A Secret Affair (12 page)

“Shh,” he whispered again her shining hair. “Don’t worry. I would never hurt you.”

Frances nodded. Her blue eyes filled with wonder and trust. He ran his opposite thumb across her lips before taking her mouth again in a passionate kiss and slowly sinking his finger into her wet warmth. His movements were deliberate. Designed to entice, seduce. He slowly moved his finger in and out, in and out, until Frances’s head tossed fitfully against the pillow and she sobbed against his mouth. “Charlie, please.”

Charlie knew exactly what she wanted, and he was going to give it to her. If it killed him. His cock aching, he continued the slow slide of his finger in and out, and then he moved his thumb up to touch the nub of pleasure centered between her legs.

Frances’s entire body bucked this time. He captured her moan by kissing her. “Let me touch you, love. I’ll make you feel so good.”

“You already have,” she whispered against his cheek. “If you made me feel any better, I think I’d die.”

Charlie smiled against her lips. “I think you can stand a bit more.”

*   *   *

Frances gasped at his words, his finger still driving her slowly mad with its unrelenting rhythm. She’d never felt anything like it. She wanted to scream, sob, kiss him forever. And there was more? She could barely believe that.

When his thumb came back to touch that spot between her legs, the one that made her hips arch off the bed, she gasped again. She’d been trying to concentrate on breathing, but she couldn’t. Charlie wasn’t kissing her any more. Instead, he was whispering things into her ear, sweet things, lovely things, things that made her thighs tremble.

“I’m going to make you come,” he whispered.

Frances didn’t even know what it meant, but some primal instinct inside her told her that she desperately wanted to find out.

“Yes, Charlie. Yes,” she murmured.

Her hand clutched his shoulder, the feel of the hard muscle beneath his smooth skin giving her a measure of reality. He pulled his finger away and Frances cried out.

“Shh,” he whispered against her cheek. “This is the best part.”

She would have to take his word for it, she thought with a smile, just before his finger came up to take the place where his thumb had been. Then she ceased thinking at all.

Frances wrapped both arms around Charlie’s neck and kissed him full on the mouth. She sobbed as his finger made unerring little circles against her tender flesh. Again. Again. Again. In a spot that made her toes curl and her back arch away from the mattress. “Charlie,” she gasped. “I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” he whispered huskily into her ear.

She closed her eyes, riding a wave of feeling that was more perfect than anything she’d ever experienced before. Her heart pounding in her chest, her breathing ragged, Charlie’s finger guided her until she shattered into a thousand little pieces.

His mouth captured her cry, and their kiss exploded as she shuddered against him, her hips coming off the bed.

It took several moments for Frances to become aware of her surroundings again. Her body was tingling in places she’d barely known existed and her breath came in rapid pants. She looked up into Charlie’s warm, dark eyes. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispered against his mouth.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he answered, kissing her forehead.

It slowly penetrated Frances’s awareness that while she felt like she had no bones left in her body, Charlie remained stiff and tense. She touched his hip. He jerked. “Charlie?”

“Yes, love?” His voice was strained.

“Are you … are you all right?”

He clenched his eyes shut and pressed his forehead into the pillow. “I will be,” he assured her.

Frances lifted up on one elbow and watched him in wonder. Charlie was in pain. She’d received her pleasure but he was still … he was still lusting after her.

Her heart wrenched. “Tell me what to do,” she whispered into his ear. “How to touch you. How to make you feel like you made me feel.”

His laugh was a bit shaky. “Oh, love, no. I couldn’t stand it.”

She frowned at him. “You don’t want me to touch you?”

Another shaky laugh. “I think if you touched me, I’d … I’d explode.”

She bit her lip. So that was it. Charlie didn’t want to explode like he’d made her explode. Well, too bad. She’d read the pamphlet
Secrets of a Wedding Night
, despite Annie’s insistence not to. She’d just been too curious in the end. And she knew a little bit about what went on between a man and a woman—who were properly married of course.

She and Charlie might not be married, but they certainly were engaging in some of the same activities as married folk, and she wasn’t about to allow him to suffer in unfulfilled agony while she drifted off into contented slumber. No. Not tonight.

