ady Ravenscroft.”
Clara looked up from the characters for domestics she’d been poring over, still startled to find herself the object of address. Whenever she heard Lady Ravenscroft, she half expected someone else to take her place. Someone who’d been born and raised to the position of countess. A true lady, of noble blood, rather than a native Virginian with a rebellious streak a country mile wide.
Five days wasn’t long enough to grow accustomed to all the abruptly altered facets of her situation. Five days of being patient yet firm with Julian’s sisters. Of contending with the badly needed refurbishing of his home, of fretting over his injuries, of taking her wifely duties to heart.
Osgood stood on the threshold of the drawing room, his face an expressionless mask. Though the rest of Ravenscroft’s staff seemed dubious at best, his butler at least remained a bulwark of old world dignity.
She smiled at him now. His assistance over the last few days was an immeasurable source of comfort to her as she grappled with her newfound role. “Yes, Osgood?”
“His lordship requests the courtesy of your presence, my lady.”
The mere mentioning of the earl kindled a languorous slide of heat through her entire being. They’d spent a great deal of time together as he convalesced and she rather enjoyed her husband’s company. He’d taught her to play vingt-et-un and told her bawdy jokes that made her cheeks flame. He’d listened with rapt attention to her stories of growing up in Virginia and her dream of founding a group dedicated to women gaining the vote. She’d yet to see him this morning, caught up as she’d been in household matters.
She’d missed him, and the sudden realization bemused her.
“Where may I find him, Osgood?”
The butler remained impervious to her good cheer. His expression was impassive. “His lordship may be found in his chamber, my lady.”
One day, she vowed, she’d wring a smile from him. Surely he was capable of levity the same as anyone else. She suspected that his disapproval stemmed from her unsolicited evening call and the resulting mayhem of her father tearing through the earl’s home brandishing a weapon. There was also the matter of the attempt on Ravenscroft’s life. Yesterday, she’d sworn she spied a glimpse of suspicion lurking in Osgood’s dark gaze.
But his suspicions were most assuredly being cast in the wrong direction. The attack on the earl had occupied her thoughts with the heaviness of iron weights. She’d already begun keeping a mental tally of who might have been responsible. For some reason, her mind kept returning to the Duchess of Argylle with fierce persistence.
“Thank you, Osgood.” She gathered up the characters, deciding to bring them along with her so that she could continue her work while entertaining Ravenscroft in whatever madness he delighted in for the day.
As she took her leave of the drawing room and made for the hall, her mind flitted back—as it invariably seemed to do of late—to her husband. She knew so little of him and yet he had overtaken her thoughts just as he’d overtaken her world. It scarcely seemed real to her that she’d agreed to be his wife in truth. He’d caught her at a weak moment with his demand that she choose between Virginia and him. Staring at him, still shaken with the knowledge that he could have died, how could she have made any other decision?
But he was still a stranger to her, a mystery. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that he held himself apart from her, that he was a man of many faces who merely donned whichever one suited his mood or his desires for the moment. What she did know was that he fast grew impatient with his recovery.
He didn’t play the role of invalid with grace, but she was gratified that he’d remained at home, where he was as safe as he could be. Oh, he grumbled and demanded a change of scenery on a regular basis. And so she accompanied him to his study or to the library, all the while taking note of whether or not he faltered or lost his balance. Yesterday had been the first day that she’d not seen a single sign of weakness or dizziness. Even his wound appeared to be healing nicely and was no longer in need of a bandage. With his full head of dark hair, the injury was scarcely noticeable now.
As she stopped outside his chamber door, she knew a moment of unease as she contemplated that. Ravenscroft in his weakened state was rather like a caged tiger. He could be seen and admired, but he wasn’t capable of doing injury. Ravenscroft at full strength was another matter entirely. The mere notion made her knees want to give out.
“Enter,” called his familiar, rich voice at her knock.
