A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (31 page)

“That kind of duty can bloody well hang, Preston.” He took her face between his hands. “You may have an obligation but you always have another choice.”

She looked at him with her clear blue eyes, her gaze direct and unflinching. “You’re right. I do. And I’m going to make it now.”

She reached out to touch his face thoughtfully, carefully, her fingers skating along the rough line of his jaw, and tracing across his cheekbone. She speared her hands through the short mane, molding her fingers to his skull and pulling at the thick tufts that sprang from his head like mown wheat. Her face was alive with pleasure and animal awareness. “Oh, Lord, Will. I’ve wanted to do that since the first moment I saw it like this.”

Will wrapped his hand tightly around her unraveling braid. “So have I,” he growled before he covered her mouth with his.

Preston responded instantaneously, fisting her fingers in his hair, and pressing the length of her body to his. Fearlessly she met his every stroke, joined him in every heated caress. She angled her head and he took her mouth greedily, only to have her questing tongue entwine with his until he was wound tight with ravenous hunger. He wanted more. His fingers worked quickly upon the buttons of her gray wool redingote, baring the sweet hollow at the base of her throat to his touch, to his tongue. Her skin tasted of the sweet, heady tang of danger.

Will was seized by a furious feeling of possessiveness, a need to devour her whole, a need to overwhelm her, and wake her to the dangers that all but surrounded her.

“Promise me you won’t sneak out in the middle of the night like this again,” he whispered fiercely into her hair. He couldn’t stop himself from asking even though he already knew she would only refuse.

“Whatever for? If I hadn’t, then we wouldn’t be doing this.” She rounded her head to kiss his neck while she pressed herself shamelessly against his chest.

Will’s mind went blank while his senses created a detailed catalogue of what lay beneath the now open redingote. She was wearing only a plain lawn shirt, tucked into a pair of boy’s breeches. No camisole, no stays.

“My God,” he groaned into her mouth, as his fingers searched out the outline of her body, running down her back, over her sleek waist, and around her smoothly rounded bottom. “If you were my daughter, I’d lock you up.”

“Don’t be such an awful puritan. They did lock me up, but here I am.”

Yes, devil take him. “Here you are.”

His eyes held hers as he slowly peeled back the loose edges of her coat. He dared her to watch as his gaze moved down her neck, and across her breasts like a physical caress. A caress that was followed by the callused fire of his hands as he brushed lightly across the veiled peaks. Once, twice, three times, back and forth, until he had peeled back the thin fabric of her shirt, until she was quivering with need, a need only he was going to fulfill.

Preston’s eyes closed and her breath came in little pants as her nipples grew hard and taut. Blindly she reached for him, pulling his mouth down to hers. He acquiesced, kissing her slowly and lightly, not letting his attention, or hers, stray too far. He wanted to touch her, to feel the warm weight of her sweet breasts in his hands. He slid his palms around to cup her, and he was rewarded when she gasped her bliss into his mouth.

Will left the kiss to pull back, so he might watch her. So he could watch the intense expressions of astonishing joy play across her face as she was touched for the first time. So he could gauge her pleasure, and guide his hands carefully over the sensitive mounds filling his hands. He kept his touch light, letting the heavy mist chill and sensitize her skin, so she could feel the exquisite difference between the cold air and the rough heat of his callused palms.

He felt her shiver with sensation against his hands. Her mouth had fallen open in amazement and her head tipped back, tempting him with the soft, silvery slide of skin from her jaw down across her breasts. Her sweet nipples were painted a shimmering lavender by the icy chill, and they stood out tautly against the pale smoothness of her skin. Will ached to put his mouth to them, to suckle her until she cried out with pleasure.

He left his hands there, upon her breasts, lightly caressing, as he brought her back to his mouth for another kiss. But she wasn’t docile, wasn’t about to be led away from so much pleasure. She gave him her mouth readily, but her attention was already diverted.

A carriage was rumbling into the mews, moving fast to reach its carriage house, and get both man and beast out of the rain.

