Flawless (32 page)

“For a gambler, you’re a terrible liar.”

“Normally this doesn’t happen at a card table.”

“Shouldn’t do, no.”

She crawled forward until she framed her husband’s unyielding torso with her knees. When she’d positioned her pelvis near enough to his face, she made a show of slowly, slowly bunching her scarlet skirts. His eyes widened. Finally, with her most private place revealed, she exhaled slowly. The dizziness was going to steal her words. But she forced it aside and stared him down.

“Kiss me, Miles. Right there. I dare you.”

A
lthough his control was only
going to last another few seconds, Miles gloried in what he’d wrought. Viv was the most erotic, the most blazingly beautiful woman he’d ever imagined. Thighs the color of cream straddled his chest. Private curls as pale as her hair shone silvery-gold in the candlelight. A goddess, a witch, she had ripped out his heart and seemed intent on ruining his mind and body, too. But for all the power he’d ceded—forcing control into her hands like a weapon she barely knew how to aim—Miles was a happy man.

He was also a man on the verge of spilling his seed as would an inexperienced lad.

Briefly, he closed his eyes. She’d been strong enough to ask. He’d be strong enough to give her what she wanted, his own body’s needs be damned. But closing his eyes barely grounded him. Viv’s woman’s scent intoxicated him. Her rasping breath was a siren’s call. And his hands at her backside, pulsing, clutching, was as much to release his own tension as to arouse his wife.

“Miles?”

The doubt in her voice did more for control than any attempt to block her out. Even now she was afraid of committing some social faux pas that would garner ridicule. He saw it in the way she nibbled her lower lip and how her hands were slowly going slack, lowering the silken curtain of her gown. Her mouth was somber, not soft and breathy.

“No mistakes, Vivie,” he said softly. “Not here. Now be a dear and keep those skirts out of my eyes. I don’t want to miss a glimpse.”

Her quiet exhale cleared the path for a return to passion. Her smile was almost grateful, grabbing inside his chest and twisting.

He didn’t want gratefulness and he didn’t want doubt. He wanted her crying out his name.

With a surge of strength Miles reversed their positions on the bed. Viv was beneath him, her thighs wide. He kissed her then, beginning with her bewitching mouth. He nipped and nuzzled until she laughed. He intensified the kiss, just his mouth over hers, exploring, mating tongue to tongue. His fists he kept tangled in the wild beauty of her unbound hair. She gave him her sighs and her restless noises.

But kissing was simply dry kindling on a fire that already glinted and roared. Miles edged down her neck and soothed tense tendons with each stroke of his tongue. Further down he reached the rounded swells of her breasts and indulged himself only briefly, just a few kisses, until the idea of stroking his shaft between those two full mounds threatened his frayed control.

Like finding an oasis, he finally reached her feminine center. Pale skin glistened and her thighs shifted in a restless dance. He hooked his arms around those limbs, stilling her. He lowered his mouth and tasted.

Viv cried out, then sighed deep and long.

She was honey and heat, sex and whiskey, melting his mind in a vat of sensation. Miles swirled his tongue and found the rhythm that made her whisper his name over and over. Her fingers threaded through his hair, tugging him closer. He kept his mouth pressed firmly against her flesh, his tongue sliding across that most sensitive bud. The moment, when it came, lifted her hips from the bed. Her hoarse gasp echoed through his room.

He had no more to give. His erection was a force of nature now, making demands that only Viv could satisfy. With his elbows still crooked behind her knees, Miles lifted his body and drove into hers. His own cry was guttural and low. He thrust hard, harder, rutting like something mindless.

He knew better, but he couldn’t stop. Dimly, with his sense of hearing blunted by the drum of his heartbeat, he heard Viv gasp once again. Her inner muscles clenched the length of his shaft and her fingernails clawed deep into his buttocks.

A pinwheel of pleasure set fire to every nerve, sparking and flashing from head to heel. He grunted, came, and collapsed with a breathless groan.

Minutes later, roused from the black by the swirl of Viv’s gentle petting along his temple, he struggled to make his bones and muscles work in concert.

“Is this a little gray here, Miles?”

“Me? Never.”

