50 Ways to Ruin a Rake (22 page)

Mellie's face jerked up at that. It was so bizarre to hear someone speak rudely to Eleanor that the novelty of it broke her out of her paralysis. “We were merely conversing, Eleanor,” she said. The woman didn't appear to hear her.

“This woman is my friend. If you hurt her, you hurt me. And I assure you, I strike back.”

His eyes changed then. They narrowed, even as his lips spread in a slow, lascivious grin. There was no avarice in that expression. This was pure sexuality, and Mellie found herself backing away. Not in fear. After her time with Trevor, sexuality intrigued her. But such a look was meant for two people, not three. Or rather, it was meant for Eleanor alone, who straightened to her full height complete with lifted chin and arched brow.

“Challenge me at your peril,” she said.

“I accept,” he answered, and then he bowed deeply before her. Was there mockery in his movements? Mellie couldn't tell, and one glance at Eleanor's face told her that the other woman was equally confused.

Fortunately, Eleanor recovered quickly. She tugged on Mellie's sleeve and gestured toward the ballroom. “The first set is forming.” She spoke the words, but her gaze was still on Mr. Rausch.

“Is… Has…?” Damn, why couldn't she say his name? And her verbal stumble at last drew Eleanor's gaze to hers.

“Mr. Anaedsley has departed. The worst is over. You can relax now and enjoy the dancing.”

As if she'd ever enjoy dancing again. Well, that wasn't true. There was some pleasure in it, but she'd only truly loved it when she'd waltzed with Trevor, but that was over now. He'd never take her in his arms again.

The scream in her thoughts grew louder again, so she focused on a new way to silence it. Or at least distract herself. Since dancing was an appropriate way to meet gentlemen, she would do it now. Perhaps someone else would be as successful as Mr. Rausch had been in temporarily grabbing her attention.

With that thought fixed in her mind, she headed inside to meet men.

* * *

Four weeks went by. A whole month, and not a single man measured up. Each day, each ball, each conversation added one more layer to the encrusted boredom of her existence. At least at home she had her laboratory experiments. She could always lose herself in science, but not here. Here she was on a husband-hunting mission, and the entire process bored her to the point of madness.

Two moments lightened the crushing sameness of it all. The first had been a visit from her uncle and father. Her uncle had repeated his request for the cosmetic formula. She had merely shaken her head. She intended that to be her dowry if her father decided to throw her over entirely. Then her father had asked if she wished to come home.

She nearly said yes. At least at home, she had her lab. But in London she had hopes of something better. At home, there was merely more of the same. And after her time with Trevor, she knew that she could never be content with the nothing of her existence before. Science could fill her mind, but she wanted something to fill the yawning blackness of her heart.

Once she had thought it would be love and children. Now she longed for something—anything—that would make it better. The only thing she knew for sure was that it couldn't be found at home. Which meant her only hope was in London at least for the rest of the Season. So she had sent her father and uncle home and turned her attention to yet another round of excruciatingly similar balls.

The second moment was more of a series of sparks of interest, like tiny flickers of possibility, before her raised hopes inevitably fell flat. And every one of those moments came from Mr. Rausch.

He had made a point of attracting her attention. He was unfailingly polite, unless Lady Eleanor was around. Then he was sarcastic and rude. But mostly he worked to entertain her with scientific tidbits, unusual people, and once, a trained dog.

She inevitably smiled at something that happened. Her mood lightened for perhaps as much as ten minutes. But in the end, she fell back into the sameness of it all. The people he called friends were interesting, but there was only so much one could explore in the middle of a society function without other people intruding. And even the trained dog was just…well, a dog. It performed nicely, but still sat down at the end and licked its own balls. She didn't even find that offensive, just very doglike in a very boring way.

So it was that on the return from her umpteenth ball with aching feet and a splitting headache that Mellie finally faced the truth.

She missed Trevor. More than that, she loved him, and he was an idiot for thinking she didn't know her own mind. And lest he suggest that her attraction to him was simply the novelty of sexuality, she had spent every night of the last weeks trying a different form of masturbation. It was nothing like what she experienced with him. It had its moments, certainly, but she wanted him.

