In Bed with the Earl

by Caldwell, Christi

  Verity stretched her arms up, reaching for him, and lowering himself, he braced his weight on his elbows.

  Then, bending his head, he drew the tip of her right breast into his mouth, and suckled that pebbled, pale-brown nipple.

  Verity groaned, long and low, and let her legs splay wide.

  His shaft jumped, all the blood rushing to that throbbing flesh.

  Malcom pulled back once more, and Verity cried out, scrabbling for him.

  But he was merely shucking off his boots, and then his trousers. And as he bared himself before her in all his scarred imperfection, Verity reclined on her elbows and simply watched him.

  In her eyes, there was no pity or revulsion. Or even the sick fascination he’d encountered in the past liaisons he’d had in his life.

  “So beautiful,” she said, her breath coming in rapid little bursts.

  Malcom resumed his previous ministrations. Worshipping the previously neglected breast, he palmed the bounteous mounds that were overflowing in his callused palms. Her skin was like pure silk upon his flawed flesh, and he laved and teased the engorged peak until Verity was crying out. Keening his name. Lifting her hips in a frantic up-and-down, primitive thrusting.

  Unable to look away from her tightly clenched eyes and the contortions of her face as she surrendered to the magic of their embrace, Malcom cupped the thatch of dark curls shielding her womanhood.

  Verity went motionless, her eyes flying open, sharp surprise emanating from them, matched by the little circle of shock her lips formed.

  And then Malcom slid a finger inside the tight, sodden sheath.

  Verity cried out as he stroked her slowly at first, and then at a quickened pace. He slipped another finger inside, and Verity bucked her hips wildly. Thrust and retreat. Over and over. They set up a perfect rhythm, moving conjointly.

  Her movements grew more frantic, her breath hissing.

  Or was that his own?

  The blood rushing in his ears made it near impossible to make any sense of any sound through the pulsing of his own heartbeat.

  “Malcom.” She moaned his name, an entreaty that sent another wave of lust pumping through him.

  Her movements grew more frenetic.

  She was so close, the scent of her impending climax hanging in the air, an aphrodisiac that pushed him near the edge of madness.

  Malcom shifted, replacing his fingers with his erection. Wet, her body slicked the way for the glide of him.

  Everything within him screamed for him to plunge deep and complete their union.

  And it took everything else within him to summon the restraint.

  “I-is this going to h-hurt?” Her breath came in quickened respirations.

  “Aye, love.” He brushed a palm along her cheek. His hand shook. All his body did, trembling from something more than physical desire. From this closeness. He’d never been this close to anyone before. And he never wanted to be close with anyone but her.

  “Y-you are n-nothing if not d-direct, Malcom N-North.” Verity laughed, her body shaking slightly, and he clenched his teeth as the walls of her sheath constricted around him, testing his self-control and restraint.

  He reached between them and resumed stroking her, gliding inside her, as he pushed deeper and deeper.

  And all mirth faded as Verity was reduced to a sound that was both a groan and a whimper. “Malcom.” His name emerged a plea, and he was lost.

  “I’m so sorry.” He rasped out that penitence, and thrust home.

  Verity cried out, her entire body bucking, and yet the pain of that did not drive her back. Instead, she clasped her arms about him, holding on tightly.

  He dropped his sweaty brow atop hers, and concentrated on breathing.

  There had never been a feeling like this, him buried deep inside such constricted heat and wetness. Malcom fought the primal need to keep thrusting and complete the act his body begged of him in the name of surcease. And yet with the pain he’d inflicted, and the desire to reawaken her body to the pleasure she’d previously known, his raw need mattered not at all. Malcom touched his lips to her forehead. “Forgive me, Verity.”

  “It w-wasn’t all bad,” she murmured, her thick lashes sweeping up. She flashed him a tremulous smile. “Everything before it was rather quite nice.”

  He grinned. There was the courage she’d shown at their first meeting. The one that had ensnared him, and had since held him bewitched. Lowering his mouth to her right breast, he resumed his previous teasing of that nipple.