“I like it.”

He found himself praying then, although what deity might listen to a wastrel like him remained a great unknown.
God, don’t let this end. I’ll be good. I promise.

Slowly he pulled off of Viv and rolled clear. She looked wanton, wicked, all rumpled silk and untidy hair. A bite mark he didn’t remember inflicting was a dusky pink crescent on the upper slope of her breast.

“Will you leave?” he asked.

“I said I wouldn’t.” Her eyes widened. “Not tonight, I mean.”

“Of course. One romp doesn’t mean forever, does it?”

He regretted it as soon as he said it. Unresolved bitterness wouldn’t let him keep a civil tongue.

Viv’s smile, however, seemed inclined toward reconciliation. She pushed off the mattress and held out her hands. They stood belly to belly, gazes lost in one another. “It doesn’t have to,” she said softly. “But it could. If we want it to. We make the rules, remember?”

Miles stood gobsmacked as she turned her back, once again offering the intimate task of removing her gown. Laces and tapes and buttons eventually gave way to the damp cotton of her chemise and long naked legs. He wasn’t above indulging his imagination once more as she bent over the head of the bed and drew back the covers. Her backside was a work of art, one made even more erotic by the rose-hued finger marks he’d put there. But then she was gone, swallowed by yards of sumptuous sheets.

Miles wanted a drink. Needed it. He didn’t think it possible to need anything after having just experienced such a satisfying encounter.

I love you, Viv.

What would she do if he said it aloud? Would she smile like she had when waltzing? Or would her brows lift and her eyes go wide, that expression of polite distance he’d come to dread?

“Aren’t you cold?” She’d poked out of the bedding just enough to extinguish the nearest candle.

He shook free of his languor, blew out the other candle and slid into the bed. Her body was smooth and warm. Sleek limbs melted over his like chocolate in the sun, just as she had after her nightmare. Only now they were sated and completely nude. A faint trace of moonlight limned every surface.

Slowly, he exhaled. This
was
enough. For now. They had come so far and had months left in Kimberley. He’d be the man she needed, no matter how long it took.

“What will we do about Elden?” she asked, her breath soft across his chest. “He won’t forgive my slap.”

Quiet laughter rumbled out of his throat. “You slapped him, too?”

“I did.”

“That’s my girl.” The intimacy and possessiveness of that statement struck him afterward. Only, Viv didn’t stiffen or pull away. She snuggled more deeply into his embrace. “We’ll deal with him in the morning. Think nothing more of it tonight.”

But still she didn’t sleep.

“Something on your mind, Vivie?”

“Mmm.”

“Now’s the time for it. You have my undivided attention.”

She propped her head on one arm and gazed down at him. Her face was made of shadow, her hair of silver. “What happened the night of the Saunders’ gala? After we finished?”

“Will you believe my answer?”

She swallowed. “I’ll try to.”

Miles stared up at the ceiling. He curled her to his chest and held her slender shoulder a little too tightly. She petted his chest hair and breathed softly against his throat, her mouth nestled there. This was harder than he’d expected, but he would not hide what he felt. Not anymore. If he was asking her to trust his reply, he needed to honor her with the complete honesty she deserved.

“You scared me that night,” he said into the darkness. “Every challenge and every dare, you leveled me with a look. Just . . . bored of it all, even after we’d ravaged each other behind the staircase. I knew it then, that you were at the end of your rope.”

She had gone still as a hunted rabbit. “And where you woke up?”

“The Duke of Hereford’s youngest son suggested a round of cards. It seemed at the time like the perfect escape route. Why take you home and risk everything by making it a real marriage—working hard for what we wanted—when I could be as useless as ever? Cards led to more drink, and drink led to a house of ill repute. It
also led me to being sick and falling unconscious on an extremely tacky purple velvet settee. I awoke after noon and even in such a state, I wondered if you would be gone when I got home.”

She kissed the notch between his collarbones and dipped her tongue inside. Surprised heat shot from head to toe. “We had no trust.”

“Now you’re the one being generous tonight, Vivie. I gave you no reason to trust me. That was the way of it.”

“But then we were apart for so long and . . . I wouldn’t. That is . . .”

