Chapter 7
“Where are you going?” Fliss frowned as Sin moved to her bedchamber door.
He shot her a glowering glance. “I only came back to the house to change out of these clothes and into something more suited for the stable. My groom is sick,” he reminded her as she looked at him questioningly. “The doctor has been called to attend to him, and so I am needed to attend to my horse.”
This was what he had meant earlier when he told her whatever you want or expect, I do not have the time for right now.
What had he thought she wanted or expected?
Exactly what had she wanted? To feel the full weight of his anger before that anger turned to other, more pleasurable pursuits?
Yes.
What was wrong with her? What sort of woman had she become in the twenty-four hours since her arrival here?
A woman she hardly knew, Fliss realized, as a heaviness settled in her chest. A woman who had thought only of her own pleasure when a man and horse were possibly dying. Poisoned, she had no doubt, even if Sin did, by whoever wished to kill the earl.
She looked at him sharply. “You should not stand vigil alone. I will—”
“I will not be alone. The Eckles’s head groom will be with me. You will send word down to our hostess that you are indisposed,” the earl informed her flatly. “Then you will remain here in your room until I return.”
“But that could be tomorrow morning,” Fliss protested. “What am I supposed to do shut in here all day?”
He shrugged. “Read a book. Until yesterday, it appears to have been your favorite pastime,” he taunted.
Until yesterday? What—
Fliss turned away from the scathing mockery she could see in Sin’s expression.
He knew, damn it.
How she now hungered and ached inside to feel more of the pleasure he had already given her. Of how her disappointment in his leaving had only increased that ache.
Her humiliation was complete.
Fliss raised her chin. “I would appreciate it if you would send word if—when, there is any change in either your groom’s condition, or your horse’s. I will worry otherwise,” she said as Sin looked at her enquiringly.
Sin’s initial anger at finding Fliss at the center of a handful of flirting fops when he had clearly instructed her otherwise now abated, to an extent he realized he had perhaps been a little harsh with her.
After all, she had only come here to Eckles Manor because of him. Now he knew who her husband had been, he was aware the respectable widow of Major Stephen Randall would not willingly have chosen to spend part of her summer with a house full of debauched revelers.
Her complete innocence of such behavior put her in almost as much danger as she claimed him to be, if from another source entirely.
“I will send word.” He nodded. “In return, you will do as I say this time, and also lock the door when I leave. Your maid will deliver all your meals to your room. You are not to leave this bedchamber until I return to the house and say you may.”
Fliss gasped. “You have no right!”
Sin crossed the bedchamber in two strides before grasping the tops of her arms and shaking her. “Damn it, can you not see I am doing my best to protect you? You will do as I say, Fliss.” He stared down at her intently.
In Fliss’s opinion, Sin was being overly protective in expecting her to spend all of this gloriously sunny day in her bedchamber. After all, she was not the one in danger, he was.
Besides which, she had already agreed to join Lord Adam Sterling for a picnic luncheon.
“I understand,” she answered with a noncommittal smile.
“Good.” He lowered his head and kissed her hard on the lips before releasing her just as abruptly and stepping back. “Lock the door behind me,” he repeated firmly.
Fliss kept a half smile on her face for as long as it took Sin to leave her bedchamber. That smile disappeared as she locked the door and then pressed her ear against it, listening until she heard Sin’s firm tread disappear down the hallway.
She turned to lean back against that door, fingers lifted to the lips he had just ravaged, half of her knowing the kiss had been meant as yet another way of controlling her, another part of her not caring why he had kissed her, only that he had.
She truly had become wanton in her yearnings for Sin’s attentions.
But not his domination.
She didn’t care what Sin said or instructed, there were at least half a dozen gentlemen at Eckles Manor who fitted the height, build, and hair color of the man she had heard discussing Sin’s murder. If Sin was preoccupied with the care of his horse, then it was up to Fliss to meet each of those gentlemen individually. To do her best to ascertain whether or not he was the man she had overheard bargaining sexual favors in exchange for killing the earl.
