hy did thinking about her bloody laugh make his cock go rigid in his trousers?
And where was the scent of bergamot originating from?
Why was it making him harder?
Sebastian sat in his study, flipping through the efficiently ordered correspondence his secretary had presented him with, numbers and letters blurring before him. Even spies of the realm still needed to manage their empires at home, and sometimes that proved the devil of a task, particularly when he was supposed to focus on the price of wheat and the cost of stone masons and the growing influx of American cheese.
A week had passed since he’d married Daisy. He’d given up any pretense at honor and had given in to his need of her, reasoning that having his fill would slake the all-consuming desire she’d fanned to fire within him. Night after night, he’d gone to her chamber. Not just nights, if he were honest.
He’d come upon her in the library one afternoon, and on another occasion, he’d brought them both to earth-shattering orgasm right here on his desk. There had been the morning he’d lifted her skirts and fucked her in the hall, where anyone could have come across them. The wickedness—in the open, on the verge of being caught by a stray servant at all times—had only propelled them both into a crescendo of pleasure.
Each time his body left hers, he was certain it would be the last, that it would be enough. And the next time he came across her, he couldn’t stop from touching her, kissing her, wanting her.
Even now, beneath the watchful eye of his secretary, he wanted her so much his teeth ached. He had left her abed hours ago. She should have been well purged from his mind, exorcised from his body. A bloody week of losing himself inside her, and he was only left needing her more.
He should never have bedded her in the first place.
Yet how could he not have?
And how could he stop, when he’d already had her so many times and yet his yearning only increased rather than sputtering out like a tired old flame? How many times had it been? Once, twice, perhaps a dozen? More counting, there he went, spiraling deeper into the abyss. Thirteen? Fourteen? With each number, he strummed his fingers on the surface of his desk as though the tactile sensation could somehow shake him free of this infernal torture. Free of this insatiable need to have her again warring with the overwhelming sense of disgust that he’d taken her at all.
That he’d spent the last week the happiest he’d ever been in his entire life, and that he didn’t want it to end.
Bloody hell, Carlisle would have his head on a pike if he ever learned the truth.
None of these thoughts were doing him any good. He crumpled the letter he held in his fist. “Simmonds?”
“Yes, Your Grace?” His eternally efficient secretary interrupted his grim musings.
“Where is the letter from my agent at Thornsby Hall?” he demanded, and if his voice was harsh as a whip it was only because he was doing his damnedest to hide the ridiculous state of his trousers.
Tight. Too bloody tight. He shifted in his chair, but that did him no good, so he forced himself to stare at Simmonds, which would surely force his cock to return to its normal state of order. His secretary was all angles, all male, arms disproportionately long so that his fingers hung to his knees, and a scar on his upper lip rendered his mustache preposterously off-center. He didn’t have golden hair or pink nipples or smell like a sultry combination of dessert and sexual congress.
Christ, that last, rogue thought wasn’t helping. Not a goddamn whit.
Simmonds cleared his throat, his expression growing ill at ease. He was an easy read, and Sebastian liked that about him. It wouldn’t do to have a man he couldn’t see straight through involved in his personal and estate matters. Simmons was trustworthy, dependable, and he never asked questions.
“Your Grace, I believe the letter in question is currently… in your hand,” Simmonds said then.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps he ought to sack him. Did he think he was daft? “Of course it isn’t, or I wouldn’t be asking you for its whereabouts, now would I?”
“Forgive me, Your Grace. It is merely that I know the order of the correspondence. They’re arranged by level of import, and your concern over the cost of suggested improvements at Thornsby Hall led me to place it atop the stack.”
He stared at his secretary, who stared back at him, unrelenting. This was Simmonds’ only fault, his inability to kowtow. And truly, it wasn’t a fault in Sebastian’s book. Not ordinarily. In this moment, however, it was, because he was beginning to fear Simmonds was correct and that he’d been so distracted by thoughts of his glorious American minx that he couldn’t even bloody well read.
His gaze lowered to the crumpled sheet in his hand, and he recognized the familiar slanted scrawl of Carnes, his Thornsby land agent, peering from between his fingers. “Simmonds,” he said without looking up.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“That will be all,” he dismissed.
Far better to wallow in his humiliation and shame on his own, he reasoned, than with his secretary watching over him. With his broad shoulders on his otherwise narrow frame, the man looked like a bloody upside-down triangle.
