His mouth. That was his mouth on her sex again. Her eyes rolled back, eyelids shutting, and she wrenched with sobs. Long, languid licks. He bit, and she couldn’t help but grind down against the sparking thrill.
He was all over her. Mouth against her sex, fingers ringing her opening. He rubbed evening stubble against her inner thighs in a soft wash of pain, then dragged his chin over her center. When he plunged his tongue into her, she lost her battle and cried out.
He stroked two fingers where his tongue had been. The embracing, pushing pleasure against the front of her channel rolled clear through her.
Her fingertips scrabbled against the wood of the desk, nails catching and digging. She didn’t want to get away, but staying still was entirely beyond her.
“This.” He spoke against her skin, against her most secret places, as calm as if he’d asked for a cup of tea. “This is only the beginning. I could give you the world. I could flip you up and down in so many ways you don’t know. More than that, I’d make you beg for it.”
She nodded before realizing he couldn’t see her. She tried to dampen her lips. “Promises, promises,” she said, ignoring the fact that it sounded rather more like a croak than an enticement.
She never could have guessed the immense rewards. He laughed. There, with his mouth against her flesh and his fingers in her cunny, he laughed. It rocked through her body, turned her into something less and something more at the same time. And he drew her out into a million crackling points of pleasure.
Ian loved making Lottie come. He swelled with power and satisfaction, combined with the sense of providing for his woman. But underneath it burned frustration he couldn’t force away. He couldn’t make the growling, animal part of himself calm. The taste of her under his mouth wasn’t enough to soothe. Even the idea of fucking her senseless wasn’t enough.
He needed base and crude things. An acknowledgment that something could be salvaged of their incendiary explosion.
She refused to give it to him. Her fine and formal evening gown hitched up around her waist so she looked half like a princess and half like a misused whore. His hands slid and skipped over her skin. Softness over the bite of her sharp pelvic bones pressed against the desk.
She tossed her head. Red locks had come unpinned, tumbling around her face. The single light in the room cast long fingers of shadow over them both. She refused to give him reality. Her mouth curved into a grin—that false one he was coming to hate.
“You’re all talk. I knew it. Nothing so much of punishment in that.” Her jaw cracked on a yawn, and he wasn’t sure if she meant it or not. If he bored her. “You’re not right about everything, you know that? You’ve your own lies that you tell.”
“You’re the biggest liar of them all.”
“Maybe.” Her hands were flat on the desk. Her ass elevated when she rose up on her toes. Between her thighs winked the glistening crescent of her sex. “You have this perfect image of the family you’ve always wanted. You’ve never questioned it. A sweet wife and a half dozen children, exactly as you’ve imagined. Like your father wished for you. But I know one thing that you don’t seem to.”
He ought to let go of her. With her taste across his tongue, she was temptation incarnate. He wasn’t sure what he was resisting at this point. Those bridges weren’t burned, they’d been hacked to kindling first. “What’s that?”
She lifted up on her elbows far enough to twist and look at him. Her smile was cold. He folded over her back and tasted it with his own mouth. The instant he pulled away, she started talking again, much to his regret. His grip curled into her waist mean enough that he pinched her ribs.
“You, Ian. You’re not the man you think you are.” Her fingers were cool and gracious on his jaw. “You’ve got a guilty, filthy soul.”
Maybe she was right, because his hand delved into the tumbled mass of her hair and twisted tight. Her hips pushed up and out. Seeking him. “Unlike you, I’ve control of myself.”
“No you don’t.” She laughed. “If you did, you wouldn’t have me pinned to a desk. You wouldn’t still need to punish me.”
“Not true.”
“Do it.” She licked her lips with her pink tongue. The way she gazed at him was as savage as he felt. “Perhaps I need a little punishment. I wasn’t disciplined as a child. I’m everything reckless. Make me feel it.”
His hand flew of its own command. Up into the air, then scoring back down again until he slapped the flesh of her small, curvaceous ass. The sound snapped through the room. He jerked his hand back. There on the white skin was a perfect print, all the way down to fingers and thumb.
