Legendary Lover (3 page)

The duchess was smiling as they walked away.

Venus wasn't aware of walking into the ballroom.

Lord
Redvers
was particularly aware of the hush that descended on the room when they moved out onto the floor.

But a second later, all the
gawkers
and voyeurs and gamblers who were counting their winnings disappeared from his perception. She was smiling up at him, a temptress in flowered yellow
mousseline
and he felt it in more than the obvious places. He felt it like a jolt, a primal hammer of arousal and excitement, and if Peggy wouldn't be so smug, he'd tell her tomorrow she was right.

"You like me," Venus murmured with a smile, the fragrance of her hair swirling around them.

"I'd say no if I could."

"If your interest wasn't so obvious, you mean."

She was smug, too, but oddly he didn't care.
"One of the great merits of the waltz."

"You're a very good dancer," she calmly remarked as if his erection wasn't hard against her stomach as they glided into a tight turn. "Is that why we're alone on the floor?"

His brief hesitation was answer of a kind.

"Tell me. I'm quite unflappable."

"You know how shallow the interests of the beau monde."

"And?"

"I don't want you to become angry again."

"Again?"

Her tone of voice didn't bode well. "How much do you want to know?"

"The truth would be fine."

He swore softly under his breath, debating the various levels of truth. "There's a wager concerning . . ."

"This dance?"
She glanced at their rapt audience. "I feel as though we're on stage."

"Do you mind?"

Her mouth quirked faintly at his politic courtesy.
"Being on stage or being with you?"

"Both, I suppose."

"That depends on the degree of scandal in this wager."

Wagers, he silently corrected, recalling the lengthy list in the betting book at Brookes. "How unflappable are you?"

She chuckled at his discomfort. "Good God,
Redvers
, just tell me. Or do you stand to lose a large sum of money?"

"Hell, no, the wagers aren't mine."

"Wagers?"

"Could we talk about this in a degree more privacy than this dance floor allows?"

"You don't wish to be embarrassed before the entire ton."

With his rash, impetuous conduct, he'd long ago learned to ignore public speculation. The lady, however, might not be so
blase
\ "Yes," he lied. "If you don't mind, we could find a measure of quiet in Peggy's library."

"Because these people don't read."

He nodded. "We're assured privacy."

"Do I dare be private with you?" The smallest hint of flirtation scented her words.

"I'm not sure," he said honestly, when he'd always viewed honesty as de trop in dalliances.

"Then I shall have to be on my guard." The tip of her tongue wetly traced her lush bottom lip, and he wondered for a split second who was seducing whom.

Having been given further impetus to leave the ball-
roomjjifi
guided them in wide, sweeping circles to the least populated section of the dance floor and, taking her hand, forced a passage through the bystanders. She followed him without demur, scarcely looking at the avid spectators. Once they were in the outside corridor, she laughingly said, "If ever I'm in a burning building, I'd like you for a guide."

"People always move out of my way." He turned to tire left, drawing her alongside him.

"I noticed. Do you have a reputation for violence?"

He paused for the briefest second; at first he thought she'd said vice and he was trying to decide how to answer. "Violence?" he said, understanding now. His smile was benign. "Not unless I'm provoked."

"You sound like my brother. He claims he's the innocent in all his duels."

"It's against the law to duel in England."
²

"Please. I'm not a schoolgirl." She knew Viscount Coleridge had just settled a dispute with Lord
Ferrers
on the beach at Brighton.

"Since I don't care to live on the Continent," he said, smiling, "I don't admit to dueling. Here we are." He stopped before a door, glancing up and down the hall before turning the door latch and ushering her in.

A splendid, Italianate gas chandelier illuminated the room, and a small fire glowed in the grate. The light, however adequate for a normal space, was subdued in the large, high-ceilinged chamber. All the corners were in shadow, the heavy, leather-covered furniture like great hulking shapes in the dimness.

He stood for a moment just inside the door, not entirely sure how to deal with Miss
Duras
when his feelings were so curiously out of character. With anyone else, with all the women in his past, he would have quickly found the darkest corner and the softest sofa and had the lady under him and panting in short order. Instead, he politely inquired, "Where would you like to sit?" offering her a choice with a wave of his hand.

