To Win a Lady's Heart (The Landon Sisters) (13 page)

A strawberry.

Chapter Twenty

The taste of the strawberry lingered sweet on her tongue. The gift could only have meant one thing, couldn’t it? He was bidding her good-bye.

This was what she wanted. Relief should be pouring through the fibers of her being—relief so profound, it should make her weak with gratitude.

Instead, mutiny careened within her, fiery and reckless. Her spirit rebelled against all that would be lost by ending the engagement.

How could she want something so much—want
someone
so much—and still be caught in the steel trap of fear?

There was no time for fear now.

Charged with purpose, Grace crept through the silent house, limbs too warm from the pounding want burning in her blood to notice ambient temperature. She was absurdly thankful she’d sent the sniffling maid to bed early instead of insisting the girl bother with winding rags into her hair.

Because she wasn’t going to go about tonight in such an odd headdress, not for this. She’d have had to stop to take them out, and she could stand the idea of tarrying as little as she could stand the idea of the questions she’d suffer for such an action upon morning.

She hadn’t even bothered with a candle. Only blown out the lamp in her chamber and left.

By God, was she really going? And so eagerly? It was dangerous moving through a house stuffed with so many people, even at such an hour. What if she were caught?

But it wasn’t just anyone. It wasn’t a frivolous risk. It was Corbeau.

How had she never noticed before how the floor squeaked and groaned with such terrible abandon? Every footfall seemed as loud as a demon shrieking to wake its brethren from the dead.

Was this really her? Was she, Grace, charging from the safety of her room in the dead of night with the hope of breaking one of the most sacredly held rules in all of society?

It was. And without a single regret. It was.

Maybe she was her father’s daughter, after all.

The warmth low in her belly spoke for itself. She wanted this.

She was at the landing where the stairs split. The guests had all been in the west wing, while the master’s apartments were in the east wing.

A low voice called out from the dark. “Grace?”

She stopped, and her eyes adjusted enough to see him there waiting for her above, his form lean and powerful as he stood in his shirtsleeves.

“What are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious, my lord?”

“Didn’t you receive my—?”

“I did, my lord. I did.”

“Well then?” He stepped before a window into a sliver of moonlight, and her heart swelled at the sight of him. What a man he was—what his nearness did to her.

The bold words charged heedlessly from her tongue, her heart thundering at a dangerous pace. “I’ve come to see you, my lord. I’ve come to—well, I want you…I want us…please, my lord, let me be yours, if only for one night.” She raised her hands to her cheeks but found no warmth. For once, she wasn’t blushing.

Because she had no shame for what she wanted from this man.

“One night?”

“One night.”

He was nothing if not in command, not greeting her, not pretending this wasn’t anything but what it was. He only issued an order. “Come.”

Grace was helpless. She had to obey. Climbing the steps toward him, her whole body became alive to sensation, readying her for his touch. The fall of the fabric of her shift over her body became a study in exquisite sensation. The press of the floor below the soles of her feet…the gathering of her hair into the short plait…

He was dark and silent in the shadows. They were close enough for her to sense the depth of his breath and the warmth coming from his skin.

When he brought his hand up to trace the outline of her face, she shivered. “Corbeau.”

“Lady Grace.” When he spoke her name, a pulse of warm wetness throbbed in that place between her legs that was so ready to have him. “You know why you’re here?”

“We have matters to discuss, no doubt, but I must admit I’m weary of talking.”

“If you’re weary—”

Quickly she placed her hand over his. “Only of talking.”

“What of resolution?”

“That can come later.”

“My lady—”

“My lord, I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want it.”

There was a pause. “We are no longer engaged, my lady.”

“This isn’t part of what you said that night in the gallery—about winning me?”

His voice was leaden. “That night in the gallery I promised to win you by the Christmas Feast. I didn’t. The engagement is ended.”

“Then I was wrong. We’ve no need of resolution.”