Starting with Lord Adam Sterling.
Sin was exhausted as he sat in the straw beside a now standing Dante, the darkness outside the stable telling him of the lateness of the hour. But at least his stallion was back on his feet, if looking very sorry for himself, his chestnut coat lackluster.
Sin and Tom, the head groom here, had purged the stallion first thing and then suffered hours of caring for the sick beast and forcing more water down his throat to replace what he had lost.
His groom was given similar treatment by the doctor who had been called to attend him, and was also recovering. Sin intended talking to him as soon as the man was well enough to give an account of what had happened. This illness seemed to have been caused by something ingested by both groom and horse. Quite what that could have been, Sin had no idea. Yet.
It had been growing dark outside, lamps alight in the stable, when he finally felt the danger for Dante had passed and he could dismiss the head groom.
Sin rose wearily his feet to stroke and pet the equine’s neck. “I will find who did this to you,” he assured softly in the stillness of the night. “And when I do, they will pay, and pay dearly. I promise you that.”
“You would find it strange, I am sure, if he were to answer you.”
Sin turned, only the dark shadow of the woman visible on the other side of Dante’s stall. But Sin knew Fliss’s voice well enough to be sure it was her. “What are you doing out of your bedchamber?”
She gave an impatient snort as she stepped farther into the soft glow of the lamplight. “I have brought you food. Cook says you have not eaten anything all day.” She held up the wicker basket and blanket she carried before placing them down beside her.
He raised his brows. “You have been down to the kitchen to get me food?”
“Is that something else you forbid me to do?”
His jaw tightened as he heard the sarcasm lacing her tone. “If it involved you leaving your bedchamber, then yes. If a member of my ship’s crew had disobeyed me in this way, they would have felt the lash.”
“You have a ship?”
“As it happens, I do. But I was referring to my years as captain aboard one of His Majesty’s frigates.”
“You fought in His Majesty’s navy?”
“I did.”
Sin’s closed expression also told her he would not discuss the subject any further tonight. If ever. That he had already told her too much.
“Your horse is better?” Fliss stretched her arm over the top of the wooden stall to gently stroke the neck of the chestnut stallion.
“Much,” Sin confirmed as he stepped out into the main stable and crossed to where there was a bucket of water in which to wash.
It warmed Fliss’s heart to see the beautiful horse was at least standing. She seemed to recall her father had once said that if a sick horse lay down, it rarely got up again.
Stroking and talking to the animal allowed her to avoid looking at Sin.
She had not thought… It had not occurred to her earlier when he said he wished to change into more suitable clothes…
The earl was only half-dressed.
He wore no jacket or waistcoat and necktie. His sleeves were turned back to just beneath his elbows, and his fine linen shirt was unfastened at the throat, revealing a light dusting of dark hair on his muscular chest.
The darkness of his hair was also tousled and fell rakishly across his forehead.
It reminded Fliss that the two of them were completely alone here in the dimly lit stable. Only the snorting and stomping of horses broke the silence. The air was filled with the smell of the freshly cut straw that lined the floors of the stalls, and the heat of the two dozen or so horses stabled here.
There was something earthy, almost primitive, about their surroundings, Fliss acknowledged. A far cry from the Eckles’s comfortable public rooms, where Fliss had spent the majority of her day following her picnic luncheon with Lord Sterling, when she had singled out and chatted with one fair-haired gentleman after another. So far, she’d had no success. Nothing about any of those gentlemen reminded her of the harshly spoken man in the Woodrows’ library.
“I am ready for you to feed me now.”
Fliss drew her breath in sharply at the husky intimacy of both Sin’s words and tone. An intimacy added to when she turned around and saw that he had now removed his shirt completely and was drying off his freshly washed chest with it.
And such a chest it was.
Fliss had guessed Sin’s body would be broad beneath his tailored clothing, but she had not imagined that clothing hid anything as magnificent as these massively wide shoulders and muscular chest. His nipples were as dark as pennies amid the light dusting of dark hair that formed a vee across his chest before tapering and then disappearing into the waistband of his black pantaloons.
