His Wicked Seduction (23 page)

In time she became aware of Lucien moving higher, his mouth back on hers again. She could taste herself on him, the thought sinfully erotic. She groaned as his weight eased down over her. The pressure of his body was a welcome one; he pinned her to the bed when she felt light enough to drift away in the winter breeze. His shaft was hard against her inner thigh and he rocked forward, the tip of him sliding over her with a rhythm her body’s instincts knew better than she ever expected.

“Yes, Lucien, yes.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, not ever again…and this might.”

“If I never hurt again, I won’t know I’m alive,” she reminded him. She was desperate and needed to feel him. Her hands slid down the ridges of his hard abdomen until she wrapped her hand possessively about his length. He groaned against her lips with feral pleasure.

“You play with fire, darling, and I don’t wish to burn you.” He tried to pull back. Horatia slid a hand down to the base of him and back up to his tip.

“Burn me. Consume me, Lucien. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted.” Horatia kissed Lucien so deeply that her assault seemed to drive him wild. He snatched her hand away and confined her wrists above her head. Poised at her entrance, he began to work his way inside, gentle and slow, so unlike what she’d come to expect from him.

Horatia lifted her hips, forcing him too deep too soon and he muttered a curse and tried to lift away. She locked her legs around his hips, keeping him close. His hips jerked forward in a shallow thrust. The sudden intrusion of his shaft inside her burned and a piece of her was forever lost in the wake of his penetration. But she was glad. She was changed. She was his.

She ignored his apologies as passion sparked his movements into life inside her.

Lucien now held her prisoner beneath him, a slow steady pace of thrusts testing her limits. He feathered kisses across her cheeks, nose, lips and chin, as though unable to stop himself from branding his essence on her in every way possible.

The pain dulled in the wake of a tension that was steadily building. The sensation she’d once mistaken for nausea was back, stronger than before. Horatia reveled in it, understanding now what it meant and the throbbing between her legs eased with each of Lucien’s thrusts.

Even though her wrists were trapped, she raised her hips, welcoming him deeper into her. Lucien released her wrists to glide his hands down her sides and underneath her, cupping her bottom, lifting it up. The angle changed things dramatically, and his shaft struck some new place deep within her. The cry that left her lips was one of startled surprise and Lucien hastened to repeat the move again and again, her cries a primal encouragement to continue. Sweat dewed on their bodies as Lucien’s pace picked up.

“Lucien, I think I…” Horatia was silenced with a dominating and possessive kiss that ended in the most brilliant burst of pleasure in her life. She heard a scream and only later realized it was her own. Lucien shouted her name as he jerked against her. He continued to shake and rock, trembling above her. Horatia would never forget the look in his eyes—so bright with passion, fire, tenderness and confusion.

“My God, Horatia. I’ve never—didn’t know—it could be this way.” He seemed afraid, like a young boy faced with fear for the first time. Horatia ran her fingers through his hair and raised her head up to kiss him.

“Don’t be afraid, Lucien. I’ll hold you.”

It was too soon to hope that he’d come to love her, but she knew that he cared. This was no casual affair. This was about making love, about forging a connection. Lucien settled in her arms, their bodies still linked as her hands brushed against him. He buried his face in her dark brown hair. A cool breeze tickled their bodies and Lucien disentangled himself from her.

“Please don’t leave,” she begged in a ragged whisper.

“Never, my heart. Never.” He pulled back the covers of the bed so he could slip inside and join her, cocooning her body with his own. The only sounds were their mingled breathing and the snap and crack of the fire in the hearth.

Everything has changed. But what would Lucien do now? Not wanting to dwell on the possibilities, she burrowed into his arms and settled down to sleep.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ashton sat in his study on Half Moon Street. Letters of a financial nature were strewn over the surface of his oak wood desk. The numbers on the letters blurred as pain lanced up his left arm, which still hung limp and useless in a sling about his neck.