She was in love with him.

And she'd be damned if she let him hold her heart without making some attempt to capture his.

The problem was that she never saw him. He was never at any function she attended. Never. That was probably Eleanor's doing, but it meant that she had only one choice. She had to go to his home at the only time she wasn't being shuttled from one event to the next. Which meant now.

Right now.

In the middle of the night.

By herself.

Odd how just making the decision sped her heart to a frighteningly excited pace.

When you risk everything on a rake, be sure he makes an equal wager.

Trevor was not a man who enjoyed drinking. Well, that wasn't entirely true. He liked the taste of it. He liked the sociability of it. Some of his best memories were of sitting with his mates drinking brandy. Sometimes they smoked, but he'd never acquired an appreciation of it. Sometimes they gambled as they played cards, but he'd never seen the full sense in that either. He simply enjoyed a good drink with his friends without becoming stupid.

Tonight he was spinning drunk.

Tonight—and for the last many nights—he'd stumbled home while singing a German drinking song with his closest friends. One had helped him up the stairs. Another had helped him out of his clothes. Then they all left, but not before repeating the phrase they'd been saying for a month now.

“Forget her, Trev. Don't let a country cit be the ruin of you.”

It was that last phrase that upset him. Mellie wasn't the ruin of him. At times he wondered if she might be the making of him. She had a way of making his path obvious. He thought more clearly when she was around. He could talk things through with her. He could sit with her in that beautiful house of hers and allow the quiet order of the place to clear the cobwebs from his mind.

For years he'd thought it was her father who did that, but Mr. Smithson was as cluttered as it was possible for a brilliant scientist to be. His lab was a mess, and his thoughts often skittered in different directions at once. But his notes and his experiments were usually pristine, the science behind them crystal clear. It was only now that he realized Mr. Smithson's notes were in Mellie's precise hand. Likely she helped her father organize his thoughts enough that everything else rolled out in neat lines.

Which is what she did. She made nice homes. She made people feel comfortable. She made him feel like he was a lazy, useless aristocrat because he'd had all the opportunity in the world but spent his days bouncing from party to party only sporadically doing his own research.

Hence the drinking. He'd known before that he wasn't worthy of her. Now he saw how very much he wanted her and couldn't have her. She had thrown him over and was daily courted by men who were smarter than him, whose family and friends weren't desperately trying to break them apart, and who had at least a courtesy title, if not the real one.

He'd lost her. And so he'd looked for solace in his friends, in copious amounts of brandy, and cigars. Yes, he'd tried cigars again because the thought of burying himself in any of the myriad light skirts who'd been thrown his way only made him want to weep.

But he really hated cigars. Made him want to gag and left a foul taste in his mouth. Which meant tonight had been about the brandy. And the wine. And ale. And anything else alcoholic that could possibly be consumed while lamenting his failures.

He closed his eyes, allowing the room to spin him into unconsciousness. Of course, the room might spin, but his mind always conjured up her face. Her voice. Her luscious body.

“Trevor?”

Bloody hell, he loved her voice.

“The door was open, and I…well, I just came in. I'd like to talk to you. Trevor?”

Damn that sounded close. As if it were real. As if…

Someone touched his shoulder, and his eyes snapped opened. “Mellie!” he cried, though it was more a hoarse croak.

She frowned down at him. Or at least he thought she did. Then she turned and quickly lit a candle. He winced from the light, but couldn't stop looking at her. Made for a bloody awkward position as he tried to stare and shut his eyes at the same time.

“Mellie?” he croaked again.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm bloody pissed, I am. Are you really here?”

“Yes, I'm here,” she said, her voice rueful. “And I can smell the drink on you. Did you swim in it?”

“Tried to,” he admitted. “Only way to stop thinking about you.” Then he shrugged. “But it doesn't work.”

“So then why do it?”

Well, wasn't that a bugger of a question. And right there was the whole damned point. She asked the right questions, which always led to the right answers. And here he'd thought all along it was him with the ideas. Well, it was, but only because she asked the right questions.

“Trevor?”

