Max had not made it two steps from the drawing room before Will and Declan waylaid him. With a clap on his shoulder, Will motioned in the direction of his office. “Come. Let us have a word.”
He hesitated only a moment. His friends no longer kept late hours. They were thoroughly domesticated. Gone were the days when they stayed out all night and returned home at dawn. A late night for them consisted of dinner before retiring to bed with their wives. Besotted. The both of them.
His parents had been that way. His father had often chased his mother into their bedchamber, their laughter ringing down the corridor for all to hear. At the time, such love seemed a beautiful thing, if not slightly embarrassing. For the most part, though . . . it had been beautiful. Those were happy times. He and his sister felt lucky having parents so happy and in love. Life had been good. Rich and full of color. Until the accident, and then that love became dangerous. Killing the weak. Robbing his world of color and painting it in strokes of gray.
Max learned from his father’s mistake. Love made one weak. It was a serpent in the grass, ready to strike when one was vulnerable. He would not be like his father and give himself so wholly to a woman. That path led to destruction. And why should he change his ways? He was perfectly content with things as they were now. There was simplicity in his existence. Freedom. No responsibility. No duty to anyone except himself.
Will’s office was unchanged since his marriage. It was still masculine, with dark tones and rich colors. Max felt the most comfortable in this room. His entire town house was outfitted in much the same manner. Dark woods. Dark drapes. Functional.
“What is this, boys?” Max demanded lightly, falling back on the leather sofa. “Your wives have no need of you tonight?”
It was a jab, to be certain, and he didn’t know why he’d said it. He supported his friends. He wanted them happy. He was fond of their wives and wished them only well. He’d even been instrumental in Will and Violet’s union.
“At the moment, our most pressing concern is you,” Declan answered evenly, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Is it? That’s kind of you, but I’ll be fine.” He worked his jaw gingerly and tested the tender flesh of his lips with his fingertips. “Nothing that won’t heal.” He might very well bruise. Who knew Arlington had it in him? The nobleman spent more time at the gaming hells than in the company of his young bride. A sore point for Lady Opheila—and one she had complained about frequently. Not just to Max, but to anyone within her sphere.
Max did not often dally with married ladies. There were plenty of other willing females. Widows, maids, independent females that did not bow to Society’s rules. But Lady Arlington had been lovely and ripe for the picking . . . and most insistent that she be picked.
He smiled, and winced at the motion. Lightly prodding his aching face, he crossed his booted ankles and stretched his legs out before him. His friends gazed at him like a morose pair of monks. “You’re staring at me like I’m the recalcitrant child and you both the stern parents.”
“Then I suggest you heed us as you would a set of parents. It’s time for you to grow up, Max.”
He blinked at Will’s clipped words. He resisted the urge to reply that he was quite grown up. That he had been grown up ever since he was eleven years old and his mother and sister died. Ever since his father, crazed with grief, put a bullet in his head. The loss of his mother and sister had been tragedy enough, but walking into his father’s bedchamber and finding him in a pool of blood and brain matter, his pistol still smoking next to him, had effectively killed what remained of his childhood.
He said nothing, however. He never spoke of that time—that day. Not even to his closet friends. It was enough that they knew his father took his life. All of the ton knew that, and looked at him as though he were somehow tainted. Those who had known his father saw him every time they looked at him. Max knew he was the mirror image of the man. Everyone saw Lord Kenneth Camden when they looked at him, and they wondered if he was equally fragile, if he would one day cave and surrender to weakness, crumble in the face of loss and adversity.
Max saw that question in their eyes—even now, when he worked so hard to distance himself from the specter of his father and to live a life as differently as possible.
He maintained his relaxed pose, but responded with an edge to his voice. “Grow up, hm? And I suppose marriage is the way to accomplish that? What? You’ve both gotten yourselves leg-shackled and now you expect me to as well?”
Will and Dec exchanged looks. “We can’t have incidents like tonight occurring—”
Max laughed and held up a hand in supplication. “Come now. It was a little amusing, was it not?”
They stared back at him, their expressions stone-faced.
His own smile slipped and he sighed. “You would have found it so once. Marriage has rid you both of your humor.”
“Someone could have been hurt, Max. What if Arlington came here with a pistol? Have you considered that?” Dec demanded. “Ladies were present. My wife was here—”
“As was mine,” Will interjected, his face flushed. “And she’s with child.”