  Her breath caught.

  “Is that quite nice?” He paused to murmur against her heated flesh.

  In response, she tangled her fingers in his hair and anchored him there, preventing him from doing anything other than attending the sensitized tip.

  Bringing her breasts together, he flicked his tongue back and forth, until Verity’s hips began to move and desperate cries pulled from her lips.

  And he moved with her. Slowly. Accustoming her body to the feel of him.

  Then they were moving. Their bodies in perfect concert as he thrust, and she lifted up into each glide of him inside her.

  “Malcom-Malcom. Malllcooom.” She wept. Just one word. His name. Over and over, a mantra that lent a desperation to every thrust of his hips. He was close.

  “Come for me,” he begged, when he’d never pleaded with a soul in the whole of his life. But Verity Lovelace was also unlike anyone he’d ever known in the whole of his existence. She was light and mirth and all clever wit and courage.

  Her body stiffened, and then she screamed her release. Cursing and pleading, until she went limp. And her surrender threw him over that edge where pleasure and pain melded in an exquisite torture.

  He withdrew and emptied himself in an arc on her belly, groaning and shuddering until his body ceased to shake, and then collapsed atop her. Catching himself at the elbows to keep from crushing her. Their bodies continued to tremble until a calm crept in.

  And as he lay there, Malcom had the terrifying sense that the arrangement with Verity would never be enough.

  When Verity was a girl in Epsom, the villagers had been less than discreet in their whispered slurs: she was a whore’s daughter, and a whore’s fate awaited her.

  Verity, however, had never been one to self-flagellate for the sins of another. Or as the case had been, the decisions of another. Her mother had taken a lover, and thrown away any possibility of an honorable, respectable match with a man who’d been willing to make her his wife. That decision, however, had belonged to Lydia Lovelace. It hadn’t been Verity’s. As such, even as the insults had stung, she’d still held her head high because she wasn’t her mother. She’d prided herself on the fact that she would never give herself to any man, in any way, outside of marriage.

  Of course, having worked since twelve, there’d been even less thought of marriage than of surrendering her virtue.

  Until she’d at last understood.

  Lying precisely as she’d been since Malcom had gently cleaned the remnants of his seed from her person, atop his chest, with her legs twined through his, it all made sense to her.

  This moment had been the one to bring it all ’round to clarity: She understood her mother. She understood what it was to want and need a man so desperately that in a moment of passion, there’d not been a fraction of a thought spared for principles such as honor or respectability or virtue.

  She’d known only that she needed to know Malcom in this way. That were she to part from him, and never have lain in his arms, it would be a regret far greater than any she’d ever carry over words like “respectability” and “honor.”

  Smoothing her palms over the curls matting his chest, she threaded her fingers through that light tuft.

  She loved him.

  And mayhap she was her mother’s daughter after all, because there was none of the deserved panic that realization should elicit. There was just a contented peace. An absolute sense of rightness in them. For however long that was.
r />   And this time, a pang of regret did strike . . . for that reason alone.

  Thrusting back those bleak musings, refusing to relinquish the time she did have to regret, Verity propped her chin up on his chest. “Are you sleeping?” she whispered.

  “Am I even alive?” he asked, his voice still hoarse and weak, and she found herself smiling.

  She pinched his side, and his eyes flew open. “Bloody hell. What in blazes—”

  “Alive.” She beamed. “I was just confirming for you.”

  Muttering, he rolled her lightly under him. “Minx,” he breathed against her lips, and then mindful of her bruise, he drew back and lightly probed the tender area around her lump.

  She anticipated the question that had formed on his lips. “I’m fine.”

  “I shouldn’t have made love to you.” Where there had been desire before, and then sleepiness after, now there was remorse. And she’d have none of that.

  Verity jammed a finger into his chest, earning a grunt. “First, I made love to you, Malcom. Second, I assure you, I’m fine. Just a little ache,” she promised.

