Oona couldn’t help laughing—a silent shaking laugh that would not wake him—she was wide awake and he was unconscious. But then he’d done all the physical work, hadn’t he?
Her breathing quickened at the memory of his muscles flexing, his hips pounding, his glorious—
Katie.
The joy she’d been feeling leaked out of her like water from a cracked pitcher.
Tonight he’d looked at her with desire and even affection in his eyes. But that would change in a heartbeat when he found out about Katie; then his expression would be something else entirely.
If Justin Taylor ever learned that Oona had not only been Venable’s lover, she’d also born his child, he’d look at her with the same expression he’d worn when he’d spoken of Viscount Venable: with eyes pulsing with loathing and hate.
Fourteen
Juss woke as dawn was breaking. The light through the gaps wasn’t gray, but a warm yellow: it must have stopped snowing. He turned his head and looked at Oona, who lay sleeping on her side, facing him. One of her hands rested on his bicep and one of her feet was against his calf. Her magnificent auburn hair was spread across the pillow in wild spirals and her lips were slightly parted as she breathed evenly.
He’d taken her again last night, the second time just as intense, but slower, more thorough and intimate.
Juss peeled back the heavy comforter and feasted on her naked body. Her nipples were dark pink and large on her surprisingly full breasts. His mouth watered and he leaned forward and flicked one with the tip of his tongue, smiling when she murmured in her sleep, the sensitive disk of flesh puckering. He took the nub into his mouth and sucked and she groaned and shifted sensuously.
“Juss.” Her voice was sleep-roughened.
He released her stiff peak and slid his hand over the soft swell of her belly, through the darker auburn curls of her sex, his cock throbbing painfully when she opened herself to welcome him.
“I want you again,” he said, his middle finger sliding between her wet, swollen lips. “Are you too sore?”
She shuddered and rolled onto her back in answer, her legs spreading wider.
Juss chuckled as he pushed onto his knees, his hand still on her, his finger thrusting deep into her tight passage.
“Fuck!” he ground out the vulgar word, amused when her sheath tightened around his finger like a vise.
The light was pale but it was enough for him to see her beautiful face as he knelt between her thighs, pushing them wider with his knees while his free hand went to his stiff rod. He thumbed the freely leaking slit, slicking his shaft while she watched him through lazy eyes, her hips pulsing against his pumping hand.
“Good God you’re beautiful, Oona.” He thrust out his hips, his fingers curled tightly around the base of his stand, the action displaying his size to advantage. “Do you want this inside you?” He smirked—preening for her just like a cock for a hen.
She touched his crown with one finger, rubbing the work-roughened pad in the bead of sticky liquid.
Juss hissed harshly looking from her circling finger to her face. She was biting her lower lip, her eyes wide, watching her hand.
“Taste me, Oona.”
Her lips parted with shock but she hardly hesitated before bringing her slick finger to mouth. She gave a soft grunt as she sucked off his juice, her eyes narrowing.
“Bloody hell,” he snarled, dropping his weight to one hand, while the other positioned himself at her opening, and entered her with a brutal thrust.
∞∞∞
Oona didn’t recognize the woman she’d become as she writhed and thrashed and moaned beneath him. She just wanted too much to care what he must see. He’d dropped to one elbow and then reached between their bodies while his hips pounded her with punishing force.
“Come for me,” he ordered, his crude command and dancing finger driving her with shocking speed toward her pleasure.
His words shoved her over the edge and her body clenched and rippled around him.
“Ah, God!” he cried out, bucking hard before jerking out of her and finishing himself, his fist a blur, until the only sound or motion in the room was their mingled breathing.
He gave a deeply contented groan and then rolled onto his back and reached down beside the bed.
Oona chuckled. “Your poor shirt.”
