Legendary Lover (20 page)

177

"That's what I was thinking." He pushed away from the door. "Now, since you can't actually wear that gown in public, I think I'll just lift the skirt on that hot red confection and make love to you in
all that
silken splendor."

"You may have to pay for your impertinence first," she said, mildly piqued at his suggesting she was captive to his sexuality.

"Are you charging now?"

"In a dress like this, why shouldn't I? And you're much too smug, in any case. I may make you beg before . . ."

"I fuck you?"

The base words were uttered in the softest of whispers, and they both felt the heated implication, the carnal expectation resonating in the air.

"Before you do anything at all," she corrected with delicate precision.

"Tell me how much this will cost. I don't care to wait." Blunt and curt, the marquis wasn't in the habit of begging for anything.

"I don't need your money."

"But I have something you do need. Perhaps you'll have to beg me."

Suddenly the game had turned.

"We'll have to see, then, won't we," she replied, untying the black silk bow at the very top of the lacing that held the
risque
"
d^colletage
together. "Why don't I take this courtesan gown off and see how you manage."

"I'll manage just fine." Walking away, he stopped at the liquor table, poured himself a brandy, drank it down, and refilled his glass.

"Isn't it a bit early for drinking?"

i
₇
8

When he turned to her, the twitch over his cheekbone was evident. "Some women drive a man to drink."

"While some men are entirely too familiar with having their own way."

"It's always worked just fine for me."

"Perhaps you'll learn something new today. Broaden your horizons, as it were."

"From you?
I don't think so."

"What insolence. I suppose it's all those women fawning over you who have contributed to your overweening arrogance."

"I suppose it is." He emptied the second glass of brandy, pouring it down his throat like a shot of medicine that had to be quickly dispensed with.

"While I've been obliged to settle for what—only fifty or so men, each willing to give me his heart, fortune, and name.
I suppose I'll have to give you points in that regard."

Fifty, he thought, rancor rising in his throat like bile. How dare fifty men offer for her, touch her . . . kiss her. His temper wouldn't allow consideration of anything more intimate than a kiss or he'd lose control. "I'm sure you have a legion of suitors," he crisply said. "But count me out. I don't marry."

The words left unsaid spiked her already heated temper. "Women like me, you mean?"

"No. Don't accuse me of morality. I mean I don't marry.
Period."

"Well, neither do
I
. I thought we were clear on that point."

"Fine.
We're clear. Now are you going to take that dress off and fuck me or not?"

"That doesn't sound like begging to me."

179

"And you're not going to hear it."

"Well, then, I might have to find some other means of satisfaction. You don't have any
dildoes
.
Hmmra
. . ." She surveyed the sitting room.

"Very funny."
He turned to pour himself another drink, and when he swiveled back around, his fingers clenched on his glass.

Venus was holding a polished wooden object, an elongated ovoid atop a beautifully turned handle. "Hat-tie left her sewing kit behind," she said with a smile.
"How fortunate."

"What the hell's that?"

"I suppose you don't darn much."

"I suppose I don't," he snapped.

"Well, I don't either, but I can think of another charming use for this lovely smooth object."

"And I'm supposed to watch?"

"Feel free to go. I really don't need you for this."

"You do this often?"

"I don't have to. So many suitors, you see," she pointedly noted.

If he wasn't averse to capitulating, he would have taken her that instant, without preliminaries. If he wasn't so in rut, he would have had sense enough to leave. Instead, he said, "How much do you charge for
that
display? Courtesans generally know the value of their
cunts
."

"Who better than you to understand the trade."

"You're damned irritating."

"Leave if you wish."

He couldn't; the vision of female pulchritude before him was irresistible. The gown's laced bodice was open to the navel, held in place only by the black silk ribbon,

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the
fabric over Venus's breasts barely enough to cover the outer fleshy curves. Constrained by the tight lacing, her breasts were mounded, half exposed between the inadequate red silk. The ruffled skirt opened in front in a flaring curve that displayed a portion of her legs almost to the thigh. The sleeves, in contrast, were long and tight, covering her arms to the wrist, where a fall of black lace draped over her fingers.

Her sumptuous body was most tantalizingly offered for view.

And she had the audacity to tell him to leave.

Grabbing the brandy bottle, he pulled up a chair into the center of the room, sat down, and said, "Show me what you can do. Name your price—as long as it's money."

"Maybe I can make you beg."

"Why don't we
see.
" He lifted one brow and gazed at her. Shrugging out of one coat sleeve, he switched the bottle to his other hand and eased his coat off. He ran his hand over the obvious bulge in his trousers. "Then again, maybe you'll be interested in pleasing me."

"Or we can just please ourselves," she softly said, beginning to unlace the black silk ribbon. "This really is tight."

A hush descended on the room, the sound of the silk lacing sliding through the embroidered grommets unusually loud, the sight of her breasts slowly being unveiled bringing Jack's erection to a new taut dimension. He drank directly from the bottle as he watched her, and when Venus smiled at him as though knowing the degree of his need, he slowly inhaled and forced himself to restraint. He'd once outlasted everyone in a brothel when the prize was the exquisite whore on display, and

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if
he could outlast a dozen men, he could outlast one easily aroused woman.

"Let me suck on your nipples," he murmured, gratified to see her pink crests further elongate, aware as well of Venus's arrested breathing.

It took her a moment to speak, but when she did, her voice was seductive, not a scintilla of nerves evident. "You can only look, you can't touch."