  He smoothed a palm over one of her thighs in soft circles that elicited a moan.

  “Now that, however, feels delicious.”

  Malcom shifted so she was once more atop him, and proceeded to glide his hands lower to the curve of her back, and she sighed. “And that feels even more wonderful.” He palmed her buttocks, pressing her lightly against his erect shaft.

  She giggled. “Behave.”

  “Am I to take it that doesn’t feel wonderful?” he murmured teasingly, thrusting lightly against her, and a sharp ache settled at her core.

  She bit her lip. “Oh, no.” She was faintly breathless. “It does. You do.” He rotated his hips, and even as he moved, Verity’s eyes closed and words failed.

  “What was that, love?” Malcom took her mouth in a slow, deliberate kiss. A teasing one that he broke too soon, dragging a regretful moan from her.

  Through the haze of desire, she caught the self-satisfaction in his gaze, and she pinched him again.

  “Ouch.”

  “Don’t be smug,” she chided. “That isn’t why I’ve awakened you, though we can certainly do more of that after.”

  He barked with laughter, his frame shaking under her, and she joined in. This side of Malcom, that clear, honest expression of his amusement, absent of the rage that had been such a part of him, proved contagious. After their mirth had abated, Verity slid off his chest and scooted to the nightstand at the side of her bed.

  Leaning over, she pulled the drawer open, and fished out the notebook resting there. Head lowered, she stared at it for a moment, and then pushed the drawer back into place and joined Malcom.

  “Here.”

  “What is this?” he asked, already taking it from her fingers.

  “It’s the story.”

  He went still, his gaze locked on the first page, the title there.

  “You’re trying to get out of the arrangement,” he said flatly.

  “No.” She scrambled onto her knees. “It has nothing to do with that. I’ll stay as promised.” Because she’d sooner sever her arm than give up any time she could steal with him. “But that is the story. The only one I’d tell, Malcom.”

  Sitting up, he edged to the side of the mattress, and for a moment, she thought he’d reject the piece. That he’d set it down and lash out as he’d done so many times when the past came up between them.

  Only this time, he sat and read. Motionless except for the occasional glide of his fingers as he turned the pages.

  Until he reached the end.

  Her heart hammered.

  She’d often wondered how readers had felt about her work. Even as she’d written the pieces as a requirement from her employer, there’d been the hope that there was someone out there who’d appreciated the words she put to the page.

  But those stories, they’d all been empty. Gossip, as Malcom had rightly claimed. And the opinions of those strangers had not mattered at all. Not compared with him. This man before her.

  When he sat in silence, Verity wetted her lips. “Well?”

  “It is . . . perfect,” he said quietly. “It is perfect.”

  And as he took her in his arms a moment later and made love to her all over again, Verity found perfection once more.

  “You are going to be the death of me, Verity Lovelace.” He groaned, an arm flung over his eyes.

  “If one must die, this would be a preferable way to go,” she teased, giggling when he lightly swatted her buttocks.

  “Minx.” He ran a hand in slow, wide circles over her back. That caress so gentle. So soothing.

  Sliding her fingers into his, Verity rested her head against his chest, the light mat of curls soft against her face. How . . . right this was. Being in his arms. All her life, she’d only seen acts of intimacy between a man and a woman as folly and weakness. Now, having made love with Malcom, she saw how wrong she’d been. There was beauty in lying in the arms of a person one cared for.

  Her sleepy gaze on their interlocked fingers, Verity lightly squeezed Malcom’s in a slow, deliberately rhythmic pulsing.

  When she registered Malcom’s absolute stillness.

  She abruptly stopped. Propping her chin on his chest, she swept her eyes over his stricken face. Gone was all hint of the earlier desire or teasing; in its place was raw, unbridled emotion. “What is it?”

  His mouth moved, but no words were immediately forthcoming. Verity followed his tumultuous stare. His eyes remained locked on their joined palms.

  Verity made to release him, but he clung tight, as if her hand were a lifeline, and she gripped him all the harder. “Malcom?”

