Chapter Six
Richard assisted Evie into the parked carriage, tapped on the door, and the equipage lurched into motion. The carriage rocked and swayed, taking her away from the cold, ugly streets of London. He pulled the blinds tightly closed so her presence within his carriage would not be noted by any of London’s gossips. Settling into his seat, he leaned forward and skimmed his thumb over the curve of her cheeks so tenderly a lump formed in her throat.
“Thank you for caring, Evie. I never expected you to visit this side of town, but I am damned glad you came.”
He lowered his hand, and she felt bereft of his warmth. “I’m glad, too. I’ll do everything in my power to gain interest for your charities.” There had never been a worthier employment for her intellect and time. She could not imagine how to start and hoped that at least conversations with the right ear would open doors. “I’d intended to call upon Adel this afternoon. I’m aware she’s become patron to several underfunded charities. I’ll take directions from her on where to start.”
His eyes glowed with approval and something far gentler that she was unable to interpret. “Why are you veiled?”
“I’d had the notion of paying you a call after I visited Adel.”
A dark brow lifted. “Without your mother or Elliot?”
Heat warmed her cheeks. “Hence the reason for the veil.”
“In the past, you sent around notes.”
“I never promised to be predictable.”
Richard leaned against the squabs with his hands folded casually across his middle. “Did something happen?”
“Yes. I’m to be married,” she said softly. “I fear I cannot escape the state any longer.”
Shock had glazed his eyes before he lowered his lids. He did not lift his head until he was composed and aloof. Evie hid her smile. She had seen that flare of discomfort, but she did not allow it to give her too much hope; her change of heart would have rattled anyone.
“I see, and when is the happy occasion?” he asked with a heavy dollop of sarcasm.
“According to Papa, I am to be engaged within the next few weeks.”
Some raw, visceral emotion leaped into Richard’s eyes, and they burned with a fire she hardly understood. His eyes dropped to her stomach. “Are you with child?”
A gasp of disconcertion escaped her. “No! How could you suggest such a thing of my honor?”
“I cast no aspersions on your person. It is natural for those who are foolish enough to believe they are in love to be intimate before marriage. I simply thought you had succumbed to someone’s charm.”
“I did not,” she snapped, cheeks flaming.
“Then why the haste? Most young ladies are engaged for at least six months,” he enquired coolly, his eyes as watchful and piercing as a hawk.
“Papa is in enormous debt.”
“That’s his burden, not yours.”
“Isn’t it? I’ve always known my sole value to the family was to make a match that would elevate them. I’ve avoided it for years because I wanted to choose my own husband. Perhaps I was naive, blind to the realities of life. We ladies of high society do not truly get to choose. We’ve already had to let go staff who desperately needed employment, and Papa is planning to raise the rents on our tenants who already struggle to pay. My marriage will not only benefit me.”
His gaze hooded even further. “I never thought you would have been so composed at the notion of marriage. You have been dodging suitors for years.”
“Unsuitable ones.”
“Ah…and is this new beau suitable in your eyes?”
“It appears he is exactly what my family needs,” she said softly.
He stiffened. “I see. Permit me to ask his name.”
“Viscount Ponsby, and according to Mamma, he has fifty thousand pounds a year. And if I do not choose Lord Ponsby, any other rich and titled gentleman will do. A ball is to be held in three days’ time, and all the eligible bachelors of the season have been invited. Mamma is quite determined to see me affianced in a few weeks.”
Richard’s eyes glinted with deep cynicism. “I liked you better when you spouted your nonsense about only marrying for love. I never thought you would become mercenary like those other ladies of society.”
Evie smiled. “I’m glad you feel so, and quite relieved, too.”
He arched a brow and folded his arms across his chest, affecting a casual pose. “I do not understand, but I am sure you will need little encouragement to inform me. I’m listening carefully.”
“There is another gentleman I would prefer to marry, not because of his wealth but because I…I admire him deeply. Sadly he is not of the same persuasion.”
“Then he is a damn fool.”
She nodded. “I agree. The problem is I do not think he notices me as a woman. My aim is to secure his attention…as a woman.”