“Mellie, can I kiss you? I really miss kissing you.”

She touched his forehead, stroking his brow. “I need to talk to you. Can you focus for a moment?”

He could focus on anything that was
her
. So he rubbed his eyes, pushed up on his bed, and sat facing her. But his hands…damn, he needed to touch her, so even as she sat primly beside him on the bed, he had to feel her skin. He had to outline the length of her thigh, to stroke the creamy softness of her arm, to know the round firmness of her breast.

“Trevor.”

His gaze shot to hers. He noted with pleasure that her cheeks were flushed, her lips were moist, and most especially that her nipple had hardened under his caress. But then she trapped his hand, not pulling it away, but stilling his movements.

“Mellie,” he said, putting all his feeling into these words. “I'm so sorry I failed you.”

She smiled. “You didn't fail me. Everything you planned happened just as you said.”

He shook his head. Not as he said. Or perhaps, maybe exactly as he'd said, but it wasn't what he wanted anymore. He didn't want to be estranged from her. He didn't want any of it.

He sighed, the drink clearing out of his mind a little. She was the more potent drug anyway. “You came to talk to me. What did you want to say?”

His hand had gone slack, so she drew it to her lips. She pressed a kiss to his fingers that sent fire straight to his cock. And her words—damn, they went straight to his head.

“Trevor, I love you. Don't tell me it isn't real love. I know my own mind. I love you, and I want to fight for you.”

He gaped at her, his body and mind throwing him a thousand different reactions all at once. There was joy, stunned incredulity, even denial and shame, because he wasn't worthy of her. And most of all, there was his baser instinct, the one that said clearly:
possess
this
woman
now
. Take her, and make her yours without doubt, without hesitation because…

Well, he never got to the
because
. He simply stayed with the growing
need
that became a
now
.

He kissed her. He wrapped his arms around her so that she couldn't run. She wasn't running. She was actually leaning forward and searching for his lips. That made it a thousand times easier to maneuver her into bed. To clumsily strip her out of her dress and rip the ties of her corset and shift.

Her breasts spilled into his hands. Oh yes. There were other words, he knew. Things he should be saying, but he couldn't grab hold of them. He was lost in the smell of her as his mouth went to her nipples. He suckled her breasts, then he tongued her nipples, and when she clutched his shoulders and cried out, he knew he had found heaven on Earth.

He'd already been undressed. His mates hadn't bothered putting him in any type of sleeping clothes, which was just perfect. Her dress was pooled about her waist as he nuzzled and sucked on her glorious skin. Thankfully, she helped him by tossing aside her corset. And when he tugged on the fabric of her gown, she lifted her hips to help him.

Good woman. Good, wonderful, luscious, amazing woman with the scent of the gods between her thighs. He found her curls, knew the dewy wetness there, and simply nuzzled her open with his chin. Her feet got tangled somewhere, but she fixed the problem somehow. He didn't care. He was too busy tasting her. He nipped at her skin, he gloried in her scent, and he spread her wide open.

His fingers were clumsy. That frustrated him, so he decided to abandon all use of them in favor of his tongue. He spread her and licked her, and the taste was like spicy cream.

She bucked beneath him, her cry echoing through the room. He thrust his fingers inside, needing to feel the greedy clutch and pull of her body. God, she was tight, but the wetness everywhere had him slipping in with ease.

But he'd been slow. Her contractions were easing. And her keening gasp, that he so adored, had faded to a breathy sigh.

“Don't stop,” he murmured. “No, don't stop.”

So he licked her again. He pulled his fingers aside and used his hands to spread her wider. He licked her just to hear that sound. And when she was pushing down against his mouth, he knew it was time.

She would be his now.
Now!

He pulled himself up her body, stopping momentarily to worship her breasts. He sucked on her, tugging on her nipple until her special cry began. Not orgasm yet, but the nearness, the approach, the almost there.

And he was almost there.

He thrust.

Inside!

Her heat and her wet surrounded him. God yes. God glorious.

She stiffened beneath him, and belatedly he realized that she'd been a virgin, and there was pain for her.

“I'm sorry,” he murmured. “It will get better soon.”

