder to tease the sensitive flesh behind her ear. He leaned closer, over her, his roughened cheek brushing hers as he bent his head and inhaled deeply.
Her heart began beating like the big drum from Mr. Sousa’s brass band. Pounding so hard that her head swam dizzily. She swayed toward him but steadied herself.
“Wha–what are you doing in my room, Harry?”
He chuckled softly, his breath tickling at her neck. “Nothing nefarious, I promise you. I merely wanted to assure myself that you were well. I never imagined…” His fingers continued upward, burying themselves in her hair. “You are magnificent, my love. I had imagined what you might be hiding beneath those proper gowns, sure it would be something sensual. If I had known just how erotic, I never would have been able to stop myself from having you the other night, Pembrooke or no.”
His cupped her breasts in his palms, his fingers caressing the bare flesh swelling above the satin edge and lifting even as his mouth descended. His lips brushed, teased along the border until Fiona raked her fingers through his hair, urging him closer. Harry’s tongue dipped into the crease of her cleavage as he fondled her breasts, then squeezed…no, the top hook of her corset came undone, then another. His tongue grazed through the widening chasm again and she shuddered with pleasure.
Two more hooks and Harry tugged at the ribbon holding her chemise, freeing her breasts to his hungry gaze. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he pulled her to him roughly and lifted her to him so that he could feast on the bounty now displayed. He nuzzled the valley between her breasts before turning to catch one sensitive nipple between his lips.
Fiona cried out shortly, catching her lip between her teeth to stifle her impassioned cries as he drew deeply on her flesh. She held him fast against her, as if he could get any closer but it wasn’t enough. Her body knew what power he possessed now, what bliss he could bring, and she wanted more.
“Harry.”
Lifting his head at her whispered plea, he met her gaze with eyes so dark she could only gasp at the emotion there. It wasn’t the turbulence she had seen at the Onslow ball that darkened them to the deep indigo she saw, but raw emotion, carnal hunger, and her body trembled with a rush of wantonness to answer the plea she saw there.
“Oh Harry, yes.”
He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed, pushing the counterpane aside to deposit her on the white sheets.
“You look like a luscious chocolate presented on a white pillow,” he said roughly. “Delectable.”
Fiona couldn’t stop the blush that crept up her cheeks and ran her palms over the sheets self-consciously. “I chose the black only because I…”
“Shh,” he murmured with a roguish grin. “Don’t ruin the fantasy.”
Harry never took his eyes from her as went to the door and locked it with an audible click that she thought sounded her doom.
She just wished he’d hurry up about it.
But he took his time and slowly worked the knots of his tie loose as he returned to the side of the bed. He tossed the tie aside, devouring her with his eyes, stoking the fiery desire within her without even touching her.
If he continued disrobing at such a leisurely pace, Fiona was certain she would explode before he even laid a finger on her.
Chapter 31
Why do I continue to try? Harry has humiliated me (I know you know nothing of it, diary. I wrote only that I could not bear to even write of it here). But be assured that it is so. Then he has ignored me quite rudely. Still I am placing myself in his path at every turn.
My head calls me a fool. My heart, however, will not be denied.
~From the Diary of Lady Fiona MacKintosh—Apr 1893
“Harry…”
“Do you know what this reminds me of?” he asked, cutting her off. The question was a confusing one. Surely being with her didn’t remind him of a time with another woman?
“What?” she asked suspiciously.
“Do you remember that time in Edinburgh when I was staying at Abby and Richard’s after Moira and Vin’s wedding?”
It was a vague reference but not so vague that Fiona didn’t immediately understand what he was referring to. Her face flushed, not with desire any longer but humiliation. Of course, she remembered.
“I had been out riding,” he continued as if he weren’t aware of how mortifying the memory was to her. He rolled his jacket off one shoulder and then the other as he spoke. “I went up to my chamber to change, and you were there on the bed. Much as you are now.”
It had been nothing like this.
He’d been staying with Richard and Abby in the month before the christening ball. Before the disaster. She’d snuck into his room one morning, waiting—yes, on his bed—for him to return to change after his morning ride. She had been incredibly nervous, flipping from her side to her back. Skirts to her knees and back to her ankles, striving for a certain provocativeness that at eighteen, she had no idea how to express. When Harry had finally come in, he’d been appalled to find her there and demanded she leave.
