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Authors: Mia Marlowe

Touch of a Scoundrel (Touch of Seduction 3) (26 page)

BOOK: Touch of a Scoundrel (Touch of Seduction 3)
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C
HAPTER
29
T
here was no wrong way to touch a naked man, Emmaline discovered. Feather-light or firm, open palmed or with her nails dragging, Griffin seemed to love everything she did. There were no limits, no place on his body that didn’t welcome the brush of her fingers or her mouth.
It was as if no one else had ever had sexual congress before. Emma was inventing it as she moved up and down his body, discovering that his third rib on the right side was ticklish, that his brown nipples hardened when she licked them, that dangling her breasts just out of his mouth’s reach would torment him beyond bearing.
Their previous coupling hadn’t prepared her for the wonder of
knowing
each other. She expected to feel embarrassed at being naked with Griffin in the fading afternoon light, but there wasn’t a smidgeon of shame in her. She liked the feel of his skin against hers. Liked spreading her legs over his body and grinding herself against him. Liked the way he smelled, all bergamot and sandalwood and male.
She was pure energy, pure hunger, pure curiosity.
Emmaline slid down to investigate his most male parts. “Such a study in contrasts,” she murmured as she stroked his length and fondled his scrotum. “The hardest part of you is next to the very softest.”
“They aren’t always soft,” he said. As if to prove his point, his testicles drew up into a taut bunch.
“Magical,” she said. “There’s no place on me that changes shape like that. Or grows like this.” She leaned down to press a shy kiss on the smooth hot skin of his penis. A tiny pearl of moisture formed at the head.
“Yes, there is,” he said, reaching between her legs to stroke her. She bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out in pure joy. “Just there. Feel the swell. It’s a smaller change than mine, I grant you, but I love it. I love that you change there for me.”
Her insides spiraled, turning back on themselves in convoluted twists to rival the Gordian knot. That place, that blessed place where she ceased to exist in her body and was nothing but light and heat and pulsing limbs, was rushing toward her again.
Was there a way for her and Griffin to go there at the same time? With effort, she moved away from his talented fingers. Then she leaned down to rub against him, his hard length fitting snugly between her breasts.
His body arced and he fisted the sheets.
So the unflappable earl can be surprised. Now to see if I can totally unravel him.
She bent and took him into her mouth.
He froze.
She swirled her tongue around the head and he made a sound indistinguishable from a growl. She took the rough bit of skin near the head between her lips and sucked.
“Are you trying to kill me, woman?” he said through clenched teeth.
She sat up. “Don’t you like it?”
“I may never let you stop.” He sat up and cupped her cheeks. His chest heaved. “My self-control is hanging by a thread. I don’t want to scare you.”
“Normally . . . I . . . admire . . . self-control,” she said, kissing him between each word to give them emphasis, “but I would count it a favor if you’d chuck yours out the window right now.”
“At your word.”
To her surprise, he flipped her over on her stomach, lifted her bum in the air, and slid into her aching channel in one sudden thrust.
Emma’s mouth gaped like a sunfish on the riverbank. Her cheek pressed against the linens. Griffin held himself motionless and she felt the throb of life flowing through his penis.
It was different holding him inside her from this angle. Deeper. More invasive.
That was it.
She’d been invaded. Conquered. Vanquished.
He withdrew and thrust into her again. Her insides tightened, pleasure sharp as a blade making her press back against him.
“If I hurt you, tell me. I’ll stop if you say so,” he said, his tone passion-rough. “But not for anything else.”
Emma was dazed. A tear squeezed from her eye but he wasn’t hurting her. It was from joy. She would trust this man with her body, with her life. She loved him. She would join with Griffin; let all the world slide by. She could do nothing else.
“Don’t stop.”
Friction is a drug,
she decided a few moments later.
A hot, wet, illicit drug.
She and Griffin slammed against each other with jarring force. She neared the special place again. In another few moments, her body would pump like a butter churn. Her mind would drift away to a state of complete lostness that meant she’d been found.
She was ready to go there. Almost there. Only a little more and . . . Griffin suddenly pulled out of her.
She made a bereft little noise as they rolled together in a tangle of arms and legs.
He was on her again in a heartbeat, but moving with slow purpose this time.
“Not until I say, Emma,” he whispered. “Then you’ll come with me.”
“Oh, yes.” She wrapped her arms and legs around him, and tried mightily not to hurtle toward that place without him. Each long stroke sent her closer to the edge. Holding back was an impossible task. “Griffin . . . I’m . . . I can’t—”
“Now, love.”
They crested together in an alternating rhythm, she contracting around him, he pulsing inside her, holding himself motionless, thrust as far in as he could.
When it was over, he relaxed onto her, careful not to crush her under his weight by supporting himself with his forearms. He kissed her softly and then laid his head beside hers on the same pillow. As Emma remembered to start breathing again and settled back into the usual expansion and contraction of her chest, she realized what she’d been given was nothing less than a blessing.
She deserved prison for her crimes. She deserved to be shunned by society for the way she’d misled Theodore. Instead, she’d found love.
Emma turned her head and kissed his cheek. “Griffin Nash,” she whispered. “I’ll love you till I die.”
“Careful. That’ll be a long time,” he said with a lazy grin.