He laughed weakly. “It has done its duty,” he said, cleaning her before himself. “I think it will be allowed to retire now.” He tossed it onto the floor and then, unlike last night, turned on his side toward her rather than falling asleep. “That was very rude of me last night—to fall asleep both times.” He propped his head on his hand, reaching out to tuck a tangled lock of hair behind her ear.
“I must look like I’ve been yanked through a dozen hedges.”
“No, just half-a-dozen.”
She scowled. “It’s not fair,” she said, allowing her eyes to move over him with a boldness she could scarcely credit.
“Hmm?” he said, his fingers combing her hair, an odd smile curving his lips. “What’s not fair?”
“It’s not fair that you look perfect—your hair hardly mussed, while I look like—”
“You look like a goddess—a sated, well-pleasured goddess.”
She gaped at the odd, yet satisfying, compliment and he mirrored her expression.
Oona laughed and he grinned.
“There, that’s better,” he murmured, his hand caressing.
Her face heated under his almost adoring stare. “It looks like it’s sunny,” she said, needing to say something.
“Yes.”
“What are our plans?”
He stroked her throat, his broad, powerful hand making her feel delicate and small. “My plan is to take Jonathan’s sleigh to Henley and engage either a horse or a chase for the rest of the journey.”
“Are we leaving right after breakfast?”
He leaned forward and gave her a lingering kiss, her lips parting for his tongue eagerly, like a welcome visitor. Oona brazenly explored him, running her tongue over his teeth, the inside of his lips.
“Mmm,” he groaned, and then pulled away, his hand on her shoulder. “Look what you’ve done.” He glanced down and Oona saw that his breeding organ had once again begun to thicken. She laughed.
“Witch.” He kissed her hard and then leaned back, his expression becoming serious. “You will stay here until the road is clear. Beekman will take you back to London.”
“But—”
He laid his index finger across her lips. “No. I don’t want to take you to Compton Abbey.” His soft, full lips hardened. “I don’t want you to come within miles of Venable. Even if you had told him about me that day it doesn’t mean you deserve to be soiled by his presence. No woman does.”
Oona’s eyes clouded at the hate in his tone.
“Hey then, what’s this?” he asked when a tear rolled down her cheek. “Don’t cry, love.”
She shook her head, although she didn’t know at what or whom or why.
“Oona?”
She looked up to find an expression on his face she’d never seen: uncertainty.
“I like you, Oona.” He frowned and his jaw worked, as if he were having some sort of argument with himself. “I like you a great deal. I don’t think I’m mistaken in thinking you might like me—at least a little?”
She gave a watery snort and shoved his chest, which did nothing. “Of course I like you,” she said thickly. “I wouldn’t have—what kind of a—”
“Shh-shh,” he murmured, wrapping his bulging bicep around her and pulling her tight to his body. “Don’t cry, darling.”
The endearment just made her cry harder.
“I want—well, I want—Christ,” he growled, his hard chest rumbling against hers as he held her painfully tight. “I want you, Oona. I know it’s too bloody fast, but I feel like—” He gave a growl of frustration. “I thought I was good with words,” he said wryly, “But I guess that’s only when it comes
to pounds and pence. What I want to say,” he hesitated. “What I want to say is that I want to see you again when this business with Venable is done. Beekman will take you back to London and I’ve got a lovely little place where you could stay while you considered, er, things.”
He wanted her to be his mistress. Oona squeezed her eyes shut; God, it was the most tempting offer she’d had in her entire life.
But then Katie’s face rose up before her. To be with Juss would be to deny her daughter. Already she only saw Katie mere days every few months. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t exist.
“Oona?” He pulled away and his hand tipped her chin up, until she couldn’t avoid looking at him. His expression was uncertain. How had she managed to make such a powerful, confident man look so vulnerable?
Oona swallowed; she refused to hurt him now—not when they could still spend a few more hours together. No, tomorrow or the day after or the day after that would be soon enough to take the light from his eyes.
Oona forced a smile onto her face. “I will go back to London,” she said, careful not to lie. It was a small, ultimately pointless, distinction, but one that was important to her.
