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Authors: Mia Marlowe

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BOOK: Touch of a Scoundrel (Touch of Seduction 3)
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“A few,” he said.
It occurred to her that the way the man danced was a good indication of what sort of lover he’d be. Gently controlling. Powerful. Tender.
“I’ve been known to get a sense about people,” he admitted. “You, for example, have more layers than an artichoke and are twice as prickly, but under all that impressive armor, I suspect you’re frightened most of the time.”
Their waltz slowed to a crawl, and he held her far closer than propriety allowed.
“An artichoke? Thank you, Griffin,” she said in a falsely bright tone. “What woman doesn’t relish being compared to a vegetable?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, cinching her tighter yet. “I simply meant you don’t have to fear me.”
They stopped all pretense of dancing and stood stock still. She felt his ribs expand and contract in slow even breaths. Her own chest advanced and retreated in time with his. She turned her face toward him and tilted her chin.
“But I wonder sometimes if I should fear you,” he said, yet he made no move to release her. His eyes darkened as he looked down at her.
His mouth was so close she could feel the warmth of his exhalation feather over her lips. He moved toward her by the barest fraction of an inch. She lifted on her toes and brushed his mouth with hers.
She and Monty were planning to bilk him of a scandalous amount of money. She was supposed to be considering marrying his brother. Yet she wanted him to kiss her back more than a Bedouin wants water.
“Fear me? Yes, Lord Devonwood. Perhaps you should.”
C
HAPTER
19
“
F
ear be damned.” He lowered his mouth to hers.
Her heart wept. It was a trusting kiss. She didn’t deserve it.
Then he slanted his lips, ravaging her mouth with a kiss that left her bruised and breathless.
Yes,
Emmaline exulted, allowing herself to melt into him. That was what she deserved. A taking. A ruthless theft. She wanted him to steal her. That way she could lose herself in this man, if for only a moment.
No thoughts. No worries. No fretting over what the morrow would bring. Only blessed hot kisses, moist shared breath, and fevered touches.
He kissed down to the daring line of her décolletage, teasing his lips along the edge of the amethyst silk. Her breasts were full and heavy, the aching tips pressed hard against her stiff corset. The bodice was tight enough, he wouldn’t be able to free her bosom without unlacing her.
She almost pushed her own palms against them to still the ache. Instead she arched her back, hoping to expose another finger-width of skin for his mouth’s exploration.
He groaned in frustration, a sentiment she shared with her whole heart. Encased in their whalebone gaol, her nipples throbbed at the nearness of his mouth. The mere memory of his lips on them sent a zing of desire straight to her womb.
If he could only suckle her again . . .
She palmed his cheeks and kissed him, openmouthed this time. She delved in. She devoured. She couldn’t get enough of his lips and tongue.
In her mind, she’d always likened Lord Devonwood to a predatory animal. Now she wondered if perhaps of the pair of them, she was the real feral beast.
His hands found her waist. Without breaking off their kiss, he raised her off her feet and deposited her on the bed. He lifted her skirts, collapsing the concentric rings of her hoops, and ran his hands up her legs. Stepping forward, Griffin forced her knees apart.
Even through the linen of her pantalets, his palms were warm as heated bricks at the foot of the bed. Pleasure danced in their wake. When he reached the apex of her thighs, where her open-crotched underthings left her sex exposed and vulnerable, she reflexively tried to pull her knees together, but his hips blocked her efforts.
He couldn’t possibly mean to touch her
there
. The thought that he might sent warmth throbbing between her legs.
It would be exceedingly wicked. Sinful.
Wonderful.
It was what she’d always longed for and never realized she’d wanted. Griffin handled that secret part of her with such delicacy, such lavish tenderness, it didn’t matter that she still didn’t deserve his gentle loving.
What mattered was the way he made her feel.
Who knew her body held so much capacity for delight? She quivered when he teased her soft curls. She ached, swollen and needy, when he slipped a finger between her slick folds.
When his thumb grazed an extra sensitive spot, it sent heat and bliss washing over her.
