The Earl's Mistress (30 page)

But she shoved her fingers through his hair and pushed him away, then knelt between his boots. With slow, precise motions, she slipped loose the buttons of his breeches, her clever fingers working them free with an almost deliberate languor.

Soon, however, the buttons were undone. He was undone—or damned near it—for he sucked in his breath when her hand merely brushed his belly.

She grasped his rapidly hardening shaft in her warm hand, her fingers curling around him until raw lust shot deep, his blood surging. He realized her intent.

“Isabella,” he choked, “don’t—you don’t have to do that.”

She looked at him, unblinking. “I did not ask,” she said, echoing the words he’d once spoken to her. “I have decided, I think, to suit myself tonight.”

With her other hand she shoved down the linen of his drawers, bent her head, and took him firmly into her mouth, her full lips sliding inexorably over the swollen head of his cock.

As her black tresses spilled along his thigh, he gave an almost inhuman groan and shoved his fingers into the hair at her nape, but Isabella wasn’t having it. Setting her palm to the flat of his belly, she pushed him back with some force.

Perhaps it was the ale, but he went, falling back against the wall, his elbows sinking into the softness of the narrow cot as he gave himself up to the torment of her mouth.

She rose higher onto her knees and slicked her tongue around the delicate flesh of his head, then down his length, taking him deep. Again and again she stroked him, until his legs shook with it, his hands fisting in the rough wool blanket. Until it was all he could do not to thrust himself upward and shove deep into her throat.

Isabella slid all the way up his length again, and the cold air brushed his heated flesh. Delicately, she drew the pink tip of her tongue around as if willing him to watch it, then drew him deep inside again, slicking him over the hardness of her teeth, all the way down until he begged her for more—for release—for something he wasn’t even certain of.

For herself. For her soul, perhaps.

And when at last he was near the edge, fighting for restraint, Isabella released him from the wet warmth of her mouth and left him gasping.

“Christ,” he rasped. “Oh, love.”

His body ached with the wanting, his groin heavy with it. But tonight Isabella was in control, and he fought for patience, awaiting her next move.

He was rewarded when Isabella simply climbed onto the bed and over him, setting her knees to either side of his hips, one hand flat against the wall just above his shoulders.

“
Isabella,
” he rasped, settling both hands at her waist, almost encircling it.

She was putting on weight, he realized, her hips growing almost lush as they curved beneath his palms. Her eyes were closed, her head tipped back with longing. “I need you inside me,” she whispered. “Now.”

Then she took his shaft in one hand, rose up on her knees, and impaled herself on it.

The sudden intrusion made her gasp, but she took every inch on one sweet, pure stroke, and he had to restrain the urge to beg her for more. To promise her anything. His lifelong fidelity. His every last penny. His undying love.

Anything,
he thought dimly.
Anything, if she will just forgive me. If she will just love me.

She did—physically, at least. She drew up his length, rising onto her knees and sliding down again, until his shaft was buried deep inside her welcoming, womanly passage.

“
Aah—
!” he choked, curling his fingers into the blanket. “Good God, woman. I tried—I tried . . . ”

Isabella chose that moment to rise up again, stroking him with such exquisite sweetness that he nearly exploded.

“Tried what—?” she whispered.

“To get drunk,” he said thickly. “So drunk . . . wouldn’t think—oh,
Isabella
. . .”

“Think of what?” she asked, falling forward until her hair cascaded over her arm, spilling like a silken waterfall. “This?”

“Everything,” he managed, his eyes squeezed shut. “You. Us. All of it.”

She stroked up again, and he exhaled between his teeth. Good God, he was not some grass-green schoolboy. He wouldn’t fuck like one. The burning desire to please her sobered him, and he settled his hands on her hip bones again, holding her down long enough to finally kiss her.

But she was not in a kissing sort of mood—even intoxicated as he was, he could sense it. It stung, perhaps. But the thought flew from his head, for in that moment, Isabella tightened herself around him and sunk slowly down again, her head tipped back in feminine pleasure as a soft moan escaped her.