Max dragged a hand through his hair, feeling like the veriest wretch right then. “Of course. They should not have been subjected to such . . . barbarism.” Not Rosalie or Violet. Not Lady Peregrine—she had been like a mother to him since his own died. Not even Aurelia—for all that she probably enjoyed witnessing him getting struck in the face. “Perhaps I should keep my distance?” he asked. “I’ll see you both at our clubs or—”
“That’s not what we’re saying, you idiot,” Dec snapped. “We don’t want to cast you out of our lives. We simply want you to stop your philandering ways and—”
“I’ll not marry—”
“We bloody well understand that. Take a mistress, then. Cease dallying with married women . . . cease flitting from woman to woman like you require a new flavor every day of the week.”
“Max,” Will said earnestly. “I’ve never known you to be with the same woman more than once.”
“That’s not true. There was . . .” He paused, thinking. “ . . . Margaret.” He stopped. “Wait, no.” Their trysts had totaled two times. It had just taken a little longer to woo the actress into his bed.
“See there,” Will announced.
“I cannot help it that I bore easily.” He wasn’t about to confess that he refused to get attached to any single female. He knew love existed. He’d been witness to it. He’d been a part of it. And then he’d stood by as it was lost. As it destroyed everything in his life. He simply took precautions against letting it happen to him.
“We’re simply asking that you behave more responsibly.”
They were asking for more than that. Perhaps they didn’t realize it, but he did. They were asking him to change. He didn’t have the heart to tell them that he couldn’t. That he wouldn’t.
Staring at his friends, he realized this was the beginning of the end. The three of them had been together all these years, but they would never be the way they used to be. Will and Dec loved nothing more than their wives. Will was going to be a father. Dec would soon follow in his footsteps. His friends were moving in another direction.
He was on his own now.
Max departed the office half an hour after Will and Dec left him there. He saw no sense in letting good brandy go to waste, so he remained, finishing his drink and having another one before rising to leave. He supposed this would be his lot now. Ending his nights alone, drinking in the shadows of a fire-lit room.
Stepping out into the corridor, he cursed the near darkness. Apparently the household had retired for the night, forgetting that he lingered in its expanding silence. Or perhaps they were so exasperated with his behavior and the spectacle he had created this evening that no one cared if he stumbled about in the dark and made it home to his bed or not. That sounded about right. Friends with their own lives to attend. No wife. No mistress. No one to give a damn.
He made his way down the long corridor, seeing a faint glimmer of light at the end, where the hallway opened up to the stairs that wound down into the foyer. Before Will or Dec married, they would have just been getting a start at this hour. Domesticated bliss. He snorted. They could have it. Perhaps he should make a visit to Sodom. The night would just be getting started there.
Rounding the corner, he collided with another body, smaller than his own. His chin struck something hard and he cursed, pain rocketing along his already tender jaw. He instinctively reached out to steady the body. A female, he knew at once. His hands slid around her back, bringing her closer. Even in a dimly lit corridor, he identified the softness of her form, the flowery fragrance of hair, the sweet catch of her breath.
Perhaps it was his mood. The nip of loneliness chasing him after being reprimanded by his friends. He flexed his fingers against her back. The thin cotton of a nightgown filled his palms. Womanly hips nestled against his hardness and his cock stirred.
He narrowed his gaze, peering through the gloom, sweeping over the fall of unbound hair, darkly rich and long. Neither Rosalie nor Violet possessed hair so dark. Instantly assured of that, he permitted his hands to travel slowly up her back.
“My apologies,” he murmured, his fingers playing along the line of her spine. A servant girl not abed, then. Perhaps she would be amenable to his company.
“Max?”
He froze, recognition slicing through him. No . . .
He closed a hand on her arm and dragged her toward the top of the stairs where the light bled brighter from a nearby sconce.
“Aurelia.” He breathed her name like an epithet and quickly dropped his hand from her as though burned.
A quick survey confirmed she was indeed only wearing a night rail. The loose garment concealed her from neck to ankle, but he was acutely aware that only a thin veil of lawn covered her curves.
Swallowing a curse, he jerked his gaze back to her face, wishing he could unsee her body. Unfeel it. “Why are you not abed?” he demanded.
He glanced left and right as though expecting her brother to materialize from the woodwork. Rubbing a hand at the back of his neck, he tried to shut off his awareness of her standing before him in only a thin layer of fabric.