What a bloody nuisance being shot was. He had lost so much of his strength that his footman had to do many routine things for him and his valet, once a minor irritation, had become indispensible. He couldn’t put a shirt on, let alone tie his neck cloth or button his trousers without assistance.

It was most humiliating. Everyone treated him like a child in leading strings and he was tired of it. And he’d only been injured a few days. The doctor had given him instructions to rest for the next
five weeks
. The idea was intolerable. He, of all people, could not afford to rest. There was so much to be done aside from his business; namely tracking down Waverly and ending this battle before it could progress to a full-fledged war.

With a heavy sigh, Ashton reached for the nearest letter, the movement sending a stab of pain through his bad shoulder. He pinned the letter down on his desk with his hand in the sling, ignoring the ache it caused and used his other hand to break the seal. He cursed under his breath until the seal gave way.

The letter was from his banker at Drummond’s Bank, Mr. Jared Simms. Simms had given Ashton a detailed report of his funds currently tied up in the consols. It was a sound investment. Consolidated annuities were government bonds that paid three percent dividends twice a year.

Ashton had put fifty thousand pounds into them and the return had been a mighty fortune that he spent wisely and cautiously. Unlike his friends, he had not been born into money. His entire life he’d amassed a grand fortune so where his political clout could not win the day, his bank accounts could. Though he did not flaunt his wealth, he did not hesitate to use it when it could gain a clear advantage.

He was currently caught up in a bidding war over a company called Southern Star Shipping. Ashton owned his own shipping company, Lennox Lines, but acquiring Southern Star would put his ships deep into the Caribbean trade markets and the routes closer to Africa, an area he had yet to penetrate.

This was not his only interest in the line however.

For months he’d heard rumors that Waverly was involved in questionable shipments, bringing lord knows what into England. Ashton suspected slaves might be involved but it could be a number of things. If he could gain control of the line, he could clean up the ships, put new captains and crews on them that he trusted, and begin to eliminate Waverly’s illicit sources of income, piece by piece. It was the one thing he knew he could do better than Waverly and if it was his best weapon, he needed to use it. A man couldn’t hire killers to take out the League if he didn’t possess any money.

He would have possessed Southern Star by now, but a rival shipping company had been matching him bid for bid. The end result was his solicitor, Mr. Danforth, contacting the owner of Melbourne, Shelley and Company to meet with Ashton in less than an hour to discuss the matter and come to an arrangement.

A knock on his study door made Ashton look up. His butler, Wimbley, a balding man of middle years, stepped inside.

“What is it?” he asked, looking back down at the investment report.

“There’s a visitor to see you my lord. A lady,” Wimbley clarified.

“If it is Her Grace, tell her I shall be with her shortly.” He had no idea what Emily was doing here, except to berate him again for putting himself in danger.

“It is not Her Grace, my lord. She says her name is Lady Melbourne and that you are expecting her.”

“Lady Melbourne?” Melbourne’s wife had come? He’d asked to see her husband. “Show her into the Rose Parlor and have tea brought in. Tell her I will be with her directly.” Still, he supposed he could work this to his advantage.

“Yes, my lord.” Wimbley disappeared.

Ashton hastily organized his desk before checking his appearance in a nearby looking glass. His cravat was snug and his trousers unwrinkled. His silk navy blue vest was crisp and his shirt pressed. He looked decent enough for company.

Perhaps his hair was a tad long for the conventional styles favored among society but he’d been too busy of late to have it cut. His eyes, which had been glassy with fatigue and pain of late, were bright again with his irritation at having to deal with this proxie.

Ashton looked every inch the dapper rogue, save for the white cloth sling holding his left arm. Showing weakness in any way was not what he wished in a business setting, but his arm could not be helped.

He left his study and walked up the stairs to Rose Parlor. It was perhaps a bit improper to have a parlor on the same floor as his bedroom, but he only used the Rose Parlor for two things—intimate meals with his mistress, when he had one, and when he did not, it was a place of seduction.