“And yet you’re here.”

“Don’t you want me to be?”

“Oh, my lady, you wouldn’t believe me even if I had the power to explain in any justice. But—I want you only if you want to be here.”

“I do.” God help her, she did. “I suppose that makes me very wanton.”

“Oh, indeed.” A wicked edge permeated his tone. “I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

The east wing of the house was older, part of the original construction. It smelled old, but it was not off-putting. In a way, that made her want to close her eyes and inhale, alight as she was in this new state of intense sensual awareness.

He paused by an open door, one that no doubt led to his chamber. “If you cross this threshold, my lady…”

She found his hand, threaded her fingers through his, and squeezed. “I know.”

“Everything?”

“I have been fully informed of what happens between a man and a woman. I know all there is to know.” A little throb came between her legs to punctuate the bold words. Her voice assumed a rough texture. “If there is more to learn, I would have you teach me.”

They were no more than a step inside when he had her up against the wall, mouth devouring hers, the smell of him surrounding her as one of his hands pressed flat on the panel behind her for leverage, and the other roamed her body.

Could this be happening? It was the stuff of dreams.

They were large, his hands. Funny how she’d never noticed before. Rather, she had, but in an absent way. Now the knowledge pressed upon her with a new understanding that wouldn’t have previously occurred to her. When he found a breast and kneaded without compunction, there was no question.

She pulled her face away to inhale a shaky breath while he explored her neck. He stripped away his shirt, leaving her to run her fingertips over the masculine hardness of his very male torso. Who knew that under those perfectly tailored jackets men were such solid beings?

The only light in the room came from the low glow of a lazy fire.

When Corbeau started pulling up her gown, she thought she might die. He found her bare hip and dug his fingers in as he pressed the center of himself against her—that hard ridge of him, the part she wanted most, pressed a hot line against her belly.

His finger slid into the slick moisture between her legs. He found the high-up bit that felt the most longing when she dreamed of what it would be like to couple with a man and began working little circles around it. “Do you ever do it to yourself?”

“Do what?”

“Pleasure yourself.” He all but growled.

Another sort of heat washed over her. Surely other people didn’t know about such things, least of all men. It’d been her secret.

Strangely, it didn’t matter if Corbeau knew what she did. She was with him alone in the dead of night in his chamber—with his hand between her thighs working that place no man had touched. She pushed her hips forward, urging him faster, harder. “Sometimes.”

He groaned and swore. The finger that had been drawing circles stopped to slide back to the very end where he paused to draw another circle. Such a small bit of flesh she hid between her legs and yet such varied terrain. “What about this?” And then his finger was sliding into her. “Have you ever touched yourself like this?”

She shuddered and gasped, the sensation strange but not unpleasant. It was done. A man had put himself inside of her. It was the end of her virginity. “Never.”

God, what had she claimed before they’d started? That she’d known all there was to know?

What a simpleton. What a fool.

“There’s more to learn than you believed, isn’t there, Lady Grace?”

“Yes.”

He worked inside of her, finger at a steady pace as his thumb pressed up and down against the top point. “What do you suppose comes next?”

She clutched at him, blind with pleasure, in agony that if she let go they would part and it would be over too soon. “I don’t know.” Her hips were moving in rhythm. “I don’t know, just please—”

“Please what, Lady Grace?”

Damn the man. Was he taking some sort of satisfaction from her frustration? “Don’t stop.”

“Say it again.”

“Please, my lord, I beg you.” Her voice was becoming frantic. “Please don’t stop.”

He continued. At his hand, her pleasure heightened and faded, heightened and faded. He was toying with her. She was under his command, and he wasn’t going to let her forget it.

It was going to happen. Heaven help her. What had only ever before happened alone in the secret of darkness was going to happen with a man present. Him. Corbeau. He was going to—

It happened. Pleasure burst. She arched and let it take her, the warmth rolling through her limbs. If she just reached out, she could run her fingers through the stars.

