This afternoon, he’d turned up in a lather, too. She loved how he was always so avid to have her.
Perhaps she should reconsider her plans to replace him. At least while desire still burned so hot. As she’d said to him, he was always as jumpy as a cat on a stove after seeing his father. The day that Eliot had suggested making their liaison public, he’d just endured a whole month under Deerforth’s roof.
Then Eliot, plague take him, went and spoiled all her favorable thoughts by reaching across the tiny gap between them and curling his fingers around hers. Such a simple – such a chaste! – gesture, yet it shuddered through her like a blow. Verena offered her amours carnal pleasure. She didn’t offer them anything that smacked of emotional connection.
But as, against her good judgement, she twined her hand around his, she could no longer deny that she was in trouble. After seven years of enjoyable adventures that hadn’t come near to touching her heart, this affair with Eliot was different.
Terrifyingly different.
“I should get up and wash,” she said, hearing the reluctance in her voice.
“Not yet,” he said peacefully.
To the devil with her, she heeded his command and didn’t move. Despite masculine commands being another thing that she’d banned from her life.
For an interval, they rested in silence. The panicked rush of Verena’s blood slowed. Because while encouraging this closeness was the last thing she wanted, she couldn’t deny that it was very pleasant to lie here, holding Eliot’s hand while the waves of titanic pleasure ebbed.
Early sunset descended to deepen the coziness. The hour of his departure approached. That thought aroused a pang of regret, but she was so relaxed that she didn’t even try to stifle it.
“Are you going out tonight?” he asked idly.
“Yes, there’s some nonsense on at the Theatre Royal that everyone is talking about.”
Verena couldn’t summon much enthusiasm for the outing. She’d rather stay here with Eliot, who was one of the few people she knew who didn’t expect her to glitter. She was rather tired of glittering, but it was what the world expected of brazen Verena Gerard.
How ironic that before she came to know him, she’d imagined Eliot sitting in perpetual judgement on her capricious ways. Yet he was the only person in her world who seemed content to let her be what she wanted to be.
“I saw it on Wednesday. You’re right, it’s nonsense, but amusing. You’ll enjoy it.”
Somehow she doubted it. “Are you going somewhere with Imogen?”
His sister had arrived in Town this week. While she found her feet in the ton, Eliot would accompany her in public. Later in the season, Verena supposed that he’d become more of a free agent, although he’d still escort Imogen to the most important events.
“Yes. Mrs. Bilson’s ball is tonight.” He didn’t sound particularly eager to go out either.
“She’s very pretty.”
“Mrs. Bilson?”
After their exertions over the previous hours, Verena’s puff of laughter was weary. “No, you fool. Imogen.”
Two nights ago, Verena had seen the girl at the opera. She didn’t look at all like Eliot. Instead, she was small and delicate, with porcelain white skin and masses of shining black hair.
“She’ll make quite a splash,” she said. “I imagine she’ll be wed before the summer.”
“Father is pushing a match with Lord Chippenham.”
Horror flooded Verena. For once, the cause of her alarm wasn’t her insidious and growing affection for Eliot. “Don’t let it happen.”
Eliot released her hand. She told herself that she didn’t want to snatch it back, although she did.
“Why?” As he rose on one elbow to stare down at her, the drowsy languor seeped out of his gray eyes. “What do you know about him?”
Verena struggled to push away a raft of tormenting memories. “I haven’t heard he’s violent, if that’s what’s worrying you.” Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t. “He’s too old for her.”
“Yes.” Eliot studied her face.
She had an uncomfortable feeling that he saw more than she wanted him to. If he saw anything at all, it was more than she wanted him to. Verena still bore scars from her marriage, but she refused to wallow in self-pity. Not to mention that if she truly meant to break with Eliot, sharing confidences was self-defeating.
Nonetheless, the idea of that sweet child forced into an arranged match with an overbearing old man made her nauseous. “And he already has three children. The oldest girl must be close to the same age as Imogen.”
Which promised a household poisoned with spite and jealousy, even if Imogen found her middle-aged bridegroom to her taste.
“Father wants Chippenham’s support in parliament.” As ever, when Eliot mentioned his father, his musical baritone went as flat as Lincolnshire fenland.
“What does Imogen want?”
To her surprise, a wry smile lengthened his mouth. “Imogen wants to go home and supervise the installation of a fountain in the south parterre at Hamble Park.”
That surprised a laugh out of Verena. “She doesn’t want a season?”
Eliot’s expression softened. He loved his sister, something Verena both admired and envied. She had two older brothers. When she was a child, both of them had viewed her as an irrelevant nuisance. Since she’d run amok as a widow, neither of them had acknowledged her existence.
Imogen was lucky to have Eliot as a brother, although when it came to a loving parent, she was no luckier than Verena had been.
“So she says. At length. And she’s not pleased with Father’s marital schemes either.”
“Good.”
“I’m hoping she settles to staying in London until summer, though. At this stage, Father isn’t pushing her too hard in Chippenham’s direction, but he’s spent a fortune on bringing her to Town. He’s rented a house in Lorimer Square. He’s bought her an extravagant wardrobe. He’s planning a ball for her. Before he lets her throw all that away, he’ll lock her in her room.”