He might not be willing to tell her how to touch him, but she’d just start with her instincts and go from there. And she could be ever-so-persuasive when she wanted to be.

She let her hands skim across his muscled shoulder, down his arm, and to his flat midriff.

The muscles in his abdomen flexed instinctively. She splayed her bare hand against his skin under his shirt. “Will you take off your shirt?” she asked shyly. “So I can see you?”

He sat up and obligingly pulled the shirt over his shoulders using both hands. Frances watched as the candlelight poured over his satiny golden skin. She couldn’t get enough of looking at him. She reached out and let her hand trace down the fine line of hair on his abdomen. The line that disappeared under his trousers. He lay back against the pillows, and she skimmed her fingers along his belly again. The muscles jumped again. When she moved her hand lower, he immediately clamped it down with his hand. “What do you think you’re doing?”

She experimented with touching her tongue to his ear to distract him. His hips bucked. Ooh, he liked that, did he? Well, he just might like the wicked things she had to say to him. “I want to touch you, Charlie,” she whispered. “Please.”

She kissed him then, not allowing him to speak, and the fierceness of his kiss was all the answer she needed. She tentatively moved her hand down his abdomen again, this time, rubbing against the bulge in his trousers once, twice. He groaned against her mouth. Now that was the reaction she’d hoped for. She moved her hand up slowly to the buttons on his trousers. She plucked one open. Charlie rested his hand against hers, flattening her palm against his bulge, stopping her. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“
That’s
your problem.” She kissed him again. “You think entirely too much. I just want to touch you.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him innocently. “Please, may I?”

Charlie groaned again. “God knows I want you to.”

Oh good, she’d won. “Excellent,” she said, plucking her hand out from beneath his, to reapply pressure to the buttons of his trousers.

When all of the buttons were undone, Frances took a deep breath and reached inside Charlie’s trousers to take him into her hand. He was huge and hot and strong. He felt like steel covered in velvet. She squeezed her fist around him and he groaned. His face wore an almost pained expression mingled with sublime pleasure. She loved to watch. Every touch of her hand, every flick of her wrist produced a different fleeting emotion across his handsome face and it made Frances feel powerful, wonderful. She had this strong, smart, wonderful man at her mercy.

And she intended to make him feel as good as he’d made her feel.

“Tell me how to touch you,” she whispered against his cheek.

His voice shook. “If you did any more I’d—”

“You’d what?” But she knew there was something. Something equivalent to the ecstasy she’d felt moments earlier. Whatever that was, she wanted to make him feel it too.

She squeezed him, and he groaned. She rubbed her thumb against the tip of his shaft and he shuddered. She traced her fingernails down and cupped him, and his hips jerked, but it wasn’t until she stroked him with her clenched fist that she heard the magic words, “Oh God, Frances. Don’t.”

His breathing became shallow, and his eyes squeezed shut. Ah, so stroking him was the equivalent of what he’d done to her. She smiled to herself.

She kissed him again, letting her tongue play inside his mouth and then she stroked him again, and again. Up and down slowly, allowing her thumb to flick across the top of his shaft whenever she pulled up.

Charlie’s jaw was clenched shut. “Frances,” he groaned.

She pulled up again. “What will happen, Charlie? If I keep doing this?” She let her fingers descend again, and his groan told her everything she needed to know. He was hers. In her control. All the power in the palm of her hand. And she’d never felt more beautiful or more wonderful as she did while Charlie writhed beneath her simple touch. She moved faster, up and down, and Charlie’s kiss became more fierce. His hands tangled in her hair as his hips moved in an unconscious rhythm with her hand.

“Frances. Oh God, Frances,” he finally groaned just before his hips shook and he spurted his seed out across her hand and his bare abdomen.

Frances stared at it blinking, shocked. She hadn’t quite expected that but she knew from Charlie’s intense groan and the way his body shook, that whatever had just happened to him had been the equivalent of what had happened to her. And she felt proud. She smiled to herself and snuggled up against him.

“Charlie,” she whispered as she laid her head on his chest. “How do you feel?”

Charlie kissed the top of her head, his breathing still ragged. “Like I’m never going to be the same.”