A shiver of awareness danced through her as she opened the door and stepped back into his territory. He wasn’t on the bed where she’d expected to find him. Instead, he sat on a chair by the hearth, clad in nothing but a dressing gown. She felt the force of his gaze like a caress. The door clicked closed at her back. Too late to flee now.
She clutched the characters to her breast as though their mere paper and ink could form a protective shield. He was eying her as though he wanted to consume her. “Good morning, my lord.”
Far easier, she found, to remain formal and impersonal when he was at his most tempting.
He stood and offered her a flawless bow, which should have been rendered ridiculous by his lack of dress but somehow made an unwanted warmth steal into her belly. He seemed as if he were truly on the mend, thank the Lord. But his recuperation also held untold ramifications for her. Ramifications that were simultaneously frightening, wicked, and altogether tempting.
“Julian,” he reminded her.
How was it that each day she saw him he seemed to somehow be more handsome than the last? Looking upon him stole her breath and did strange things to her pulse. His bare calves and feet peeked from beneath the hem of his robe as he strode to her. Nary a hint of weakness today. Not a pause. Not a sway. No indeed. This morning, he was pure, seductive intention. How was it possible for a man to move with such elegance, such easy, carnal grace? She couldn’t stop staring at him.
Clara took a breath, marshaled her thoughts into a semblance of order. “Osgood said that you sent for me.”
“Yes I did.” He didn’t stop until he was near enough to touch her. And touch her he did. Nothing overtly seductive. Just a mere glance of his index finger over the characters she still held clutched to her bodice. “What’s this, little dove?”
His vivid gaze held fast to her mouth. “Characters,” she blurted.
“Ah, the search for domestics continues.” He cocked his head, considering her. “Have you ever hired servants before?”
Of course she hadn’t. She had gone from her mother’s home straight to her father’s. Someone else had always taken charge of the household. But she’d never backed down from a challenge and she didn’t intend to do so now. “Do you not think me capable of hiring proper staff?”
He considered her, his regard slow and thorough and so intense that she couldn’t help but feel it as intimately as any caress. “I think you more than capable. You continue to surprise me, Clara.”
She wondered if he meant that as a compliment and decided to accept it as such. “Thank you.”
He gave her a rare smile, and she felt it all the way to her toes. His smile transformed his already gorgeous features, somehow rendering him even more irresistible. It stole some of the lines of worry from his face, abated the darkness in his eyes. Of course, he had cause for the worry and darkness. Someone had tried to kill him. No matter how devilishly handsome he was, no matter how tempting his presence and sensual gazes, she couldn’t forget that disquieting fact.
“You’re most welcome.” He reached for the characters then, catching the sheaf of papers in his long fingers. His other hand circled her wrist in a firm but demanding clasp. “Let’s leave off the characters for today, though, shall we?”
“But my lord, you haven’t a housekeeper.” She felt obliged—as a woman of reason and the new lady of the household both—to point out the failings of his staff. “I’ve had it from the Cook that his kitchen is woefully inadequate. You’re in need of at least half a dozen maids and just as many footmen.”
He shrugged with studied indifference. “I don’t give a damn about the servants at the moment.”
Some stubborn part of her refused to relinquish the characters to him. Her fingers clenched on them with determination. “But you ought to, Julian. Your household is in dire need of proper, well-trained servants. You must realize your sisters should not be subjected to the presence of servants who are so depraved that they engage in relations in your library.”
His smile deepened. “And you must realize my sisters are not like most well-bred young ladies? You’ve spoken with them, yes? Their parents were sinners. Their brother is the worst sinner of them all.”
Yes, Lady Josephine and Lady Alexandra were undeniably different from every other aristocratic young lady she’d ever met, with the possible exception of her best friend Bo. But the reminder of Ravenscroft’s past sins didn’t sit well with her. It made all the muscles in her body tighten, as if in anticipation of a blow. What was that other, foreign sensation swirling within her? Certainly not jealousy? Definitely not possessiveness.
For he was not truly hers.
Nor was she his.
They were two people bound by an odd concoction of duplicity and necessity, of needs and wants, danger and longing. There was no love between them. Nothing but desire.
