The Seduction of Lord Stone (16 page)

She angled toward him. “Don’t stop. I want you so much.”

I love you so much.

“Oh, my darling,” he whispered.

This time when he kissed her, she responded with all the emotion crammed unspoken in her heart. He raised his head and stared down at her with a question in his eyes—he’d notice the difference—but she bit his shoulder and rose to take him into her body.

Just as her heart flowered with love, her body flowered into delight. As he slid into her, his shuddering sigh expressed his happiness. Her fingers gripped his shoulders as he began to move. Hard, decisive thrusts that branded him on her heart as indelibly as a chisel carved wood. Swiftly her pleasure began to swell in great, engulfing waves. Over and over he plunged into her, hammering her into accepting his love.

Gasping Caroline ran her hands down the sleek skin of his back, feeling the muscles tighten and release with every stroke. She dug her fingers into the hard globes of his buttocks, encouraging him to go deeper and further and harder. Hot, restless, needy, she pressed upward.

“More,” she gasped.

Despite his fierce possession, a broken laugh escaped him. “You’re a demanding wench.”

Catching her hip with one hand, he lifted her. All pretense at control disintegrated. He kissed her on the mouth and she responded savagely, using teeth and tongue. She was desperate for relief from this endless striving toward an unreachable pinnacle.

He circled his hips, plunged deep, and sudden fire split the night. She cried out again and sank her nails into his flanks. As roaring flame gushed through her, he groaned and bucked, flooding her. She lay quaking with wonder in his arms and knew she never wanted to be anywhere else as long as she lived.

Caroline only slowly floated down from that miraculous space caught in the light between stars. Her heart beat like a thousand drums and her blood pumped through her veins like hot honey. The world she inhabited was sweet as sugar, bright as sunlight.

Silas slumped in exhaustion, burying his face in her shoulder. His crushing weight made it impossible for Caroline to snatch a full breath. But, for once, in a good way. Her body ached from the vigorous loving in a way it never had after Freddie’s desultory attentions.

And she was happier than she’d ever been before.

She sucked in a breath and blinked away the tears springing to her eyes.

Silas rose onto his elbows and glanced down at her. A frown wrinkled his brow. “Caro? Did I hurt you?”

“No,” she said in a choked voice. After such a transcendent union, a woman should be proud and elated. Instead Caroline felt like a pathetic puddle of confused emotion. She untangled a hand from his hair and wiped roughly at her eyes. More idiotic tears welled. “It was wonderful. You were wonderful.”

“Yet here you are, sobbing in my arms,” he muttered. “You’re obviously as happy as a dog with two tails.”

She pushed at him until he rolled away, breaking the connection between them. Immediately she missed him. “I’m fine.”

He turned onto his side and caught the trembling hand she clenched against his chest. “That sounds more like the woman I love. The minute she says she’s fine, I know I’m in trouble. Tell me what’s wrong.”

She studied that beautiful, clever face that she should have long ago known would prove her downfall. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“I’m not sure even I understand.”

His lips stretched in a smile so warm that it made her toes curl against the sheets. “Emotions are bewildering beasts, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” she agreed, reluctantly smiling back. His smile gave her the courage to speak. “I’m feeling at such a loss. I hardly know where to turn. I’ve never…never known anything like what just happened between us. Freddie wasn’t a bad man, but we were a bad match. I did my duty by him and he did his duty by me, but it was a sour, barren bargain.”

“No joy?”

Surprised, her vision filled with Silas, naked and virile beside her, instead of the ghosts of her lonely past. Perhaps he might understand after all. “Not one scrap of joy. Whereas what we did was—”

“Alight with joy.”

“Yes.”

“And now you regret all the wasted years.”

“Of course I do.” She freed her hand and sat up against the pillows, pulling the sheet over her breasts with belated self-consciousness. “I regret that in ten years of marriage, I experienced no satisfaction with my husband.”

“I’m sorry. You’re made for pleasure. It wasn’t your fault.”

Her mouth flattened, even as his description soothed her. “Some of it was. I was an unloving wife and Freddie knew it. Although the outside world would have looked at our match and wondered what I had to complain about. After all, however oblivious he was to anything beyond the estate boundaries, Freddie was kind and faithful and steadfast. It could have been worse.”

“And every day, your spirit died a little more.” Silas moved up on the pillows to brush back a strand of hair clinging to her damp cheek. “Don’t discount the truth of your unhappiness. That only makes it worse. Hell is two incompatible people glued together for life.”

“The definition of marriage,” she said bitterly.

“The definition of an unhappy marriage.” He leaned over her, his splendid shoulders creating their own horizon. His gaze was searching. “Who are you in love with Caroline?”

She shrank away, would have run if he hadn’t caught her wrist. “Don’t ask me.”

“I have to,” he said gently, turning his grip into a caress as he stroked her, making her wayward pulse hop and skip under his dancing fingers. “Who, Caro?”

Her eyes narrowed on him as she struggled to summon the exasperation his prying would once have sparked. “Naturally you think I’m in love with you.”

The promise of another smile creased the corners of his eyes. “You know I love you.”

She made a despairing gesture. “I don’t want you to love me.”

Self-derision lit his eyes. “Believe me, I didn’t want to love you either.”

Startled she surveyed him. It hadn’t occurred to her that Silas, too, might have struggled against falling in love. “You didn’t?”

His laugh was short. “Good God, no. I had the perfect life, diverting, self-indulgent, hedonistic. Then one day I met a widowed friend of my sister’s, and that was the end of all my gallivanting.”