She soon untwined her hands from his neck and set them flat to the wall again, riding him very deliberately and hungrily, drawing herself up his length. Sensing what she needed, he tightened his grip on her waist and stilled her to his thrusts, pushing himself up inside her, his mouth set to the soft skin between her breasts.

Eagerly she shifted, pressing herself against him, deepening the intimacy. He dragged in his breath, and with it her scent, warm and seductive. So achingly familiar.

With every stroke he felt himself straining for control as his flesh pulled at hers. He let his lips slide higher, up the graceful length of her throat. Through the haze of lust and ale, he felt himself falling. Falling deep and hard as he loved her, falling into something so perfect, so natural, that it was like the drawing of his own breath.

She made a sweet sound, a catch in the back of her throat, and her breath began to come faster. Thrusting up again, he whispered something in her ear, he hardly knew what. Words of love. Words of longing and enslavement. Words he might later regret but in that moment could scarce restrain.

Her body answered if her lips did not; her hands sliding down the wall to curl over his shoulders, her nails digging deep into his muscles as she rose up again. Sweat sheened his forehead and he felt his release near, the tendons of his neck straining. He held it in check ruthlessly and set a steady rhythm. She drew back, and his gaze captured hers.

Those eyes.
Those dark and knowing eyes that seemed to drill into his soul. They burned for this now. For
him
. Again and again she urged herself against him, the tempo deepening, until at last Isabella shattered and began to tremble.

He drew her to him, thrust deep, and deeper still, until he was lost to all sanity, his release coming upon him with a powerful certainty. That he had fallen, yes, in a way he’d never known possible.

He had fallen into Isabella’s dark, blue-violet gaze, and he would not emerge whole. He was forged to her—she was a part of him—for good or ill. He needed her with a depth and a desperation that frightened him. When at last the spasms of pleasure relented, he opened his mouth to tell her so, but this time, words failed him.

It was as well, perhaps.

Isabella had set the heels of her hands to his shoulders very firmly and was pushing herself a little away. Their mingled scents rose up between them in a sensual cloud. He drew it in and shifted so that they might lie down on the narrow cot together.

But Isabella lifted herself off, still a little unsteady.

“
Ohh
, that felt good.” With the back of her hand, she pushed back a teasing tendril of her hair. “Anthony, what you can do—such physical pleasure—oh, I never knew it was possible.”

“Isabella.” He threaded a hand through the inky black hair at her temple. “I want you to know that I—”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t need your words. I just needed that. What you gave me. Thank you.”

She climbed off the bed then, turned around to snatch up her nightgown from the floor, and, in a trice, drew it back on, shimmying the fine white lawn over the perfect, pale globes of her hips with an expert twitch.

Then she turned around, flashed a faintly tremulous smile, and leaned over to kiss him softly. When she drew away, he held out his hand, eager to draw her back into his embrace, but it was as if she did not see it.

Or simply did not want it.

“Thank you,” she said again. “You truly have a gift for pleasuring women.”

And then she was gone, shutting the door softly behind her.

Hand outstretched into emptiness, he still sat on the bed, his breeches hanging off his hips and his boots still on. He stared at the door, her scent still strong in the air. He had the most sickening sensation of having been . . .
used
.

Yes, that was the right word. She hadn’t whispered words of love or longing. She hadn’t lost herself. Not as he had done. In fact, it was slowly dawning on his ale-addled mind that Isabella had come in with a purpose—and a very specific one.

One that involved him and his stiff cock—and damned little else.

It was a man’s fantasy, that; a beautiful woman who just wanted a good, hard ride and nothing more. He twisted sideways on the little cot, fell into the pillow, and wondered why he wasn’t savoring it.

The truth was, it felt unnervingly like the first time they’d made love and she had wanted him to leave her bed afterward. And the second time in her cottage—that awful morning he’d woke with her in his arms, strangely certain that everything in his life was on the cusp of some sort of inexorable change. Then, too, she had simply wanted to say good-bye.