“And you will let me take care of you—just until you make your decision?”
“Yes. I will let you take care of me until I’ve made my decision.” I’m sorry, Juss. So sorry.
His lips curved until he was grinning. “I shall make you a happy woman, Oona. I promise you that—well, you won’t regret it.” He pulled her close. “I—” His embrace grew painful and the very air around them shimmered with expectation. But then his arm loosened and his body seemed to deflate. “I look forward to it,” he said lamely, his voice so sad she wondered what it was he’d really wanted to say.
∞∞∞
Juss was barely a half day away from Compton Abbey when it started to snow. Again.
The carriage slowed down when the sky opened up, creeping along until it finally turned off the road and then ground to a halt in front of a tiny posting inn.
Juss knew what the postilion would say before he even opened the window.
“Sorry, guv, but we ain’t allowed to keep goin’ in this wevver.” He cut a significant look at the sky, as if to draw Juss’s attention to the thick white flakes falling like leaves. “We can wait ‘ere and if it clears up in an hour, mebby go a piece. But ovverwise,” he shrugged. “Well, I’m finkin’ we’ll be spendin’ tonight ‘ere.”
It didn’t clear up in an hour, nor two or three. Juss took one of the four rooms the tiny inn had to offer and parked his arse in a chair, his eyes riveted to the scene outside the window, his brain somewhere else.
He’d been a bloody fool to leave Oona at the Cantrell's farm yesterday morning. Not just because of the foul weather—which had meant yet another night in a roadside inn last night—but because of the way she’d looked when he’d kissed her goodbye. She’d looked deeply, profoundly, sad, even though her mouth had been smiling. Juss had seen it, but had been too much of a bloody coward to ask what was bothering her.
Because you know what was bothering her: You, a man so bent on revenge you would leave her alone to pursue it. You should have gone with her back to London. You are a fool.
Juss couldn’t argue with that.
Not long after he’d left her—maybe not even an hour—he’d suddenly realized his hunger for vengeance had disappeared, replaced by another hunger: for Oona.
Like a sleepwalker who’d awakened from a long nightmare, he couldn’t understand what had been so compelling about destroying Venable—a man who was already doing a fine job of destroying himself—that he would leave a woman he’d been thinking about for years.
There was no point in returning to Compton Abbey, a place he certainly had no desire to occupy or even own—even though he did. No, he would call in the notes through his man of business and then put the place for sale. And that would end this dismal chapter of his life.
Juss smiled like an idiot as he gazed unseeingly out the window. And then he could return to London—to Oona—and begin another chapter. One that would hopefully lead to a more satisfactory ending to his story.
Fifteen
Oona looked up from her needlework, her eyes immediately going to Katie’s strawberry blond curls. It had been three weeks since she’d come to Ightham, a tiny village not far from the school that Katie now attended as a day student, but Oona still could not believe that she had her daughter to herself—not just for a two-day visit, but permanently.
“How much longer, Mama?” Katie asked, looking up from her work.
Oona glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Only until three, darling.”
Katie groaned. “It’s Christmas Eve! I’ll wager none of my friends from school are doing sums today.”
“I hope you will not wager, Katherine Anne.”
“Oh, Mama.”
“Fifteen minutes,” she said firmly, smiling to herself when Katie heaved a huge sigh but turned back to her remaining schoolwork.
Some days her daughter’s presence was the only thing that made it worthwhile to get up in the morning.
As hard as she tried to forget him, Justin Taylor had taken up residence in her brain—and heart—and seemed in no hurry to leave. It was foolish and self-destructive to allow herself to think of him as she’d most certainly killed any chances she’d had with him after leaving him in such a deceptive, underhanded way.