He held himself still. Or rather, he held his throbbing cock in place, fully seated. He couldn't stop himself from raining kisses along her neck and her cheeks and her lips.

“It's all right,” she murmured. “You're just…so much.”

He dropped his forehead to hers, trying to hear her over the pounding in his head. “So much?”

“So big.”

He grinned. The bigger his cock, the greater his possession of her. She thought he was huge, and that meant she would not forget him. She would remember that he was her man. He was the one who had taken her maidenhead and claimed her as his own.

Those thoughts spun over in an endless circle of glory in his mind. He tried to wait for her to catch up. He truly did, but without him willing it, his body began to move. First a shift that shot pleasure up his spine. Then a thrust in reaction to the joy that made her gasp in that sweet way of hers.

He looked in her eyes. He tried to apologize without words because he was moving too fast. She wasn't in that keening place yet. Her breath hadn't caught, and her body was so amazingly tight around him that he couldn't tell if she was clutching him.

But when he looked into her eyes, when the light caught the sweet pink flush of her skin and the rosy red of her lips, he saw her smile. It was Mellie's smile. It was the one she gave him when she learned something new, the one that wasn't a laugh, but a sweetness that was all her. It never failed to squeeze his heart tight and make him worship her. He'd do anything for that smile, if only she would give it to him again.

“I love you,” she whispered.

He thrust. Her words had triggered a need so great, a welling of joy so powerful, that it took over his body.

She loved him.

He slammed in deep.

She loved him.

He slammed in hard.

She would be his. He would drill so far inside her that she couldn't possibly get rid of him.

Again and again.

Then he heard it. Her keening gasp.

And then, God, she became a wild thing beneath him. Pulsing and crying as her body fisted him.

Yes!

He exploded.

Mine!

* * *

Mellie came awake slowly. She was spooning in Trevor's arms, her mind drifting, but her body entwined with his. Hours had passed. She knew it because the window in his room gave her a view of the sky. There were stars still, but fewer than before. Dawn couldn't be more than an hour away.

But that was her only thought as she felt Trevor's hands on her body. They were moving slowly, almost reverently. He stroked her skin, brushing her belly with heat, lifting her breasts as he brought fire to her nipples.

And behind her bottom, she felt his penis—thick and hot—as it pressed tiny pulses against her. The movements were so slow—above and below—that she wondered if he was even awake. Then she felt the press of his lips against her shoulder and the murmur of her name on his lips.

“Mellie.”

“Ummm,” she said in response.

“Mellie, it's almost morning. I need to get you home.”

She knew it was true, but the way he touched her body mesmerized her into stillness. Or perhaps, not quite stillness, as she arched into the hand on her breast and pushed back against his cock.

He groaned as she did that, and she felt his teeth gently nip at the base of her neck right above her shoulder blades. She shivered in response, and he groaned again.

“Are you sore?” he asked.

“I feel wonderful.”

“You don't regret—” he began, but she cut him off.

“Make me feel wonderful again.” And lest he mistake her meaning, she lifted her leg and slid it over his. The hand on her belly stilled, but she knew what she wanted, so she took his wrist and pushed his hand lower.

He knew what he was doing. Lord, he always knew what she wanted. He slid his long fingers between her cleft and began to stroke her where she wanted.

“So wet,” he murmured. Then more clearly. “Are you sure you're not sore?”

She hadn't the words as he stroked over her pulsing clitoris. She knew the medical word because she'd looked it up. She knew a great deal about sexuality now because she'd made a point to learn what she could. Sadly, there wasn't much information to be found other than the anatomical names. The rest she'd learned from him or from her own nighttime stimulations.

But none of what she'd experienced before had come close to last night's penetration. There was so much more to her time with Trevor than the contraction of muscles and the ensuing pleasure. With him, she felt a connection. As if he would die if he couldn't be deep inside her. As if she was fallow without his possession.

And now, when he stroked her clitoris, she felt the familiar build to pleasure. Her belly tightened, her breath began to stutter, but it wasn't what she wanted. Inside she was still empty, and she wanted to be filled by him.