Three Times the Scandal (25 page)

* * * * *

“
Oh, Fortuna,” Giles ground out. He trembled as blood surged into his cock, and realized that Neddy was holding him steady. Fellatio, he never demanded it of any woman, and wasn’t really certain of Fortuna’s motivation now, but God, he wasn’t about to stop her. Not even now stood here flanked by his two best friends.

“
You feel hard,” she whispered, drawing back from him to take breath and to wrap her delicate palm around the base of his shaft. Two exploratory fingers swept over his ball sack. “Soft but rigid. I want to suck you. Will you let me do that?”

The request seemed to swallow his ability to speak. No other woman had framed such a question as if she’d expected a rejection.

“
Is this truly what you want, Fortuna?” Good lord, what was the woman thinking. What crazy plan had entered her head? He wanted to shake her, make her confess the details. Allowing her to go home to wed that brute was unthinkable. He’d stop her. By God he’d stop her. There had to be a way out of this nonsense. But, dear God! the woman had a mouth of an angel.

Absolute heaven! Where she’d acquired the talent for this, he couldn’t guess, but there was no denying she had one.

He was on the edge, literally dying in her arms when she drew back and nuzzled against the warmth of Neddy’s thighs. It was a fight to stop himself pulling her back and thrusting hard into her until he’d finished, but somehow he got his lust under control.

“
Kiss him. I know you want to,” Giles gasped. Her eyes were wide and bright as he raised her up. Neddy’s too were flecked with emotion. They sandwiched her between them. Giles’s cock was hard in Neddy’s hand, the tickle of her skin against it almost intolerable.

“
I want you both,” she murmured. Un-spilled tears still clung to her eyelashes.

He knew what she was doing, trying to bury her grief, her pain. He caught her tears and brushed them away, and found he was far too mindful of Darleston’s continued presence, even though his friend had removed himself to a nearby armchair.

A shudder rolled up Giles’s spine, at the expression on Darleston’s face. His friend had many kinks, but damned if this one didn’t disturb him the most. Spanking, he could tolerate, likewise the propensity for sodomy, but tears, godamnit! What was there to find enthralling about that? He just wanted to wipe them away and with them all her woes. Darleston’s admiration of the crystal-like beads streaking her face made his damn stomach clench. He held her closer as she sighed into Neddy’s mouth, their lips brushing while he stroked her breasts.

He wanted to push Neddy away too, take Fortuna to his own room and lock them both inside. He’d throw her over the stool and push into her, feel her heat encompass him, and only him. He’d shared many women with both the twins over the years. There was a special edge being inside a woman together brought. The experience lifted sex to some higher plane, but he didn’t want that now. He wanted to keep her for himself.

“
Damnit, Giles! I don’t want to wait any longer.” Neddy’s voice was high and tremulous. Fortuna had her hand around his cock, and was twisting her wrist with each loving caress so that she encompassed both the shaft and head. Her thumb worked repetitively over the sensitive eye. His own cock bucked again at the just the thought of that sensation. He was tempted, lord was he tempted to throw her over his shoulder and hurry upstairs. What stopped him was not a sense of propriety or any rational thought, but Fortuna herself. She slipped from between them, leaving him and Neddy pressed against one another’s chests.

The shock of finding himself fully dressed, with his naked cock pressed against another man’s set him into a state of shock. He shuffled back from Ned, mumbling nonsense and sought Fortuna again.

The walls of the room seemed to close in around him when he realized where she was.

She stood before Darleston, looking down at him sitting so poised and stoic in the armchair. Only the raw glint in Darleston’s eyes told Giles his friend was aroused by her display.

No!
he wanted to shout at her, but how could he after all he’d said. He couldn’t abandon all his beliefs. Couldn’t twist them to make her only his.

Bile sluiced up his throat as Fortuna placed her hand upon Darleston’s knees, and bending forwards, wiggled her rear.