He found that the dark hues of the room seemed to lull the ladies into a receptive mood. Rose-colored gauze curtains laced the windows, casting the room into tempting rosy dimness even in the morning. A fire was always lit in the hearth to keep up the impression of an evening rendezvous. The Rose Parlor had never failed to help him in his conquests.

If he was to deal with his competitor’s wife, it seemed logical that a bit of seduction might help his cause. Ashton was no fool. Unlike other men, he learned long ago how powerful a woman could be in a man’s world of business and how men underestimated them. However, if he played the charming rake, Lord Melbourne would be but a pawn in Ashton’s game and Southern Star shipping would be his.

Ashton opened the door, expecting to find a gray-haired matron. What he found instead halted him in his tracks. A woman, who must have been in her late twenties, perched on the edge of the red velvet settee close to the fireplace. Her raven-black hair and almond-shaped gray eyes were framed by sooty dark lashes. She stared back, seemingly just as confused by him. It was clear that neither of them had expected the other to appear as they had.

“You are Lady Melbourne?” Ashton asked.

“Yes. Lord Lennox I presume?”

Her lips were a pale shade of pink and not as full as most women’s, but their shape was somehow quite erotic. Rather than a pretty pout, she had a wide mouth, as though she was more inclined to smile, despite the cool gray of her eyes. Ashton rarely entertained thoughts regarding married women, but in her case he could make an exception.

“I am Lord Lennox.”

“Good. We have much to discuss, my lord.” There was a soft accent to her speech, a Scottish lilt. Not as heavy as a brogue and far more refined, as though she was trying to hide it. It was a revealing weakness and he acted upon it instinctively.

“What part of Scotland are you from, Lady Melbourne?” Ashton enjoyed watching her eyes widen. It was clear she preferred to hide her origins, something he understood only too well.

“I was born in Falkirk, my lord.”

“Falkirk?
An Eaglais Bhreac
,” he said with a smug smile.

“You speak Gaelic?” She looked doubly surprised.

“Only a few phrases and some cities and villages. I had an uncle who married a woman from Edinburough.”

“Oh?” Lady Melbourne replied curiously. Ashton pressed on with his advantage now that she was off balance.

“What brings you here, Lady Melbourne? Not that I don’t find your presence in my home charming, but I had expected to be meeting with Lord Melbourne.”

“Lord Melbourne?” Her black brows rose in surprise.

“Yes. I had my solicitor contact the owner of Melbourne, Shelley and Company. Your husband, I presume, or perhaps father? It is he that I need to meet with. I assume he’s related to William Lamb?” No longer surprised, her eyes seemed to glint with glee. He’d clearly missed some vital piece of information.

“I’m afraid
I
am the owner of Melbourne, Shelley and Company. My husband, only a distant relation to William Lamb, passed away last year. His company has been under my control for the better part of a year.”

Ashton’s jaw drop. A woman running a business? It wasn’t unheard of…but still…

“You can handle business with the opposite sex, I presume?”

He didn’t like that she’d gotten the better of him already. And the way she dressed was driving him to distraction. Her husband was dead less than a year yet she was not wearing the black crepe gown and veil expected of her. Instead, she wore a low-cut ruby dress that seemed to make her pale skin almost luminescent against the firelight. She looked more the seductress than the grieving widow. She knew her looks were an advantage and she wasn’t afraid to use them. A dangerous lady. He’d have to remember that.

“And what of Shelley? Is he stationed in London? Perhaps I ought to meet with him instead.”

A thin smile of victory teased her mouth. “That would be a waste of your time, my lord. I bought out Shelley’s stock months ago and am now the sole owner of the company my husband founded. We will be changing the name before the next quarter. So it is in fact me you need to see.” She punctuated this statement with no small amount of pride.

Ashton glowered. He was not one of those men who believed in discouraging women from the arena of business, but with Lady Melbourne he wished to make an exception. With her in the same room, he could not concentrate, not when his mind and body were conspiring against him like this.

“I’ve noticed that you are injured, my lord. Please sit. How did you come by such an injury?”