With Isabella, was he forever destined to be left . . . so bloody unsettled? To be left aching for more? But more of what, he was never sure.

Intimacy was the thing he’d been forever hell-bent on avoiding. He stared for a long time at the ceiling, studying the eerie patterns the lamplight cast up. He was not a man much given to self-deception. Yes, he was beginning to fear that it was something like intimacy he wanted from her.

But intimacy meant an ultimate giving and sharing—of oneself, of one’s innermost feelings. And failings.

Hadn’t he realized from the very first that to touch Isabella might bring him to his knees? Even that day at Loughford—yes, even then, he’d known. He had insulted her and angered her and sent her on her way—far, far away, he’d hoped—because somehow he’d just known.

Now all he could think to do was stride across the hall, tie her to the damn bed, and fuck her until she swore she loved him. He was already up and hitching shut his trousers before he knew what he was about. He sat back down, his hands shaking.

Jesus Christ, man,
he told himself,
get a grip on yourself.

But his usual cold resolve had left him, and he was left with the dreadful sense that this time he just might get precisely what he deserved. There was a dangerously hot pressure welling against the backs of his eyes now and a weight hardening in his chest that he knew was nothing but a knot of shame and regret.

All this weighed upon Hepplewood as he drifted off to sleep. And when he woke somewhere near dawn, it was to find that his bed was still cold and his boots were still on.

That he embraced not Isabella but merely his valet’s pillow, the linen damp—with his sweat, he hoped.

CHAPTER
15

H
epplewood spent the next several days determined to get the whip hand on his irrational notions and focus on making the visit enjoyable for his guests. It required no great effort; hospitality came naturally to him. So when Yardley had no need of him—which, given the size of the farm, was most of the time—Hepplewood immersed himself in entertaining the children and dancing attendance on Anne and Isabella, but only in the lightest, most flirtatious of manners.

The party rambled about on wilderness walks with Fluffles, the dog running, snout to the ground, in search of something vile to roll in—and often finding it. This would ultimately result in another wade in the brook, risking Anne’s wrath if anyone returned too wet. They also picnicked in the Chilterns and drove out to clamber about the medieval ruins at Totternhoe Knolls.

On fair afternoons, he took Bertie and Harry out for a spot of target shooting—a habit of his when in the country—and, after a little wrangle with Anne, began to let Harry fire his pocket revolver so long as he stuffed the lad’s ears with cotton and helped him hold it. And when it rained, he would go up to Lissie’s room and read while the girls played dolls.

In fact, within hours of the children’s arrival, Georgina’s love of Lissie’s dollhouse was so profound that Hepplewood had found himself commissioning another. It was that errand, in fact, that he’d used as an excuse to himself—cravenly, to be sure—for abandoning Isabella by the brook.

Fortunately, a second dollhouse was sitting nearly finished in Yardley’s shop, meant for a raffle at the village’s harvest fair. Hepplewood made a donation well in excess of what any raffle would have brought, and thus the deal was struck.

He also spent a great deal of time simply watching Isabella. It was not easy. Lust stirred in the pit of his belly with every sidelong glance they exchanged. He was still determined to somehow lay claim to the woman. But he found himself oddly intent on viewing her through less heated eyes and getting to know her—getting to know her, that was to say, in the way that ordinary people became acquainted.

Their beginning had not been ordinary; it had exploded in heat the moment they’d met. And he now forced this almost monastic existence on himself because, as much as he cared for her—and burned for her—he was increasingly aware that he still did not
know
her. Not in the way a man should know a woman when he contemplated . . . what?

Befriending her?

He had done that; he had even allowed his daughter to befriend her—which was not something a man did lightly.

Bedding her? He had already done that, too—and in the past, fucking a woman had had, in his eyes, nothing to do with any knowledge of her finer nature. In fact, the darker and more enigmatic a lover was, all the better for his purposes.

Perhaps he contemplated another attempt at making her his mistress? The notion made him almost laugh out loud. Oh, he would try—of that he’d little doubt. But Isabella would not submit to him. Not in the long run.