As they should do. “Come.” He lapped the loose edges of her coat closed, and turned her in his arms, pulling her close to his side. “We need to find somewhere dry to talk. Why don’t—”

“No.” She was single-minded in her pursuit of her pleasure, pressing him back into the darkness against the wall. “My turn,” she whispered with unrestrained hunger, as her hands came up to the buttons of his greatcoat. Preston went at his clothing, opening his coat, jacket, waistcoat, cravat, and shirt with a rambunctious alacrity that said more for her curiosity than her experience. But he allowed it, letting her peel back the layers of clothing until her hands could at last touch his skin.

She hesitated only a moment before her hands skimmed across the blistering surface of his chest. She traced the outline of his muscles, her eyes wide and dark as she ran her fingers across his tanned skin. He felt his lungs expand and his flesh contract with the exquisite torture as her nimble fingers curled into the glistening hair sprinkled across his chest, and her deft hands teased across his flat nipples in imitation of his light, sweeping caresses.

William closed his eyes to savor the feel of her clever, clever hands on his body, and heighten the erotic pleasure of being bared for her perusal. He stood still, listening to the appreciative sighs that signaled the obvious delight she took in pleasuring him, until he was wound tight. Until the ravenous, hungry, aching desire for her asserted itself once more.

He stepped away from her for a moment, only long enough for her to look up at him in frowning displeasure, when he reached up and yanked the edges of his clothing wide. And just when her eyes were softening as she looked at his body before her, he reached out and spread the loose, open ends of
her
clothing wider, baring
her
to
his
gaze.

Then slowly, so slowly, he pulled her to him, until their flesh just barely touched. Until their skin was quivering in unsatisfied anticipation. He kept his gaze locked on hers as he moved slightly, grazing her cooled and sensitive skin with the rough texture of his body. Her eyes flared wide and dark with pleasure, before she closed them slowly, concentrating, giving herself up to the saturated bliss of their bodies pressed together in intimate embrace. And then she began to smile.

It was as if the sun were rising beneath him. Her smile broke across her face like early-morning light, spreading until her mouth was open wide and her teeth were flashing at him in the dark. And her dimples. Her dimples rose with her smile, creasing the smooth skin of her cheeks as she turned her face to the night sky and laughed, gasping from the sheer bliss of being alive. Laughed until the frigid rain pouring down on her face left her sputtering for air in his arms.

As they had been standing there, indulging in the tortured bliss of their kisses, warmed by the heat of their bodies, the night around them was turning nasty. Freezing rain began to sluice down William’s back, reaching icy fingers through his hair, and chilling him through his clothes. He gathered Preston closer, pulling the open ends of her clothing together and beginning to work at the buttons.

“Preston, what am I thinking? Damn my eyes. It’s the middle of the night and it’s freezing cold. What am I to do with you?” He smiled in spite of himself.

“Why, you’re to kiss me again, of course.”

He couldn’t resist such an entreaty from such tempting lips. He pulled her face to his, angling her jaw gently, feeling the heat return instantly. It wasn’t until he had thought of leading her into the stables and taking her on the first available pile of hay that Will realized he was about to go too far. To ruin this girl in a stable loft was beyond all boundaries. He needed to regain control of himself, and of her, to bring her back to sanity before their actions became irreversible.

“Pres,” he said as he pressed soft kisses to her temple. “We’ve got to stop. I’ve got to think.” As if he were capable of rational thought.

“Why?” She was nothing but sweetly obstreperous temptation.

“I hate to say this, but I think we may be sailing into dangerous waters here.”

“I don’t care,” she answered him, all fierce insistence. “I don’t care about anything else but this.” She rose up on tiptoe to press her mouth to his again.

He couldn’t fall back into her. He would lose himself. He levered her off. “We’ve got to think,” he repeated. “To talk. I came here to talk to you. I have things I have to tell you.”

“I know what you’re going to say, Will—”

“You couldn’t possibly.” At least he hoped not. God only knew what he was going to do if she already knew, and was going ahead with her engagement to the bastard anyway.

No. She wasn’t like that. She was forthright and direct and very, very clear about what was right and wrong. Wasn’t she?

But she also stole out of her house at night, and went traipsing about the countryside and now London—God, what was she thinking?—and thought next to nothing of starting brawls nearly everywhere she went. Perhaps Aldridge had chosen her because she was as morally flexible as he.

