by Merry Farmer
“No,” her father answered, barely looking at Fabian. “There’s no problem at all.”
Without another glance at either Fabian or Alice, he marched off, weaving through several couples walking out to form new lines for the next dance and nearly upsetting a footman carrying a tray of empty punch glasses. He stormed through the ballroom door and out into the hall.
Alice let out a breath once he was gone, pressing a hand over her raging heart. “Thank heavens,” she whispered, though the pressure only felt partially removed. The air still sizzled, as though her father’s machinations weren’t done yet.
“Would you care to dance, my love?” Fabian asked with far more affection than Alice felt she deserved, but which she needed all the same.
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” she said, taking Fabian’s hand and walking with him to the center of the room.
Although judging by the spark in his eyes, quite a few things would give her more pleasure than merely dancing with him. She prayed she would get the chance to experience passion with him again and that her father’s schemes didn’t ruin everything.
Chapter 7
Dancing with Fabian was like walking out of a cramped and smoky house and into a pristine, spring garden, as far as Alice was concerned. It didn’t even bother her that the steps of the dance frequently split them apart so that they were unable to carry on a conversation. With her father out of the room, Fabian had returned to normal. Judging by the way he executed the complicated steps of the dance with razor-sharp precision, he had no more been in his cups earlier than she had. The whole thing had been a ruse, and it was glorious to feel as though she was a part of it.
“Whatever possessed you to behave like such a buffoon earlier?” she asked all the same once the dance was over and Fabian escorted her to the side of the room.
Fabian glanced around, mischief sparkling in his eyes, before leaning closer to her and murmuring, “It was all part of a plot to save you, my dearest.”
A strange, swooping sensation fluttered through Alice’s stomach. She felt her cheeks go pink as she glanced up at him, not sure whether to smile or to feel like the lowest worm in one of his gardens. He watched her with absolute genuineness, affection that she didn’t deserve radiating from him. She’d been such a ninny, shunning him as just another piece in her father’s marriage games. And while a part of her thought she was justified in lumping Fabian into the same category as Lord Sloane or Mr. Garland, she felt as though her heart should have known better all along.
“Why would you want to save a silly miss like me?” she asked as they reached the side of the room, lowering her head.
“You’re my fiancée,” Fabian said.
She glanced up at him, shocked to find a look of surprise in his eyes. “I haven’t given you any reason to like me,” she said, her heart beating faster.
He let out a breath, bursting into a smile and resting his hand on the side of her face. “You’ve given me a great many reasons to like you.”
“This summer, perhaps,” she sighed, lowering her eyes even though he kept her from bowing her head. “I haven’t behaved well since arriving at your mother’s house.”
“I’ve come to see why, though,” he said in a more serious voice. He dropped his hand and shifted to stand beside her, his hands clasped behind his back. Alice wondered why until she saw a cluster of matronly, older women frowning at them in disapproval. “Your father is a villain,” Fabian went on.
“He’s my father,” Alice sighed, assuming a respectable pose at his side. The old biddies tilted their noses up in grudging approval and went on with their conversation. Alice decided she truly hated being in the middle of a crowded ball when her heart and mind were at sixes and sevens. “One cannot choose one’s father.”
“No,” Fabian agreed. “But one can marry and get away from him.”
She peeked sideways at him, arching one eyebrow. “Do you truly think it will be that easy to escape from my father and his wheedling ways?”
Fabian dropped all pretense of pretend respectability and faced her fully again, taking her hands in his. “He can try to interfere all he wants, but I won’t let him.”
She sent him a weak smile. “I am grateful for the sentiment, but I doubt escape will be possible. You do not know the man like I do.”
To her surprise, Fabian merely shrugged at her gloomy prediction. “If it comes to it, we will decamp from England and take up residence on my Italian lands. In fact, I would prefer if we did regardless.”
Alice frowned in confusion. “I thought Bonaparte took away your Italian holdings.”
An uncertain look pinched Fabian’s face. “The Congress of Vienna restored Italian independence. The Habsburgs are nominally in control again, though I hear there is a strong movement for the unification of the peninsula afoot. The entire process has been chaotic, but my father’s man of business has stayed near our land, even after my father’s death, and I have hired him to sort through the bureaucracy of reclaiming the Camoni lands. I expect to hear from him at any time saying all is clear and it is safe to return home.”
“Oh.” Alice pressed one hand to her heart. Perhaps there was a means of escaping her father after all.
No sooner had hope filled her than heartache set in again.
“He wants to call off the wedding,” she sighed, biting her lip and glancing out to the center of the ballroom, where Lord Farnsworth had joined the new dance with another female guest. “I know my father. I’ve observed the way he’s watched you and me and the events of the evening. I am certain he thinks he can broker a marriage with Lord Farnsworth now, as he is now the highest ranked, eligible man at this party.”
Fabian laughed. “Impossible.”
Alice glanced back to him, her brow lifting. Fabian scanned the room, then took her hand and led her swiftly toward the exit and into the hall. A good number of party guests had left the noise and bustle of the ballroom to carry on conversations in the hallway or some of the parlors nearby. Fabian whisked Alice past all of them. A slight frown creased his brow at the sight of so many other people who had invaded his mother’s house.