But she didn’t like the derision that always colored his tone when he spoke of his past. He was so much more than the sum total of the things he’d done. “You mustn’t speak ill of yourself. I won’t allow it.”
His thumb rubbed a slow, delicious circle on her inner wrist. Sparks of heat shot up her arm and radiated throughout her body. “What will you allow, little dove?”
Everything, some wanton part of her wanted to say. Her breath froze for a beat, a scorching wash of heat flooding her. The sensitive flesh between her thighs where he’d once stroked her ached. And she knew instantly what he was about. He finally meant to claim her.
Belatedly, she realized she’d released the characters to him. That was how much power he could wield over her. He made her give in, and she didn’t even notice until he was carefully placing his spoils upon a nearby table. “Why did you call for me, Julian?”
The flippancy leached from his expression, replaced by concentrated solemnity. “You don’t think I called you here to read over the references for chamber maids, do you, love?”
No. Of course she didn’t. But that didn’t mean she was prepared for the consummation of their marriage. When she’d told him she would be his wife in truth, she’d been weak, her heart and mind a confused jumble. He’d been wounded. He hadn’t been strong and leonine and half-dressed, gazing at her as if he could already see her naked before him.
She needed time. She needed space. She needed to leave the chamber and put the safety of a locked door between them. Her heart pounded against her breast. He hadn’t even touched her beyond the maddening circling of his thumb, and already she was about to fly out of her skin.
“It’s too soon,” she protested.
His lips quirked. His other hand came to rest on her waist. “You needn’t be nervous with me, little dove.”
Was he mad? Of course she needed to be nervous. No man in her acquaintance had ever been able to wear down her defenses—to storm her battlements and overtake her castle—the way he did. And with an effortless ennui that suggested everything was a game to him.
She had to dissuade him. Surely this sort of thing was commonly done in the dark. “It’s the morning.”
He hauled her up against him in one quick tug, crushing her breasts to his hard chest. “So it is.”
Her hands flitted to his shoulders, disarmingly broad and strong. “Your sisters.”
His lips were so near that they almost brushed hers. “The bloody minxes are amply entertained for the day. I’ve arranged for them to go shopping with my elderly dragon of a great aunt. She disapproves of me most wholeheartedly but she approves of your fortune a great deal, as it turns out.”
His dry pronouncement wrung a reluctant laugh from her. She didn’t want to find humor in anything he said. Didn’t want to soften toward him. Didn’t want to allow him to make her any weaker than he already had. But wasn’t that the way things had been between them from the start? He’d been able to undo her from the moment she’d stepped foot in his study. Nothing had changed except that she was now his wife. Not just in name only, for she’d agreed to more. She’d agreed to everything.
And she wanted everything. But she was also terrified of it.
“It’s not my fortune any longer,” she forced herself to say. There was comfort and familiarity in dialogue. Perhaps she could distract him. Perhaps she could distract herself. “It’s yours now.”
“It’s ours.” His tone was as gentle as his touch as he swept a stray wisp of hair from her cheek. “We’ll build a life together, Clara. Starting today.”
A life together.
How odd to hear those words coming from a hardened rake such as he. At times tender, at times scorching in his sensuality, he never failed to surprise her. But while his pronouncement may have otherwise met with cautious pleasure, they also served as a reminder that his life had recently nearly been taken. The thought chilled her as nothing else could.
She searched his fathomless gaze. “Have you forgotten that someone tried to kill you, my lord?”
He cupped her cheek, rubbing the pad of his thumb slowly over her lower lip’s fullness. “Julian. There’s no need for formality between us any longer.”
His touch stirred a hunger within her, a blossoming ache between her thighs. She steeled herself against both. “Do you seek to distract me? You cannot believe your attentions will make me forget the grim realities we face.”