His closeness sent an irrepressible shiver up her spine, and she turned to him as though trying to gauge the reason for such a sensation. There was no explanation for her fevered susceptibility, nothing in her past to serve as yardstick or measure.

"If
you'd like to sit," he added in an exquisitely soft murmur that meant something else entirely.

A touch of flame from the fire was reflected in the depths of his eyes. He was so near she gave in to a tantalizing urge, reaching up to run her fingertip over the silken blackness of one brow.

He raised his hand slowly, understanding she might be easily frightened, and lightly clasping her upraised hand, he brought it to his mouth and placed a warm kiss in her palm.

She made the softest of sounds, muted and low, and he felt it deep in the pit of his stomach and in his pulsing erection. Sliding his free hand around her waist, he gently drew her against his body.

Neither spoke, the utter silence of the room broken only by their breathing, his deep and
rhythmic, hers lightly labored as if she were caught in a turbulence.

He didn't know her, knew nothing about her, only that she'd rebuffed him when last they met, so he proceeded with caution, not rushing the lady, lowering his head to hers slowly, deliberately, so she could change her mind if she wished.

When their lips touched, when the velvety, brushing contact first registered in their brains, they both sighed as if the world had briefly vibrated on its axis and they were the recipients of that delicious oscillation. Her arms drifted around his neck a second later and she molded herself against his hard, muscled body, like a flagrant invitation to pleasure—
when she never, never allowed herself such license, when she should have known better with a man of his repute
.

'1
think
it's your cologne," she said against his lips.

"Good," he whispered. "Then I'll bathe in it."

She laughed, the sound smothered by his kiss, and when next he lifted his mouth from hers, she was panting. He knew the sound, understood the nuances of female arousal to perfection. Slipping his hand under her legs, he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the darkest corner and softest sofa and placed her on the satiny leather. He followed her down because she didn't release her hold around his neck, and when she said, "I need more kisses," he obliged.

The sofa was broad and long and more than sufficient to hold them both, despite her voluminous petticoats and flounces and froth of a gown. For a brief moment between kisses, she wondered if she'd gone mad to be doing what she was doing in a stranger's house with a man she scarcely knew. If she'd not been so unmoved by the hundreds of suitors in her life, all vying for her attention, she might have considered being prudent. But she knew better than most how rare these sensations were, how miraculous these heated feelings, and she was liberated enough to want what she wanted.

A woman of independence for many years now,
reason her only guide
, she was familiar with making her own decisions. But even unconventional as she was, it took a dramatic, fevered passion for her to so cavalierly disregard her scruples. She even said, "Maybe we shouldn't," as he began unhooking her bodice, and he stopped, well-mannered even half-breathless, even under duress. But the throbbing between her legs was so profound, she couldn't resist her carnal longing for more than a second, and when she said, "Never mind," and arched up to kiss him, he drew in a deep, steadying breath and resumed what he did so well.

He'd undressed her to her chemise and stockings when she frantically whispered, "The door!"

He responded swiftly to her fearful cry, springing up in a fluent flow of muscle and long-limbed grace. Captivated, basking in a sensual glow, she watched him cover the distance to the door and back in record time, thinking him wholly too beautiful for words, from his gleaming black hair and starkly handsome face down his lean, athletic body to his silk-
stockinged
feet.

He smiled at her as he reclaimed his place at her side, unaware of her scrutiny, or too familiar with it to take notice. Brushing her lips in a gentle kiss, he murmured, "Now you're safe."

"Or in great jeopardy, depending on your point of view," she whispered, smiling up at him.

"Never that," he breathed, "with this kind of pleasure." He slid the strap of her chemise down her shoulder, kissed the mounded plumpness of her breast and, pushing the fabric aside, covered her taut nipple and aureole and gently sucked.

She couldn't breathe for several moments, but when she could, she whispered, "More . . ." as she shakily unfastened the bow at the neckline of her chemise, wanting that exact sensation again—the touch of his mouth on her breast miraculously traveling downward to the heated, throbbing core of her body.

