“It is the only answer I can think of as yet.” She quirked an auburn brow. “Unless his gift to you informed you otherwise? My God, Gideon.” She gasped when he turned his gaze away from meeting her questioning one. “You have not even opened the parcel my father left for me to give to you, have you?”
There was no actual accusation in her tone, but Gideon nonetheless heard her surprise and shock. After all, that parcel represented her father’s final gift, along with the guardianship of Chessington’s daughter. Both given into Gideon’s safekeeping.
And how had he repaid the other man’s trust?
By making love to his daughter and allowing that same daughter to make love to him.
“Whatever you are thinking, I really wish you would not rebuke yourself so soundly as I can see you are doing.” Lydia once again stood in front of him. “It has only been a week since my arrival, after all, and I did not give the gift to you until the following day.”
Gideon winced. “After which, I gave it to my butler to put in the library and immediately forgot about it.” He had been keeping himself busy every moment of the day and evening since then in an effort not to think too much of Lydia and his desire to make love to her again. This evening, his resolve had been broken, and he had been unable to bear the rift between them for a moment longer.
Knowing the true reason for that did not absolve him from blame. He had been cold and unreasonable in insisting Lydia wear black in mourning for her father. Damn it, as far as Gideon was concerned, in future, Lydia could wear whatever color gown she chose, pink with purple spots if she so wished, and he would make no word of criticism as to her appearance. Well…perhaps the pink and purple together might be a bit much. They would also clash dreadfully with her auburn hair.
“We could go downstairs to the library and open it together now,” he suggested.
She eyed him teasingly. “I have not finished making love to you yet.”
“Lydia—”
“Gideon.” She stepped close to him again, so that their torsos were now touching. “I may be inexperienced, with a very limited knowledge of sexual pleasure, but even I know that what we have done together so far does not in the least compromise either one of us.”
He gave a shake of his head. “So, when the time comes, you will happily tell your future husband of the intimacies we have shared?”
Lydia shrugged. “I do not consider those intimacies to be serious enough for me to need to tell anyone else about them, least of all a future husband. After all, you are my guardian, and a guardian very often guides his ward.”
Gideon’s brows rose. “The things we have done together are not ones a guardian teaches his ward.”
“Have you been a guardian before?”
“No.”
“Then how can you possibly know that for certain?”
“Everyone knows—”
“Even in the short time I have known you, I did not think you to be a man who is interested in everyone’s opinion.”
“It is common knowledge—”
“Or in anything that has to do with the word common!” she finished mockingly.
His nostrils flared as he breathed in deeply. “You, my dear Lydia, are well on the way to having your arse spanked.”
She remained unconcerned by the threat. “Is that something you are interested in doing?”
“Lydia!” he snapped in frustration.
“I have heard it said”—she leaned forward conspiratorially—“by some of my married friends in Society, that their husbands occasionally like to spank them and that afterward it intensifies the pleasure of the fu—”
“Lydia!” His second warning was sharper still. Really, he had no idea who these married friends of Lydia’s were, but it would seem that they spoke altogether too freely in the presence of an unmarried young lady.
She gave him a disappointed look. “I am only telling you what I have heard said. It was enough to make me curious, in any case,” she added brightly. “So, if at any time in the future you again feel the inclination to, as you said, ‘spank my arse,’ know that I would not be averse to the experience.” She eyed him gleefully. “It will be another new experience my guardian has taught me.”
Gideon sighed his frustration. “It was not my intention to teach or guide you when I licked and sucked your nipples and between your thighs.”
“But it did enable me to decide that I more than like both.” Warmth now colored her cheeks, but her gaze still didn’t flinch from meeting his. “My virginity also remains intact.”
“Nor should I have allowed you to suck my cock this evening.”
The color in her cheeks deepened. “Unfortunately, not to completion.”
Gideon frowned his frustration with what sounded like her disappointment in regard to that fact. “Then what intimacy would you consider serious enough you would need to confess it to your future husband?”
Lydia gave the matter some thought.
Their lovemaking a week ago and this evening had stepped over the boundaries of acceptable behavior between a man and a woman who were not married to each other.
But she remained adamant that it had not been enough so that they ever needed to share it with anyone else, least of all this mythical “future husband” Gideon kept referring to.
Annoyingly so, as far as she was concerned.
“Nothing we have done together so far,” she maintained firmly. “Which is not to say”—she began to unfasten the buttons on his trousers—“that will still be true by the end of this evening.”
She murmured her approval as the flap of his trousers fell open again and she was able to unfasten the tie of his drawers and part that material as well. His still-engorged cock once again sprang free.
Lydia immediately fell to her knees in front of him. “Watch the two of us together in the mirror, Gideon,” she encouraged throatily.
Chapter Ten
Gideon tried not to do as Lydia asked but, against his will it seemed, his gaze was drawn toward the mirror in front of him. As a moth would be drawn to a flame.