“I find distraction is what I need the most just now.” He traced the seam of her lips, his eyes dropping to her mouth as though it contained a secret he dearly longed to decipher. Once, twice, three times. He pressed the tip of his thumb inside her mouth, and she tasted him, salty and warm and inviting. “Can it be so grim if I’m still here, little dove?”
She nipped him, not enough to do injury, but enough to demonstrate that she wouldn’t be so easily swayed. He withdrew, bringing his thumb to his own mouth. She watched its progress, her gaze lingering on his sensual lips. So finely formed, so beautiful in their masculine perfection. He sucked his thumb for just an instant, as though tasting her, before releasing it. His eyes never left hers.
Good Lord. She wanted that mouth on her. Once, he’d told her to think of where she’d like his tongue. And she knew it now with alarming clarity. Desire unfurled within her, warm and slow and delicious.
Everywhere. She wanted his tongue to travel over every part of her body. Anywhere he chose.
But she wasn’t about to tell him any of that. Good heavens, she was a lady, after all. Or at the least, her father had attempted to fashion her into one. Best to think of safer subjects. What had Ravenscroft said? Ah, yes. Their reality couldn’t be so grim since he’d survived the attempt on his life.
“I’m grateful you’re still here,” she admitted. Knowing how close he’d come to death still shook her. He was such a big man, tall and strong, alive with energy and wit and wickedness. How could anyone dare to attempt to take him away? She needed him, and the realization simultaneously appalled and thrilled her. “But we must find out who orchestrated the attack on you. If you’ll take nothing else seriously, I hope you’ll at least consider your own life with the gravity it deserves.”
He cocked his head, considering her. One of his hands remained on her waist, hot and possessive. The other settled on her shoulder, splaying over her collarbone, his touch as light as a butterfly. “I assure you that I have no intention of an imminent demise.”
How exasperating. He could not think himself omnipotent and immortal both? “Am I meant to take heart in that? Because if I am, you’re destined for disappointment. I don’t think your intentions have any bearing on the matter. Someone wishes you ill, and from the severity of the attack, I’ve no doubt he will try it again. You must be prepared.”
He trailed a path of fire to the hollow at the base of her throat. His middle finger stroked her there with effortless seduction. Fire shot through her entire, traitorous body. “Ah, my fierce, sweet wife. I’ve no need for your pistol. We’ve already been down this road.”
Yes, they had. And she’d had plenty of time to consider a course of action over the last few days. She was no society miss, no bland and sheltered English lady who’d never known a day of true suffering in her life. She’d been raised in the barren landscape of a homeland ravaged by civil war. She knew how to protect herself. Indeed, she knew how to protect him, and she would if need be. His pride be damned.
Clara shook her head, trying to ignore the way his roving hand made her feel—weak and jittery and longing for something she couldn’t yet define. “You need your own pistol. I’m a crack shot. I could take a man down before he even knew what happened. I’ll not part with my weapon. But you need to be armed at all times. You also need to travel with a trusted coterie of armed servants.”
“All excellent suggestions, love.” He found the first button on her bodice, the tiny shell disc hidden in the high collar of her smart aubergine morning gown, and effortlessly plucked it from its moorings. His index finger traced a path down the flowered brocade trim that artfully hid the remainder of her buttons from view. “But at the moment, I must confess, I’m far more interested in taking my wife to bed.”
His pronouncement sucked all the air from the chamber. She was suddenly hyperaware of her surroundings, her every sense alert. Her mind whirled, grasping at any excuse to ward him off. She wasn’t ready. Not for him. Not for this. Not yet. “Your injury, my lord.”
“Healing.” He made short work of the next few buttons. “I find myself with more than enough strength for the task. And it’s Julian, little dove. No more formality if you please. After today, there will be no other man you know better.”
The notion thrilled her. A fresh wave of heat bloomed from the very core of her, stretching out across her body like the ripples from a pebble in a still body of water. All he required was words and a molten stare to transform her. She wanted to become familiar with every inch of his hard, masculine form. The urge to see him stripped of his dressing robe seized her.
