It all felt hotly familiar to Max. Walking up on Aurelia with Mackenzie hovering close, his big hand on her like he had every right to touch her. If possible, this time he felt closer to unraveling. Here, in Struan Mackenzie’s drawing room, he wanted to tear the bastard apart.
Aurelia’s eyes widened and then narrowed. “Camden,” she said with a calm at odds with the spitting fire in her brown eyes.
There she went again. Calling him Camden as if they weren’t lovers.
And why did she look so angry to see him? She was here against his wishes. He had done nothing to her. She was the one in error here.
“This is a surprise.” Her lips curved into a brittle smile. “I did not think you could make it tonight.”
Oh, the cheek of the girl!
Mackenzie slid his hand off her arm, and some of the tension ebbed from Max’s shoulders. Until the bastard opened his mouth.
“Your delightful wife and I were just having a fascinating conversation.” He slid her an appreciative glance. “She always proves diverting.”
Max shook his head, despising that way he spoke about Aurelia. As if she and he were the most intimate of friends. He stepped closer, almost nose-to-nose with the Scotsman. He might not give a bloody damn about the curious stares shooting their way, but he would speak low so they would not be overheard. “You gave your word to stay away from her.”
“I promised I would give up my pursuit to marry her.” Mackenzie shot him a cocky smile. “I did no’ say I would no speak to her again . . . no’ touch her—“
Max’s fist flew out before he could stop himself, his knuckles contacting with the man’s jaw.
Mackenzie went down. Chaos erupted, which included Aurelia shouting his name. Max. Not Camden, and for that he was perversely satisfied. Even as several men lunged across the room to restrain him, he was gratified to know that in the heat of passion she thought of him as Max and not Camden as everyone else in the world. She was it, the only one, and for some reason that mattered to him for reasons he refused to examine.
“I’m fine,” he growled, shaking off hands.
The big Scot rose to his feet, gingerly touching his jaw. The crowd shrank back, no doubt assuming Mackenzie would want a crack at him now.
Aurelia was of the same assumption, too. She stepped between them, holding out a hand as though to ward off Mackenzie. “Don’t . . . please . . .”
Something snapped inside Max at having her intervene as though he couldn’t defend himself. Or her.
He stepped around Aurelia, closing his hand around hers and pulling her to his side. “We’re leaving.” He held Mackenzie’s gaze, conveying all his fury, all his possessiveness. In a single look he let the Scotsman know that he would not have his way. He would not have her.
A long moment passed and then something passed over Mackenzie’s eyes. He nodded. One nearly imperceptible nod. He understood.
With one hand still flexing his jaw, he stepped to the side and gestured for them to pass.
Adjusting his clasp on Aurelia’s hand, Max pulled her after him and out of the drawing room. Every pair of eyes followed them and he didn’t care. He didn’t give a bloody damn.
He was going home and he was taking his wife with him.
In moments they were in the carriage. She launched herself into the seat across from him. It was reminiscent of the night he fetched her from Sodom. Now, as then, she didn’t want to touch him.
“Are you out of your mind?” she demanded.
“I told you not to come here.” He shrugged. “What did expect me to do when I learned where you were?”
“Not that! You hit him! In front of all those people! What will people say—”
“Come now.” He tsked. “What others think of you has never mattered.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, which only pushed the generous swell of her breasts higher. The sight made him ache. He wanted to touch her there again. Taste her. Close his mouth around—
“Perhaps it matters now.”
He studied her in the shadowy interior of his rocking carriage. “Oh? What’s changed?”
She said nothing. Her eyes gleamed at him across the distance, deep and full with emotion. The anger was still there but something else lurked, too. Something he had never seen in her before. Whatever it was it made him want to haul her across the carriage and into his arms so she didn’t look that way anymore.
She must have realized she was revealing something of herself because she averted her gaze, looking downward. Her lashes cast dark crescents on her cheeks. “He told me what you did,” she whispered, and damned if she didn’t sound wounded. As though he had damaged her somehow.
She lifted her gaze and there it was. The hurt in her eyes.
“What did he tell you?” Immediately he wondered if Mackenzie had made up some lies.
“You went to see him. After Sodom.”
Not lies, then. The truth. The truth had upset her. A flicker of uncertainty curled in his chest that perhaps he had something to feel guilty about. A feeling he quickly squashed. He would not change his actions, so there was no sense regretting them. “Yes. I did,” he admitted.
She inhaled, lifting her breasts higher against her bodice. He tried not to stare. Staring only made him want her more, and she clearly wasn’t in the mood to have him. No, she looked as though she would rather have his head on a pike. “How could you do that?”
He frowned. “I was looking out for you—”
“You made him promise not to court me . . . not to ask to marry me.” She shook her head. “That left me with Buckston.”
“What does any of this matter now? You’re married to me.”
“It matters because you don’t trust me. I won’t have you control me . . . my own family never treated me like that. I was twenty-three and unwed because they trusted me to make my own choices. Something you—my own husband—can’t even do!”