Richard blinked…and then blinked again, an arrested expression settling on his face. He lowered his arms slowly and leaned forward. “Exactly what do you mean?”
“I’ve decided to get him to notice me, and if I successfully capture his attention in the next few weeks and secure an offer from him, then I can cry off from Lord Ponsby.”
Richard considered her intently, and she worked to prevent herself from fidgeting under the cunning intelligence glaring at her.
“And how do you intend for him to notice you as a woman?”
She wetted her lips, a nervous reaction to her scandalous plans, and his eyes tracked the movement. “That is where I shall rely on your expertise. I’ve spent so many years discouraging suitors, I have no notion how to attract one. How do I capture his interest and hold it? How do I tempt him to kiss me? How do I entrance him so he will dance with me at balls, walk with me in the park, send me letters and poems?”
“I believe I know where you are heading and the answer is no.”
“Oh, Richard, you haven’t even heard my request.”
His jaw clenched, and he was gripping the edge of the seat. “Evie—”
“Teach me,” she breathed boldly, sliding forward on her seat. “How do I kiss…how do I ensnare his regard? You are my friend. I quite believe you are honor bound to tutor me.”
“Evie—”
“I need lessons in seduction.”
“Bloody hell. If you must work to ensnare your gentleman’s regard, he is a bloody fool,” Richard said gruffly. “You are beautiful, Evie. Clever, witty, and kind. He should be damn well fortunate you would consider him.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Who is this idiot?”
You, my darling. “I would rather not say.”
“Why in damnation not?”
“I already know you are going to investigate Ponsby, as you did all the other suitors who have approached me over the years. I would…prefer you not to do so with my secret gentleman.”
“And if I gave you my word?”
“I will still be directed by my desires and withhold his name from you.”
“And what makes you think I have any notion of what in God’s name you must do to attract this buffoon?”
Evie couldn’t help laughing. “Rumors say you’ve had various lovers—actresses, famed courtesans, ladies belonging to high society and ladies of questionable morals. Surely you have some idea of how they caught you so thoroughly?”
“Perhaps it was I who caught them,” he said with some amusement and with such arrogant superiority she wanted to slap him.
She settled with an inelegant shrug. “Unquestionably it was mutual.”
“And what do I get from this?”
“You get to make a dear friend the happiest of women.”
After a pulse of silence, he responded, “And that is all the incentive I need.”
A wide smile split her face, and he sucked in a harsh breath. Evie pushed out her hand for him to shake. He held her palm lightly. “Then we have a bargain. You will teach me how to kiss properly, in secret of course, how to flirt, and you will attend balls and dance with me so that he can be dreadfully jealous.”
Richard shook her hand. “I may be present at a few balls, I may dance with you, I may give you meaningful insight on how to attract this unmitigated idiot, but there will certainly be no kisses.”
It was something, Evie conceded grudgingly, but not quite what she needed. “And why no kisses?”
The air tightened with an unexpected tension, and the pulse jumped in her throat.
“That would be too dangerous.”
“You have kissed me before.”
A powerful heat flared in the depth of his gaze. “That has no bearing on how we must go forward now. And those kisses were chaste.”
“Chaste? You’ve intrigued me, Richard. I quite thought at the time they were illicit and daring. Are you suggesting there is more?”
He narrowed his gaze in warning.
She pursed her lips, trying not to smile. “You would prefer I seek someone else’s tuition for lessons on how to kiss properly?”
“Good Christ, I implied nothing of the sort.”
“Without lessons in the art of delicate seduction, I am certain I am to muck it up. The very idea is intolerable.”
“Evie…”
He swallowed, at an apparent loss for words as she moved to sit beside him. She quite liked ruffling the feathers of a man of the world like Richard. Acting on pure feminine instinct, she lifted the veil from her face and lightly kissed the firm side of his jaw. Her heart pounded an exhilarating yet terrifying tempo. When he didn’t shift from her tentative exploration, her anxiety lessened, and her curiosity increased. How far could she tempt him? “Perhaps we should attempt a lesson now…that way you can plan how thorough your lessons need to be.”