Something inside her broke. Her hands rose to frame his face, and she watched as if they belonged to another. Only the tantalizing abrasion of the whiskers shading his jaw told her the hands were hers. She touched him freely, as she’d wanted to do even before she’d ever spoken a word to him.
Her fingers traveled everywhere, all over his handsome face, from his high cheekbones to his angular jaw, lingering over his sculpted mouth and perfectly defined philtrum. Such raw magnetism, such undeniable beauty confined in one man. She touched him as though she could absorb him, understand him somehow with this tactile familiarity.
Her inner resolve bordered perilously on the razor’s edge of surrender. One smoldering look from him, one more undone button, a ghost of a kiss, and she’d shatter. But the devil of it was that she wanted to. He made her want to experience the impossible, the forbidden. Yes, all of it. All of him.
Her index finger lingered over that faultless indentation on his upper lip, almost as though she sought to quiet him. “Julian.”
His mouth quirked into a knowing, wicked grin that she felt first with her finger before it echoed through the rest of her. That dark, intense gaze of his was upon her, refusing to allow her to look anywhere else. Not that she would. There was no other sight in the world that she currently wanted to see.
He licked her. Slowly and deliberately. Up and down, firm and wanton, his tongue teased the pad of her finger. Strange how her entire body could center on the smallest point of contact. Just a finger. Barely a connection. And yet, she felt his tongue as though he plied it upon the most intimate of all her flesh.
That tongue told her what he could do to the rest of her. What he would do, as long as she remained precisely where she was, trapped in the web of desire and his penetrating stare.
Merciful heavens.
What had she done, agreeing to this? He wasn’t a mere man. He was a force. A wicked seducer. A man who had dedicated his life to giving pleasure. A sybarite. A rake. A rattler. The man who had betrayed her trust.
And yet he was also himself. The man who made her feel what she’d never imagined existed. A man who listened when she spoke. A man who respected her and wanted her. He was not Ravenscroft in this moment. No, he was her own. Purely, completely, hers.
“Julian,” she said again, and she wasn’t certain if she uttered his name as a protest or as an encouragement. For she was equally torn between wanting him and fearing the power he had over her.
“Clara. I want you more than I ever imagined possible. Today, I’m your servant. Anything you wish, I’ll do it.” He kissed her fingertip with a reverence that hit her square in the chest. The last of her defenses against him crumbled. Nothing remained but her deep, abiding need for him.
Of course, she should have told him all she wanted was to leave his chamber. To flee him and the unwanted complications wrought by the things he did to her. But the truth of it was that she didn’t want to leave him. Didn’t want to leave his chamber. If he was well enough—and he certainly seemed so as she eyed him now—then she wanted him to take her. Though the prospect simultaneously thrilled and terrified her, it was what she longed for most.
Perhaps the time had come to be brutally honest with herself. She’d found her weakness at long last, and it was a beautiful, dark-haired, blue-eyed, silver-tongued English rake who viewed the world as his private amusement and could make her body weak with a mere look.
He caught her right hand and lowered it to his hard chest, slipping it beneath his dressing gown so that her bare flesh connected with his. He didn’t stop until her palm flattened over his thumping heart.
Beat. Beat. Beat.
So steady, so reassuring. The skin beneath hers, however, was anything but reassuring. His crisp chest hairs teased her senses. His scent, masculine and spiced with his fine French cologne—a blend that was innately his—enveloped her. The slab of muscle beneath her touch flexed. His heat seared her. She never wanted to let go.
“Tell me,” he said, his tone maddening, another delicious assault on her senses. “Tell me what you want.”
She didn’t even know. Didn’t know how to give voice to the pulsing, aching need he’d brought to life within her. He was the experienced one. Shouldn’t he know what she wanted? “I…” she faltered, not knowing what to say. All the suggestions that clamored to mind seemed far too improper. Far too unwise. “My lord, please.”
But he was determined to be wicked, it seemed. He found her waist, caressing her there when she would have preferred his attention elsewhere. Of course he must know it, rake that he was.