He waited for Simmonds to take his leave before releasing the letter and spreading it over his desk in a futile attempt to smooth out the many wrinkles. Thornsby Hall was his family seat and his chief concern these days when he wasn’t otherwise engaged in duty. His father had allowed it to fall into disrepair, and Sebastian had begun to undertake the tremendous investment of restoring it to its proper glory. A great, sprawling estate of seven thousand acres, it contained some of his fondest boyhood memories. Thornsby Hall was to be his reward when he retired from service to the League.
Or when he was removed from service, which seemed far more likely given his recent carelessness. He forced himself to read the correspondence from Carnes in full, but his mind remained diverted.
Fifty thousand pounds for this year’s needed improvements. The leaking roof had been repaired, thank fuck, but the crumbling southern wall needed to be addressed. Something about an increase in the turkey flock. Fodder cabbage, turnips, and sheep.
There it was again, damn it all.
Bergamot.
And her laughter the first morning after he’d made love to her. Her laughter had been like a gift: unexpected and treasured, a joy to his soul. That beautiful, mellifluous sound had wound its way inside him, imprinted itself upon his very memory, so that he would never again hear another woman’s levity without thinking of her. Of Daisy with her spun-gold hair and her sad eyes and insuppressible daring. Of how he had once laughed with her and it had been the best fucking morning of his life.
The only morning in as long as he could recall where he’d allowed himself the luxury of being. He had been Sebastian, and she had been Daisy, and none of the mire surrounding them had intruded.
Realization struck him then, with the force of a fist straight to the jaw. He didn’t just lust after her. Bedding her had not been based upon basic sexual need alone in the same way it had with his past lovers. It had been necessary, yes, but in the way that filling his lungs with breath was necessary. Why else would he have been caught up in her for an entire week and still more lost than he’d ever been?
Bergamot hit him again.
He lowered his nose to his shoulder and took a discreet sniff. Jesus, his neck smelled like her. It was as if she’d planted her scent on him as another method of feminine torture. He must have been remiss in his morning ablutions, but he couldn’t say he minded now, for he liked the way she smelled.
He liked Daisy.
A knock sounded at his study door, and unless he was mistaken, it wasn’t the knock of any of his servants. Which could only mean one thing.
Her.
She wasn’t satisfied with invading his mind and imprinting her scent upon him, but now she intended to infiltrate his inner sanctum as well. He would ignore her, he decided, flipping past the Thornsby Hall letter to the next. She was his temporary wife, he reminded himself. Their union wasn’t meant to last. It was a falsehood. A ruse. They needn’t play at being husband and wife. He wasn’t required to invite her into his study. And he bloody well ought to stop spending every night in her chamber. He would, just as soon as he could bring himself to look at her without needing to tear aside her fripperies and fill her with his cock.
That didn’t seem likely any time soon.
The knock came again, followed by her voice. “I’ve been wondering all week and have yet to reach an answer. What follows a one-sixteenth, Your Grace?”
The woman was mad.
He should continue ignoring her. Turn her away. Begin to erect a sensible distance between them. But he was grinning, and that meant he was just as mad as she.
Fit for the lunatic asylum, the both of them.
“You may enter,” he called out, and it wasn’t solely with resignation. No indeed, there was also a most unwanted note of anticipation underlying his words.
The door opened, and she swept inside, a vision in a pink-and-red-striped frock with lace underskirts peeking through. Her hair was styled differently today, worn in a loose twist atop her head with curls framing her face. She looked like a goddess he’d seen in a picture at the Grosvenor Gallery once: luscious, romantic, purely feminine.
The air fled from his lungs as he stood in deference and bowed. How was it possible that she was even more beautiful, more vibrant and magnetic, than she’d ever been? How was it possible that he wanted her more than ever?
She offered him a formal curtsy as well, but her full lips quirked into a confident smile. “Sebastian.”
“One thirty-second,” he answered, skirting his desk and going to her. Suddenly, he couldn’t be in the same chamber as she without having her in his arms.
He tried to remind himself that he was a spy with a duty to the Crown, but that argument had grown increasingly muffled as he’d gotten to know Daisy better. She made him recall what he’d forgotten over the last dozen years: that beneath the façade he was forced to present to the world, he was also just a man. His training had prepared him for torture and death, had taught him how to defend himself with or without weapons, to kill with his bare hands, to read a man’s face, to anticipate his enemy’s every action. But none of his training had prepared him for the onslaught of one small, daring woman.
The warm tones of her gown enhanced the moss of her eyes as he approached her, and he won a laugh from her that settled somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. “Good heavens, that is quite a small fraction. Would one even pronounce the ‘Y’?”
“I can’t be certain.” He caught her waist and pulled her against him, savoring the already familiar crush of her breasts into his chest. “But one could rectify the matter by referring to one’s husband by his given name.”