“Me? This is my h-home.” She stammered a bit at this last word, as though it stuck in her throat. “Why are you still here?”
“Merely took a moment to lick my wounds after a set-down from your brother and cousin.”
“Oh.”
“ ‘Oh’? Is that all you have to say? I thought you would relish that. No applause, brat? No words of smug satisfaction? I know how much you enjoy knocking me down a peg.”
She shook her head, and the light from the sconce caught in her hair, gilding it to fire in certain spots.
Against his will, his gaze skimmed her body again. Heat flamed his face as he noted the swell of her breasts against the fabric of her nightgown. Even after his brain shouted at him to look away, his eyes made out the dusky shadow of her nipples.
Heat scored him. This was Aurelia. Will’s vexing little sister.
Only not so little anymore.
He could not pretend otherwise. He’d first noticed that when he faced her amid her mother’s garden party years ago. But it was too late then.
And it was much too late now.
“Do you always make it a habit to stroll the house at night in your bedclothes?” he snapped.
Hot color flooded her face. “Should I not? I’ve no one to fear in my brother’s home. At least that was my assumption.”
“Not everyone in this house is kin to you. There are servants, are there not? And the occasional guest.”
She snorted. “Such as yourself? Is it fair to call you a guest? You’re constantly underfoot.”
“Well, you have made it your mission to remind me that I’m not a part of your family, so what else am I if not a guest?”
“Your unsavory reputation withstanding, I have nothing to fear from you.”
“No? You’re awfully confident in me.” He advanced a step. “How uncharacteristic for you to have faith in my ability to behave as a gentleman.”
She snorted. “I know very well I’m not the sort of woman to interest you.”
“True,” he agreed, forcing himself not to let his gaze rove over her again and disprove his words.
Her nostrils flared and he knew he’d offended her. Which was preferable to her knowing that he actually did find her appealing.
“And yet,” he added, “I imagine another man might not feel as I do.”
“Oh, indeed? A man ‘might’ exist to perceive me—wretched cow that I am—in a favorable light? Are you certain about that?” She made a sound of disgust and then stormed around him.
He grabbed her arm and forced her back to face him. “Don’t presume to know what I think.”
“I know your opinion of me.” He backed her up until she bumped the wall. She could not escape without touching him—a fact of which she was clearly aware. She pressed herself as far back as possible, her gaze skimming the breadth of his shoulders and chest before snapping back to his face.
“You know very well the effect you have on men. You had a table of men panting for you at Sodom. You took their clothes, their dignity. They gave it gladly. All for the chance to have a taste of you. I haven’t forgotten that.”
Her eyes widened. He’d flustered her by flinging that at her—by speaking of that night. Good.
He took a step closer, until the wall of his chest brushed hers. His attention fixed on her mouth. That plump bottom lip jutted out and the insane urge to take it between his teeth seized him. It still aggravated him. That she had turned into this—a temptation he had not seen coming.
“Can it be?” he taunted. “Aurelia at a loss for words? Impossible. Let us mark this day.”
She opened her mouth, gaping like a little fish. It was tempting to step closer. To feel those breasts against his chest, the nipples pressing into him like scorching points.
“You’re soused,” she accused, her nostrils flaring as she smelled the liquor on him.
“I’ve had a brandy or two.” Or five.
“Clearly, you’ve had one too many or you wouldn’t corner me here like this. I’m not one of your giggling tarts—”
“Of that I am painfully aware, Lady Aurelia. They know what to do with their mouths, and it isn’t talk.”
Bloody hell. Even in the dim glow of the corridor, he did not mistake the rush of color to her cheeks and throat. He blinked once, hard, as he considered that blush, wondering how far it extended beneath her night rail. Would it reach her breasts? Her belly? The dip of her navel? The insides of her thighs? He ground his cock into the soft slope of her stomach. Her breath caught in a sound that resembled a moan. A shudder racked him.
“But then you aren’t so innocent, are you? You’ve been to Sodom.”
She shook her head, but he couldn’t stop. With her, he could never stop. Never back down.
“Did you go upstairs? Did you see anything you liked? Did you do anything in one of those rooms? Let someone put his hands on this very ripe body of yours? Would you like that? To be touched, stroked? Your breasts were made to be caressed, tasted—”
“N-No,” she choked.
He blinked.