His face hovered close, so beautiful and arresting, his mouth perilously near to hers. “Where do you ache, darling?”
She went crimson, her cheeks as hot as if they’d been touched with live coals. “You know.”
“I want to hear it from you, little dove.” He leaned into her, pressing the length of his body to hers. The protrusion of his arousal, obvious beneath the thin layer of his dressing gown, sank into her skirts. She could almost feel him prodding her center, and it took her breath. “Tell me where.”
Did she dare? He was her husband. It was all very proper. She’d agreed to be his wife, fool that she was, even after he’d misled her. She’d agreed to all this, to everything. And worse, she longed for it. Yes, of course she dared, for she was just as wild and dark, as brazen and roguish on the inside as he was on the outside. It was only that she realized the wickedness of her own nature now for the first time. Perhaps he had well and truly debauched her. Perhaps she’d always been so flawed. She couldn’t be sure.
Clara took the palm that wasn’t flattened to the sinful lure of his broad chest and snagged his hand. Without sparing a thought for consequence, she slid that large, warm hand straight past the buttons on her bodice that he’d undone. Farther, even, beneath her corset cover, corset, and finally her shift. Until his hand curved around the fullness of her breast. Her nipple hardened into his palm.
She arched into him, never breaking his gaze. “There.”
He caught the sensitized nub between his thumb and finger, not wasting a breath of time. Leisurely, he rolled and pinched. “An excellent place to begin, love.”
And then his mouth lowered over hers. He fitted his lower lip between hers perfectly, the kiss slow and delicious, as though he had forever to savor her, as though he drank her like a rare wine. She kissed him back then, as if prodded into action for the first time. She didn’t want slow and languorous. She wanted fast and steady, a determined claiming, a fierce joining. She wanted him to make her his in every way possible.
Clara caught his lip between her teeth. She felt suddenly ravenous, as untamed and unpredictable as the man whose heart thudded beneath her inquisitive palm. She reached behind her to capture his other hand, tugging it from her hair. Dragging it between their straining bodies, she pressed it to the part of her that begged for him the most. They were separated by her crinoline and layers of fabric, but it was a mimicry of the way he’d touched her in the brougham the morning of their wedding. Perhaps he would appreciate the significance.
“And here,” she said into his mouth.
Good God.
He was nearly out of his skin. Her scent wrapped around him, orange and musk and everything delicious. Everything that was wonderfully, innately her. Clara. Wife. His. She was all those things encompassed in the finest, loveliest form he’d ever seen.
Julian had fucked more women in his life than he could count or remember. No one had ever made him feel the way he did now with her lush, beautiful innocence within his reach. Every part of her was perfection, from the sweet curve of her breast in his palm, to the fullness of her lips opening beneath his, to the sharp nip of her teeth. Her palm remained flattened to his chest, absorbing the frantic beats of his heart. She undid him, and he was helpless to stop the power she wielded.
Hell, he didn’t want to. She unleashed a savage side of him, a side he hadn’t realized until this moment that he possessed. He’d always been in control. He’d been the detached seducer, his skills honed from years of plying his trade. He knew how to make a woman come. He knew how to make her whimper and writhe beneath him, to prolong her pleasure and build her inevitable release into a shattering, beautiful thing.
But Clara was different. She stripped away every artifice, everything he’d believed about himself. All the games he would have played with her fled him. The blood rushed to his cock, lust roaring through him. This would not be the unhurried, controlled lovemaking he’d imagined the many times he’d envisioned in his debauched mind.
No.
This would be unrestrained fucking.
He would lose himself inside her, and he would relish the claiming.
But he would not hurt her, nor would he make her first time anything but as pleasurable as he knew how. He reminded himself that she was an untried virgin as he ground the heel of his palm into her skirts at her urging, seeking the very heart of her that he so longed to possess. Her dress was an unwanted impediment. He longed for nothing more than her naked and spread out before him, no fabric, boning, caging, or padding between them.
