Lady Scandal (14 page)

“Mr. Tanner!” she gasp-moaned.

He hollowed his cheeks and sucked sharply, allowing his tongue to bedevil the knot of nipple now held snugly between his teeth.

“Mr. Tanner…”

This time it was a sigh. One of capitulation, of complete and utter sexual surrender. And Zeus couldn’t have been more pleased.

Until she added, more than a little primly for their current circumstances and his liking, “My body may melt under your torrid tutelage, but I have yet to be granted an accounting of precisely
why
you deem it necessary to laugh at me.”

To punish her for thinking so—especially when his mouth was so very
delightfully
occupied, Zeus drew deeply on her flesh, taking all he could inside the hot cavern of his mouth. He lashed at the tip of her breast with his tongue. “You horrid, haughty man,” she accused, winding her fingers through his hair, “to do such wicked things…and so splendidly!”

Grinning inside, from ears to erection, Zeus glanced up. While entertaining his eyes with her flushed and piqued features, his mouth with her breast, and his mind with all the bawdy bedchamber antics they’d share in years to come, he stripped to skin. Blindly, he rid himself of his boots—nearly wrenching his ankles off in his haste—then he ripped clear through one of his woolen stockings until they too were gone and he could finally dispense with his drawers and banish his buckskins to the floor.

“What is the jest, you wonder?” He spoke around her nipple, doing his best to distract her, unwilling to confess it was her naïveté he found so heartening, so joyful. Worried she might not see those qualities the same way he did. “That a man such as I could find exactly what he’s been searching for all his life, and so very close to home.”

“I do not—” When he bundled her shift out of the way and brought one hand to the juncture of her thighs, she broke off. When he fumbled open her legs to touch her honeyed center, she gasped and came up off the settee. “Do not take your meaning.”

After another upward sweep of his fingers through her damp curls, another sharp pull on her breast, he released the succulent treat and rimmed the puckered areola with his tongue before pledging, “You shall, and soon. Of that I promise.” Her womanly scent continued to entice him downward, beckoning him to take further liberties.

Answering the call, his moistened fingertips parted the swollen folds. Her damp heat coated his wandering fingers. Captured him completely. “Have you any doubts, my lady? If so, you’d best speak them now.”

He meant about marrying him, because in truth, if he tasted her beyond what he’d done so far, she
would
be his wife.

So when she answered, “Nay, no doubts, Zeus. I want you to show me passion. Every bit of it,” using his name, he knew she’d be his forever. That they’d miraculously captured each other.

“But show me your form first,” she challenged when he pressed deeper toward her core. “Now that you’re fully revealed.”

Realizing his exploring fingers had gone a little too far too quickly, Zeus tamped down his own urges and ordered his passion-coated fingers to retreat. Coiling them into a fist, he hiked off her.

“Stay close,” she said when he started to step back.

“Did you not see enough earlier?”

“Nay.” Then softer, “I may never see enough.”

So he halted at the edge of the settee, her heartfelt sigh caressing his ears. Rather pleased with his new position, he stared at one of her dainty feet, the one sans splint and bindings, while giving her time to admire him (he hoped).

Zeus found himself grinning. Even her toes were ladylike.

He swore he could feel her gaze drift along his nude body like a tangible touch. Her silent perusal continued until the tension stretched taut between them.

In his bid to grant her as much time as she needed, Zeus sought a distraction and found one fortuitously close by. Lifting her uninjured foot with his open hand, he cradled it and bent to feather light kisses over her toes. When a tentative swipe of his tongue caused her to squirm, knowing there’d be plenty of time for more attention here
after
they said their vows, Zeus moved on, applying himself to licking a decisive path over the top of her foot, past her trim ankle, over her knee, and up to her thigh where the hem of her shift bumped his nose.

God, he had to taste her. Freely—without any encumbrance between them. “By God, woman, I hope you’ve seen enough because my patience is—”

“About to be rewarded. Come back.”