He stripped her chemise away so gracefully she felt as though it were removed by gossamer wings, and she lay before him unclothed except for her white gartered stockings.
³

He didn't know how much longer he could wait, whether he could continue with his amorous play now that she was nude and waiting, a siren with creamy
thighs and a welcoming smile. Only an iron will had restrained his lustful urges thus far; he'd been ready to take her on the dance floor.

"Take all your clothes off," she softly urged, her hips restlessly rolling from side to side, her large breasts quivering with the movement, her eyes hot and fevered, glowing with emerald fire. "If you don't mind," she added in a sultry murmur.

He was partially undressed, his shirt studs loosened, his coat and cravat discarded, his shoes kicked off under the sofa. "A rhetorical question, no doubt," he said with a smile, slipping his forget-me-not-embroidered suspenders down his arms.

"I certainly hope so." Rolling on her side, she propped her head on her hand and surveyed his disrobing with interest.

"Do you like to watch?" For the first time since he'd seen her in the supper room, the thought of other men struck him. Obviously he wasn't the first, not with her explosive, swiftly roused passions and the bewitching sorcery in her eyes. For a dissolute man, he was curiously offended. "Do you?" His shirt arrested halfway down his arms, he frowned at her.

She looked wildly desirable lounging on the leather sofa, her thick, magnificent hair undone and falling on her shoulders in a fragrant tawny mane, her sumptuous cleavage ostentatious and showy in her odalisque pose, as though her large breasts had been confined in her gown bodice with only the most repressive constraint.

"I do right now." She shifted slightly so the curve of her bottom was more highly defined in pale profile against the dark leather. "Hurry . . ." she whispered.

"And if I don't?"

"Don't be temperamental. Were you expecting a virgin?"

A flash of annoyance heated his brain even though she was right, even though he avoided virgins like the plague. "You're no shrinking violet, are you?"

"Hardly your type, 1
expect
. Are we having our first fight?" Her brow arched in amusement.

She was a veritable vision, voluptuous, enticing, the kind of woman seen only in paintings.
Definitely his type.
"Forgive me." He slid his shirt off and dropped it on the carpet. "I seem to have lost my mind for a moment."

"Then we're not fighting."

"Perhaps tussling, as soon as 1
get
these clothes off."

"
Ummra
... a lovely promise."

"1 can promise you something else as well," he said with a salacious grin, unbuttoning his trousers.

"Is this where I should blush and assuage your sense of propriety?"

He shook his head, not sure why he'd reacted so oddly a moment ago. "You're perfect, really. 1
mean
it sincerely."

"I didn't know rogues were sincere."

"1 didn't know women were sincere."

"Then we both have something to learn tonight."

"Is this a teaching lesson then?" he teased, stepping out of his trousers.

"I doubt I can teach you anything. And you'd be angry if I did," she playfully added.

He tipped his head, his look sportive. "In my more benign mood, that's damned tempting."

"You're
very tempting, standing there in your silk underwear with your beautiful, rampant penis rearing its head." His drawers were short, the China silk covering only his upper thighs, the evidence of his erection barely concealed beneath the light fabric. "Do come closer."

"I don't suppose there's a man alive who would decline that invitation."

"Nor many women who can resist your intensely virile charms."

None as of this moment, but well-bred and gallant, he said instead, "As long as you can't, I'm content."

"Contentment wasn't exactly the sensation I was looking for." Crooking her index finger, she motioned him closer.

"Something more feverish?"

"How clever you are."

She was utterly natural, frank and unself-conscious. Asking for what she wanted without ceremony. After the surfeit of coy and artful society belles sharing his bed, pretense and artificiality their forte, she was delightfully refreshing.

As he moved toward the sofa, he slipped his fingers in the waistband of his underwear, about to slide them off.

"Let me do that." Her voice was a husky low contralto that touched him like velvet across the small distance, adding dimension to his erection.

He came to a stop inches from the leather couch and waited, feeling overwrought with a rare, reckless delirium, as if this were his first time. It unnerved him briefly, the effect she had on him,
he
never felt more than an impatient lust. When she sat up, gazed up at him from under a fall of gold-streaked curls, and reached out to stroke the enticing outline of his erection, he
sucked in his breath and began counting backward from a thousand.