“Oh?” She raised a brow in feigned innocence and batted her long lashes. “And what is that? My memory is appalling, I’m afraid, and I’ve forgotten.”
“Perhaps I can stir it for you, buttercup.” He gave in to temptation and lowered his mouth to hers. How naturally they fit together. How easy it was to slide his hand into the soft confines of her neat coiffure, cup her perfectly shaped head, and angle her just as he wanted her. His tongue traced the seam of her lips, demanding entrance, and she opened for him without hesitation, her tongue tangling with his.
She tasted of chocolate and decadence, and he wanted more. Always wanted more. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? His hands tightened on her waist, and he led her backward until they reached his desk. He could never have his fill of her.
He dragged his mouth from hers and trailed a fervent line of kisses to her ear, tonguing the silky patch of skin behind it. She tasted of vanilla and the light salt of her skin. She moaned and clutched at his shoulders. So responsive, his Daisy.
“You’ve bewitched me,” he accused softly into her ear. “I’m meant to be attending estate matters and all I want is to lift your skirts and feel if you’re as wet for me already as I suspect you are.”
She would be drenched when he touched her, and this he knew by the way she strained against him, as if she desired all points of her body to be in simultaneous contact with his. He felt the same. He wanted every inch of her flawless skin naked and pressed against his, from her hard, pink nipples to her pale, curved legs.
“Shall I leave you to estate matters?” she asked, breathless.
He tore his lips from her neck to survey the contents of his desk. Correspondence. A stack of news. Some pens and sheaves of paper. His ledger. To hell with all of it. With one swipe of his arm, he sent it raining to the carpet. Papers flew, somersaulting over themselves, pens clanging together, the news crumpling into a heap.
“I do believe I’ve had enough of estate matters for the nonce,” he decided, grinning down at her like a lovesick fool.
No, surely not lovesick. Nor a fool, he corrected himself hastily. It had only been a week, after all. Love didn’t come upon a man so precipitously, and especially not when the lady in question was suspected of treason. He was sure of it.
In an effort to ward off further maudlin sentiment, he took her mouth with his once more, and this kiss was unapologetically demanding. He sucked on her lower lip, then caught it between his teeth and tugged. Frantic, fierce need speared him. The need to have her, to consume her. His cock twitched against his trousers, his balls already drawn tight in anticipation of flooding release.
Her palms, which had dropped to his chest and had been conducting a slow, torturous exploration over his waistcoat and shirt, gently pushed, putting enough distance between them to break the kiss. Her gaze sparkled into his, the green of early spring rebirth after the barren death of winter.
“You’ve a duty, Sebastian,” she said then.
For a heartbeat, he stilled, the blood pumping through his veins turning to ice. Was it possible that she somehow knew after all? Jesus, why would she repeat the words his own conscience riddled him with every day?
And then she tilted her head in that way he’d come to know meant she was being earnest, cupping his jaw in her hand. “I don’t wish to distract you from your work. I missed you, but I don’t wish to be unfairly demanding of your time. I’ll leave you to it, then. I need to go over the menu with Mrs. Robbins, and I’ve yet to make myself at home in your library. Father thought reading invited sloth, so I haven’t read as much as I would have preferred.”
He released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. She was babbling, and she was adorable, and he was going to come out of his skin if he wasn’t buried deep inside her in the next five minutes.
“Daisy.” He pressed a kiss to her open palm, and held her to him when she would have attempted to make her retreat. “You may distract me any time you wish, buttercup. My time will always be yours, and if you want to buy an entire new library’s worth of books that are to your liking, I won’t blink a bloody eye. Read until you need spectacles. But you’re not leaving this room until I’ve made you spend.”
Her eyes widened, cheeks going rosy. Lovemaking remained new to her, though she’d proven an apt and willing pupil. She was still very much an innocent, however, and he would enjoy debauching her for the rest of their lives.
The rest of their lives.
The unbidden thought sent something profound streaking through him. And it wasn’t dread or a sense of futility. It wasn’t guilt or duty. It was… Christ, he didn’t know what it was.
Rather than further complicate matters, he lifted her onto the desk. His hands fisted in her billowing skirts, crushing the fine silk, but he didn’t give a damn. Slowly, his gaze never leaving hers, he drew them to her waist, petticoats, chemise, and all, and lifted them so that they lay atop his desk.