Lady Melbourne had the nerve to offer him a seat in his own bloody parlor? Oh, he’d sit down all right, and pull her body beneath his… Ashton locked the thoughts safely away in a dim corner of his mind, then he sought to regain his natural civility.

“Thank you.” He seated himself in a chair opposite the settee. “In answer to your question, I was shot recently.” He waited for her to show disgust or some form of feminine aversion to the mention of bloodshed.

She did nothing of the sort. Minor surprise transformed into open curiosity. Must be her damned Scottish blood.

“Were you dueling, my lord?” she asked bluntly.

“Dueling is outlawed. Do not make such quick assumptions about me, Lady Melbourne. I can guarantee you will be wrong on every account.” His tone was so rough he barely recognized himself. It was the tone of his youth, before he’d learned to hone in his temper.

Lady Melbourne had awakened a very dangerous inferno in him. She raised her chin defiantly in a silent challenge to his temper, but the movement only brought her tempting lips closer to his. Ashton forced himself to back away from her as he spoke again.

“My apologies, Lady Melbourne. My arm twinges with pain and it has quite ruined my ability to play the polite host.” It was the truth, though only part of it.

“I will accept your apology my lord—if you will satisfy my curiosity as to how you received your wound,” she said. Her impertinence both infuriated him and astonished him.

“The business that led to my injury was personal in nature and I will not divulge it just to flatter your curiosity. Now come, let us speak of business, if you will.”

She seemed as though she wanted to say something further, then thought better of it. “Very well,” she sighed. At that moment a maid entered with a tea tray and Lady Melbourne took the pot from the tray and glanced at Ashton.

“May I pour?” It was usually a maid’s job when a man did not have a wife or a lady of the house to perform the task, but the maid in this case took one look at him and scampered from the room without so much as a backward glance.

“Yes, of course,” Ashton muttered curtly, once more resuming his seat as she poured two cups of tea.

“When your solicitor contacted my office I was informed that the business matter that concerned you involved the purchase of Southern Star Shipping.”

“Indeed.” Ashton didn’t take his eyes off the woman as he took a sip of tea—and nearly spat it across the table.

The blasted woman had not added any milk, leaving it scalding hot. She seemed to be watching him for some reaction, some exclamation of pain, as he fought to remain calm and pretend that he hadn’t just lost all feeling in his tongue due to sabotaged tea. The woman was ruthless.

“What puzzles me is why you crave the Southern Star ships.” Ashton took another step in her direction, trying to recover lost ground. “As far as I can tell your business doesn’t require them.”

“Why does anyone want anything? I crave the power of the ships. And contrary to your no doubt thorough research on my interests, I do in fact need them for access to the Caribbean ports.” It was a business answer, but not the truth, and for some reason her answer angered him. He could not negotiate with someone with such solid defenses around her. If only he could tear down those walls somehow.

“I propose a trade. If you tell me how you were shot I will cease bidding on the Southern Star.”

This was unexpected. Another ploy to keep him off guard, perhaps? Ashton scrubbed his jaw with one hand, considering the proposal. Normally his affairs were kept private, especially those relating to the League, but he saw no harm in giving her a somewhat censored answer. He didn’t trust her, however. Not one whit.

“You would relinquish the line to me that easily?”

She gave a graceful shrug of one shoulder. “There are other lines, of course. I have enough capital that I could build my own if I had to. Buying the Southern Star was simply a more efficient way to reach my goal.”

Her answer satisfied him enough.

“I agree to your terms.” He took a deep breath. “I was shot while investigating a place of ill repute for evidence that someone of my acquaintance had hired a man to murder my close friend. That same man found us there and opened fire before running off.”

“You were shot trying to prove someone wanted to murder your friend?” Lady Melbourne seemed surprised.

“Yes.” He would not tell her any more than that however.

Her reaction puzzled him further, as if his words had told her far more than he’d intended, and had told her everything she wished to know about him. “Very well. The Southern Star is yours, Lord Lennox. Enjoy the profits.”