Chapter Nine
Bracebridge didn’t look away from Emily. No man in his right mind would, for she lay on the bed like an erotic dream come to life. Her clothes were in disarray, tapes unfastened, her corset on the floor, pettiskirts rucked up nearly to her knees. One of her garters was missing. Her hair, which he’d loosened, had come entirely undone. She continued to look him up and down.
“Bold, aren’t you?” he said.
“Should I not look at you?”
He lifted his arms away from his body. He trained almost as hard now as in his fighting days. His body was a weapon, his muscles defined and hard. He’d never been a wiry fighter like Bill Richmond. He was more on the scale of Jim Belcher or Devil Wilcott, shy of Belcher’s science and without Wilcott’s blinding speed and perfect technique. He was strong, though, faster than most and with excellent bottom and wind, as the pugilistic crowd liked to say of a fighter with endurance and control of his breathing.
Emily took a handful of her skirt and lifted one knee. “When I look at you, I feel like I’m stepping onto thin air with nothing to stop me from falling.”
He sat on the side of the mattress and put a hand on her bent leg, just below her knee. He moved his hand upward, sliding his fingers around to the inside of her thigh. “When I look at you, I feel you have too many clothes on.”
Her mouth curved in a smile. “Compared to you, I do.”
He reached the apex of her thighs and slid two fingers along her sex. “You’re wet.”
She blinked twice and went quite still.
“It means I’ve aroused you. The same way my hard prick means you have aroused me.”
With her assistance, he stripped her of the rest of her undergarments. Everything gone: garters, stockings, chemise. Naked, she lay still, with a quietness that made a barrier between them. He was both frustrated by it and grateful for it.
He drew his fingers from the base of her throat down the center of her torso, then back to cup one breast. “Magnificent.”
She caught his gaze and held it. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“What?” He had his hand between her legs again. She was hot and wet, and she had adjusted to give him access.
She sat up and dislodged his hand, and if she hadn’t moved closer to him, one hand on his chest, sliding down, then up, he’d have been annoyed she’d stopped him from feeling her sex. “You think I’m too delicate for a brute like you.”
He curved his hand around her waist. Her skin was astonishingly soft. “You’re a young lady of society. Coddled and cosseted from the day of your birth, spoiled by everyone who meets you because you’re this.” He pressed his hand to the center of her upper chest, then slid his palm down. “Perfection.”
“While you are a disreputable, reprehensible beast, my lord.”
“Compared to you.”
She was kissing his chest, touching his stomach, following the ridges of muscle. “I know what else you’re thinking.” She drew back. “It ought to be out in the open.”
“Why, when I’d rather be doing this?” He leaned over and took her nipple into his mouth and sucked hard. Her chest rose with her intake of breath.
“I can’t think when you do that.”
He cupped her. “No? That’s a shame.”
She put her hands on either side of his face. “You resent me because I’m not Anne. In fact, I think you hate me because I’m not.”
His heart skipped a beat. Jesus.
She was right, though. “You have her eyes.”
“Mine are blue.”
He touched the side of her eye. “The shape is the same. Your lashes are dark like hers.”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes when you smile, you remind me of her. But you’re nothing like her.”
“Not at all.” She leaned close and kissed the bulge of his biceps, then his pectoral.
He wrapped her hair around his hand and pulled her head back. Not enough to hurt. He was careful of that. “Your hair isn’t the same color.”
“It’s not.”
“Anne is taller. She’s gentle, always so gentle. So kind. She was always kind to me when I was a man no lady ought to know. She’s the finest mind of any woman I’ve met, and she’s loyal to a fault. She was a mother to you and all your sisters.”
“She was, and we loved her for it.”
“You aren’t her.”
“Tell me how much you hate me.” She straddled his lap, and he put his hands on her bottom, either side. “Say it and be done with it. It changes nothing for me if you say what I already know.”
He was hard and aroused by her ferocity and the perfection of her. “I hate that I want you like this.” He pressed his mouth to her shoulder and kissed her there while he worked his finger around to her sex. He bit her, not enough to break skin, but enough to make her gasp. He gripped her hard, and she sucked in a quick breath. A moment later, he pushed her onto her back and splayed himself over her, palms flat on the mattress on either side of her. Words poured out of him, a river of despair. “I hate that you’re beautiful. I hate that every time I see you, I betray Anne because I want you.”
“Most everyone wants me,” she said without a hint of pride. “And some of the ones who do are married men who shouldn’t want any woman but their wives. There’s nothing special about you feeling that way.”
“No,” he said. “There’s not.”
She curled a hand around the back of his head. “I know,” she whispered. She held him close, but he pushed away. He did not want sympathy. Not from her. Never from her.
He used one leg to push one of hers aside to make room for himself. He was so hard, so aroused, so full of anger and heartbreak, he was rougher than he should have been. She smiled and tightened her grip on his shoulders. They’d been almost this close to disaster once. He’d had one hand on her thigh and the other on his breeches’ buttons, and the Lord only knew how he’d managed not to ruin both their lives that day.
“Do it now,” she said in a low, fierce command.
He shoved inside her in one long, hard, savage thrust, into softness and heat, and he told himself he would not continue in this way. He would be gentler, soon. So soft, and already orgasm hovered, promising him the oblivion of sexual release.
She made a small sound, a gasp, a catch of her breath that wound through him. She tensed, and by the time he remembered that, yes, this was her first time, she’d relaxed. She arched toward him. “Devon,” she said while he stopped moving. “My God, Devon. My lord. Do that again.”
He fucked her. There wasn’t any other word that sufficed. He tried to start slowly, but she caught on quickly, and she held him tight and put her mouth by his ear and said, “It’s all right to hate me.”
He reared back, and she did something with her hips, once, then again, and God in heaven, she was fucking him in return. He kept his weight on his palms and matched himself to her motion, harder, a little harder, and he had the wit and presence of mind to be sure he brought her along with him.
He didn’t have to chase his orgasm, and he’d long ago stopped thinking about slender, delicate Emily Sinclair. Their intercourse was not polite or delicate. Together they were crude and raw. She came first, but he followed only moments later, a release that shattered him because he’d found his sexual match and because it was Emily, Emily, who was forbidden to him.
He came hard, so hard, he found bliss.
Afterward, though. Afterward. He sat up, legs hanging off the mattress. Her words echoed in his head, relieving him of his guilt, accepting his anguish as if she didn’t deserve better. “What have I done?” he said to the room. “Emily, what have I done to you?”
The sheets and blankets slid around her as she sat up and put a hand on his back. “Nothing. You’ve done nothing.”
He turned just enough to see her face. Guilt annihilated him. “Don’t forgive me for this. Don’t ever.”
“Too late.”
“Why, when I’ve consigned you to a life without the possibility of love?”