Helplessness washed over him looking at her, listening to her. This was new. Listening to a female. Trying to understand the workings of her mind and how not to behave in a wholly selfish manner. He’d never come near to this intimacy with another female. He was gone before things ever became even close to this. Aurelia was the only woman he ever argued with . . . the only one who mattered.
A lump rose in his throat and he inwardly cursed. “Has it occurred to you that I did it for myself?”
She nodded fiercely, scooting to the edge of her seat in the heat of her indignation. “Well, you certainly weren’t thinking of me.”
He nodded back just as fiercely, leaning forward, feeling dangerous right then. As though he might admit anything. Do anything. “My own selfish reasons drove me.”
She sucked in a tiny breath and jerked back ever so slightly.
He closed in, moving closer. A few inches separated them. It would be so easy to grab her, touch her, kiss her.
Instead, he continued talking. “I went to Mackenzie’s because I couldn’t stand the thought of you with him. I probably would have put an end to you and Buckston, too, no matter that he was but a harmless fop . . .” He was breathing harshly now, his hands curling around the edges of the squabs. “Because the idea of you being with anyone but me makes me want to hit something.”
There was no sound save the rasp of their breaths and the creak of the rolling wheels on the street.
She blinked, her brown eyes owlishly big in her face.
“Don’t tell me I silenced you.” Such a thing he would have never thought possible.
She opened her mouth. Her lips worked, but no sound emerged except a strangled, “I—I—”
“It’s all right,” he growled. “You don’t have to say anything.” He reached out, curved a hand around the back of her neck and hauled her onto his lap.
Her sweet breath escaped in a puff against his mouth as they gazed into each other’s eyes in the dim interior. They were so close. Their mouths practically touching, but not. Not kissing. Not yet. Everything in him quivered from the restraint. Another one of those whimpery sounds escaped her lips.
He speared a hand through her hair, scattering the pins so that the dark mass tumbled loose. A small sound escaped her. God. He loved all those little sounds she made.
He pulled her head back, bringing his nose to the arch of her throat and inhaling. He missed her smell. He loved it. He caught whiffs of it throughout the house. Especially when he passed her door. He wanted to roll over in his bed and be able to breathe it in all the time.
He dragged his mouth and nose up her throat, loving the way she shuddered in his arms. He flexed his hand in her hair, forcing her face back down, his mouth taking hers. Claiming it in a crushing kiss.
She was eager, ready. Her mouth opened instantly for his and his tongue swept inside, colliding with hers, tasting all her sweetness. All her warmth.
Her fingers dug into his shoulders and she pushed herself up on his lap so she could straddle him. She settled back down then, pressing her sex against his cock. Even with clothing between them, she scorched him.
Her skirts pooled around them in a giant puddle of silk. His hands roamed her bottom, buried beneath layers of fabric, and he growled, frustrated at the bulk of material in his way. His palms moved around to her front. He yanked her bodice down, not caring at the rip of seams. He tugged down her corset and broke their kiss to look at her. To feast his gaze on the erotic bounty of her breasts spilling free, pushed up high over her corset. His cock jumped against the front of his trousers. Groaning, he bent his head and seized a dusky nipple, drawing it deep into his mouth.
She cried out, arching against him, fingers diving into his hair, urging him on. He sucked and laved her nipple with his tongue and then scraped it with his teeth until it sprang into a hard, distended tip. She went wild in his arms, her hips undulating on him. She knew what was coming now and it made her hotter, ready and eager.
She pulled on his hair, yanking him to her neglected breast. “Camden,” she growled.
“No. Say it, damn it. Say my name.” Camden was his father. And his grandfather and the sire before him. She used to say his name. Long ago. He’d hear it from her lips again.
Her lips pressed into a flirty, mutinous line. “No.”
He smiled slowly. “I’ll hear it from you.”
She shook her head, her dark hair tossing around her.
“Shall I make you?” he said in his most silky voice, stroking a finger so softly against her neglected nipple.
She shivered slightly. “Please . . .”
He arched a dark brow. “Say it.”
“Max,” she choked.
He ducked his head and sucked her into his mouth, loving the sweet taste of her on his tongue. He bit down. Just enough pressure to sting sweetly. She screamed and shuddered, coming apart in his arms.
He couldn’t wait another moment. His hands dove between them, working his trousers open. He was so anxious he was shaking. He freed himself, and then she was there, her hand closing around him.
He cursed and dropped his head back on the squabs at the sensation of her cool fingers around his swollen length.
“Aurelia,” he ground out as her thumb rolled over the tip of him. He lifted his head. “I need to be inside you. Now.”
Her eyes settled on his face. They were beautiful. Clouded and hazy with desire. She smiled slowly. A siren’s smile and she didn’t even know it. Her lips were moist and bruised . . . plumper than usual. They were the kind of lips a man fantasized closing around his cock. He groaned again. He was so hard he actually hurt. He wanted her to do that to him. He wanted to act out his every fantasy with her.
But right now he wanted to be inside her more. He needed to sink inside her. It was as imperative as his next breath.
She rose up on her knees. Then she was guiding him through the slit in her drawers and sinking down, lowering her weight and impaling herself on him.