In this case, Lydia was most definitely the flame and Gideon the enraptured moth tempted inexorably toward his fate.
Was Lydia that fate?
She was a young woman, it seemed, who feared nothing and no one, least of all him—
Dear God!
Gideon’s breath arrested in his lungs, his body drawing up tensely, the moment Lydia sucked his shaft into the wet heat of her mouth and to the back of her throat.
The view in the mirror behind Lydia showed her down on her knees, the fragile column of her bare back revealed by the unfastened button at the top of her gown. Some of her hair had fallen from its pins and now brushed against the slenderness her nape and appeared a red gold in the candlelight.
But it was the heated suction of her mouth encasing his cock and the sight of her moist lips stretched about the girth of it, her fingers wrapped about the inches she could not fit inside her mouth, that caused Gideon’s breath to halt and a fever to burn deep inside him.
The scars upon his face, throat, and chest were rendered irrelevant as he continued to watch Lydia. There was an ecstasy of expression on her face as her head bobbed up and down and she sucked and ran the wet roughness of her tongue along his hard length.
The sight of her kneeling before him, though not in the least his supplicant as she easily controlled his pleasure, and the vision of their reflection in the mirror, was the most erotic thing Gideon had ever seen.
More so than any sexual encounter he’d had before her.
More so, he believed, than any he might have after her.
Lydia possessed a type of sensuality Gideon had never known. An innate ability to please her partner whilst also pleasing herself—
Gideon drew in a rasping breath as Lydia’s slender fingers pushed down the material of his trousers and drawers before her palms cupped the globes of his bare arse.
She held him firmly in place as the bobbing of
her head increased, the suction of her mouth pulled his cock deeper, the plunging of that sensitive flesh against the back of her throat causing Gideon’s balls to draw up tight and the heat of his release to burn inside him.
“Lydia, you have to stop.” Gideon’s entreaty was accompanied by his hands grasping her shoulders as he gently tried to push her back and away from him.
Her eyes glittered as she looked up at him, her cheeks red, lips swollen.
But it was the bead of viscous cum that she licked from those lips that caused Gideon to groan weakly. “If you continue to do that, I am going to release in your mouth,” he warned gruffly.
“I want you to.” She nodded. “This past week has been purgatory. I want all of it, Gideon. Every single drop.” She looked up at him from between silky lashes. “Please give it to me.”
Not even Gideon could resist such a heartfelt entreaty.
His hands tightened on her shoulders, his knees beginning to shake as his cock was once again surrounded by the heat of Lydia’s mouth as she sucked in earnest. Her hands on his arse kept him steady in front of her as she moved faster, and then faster still while maintaining that perfect suction on Gideon’s cock.
The breath sawed in and out of his lungs as he felt that familiar tingle at the base of his spine, his cock swelling, before his hot cum burst down its length to release pulse after pulse into the eager receptacle of Lydia’s waiting mouth.
Nectar.
The purest honey.
Sweet ambrosia.
As promised, Lydia swallowed down all of Gideon’s long and copious release.
She had never tasted anything so delicious in her life.
She sucked and licked Gideon’s cock clean, only releasing his slightly deflated shaft once she was sure he had given her every single drop.
She sat back on her heels to look at him shyly from beneath her lashes. His hair was disheveled. His eyes and face feverish. His chest bare. His unfastened trousers and drawers were pulled down to his thighs, his cock still thick and long but no longer quite so erect.
Gideon straightened his clothing before bending down to pull her up to her feet. Being lifted into his arms and placed gently down on the bed rendered Lydia completely speechless.
“Do not move,” he instructed softly as he moved to the bottom of the bed before gently parting her legs. “I am going to pleasure you now.”
Lydia felt self-conscious but offered no word of resistance as Gideon knelt on the bed between her thighs and pushed her gown up to her waist. He then unfastened her drawers and removed them before staring down at her hungrily.
She knew her pubic hair was slightly darker than the fiery red on her head, but as so many of her married Society friends had advised, she kept those curls trimmed. She had been even more vigilant with that grooming since the night in the kitchen when Gideon had put his mouth on her there.
As he did again now.
Except this time, he didn’t stop or seem to come out of a dream daze. No, this time, his tongue licked, his mouth sucked, and his fingers caressed her time and time again.
Until Lydia knew she was on the brink of her release.
“Do not stop.” She was now the one to plead as she reached forward to grasp his shoulders, but knowing she was not strong enough to prevent his withdrawal if that was what he chose to do.
He didn’t.
Instead, his attentions toward her engorged nubbin increased. As it did to the petals of her nether lips and the moist entrance to her channel. Until Lydia was drowning in sensation.
Deep pleasure.
Intense need.
An aching desperation to finally know the same release as Gideon had—
Oh God, yes!
Nothing, no one, could have prepared Lydia for the pure intensity of the ecstasy that claimed and continued to claim every inch of her body. A pleasure that rushed wildly through every part of her, arching her spine, heating the blood in her arteries and veins, and holding her completely in its thrall for lengthy minutes.