He kissed her again, full and deep and plundering, a mimicry of the way he would take her. And then he broke away, gazing down on the sheer loveliness of her rounded face. Her golden hair may as well have been a halo surrounding her goodness, her blue eyes heavy-lidded with desire, her rosebud lips swelled and darkened berry-red with his kiss. She flushed a pretty pink to rival the most glorious summer rose. Even the freckles dotting her nose entranced him.
“Here?” he asked, pressing deeper into the billowing contours of her gown, wanting hot, wet flesh rather than silk. He would run his tongue over every last bit of her delectable body once he had her out of these blasted trappings.
“Yes.” The single-word response hissed from her lips, telling him just how much he affected her.
Good, for she made him feel like a callow youth about to spend on the petticoats of the first woman he’d ever kissed. Those freckles of hers would drive him mad. His head had begun to pound, and he couldn’t be sure if it was from pent-up desire or the remnants of his injury, but he didn’t give a damn. He wasn’t about to allow anything to come between him and the fiery woman who’d haunted him since she’d first appeared in his study, asking him to marry her.
Her boldness, her fearlessness, had drawn him to her then. And it was those twin attributes that drew him to her now. She didn’t retreat from him. Though her flaming cheeks gave her away for the innocent she was, she didn’t hesitate. She wanted this joining every bit as much as he.
Julian kissed her again, plucking at her responsive nipple and pressing ever deeper into her skirts before he withdrew entirely, standing back to survey her. She was as beautiful as he’d ever seen her in a lush creation of silk, her expression glazed with passion, bodice deliciously askew. It occurred to him that he was scarcely clothed while she was as properly dressed as though she awaited a bevy of callers during her receiving hours. Most unfair, that.
A dark urge rose up within him. He’d never wanted another woman with the all-consuming hunger that spurred him now. As undeniably lovely as she was in her French gown, he wanted it off her. “Disrobe for me, little dove.”
Her eyes widened, a hand fluttering to her throat, the only evidence of her unease. “My lord?”
“Julian.” He wanted to hear his name on her lips, in the mellifluous drawl she didn’t bother to mask in his presence. It soothed his soul and made his cock ache at the same time. The devil of a thing. “You heard me, love. Remove your dress.”
She hesitated, looking adorably uncertain. “Julian then. I’m…unaccustomed to disrobing myself, and this dress is rather complicated in construction. Perhaps we ought to wait until later. The evening? Another day? I do believe I saw you wince as though your head—”
“Come now,” he interrupted, equal parts charmed and amused by her nervous attempt to procrastinate. “A Virginia lady such as yourself, one who can shoot and bluster, one who can infiltrate the study of an earl at midnight, one who tramps about London on her own wielding a pistol in her reticule, surely a lady such as this can manage to remove a mere gown on her own. Yes?”
He was testing her and the spark in her eyes said she knew it. Her gaze clung to his, her chin tipping up in her trademark show of defiance. “Of course I can. But your injury. It’s too soon. You did seem to be in some pain.”
“My injury is almost fully healed, fully recovered.” A lie, but he didn’t particularly give a damn about such a minor falsehood at the moment. “Perhaps I mistook your daring, then.”
If he’d learned anything about his new wife, it was that she never wanted to be seen as weak. Long ago, he’d mastered the art of using a woman’s weaknesses against her. It was how he’d managed to carry on for so long as he had. One of the many roles he’d been forced to play.
Only, he wasn’t playing a role now. He was hers. She was his.
“Take it off me.”
Her demand, as sudden and unexpected as it was arousing, took him aback. He stared at her, just narrowly refraining from catching her up in his arms and tearing her dress away like a ravaging beast. Gentle, he reminded himself. He would be gentle. He would take the greatest care with her. For she deserved that and so much more.
But the moment he touched the remainder of the buttons fastening her bodice, his good intentions shattered. He caught the gaping vee of her dismantled décolletage in both his hands and yanked. A shower of buttons rained to the carpet, mingling with her startled gasp.