He did it again.
She cried out. Her hands flattened. She melted down, her chest meeting the desk. But she pushed her bottom into the third blow. Then the fourth. By the fifth, she was sobbing into her shoulder.
He hesitated. Long enough to feel the press of his cock against the inside of his trousers. What had once been fairly comfortable, innocuous fabric now scraped like a thousand granules of sand across his sensitive flesh.
He was so damned. So wrong. Everything about this was wrong. He should stop them. Make this end.
“Do it,” she taunted. Her spine curved in a sinuous arch toward him. “Don’t you stop, don’t think it. Make me burn.”
He continued. Five more blows. Her sex quivered at the next to last. She moaned long and loud. The tenth slap was still echoing in the room when he loosed his trousers and stripped his jacket down his arms. He yanked his shirt off over his head, and she was still crying when he sank his cock deep in her wet sheath. “Here, yes? This is what you wanted?”
Her fingers twitched on the desk. Her moans turned into a husky mewl. “You don’t know. I get lost. I lose myself. Here...”
He thrust his hips against the heat coming off her bruised flesh. He should have been nicer. Should have backed down from the precipice that he’d found.
Instead he sank his grip into her ass. Her flesh felt different. Firmness came from the swollen flesh combined with pure heat pouring off her. He wasn’t appeased. Wasn’t comforted. Not in any meaningful way.
He was leading with his body, with his cock. Fucking her deep wouldn’t fix any of this. Once he spent, she’d still be as troublesome as she’d been an hour ago. He’d still be unable to forget her, unable to see a way clear of the mess she’d created.
Somewhere these terrible truths made reality, but not so long as he was inside her. Not so long as he could seek the front of her dress and tuck his fingers down her bodice. Her nipples were tight already, and he played and pinched the perfect little beads. Her cunt pulled at him with her wetness. Her cries and moans filled the shadowy room.
He wanted to go away on the pleasure. Wanted to let it coast over him like something dark and meaningless.
That was the problem altogether. It wasn’t meaningless—yet it didn’t mean enough either.
He withdrew, but he couldn’t make himself go far. She reached backwards. Her fingers scrabbled over his hip, to his waist. She tried to hold him to her.
“No, don’t stop.” She panted. Her eyes were glassy and her cheeks flushed with red. “Don’t. I need this.”
“Why?” He gathered her close, yanking and pawing at her dress until she shrugged and helped. It stripped off her body and crumpled in a pile to the side. He spun her so her ass pushed against the carved desk. She hissed. He didn’t relent.
So very ruined.
She shook her head. “I wish I knew. I...I can’t.”
Her fingers traced over his chest in a soft caress until she reached the hair above his cock. Her nails scratched and tangled. His turn to hiss, but he wouldn’t let go of her hips. He hitched one of her knees over his forearm. She was a lewd masterpiece. He sank three fingers deep in her quim, then moved back up to circle the top of her sex.
“You will,” he said eventually. He dragged his gaze up her body. Lean. Long. The bare curves of her breast, tipped with pink. “Tell me you want me.”
“That’s because your body knows.” He edged the head of his cock over her wet slit, delving between her lips. A tease and back out again. “Because this part of us is perfect.”
She arched back on one arm and swept the other around his neck to insist he come closer so that she could whisper in his ear. “And the rest of us is so very wrong, isn’t it?”
He buried his face against her neck as he thrust. There was so much of her that he knew to be perfection. She was beauty and grace. And fury. It was the fury he didn’t know if he could handle. But it didn’t seem right to agree while he fucked her. He claimed her in a deep stroke that made her nails sink into his neck and pleasure rock up through his chest and down to his toes. He was as lost as she was.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse with gasps and a soft, keening moan when he slid up the front of her sheath. He pressed two fingers to her cunt, pinched her lips against the slide and thrust of his cock. She dug her nails into his ass. “I understand. I wanted you and I took you. All this other stuff is unfair.”