Bloody, bloody hell. He stepped back quickly and dragged a hand through his hair. Perhaps he had imbibed too freely tonight. That, or Arlington’s fist to his face had done more damage than he originally thought and shook his brain loose.
She blinked those wide doe eyes up at him. They looked almost black in the near-dark, glowing with an emotion he had never seen from her.
He opened his mouth to say something. An apology for acting like a rutting beast. Nothing seemed adequate. He’d just spoken to Will’s little sister as though she were some vulgar minx he met at a sordid pub. To say nothing of his actions. He’d just ground his cock against her like she was a seasoned whore. This on the heels of Will and Max telling him he needed to behave more circumspectly. He really was a bastard.
Without a word, he turned and fled, descending the stairs with his cock throbbing. When he reached the bottom floor, he was tempted to look up, to see if she watched him, as he felt she did, or if that notion was just in his head.
He resisted. Keeping his eyes trained straight ahead, he opened the door and stepped out into the night.
Aurelia leaned over the railing and watched Max depart the house as if the hounds of hell were after him. She had done that. To him. She had sent the rogue running for once . . . and it was not because of her barbed tongue. It was because of her. He had left because of what swelled between them. The heat . . . the desire that even now still pumped between her legs.
For a moment there, pressed against the wall, she had thought he might kiss her. Finally, she would have a kiss other than the one Archibald Lewis forced upon her. She would know a kiss that did not taste of fish. She would be kissed properly. If nothing else could be said of Max, she felt certain it was this. He would know how to go about pleasing a woman.
She returned dazedly to her bedchamber, not recalling precisely how she got there. Somehow her feet moved, one step after another, until she was tucked back beneath her sheets, her hand pressed to the curve of her breast where her heart pounded like an incessant hammer.
The night had been eventful. Her hand slid to her throat where her pulse hiccupped a mad staccato as she recalled Max’s body so close to hers. What would he have done if she closed that space? If she had kissed him? She’d witnessed all manner of illicit activity in the private rooms at Sodom. She had seen kissing and more. Her cheeks caught fire. Much more.
She was no ignorant girl. Images of those people coupling had stayed with her, filling her mind with fantasies when she was alone in her bed at night and aching. Her imaginary partner had always been a phantom man. Vague and faceless. But in this moment, tonight, he possessed a face. He was Max. A breath shuddered out of her.
She had no misconceptions of what Max was. She wasn’t romanticizing him. She’d seen him in the greenhouse, trysting with the maid. She knew of his innumerable exploits after she, however inadvertently, christened him Cockless Camden.
They know what to do with their mouths . . .
A breath shuddered past her lips. He was a rogue who lived for pleasure. And his body had felt so good against her. Hard and strong. Her hand swept over her breast, fondled it, finding the nipple and giving it a squeeze, imagining it was Max’s fingers. A small whimper escaped her.
And then reality crashed down around her. This was Camden. He would never cross that line with her. No, not with Will’s little sister.
Sighing, she rolled onto her side. She had made up her mind tonight to find a husband and save herself from a lifetime of obscurity in Scotland with Aunt Daphne and her horde of pillows every shape, size, and color.
She best forget about Max and formulate a plan. Her gaze drifted to where her armoire stood. The room was too dark for her to see its hulking shape, but she knew precisely where it was, and she knew what resided within it. Countless gowns all handpicked by Mama. None were suited for her shape or coloring. She’d always known this and yet had never cared enough to oppose Mama on the matter. That would have to change. Starting tomorrow, she would need new gowns. She would begin there. A small and yet necessary change if she wanted to secure a proposal this Season.
She had two months before Mama left for Aunt Daphne’s. And yet lying in the dark, the idea of marrying someone so that she could remain here only filled her with an aching bleakness. For the first time in years her drawings and the purpose they fed her soul didn’t seem enough. Perhaps it was greedy of her, but she wanted more.
A shaky breath slipped past her lips as her mind touched on Max’s face, his voice, the sensation of his bigger body so close to her own tonight. She’d felt him all over . . . against her, around her. Everywhere, right down to her toes. And he had not even laid a finger on her. How would it be, how would it feel, if he did?
Snuggling deeper under the covers, she slipped her hand between her thighs and touched herself, gently at first and then with growing pressure. Closing her eyes, she increased the friction and arched her back, envisioning it was someone else’s hand on her, someone’s body. Someone she wanted, someone she craved as desperately as her next breath.
As she brought herself to release, it was Max she saw in her mind.