Fascination -and- Charmed (11 page)

“You are right.” Her tone had changed, become certain. “Yes. You have made up my mind. I shall share my secret self with you at once.”

Arran almost laughed aloud. “I am honored,” he said against her skin. He raised his head and regarded her steadily. “But we should definitely not hurry, my dear. Oh, no, these things are far better when enjoyed in a leisurely manner.”

She frowned, a perfect parody of perplexity.

Glancing down, Arran bracketed her breasts with his hands and pushed them together.

Grace let out a sharp cry and clutched his arms.

“There is no hurry, sweet. Trust me in this.” Trust him and he would lead her to joy that was agony ... and frustration that was endless torment. This avaricious, deceitful, predatory, carnal little woman would learn the agony of knowing ecstasy, knowing its source, knowing that it was physically within her reach, but knowing also that it would never be hers to command.

“Niall?” Her hands sought his. “What ... Do you want me to share what is most intimately mine with you now?” Her gaze darted to the window seat.

Her nipples were all but freed. She would share
what
he wanted her to share,
when
he wanted her to share it. Arran jerked satin and crepe down and rubbed work-roughened thumbs in circles that skirted contact with distended areola.

“Niall!”

“Cry out my name,” he told her, narrowing his eyes. “Cry, my sweet. This is a most gratifying beginning to our friendship.” He concentrated, tracing the paths again and again, slowly, very slowly, coming a little closer to that which she sought from him, and a little closer, but not touching.

“I want ... I want ...” She writhed and plucked ineffectually at his fingers.

“What do you want? Tell me.”

Grace only moaned and pressed her eyes shut. She let her head fall back, and Arran bared her breasts completely—and gasped at their small, thrusting perfection. He must control himself. He must. If his plan was to be brought to the satisfying conclusion he demanded, then he had to curb his impulses.

Half-lifting her from the floor, he bent to kiss the underside of one breast.

Grace cried out.

With his tongue, he followed the circles he’d first made with his thumbs.

She filled her hands with his hair, and he felt it pulled from the ribbon at his nape. “Oh, please,” she said on a deep sigh.

Please, indeed, Arran told himself. Please myself. Suck you so deeply into my mouth, you cry out your pleasure. Tear off this damnable gown and plunge into your body until you scream, not knowing if you plead for more or beg to be spared.

The tip of his tongue dragged across one swelling mound, into the vale between the onward across petal-softness to the very edge of the other rosy circle.

Grace tugged his hair. She clamped his head between her hands and attempted to force his mouth to that aching spot she yearned for him to claim.

And he wanted it.

With his eyes squeezed shut and his teeth clenched, Arran held Grace close and rested his cheek where she would have his mouth take possession.

Another second of this and his legs would give out.

“Niall,” she said, pleading.
“
Please.
”

Please, please, please.
His manhood pulsed, drove against his trousers until he longed to be naked.

Her struggling shifted her nipple back and forth against his cheek. The smallest shift ... just a tiny turn of his head and he could claim it.

Stop. Now.

“Thank you, Grace,” he said, certain that she would not notice how his voice rasped. Standing straight, he shook back his hair and straightened his shirt. “You have proved to us both that we will be a great comfort to one another in the days to come.”

“But ...” Her face was flushed. Rather than cover herself, she held her bodice where Arran had drawn it—to frame her breasts.

“It is very late, Grace,” he told her, taking hold of her elbows and backing her around the piano and across the room. “You must go to your bed now.”

“But I don’t want to. I want you with me.”

So brazen. “Soon enough, sweeting.” Soon, just as soon as he could adequately set the scene.

“I am afraid,” she told him, and tears filled her eyes. “You are my only friend, the only one I can turn to. Please do not make me go away without you.”

He brought her to the door. “What are you afraid of?”

“Of being alone. Of—of what is supposed to happen to me.”

“That you are to marry the marquess, you mean?”

“
Yes!
”

“I’m certain you will cope most satisfactorily with that event. For everyone’s sake.” He reached behind her and opened the door. “Go to bed, Grace.”

“No.”