As he replaced her foot on the cushion, with a damnable arm that shook he couldn’t help but notice, Zeus marveled at the set of circumstances that had landed him here, within reach of everything he’d never known he needed. Feeling lighter inside than any man had a right to, he climbed onto the settee between her legs, flattered by her shy, somehow sultry smile. Welcomed by her outstretched arms. “Miss me?”

“You and everything you’re teaching me.” After that admission, she
mmm’d
her approval when he snugged his groin at her mons. On top of the shift.

Zeus fingered the filmy cotton—the only item of clothing yet to be discarded—and met her inquisitive eyes, scouring his mind for another question she could refuse to answer. “Why did you not learn to read after Letheridge kicked off?”

It was the wrong thing to ask.

“I meant to—truly, I did!” she stammered, frowning and shoving him away in an effort to sit upright.

Zeus knew he’d inadvertently found her Achilles. Dammit, why couldn’t he have just continued
kissing
her ankle and kept his chops shut?

Not permitting her to gain distance from him, Zeus kept his heavy body anchored over hers. He attempted to soothe the legs that’d tensed beneath him, unfurling the fist full of her nectar he’d gathered like a prize so he could graze one slickened finger over her thighs. Her scent nearly did him in. “Never mind that now—”

“I did! It’s just that with the funeral and his creditors flooding in before his corpse was cold and then the fire—”

“Shhhh, it’s over now.” Zeus stilled his foray, endeavored to do the same with her rising panic. “I’ll take care of the creditors. Put your mind at rest on that front.”

She clutched at his arms as though she was sinking in quicksand and trusted him to pull her out. “But I meant to, I did! Everything changed so precipitously after the house burnt, and—and—”

“Tell me of it, sweetheart. What fire?” Mayhap if she unburdened the words tripping her tongue, they could return to setting her settee on fire with their own carnal conflagration. “What burnt?”

She hugged him closer, pulling him down and burrowing her face into his neck. “’Twas such a tragic loss.” She sniffed. “Amherst was so very lovely, my favorite of all his properties.”

Her words doused him with ice. “Burned?
Amherst
?
” Zeus went rigid, saying it. Then he sought comfort by wrapping both arms around her and squeezing her tighter, settling himself more deeply against her. “Amherst?” he whispered hoarsely. “It’s…gone?”

Chapter Seven

Endearments, Confessions & Completion

The nod of her silky head against the underside of his chin confirmed the worst. “Up in billowing clouds of black smoke that smoldered for days.” She turned her face to his, pushed on his shoulders until she could snare his gaze. “Why? Do you know it?”

“I…” He…
what
? What could he tell her? That his reason for being there no longer existed? That his sole ambition these last years was gone? Turned to nothing more than dusty embers blown into oblivion by the first gust of wind.

Then why, he pondered as he stared into her grief-shadowed eyes then lower at her lips, parted and plumped by his kisses, did it not feel as though his very dreams followed the scattered ash? Why was he not, even now, retreating from her in a fury? Striding quickly away while he cursed the time wasted? The loss of the ultimate goal that had guided his every action for over a decade?

He should leave, allow her the opportunity to marry a better man than he. Maybe that seafaring one she’d sent on his way. A man not consumed with seeking vengeance against a father long dead.

But he couldn’t make his feet move toward the door. Couldn’t stop himself from brushing his fingers over the tussled strands of red-gold framing her concerned face. Couldn’t stop his thighs from wedging themselves more solidly along hers.

“Mr. Tanner?” Her searching fingers feathered over his jaw. “Zeus? What is it? What has you looking so lost?”

Did he tell her? Admit the lure, until meeting her, was not the bounty she offered—that of herself—but lands he not only coveted but loathed? Or did he stay mute? Give her the taste of passion—just a taste, mind—she craved, and then leave, as a true “gentleman” should?