“Not unfair. Unexpected.”
Their chests rubbed together with every surge. Sweat sheened. Their breath was jerky, abandoned.
“You were both wrong and right.” She bit his earlobe, then licked away the sting. “I don’t hate myself, but I don’t hate the rest of them either.”
His grip above her thigh squeezed. He wrenched her up so the angle of her hips shifted. Stroke and fuck and take. All wrapped together. “Me? Do you hate me?”
She didn’t answer. Part of him wanted to take it for affirmation. Except she burst apart into orgasm. Her agreement was there in the husky keening of her cries and the way her body clenched, tried to bind him to her. The clasp was too much. She dug nails into his neck and then pushed him away as fast. Her hand slid across his sweat-dampened chest.
“Bloody fucking hell,” he grunted. He slipped out of her sheathe at the last second. His release jerked lashing euphoria from his spine and from that guilty, filthy soul she’d mentioned. As spiky pleasure washed him with gooseflesh and loosened his knees, he knew what was coming.
She panted, her arm still looped around his neck, her other hand resting on his chest. Her head stayed lowered. She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—look at him.
“I don’t hate you, I swear it. Me. I hate what I could become. What I feel like tonight.” Her huge and damaged eyes flashed up at him. He wasn’t big enough to wipe away that pain. Nothing ever would be, not so long as she was so very frightened of herself.
Her throat tightened on a swallow, and his chest tightened in tandem. Breath rasped his lungs. Whatever she was about to say, he wasn’t going to like it.
“I can’t inflict this on anyone else. I’ve told you that.” She pushed him away. A nude study in beauty, from her dips and bones to the softness of her curves. “That includes you. Goodbye, Ian.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The intensity with which Sera and Victoria watched Lottie made her feel like she would fall out of her own skin at any moment. Or maybe that was what came from missing Ian. No matter which, it turned out that she’d found a more miserable way to live. Joy and kittens and rainbows to all.
In the reception hall they rented quarterly for the school’s social mixers, she directed a small army of girls in assembling flowers in vases and decorating the walls with swags of bunting. Sera and Victoria sat near the front entrance, counting dance cards against expected attendees.
But they watched her the whole time. Though she tried her best to not look back at them, she knew they whispered. The guilt rained down on her like hail.
“That’s it, girls. Continue as you are. Remember, we’re aiming for beauty. Not conformity. Have fun at your tasks,” she said before patting a girl on the shoulder and heading toward her two best friends in the world.
Victoria’s expression was warm, her cheeks rounded. Her smile was small but enough of a reassurance she didn’t hate Lottie. “Are you finally ready to talk about it?”
“Certainly not,” Lottie said with as much of a chuckle as she could muster. “I don’t intend to talk. That wouldn’t be at all like my family. Who bothers with such nonsense?”
Sera leaned across the small table piled with dance cards and tiny pencils and took Lottie’s hand. She squeezed tight. “Those who need it.”
Lottie shook her head. If she released one tiny fraction, the rest would come spilling behind. A dam crumbling under the weight of everything she didn’t know how to assess. She’d drown. “What I need is for this evening to continue without a hitch. We must truly be impeccable. After my recent peccadillo, we must be prepared for a level of examination we’re unaccustomed to.”
“Peccadillo?” Sera echoed.
She and Victoria traded a measured glance. Lottie wanted to send the perfect squares of parchment flying. Yes, she’d ruined everything. She’d risked all she held dear and then gone ahead and thrown away the one person who made her heart feel whole. That didn’t mean she needed her supposed friends passing judgment on her choices.
She had reasons.
As a small blessing, her father had retreated back to the country. He’d packed up the very next morning in typical cowardly fashion. Lord Cameron had gone along, but if he hadn’t left the city, Lottie wished him well. There was no reason for her inappropriate outburst to ruin his time in London.
It wasn’t as if she’d staked out the entire city as her territory. If that were true, Ian would have gone home to the country.