As he surveyed his handiwork, his mouth went dry. She was perfectly coiffed and demure from the waist up, her bodice in place, hair as elegant as when she’d entered the chamber. But from the waist down, she was pure, unadulterated siren. Lacy drawers hugged her hips. Narrow ankles clad in silk stockings peeped from beneath, and her heeled black leather shoes dangling over the floor somehow rendered it all incredibly erotic.
He wished he could keep her here, in this moment, forever.
Beautiful and bold and undeniably his.
“Sebastian,” she said his name quietly, and it held a wary note of protest.
“Buttercup,” he returned, his fingers finding the button on her drawers, just below the point of her corset. He slid it free of its mooring and pushed the undergarment down her legs, leaving her nude from the waist down except for her stockings, garters, and shoes.
He nearly came right then and there as he drank in the sight of her. She was so fucking beautiful it hurt to look at her. His chest physically ached. And his cock, well, Jesus, that was another matter entirely.
He sank to his knees on the soft carpet, ignoring the startled sound she made, and urged her legs apart. “Open for me, darling?”
He had seen her before, had tended to her intimately on their first night. But this was different, in the undeniable daylight of his study, in the midst of the afternoon, and he was intending to dance a different sort of attendance upon her.
She hesitated only a moment before giving in to him, sliding her legs apart so that he could see the heart of her, as pink and beautiful as her full mouth and hard little nipples. He hummed with pleasure as he ran his hands along the soft expanses of her inner thighs and lowered his head.
His tongue traced over her pearl slowly, allowing her to get accustomed to him. One swipe, then another, and another. He ran circles over her, teasing and leisurely, listening for her intakes of breath, attuned to the tilt of her hips and the rocking of her body against his mouth as he learned what pleased her.
A lilting moan tore from her, and it was his name, and he felt it all the way to his cock. He sucked then, loving her on his tongue, in his mouth, and nipped her with his teeth. She tasted musky and sweet and like the affirmation, it seemed, of life itself. He ran his tongue over her seam, finding her wet and hot, and then let his tongue find its natural place inside her. He filled her as deeply as he could, thrusting, worshipping, claiming.
She surrounded him, enveloping him, her fingers in his hair, her cunny soft and wet and so bloody sweet he never wanted to stop. With one hand, he cupped her pert derriere, angling her against him to maximize his ability to pleasure her. His other hand splayed over her mound, his thumb finding her pearl with unerring accuracy. Again and again, he sank his tongue inside her as he worked her clitoris. Her cries of pleasure grew in crescendo, raining around him so that he was completely surrounded in nothing but Daisy. Her scent in his nostrils, her taste on his tongue, her moans in his ears, her slick flesh beneath his touch.
She was going to come. He sensed it, reveled in it as her body jerked into his with increased insistence until all at once, she was arching against him, trembling and crying out, her release liquid and sweeter than honey on his tongue. He lapped it up, his cock so hard he feared he wouldn’t even make it inside her before he lost himself.
Tearing his mouth away, he stood and in one swift motion, he pulled her from his desk and spun her around so that she faced it. He couldn’t look at her for one moment more. He’d never felt closer to another woman in his life. Had never wanted anyone the way he desired her. And yet everything was a lie. He was a lie. But as much as he couldn’t face her, he also couldn’t bear to let her go.
“Sebastian?” Her tone held a note of question.
“Hush,” he soothed into her ear before pressing kisses to her throat. He clamped his hands on the sweet curves of her waist and guided her forward, grinding his hips into hers from behind. “I’m going to make you fly again, buttercup.”
He hefted her skirts out of the way and tore open his trousers, pulling himself free of his smalls. He dipped his fingers into her silky heat and then smeared her wetness over his aching cock. One swift undulation of his hips brought him inside her.
“Oh,” Daisy said.
He kissed her ear, her throat, stilling though he was half certain stopping now would kill him. “Do you want me to continue, love?”
“Mmm,” she hummed, arching her back and bringing him even deeper inside her tight sheath. “Please.”
He didn’t need to hear it twice. Burying his face in her hair, he pounded into her. His fingers sank into her folds, finding her pearl. She met him thrust for thrust, her head back, her breath coming in pants as she cried out his name. She came before he did, tightening on his cock with so much force that he lost himself in the next instant, sliding home within her as he exploded.
There wasn’t time for him to withdraw, and in truth, he didn’t want to. He let out a hoarse cry of his own as her body milked him dry. Deep inside her, he came, filling her with his seed, sealing their fates.
She was his, and that was that.
He collapsed against her, kissing her throat, still inside her, and he had never known another experience in his life that had been as true and real. “My God, Daisy,” he rasped into her skin. “My God.”
There was nothing else he could say.