Chapter 4
A sensual mouth and a kiss Heather had no defenses against after their bitter exchange of words.
Despite her challenging claim of having a lover, in reality, it had been a long time since anyone had so much as kissed Heather on the lips. Or since she had felt the wildness and heat of passion that now claimed her body, causing her nipples to engorge and harden, and the lips between her thighs to flower and dampen.
She gave a low groan as Maxim’s tongue breached her lips to become entangled along the length of her own, igniting sparks of pleasure even as he slipped the jerkin from her shoulders and down her arms before allowing it to fall to the carpeted floor. He made no effort to unfasten her shirt but instead gripped it at the collar and ripped the front effortlessly apart from throat to navel, baring her breasts and abdomen.
Heather pulled back with a gasp, her protest at such rough treatment dying in her throat when she saw the raw desire blazing in Maxim’s eyes as he looked at her bared breasts.
Color blazed in her cheeks at the knowledge her breasts were far larger than they had been six years ago. Bigger and fuller, the nipples colored a deep rose.
Maxim’s hands moved to cup beneath each of those breasts. His skin was so much darker than her creamy mounds, his hands large enough to take that fullness in his palms. The soft pads of his thumbs stroked across the turgid nipples, causing Heather to gasp anew as pleasure shot down the length of her spine and burned hotly between her thighs.
He glanced up at her. “Did you have a wet nurse or feed Ralph yourself?”
She swallowed. “I fed him.” Her milk had been so plentiful, it had been painful for her not to do so.
“Did you enjoy having your babe suck on these?” Maxim pinched her nipples between fingers and thumb. “Pulling and sucking as he gorged himself on your milk?”
The weakness of her knees had absolutely nothing to do with thoughts of breastfeeding Ralph but all and everything that was Maxim. The memories of him sucking on her breasts as he pleasured her with his mouth and hands. The squeeze and pull on her nipples as the juices flowed between her swollen nether lips.
“Answer me!” he bit out harshly.
She gave a shake of her head. “It is not the same. I was giving my baby life—”
“Whereas I intend to give you pleasure.” Maxim gave a hard, relentless grin as he lowered his face until it was on a level with her breasts. “As I recall, you always came the first time from nipple stimulation alone.”
This was wrong, so very wrong, and yet Heather had no will to stop Maxim as his open lips claimed and sucked one of her sensitive nipples into the moist heat of his mouth. Her eyes closed, back arching, pushing her breasts forward, as the fingers and thumb of his other hand squeezed and tweaked its twin in the same rhythm as he sucked and laved the turgid flesh with his merciless tongue.
It was as if those six years apart had never happened, as Heather’s body responded to the only master it had ever known, consuming her as familiar and overwhelming desire rose within her. Her breathing turned into sobs, and the undulating of her thighs were pleas for release as the pleasure deepened and then finally broke, sending her hurtling into an ecstasy of release that almost brought her to her knees.
She could no longer breathe or think. She had no strength or will to protest when Maxim unfastened her breeches and pulled them far enough down her thighs to allow him access. His fingers parted her dark curls and stroked her swollen and wet nether lips. Two of those fingers entered and then thrust into her still-pulsing channel. The rasp of his tongue against her swollen and sensitive nipples sending her over the edge into another climax, even deeper than the first.
Heather fluttered her lids open as Maxim straightened in front of her.
“Whoever your lover is, he obviously cannot be satisfying your specific needs if you can still respond so readily to me minutes after leaving his arms,” Maxim stated with satisfaction as he stepped back.
His expression was one of triumph as his gaze swept over her debauched and satisfied body in the ripped shirt and her breeches about her knees, bringing about a painful and humiliating return to reality for Heather.
She lowered her lids as hot tears stung her eyes, blinking rapidly to prevent them from falling. She would not cry in front of this man. Would never allow Maxim to see or know the pain he had caused her, in the past and now.
She pulled up and refastened her breeches before pulling the two ripped sides of her shirt together over her breasts. “I assure you he satisfies me well enough.” The fact the only lover she currently had was her own caressing fingers, and then only rarely, was none of Maxim’s concern. “And at least I can rely upon him to be there to give me what I need when I need it,” she added challengingly.
His jaw tightened at the deliberate taunt. “I am here now to give you what you need, whenever you need it.”
She tossed the long length of her hair back over her shoulder. “And if I do not care to once again put myself at the mercy of your whims and fancies?”
Maxim could still feel the softness of Heather’s breasts in his hands, her cum still dampening his fingers. It made her obdurate attitude toward him now doubly infuriating. “Do not force me into reminding you that you and your son owe your current comfortable existence to me.”
She eyed him contemptuously. “I believe you just did.”
Yes, he had, and Maxim had regretted it the moment the words left his lips. He was not this man. He did not use emotional or any other form of blackmail in order to force a woman into his bed. Except Heather was not just any woman. And when he was with her, it seemed he became a man he barely recognized.
“You have been allowed to run wild for far too long, and it is time that wildness stopped,” he stated flatly.
“And how do you intend to bring that about?” she scorned. “By pushing me up against any convenient door or wall and mauling me whenever you feel like it?”