“Ah, just there.” The words slipped from her lips between one kiss and the next. She grasped his shoulders and held on, white-knuckled, while he continued to torment that needy bit of flesh with slow, ever tightening circles.
He kissed her neck. He suckled her earlobe. Her breath hissed in over her teeth when she remembered to breathe. She began to shake inside. Something deep within her tightened, like a cat whipping itself with its own tail, every muscle tensed for a leap.
Emma kissed Griffin back, matching his movements, nibbling his ear, sucking his neck, desperate for him not to stop the devastating game he played with her mound. Even though she knew she was still seated on the bed with her knees spread, she had the eerie sense that she was on a journey. Her soul was going somewhere. Trying to reach some place. She strained toward that unknown goal with every bit of her being.
Then suddenly, she was there.
“Griffin,” she breathed his name. It slipped from her lips as power over her own body slipped away as well. The tightness inside her unraveled in a frenzied, whiplike release. Her womb pounded. Her limbs bucked and shuddered with the force of her inner pulses.
When she’d imagined earlier that if she could only drink Griffin in, his light would shoot out her fingers and toes, she’d thought she was losing her mind.
She had no idea something very like that could actually happen.
The pumping contractions began to subside. Emma’s head lolled on her shoulders. She felt boneless and sated and couldn’t bring herself to care about anything for the space of ten heartbeats.
She was still glowing with Griffin’s light inside her.
She was vaguely aware that he smoothed down her skirt. Then he kissed her, his mouth soft and giving on hers.
Emma still didn’t deserve his trusting kiss, but she allowed it anyway. Perhaps that was the point of such things. The kiss she didn’t deserve was exactly the one she needed.
The sharp clack of heels on hardwood sounded in the next room.
“That’ll be Baxter,” Griffin said softly. “Are you all right?”
She’d never been so all right. He’d taken control of her body and stood her world on its head. A sense of well-being spread over her like warm oil, but she couldn’t regain enough self-mastery to answer him immediately. She drew a shaky breath.
“Yes,” she finally managed.
“Good.” He helped her to her feet. “I’ll stay with you if you wish while you speak to the doctor.”
She’d been lost in the realm of pure sensation. Now the real world slammed back into her with his words. Monty, consumption, Tetisheri, Theodore . . . everything rushed in. She had to abandon the short respite she’d enjoyed with Griffin and plunge back into the tangled web of her life.
She had to stop thinking of him like that. He was Lord Devonwood, not Griffin. Griffin was the man who sent her soul flying and brought it safely back. Lord Devonwood wasn’t her magical protector. He was Theodore’s brother. Monty’s mark.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said with only a slight quaver in her voice. She walked toward the door to meet Baxter before the butler sought them in her chamber. She stopped at the door and turned back to look at him.
She still didn’t understand what he’d done to her. There’d been nothing like this in the medical treatises Monty had given her when he judged she was old enough to be educated in the ways of the flesh. She knew she was technically still a virgin, but something had definitely passed between her and Griffin.
Something special. He’d seen her spirit bared and she only now realized what it had cost him to give the experience to her without taking pleasure for himself. His chest heaved in shuddering breaths and the bulge in his trousers left no doubt of his frustrated state.
She wished things were different. She wished his brother wasn’t courting her. She desperately wished she didn’t have to trick him for Monty’s sake.
But she did.
So she drew herself up to her full height and decided to put some distance between them. It might make it hurt less later on when he learned what she was and he was forced to hate her. “Thank you, milord. I’ll see to my father by myself.”
 
“Thank you, milord?” Devon repeated as her skirt swished through the doorway. She’d melted under his touch, then when it was done she’d gone cold as an ice sculpture. As if he’d merely rendered her a service. “Damnation.”
She
thanked
him. For what? Diddling her silly? By God, she made him feel like one of those quack doctors who treated their hysterical patients by massaging them to release and calling it therapy. For tuppence, he’d go to his brother with the musky, sweet scent of her still heavy on his fingers and show Ted exactly what sort of woman he was mooning around about.
Devon strode to the washstand and scrubbed his hands. The man glaring back at him in the mirror damned him for an indecisive coward. He’d never been at such a loss for what to do next, not even in the moments after his father had died.