She stroked his hair. “Do you know that for certain? Have you seen a vision about it?”
“No, just hopeful. You’ll grant there are certain things about the future no one should know,” he admitted, raising himself up and searching her face. “In any case, my visions come with a limited time for fulfillment. Twelve hours is the furthest extent of my reach.”
She knew he didn’t like that part of himself, but she loved all of him. She was determined to love this about him, too. “You started to have a vision earlier when you touched a button on my blouse. Do you want to tell me about it?”
“I released the confounded thing as soon as it started to
Send
.” He slid out of her and rolled onto his side, splaying a possessive hand over her belly. “I saw a flash image, nothing more.”
What on earth could a button have to say to him? “What did you
See
?”
“If you must know, I saw Theodore and me. We were in a small clearing ringed with trees. Morning fog swirled about our knees.”
“What do you suppose it means?”
“I don’t know. I was trying to undress you at the time and I didn’t want to think about my brother, much less see a vision about him.” He flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “But we have to think about him now.”
“Before you came to me, I’d already decided to tell Theodore I was declining his suit tonight,” Emma said with a sigh. She wished they’d been able to savor the sweetness of their joining a bit longer before the world came crashing back on them. “I’ll be as gentle as I can. We started as friends. I’ll try to see we end as such. And of course, I will not tell him about us.”
“He’ll have to know, sooner or later.” Griffin pulled her close to his side and tipped her chin up so she had to face him. “I don’t intend to lose you now.”
Her heart warmed to his words. “We’ll have to be discreet for a while to give Theodore a chance to heal. Monty and I haven’t any money to speak of. Perhaps”— she hesitated to ask, but she had no other option—“you could set us up in a quiet little place nearby.”
“So I can court you properly without rubbing Theodore’s nose in it.” He nodded. “Yes, that’ll do.”
“Court me?”
One side of his mouth lifted in a smile. “I love you, Emma. What did you think would happen?”
“You didn’t think I was a decent match for Teddy. Remember? I believe your exact words were ‘the brother of an earl and the daughter of a scholar are fundamentally ill-suited. ’”
“Lord, I can be a pompous ass sometimes.”
“Yes, you can, but I love you in any case,” she said as she teased the dark hair that whorled around his brown nipple. “Especially since in this case, you’re probably right. Your Polite Society won’t accept a match that bridges such a wide gap. Given the difference in our status, I assumed I’d become your mistress.”
He covered her hand with his. “You assumed wrongly. I intend to make you my countess, and to hell with what Polite Society thinks.”
His words stole the breath from her body. To be his before the world. Of course, there’d be endless tongue wagging, but eventually, they’d be accepted. Monty had told her once that titled lords could get away with anything short of multiple murders. The thought of marrying Griffin made her feel a bit like Cinderella.
And surely an earl could afford to send his father-in-law to a sanatorium, whether it was in the Alps or the Andes or Timbuktu!
“You may live to regret this,” she said.
“A wise woman once told me regret is a waste of time.” He rolled her over and covered her body with his penis hard against her belly again. “Especially when there are far better ways to waste it.”
Kingsley wandered the labyrinth of the Tudor wing searching for the blasted library. He’d been to Devonwood Park a number of times before, but this section always bumfuzzled him. The way the rooms wandered into each other with few proper corridors between made no sense to his mind. For tuppence, he’d abandon the search and retire to his chamber till the dressing bell rang, but he itched to finally see Tetisheri with his own eyes.
If Theodore and that professor were in the library, no doubt the statue wouldn’t be far away.
He balled his fingers into fists in frustration. How had Devon discovered the statue’s secret? Kingsley’s contact in Egypt had assured him it was so cleverly designed, none but the initiated would guess it hid a secret void that contained the mystical grains. Instead, at any moment now, that university student nephew of Baxter’s might stumble on the true nature of the substance.
Fat lot of a chance he’d have of finagling it away from Devon then. What man wouldn’t jump at the advantages the ancient grain offered?
No, Kingsley told himself, trying to control his exasperated breath and make his heart stop hammering in his ears. Some squinty-eyed scholar would never uncover the proper mix of other ingredients necessary to produce the empowering brew. The statue and its contents were meant for him and he intended to keep it that way.
But the sooner he spirited the statue out of Devonwood Park, the better.
As Kingsley approached a rounded corner he was certain he’d passed at least once before, he heard whispered voices in the next room. He stopped and cocked his head to turn his ear toward the sibilance.
“The earl? No, I’ll not believe it. Himself is the finest o’ gentlemen,” came a furious whisper. “Never say he did such a thing, Marta.”
Kingsley held his breath. Servants” gossip was the juiciest sort to be had and it was almost always spot on.
“As God is my judge, Harriet, I saw him slip into the lady’s chamber with my own eyes, not a quarter hour after all the Quality Folk arrived this afternoon,” another woman, presumably Marta, said. “And what’s more he ain’t come out yet.”
The other speaker gave a low whistle. “Gorblimey! And it bein” the middle of the afternoon to boot.”
“My thinkin’ exactly. Weren’t bad enough the lady’s meant for Master Theodore,” Marta said. “But carryin’ on so in broad daylight before God and everybody . . . why, it’s shameless, is what it is.”
BOOK: Touch of a Scoundrel (Touch of Seduction 3)
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