“Your climax just now, not once but twice, shows how much you enjoyed my mauling,” he bit out.
Her cheeks suffused with color. “What an arrogant bastard you still are!”
He made no attempt to deny it. “I also intend for the two of us to travel to your parents’ home later on this morning to collect Ralph and bring him home.”
Heather’s throat moved as she swallowed. “He has barely spent any time with them. Besides, I do not think it would be good for him to be brought back into a house that is so charged with the tension between the two of us.”
“If there is tension between us, then it is of your own making, not mine,” Maxim assured her. “Make sure you are appropriately dressed and ready to travel at eleven o’clock this morning.” He grasped her arms and moved her gently to one side before opening the door and stepping out into the hallway. He closed that door behind him before releasing his breath in a shuddering sigh.
He had not known quite what to expect as he took his time traveling to his estate in Cornwall this past week. He had known there would be tension between himself and Heather, of course. His own investigation into whether or not Heather was a spy for the French made it impossible for there not to be tension on his part, at least.
He had also known there was an unconcluded desire between the two of them. Again, on his part. But he had believed Heather’s marriage to his father to have meant her own desire for him no longer existed. Her ready and explosive response to his lovemaking just now had proven otherwise. Even if, as was obvious, it was a desire she despised to recognize in herself.
Maxim could not accept her story of having spent the night with a lover. Heather had always been wild and a little reckless, but she had never been promiscuous, having been a virgin the first time the two of them made love together. If she really had spent part of the night with her lover, Maxim did not believe she would have allowed him to touch her in the intimate way he had.
Which meant she had either spent that time smuggling with her brothers or meeting her French counterpart. But not in Treganon Cove; otherwise, Maxim would have seen her descent into the cove and the arrival of the ship. Which meant there might be illegal contraband stored somewhere else in the area. If so, it was his duty to go in search of it.
Despite the desire he felt for Heather, Maxim would not fail in his mission to find out exactly what the mistress of Treganon House was up to, as he had not failed in any of his missions since that ill-fated one six years ago.
“You have insisted upon this journey, but there really is no need for you to accompany me,” Heather told Maxim waspishly as he assisted her into the Carlton carriage. Her parents would be no happier to see Maxim again than her brothers had been last night to learn of his presence in Cornwall.
As a child and then a young man, Maxim had been welcomed into Heather’s family home as a friend of her brothers, his then title of lord having no bearing on that friendship. But many years had passed since there had been that ease of welcome for Maxim by her parents into their home. None of her family could ever forget or forgive the callous way he had used her and broken her heart six years ago.
Including Heather.
Maxim shrugged broad shoulders beneath the dark blue superfine he wore over a silver waistcoat and snow-white linen, a complicated neckcloth arranged at his throat, his muscular legs encased in gray pantaloons and black leather Hessians. “I will need to see and speak with your father while I am here anyway, so this morning will do as well as any other.”
Knowing Maxim was a friend of the Prince Regent, Heather could easily guess the reason he needed to speak to her father. “I am so pleased I am able to accommodate your own plans,” she told him with a false and sugary sweetness.
He gave an appreciative smile. “Somehow, I doubt that very much.”
Heather relaxed back against the plushness of the seat to turn and stare out the window at the rugged coastline, hoping Maxim would take that as an end to the subject. It would take an hour or more to reach her parents’ home, and she did not intend to make conversation with Maxim for the whole of the journey. He had a habit of asking questions she would rather not answer.
It had been difficult enough facing him again in time for this carriage ride after the events of earlier this morning.
It galled Heather immensely that she still responded so readily to Maxim. She should hate and despise him, and perhaps she did, but her body was still as attuned to his as it had been six years ago. Even now, much as she wished it were not the case, she was still aware of Maxim’s effect upon her and the shattering climaxes that had resulted from the caress of his hands and fingers.
From beneath lowered lids, Maxim studied the coolly composed woman seated across the carriage from him. It was difficult to imagine her as the little hoyden she had once again appeared early this morning in her men’s clothing. Even more difficult to imagine her as the woman who had climaxed, twice, beneath his ministrations.
The feel of her had lingered long after he returned to his bedchamber, tormenting and torturing his own lack of release until he could stand it no longer. He had undressed with the anticipation of a few hours’ sleep before his bath, but instead had lain down upon the bed before taking his engorged cock in hand and pleasuring himself, all while imagining it was Heather’s hands upon his cock and balls, stroking and caressing the former and squeezing the latter. Maxim had come quickly and hard, harder than he could remember doing since last he had been with Heather.
Oh, there had been other women in the years since he had learned of Heather’s marriage to his father. Too many, if Maxim was honest with himself. Women he had necessarily kept from seeing his scars by remaining partially dressed during those encounters, or from asking the questions the gentleman at his boxing saloon were too polite to voice.
Maxim found it difficult, now that his senses were once again saturated with Heather’s beauty and allure and her feminine perfume, to recall so much as a single one of those women’s faces. Certainly the sex had been far from memorable.
Because none of those women was Heather.
She had enslaved more than his body all those years ago. Had engaged his emotions in a way no women had before or since. Emotions Maxim had been at pains to bury these past five years, but which were once again clamoring to be heard and felt.