“Are you asking if I’ve been unfaithful?”

She nodded silently.

He was thankful then—thankful for whatever latent sense of honor had kept him out of any other woman’s bed. He was thankful because he could tell Viv the truth.

“I swear it,” he said, his voice low and calm. “There’s been no one else, not even when you had cause to assume the worst. I recited my vows carelessly, yet those vows have bound me. I was many things, Vivie—drunk, irresponsible, obnoxious. But I’ve never been unfaithful.”

She let out a long exhale that sounded very much like the relief he felt. “Then what do we do?”

He stroked her upper arm as if she were the one shivering. But it was Miles who quivered on the inside. They were on the cusp of something new. New could be good, just after it finished being petrifying.

“I want to change. I want to be the man you can depend on.”

Viv looked down at him from amid a halo of pale tangled hair. She was Venus personified, a living goddess that fate had decided might be his. What a ridiculous fool he’d been, waiting so long to be worthy of her.

“You’ve kept your side of the bargain admirably. More than I could’ve hoped. You
have
been the man I could depend on, when no one else would’ve dared.” Slim fingers worked down his chest, following the line of hair toward his groin. Firm, beautiful breasts pillowed against him in an unashamed display of her body’s lush bounty. “Tell me it wasn’t for my enthusiasm alone.”

He slid his hands into that lush curtain of hair and brought her face near. Against her lips he whispered, “It was for you, Vivie.
All
of you.”

Their mouths met just as she found his member with a sure grip. His erection surged in her hand. Blood and hope and relief spun together. He fused them in his kiss and rolled his breathtaking wife onto her back.

“Then maybe,” she said between gasps, “it’s time to start again.”

At the sound of rustling
papers, Viv opened her eyes. Frankly, it wasn’t how she had imagined greeting the morning. Ideas of Miles nuzzling her awake and making love to her in the sleepy half haze of dawn had been more probable—and more enjoyable. But he was sitting up in bed reviewing notes from a stack on his bedside table.

Had he often done as much studying as she did? A warm shiver of happiness tickled up from her belly. Only,
he saw the world in distinctly different ways. Learning those ways would be a joy for the rest of her days.

A future. They had talked of a real future.

That happy tickle threatened to turn to fear. So much could still go wrong. She no longer doubted Miles, but her own worth. If he discovered the truth of her birth . . . Would he want her then? It was all well and good for a nobleman to cultivate a reputation for vice, but could he bear to know that his wife had been born to such a dismal life?

The chance was worth taking. She peeked up at him through half-lidded eyes. His sun-touched hair was tousled. A serious expression shaped his mouth, his jaw, the corners of his eyes. The gathering dawn caught the brown of his irises and lit them with a sensual golden fire. Bare-chested, he radiated that effervescent combination of physical strength and confidence. Perhaps she should have been startled by the faint scratch and bite marks that revealed the path she’d traveled from his throat to his groin. Instead she grinned at herself. He was her territory to claim.

“When you’re done consuming me with your gaze,” he said dryly, still examining the papers in his lap, “I have something to show you.”

Viv giggled and buried her face in the pillow that carried both of their scents. Man and woman together. Husband and wife. At that moment, she knew she would do anything to keep him now—and that meant keeping her secret, too.

Miles caught her by the shoulder and rolled her onto her back. “I mean it, Lady Bancroft. My brain can only sustain a
train of thought for so long, especially when presented with such a delectable alternative.”

“What alternative might that be?”

“Worshipping you from head to toe until neither of us can think ever again.”

A hot jolt settled beneath her sternum and wet her inner thighs. That he could manage such a thing with words alone was only intimidating in that he used his mouth, his hands, his glorious manhood to even more potent effect. “I like the sound of that.”

“Yes, but not exactly the makings of a profitable company. Come figure this with me.”

“You really are determined on this point, aren’t you?” She sat up and dragged the sheet with her, covering her breasts.

Miles eyed the move with obvious disdain. “If I’m the naked object of your unabashed appreciation, I demand reciprocity.” He tugged the bedding down until her breasts were fully exposed. “I could become a dedicated entrepreneur if this is how we conduct our morning meetings.”