CHAPTER 25

Frances was barely paying attention when the other women’s voices drifted toward her. She was drinking a glass of punch on the sidelines of the Havertines’ party and waiting for Annie to return from the ladies’ retiring room. But her mind was entirely preoccupied with thoughts of what she and Charlie Holloway had done last night.

Oh God, were her cheeks burning? They must be. Thank heavens she hadn’t seen him here tonight. She’d surely turn into a puddle of embarrassment on the parquet floor. All she had to do was get through the evening. Then she and Annie would be off to Ashbourne Manor to finish the wedding preparations. She would have an entire week, a whole sennight, to think about things without having to face him. She couldn’t see him now. She just couldn’t. Not with the wicked scenes of everything they’d done last night playing in her head again and again.

Sated and spent, they’d drifted into a peaceful slumber in each other’s arms. By the time they’d awoken, it was nearly time for the maids to come, and Charlie had barely had a chance to kiss her on the top of the head, gather his clothes and boots, and run before Mary had come tripping into the room, a bright, cheery smile on her face. Frances had breathed a sigh of relief at the time, but she hadn’t had any chance to speak with him today and she had no idea what he was thinking. How did two people proceed from—she gulped—what they’d done?

It took the mention of Charlie’s name to snap her from her reverie. She glanced over her shoulder. Confound it. Lady Lenora Harcourt was standing with her group of friends just a few paces away, and she had uttered Charlie’s name.

“I heard Oliver Townsende will be here tonight,” one of Lady Lenora’s friends said.

“I should have bid on him and not Charlie Holloway at that auction,” Lady Lenora shot back. “At least Townsende stands a chance of being interested.” They all laughed. “Not to mention he’s a duke.”

Anger shot through Frances’s veins. How dare that woman cast such aspersions on Charlie’s character? Why, the widow could ruin his reputation with such vicious lies, and she seemed to take great pleasure in repeating them. And while Frances herself had believed them up until recently, she had never, ever dared repeat them to others, and now she knew for—ahem—certain, none of it was true. Not one bit.

Lady Harcourt had best shut her mouth. Frances turned to leave, not wanting to hear any more of the lady’s awful gossip when that woman took notice of her.

“You shouldn’t be so sad at Mr. Holloway’s rejection of you, Miss Birmingham,” Lady Lenora drawled.

Frances squeezed her skirts in her hand and turned toward the woman, her face a mask.

“We were just saying that it seems Mr. Holloway isn’t interested in ladies at all.” Lady Lenora gave her a thin smile.

Frances clenched her fist. She stalked over to the other woman and looked her straight in the eye. “You’d do well to remember that just because a man isn’t interested in
you
doesn’t mean he isn’t interested in all women.”

“Oh, I’m quite certain dear, I kissed him once. It wasn’t worth it.”

Frances ground her teeth together. The words flew from her mouth. “I happen to have firsthand knowledge that Mr. Holloway is
exceedingly
interested in women.”

Both of Lady Lenora’s finely drawn eyebrows shot straight up. “Is that so, Miss Birmingham? Firsthand knowledge? What exactly are you admitting to?” The group of women narrowed their eyes on her and laughed.

Impotent rage bubbled in Frances’s chest. This woman was calling Charlie’s name into question, lying about him, dishonoring him. What would a man do in such circumstances?

She pointed a finger in Lady Lenora’s face. “If I hear you say another word about Mr. Holloway, I shall call you out!”

Lady Lenora’s mouth fell open, then her red lips turned up in a smirk. “Are you honestly challenging me to a duel?”

Frances nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. “I will if you don’t keep your vicious lies to yourself.” And if that wasn’t scandalous enough, Frances added for good measure. “And make no mistake, I would win.”

Frances whirled around to walk haughtily away. She stopped. Charlie and Annie were standing directly behind her. Charlie had an inscrutable look on his face. Frances’s heart leaped.

Annie merely stuck her nose in the air and added to Lady Lenora’s group. “She
would
win, you know. I taught her to shoot myself.”

CHAPTER 26

Charlie wasted little time in dragging Frances into the corridor with him.