They moaned simultaneously. Her snug channel hugged him like a fist. And then she started to move, clumsy at first until she gained her own rhythm. She used his shoulders for leverage, fingers digging into his jacket. She pumped over him, stroking him in and out of her.
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. A dark temptress. Her face flushed. Eyes liquid-dark as she worked toward her own climax. Pressure gathered at the base of his cock. He was close.
He gripped her hips, helping her along now, setting her at a faster clip. Harder. Their flesh met with satisfying smacks that grew louder as their movements became wilder. She was so close. She shook in his arms . . .
Then she cried out, dropping all her weight down on him. Her channel tightened and convulsed around him and he was lost. His hands curled around her shoulders, pulling her down, holding her tight as he spilled himself inside her.
They remained just so for several moments, trembling in the aftermath. Air escaped their lungs in ragged saws of breath. He felt dazed. In a fuzzy state of euphoria. He wanted to roll over, pull her against him and fall asleep buried inside her.
A curse exploded from him.
She jerked in his arms.
There was a frozen moment in which he could not say anything. Or move.
And then, horrified, he was moving, yanking her off him and depositing her on the seat across from him. Tucking himself back into his trousers, he stared at her as though he didn’t know her. Or rather . . . as though he didn’t know himself.
She worked to set her clothing to rights, too. The front of her gown sagged loose and he recalled the sound of ripping seams. She pulled her cloak around her shoulders, shielding herself from his view.
Something softened inside him when he noticed how her hands shook. Until what he had done, once again, hit him like a brick in the face.
He dragged a hand over his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. He had released his seed inside Aurelia. He had never down that before. He had never even come close to losing himself before.
This just proved what he already had accepted. She was different. Special.
He brought both hands to cover his face and expelled a heavy breath. How could he have forgotten? He lived by a code.
“We’re here,” she said abruptly.
Then she was out of the carriage. She didn’t wait for the groom to open the door and assist her. He barely had time to lower his hands before she was gone. A blue blur of silk and streaming dark hair.
He took off after her. “Aurelia.”
She didn’t stop. She ascended the front steps, rushing past the butler. He sent him a nod of greeting and then followed at a more sedate pace. He didn’t want to alarm the servants by running her to ground. But catch her he would. They needed to talk about this. They needed to make sure it never happened again.
He stopped her in the empty corridor outside her chamber, circling a hand around her wrist and forcing her around.
“Aurelia—” He stopped at the wrecked expression of her face.
She shook her head, her dark waves tossing wildly. “That was the most humiliating . . . the smallest I’ve ever felt—”
“No.” He cupped her face, pushing strands of hair back off her face. “It wasn’t you . . . it was me. I lost control because it was so good. Perfect.” He kissed her softly, something twisting inside him at her unresponsive lips. “I reacted badly. You know how I feel about—” He cut himself off, feeling as though he were drowning in the ocean of her eyes. “I realize it’s unlikely just this once, but the risk that we could have created a child—”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” she said in a flat voice, her eyes like flint. “Ease your mind. You have nothing to worry about on that score. You didn’t get me with child tonight.”
“No? And how do you know that?”
“Because I already am,” she blurted. “Your sure-fired way all the other times we came together . . . well, it’s not quite one hundred percent effective. Given my lateness, it probably happened the first time we were together.”
Ice swept over him. “You lie.”
She gasped and staggered a step back. Hellfire. Had he just accused her of lying? Of something like this?
He shook his head, feeling the warmth return to his face. “No. That is to say . . . you’re mistaken. It cannot be.”
“Oh. It can be. It is. I’m having our child.”
“You can’t know that yet,” he insisted.
“Oh, I know. I’ve been in denial, wanting to prolong telling you, but I am.”
He angled his head, an uneasy feeling stirring in the pit of his stomach. Something in her face. In her voice. She never looked so hard before. So untouchable.
She exhaled, a brittle smile playing about her mouth. “I’m already with child,” she repeated.
“You can’t be. I didn’t . . .”
“Yes, well, that apparently didn’t work.”
He grabbed her by the arms and gave her a gentle shake. “You are certain?”
“Fairly certain. I’m late . . .” She sighed. “I’m never late.”
He dropped his hands from her and took a step back. Then another one.
The idea of having a child . . . being a father . . .
He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He had long rejected it as a choice or a possibility. He could not fathom it.
“This . . .” He couldn’t think what to say. How to react. It had only been two weeks since that night. She could be mistaken. “So you are not absolutely positive.”
She stared at him, the light fading from her eyes. A candle snuffed out, her brown eyes gazed flatly at him. “You can always hope.”
She turned then and continued to her room. She moved like she was tired. A tired, beaten woman. Not the vibrant lover who had moved over him just moments ago.
He opened his mouth to call out to her but no sound escaped. Nor could he force his legs to move to go after her. He watched her disappear inside her chamber. And still he stood in the center of the corridor.
The ground was no longer solid beneath his feet. Everything he ever thought he knew. Gone.
Aurelia carried his child. He was going to be a father. With a curse, he charged into his bedchamber and headed for the decanter of whiskey. He didn’t bother with a glass.