“I’m of a mind to turn you over my knees and redden your backside. Perhaps then you’d act with more sense,” he replied, his voice quiet, too soft, dangerous.
“Is it wanton to admit the thought of your hand on my backside is shamefully appealing?” she teased, even as a bolt of heat shot through her.
With a harsh groan, he tugged her closer, their lips scant inches apart. “You are a babe at the game you’re attempting to play. If only you knew how easy it would be for you to be devoured, I wonder, my dear Evie, if you would then tread with more caution.”
Sudden nerves erupted in her stomach. “Richard, I—”
He swallowed her words. Oh. His kiss was so gentle, quite at odds with the manner in which he held her, as if he wanted to push her down on the cushions and ravish her. He caught her lower lip between his teeth and stroked over it with his tongue. A hungry whimper broke from her throat. He pulled his lips from her. “Dammit, I truly cannot… I am holding on by a mere gossamer thread. I desire you too much.”
He desires me? “How long?” she breathed. “How long have you wanted me?”
“Six years,” he ground out, his eyes flashing with dangerous fire. “If I ever kiss you again, I will take you, consequences be damned. I’m not the man you knew, Evie. I’m not bound by society’s rule of conduct and their vague notions of honor. I have my own code…immoral to most, and there are days I question my character.” His hands tightened on her hips. “I will not be persuaded to a union because I take what you are freely offering.”
She raised trembling fingers to touch his beautiful mouth. It physically hurt to crave him so much. “I’ve been waiting in agony and hope for your kisses. Foolish and reckless of me, but at this moment, I do not want to be dutiful…not now.”
He brushed the lightest of kisses across her mouth. Her lips tingled and burned. His taste was evocative. He bit gently into her bottom lip, and she whimpered.
He swore violently, and then he plundered. Oh God. He stole the air from her lungs and turned her thoughts to mush as he claimed her mouth in another kiss. He took her lower lip between his teeth and bit down gently, teasing her lips to part with soft nibbles and hot, urgent kisses. With a moan, Evie opened her mouth, and his tongue thrust boldly in to tangle with hers.
They parted, breathing raggedly. “I could taste you forever and not want anything else to sustain me.”
Her breath hitched at his fervent whisper. His fingers trailed to her jaw, where he cradled her cheeks in his palms and stole her breath with another kiss. He alternately savored and consumed. She sighed deeply. The drugging heat of his kiss couldn’t be denied, and she responded to his sensual mastery helplessly. Each nip and kiss went deeper, lingered longer, became wetter, more carnal, and enmeshed her heart even more.
Somehow, she ended up draped halfway across his lap, her fingers clutched tightly in his hair, and his hands, dear Lord, his hands were sliding her dress up her thighs with shocking and exciting boldness.
He released her mouth to press kisses against her shoulder, her chin, down to the sensitive hollow of her throat. Richard shifted with her, lowering her back onto the cushions, splitting her legs open and moving between them, predatory heat glowing in his eyes. A wild, dangerous charge emanated from him, lighting every nerve in her body. She trembled with the instinct to surrender to his magnetic pull. An unfamiliar sensation fluttered low in her stomach, and a sharp tremor of uncertainty quivered through her.
His fingers trailed with alarming intent up the inside of her legs to her thighs, leaving fire in their wake. Evie was grateful for the semi darkness of the carriage, certain her entire body was blushing red. The teasing strokes of his fingers as they dragged along the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs had the sweetest pressure building between her legs.
“I ache…Richard.” Her voice was a whisper, but it elicited an answering groan from deep in his throat.
“Here?” he murmured, cupping her in a place she had never been touched.
Evie bucked and shivered at the piercing arousal that stabbed low in her stomach. “Yes,” she said on a sob.
His wicked fingers parted her and touched the intimate heart of her. She froze, panting, as unknown sensations erupted deep inside.
A ragged groan burst from him. “You’re so wet.” With a tender glide of his fingertip, he stroked over her aching folds with delicacy.
Her breathing fractured and her mind muddled. He shifted, pushing her knees up and splaying her wantonly wide. His head dipped, and she jerked in acute shock to feel the waft of his breath across her core. “Rich…Richard?” she stuttered and unsuccessfully tried to clamp her legs closed.