What was it he wanted from Emmaline Farnsworth? Relief from his gift?
There was that. Each time he touched her, normalcy flowed over him like a healing balm. He didn’t understand it, but he was certain if he could only hold her hand, the fiercest
Sending
would be unable to harm his mind.
Did he merely want her body?
She’d given herself over to him completely for those brief moments, and he’d reduced her to gasping need. It made a man feel like a god to make a woman burn, then watch as her release shivered through her all on account of only his touch. If he and Emmaline actually came together in sexual congress, they’d surely spontaneously combust.
Or did he want something deeper?
He’d always imagined a happy home for Teddy, a loving wife and children scampering about. Devon knew he was obligated to wed and produce an heir for the estate, but he couldn’t ever see himself happy with the shadowy figure who would become his countess. If he touched anything of hers, his gift would likely come shrieking in with a peek at their future.
Invariably, a tragic future.
It had been horrific enough to
See
his father’s death. He didn’t think he could bear advance warning of the death of a child. Or the death of a wife.
Especially since he was powerless to change that fate.
He’d already decided when he finally wed, he’d have to wear gloves round the clock to avoid touching anything that belonged to his bride.
But even though he’d received visions from her pencil and her fan, when he touched Emmaline he didn’t fear the future breaking in. When he was with her, he lost his sense of aloneness, his sense of “other-ness.” He wasn’t Griffin, the monster, the freak, the one with the damnable Preston gift.
He was just Griffin.
She had sighed his name as she came, and he was reborn.
When she retreated behind distant courtesy, his solitary existence rushed up to claim him again. Years of self-enforced isolation marched ahead of him. He’d never met anyone besides Emmaline whose mere presence eased his burden. He likely never would again.
But to make her his, he’d have to betray his brother.
He walked over to her chifferobe and peered down at the Tetisheri statue nestled amid her lacy chemises and stockings. The figure’s smile had seemed enigmatic before. In this setting it seemed indecently knowing.
Somehow, everything swirling in his life was tied up with that infernal statue.
Devon stretched out his hand toward it and a low thrum sounded in his head. If he touched it, he was certain a
Sending
would come.
Would it show him what he needed to do?
He lowered his hand to the cold granite.
The field of rye stretch to the horizon, the heads of grain ripe for harvest, the air dusty with motes of chaff. The sun was over-bright to his English eyes. Images in the distance wavered in the heat or hovered above nonexistent pools of shimmering water.
Threshers appeared, wielding handheld scythes. The long curved blades flashed in the sunlight. The workers chanted a song of reaping. Their rhythmic movements perfumed the air with cut grain. Rasping slices of the blades filled Devon’s ears. Bits of chaff worked their way under his clothing and made him itch.
The overlord of the field drove up in a gilded chariot to survey the work. Once he disembarked, he walked on two legs like a man, but his face was long-muzzled with pointed ears pricked forward.
Anubis,
Devon realized. The jackal-headed guardian of the dead.
Anubis laughed, the hysterical cackle of a carnivore who’s been reduced to eating carrion. Death hovered around him like a flock of crows. Devon smelled his fetid breath from across the amber expanse of the field.
Then Anubis pointed to one of the threshers and barked an order. The man straightened.
It was Teddy.
Devon’s brother dropped his scythe and began to run, the rye wavering around him like an ochre sea. Anubis gave chase. Devon tried to run after them, but his feet were anchored to the spot. He couldn’t move.
He bellowed his brother’s name as Anubis closed the distance between him and Teddy with each long stride.
A phoenix appeared in the sky and streaked to intercept Anubis, but neither had the upper hand so far as Devon could tell.
Life or death. It appeared they’d both reach his brother at the same time.
Devon watched, helpless, as Theodore tripped and disappeared into the thick miasma of rippling grain.
He jerked his hand away from the statue and the vision faded. A vise tightened at his temples but Emmaline wasn’t near to banish the pain. The vision was once again an allegory instead of a clear
Sending
.
BOOK: Touch of a Scoundrel (Touch of Seduction 3)
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