Until it finally ebbed enough for her to collapse against the pillows, a smile of satisfaction on her lips. “Now I know what all the poets talk about in language designed to disguise they are actually referring to sexual pleasure.”
Gideon moved up the bed to lay his head down on the pillow beside hers. “Did it meet your expectations?”
She glanced sideways at him. “You know that it did.”
“I hoped it did.” His fingers were gentle against the heat of one of her cheeks. “You really are a magnificently unusual woman, Lydia.”
Her gaze became shy. “I hope that pleases you.”
Lydia pleased him. More than words could say. More than he could ever express.
Lydia gave, and then she gave even more.
Nothing she did was with the intention of taking. Not materially or physically. Not from anyone. Least of all Gideon.
On the contrary…
She had dismissed and ignored any and all criticism of him before coming here and had preferred to make up her own mind about him.
Tonight, since her arrival a week ago in fact, she had constantly strived to give Gideon back his belief in himself as a man and as a lover.
Tonight, she had succeeded.
If a woman such as Lydia believed in him, in his innocence, in him as a man, a lover, then Gideon could no longer continue to accept what others thought of him.
It was time, past time, for Gideon to reclaim his reputation for integrity, and his place in Society along with it.
Perhaps then he might be able to claim Lydia too.
“You please me,” he assured her now huskily. “I have never met another woman like you.”
Her smile was teasing. “Even though you disapproved of me when we first met.”
He smoothed silky wisps of hair off her brow. “Because I did not understand you.”
“Do you understand me now?”
“I believe I do, yes.”
Gideon realized that Lydia’s unusual upbringing, alone with her widowed father, had been such that she did not now fit into the normal mores of Society. She was not a simpering or obedient miss, but had a mind and ideas of her own, ones she was not afraid to state or implement.
That honesty and straightforwardness were the things Gideon most admired about her.
His marriage to Harriet had been a series of hurdles to be jumped over and obstacles to be best avoided if he did not wish for his wife to disappear into her rooms for days on end and refuse to speak to him. Or, as had been the case toward the end of their marriage, take herself and her maid to another Esher residence entirely.
Until this evening he had thought Lydia to have been behaving in the same spoilt manner this past week.
He had been wrong.
Yes, her lengthy seclusion with her companion had been due in some part to her stubbornness. But the fact was she did not possess the black gown Gideon had ordered her to wear when next she appeared down the stairs.
Now that Gideon understood her reasons, he no longer intended to insist that she wear such a gown. Not when her father had instructed her not to do so.
Once again, Gideon regretted not having remained friends with Michael Montague.
Perhaps he might also have met Lydia sooner and so not made the mistake of marrying Harriet…
Meeting Lydia all those years ago would have served no purpose whatsoever, when she would have only been aged seven and in the schoolroom when he married Harriet twelve years ago!
Lydia was starting to become attuned to Gideon’s sudden changes of mood. At this moment, it had turned from the afterglow of pleasure to one of introspection and self-doubt. Something she really could not allow to continue in this self-confident and imposing gentleman.
She rolled onto her side so that their faces were very close together on their side-by-side pillows. “I am feeling hungry, so shall we go downstairs and raid the kitchen together, as we did last time?”
Some of the tension eased
from his brow. “I could eat something, yes.” He nodded. “My appetite has not been great this past week.”
“For food, at least,” she came back cheekily.
He chuckled softly. “You really are a surprising young woman. I wish…” He broke off, that look of introspection returning.
Lydia reached out to smooth the frown from his brow. “Regrets for the past serve no purpose, my father once told me. Nor do wishes for the future. There is only now for us to concentrate on, and the hope that there will be a future.”
“He was obviously a very wise man.”
“Yes,” Lydia confirmed affectionately. “So,” she added briskly, “we shall put the week of dissent between us into that past, where it belongs, and go downstairs to look for a midnight snack we might enjoy eating together.”
Following which, she hoped that Gideon would spend the rest of the night in bed beside her. Although she doubted it would happen. Not because he didn’t wish to share her bed, but because of the danger of possibly being found still asleep there in the morning, most probably by the maid delivering her morning tea.
If that was the case, then she must make what she could of her time with him now.
She sat up on the bed. “Once we are downstairs, we could retrieve my father’s gift to you from the library and then open it together.”
Which was exactly what they did.
Although Gideon looked no less puzzled by her father’s gift even once they had retired to the kitchen and the string had been untied and the brown paper wrapping folded back.
Inside, rather than a book to be read, was a brown leather journal.
Lydia picked it up, having recognized it immediately as one of the diaries her father liked to write an account in when he sat down in his study at the end of the day.
She had seen him doing so numerous times once she was old enough to remain out of bed later into the evening. He explained that, as he got older, it helped him to remember certain events rather than relying on a fading memory.
The question was, why had her father picked out and then wrapped and left one of those diaries for Gideon to read?
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