“I want to do some gallivanting before I’m old,” she said in a subdued voice, telling her heart it would
not
dissolve into mush at his declaration.

His face filled with such tenderness that her heart dissolved anyway. “You could gallivant with me.”

He stroked her jaw with more of that melting tenderness. Dear heaven above, she was in terrible trouble here. She’d cried not just because she finally knew what Freddie’s discontented wife had missed. She’d cried because Silas’s possession had owned her so completely that she feared she’d never be free again.

And for over eleven years, freedom had been her goal, her only hope of happiness.

“Stop tempting me, Silas,” she said thickly.

“Never. Tell me who you love.”

“You know,” she mumbled, avoiding those keen eyes that saw too much.

“I hope.” His gentleness was more powerful than an army.

She sighed and looked directly at him. His dear, intriguing face was grave. “Oh, devil take you, you awful man. Of course I’m in love with you.”

Silas stared down into his beloved’s lovely, sulky face as a tide of elation flooded him.

“Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” Caroline said huskily.

“But I am pleased with myself.” The understatement to end all understatements. He stopped trying to hold back his grin. She loved him. More astonishing, she’d admitted it. On a night of wonders, this was the greatest wonder yet. He felt like dancing around the room in triumph, whooping and punching the air like a lunatic.

She didn’t look nearly so uplifted. “Now you’ll think you have the right to choose my friends and criticize my clothes and tell me what to do, and you’ll turn into a growling bear if I smile at another man.”

“Probably,” he said cheerfully.

“And you’ll imagine I’ve made promises to you.”

“Haven’t you?”

She sat straighter and regarded him like an adversary. The wariness sat oddly on her features when her hair cascaded around her naked shoulders and her lips were red and swollen from his kisses. “I won’t be a chattel.”

“And I won’t be a tyrant.”

Her expression remained doubtful. “Easy for you to say.”

“Will you give me the chance to prove myself?” He moved in to kiss her. After an infinitesimal hesitation, she kissed him back with all the glorious passion he’d discovered tonight. By the time he raised his head, she was flat on her back and he curved over her in a damnably suggestive pose.

“If I listen to you much longer, I’ll give up my dreams.”

“Perhaps it’s time for new dreams.”

To his surprise, he saw she gave the idea serious consideration. “New dreams sound…appealing.”

“I’ll make sure they are.”

“So what do we do now?” she asked, sounding more confused than belligerent. She lay warm and soft and loose-limbed under him, his dream lover.

Suggestively he tilted his hips forward. “If you give me a couple of minutes, we can do it all again.”

She cast him an unimpressed look, although the pink in her cheeks indicated interest. “Not that.”

“Time’s a-wasting. You only offered me one night.”

Her lips quirked. “You don’t expect me to believe you’ll abide by that.”

He didn’t smile back. “Let me make a deal with you, sweetheart.”

He must convince her to stay with him. Of course, he had the great advantage that she loved him. But that mightn’t be enough. Silas cursed that idiot Freddie for giving her such a sour view of marriage.

“What sort of deal?” She sounded mistrustful. Physically she’d given herself without reservation. And mentally she’d ventured a long way toward him tonight.

“You said one night.”

“I did.”

“Then let’s take our affair one night at a time.” He didn’t add that one night after another, year after year, totaled a lifetime.

She stared up at him, troubled. “Can you bear that? The uncertainty of it.”

If she loved him, he wasn’t uncertain at all. He was sure, and he believed that soon she would be, too. He shifted again, letting her feel his heavy readiness. “The compensations will make it worthwhile.”

To his surprise, her arms crept around his neck. “I look forward to seeing you win this war, Silas.”

Her lips were hot and ardent. By the time he raised his head, he was shaking with desire and poised between her legs.

“What was the question?” he asked huskily.

She glowed up at him. “Whatever it was, I think the answer is yes.”

“I love you, Caro,” he said, breath catching on a spike of poignant emotion.

“I love you, Silas.” This time, the words emerged so smoothly that his heart leaped with hope. “So much.”

He pressed his lips to hers once more to conceal his overwhelming relief and thankfulness. Elusive, fascinating, beloved Caroline Beaumont lay in his arms—and he swore by all that was holy, that’s exactly where she’d stay. As his mistress, as his darling, and soon as his wife.

The dashing widow had met her match—and her true love.

Whose hot kisses will melt the ice princess? All London is agog to know!

As the season reaches its brilliant climax, three very different men pursue beautiful Lady Marianne Seaton. She’s the marriage mart’s greatest prize – even if cruel and unjust gossip paints her as a woman cold and glittering as any diamond.

Lord Desborough is her father’s choice – rich, powerful, safe. Lord Tranter is society’s darling – handsome, dashing, charming.

Then there’s the dangerous, compelling man nobody in their right mind calls eligible. Elias Thorne, son of scandal, reputed deceiver, possessing a rakish fascination no woman can resist. A lady might choose Elias as a lover, but as a husband, he’s too risky a bet. Even if Marianne’s forbidden yearning for him threatens her future and her reputation.

When Marianne’s suitors pursue her to the year’s most glamorous house party, there will be proposals and passion, rivals and revelations, secrets and scandals.

Let battle commence
–
but will the best man win?

Chetwell House, London, April 1829

O
nce a duke has jilted a lady, she should be grateful to have any suitors at all.

Lady Marianne Seaton was blessed to have three men vying for her hand.