His powerful forearms, which held her splayed open, prevented her action. He nipped at her thigh, causing her to whimper with the edge of pleasure-pain.
“Hold still,” he commanded tenderly.
The provocative stab of his tongue against her wet sex sent shockwaves of delight through her blood. Sweet heavens. This cannot be decent. Unexpected hunger crawled over her skin with wicked heat. She moaned and twisted, suddenly hotter than she could bear. His tongue was a soothing glide over her pulsating flesh, and the onslaught of sensations was overwhelming.
Her entire body quaked. “Richard!”
His tongue licked over her, teasing her aching swollen nub. Evie almost jackknifed from the carriage seat, her breath escaping in shuddering gasps. He raked his teeth over her straining nub, then licked it hard. She whimpered and rocked against his face, lost in pleasure, straining for an elusive bliss that had her stomach twisted into an aching knot of need.
There was a lurch as the carriage rolled over a bump in the road. Richard stopped his maddening torment and sat up, tugging her dress down. Evie felt fevered, restless, and desperate for the ache to be assuaged. “Richard?” she asked, hating the tremble of uncertainty in her voice.
He shifted the blinds of the carriage, and a curse slipped from him. She sat in a daze as he thrust his head through the window and commanded the coachman to another location. He settled back, his piercing gaze studying every nuance of her face. Her gaze dipped to the front of his trousers where an impressive bulge had made itself evident.
She leaned forward and touched his thigh lightly. “Rich—”
“Do not touch me, Evie,” he all but snarled. “I cannot resist you, and so help me God, I will not take you in a damn carriage.”
She snatched her hand away as if a bee had stung her, blinking back confused tears. “I…I feel so needy, but I do not know what I need,” she confessed shakily. “I throb there.”
A harsh groan and then another curse slipped from him. “Close your eyes,” he commanded.
“Why?”
“Evie,” he growled. “Close your damn eyes.”
His profanities were shocking, the hunger in his gaze equally intimidating and thrilling. Evie was unable to comply. “Whatever you need to do…I want to watch.”
His eyes darkened dangerously, entrapping her attention and holding her still. A blush worked itself along her body when he loosened the front flap of his breeches and…a sturdy stalk sprang forth. Oh God. Heat flushed through her, but she could not look away. He was so hard and beautiful. He fished a handkerchief from his pockets, gripped that thick stalk in a tight fist, and with three strong and violently sensual strokes, his hips jerked, and a raw groan of need pulsed into the carriage.
The raw intimacy of what he was doing enthralled Evie’s senses, and a startling rush of need arrowed down to her aching core. Unable to help herself, she rubbed her thighs together, even squeezing them closer. She needed to be touched, held, anything to relieve the pressure stabbing her insides with cold fire.
As if he understood, Richard tucked himself back into his pants and stuffed the handkerchief into his top pocket. “Come here,” he said soothingly, drawing her onto his lap. “I had to do that…or I would have taken you.”
She dropped her forehead to his shoulder. “Tell me what to do.”
He positioned her even more securely in his lap, but very scandalously so that she straddled him, her legs bracketing each of his outer thighs. An unexpected shiver of anticipation cascaded down her spine. One of his hands snaked around, and his fingers splayed across her stomach, where he kneaded gently. The other found its way to her core where he lightly skimmed his knuckles over her desperately needy flesh. Evie gasped at the electrifying contact, desire coursing through her like molten lava at each soft but persistent stroke.
His fingers slipped over her aching nub with even more firmness, and then he pinched down. Her nub got harder, more sensitive, yet his questing fingers never stopped their slippery caresses as she trembled with powerful quakes and her breathing became fast and urgent.
“That’s it,” he murmured. “You are getting so wet, Evie, so damn wet.”
Her breath came in gasps and pants as she clutched his shoulders and dazedly deduced that it was a good thing she was wet. He sounded so pleased at the notion. She had not thought the piercing sensations could improve, but Richard moved his wicked questing fingers lower. He gently eased one of his long fingers into her aching depths, and she bit into his shoulder as the feeling became so intense it bordered on pain.