He’d not. Reports and gossip told her he’d remained and escorted his sister to event after play after musicale. How very lucky he was to be male and rich. Such minor issues were gladly overlooked, while Henrietta benefitted from whispers he’d increased her dowry as an intentional distraction. Sera and Victoria had engaged in only the most minor socializing. Enough to make it clear they were unafraid of the talk.
Lucky for Victoria, her parents were out of the country. They had accompanied Victoria’s stodgy fiancé, Lord Ashby, on a diplomatic mission and left Victoria under the aspect of her doddering aunt. By the time the trio returned home, a much grander scandal would hopefully absorb Society’s attention.
Not that Lottie could imagine what would be grand enough to wash away the ton’s memory of her dramatic Sturm und Drang. Perhaps if the queen married her groundskeeper, Lottie would have a chance.
Her temples throbbed with sudden and abrupt pain. She rubbed them, but it didn’t alleviate the urge to run. Flee. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Or enter her. An absurd giggle almost overwhelmed her. She’d lost her mind. Completely.
“Why don’t you two go home to dress. I’ll make sure everything gets finished up here. We’re almost ready as it is.”
Victoria rose and took Lottie’s hand. “We want to be here for you.”
Her kindly strokes up and down Lottie’s arm were both relieving and frightening and even a little bit annoying. Lottie wanted to draw into herself, not be comforted. She’d crumble if given the slightest bit of encouragement. As subtly as she could manage, she pulled away. “You’ll help me best by making sure you’re ready to take over if I need you to.”
Sera stood as well. They flanked her, one on each side. She wanted to sag. After all, they’d hold her up. But then nothing would put her back together again. “We only want you to know that we’re here for you. That we love you. With enough time, everything will pass.”
Braced between her two best friends in the world, she could admit to herself she desperately missed Ian. That wouldn’t pass. Even if she still couldn’t say the words to anyone else, she knew it. She missed the way he’d drop by the school unannounced, offering information about Patricia’s whereabouts or the likelihood that she’d be f
ound in any particular place. Or the times she’d finagled him into returning for tea. Those had gone better once her mother wasn’t throwing herself into ponds.
She missed talking with him. He’d been steadying. Calming. A safe harbor, a place she could return to and count out her treasures. She missed touching him and kissing him and knowing that she had a measure of connection in the world. She missed having someone who relished her attentions.
Mother hadn’t been out of her room for the two weeks since the ball. Some days, she never made it out of bed. She claimed to be recuperating and reading, but many days she didn’t turn on a lamp, and she kept the curtains closed against the encroaching sun.
Lottie was going to lose control soon. So very soon.
She smiled first at Sera and then at Victoria. “Go, ladies. I’m well. I promise.”
And they believed her.
Of course they did. It wasn’t as if she had pushed him away for pure caprice. This constant, unrelenting pressure inside her head was proof of that if nothing else. She was riding the sharp edge of madness. There was no reason to inflict that sort of pain on anyone else.
With plenty more low-pitched words and assurances they’d return before the event started that evening, Sera and Victoria gathered their cloaks and departed. Lottie was left with the half dozen servants and school-goers she directed toward making the room acceptable. The event would go on. This was balance. This was what she’d put her energy into over the years.
The school would go on no matter what. They operated below the rungs of her usual societal acquaintances. So long as they kept their accustomed people, everything would be normal. She hoped.
Fifteen minutes later she waved Maria away so the girls could return to the school and get dressed in their finest clothing, which had been specifically sewn for the occasion. How thrilled they all were. They walked away in a giggling, twisting spill of happy voices.
Lottie envied them. She shut the door and set about gathering up the last few scraps of ribbon and tulle on the floor. The room was large and empty. Low ceilings weren’t particularly attractive, but they’d done their best to make the space pleasant. Once it was filled with eager gentlemen and the ladies Lottie had helped create, it would be entirely different and more enjoyable.
An Indiscreet Debutante Page 21