His throaty laughter.
It was low and soft, and husky from lack of use, but it was still laughter, nonetheless.
The unfamiliar sound lifted a heaviness from inside Lydia she had not even realized was there until it was removed.
It was replaced with something else, something which caused the breath to catch in her throat as Gideon’s laughter slowly came to a halt and he now gazed at her with warm and admiring eyes.
Gideon could not remember the last time he had laughed at anything, least of all anything even remotely connected with Harriet and their unhappy marriage.
He was also totally aware of the heat of Lydia’s palm through the linen of his shirt at it rested on his shoulder.
Lydia’s perfume was of roses and pine trees, no doubt from some oil she had poured into her bathwater earlier. But beneath that was a headier scent, that of warm woman and female arousal.
Gideon was surprised he was even able to detect the spicy allure of a woman’s body after so many years of not experiencing it. Harriet had never been aroused by anything they did together, and the whores Gideon had bedded since then were paid to groan and make encouraging noises for their customer, while their lack of any physical response—pebbled nipples, a slickness between their thighs—betrayed their feelings of detachment from the deed.
Gideon now breathed in the musky headiness of Lydia’s scent every time he inhaled. She was also standing so close to him, he could feel the heat given off by her body.
As for her hand upon his shoulder…
He could not remember the last time someone, anyone, had touched him voluntarily. It felt somehow alien to have someone do so after all this time, and yet Gideon knew that he wanted more of it. More of Lydia.
He closed his eyes, as if shutting out the vision of her would succeed in banishing his own desires.
Instead, they followed him behind those closed lids.
The need he felt to place his arm about her waist and pull her body in closer against his own.
The desire to press his face against the full softness of her breasts. To nuzzle her there before baring those pert globes and taking the engorged nipples into his mouth, one at a time, to taste, suckle, and bite them.
For one of his hands to be drawn along the silky length of her thigh toward that increasingly heady perfume which was the center of her arousal. For his fingers to gently part the petalled lips there and seek out the source of that slickness before using that wetness to stroke and caress the engorged button above.
He would revel in the increasing responsiveness of her nipples as he continued to lick, bite, and suck them, wanting to lick, bite, and suck between her thighs in the same way. To use his tongue to plunder between those wet folds and taste her nectar. To gorge himself upon it, drinking down that ambrosia as his fingers continued to pull and squeeze the plumpness of her nipples in the same way he was pulling and squeezing her engorged nubbin.
He could feel and taste all those things so clearly, it felt real rather than imagined.
He wanted to do all that to the accompaniment of the sound of Lydia’s gasps and groans as her juices gushed and she hurtled toward her climax.
Dear God, he could hear Lydia’s gasps and groans!
Gideon raised startled lids to find Lydia was leaning back against the edge of the kitchen table and his face was buried between her parted thighs. From there, he gazed up at the creamy softness of her bared breasts above where her robe was pushed aside, and the neckline of the night rail had been pulled beneath them. Her engorged nipples were as red as strawberries from the ministrations of his lips, teeth, and fingers.
“Don’t stop!” Lydia’s fingers clung to his shoulders as she looked at him pleadingly. Her eyes were feverish, cheeks flushed, her red and swollen lips slightly parted. “Gideon, please, do not stop!” she groaned encouragingly.
He wanted to give her what she was pleading for.
He wanted more. More of the feel of her. The taste of her. More of those audible and unashamed sounds she made of her arousal.
He also wanted to unfasten his trousers and release his hard-as-steel cock so that Lydia could suck on it and swallow down the copious amounts of pre-cum leaking from the slit at the top until he released rope after rope of his cum inside the hot and welcoming cavern of her mouth.
Gideon wanted all those things, but he knew he couldn’t have them.
Whatever trance he had fallen under, whatever dream he had believed himself to be in, one where Lydia desired him as much as he wanted her—her glistening pussy lips mere inches in front of him, the heady aroma of her arousal invading his senses, the fullness of her breasts tipped with those red and engorged nipples, the taste of her nectar on the slickness of his lips—reality said he couldn’t take this any further than he already had.
No doubt Lydia would hate him for doing so, but he had to put a stop to this now.
Chapter Six
“Cover yourself and go to bed!”
Lydia had already seen Gideon’s rejection of her reflected in his suddenly shuttered eyes before he even spoke the words.
Which did not make it any less humiliating for her when, holding gaze, he pushed his chair back noisily on the tiled floor. He then stood and wiped her juices from his lips with the back of his hand.
Or to be the focus of his cold gray eyes as he watched her through narrowed lids while she straightened the top of her night rail so that it once again covered her breasts, before pulling the material down over her thighs and legs. She stood and turned away from him while she refastened the tie of her robe about her waist with trembling fingers.
All of her trembled with need still.
For the caress of Gideon’s hands and mouth upon her body to continue.
For her to reach the pinnacle of whatever pleasurable plateau she had been hurtling toward.
She inwardly ached with that need.
A need the coldness of Gideon’s gaze told her he wasn’t about to satisfy.