His jaw tightened as he turned his head to stare out the window beside him, barely registering the skeleton of Wheal Anne, the old family mine, which had been closed and boarded up from before Maxim was born.
Until he knew exactly which Heather was, smuggler or traitor to the English Crown, Maxim knew he dare not allow his guard to drop in her presence any further than he already had.
Except he had no idea how he was supposed to keep his hands—or his cock—to himself, when even now he wanted to lay Heather back upon the carriage seat, throw up her skirts, and bury his face in her pussy and eat her until she came and came against his lips and tongue, her juices dripping down his chin. After which he wanted to feel her hands and tongue on his cock, caressing and sucking until his cum exploded into the heat of her mouth and she swallowed it down greedily, as she had so many times in the past.
Imaginings which had only resulted in Maxim’s cock once again being as hard as steel.
Surely the fires of hell could not be as painful as the suffering of his rekindled desire for Heather.
A desire which, thankfully, became secondary the moment he alighted from the carriage at the Turners’ home and was met with their icy lack of welcome.
“My lord.” Lady Adelle Turner, an older but just as beautiful version of her daughter, greeted frostily as she curtseyed just enough to be considered polite.
“Carlton.” Sir Walter’s welcome was even more cold and unwelcoming.
“Mama!” A young boy hurtled past them all and threw himself into Heather’s waiting arms before Maxim could think of a suitable reply to such discourtesy.
Heather’s arms closed about her young son, and she laughed happily as she twirled him around in a circle before holding him close to her and turned to face Maxim. Her expression became challenging as Maxim studied the boy in her arms.
There was no doubting this child was his much younger half brother. He had the same dark blond hair and gray eyes of their father, his facial features very similar to what Maxim’s own had been at the age of five.
“Ralph, this is your brother Maxim, the new earl,” Heather introduced gently as she continued to hold the boy tightly against her.
Protectively? As if she feared Maxim might hurt him in some way, either physically or verbally?
He would never—
“Maxim, my son, Ralph,” she added in a much harder voice.
The boy struggled to be put back upon his feet before bowing. “My lord.”
Maxim’s heart squeezed painfully as he returned the formal gesture. “My lord,” he greeted softly, forcing a smile to curve his lips rather than show how disturbed he was by this physical evidence of Heather’s marriage to his father. “But you may call me Maxim if I may call you Ralph,” he encouraged gruffly.
The child nodded permission, his expression wary and serious rather than the unadulterated pleasure he had seconds ago shown at being reunited with his mother.
And why should Ralph not feel wary of him? Maxim was his brother, but the boy had never met him before. Well, not since he was a newborn babe of a few days old, at least.
Now, with the critical gaze of the Turners fixed upon him, as well as Heather’s more openly hostile one, was not the time for Maxim to attempt to form a relationship with Ralph.
Maxim dragged his gaze away from the boy with effort and instead looked at Sir Walter. “If we could leave the ladies and Ralph to become reacquainted for a few minutes so that you and I might talk in private?”
Heather noted how her father’s shoulders stiffened even further at the request. No doubt because he was already aware of the subject Maxim wished to discuss with him. As were they all.
As the magistrate of the district, her father could and would be held accountable for not bringing to justice any wrongdoing in the area, including the smuggling, which he knew his sons and daughter had been guilty of the previous night.
“How are you?” her mother prompted worriedly once the two women were comfortably ensconced in Adelle’s private parlor enjoying a cup of tea together while Ralph resumed playing with his toys near the window.
How was she, Heather wondered? Angry. Confused. But most of all ashamed of her responses to Maxim earlier today. He had used her and then abandoned her all those years ago, but despite it all, she had responded to him earlier today much like a cat in heat.
Not that she could ever tell her mother that. The two women were close, but not so close Heather ever wanted her mother to know of her weakness still in regard to Maxim. “I am well enough,” she said instead, keeping her voice low so that Ralph did not hear the rest of their conversation. “The shipment arrived safely last night and is hidden away in Wheal Anne.”
“So your brothers informed us this morning,” her mother dismissed. “And we both know I was not referring to last night’s shipment.” Her gaze was reproving.
Heather sighed. “It is a little strange to see Maxim again and know that he is somewhere in the house, but otherwise, I believe we are making the best of it.”
“We?”
She gave a rueful smile. “I doubt Maxim is any more pleased to see me again than I am him.”
“I fail to see why,” her mother snapped. “He is the one who so callously abandoned you after using you for his own pleasure.”
Yes, he was. But somehow, all these years later, with her son playing happily in the same room as her, and still able to feel the effect of Maxim’s lovemaking upon her body, it was difficult for Heather to completely recall the anger she had felt toward Maxim’s betrayal and abandonment.
Which would not do at all.
She could not allow herself to become prey to those desires a second time. She had a responsibility now, as Ralph’s mother, which she had not had then.
“Let us talk of pleasanter things,” she encouraged her mother with a pointed glance in Ralph’s direction. Young children, as she knew, were apt to hear more than the adults might wish them to.
Certainly Heather did not want Ralph to ever know there had once been more between his mother and his brother Maxim than Society would ever allow or accept.