  “I just . . . I . . .”

  She waited, allowing him his time.

  “My mother . . .” His whisper emerged hoarse and gravelly. Malcom drew in a shuddery breath and began again. “As a boy, I was always running off, seeking and finding mischief, and before I would go, she’d take my hand and . . . squeeze it as you did as she said:

  ‘I love thee, I love but thee

  With a love that shall not die

  Till the sun grows cold

  And the stars grow old.’”

  His eyes slid closed. “She’d say it whenever we parted, and when she tucked me into bed.” Then his words came quickly. As if he feared in not speaking them, he might lose them and the memory he held dear. “She would press my hand in time to the rhythm of that sonnet. B-because . . .” His voice wavered, and Verity closed her other palm over their joined hands. “‘Because my h-heart beats for you. It always has and it always will, and even after it ceases to beat, my love will live on in you.’” A ragged sob tore from him, and he clung to her fingers, clenching tight.

  Tears clogged her throat and blurred her eyes, and Verity just held Malcom. Lying against his chest, she allowed him to weep with the pain of all he’d lost and the memory that had at last come to him. His body shook and trembled from the force of his emotion. Verity held him all the while, with time meaning nothing, and then his crying stopped.

  She pressed a kiss to the corner of his temple, and squeezed his hand several more times in that rhythmic beat, and willed him to feel the love she carried for him.

  Chapter 28

  THE LONDONER

  THE MEETING!

  Lord Maxwell was seen breaking down the front door of the Baron Bolingbroke. Society was agog, and now salivating for details on the fight that undoubtedly erupted between the Lost Heir and his nemesis, Lord B.

  M. Fairpoint

  Over the course of his life, Malcom had sought—and attained—revenge on more enemies than he could remember or count.

  Never, however, going into battle had he felt this. Bloodlust pumped through him, primal and raw. It heated his veins and coursed through him, spreading a venomous poison where only one word took shape: destroy. This upcoming meeting didn’t have to do with territory or right of ownership or the simple primitive need to
exert control and display dominance.

  This was about her—Verity, and what had almost befallen her.

  Not bothering with a knocker like any civilized guest would, Malcom pounded hard at the modest panel. The heavy oak rattled, and he pounded all the harder.

  But he wasn’t going anywhere. This meeting had been ordained following the attack on Verity at Hatchards. Nay, if he were being honest with himself, it had been ordained long before that. Back when he’d been a boy smuggled from his family’s Kent estate in a burlap sack, taken for dead, and passed off like trash.

  And now he was back, reclaiming his past life.

  That brought him up short with his knock, and he froze, his fist halfway to the oak panel.

  Could he?

  Forget moving amongst the world in daylight. Could Malcom move amongst the peerage? Polite Society, which he still wanted no part of. He was a man trapped in an “in-between” in which he’d never truly belong. Neither the sewers nor the fanciest end of London.

  But the possibility of a future he saw, it wasn’t a place.

  It was with her . . .

  It was with Verity.

  He wanted to be wherever she was. It’s why for the first time ever, he’d wanted not to be scouring for treasure but instead at Hatchards with her.

  Home was wherever Verity was.

  I love her . . .

  Malcom shot a hand out, catching the stair rail, managing to keep himself upright. Christ. It was a prayer from him, a man who’d never been religious, and yet that was all he was capable of. He loved her. He’d loved her since he’d stumbled upon her in his sewers, a tart-mouthed spitfire challenging him at every turn as if she’d forever dwelled in those tunnels and set herself up as queen.

  With their every exchange, he’d lost more and more scraps of a heart he’d not known he possessed: Verity, as she’d doled out chess lessons. Verity, as she’d gone toe-to-toe with him to defend two old toshers. Just Verity. It would only ever be Verity.

  And she was the reason he was here even now.

  Steadied once more, Malcom let his fist fly with a thunderous boom that rose above the din of the early-morn Mayfair traffic.