Lydia raised her chin. “You do not have the right to look at me with such contempt when I know minutes ago, you felt the same desire I did.”
A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. “It is not contempt.” He did not, however, attempt to tell her what it was. “And I told you to cover yourself and go to bed.”
She looked at him searchingly for several painful minutes, but there was nothing for her to read from his expression as he continued to look at her with those icy-gray eyes.
She released a ragged breath. “I will wish you a good night, then, Your Grace.”
He nodded abruptly. “I wish you the same.”
Lydia doubted that was about to happen, as far as she was concerned, at least. She now ached too much, wanted too much, to be able to settle her body and clear her mind so that she could fall asleep.
She gave him one last pained glance before turning on her heel and crossing silently to the kitchen doorway.
“Do not come downstairs in the middle of the night again,” he called out harshly. “The consequences if you do might be more severe next time.”
Lydia’s footsteps faltered, but she didn’t stop or turn to face him. “I repeat, I am not frightened of you, Gideon.”
“Then you should be.”
The words were spoken so softly, Lydia wasn’t sure whether Gideon was talking to her still or to himself.
Either way, she gave him no reply but instead stepped out into the darkness of the hallway. She was able to use the moonlight shining in through the long windows in the entrance hall to light her way up the stairs and then down the hallway to her bedchamber.
She quickly shut and locked the door behind her, as if the devil himself were at her heels. When in reality, no one was. Neither the devil nor Gideon. Although, after tonight, she might very well think of him as being one of the Lord of Darkness’s disciples. Who but a man affiliated with the devil himself could have touched and caressed her to such heights of pleasure and need before stopping and rejectin
g with a finality that still hurt?
She hurt, damn it.
Everywhere.
She had overheard married women, gossiping together about the need for self-pleasure, after their husband had taken his release and fallen asleep without ensuring his wife attained that same release.
But, as there had been no details as to what that actually meant, Lydia had no idea how to ease the needs of her own body.
Instead, she paced her pink bedchamber until the light of dawn announced the arrival of morning, hating that fuchsia color more and more with each step she took.
She also thought far too much of Gideon and the intimacies they had shared during the night. Intimacies which caused her body to ache anew.
No wonder she couldn’t sleep with all these wants and desires churning inside her, refusing to be dampened, and no way of assuaging them herself.
As for how she and Gideon were to look at each other again later today, she had no idea. Or any of the days that followed until his guardianship of her was over.
By the time she heard her maid’s familiar tread outside in the hallway to indicate it was after seven o’clock in the morning, Lydia had decided she would face Gideon, and the sooner the better.
She had also decided she absolutely hated the obnoxious pink color in her bedchamber, to the degree she wanted to rip the offending curtains down off the walls before throwing them out of the windows. If she had her way, the bedcover would quickly follow them.
She turned toward the door as the briefest knock sounded before the handle was turned. The lock prevented it from opening. “Lady Lydia? Lady Lydia, open the door.” Mary’s voice revealed her concern with this unusual circumstance. “Are you feeling unwell? Do you need a physician?”
Lydia hurried to unlock the door and allow her maid to enter. She smiled at Mary rather than giving the reproof that if she were feeling unwell, she would hardly have gotten out of bed to lock the door so that she received no assistance with her affliction. “I am quite well, thank you, Mary. I was simply unaware I had locked the bedchamber door last night,” she said. “I must have done it without realizing after Miss Babcock left to go to her own room.”
“I’m not surprised.” Mary moved about the room picking up discarded towels and other detritus from Lydia’s and Charlotte’s baths the previous evening. “It’s a big and draughty old house, and that wind blowing fiercely through the trees outside and churning up the sea is enough to give you nightmares.” She gave a shiver of displeasure at their unfamiliar surroundings.
Mary had been born in and lived in London all her life, and Lydia could quite see why this move to the wilds of the Cornish coast might have unsettled her. “I did give you the choice as to whether or not you accompanied me here,” she reminded gently.
Mary sighed heavily. “As if I was ever going to leave you to come here alone after the things I heard said about His Grace in London.”
Lydia winced. “You should not listen to gossip, Mary. Besides, His Grace has been nothing but kind to me, to all of us, since our arrival.”
“And so he should be kind to you, you being the daughter of an earl and such.” Mary tidied the bed as she spoke. “Although the staff that works here say he’s a good employer, and none of them have a word to say against him,” she added grudgingly. “He also chooses not to employ an estate manager, but works daily about the estate with his staff and tenants.”
“There you are, then,” Lydia dismissed with a nod. “A man who is good to his servants and not afraid to get his hands dirty is usually to be trusted.” It didn’t surprise her to know that Gideon worked on the estate: he had been living here alone for ten years and must have needed to occupy his mind and hands in some manner during all that time.
“If you say so, miss.” The maid didn’t sound convinced. “Will you be going downstairs for breakfast this morning as usual, or would you like me to bring you up a tray?”