Nothing had happened.
Other than the gross loss of her dignity.
“You need to leave, Fiona,” he’d said.
“I have nowhere else to be,” she had teased as coyly as she could.
“Well, you cannot be here,” he had said bluntly.
He’d lifted her from his bed, his body shaking with anger, and deposited her abruptly in the hall before slamming the door on her.
“Do you
remember?”
Fiona nodded, the memory choking her with its humiliation all over again.
“You had tormented me almost from the moment I met you,” he said huskily, working the buttons on his shirt.
Astonishment swept over her though he wasn’t likely to see it written as clearly on her face as it must have been since he was pulling his shirt over his head. “What?”
Flinging the shirt aside, he toed off his shoes, first one, then the other. “Against my will I had dreamed of you, imagined you in my bed. Finding you there that day…”
Good God, Fiona thought, so shocked by his admission that she couldn’t even appreciate the sculpted beauty of his bare chest. Were they remembering the same day?
“You ordered me out of your room,” she reminded him.
“You were in my bed,” he continued watching her as he sat on the edge of the bed and made quick work of his shoes and stockings. “Your skirt was hiked up just over your ankle. Sweet innocence and seduction combined. Just as you are now.”
“You forced me bodily out of the room,” Fiona said slowly. “You deposited me like so much rubble in the hall.”
“Is that how you remember it?” Standing, his hands moving to the buttons on his trousers. her eyes followed his hands, feeling some frustration that he was stealing the beauty of the moment from her with such an awful memory. “That isn’t how I recall it at all.”
“You were practically shaking with anger!”
Harry laughed then, a low rumble that began deep within his chest. “Is that what you think?”
Forgetting his half-opened trousers, he crawled up the length of the bed, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunching like a prowling lion as he came. Lifting himself over her, he let her feel the hard length of him brushing against her, pressing the proof of his desire against her core.
“I was shaking,” he whispered, running one rough palm up the length of her thigh and lifting her leg around his hips, “with desire, my love. I was so taken by pure rapacious lust at the sight of you on my bed that it was all I could do to get you out of there before I surrendered to my most base urge.”
“What urge?”
“To take you for my own,” he confessed roughly. His lips descended, running down the length of her neck. His teeth raked lightly along her collarbone. “You had teased and tortured me for weeks. Months. I couldn’t bear to touch you. I couldn’t even dance with you without wanting you. And then there you were. In my bed. My darkest fantasy made real. All I wanted to do was pounce on you and ravish you like an animal.”
“Unbelievable!” Fiona sighed, holding his head against her as his lips closed over her breast, drawing her sensitive nipple deep into his mouth once more. Arching against him, she felt the pull all the way to her core and gasped out, “Isn’t it amazing how two people can see something so differently?”
“I guess we shall just have to reexamine every conversation we’ve ever had,” he murmured against her breast as his palm covered the other. “But not now.”
“No,” she agreed. “Not now.”
“Right now, I would rather show you what I would rather have done that day.”
She shook her head, pushing him away until he was on his back. “No, Harry. I want to show you what I would have liked to do that day.”
Pressing the heels of her hands against his shoulders, she rolled over on top of him, straddling his hips. Smoothing her palms up the ridged muscles of his abdomen, she swept them over his chest and back down the sides of his ribs. Allowing herself to touch him, enjoy him as she had always wanted to.
Harry was spread before her like a gift she had waited for too long. His skin was hot and smooth beneath her hands, his muscles quivering at her slightest touch. She had the power, her mind scrambled over how to best use it. He liked her undergarments, she could tell, so she wouldn’t disrobe as he had, but he seemed to like her breasts as well.
Uncertainly, Fiona pushed open a couple more hooks on her corset, spreading her chemise wider until her nipples were barely exposed by the lace edge. His hungry gaze was fastened there, his lips parted. A good sign, she thought, when his palms cupped her breasts once again, his thumbs flicking back the lace, grazing her hardened nipples.
Pushing her hair over her shoulder, she leaned over him eager to have his lips on her once more. He nipped at nothing more than air when she pulled away.
“You are truly about making me regret what I did. Aren’t you?”
Why not? She had him there, laid out before her and he seemed content enough to let her lead the way. What would she have done that day if he hadn’t set her aside? Would she have waited to see what he would take? Fiona smiled. Even at eighteen, she would have been too nervous to do anything else.