"If I pay enough, I can."

"You don't have enough money, darling." The last bit of black ribbon slipped through the lacings and she tossed it away. Slipping her hands under her barely covered breasts, she lifted the heavy globes, the ostentatious exhibition inviting to the touch. "Whenever you want to ask me nicely, I'll consider any proposal."

"I can outlast you."

"Really.
When I thought you were the catchword for fornication."

"I think unbridled better fits you." But it took effort to speak in a normal tone, her showy breasts a spectacular lure to the eye.

"Since I have such lurid desires, perhaps they should be assuaged." Letting her hands fall, she reached for the darning device.

"I have something more satisfying."

"But not so manageable."

"You like to be in control?"

"Not necessarily. Do you?" When he didn't answer, she said, "I thought so," and sliding the polished wood instrument between her legs, she eased it into her vagina. Her eyes closed briefly at the rush of pleasure and Jack gritted his teeth.

It was a contest of wills, self-indulgent,
confronta
-

1
82

tional
between two headstrong people who had always had the world at their feet.

He was utterly still while she used the instrument, his gaze on her hand as it moved in and out, his fingers white-knuckled on the chair arms. He took note when she became so absorbed in the pleasure she was no longer aware of his presence. He counted the rhythmic undulations, observed how far the sculpted wood disappeared, contemplated her bounteous breasts suspended like ripe fruit as she leaned forward to press the object home. When she began climaxing, his self-restraint broke, and lunging up, he took no notice of the chair toppling over, or of the rippling sound of his trouser buttons being torn away. He just knew he was going to bury himself inside her.

Sweeping her up into his arms, he carried her through the connecting doorway into his bedroom, oblivious to her keening orgasmic cry, acutely aware of her hot scent, like an animal tracking a female in heat.

He dropped her on the bed, jerked the makeshift dildo from between her legs, climbed on top of her fully
clothed,
and oblivious of his shoes smudging the coverlet, guided his erection to its destination with single-minded purpose. He would have her, now, later, and often, he thought, plunging in with an ungovernable violence. "Don't fuck with me," he growled, driving in with a savage frenzy. "You'll always lose."

"Can't control yourself, can you?" she murmured, lying motionless beneath him.

"You should talk."

"I didn't pounce on you."

"You're telling me you're not interested?"

"Not in this."

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"Really ..." He hitched her closer, his hands crushing the ruffled red silk bunched over her hips. "We both know how much you like to fuck." He held himself motionless for a moment so she could feel the full extent of his penetration, so she could experience the exquisite totality of his size and length. So every tingling nerve and suffused tissue in contact with his rigid
plenti-tude
was blissfully overcome.

No, she thought, I won't—as the first ripple of arousal registered in her brain.

But he seemed to know, or perhaps had felt it, and he moved in a gentle undulation that delicately touched every interior surface. And what had been sleek became sleeker, what had been heated became hotter, what had been a ripple swelled.

She bit her lip, tensed against the unwanted pleasure, tried to withstand the rapturous feeling.

"Neither one of us can," he whispered, as if reading her thoughts. "Call truce?" he murmured, his mouth brushing hers. "I will if you will . . ."

It was impossible to ignore the throbbing ache between her legs; she recognized how little control she had against the inevitable explosive ecstasy—or at least with him. And he knew, too. "Truce," she whispered.
"You insolent libertine."

His wink was shamelessly wicked.
"Truce, my darling wanton."

"Lost to all reason, aren't we?" she murmured, a smile in her words.

"Utterly lost," he softly agreed.

Before they were sated or replete or momentarily quenched that morning, the cherry red dress was ruinously wrinkled and rumpled and creased.

184

"A testament to love," the marquis said, holding it at arm's length before tossing it on a chair.

"A testament to obsession," Venus noted with a slow, sensual stretch, gazing at him from the shambles of the bed.

"One and the same, are they not?"

"Don't ask me. I'm not qualified on the subject."

"Then perhaps we should explore the possibilities," he said, climbing back in bed.

"Now?"

"Whenever you're ready."
Infinitely courteous, he might have been asking for a walk in the park.

She looked at him from under her lashes. "I'm beginning to think this is a match made in heaven."

"In many ways, it is."

"In what ways?"

"In the only ways that matter," he murmured, bending to kiss her.

Chapter
13
        
esae
           

S
  
INCENZO, DON'T BE RUDE," SARAH PETTISHLY

said
. "You know I must marry someday. My papa's rich, and I can have anyone in the ton." She lay beside him on his bed in a small room over a baker's shop, her pale brows drawn together in a faint frown.

"I thought you loved me." Ill-tempered and moody, he scowled back at her.

"Of course I love you. But I'm going to marry the Marquis of
Redvers
because he's ever so wealthy and well connected and every
deb
wants him."

"I'll challenge him."
Vincenzo
was patently young, or he'd have known better than to trust a girl like Sarah, who viewed the world through opportunistic eyes.

Sarah's father and mother had never minced words about her duty to marry well. With the Palmers' peerage of recent origin—the first baron a beer magnate only one generation removed—she understood it was up to her to elevate the status of the family. "You'll do no such thing. Good heavens,
Vincenzo
, I'll be ruined if you implicate me in your life."

"I'm good enough to make love to, but not to acknowledge." A hot-blooded young Italian,
Vincenzo
took issue with society's rigid caste system.

"Of course, silly.
Everyone knows that. You're a
danc
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