“Yes.” Slowly he brought his face closer to hers, and her chin rose. He parted his lips, and so did Grace. He wetted his lips with his tongue—and so did Grace. She was a passionate man’s fantasy. “Oh,
yes
.”

Arran kissed her, kissed her lips for the first time. Her mouth did not respond, but she tasted sweet. He knew he risked falling into the seething abyss he had sworn to avoid as yet, but he had to drink of her.

Just one last, long sip to last the night. Slowly her lips softened and he felt her sigh.

With gentle desperation, he lifted a breast into his hand and his manhood leaped.

He reached his tongue deep into her mouth. She became very still. Arran stroked farther inside, and finally her tongue met his. His groan was echoed in her hushed moan, and Arran pushed his thigh between her legs.

Grace threaded her arms beneath his and wrapped him tightly, pressed her center to him with all her might.

Stop!

Arran broke away.

“Niall!” She groped for his shirt and tugged until he heard buttons tear loose. “Don’t stop holding me.”

“Go to your room,” he told her, avoiding her eyes, locking his legs, willing the burning need to die. “Go now.”

Instantly her hands fell away from him.

“Go.”

“Yes,” she muttered. “Yes, I must go at once. Quickly.”

He could finish this as soon as he chose. There was no need to delay.

“You’ve decided you do not want to share yourself with me?” she said. “My friendship no longer interests you?”

Then he did look at her. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, it interests me very much.” Steeling himself to resist the urges of his flesh, he pulled her bodice back into place. Why be in too much of a hurry? Restraint could only make the ultimate capitulation more tumultuous. He would not allow his mind to make those pictures now. “Come to me again tomorrow night.”

“I do not think that is wise.”

Arran regarded her sharply. “It is absolutely wise.”

“No. I should not come here again.”

Surely she wasn’t feeling guilty. He surveyed her tumbled curls, her kiss-swollen lips, her disheveled dress, and smiled. No, any protest was simply another ploy to bind him more tightly in her sensual snare. “Tomorrow night, Grace.”

Taking a step backward, she shook her head. “I do not know what has possessed me here, but I know it has been wrong. I must not return.”

Inclining his head, he smiled slowly, hooked a finger into her bodice between her breasts, and drew her close. “We both know what we must do, don’t we?”

She shook her head again but less vehemently.

“Of course we do. We have only begun what will become a great comfort to both of us.”

“Niall—”

“A very great comfort, and I thank you for it.” He thanked her deeply. “The same time tomorrow?”

She stared at him as though mesmerized, but formed a silent “no” with her enticing lips.

“Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, because there is so much more for us to accomplish together.”

With that, he found a nipple and squeezed very gently with a finger and thumb.

Grace’s lips parted and her eyelids drooped. She sought his arm and held on.

He replaced his fingers with his palm and made tight little strokes back and forth.

Her knees began to sag.

Arran’s hands went to her waist and he shook her lightly. “So much more, Grace. Don’t you agree?”

Her eyes flew open. Her cheeks were wildly flushed.

“Of course you agree.” He straightened her bodice again. “Run along now, there’s a good girl. We’ll meet here tomorrow at the same time.”

Once he’d urged her out, Arran shut the door and all but threw himself against it. He had not spilled his own seed since he’d taken his first female. Tonight he was perilously close to breaking that record.

Somehow he returned to the windows and forced one open against the straining wind. Leaning out, he turned his face upward and closed his mind to everything but the cold rain that took too long to douse his ardor.

Grace said a prayer that the dark circles beneath her eyes would not be noticed, and knocked on the door to which Mrs. Moggach had gruffly directed her.

“Mr. Innes wants to see ye,” the woman had said the moment Grace entered the dining room that morning. Mrs. Moggach’s mouth had turned down in surly disdain. “Ye’re to go to him now.”

Grace had set off at once and without breakfast. Not that breakfast appealed in the slightest, so disturbed was she by the previous night’s events.

No voice commanded Grace to enter, and she knocked again. These rooms—on the ground floor of the castle’s most easterly wing—were far-flung from her own quarters. Really, this place was ridiculously large. What a waste it was for one old man and a gaggle of mostly nasty servants to occupy so little of so much.