“I need more, Richard,” she said on a soft moan into the curve of his neck.
Using a finger to force her chin up, Evie met his golden gaze. The mix of tenderness and visceral lust had her throat closing. He covered her trembling lips with his and withdrew his intimate caress, returned with two fingers rimming her aching entrance, and proceeded with an even more torturously slow plunge into her. Though he seemed so careful, the pain and the sweetest pleasure mingled, driving her higher toward something wonderfully elusive. Helpless against the emotions flooding her senses, helpless to stop the undulations of her hips, she slowly rode his fingers to the fever beating in her blood. Hungry, desperate cries spilled from her, mingling with his low, gravelly murmurs of approval.
A rough kiss was pressed to her swollen lips, and his diabolical fingers stroked her deeper…harder, while his thumb slid sinuously across her aching nub. Everything inside of Evie melted as fiery heat swamped her senses with bliss so destructive her entire body shuddered as ecstasy exploded through her.
Shaking and trembling, she rested her forehead against his. It took several moments for her to regain equilibrium. “Oh, Richard…that was…I’m not sure what it was.”
He dragged his thumb across her tender lips. “I want these sweet, hot, reddened lips around my cock.”
She whimpered at the illicit images filling her mind. Surely she did not understand his meaning. Evie felt as if she stood on the precipice of change, or more like the cliff of insanity, for she wanted to bestow on him pleasure…even the lurid images he’d just provoked to her thoughts. She should have been appalled at her unladylike passions, but instead, a burst of exhilaration shot through her heart. It was a heady feeling, doing something she wanted, and not because of duty and expectations. “Teach me.”
“I assure you, these lessons would be of ruin and disgrace,” he groaned against her lips. “Eventually I’ll strip you bare, kiss away all your shyness, and ride you for hours…until you can only moan my name in satisfied exhaustion. I’ve not the willpower, Evie, to stop at kisses and harmless teasing.”
The silence that lingered seemed brittle. She suddenly felt ridiculously vulnerable. “Is that so bad?”
“Yes. I’d have no choice but to marry you, wouldn’t I? My blackened reputation will sully you in the eyes of the ton, and remove you from your family and friends,” he said, his voice still rough and uneven.
She wanted to protest, but the words remained trapped in her throat. Surely it couldn’t be that bad. Deep inside, she did fear her mother would never accept an alliance with a known miscreant like Richard. I have Papa’s approval. And that was what she would hold on to. Not the memory of the embarrassing insinuations she had to suffer from friends, and the avid way they tried to besmirch his character, and the rebukes from her family whenever she publicly socialized with him, even briefly. Spying his conviction that she would be ruined by association, at that moment Evie grew unbearably wary.
He skimmed his fingers over her cheek. “I know your ridiculous fancies. They will never be had with a man like me. I do not trust, nor do I love. These are things you desire from your marriage, Evie. I’ve heard enough of your girlish, foolish hopes, albeit I want that for you because I need you to be happy.” He withdrew from her fully and tugged her dress lower, shifting her so she was once again seated beside him. “No more kisses, Evie…such intimacies will only lead to a ruin of your reputation, whatever is left of my honor, and our friendship.”
He chucked her gently across her chin, and she managed to produce a small smile. She lowered her head and rested it against his shoulder as the carriage rumbled along the streets.
I do not trust, nor do I love.
It struck her then how awful it was that a man as giving and selfless as Richard should live a life where he trusted few and did not require the comfort and joy loving someone brought. She wondered if he found it lonely to be without his family and the friends he had lost. Evie couldn’t imagine an existence where her parents and her brother lived, but she was prohibited from speaking, laughing, visiting them for the Christmas feast, or other traditions which they honored.
It cheered her to envision the happiness his daughter must have brought to his heart. Evie was determined even more now to love him, though she did feel more than a twinge of apprehension at constantly tempting the ruthless sensual scoundrel who’d almost ravished her in a carriage.
But what wouldn’t she risk to have his love, to move from being his only friend to his lover, his wife, his marchioness and future duchess?
Nothing… She would up the stakes for his heart.