He tried to shake away the sense of losing control, reminding himself she was just one of hundreds; this wasn't his first time, not by the farthest stretch. But then she began sliding his silk drawers down his hips and he felt a wild desperation to bury himself deep inside her without further wooing or preliminaries. "I'd better do that," he said in a strained voice, forcing himself to master the rash urgency impelling him, brushing her hands away with as much courtesy as he could muster.

"You're impatient—good." Her whisper
was understanding
, approving, as if the sight of white China silk sliding to the floor were a personal present. "Then I don't have to wait."

For the merest pulse beat he questioned his frenzied need for her, but relentless lust immediately voided introspection and a second later, he eased her down on the sofa and climbed between her outspread legs. He was beginning to move forward, when she pressed hard against his chest and breathlessly murmured, "I almost forgot. You need a condom."
⁴

Already in full rut, he ignored her, forcing her hand aside, adjusting himself for penetration.

"No!" she cried, shoving at him harder, and the enormity of what was required of him finally registered in the tumult of his mind. It took a moment more to compel his body to understanding, then another second for him to bring some order to his thoughts. Marginally rational, he found enough breath to whisper, "I won't come in you."

"That's not good enough." Her gaze was challenging.

His body still at ramming speed, he drew much needed air into his lungs. "I'm absolutely dependable." He was going to die, he thought, or explode, or do something unforgivable.

"I'm sorry, that's not good enough either."

His brows came together in a scowl and looking daggers at her, he swore and rolled away. Sprawled against the sofa arm, his chest rising and falling in agitation, he hotly said, "Is this some fucking game?"

"Haven't you ever heard of a condom?" she snapped, as frustrated as he with the interrupted pleasure.
"A man like you who fucks everything in sight?"

"A hot little cunt like you—I'm surprised you didn't bring your own."

"Go to hell." At twenty-five, she'd seen enough of the world to take on anyone as an equal. Not to mention being a member of a family who faced challenges undaunted. She scrambled up into a seated position and reached for her chemise. "I should have known a man like you only thinks of his own pleasure.
Selfish bastard."

"Not as selfish as you. We could have both climaxed without any problem. I mastered the art of withdrawal a decade ago."

She snorted. "I doubt it." Pulling the chemise over her head, she thrust her arms into the
arrrtholes
and let the embroidered silk fall into place. "How many children have you left in your wake?"

"None.
If you'd done your homework better, you'd know that."

"I was pursuing you? Is that what you think?" Incredulous, she swept up his shoe and threw it at him.

He deftly caught it, replaced it on the carpet. "You
certainly weren't running away, Miss
Duras
," he rudely said. "How long was it between the supper room and this sofa? Ten minutes?"

"
Ohhhh
!" she bristled, clenching her fists. "I could hit you if it would do any good, you smug bastard. If you must know, it's been a year since I've made love. So, acquit me of being lured by your irresistible charms. I was in heat, that's all."

"Then I have a suggestion." His voice altered, his eyes turned seductive, his fury was abruptly curtailed.

"I'm not interested in your suggestions," she tartly replied, grabbing one of her petticoats from the back of a chair.

"If you haven't climaxed in a year and if you'd like to, I could help you out—short of intercourse."

His voice was like the most bewitching sorcery, his words an overt promise of pleasure. The thought of assuaging the tremulous pulsing that still heated her body shamelessly tempted her. She swung the lacy petticoat in a lazy arc and looked at him straight on. "And what will you get out of this charity?"

"Nothing if you don't wish, but—"

"There's always
a but
," she mocked.

"I
could
find a condom among the men at Peggy's ball." He glanced down at his conspicuous erection. "And we could both enjoy this . . ."

Her body instantly responded. If the thought of being brought to orgasm manually was tempting, his second choice was wildly provocative. It had been so long, she thought, or she wouldn't even consider his brazen invitation, however seductive his tone, however tantalizing his enormous penis. She
should
say no, though, she reflected. He was too self-assured . . . and too damned

beautiful
, and much too familiar with women always saying yes. She should refuse him out of hand. "Under one condition," she said instead.

He smiled. "Look at me. I'll agree to anything."

She couldn't help but smile at his candor. "So we'll each be charitable."

"Something
like
that, although this is the first time I've ever bargained for a fuck."