“There’s nothing for it,” he said at last, drawing her around the corner in the front hallway and up the main flight of stairs. “Some things need to be discussed in private.”
“And my father could be anywhere,” Alice added, looking around with extra intensity as they mounted the stairs.
“Matthew deliberately put himself forward as bait for your father,” Fabian said as they reached the second floor and started down a hallway that Alice recognized with a gasp. Fabian was taking her to his bedroom. “It was all part of the plan,” he went on as though nothing were at all untoward in him sneaking her to his most intimate space.
“What plan?” she asked, her body heating at the memory of what had happened the last time they were in his bedroom.
They reached his door, and Fabian pivoted to grin at her as he turned the handle. “The plan to convince you to marry me in spite of the match appearing to be a manipulation on your father’s part.”
Alice opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out. She could no more defend her previous stubbornness and the coldness with which she’d greeted Fabian upon arriving at Holly Manor than she could defy her father outright.
A moment later, as Fabian drew her into his bedroom and shut and locked the door behind her, she couldn’t have come up with any words at all if she’d tried. The familiar scent of his personal space ignited memories within her that left her short of breath. The sight of the bed reminded her of how she’d been bent double as he mastered her from behind. The warm light of the crackling fire made her feel as though she needed to shed every stitch of clothing she wore to keep from burning up.
“Has it worked?” Fabian asked, his voice deep, an impish grin spreading across his face.
“Has what worked?” Alice gulped at the wolfish glint in his eyes.
“Have I convinced you that I am no
t part of your father’s insidious plan?” He stepped flush with her, snaking one arm around her back to pull her close. “Have I convinced you to give yourself wholeheartedly to me?”
A shiver swept through Alice from her head to her toes, settling in her core. She rested her hands on his chest. Even through the layers of his formal attire, she could feel the pounding of his heart.
“Is this why you brought me here?” she asked, fiddling with the buttons of his jacket. “To ravish me so that I have no choice but to marry you.”
He answered with a lopsided grin. “To be fair, I did that the other night.”
“Yes, but that was a mistake,” she said, her breath coming in tighter gasps, pressing her breasts against the scooping line of her bodice. “This has a far more deliberate feel to it.”
He laughed low in his throat and drew his hands up to the tops of her short, puffed sleeves, then tugged them down to expose her shoulders. Her bodice was unforgivably tight, and though Alice had the feeling he might have intended to expose her breasts with one, forcible jerk, the result was to pin her arms to her sides and to make her feel all the more constricted.
“Yes,” he said, lowering his mouth to the line of her neck and brushing his lips across the top of her right shoulder. “This is deliberate.” He kissed her shoulder and nipped her tender flesh, even as his fingers stretched across her back, seeking out the ties holding her in her gown. “I plan to deliberately make love to you in such a scandalous way that your reputation would be forever ruined if so much as a hint of what we’ve done were to be made public.”
“Oh, my,” Alice whispered, closing her eyes and leaning her head back as he trailed kisses across the front of her chest.
He found and loosened the ties of her gown, then tugged the bodice lower. Her breasts popped free just as his kisses rained over their tops. His mouth closed firmly around her right nipple. She sighed and made a wicked sound of pleasure as he teased it into a pert point.
“You really do have the most extraordinary breasts,” he purred.
“They’re too big,” she gasped, her legs going wobbly as he brought one hand around to knead a breast and lave his tongue over its nipple.
“I like them big,” he said, glancing up at her with a predatory grin. “There are so many things you can do with a pair of sizable tits.”
His use of vulgar language triggered something delicious inside of her. She wriggled and shifted, doing what little she could to climb out of her restrictive clothing. “Such as?” she asked, breathless.
He seemed to sense what she wanted. He stepped back, walking behind her to undo the rest of the fastenings of her gown, then in front of her to push the whole thing down over her hips. It pooled on the floor around her feet as he went to work on the closures of her stays. Alice had been dressed and undressed by maids countless times in her life, but there was something deliciously erotic about being stripped by a man with such sensuality in his eyes. A fully clothed man at that. Fabian seemed in no hurry to remove his own clothes as he peeled away her layers, leaving her bare.
A needy shiver swirled up in her as he pulled away her stays and chemise, then undid her drawers and pushed them and her stockings down over her legs. “There,” he said when she was fully naked. “If anyone were to come through my bedroom door and see you like this, the scandal would be so great that you would be forced to marry me, no matter your father’s wishes.”
“But your door is locked,” she reminded him, every part of her fluttering. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. The wild idea that she should touch herself while he watched filled her, but she was too overcome with the desire to see him undress to do it.
Fabian glanced over his shoulder at the door, then back at her, one eyebrow raised. “So it is. Anything can happen to a woman when she is in a man’s bedroom with the door locked.”
“Anything?” she echoed, her voice high and thready.
“She might find herself savaged by a man with uncontrollable lusts.” He took a step toward her.
Alice backed up as he stalked her, until her legs hit the side of his bed. “Oh, my.”