“Pres, I have to talk to you about Lord Aldridge. He doesn’t want you.”

“I know.” Some of the insistence seemed to drain out of her at the admission. She let go of him and subsided back against the wall. “He’s told me as much himself. I made him admit it. Though much good it did me.” She turned those clear, devastatingly direct blue eyes to him. “Which is why I want to be with you. Why I choose to be here with you, now. I want to give myself to you.”

Her declaration had an alarming effect on Will. Alarming because it dampened his heretofore avid ardor. It stopped him cold. It made him cautious. “Wait just a minute there, Pres—”

“Wait for what, Will? For others to find their happiness? For Cassie and your brother to come to an agreement? For you to go away to sea? All we have is now. Why should we waste it? Why should we waste this?” She twined her arms around his waist and pressed her half-naked body to his. “Please.”

The intensity of the need that roared through his gut was nearly painful. But the potential consequences were more than dire. “God’s balls, Pres. You can’t be serious. What you’re proposing…” He backed off, shaking his head.

“Why not?” she asked, her liquid eyes imploring. “We both know precisely where we stand. I have no expectations of you and you have none of me. Please, I want to be with you. I want to have a chance to taste what a man can offer before I have to pack myself onto the shelf. Fate has given us this one imperfect chance to be together, you and I. I don’t want to waste it.”

Something within him chilled, despite the fact that she had just offered him the kind of deeply satisfying, and deeply provoking, encounter any man might wish for. That
he
had wished for in the dark, wakeful stretches of the night. But her words also left him stone cold with fury. “What a man has to offer? Will any man do?”

Oh, damn his eyes and his mouth and his jealous, jealous, stupid brain.

She stepped away so abruptly, he almost stumbled from her loss, but he could see his barb had hit home. Her face had gone ashen, and her jaw was as sharp as a blade. “I want to hit you so badly, Will Jellicoe, I can hardly breathe.”

And, devil blast him, he wanted her to hit him. He wanted to feel the punishing bruise of her anger.

But she didn’t hit him. She dug her fingers into the loose edges of her clothes to keep them from balling into fists. “If that is what you think of me, then you don’t know me at all.”

“The truth of the matter, Preston, is that I don’t know you.” He sounded weary to his own ears, like an old man—like a sailor who had been concussed in battle one too many times, and could not recover his wits. “I just bloody met you nine days ago.”

The fight seemed to have run out of her, as well. “It hasn’t felt like only nine days to me. It felt…” She shook her head and turned away, her hands wrapped around her middle, gathering the loose ends of her clothing together. Protecting herself.

Yes, it had felt like more than nine days. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? It shouldn’t feel like more.

“Why?” He asked the questions echoing in his mind. “Why are you doing this—staying engaged to this man? You don’t know what he is.”

“I know enough.” She closed her eyes for a moment as if she might try to shut out the ugly truth. He would not let her off so easily. “Listen to me, Pres. He gets his pleasure with boys. Children.”

She went still, and then her eyes opened slowly, dark and wide with shock. Her face blanched until she looked encased in frosted ice. “Is that what you came to tell me? To bring me tales of his perversions?”

“Yes. He comes to London to find children who have no choice but to go with him.”

Into the long, heavy silence between them the sounds of the city crept back in. The rattle of carriage wheels across pavement. The low whinny of a horse. The jangle and slap of harness leather being stored.

“God help me,” she finally said on a shaky stream of breath. “It all makes such peculiar, horrible sense.”

Sense? “How can that make any sense?”

“Look at me.” She spread her arms, and her voice was tinged with frightened disgust. “‘Spare and gangly’ are the words my mother has often used. ‘Hoyden, boyish.’” She closed her eyes, and her voice rose like a frosted ghost in the eerie stillness of the mews. “Boys, you said—children. His favorite appellation for me has seemed to be ‘unruly child.’ And Mama told him I was younger than I am. I thought it was vanity—to make Cassie seem younger, to cover Mama’s ridiculous embarrassment that she had not given us a Season.” She took in a few short, panicked breaths. “Oh, my God. I think I’m going to be sick.”