Impatient, Grace turned the door handle and slowly entered a small study beyond.

Empty.

She walked to a rosewood desk strewn with papers, and looked around. Books were scattered everywhere. Bending, she studied titles.
A Romany History. Kings Without Countries. People of the Moors. The Heather Crown.
Grace sniffed and straightened. She had no idea what might be contained in such volumes. Mr. Innes was a silent, apparently thoughtful man who made her slightly uncomfortable. Nevertheless he was very handsome, and women undoubtedly found him attractive.

But he was not Niall. Scalding heat dashed up her neck and into her face. Places in her body for which she knew no names began to throb as they had throbbed last night.

A suspicion had been swelling within her ever since she’d left Niall and rushed back to her chamber. Her first reaction to his touching her must have been correct. Regardless of what he said and regardless of how much she wanted to believe him, it was not appropriate for a man to see, let alone put his fingers where ... She was freshly afire over every inch of her skin.

Liberties.
The ladies who were Mama’s friends had—on many more than one occasion—spoken darkly of
liberties.
These were apparently the inappropriate actions of gentlemen toward females to whom they were not related. She had not quite understood what was meant, but heads had been wagged in her direction and Mama had been reminded of her heavy responsibility as the sole parent of an unmarried woman.

The females who had supposedly been prey to these liberties had been referred to as wicked and weak and as
strumpets.
The inference was that they had caused the understandably susceptible gentlemen involved to lose their heads and do things that were absolutely wrong and which they would not have done unless tempted beyond endurance.

Grace clutched handfuls of her skirts. Niall had been taking liberties, she just
knew
it.

She was
wicked.

She was a
strumpet.

She was so
weak.

She must
not
go to him tonight.

Her hands stole up to cover her breasts and she closed her eyes.

“Niall,” she whispered. “I want you to touch me again.” She was wrong, but she wanted to forget the marquess and think only of the man who filled her thoughts in every waking moment.

They did share something deep, something that drove her to want to be with him. And that same deep something made Niall mistakenly feel that he needed to touch her to
share
himself with her in that way.

That was exactly what caused last night’s happenings.

And—wicked as she might be—she wanted them to happen again.

Rattling startled her. She dropped her arms and spun around.

Mr. Innes, with Father Struan at his heels, opened French doors and stepped in from a stone-balustraded terrace, bringing with him a gust of fresh, rain-washed air. At the sight of her, his dark brown brows shot up. “Miss Wren. What are you doing here?”

She hoped she was no longer red-faced. “You sent for me.”

“I did?”

“Good morning to you, Miss Wren,” Father Struan said, stepping around Mr. Innes and smiling as if the very sight of her made him enormously happy. “You are looking particularly fetching today, my dear. My brother is a very lucky man.”

Grace tried to smile back, not a particularly good attempt. “Thank you.” She did not feel at all fetching. “Good morning, Father.” In her experience, no man of God had ever looked remotely like Father Struan. Even in his threadbare black garb, his impressive bearing and physique were impossible to

ignore. And his face ... Father Struan was exceedingly handsome.

Mr. Innes tugged a watch from his waistcoat pocket and frowned at its face. “It’s later than I thought,” he said, sounding irritable.

Grace decided that Mr. Innes was a trifle formidable. “Mrs. Moggach said she’d sent Florence to you with a message and that you would want to talk to me.”

He closed the door behind him. “No doubt that’s what this is about.” Patting of pockets produced crackling, and he pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. “Here we are. Does Florence ever speak coherently?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.” She forbore to point out that she had been at Kirkcaldy but a short time and hardly knew the servants—or anyone else here—at all.

“Four Meissen-style porcelain flowers,” he read aloud. “Gilded leaves. A gold brooch in the shape of a bow and set with sapphires. One small bleu celeste cup and saucer—Vincennes. Pearl earrings with diamond drops. An enameled chicken—Russian—with five topaz eggs. Gold fork with single large ruby set in handle. Mm. Hmm. And so it goes.”