“Do you want to be savaged, Alice?” he asked in a voice as dark and velvet as the night sky.
Alice swallowed, her throat going dry. The way he looked at her body, as if he wanted to devour her as thoroughly as he had the night before, left her knees too weak for her to stand much longer. All she could do was nod and blush.
“It’s difficult to be savaged by a man still dressed for a ball,” he said.
It was all the command he needed to give. Alice reached for him, working open the buttons of his jacket with shaking hands. A hint of a grin played across Fabian’s otherwise serious lips as she peeled his jacket back and started on the buttons of his waistcoat. He shrugged out of the jacket and tossed it aside, then disposed of the waistcoat as well as her hands dropped to the falls of his breeches.
His quick intake of breath was all the hint she had that he was pleased with what she was doing. His face remained an implacable mask of seriousness, although his eyes danced with mirth. There was something fun and erotic in the roles they’d fallen into so quickly. She was his submissive slave, helpless against whatever wicked things he wanted to do to her, and he was her master. The game made her bold and free to explore.
“What do you want from me, master?” she asked, blinking up at him as innocently as she could.
The flash of fire in Fabian’s eyes was a clear sign that he wanted to play as much as she did. “I want you to pleasure me,” he growled.
“Anything for you,” she said.
She finished with the fastenings of his breeches, pulled the hem of his shirt up, and slid her hands against his cock as it sprung free. He growled deep in his throat, biting his lip.
“More,” he demanded. “I want you on your knees.”
Every hint of naughty things women could do to men that Felicity and Eliza and the other young ladies at the Herrington’s house party had whispered about swirled back through Alice. She could barely catch her breath as she lowered herself to her knees, her head at the level of Fabian’s hips.
He peeled his shirt off and tossed it aside, then said, “Remove my boots.”
It wasn’t what Alice had expected but she did as she was commanded anyhow. Their game was nearly upended as his boots gave her a devil of a time coming off. There was nothing at all sensual about yanking and tugging while he was forced to step back and lean against the bedpost for balance. Alice caught herself laughing at one point, but that laughter died in her throat when his second boot came off, leaving her staring at his erection as it poked above the sagging front of his breeches.
“Remove my breeches,” Fabian ordered, leaning heavily against the bedpost and resting his arms behind his head.
“Yes, my lord,” Alice said, scooting closer and grasping the garment.
She tugged them down slowly, her senses running riot as she revealed his hips, his thighs, and the alluring sack that was pulled tight beneath his impossibly thick and hard penis. She licked her lips as she studied that part of him, pushing his breeches and stockings down until he was able to step out of them.
That left him fully naked in front of her. He stood with his feet slightly apart, watching her with heavy-lidded eyes.
“I want you to swallow my cock,” he said in a voice that resonated with desire and command. “As deep as you can. I want to see your lips tight around the base and hear you moan with pleasure as you sheath me.”
“Yes, my lord,” she managed in a shaky voice, aching with sinful desire.
She reached for him, caressing his sack and stroking his length. Prickles of desire broke out across her skin and her sex ached so desperately that she could feel it weeping. That only encouraged her to lean forward, bringing her mouth to the tip of his cock to tease and test it with a kiss.
The salty taste of him set her heart beating faster. He was hot and hard in her hand, and curiosity raged within her. She k
new what he felt like stretching her cunny, but she wanted to know what he would feel like in her mouth. She opened her mouth over his tip, tasting more of him and running her tongue across his slit. He sucked in a breath and groaned, tension rippling off of him.
He liked it. He liked what she was doing. That knowledge encouraged her. It filled her with power as she took a breath and drew more of him into her mouth. It was a strange sensation, like taking a bite of a delicious treat that was just a bit too much for her. Her tongue slipped along the underside of his cock as she slowly bore down on him, taking in as much of him as she could. He let out a wordless sound of delicious frustration and shifted his hips forward.
A moment of panic hit her as he went too far, nearly choking her. That panic quickly faded as she pulled back and took him in again on her own terms. She took her cues from him, sliding him in and out of her mouth, slowly at first, but with increasing speed and depth as he responded. She peeked up, excited by the look of abandonment on his face as she swallowed him. The look left her feeling paradoxically in control, and she gripped his thighs and made a long, low sound of pleasure.
“You’d be ruined if anyone saw you with my cock down your throat,” he growled. “So you’ll have to marry me now.”
“I never want to marry anyone else,” she said, taking a moment to breathe. “You’re the only man I’ll ever want.”
She drew him into her mouth again, teasing him with her tongue for a moment before steeling her nerve and taking in as much of him as she could. She let him fill her, moving on him with sureness of purpose until she could feel his body tense, near release.
“Dear God,” he gasped at last, pushing at her shoulders so that she rocked away from him. His cock sprung free, standing straight up between them. “Not like this,” he growled.
She opened her mouth to ask what he wanted, but no sound came out before he scooped her under her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. He practically threw her onto the bed, then grabbed her knees and wrenched them apart. He wore a look of absolute concentration that bordered on desperation as he spread her. With another, swift, strong movement, he pulled her hips right to the edge of the bed then plunged into her.