* * * * *

Fortuna wasn’t really sure what she was doing, only that ever since that first night when Darleston had held her outside the drawing room and spoken to her in such blunt terms about desire, she’d felt some latent curiosity about him. It was not as specific as her need to devour Neddy or the pulsing intensity of what she felt for Giles, rather it was a far darker emotion, borne she suspected not out of love or even lust but out of some sort of malicious desire to see how far she could push him.

And there was no need to fear Darleston’s wife any more. Regardless of the woman’s threats of exposure, Fortuna was going home to wed Macleane.

Darleston reacted to the placement of her palms upon his knees with only mild interest, but that didn’t really matter. She didn’t really want him to touch. She wanted to see how distant he could remain.

“
Giles,” she pleaded, swaying slightly at the hips, hoping to entice her lover with the outthrust of her bottom, while maintaining eye contact with her captive.

Giles came to her. She felt his warmth against her rear just before he entered her in one smooth stroke. Fortuna locked her elbows tight, while her mouth fell open on a gasp. It felt good to feel his cock stretch her, to feel him go deep. No, not just good, fantastic.

“
Tell him how it feels,” Giles’s voice burred, treacle-soft in her ear. His hands came around her to her breasts, fingers claiming the nipples, which he rolled between his fingers.

Still Darleston’s expression didn’t change, although his gaze slid to where her breasts hung exposed, swaying with the motion of Giles’s penetration. She couldn’t hold Darleston’s gaze any longer. Fortuna closed her eyes, sunk into the sensual energy. Giles fucked her harder, causing her hands to slip over the silky fabric of Darleston’s breeches until her palms rested upon his thighs. She felt his arousal then, vital, between the splay of her hands. Unable to resist she stroked his covered cock with her thumbs, once, twice, before Neddy crawled beneath her.

Awkwardly crouched between her and his brother, Neddy nevertheless raised his mouth to her puss and found her clit with his tongue. Giles’s motion drove her hard against that new sensation, until her climax shook her.

The explosion in her clit, in her womb, resembled the gripping of a fist. Her muscles clamped tightly around Giles’s cock, claiming him. She heard him shout a curse, but unlike on other occasions he didn’t pull out. Instead, she felt the vital pulsing of his cock deep within her as he came.

Climax over, he sagged against her back. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. She wasn’t really sure what for, whether for coming inside her, or because he couldn’t save her from her fate.

Neddy blew a cooling kiss over her clit, and a dart of arousal sparked at the contact. But she felt sapped. Boneless, she sagged onto her knees, her head rested upon Neddy’s shoulder. He stroked her hair, smoothing the golden strands that had fallen loose of their bindings back into place. “It’ll all come right in the end, Fortuna. Believe in it and it will happen.”

She couldn’t believe in it any more.

Lord Darleston stood abruptly, forcing them both forwards. “Thank you for that entertainment, Miss Allenthorpe, but it’s time I left.”

Fortuna peered up the long length of his body. She still didn’t understand him. Now, she supposed she never would. How could he be concerned and distant, aroused and yet so unresponsive?

Giles followed him to the door and the whisper of their conversation drifted back as an unfathomable stream of sibilants. Tired, Fortuna’s eyelids drooped.

“
I think I should tuck you into bed for an hour or so,” said Neddy. He lifted her in his arms.

“
No,” she murmured. “Don’t leave me.”

“
You need to rest.”

* * * * *

Giles trailed in Ned’s wake as his friend carried Fortuna to the guest room. They both kissed her tenderly before closing the door and leaving her to sleep. She’d nodded off in Neddy’s arms.

“
She’s planning to go home, Giles. We can’t let her marry that brute.”

Giles warily nodded. “I know.”

“
Perhaps if we saw the will,” said Neddy. “There might be a way around the marriage.”

“
Maybe.”

“
We should do it now.”

Giles stopped in his tracks and faced his friend. “Leave her here alone, when she wants to spend her last night of freedom with us? We might come back to find her gone.”

Lips pursed, Neddy nodded. “Aye, but if we don’t take that risk, then how exactly are you going to keep her here come morning? Unless you’re planning on taking away every freedom she has.”