Zeus swore harshly. A true gentleman wouldn’t consider tasting anything beyond what he’d already stolen. He’d settle for licking his fingers clean on the way out and never look back.

Well, hell. As though defying his very thoughts, those bound-to-be-tasty fingers opened and after smearing her essence across his chest, rose to entrench themselves against her scalp,. And why shouldn’t they? A
real
gentleman would never have compromised her to this state to begin with.

Guilt crashed down on him.

A bastard might, by some miraculous stroke of fortune, marry a lady, but that wouldn’t change his stripes. Wouldn’t make a gallant gentleman out of a churlish cur’s seed.

Before he could rationalize it further, mayhap talk himself out of the altruistic action, Zeus wrenched his head from her comforting hold and blurted, “Forgive me, my lady. I must go.” He angled backward, distancing his torso from hers, determined to leave,
to do right
. “I cannot marry you!”

Nails pierced the skin of his shoulders even as she wound her strong leg around both of his. “No! What are you saying? Leaving? You cannot—”

“I came here for Amherst, not for you.” The weight of regret made him nearly shout at her. “I don’t deserve you!”

“Don’t deserve…?” It was a ragged sigh. But her leg only gripped him tighter, the heat of their melded bare skin burning a path to his soul, forcing the confession to erupt like steam trapped too long.

“I’m Letheridge’s bastard!
His
damnable son!” And with that admission, though he’d once sworn he’d make any sacrifice, surrender anything necessary to regain his questionable birthright, Zeus realized he wasn’t willing to heap more lies upon the ones already uttered, wasn’t willing to sacrifice
Juliet
. Wouldn’t use additional duplicity nor her own inexperience to do it. “You deserve someone better! Someone forthright. Someone…else.”

“Leth’s…boy?” Said as though simply the act of comprehending his statement took great strength.

“His
bastard
.” Zeus nearly spat at her, making it clear as shattered crystal. He would have no more falsehoods between them.

He expected her to throw him off, to scurry away. To curse him for the deceitful, deceptive rogue he was.

Zeus was confident he’d get over losing her. In another decade. Or ten.

But instead of screeching at him to remove his filthy person from her sight and her life, Juliet wound her arms savagely round his neck. Nearly cut off his air.

But who needed to breathe when she hadn’t cast him out? At least not yet…

Zeus clutched her as fiercely as he could. And prayed. For the fortitude to leave or for her forgiveness to stay, he knew not which.

He couldn’t go!
Juliet’s mind screamed. Not this beautiful man with his impertinently insightful replies.

Discounting the wretch who caught her out due to an untimely dust mote and resulting sneeze, not a single one of the other applicants had seen through the ruse, surmising she watched from beyond the shielded corner, once she’d had the forethought to retreat there after the Mongrel Misadventure.

None of them had realized
she
created the crewel-worked “masterpiece”, save Mr. Tanner. While some had told her the truth during questioning and not simply what they thought she wanted to hear, none had done so with his aplomb. With confidence bordering on arrogance.

And certainly none drew her as a magnet, their very person energizing hers in such a way that when she neared them, parts of her came alive for the very first time
in
her life.

And now he sought to desert her? Over nothing more than
his
unfortunate circumstance of birth? “Nay, you cannot! Not if that is your only reason for thinking to do so.”

“But Lecherous Letheridge…” She thought he mumbled
rotten, hateful father
and
hated, useless son
. Then clearly, “I should go. Must go. For you. For—”

“No!” She planted hungry kisses on his mouth to still the ongoing protests. Then over his cheek, his ear. “I don’t care! It does not matter who sired you! Not to me.”

He’d gone rigid as marble above her.

She couldn’t stop touching him, brushing her lips across his stubbled jaw. “You’re better than all of them,
all of them
I say.”

When he attempted to pull away again, she shrilled, “Applicant number six
smoked
here. In my sitting room! After I expressly asked him not to.”