“As long as he doesn’t beat her and starve her into submitting to his will.”
When Eliot’s gaze sharpened, Verena cursed the way her tongue ran away with her. Before she could change the subject, he reached over to stroke her cheek. The tender touch slammed through her. How bizarre that such a gentle contact should have the power to stop her heart.
“Is that what happened to you?”
Her eyes flickered away, and she pulled free of his caress, pushing up against the pillows. The act of rejecting his concern wrenched at something inside her. The idea of leaning against Eliot and finding shelter in all that manly strength was too tempting. She really had to move on from him before she made a complete cake of herself.
“George Gerard wasn’t an ideal match,” she said with artificial carelessness, because the wretched truth was that her husband’s cruelties haunted every minute of every day. “But it was a long time ago.”
“Not that long.” Eliot’s concern didn’t ease. “He had a reputation as a hard man on his servants and his horses and his dogs. I can’t imagine he was any kinder to a wife.”
Verena lay so stiff that her muscles ached. And stupidly, she felt the prickle of tears, when she’d stood dry-eyed beside her husband’s deathbed. She’d sworn then that the odious swine stretched out before her, struggling for his last breaths, would never make her shed another tear.
He’d died glaring his hatred but unable to voice a curse upon her head. She’d been glad, because the last words that she spoke to George were a promise to take every man in London into his ancestral bed and enjoy them in a way that she’d never enjoyed her spouse.
Now she didn’t weep for her vile husband, but because of the gentleness in Eliot’s voice. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me,” she muttered. “I may have had a dreadful six years with George, but it’s been nothing but gaiety and pleasure since.”
Which was true. Although now that she’d taken El
iot as her lover, she couldn’t help feeling that her frantic striving after forgetfulness held a touch of futility.
At twenty-three, she’d felt brave and daring when she launched her career as a wild widow. Even aside from discovering what a good lover could do for her, she’d so enjoyed knowing how George would loathe her profligacy. He’d once beaten her black and blue for smiling at a footman in a way he hadn’t liked. Of course, he’d beaten her for other things, too. Every time some man shoved his cock deep inside Verena, the knowledge that she spat in the late Lord George’s eye spiced her pleasure.
At thirty, she’d lost some of her gusto for new bedmates, although she continued to enjoy sexual relations. The men she chose knew how to arouse a woman. On the rare occasion that she mistook a paramour’s skill, he didn’t last. She treated men like toys, entertaining while they were new, easy to cast away once she’d finished playing with them.
How she’d love to treat Eliot like a toy, too, but from the first, this affair had taken her to places that she’d never been before. Places where the dashing, heartless, witty widow disappeared, and she caught a glimpse of the vulnerable girl she’d been before her father and her husband had conspired to tame her.
Without success, she was proud to say.
Now she feared that Eliot Ridley might defeat her, when nobody else had. And he’d do it with kindness, which seemed even more ironic.
Eliot didn’t react to her sudden spurt of temper. He was in general a calm man. Instead, he persisted in regarding her as if he saw right to her soul. Which was ridiculous, because she didn’t have a soul.
What she had was a body that was hungry for carnal delight. In seven years, that hadn’t changed. With Eliot, she was as greedy as she’d ever been. More.
“How could I feel sorry for you?” he said evenly. “You’re magnificent.”
Disbelief arched Verena’s eyebrows. “Magnificent?”
“Yes, magnificent.” He bent to kiss her. Despite the trouble that he caused her, she kissed him back. “Strong and invincible and beautiful.”
At least he was no longer prying into the miseries of her marriage. Verena had no intention of allowing him to revive the subject.
She and Eliot were such different people. He was good to the bone, and she gloried in her sinfulness. But one thing they shared was an intense sexual appetite. If his touch had the power to dissolve her into a puddle of honey, hers turned him as hard as granite. When they’d first come together, his impressive virility had been a marvelous surprise.
He might be a saint, but he was a deuced potent one.
Verena knew just how to distract him from unwelcome questions. She curled her hand around the back of his neck and drew him down for another kiss, this one more purposeful. She used her tongue and teeth to tell him that the last thing that she wanted to do right now was talk.
When his groan against her lips sounded like surrender, satisfaction flooded her. Even as her body softened and heated in preparation for a different kind of satisfaction.
It was a pity that her liaison with Eliot threatened to become too complicated. Because she was a long way from growing jaded with the magic he conjured from her body.
Which only made her more desperate now.
Still kissing her, he rolled over and settled between her legs. He’d hardened fast. He always did. As a pleased little chuckle escaped her, one seeking hand reached down to test his readiness.
“Oh, lover,” she sighed in anticipation. She squeezed him to spur him into action.
He wasn’t quite ready to yield to her demands. Verena loved those encounters when they seemed to share a single mind as their bodies joined. She also loved it when sex turned into a continuation of a silent argument.
This was one of those occasions. She knew that Eliot wanted to discover more about her marriage, although Lord knew why. It wasn’t an edifying story.