She was still nervous now, but there had been a long while in between for her imagination to rework that day with what ifs. What if he had let her stay? If he had looked like this? What if he had looked at her like this?
“Yes, I am. Now hush. There’s only a dressing room and a bathing chamber between us and Connor’s room.”
“I doubt he’s in.”
“Do you want to find out the hard way?”
Running her hands over him again, Fiona explored the breadth of Harry’s shoulders, strength of his arms and the shape of his muscular chest. A tight sprinkling of dark hair started there and trailed down over his stomach. Brushing her thumbs over his nipples as he had hers, she reveled in his harsh intake of breath and leaned over him to run her tongue across them as well while her hands worked their way down his ridged stomach, marveling at the way the muscles coiled and jumped as her touch dipped and cut in so definitely.
With so many men in her life and home, he’d seen more than one bare chest before and knew the amount of hard labor it took to build such massive muscles. Her brothers rode hard, boxed, and worked the estate alongside their tenants.
“What do you do?”
She ran her fingers over the rippling muscles while his rough palms skimmed up her thighs and under the hem of her knickers before his fingers closed over her bottom.
“Rowing,” he murmured. “Skulling. Cambridge.”
“Ah, so that’s why you gave in so easily when I told you where I wanted to go today.”
“Yes, and I wish I hadn’t.” He squeezed her bottom, pulling her down as he arched up against her. Fiona gasped and lifted herself.
“None of that, this is my turn.”
“Who said so?”
“I do. A thank you for saving my life.”
Boldly, she dipped her hand into Harry’s open trousers, closing her fingers around the thick, rampant erection that she found there. It startled them both. He groaned, straining against her hand and Fiona moaned softly herself. He was so hot, so hard. Unable to help herself, she ran the circle of her fingers down the turgid length, savoring the low rumble that shook his chest as she did so.
“Fiona.”
His husky plea only encouraged her to continue. Sitting back on her heels, she tugged his loosened trousers down, easing back farther until she was able to pull them off. Straddling his ankles now, she ran her hands up to his knees, wondering at the texture of the black hair covering his legs against her palms. His thighs were hard, bulging as she slid back up dropping kisses along the way. Nipping at his thighs. He was beautiful in his nudity, every tense muscle shadowed and highlighted in the light of a single lamp as he waited for her assessment, his eyes piercing hers.
Her attention was elsewhere though. Running her hands upward, Fiona cupped him in her hand once more. Harry’s breath hissed when she encircled his arousal, his body as taut as a bow. Groaned again when she traced the length again, feeling him pulsing in her palm. Such power he was giving her, waiting for her to look her fill. To touch to her heart’s content.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to be contented that easily.
The wicked gleam in her eyes and the brush of her hair against his hip was all the warning Harry had before Fiona’s l
ips closed over him. Hands fisting in the sheets, he arched up as her tongue circled the engorged tip, a hoarse shout escaping him.
“Fiona! My God…”
“Shh.”
Then she took him in her mouth. Deep, drawing on his length. Harry nearly came right there. There had never been anything more arousing in his entire life. His hand moved to the top of her head, wanting to urge her on. His fingers fisted, drew her away until he met her eyes, knowing his were blazing with shocking white-hot lust when hers widened in surprise.
Lifting her with one arm, Harry looked down at her. “My turn.”
Even before she had seen that look in his eyes, Fiona had wanted him. Deep within her very core, she’d been throbbing with want, hot and ready for him. That look nearly made her swoon. Her blood was thrumming hotly, leaving her dizzy with heady desire before his mouth closed over hers. No longer tender and gentle, Harry devoured her with urgent fervor, driving her passions when she was sure they could go no higher.
But they could. His lips followed his hands as he unhooked the remainder of her corset, nipping, sucking and biting through the thin batiste chemise beneath. Hooking a thumb in the waist of her bloomers he pushed them down and off, lifting her to sweep the chemise over her head in a smooth motion before his naked body covered hers.
The feel of him—hard, rough and hot—against her, left her gasping for air but Harry had only just begun.
His hot lips continued downward, his teeth raking along her ribs, his tongue delving into her navel and downward still. He nudged her legs apart and his hot mouth descended over the throbbing nub at the apex of her thighs. She cried out in surprise, both hands fisting in his hair as he roughly tongued her, licking and tugging.
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