After spending one more night with the Cantrells, the road had been clear enough to head south. She’d arrived in London, collected her small cloth bag of possessions from her landlady, and took a hotel for the night. She’d spent most of that evening thinking about the money Juss had offered her. By the following morning she’d decided to keep four hundred pounds for the four days she’d spent on the journey and returned the rest along with a brief letter—the hardest letter she’d ever written. All Oona had said was that she was grateful for their time together and his generous offer of money.
Juss would be hurt and rejected, but he was a gorgeous, powerful, wealthy man and any pain he felt would likely pass quickly. At least she hoped he wouldn’t suffer. Not like she was suffering. But she had the added pain of knowing she had left a man she loved; yes, there was no denying that this much agony could only mean love. The shameful truth was that Oona would have been his mistress in a heartbeat if matters had been different.
She felt a familiar prickling behind her eyes that heralded tears and dropped her gaze to her idle hands. She couldn’t cry—not in the middle of the day. That is what nighttime was for: yearning for Juss and crying. Because it certainly wasn’t for sleeping.
“Mama?”
Oona looked up through bleary eyes. “Hmm?”
Katie had put aside her quill and pushed up from the table where she’d been working on her sums, which she hated. “There is a man on a magnificent horse coming down the drive.”
Oona jabbed herself with her needle, yowled, and stood so abruptly her tambour slid to the floor; she knew who it was before she rushed to the window.
“Oh.” Oona clutched her throat, drinking in the sight of his powerful, elegantly clad body like he was a pitcher of cool water and she was a parched wanderer in the desert. Which was not far from the truth.
“Who is it and why would he be coming here on Christmas Eve?” Katie asked, her gray eyes crinkling at the corners as she gazed up at Oona. Her eye color was the only feature she’d taken from her father—at least when it came to looks. But when it came to behavior, Katie had Viscount Edward Venable’s persistence and charm, and then some. Her father had been able to charm the birds from the trees—or at least a governess into his bed—by making Oona feel as if she were the only woman in the world. Katie was almost as skilled at charming her way out of chores.
“Mama?”
“You stay here,” Oona said, waiting until Katie nodded before moving toward the door, her hands unconsciously going to her hair. She swallowed several times, hoping to generate some moistur
e in her suddenly bone-dry mouth, to no success.
Quit acting like a fool and get out there!
Oona jerked open the front door and found him only a few feet away.
He stopped, his jaw dropping in a way that would have been comical if she wasn’t in such physical pain looking at his beautiful face.
“Oona.”
The sound of her name on his lips made her flushed and dizzy. “What are you doing here, Mr. Taylor?”
He recoiled—either at the cool tone, formal greeting, or both—and his face darkened. “I came to see you, obviously.”
“On Christmas Eve?”
“Yes. On Christmas Eve.” His beautiful eyes were stormy—angry and sad and something Oona couldn’t decipher.
She smoothed her skirt, unable to stay still. “Didn’t you receive my letter?”
His lips twisted into a bitter smile. “You mean the one with three sentences and three banknotes?”
Her face heated.
“Yes, I received that.”
“Then why are you here?”
He took a stride toward her and she stepped back.
He stopped, his expression one of barely suppressed fury. “What the hell happened between the time we said goodbye and three days later when I returned to London?”
“You were back in three days?” she blurted.
He brushed aside the question. “I deserve an answer. You told me you would be in London, that you would be wa—” His hot blue gaze slid to something over her shoulder and his jaw sagged.
Oona closed her eyes and groaned. “I thought I told you to stay inside, Katie,” she said before pivoting to face her daughter.
“I’m sorry, Mama. But I just wanted—”
“You have a daughter!”
Oona opened her mouth but before she could answer Katie stepped forward, her forehead furrowing, her expression mulish—a look Oona had to admit she’d inherited from her. “Don’t shout at my Mama.” She stepped beside Oona and slid her hand around her waist, her nine-year-old body quivering to do battle on Oona’s behalf.
Juss shook his head. “Good God—it’s a little Oona.”
A Second Chance for Love: A Bachelors of Bond Street Novella Page 9