Lydia always woke sometime between seven and eight o’clock in the morning, whereas Charlotte never woke before nine o’clock. Consequently, the two of them had rarely breakfasted together in the past, and Charlotte’s absence said they wouldn’t be doing so this morning either.
“I believe I will go downstairs for breakfast.” She nodded. “Did the servants mention what time His Grace breaks his fast?”
“He’s downstairs in the small dining room now, my lady.” Mary straightened. “What gown will you be wearing today?”
Lydia knew she had been instructed to wear black but as she really didn’t own a black gown… “I think the deep blue, please, Mary.” It was the closest she had to black.
The maid had last night unpacked the bound gift Lydia’s father had instructed be delivered to Gideon. She would take it downstairs with her this morning and hope it was enough to distract Gideon from the fact she was not wearing mourning black as he had told her to.
Even so, Lydia took special care with her appearance this morning. She had Mary arrange and secure the curls of her red hair to her crown. Applied a little concealer herself to cover the dark shadows beneath her eyes from lack of sleep. A little rouge to the pallor of her cheeks and her lips, for the same reason.
Finally, taking a deep breath and picking up the wrapped parcel for Gideon, she set off toward the stairs.
She had barely reached the middle of the wide staircase when Gideon suddenly appeared at the bottom of it.
He was no longer wearing the evening clothes from last night, but instead wore a dark brown superfine, with fawn pantaloons, and a matching waistcoat over a white shirt.
Evidence that he had retired to his bedchamber sometime during the night, although the dark shadows beneath his eyes spoke of his having slept as badly as Lydia had.
Although she very much doubted it was for the same reason.
There had been no doubting Gideon’s arousal last night, but Lydia knew from chatting with female friends that some men could be as aroused from the glimpse of a woman’s ankle as he could by her bared breasts. She did not think Gideon was one of those men, but he had made it clear the intimacy between them had been a mistake and would not happen again.
His eyes were narrowed to steely slits. “Go back to your room and change into a black gown immediately,” he instructed her harshly.
“But—”
“Immediately,” Gideon repeated. “And do not come downstairs again until you have done so.”
Lydia could have continued to argue with him, to explain that she didn’t own a black gown, but the angry glitter in his eyes warned her that he was in no mood to listen to her excuses, even if they were truthful ones.
“Do not presume,” he grated softly for her ears alone, “to think that your disgraceful behavior last night gives you any privileges where I am concerned.” His gaze raked over her coldly. “I assure you, the opposite is true.”
Lydia’s own anger began to rise. “I believe your own behavior last night was, as you have described, as disgraceful as my own.”
“I am aware of that,” he answered icily. “It will not happen again.”
She continued to look at his uncompromising expression for several long seconds before holding up the wrapped parcel in her hand. “I will leave this here for you.” She placed it on the stair beside her before turning on her heel and hurrying back to her bedchamber.
A bedchamber, as there was no black gown in her wardrobe, she would not be leaving any time soon.
Gideon glared his frustration up the wide staircase where Lydia had minutes ago appeared, a beautiful vision in dark blue. A vision that had instantly caused his cock to stiffen and throb with need inside his pantaloons, and which had no doubt had added to the frustration he was feeling following a sleepless night, and so caused him to snap at her.
After Lydia left him in the kitchen during the night, he had spent the hours until morning either pacing his bedchamber or lying on top of the bed trying to fall asleep.
Both had proved impossible when, despite having downed severa
l more glasses of brandy, he could still taste Lydia’s juices on his lips and tongue.
Still feel the velvety softness of her skin beneath his caressing hands.
The slickness of her nether lips and the responsive and swollen nubbin hidden above those delicious petals.
And every time he thought of all those things, he was weighed down by the fact that not only had he touched Lydia in that intimate manner, but he had also refused to give her the climax she had begged from him.
Lydia was right. He knew his own behavior last night had been reprehensible, but possibly for different reasons from the ones she had accused him of.
He was older and more experienced than Lydia.
As such, he should not have touched her. Put his lips upon her. Pleasured her. And then refused to give her release.
What sort of man did that?
The man he now was, apparently.
“Can I get you anything, Your Grace?”
He turned to face Smythe, the butler’s expression one of concern at finding his employer standing immobile at the bottom of the staircase. “Nothing at all, thank you,” he dismissed lightly. “Could you take this downstairs?” He took the stairs two at a time to where Lydia had placed the book parcel for him to collect. He picked it up and handed it to the butler. “Put it on the table in the library for me to look at later. I’m going to my rooms now to change my clothes for a day’s work.” He was not already dressed for that purpose because he had thought he would be eating breakfast with Lydia.
He could only hope that a day of labor outside in the fresh air would help to alleviate the restless hunger still burning inside him to go after Lydia, rip the clothes from her body and throw her naked on the bed, before burying his cock in the wet and welcoming heat of her channel.
Hopefully, they would both be in less hostile spirits by the time the two of them sat down to dinner together this evening.
Except Lydia did not appear for dinner. Neither did Miss Babcock.
Wayward (Regency Scandal 3) Page 5