Chapter Ten

Darleston hadn’t intended to walk home. It had just turned out that way. He’d been locked in his own thoughts and the minutes and miles had drifted by until he was stomping up the steps to Darleston House, knocking slush from his boots, feeling overheated and yet frostbitten. Fortuna was getting to him. He didn’t think it was love by any stretch, but there was something about her. He supposed it was lust for that which he couldn’t have. Giles’s obvious love for the girl comprised a large part of what was stopping him from acting on his impulses as much as Lucy’s ridiculous threats, but if he had to watch any more performances like the one Fortuna had just put him through—well, he might not show such restraint, considering that the cold walk home had failed to kill his stiffness.

“
Robert!” The countess awaited him at the top of the grand stairs.

Darleston shrugged his great coat into the hands of a liveried footman and slowly mounted the steps to his new mama’s side. In her hooped court dress, complete with towering feathered headdress she did indeed bear a startling similarity to his deceased mother.

“
We haven’t seen you in awhile. Where have you been making your bed?”

Darleston held her gaze a moment, having no intention of imparting that information to her or anyone else.

She snapped open her enormous feathered fan when he refused to speak and wafted it under his nose. “Your father wishes your cooperation on this matter, Robert. He’s not at all happy with the way our family is being portrayed. Lady Darleston’s behaviour… Well, it’s drawing rather too many comments.”

“
Really,” he remarked. “I’ll speak to her.”

“’
Tis not just her behaviour, there’s a small matter of yours too. Your pater had a visit from Mr. Allenthorpe earlier. He is under the impression that you know the whereabouts of his eldest unmarried daughter. Apparently Miss Fortuna Allenthorpe is missing and has been since the evening of my ball, where you were the last person to see her.” She swept her arm out and wafted him towards the open door of the winter parlour.

Darleston strode ahead of her, but turned immediately upon crossing the threshold. “You do know that I danced with her sister afterwards.”

“
Robert. I know that you’re no fool. Your father doesn’t wish for an argument with Sir Hector. The girls affianced, if you are not already aware of that fact.”

“
I saw the betrothal announcement, but I’m at a loss as to what you wish me to do. Clearly, I do not have her hidden about my person.” He folded his arms across his chest.

The countess swished her fan closed and rapped it against his knuckles. “Don’t play games with me. Do you know where she is?”

“
No,” he said coldly. He kept his hand still despite the sting in his knuckles. He was not in the mood to be bullied by anyone, least of all another woman.

The countess pressed her closed fan to her lips. “Then explain why the younger Allenthorpe girls are so suspicious of your little set.”

“
I have no idea. You would have to ask them that.” After Alicia’s plea to him just a short time ago, he was surprised to find their suspicions common knowledge. Had the girls’ visit to Giles’s home got out? He waited, expecting another line of attack. Instead she swirled away from him and sat, so that her skirts fanned out across the chaise.

“
Andrew Morton is here,” she remarked.

“
Excuse me?”

She flashed him the smile that had broken so many hearts when she was a courtesan. “I rather assumed you’d invited him. He seemed eager to discuss your friend Giles Dovecote with you.”

“
Where is he?” he asked, his heart pounding a little faster now. God only knew what his wife was getting up to with that sadist.

“
I had Dodds show him up to your suite. I believe Lucy is up there. Although, I did send someone up twenty minutes ago to remind her to hurry as we’re attending Queen Charlotte this evening.”

“
How exciting,” he remarked dryly. The Queen was undoubtedly the dullest woman he’d ever met. Still, he did not care to hear that his wife was attending to Morton. Time he showed the man the door.

* * * * *

The outer sitting area of their domain was empty, the only light cast by the flickering blaze around the shield of the pretty fireguard. Darleston moved quietly, sliding like a shadow around the perimeter of the room. His first thought had been simply to barge in and demand explanations, but such an overt show of temper was unlikely to win him the upper hand. Besides, he wanted to be certain of what he was dealing with first. Facts, not assumptions, he told himself.