As he caught her hand and brought it to his lips, she felt the tension rise between them. Verena liked to maintain the advantage. She never quite managed it with Eliot, who for all his even temper and kindness, possessed an inner strength that awed her. He didn’t rage and threaten and carry on like a child when he wanted his way. But once he set his sights on something, he was a determined opponent.
In his quiet way, he was the most formidable man she’d ever known.
And dear God, he knew how to touch her. He slid down her body, tracing sizzling paths with his mouth. He took his time on her breasts. Eliot loved her breasts. He could bring her to orgasm playing with her nipples alone.
Today, he used his teeth until she was panting and writhing. But before she could slip over into rapture, he moved lower to bury his head between her legs.
Verena gave a choked growl of approval and raked her hand through the thick silk of his fair hair. He licked her cleft with a luxurious thoroughness that had her trembling anew. He caught her thighs and spread them wide, opening her for his wicked depredations.
Eliot took his time, concentrating on the pearl of flesh that sent lightning streaking through her. A liquid rush of pleasure overwhelmed her. She slammed over into a climax that had her seeing stars, then into another that left her quivering on a rack of pleasure.
As his tongue tormented her, he made low sounds of enjoyment. Her grip on his hair tightened as she spasmed again, then collapsed back against the sheets in exhaustion.
Her frantic grasp loosened to a fumbling caress. Every bone in her body had melted into syrup. She closed her eyes and struggled to fill her starving lungs.
Verena felt him move, then the sublime pleasure of his large, beautiful cock penetrating her. She was so wet that he slid into her with silky ease. She shifted to take him deeper, although he’d wrung every ounce of vigor from her when he pleased her with his mouth.
Oh, that mouth. The eighth wonder of the world.
Although perhaps the ninth, because he knew what to do with his dick, too.
Slow waves of pleasure lapped over her, as he adopted a driving rhythm as powerful as the tides. By the time he withdrew, she was quaking with another climax. Through half-open eyes, she watched him sit up and grab for a towel from the bedside table.
She loved to observe his face when he found his bliss. The skin clung to those perfect bones, and his eyes became opaque and distant. It was as if this private Eliot was hers alone.
Verena lifted a hand that felt like it weighed a ton and laid it on his thigh, feeling his release vibrate under her palm. “Thank you,” she said, her voice thick. “That was glorious.”
He wiped himself off and cast the crumpled towel to the floor. “Yes, it was.”
When he leaned down to kiss her, she was too weary to inject much passion into her response. The salty flavour of his lips reminded her of how his mouth had sent her flying up beyond the clouds.
Raising his head, he smiled down at her. “I really must go. It’s late.”
The room had grown dim and shadowy, the only light coming from the fire. She should light some candles. “I’d offer you dinner, but I need to dress for the theater.”
Where she’d meet people she didn’t care about and watch a play that held no interest. She’d rather stay here with Eliot. The thought conveyed an odious tinge of domesticity, but she was too well pleasured to summon her usual prickly reaction.
“I can’t let Imogen down, and the Bilsons have invited us to dine first.” Despite what he said, he remained propped on one elbow, studying her. “I’ll see you next Friday.”
“Yes,” she said and heard the regret in her voice. Friday seemed an age away. “I’m sure our paths will cross during the week.”
When they’d pretend to be strangers. It was one of the inconveniences of this affair. Her other lovers had all been as disreputable as she was, but Eliot needed to maintain his good name. Even more so, now that he helped his sister to navigate her first season.
He left the bed and walked with that long graceful prowl toward the dressing room where he’d wash and dress.
Verena lay exactly where she was, enjoying the sight of those firm buttocks clenching and releasing with each step. Long scratches scored his back. When he left to hobnob with people who despised her, he’d bear her secret mark. That was a thrill that never failed.
Eliot lingered in the doorway and glanced back with a piercing light in his gray eyes. “That was splendid, Verena. But don’t imagine that sex will always help you to dodge questions you don’t want to answer.”
Before she could summon an adequate response, he disappeared into the dressing room.
Chapter 4
The Lumsden ball was held in their magnificent mansion in Lorimer Square. It was always accounted one of the highlights of the London season. This year, the event was more spectacular than usual, because it also served as the official launch for their daughter Harriet Comerford.
Verena stood with Celia and Freddie Edgecombe and fanned herself idly, as she studied the Comerford chit. Pretty. Blonde. Lively. She was already acclaimed as a diamond of the first water. The Lumsdens should have no trouble marrying her off in style.
Harriet was great friends with Eliot’s sister Imogen. Down in the wilds of Gloucestershire, the Lumsdens and Ridleys were neighbours. The two girls were inseparable, although at this moment, when Verena glanced around the ballroom, Imogen was nowhere to be seen.
The rest of her family was present, though. Near the French doors, Deerforth was holding forth on some topic dear to his heart to a clearly bored Lady Tierney. The mousy cousin was here somewhere, too, Verena was sure. After dancing with Elizabeth Tierney, Eliot was escorting her back to her mother, which might offer that lady some relief from Deerforth.
Elizabeth Tierney was as pretty as Lily Bilson. Another girl who would make Eliot an excellent wife, which must explain why Verena wanted to scratch the little poppet’s big brown eyes out.
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