Taut muscles rippled as he threw the shirt down on a stool. “Fliss?”
Her legs moved of their own volition, it seemed, as she walked slowly toward him, her mesmerized gaze fixed on that naked and magnificent chest.
She came to a halt mere inches in front of him. Her breathing was shallow, but even so, the bodice of her gown felt too tight to contain the sensitive, heavy weight of her breasts. Her heart fluttered wildly as she raised her gaze to meet his fierce emerald one.
A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. “You should not have come here.”
Fliss took no heed of his warning as she slowly lifted her hands toward him, feeling the heat given off from his naked flesh without even touching it. Heat, and that clean male smell that was purely Sin.
Purely?
Fliss almost choked on the thought. There was absolutely nothing pure about Sin Montgomery.
Or the way he made her feel.
Sin sucked in his breath as he felt his skin absorb and respond to the soft touch of Fliss’s gloved fingers, and all the way down to his rapidly engorging cock. He tensed as those fingers became bolder still, trailing across the hard nubbins of his nipples, stroking and then lightly pinching, much as he had with Fliss’s own breasts this morning.
She gazed curiously up at him. “Does that give you as much pleasure as it gives me?”
“Yes,” he bit out between clenched teeth.
She nodded as if satisfied with his answer before her eyes lowered to watch as her hands moved lower still, down over the soft vee of dark hair to where Sin’s fully erect cock now strained the material at the front of his pantaloons.
She chewed on her bottom lip. “May I…?”
May she? The desire to take, to possess, had been raging through Sin’s body since this morning. Only the distraction of caring for Dante had prevented him from returning to the house and making love to Fliss where she stood. Or lay. It had not mattered where, only that he do so.
She had disobeyed him by leaving her bedchamber, and he would bring her to task over that later. Much later. For now, Sin only wanted her hands and mouth on him.
His fingers shook slightly as he unfastened the front of his pantaloons before peeling back the material and exposing his bare and straining cock. He heard Fliss draw in a breath as he fisted his cock and pumped several times along its length, resulting in the release of liquid at its tip. “Would you like to taste it?” he invited gruffly as he saw how avidly she watched him.
Fliss’s gaze darted up to Sin’s and then back down again as his long fingers continued to caress the length of his cock and more of that release escaped its slitted tip.
The scene was reminiscent of that one in the Woodrows’ library, and yet at the same time nothing like it. There was no aggression in Sin’s tone, only invitation, and the truth was, Fliss wanted to taste him.
She licked her lips even as she dropped slowly to her knees in front of him, one of her hands moving so she could curl her fingers about his, learning, watching how he liked to be stroked. She reveled in his soft groans of pleasure as she used both her hands to take over that stroking.
The bulbous head was now slick and gleaming from the release of his juices. Fliss’s tongue darted out to lap up several drops as it began to dribble down his shaft onto her fingers.
It tasted salty and sweet at the same time. An addictive nectar that she began to lap up greedily.
“Take me in your mouth, Fliss,” Sin groaned. “Please!” His fingers gently tangled in her hair as her lips parted and he guided her mouth onto his cock, one of her hands remaining wrapped about the length her mouth could not accommodate.
He was at once surrounded by that moist and hungry heat, so reminiscent of fire inside her channel when it had contracted about his thrusting finger. Sin had no control over his own thrusts into the inferno of her mouth, his fingers in her hair holding her closer, and then closer still as his cock hit the back of her throat and he felt his release building.
He would pull out before that happened. He wanted a little longer thrusting inside that fire. Only a little longer, and then he would—
“Oh God…!” he groaned, completely out of control as Fliss’s other hand cupped and squeezed his balls.
There was a deafening roar in his ears as his movements became erratic, desperate, and his release burst hotly up the length of his cock before it exploded in pulse after fiery pulse into the heat of Fliss’s eager mouth.