Grace found herself panting in his arms.

He licked her moisture off himself and then came close to nip her earlobe with his teeth. “So I’m good enough to take as a lover, but not good enough to take as a husband, is that so, my lady?”

“My lord—”

“
Shh
.” He placed a finger over her lips. “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter. If this is what I can have of you, this is what I shall take.”

She let herself soften in his arms.

“Besides…” Something in his tone made her shiver with anticipation. “There’s more yet to come.”

Her eyes opened.

Keeping hold of her hand, he straightened. She found her balance and let him lead her to the bed.
The bed. Dear God. The bed.

First he pulled open the tapes of her shift, then he pulled the garment up and over her head. It fell to the floor with a whisper. He bent to free one foot from the confines of a woolen stocking, then the other.

She stood before him bereft of a single scrap of covering. The room was warm enough to be comfortable, but cool enough to pull her nipples into hard points.

Feverish heat singed her cheeks, but not from exposing herself before him. All these many years of womanhood and no man’s eyes had yet been upon her. She wanted Corbeau to see her like this. She wanted him to appreciate her natural state.

His eyes drank her in, gleaming with dark appreciation. “There is no woman in the world more beautiful than you, Lady Grace.”

“Now you, my lord.”

His mouth turned in a cocky half smile. “You want to see a nude man, do you?”

“Very much so, my lord.”

The falls came first. He undid each button with fastidious ease, as if he had no hurry in the world. Stepping free, he revealed himself.

Sure enough, the connection that’d flitted in the back of her mind between the size of his hands had indeed correlated to the size of
that
part of him, impressively sized as it was, and swollen and pointed straight upward.

It didn’t much resemble the specimens modeled by paintings or statuary.

She had no true basis for comparison, not from a man of flesh and blood, only a little alarm in the back of her mind crying out that he was not a typically sized male—and he was going to use that on
her
?

A little thrill shot down to her toes.

He was going to use that on her.

Her insides clenched. She was so swollen. So wet. If only he would do it. At long last, she was going to know what it was like. He was a tall man and proportionately sized. So what? Men and women had to work together in more mysterious ways than she could imagine. If he wasn’t worried, well…she trusted that she needn’t be, either.

When she reached for it, he caught her by the wrist. “I want you to, don’t mistake me. But I have to save myself for the rest of it.”

He picked her up and placed her almost reverently on the bed, the coverings already turned down.

Instead of climbing atop her and starting to do it immediately upon following her to the mattress, he laid himself out long next to her and stroked the flat of his hand down the expanse of her torso, going from just under her breasts to the beginning of her legs.

Their bodies pressed together, skin to skin. He was warm, deliciously so, drawing her closer. That part of him he would put inside her pressed against her thigh, and he moved in a gentle rhythm.

“Grace.” He leaned over her to drink in a long kiss, tongues playing, easing her arms up over her head and following his way down her body again in a long stroke from elbow to waist.

Amazingly, he didn’t turn her to lie on her belly. Apparently people varied from animals in how they managed the act.

It stood to reason it was done this way—given that people stood front to front to press their lips together in a kiss, of course they came together in the same manner to press themselves together in closer ways.

Corbeau moved himself over her so they were face to face, pushing her knees open so her legs spread to accommodate his torso.

Now she was truly open—truly exposed. It was a surrender, of sorts.

It made all the sense in the world. A part of her had been born for this, born for him to open and explore.

The weight of him pinned her in place. Her body tensed a little with eager anticipation of what was to come. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pressing her breasts into his chest, and raised her head to bury her nose in the scent of his neck.

“Are you decided upon this, my lady?”

“I’ll die if you stop.”

He reached down between them to adjust himself, pointing the blunt end of the erection against her entrance.

He brushed back stray hairs from her forehead, his voice coming in a breathy whisper. “I’ll be as gentle as possible.”