“As you wish, little dove.” Her beautiful dress hung limply apart, revealing her embroidered corset cover. The sleeves were damned tight, clinging to her shoulders in an impediment he grew impatient to banish. He pulled again, and this time the sound of rending fabric filled the air. The sleeves went down at last, revealing soft porcelain flesh. Jesus, even her arms were beautiful, curved and feminine. He fought back the absurd desire to kiss the hinge of her elbow, to lick a path all the way to her shoulder. Her scent, bright and musky, filled his senses, even more potent now that so much of her gorgeous skin was revealed to him.
He wondered if she tasted as sweet as she smelled everywhere. Behind her knee? Her belly? The roundness of her thighs? Fuck, he had to know. Blood roared through his head, a river of lust pouring over his body, threatening to engulf him.
Dimly, he registered her protest.
“Lord Ravenscroft, you’ve ruined my new gown.”
What an intriguing moment for her to once again revert to polite formality. She was nervous, his little dove, her eyes wide. Perhaps she feared he’d take her as roughly as he’d stripped away half of her dress. He ought to reassure her, but any civility he pretended to possess had utterly fled him.
“You required me to take it off you.” The damn thing was still fastened tightly at her waist. He ripped a few more buttons and hooks, locating the ties of her crinoline and undoing them with scarcely more finesse. Down went her skirts, bodice, and dress shaper, landing in a muted swoosh around her feet. But it wasn’t enough. More fabric fell to the floor until she stood before him in only her corset, chemise, drawers, and stockings. He pulled her to him, cupping her face as gently as he could manage. “And so I obliged.”
She sputtered. “I didn’t tell you to ruin it, my lord.”
Even her dudgeon sent another arrow of heat directly to his cock. “No more ‘my lord,’ love.”
He kissed her then because he couldn’t go another second without feeling her sweet, yielding mouth beneath his. She opened. He raked his teeth over the fullness of her bottom lip before sinking his tongue inside. So sweet. Sweeter than he deserved.
Every part of him hungered to take her. To tear off her drawers, drag her chemise to her waist, take her to the carpet, and sink inside her. But he wrangled his wayward impulses. His reputation and indeed his living had been built upon bed sport. His prowess was unparalleled. He took his time, made his lover’s body sing with pleasure, relished in giving her what she’d paid for—the release no man before him had known or dared to give.
What was it about Clara that dragged him to the edge? What was it that made him want to rend and tear, to rut like a beast? To fill her with his cock and after that, with his seed? In an elemental sense she was no different than any other before her. She too had bought and paid for his services, after all, with her dowry and soon her virginity.
The thought cooled some of his ardor. He dragged his mouth from hers, kissed her jaw, her ear, ran his tongue over the defined whorl that nestled against her hair. An anomalous crudeness surged to life within him then, a need to shock her and perhaps shock even himself.
“Clara, sweet, innocent Clara,” he whispered into her ear. “I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to strip every last bit of covering away from you. And then I’m going to taste you everywhere. I’m going to make you spend all over my tongue first. Then all over my cock.”
His words should have sent her spinning away from him in retreat. Should have made her run, flee the chamber through the adjoining door to the safety of her own space. She was a maid, after all. Untried and pure aside from his own attempts to sway her to the darker side.
But instead she did something he least expected, his little dove. Her busy fingers, the fingers he’d watched on countless occasions fretting on the folds of her gown, discovered the knot keeping his dressing gown in place. And undid it. Then those fingers skated beneath the plackets of his robe, gliding over his bare chest with pure, unadulterated fire. Her nails grazed one of his nipples.
“Do it then, Julian.” Her voice was deep and throaty, at once a taunt and a dare.
So bold, his Virginian. Such audacity. As his surprise dispersed, he could sense her bravado for what it was, but that didn’t mean her actions and words didn’t have their intended effect upon him. His cock was rigid, and he was desperate to bury himself inside her so deep and hard that they both lost every last splinter of control.
The thin thread of his restraint snapped. She was small and fine-boned, and when he hauled her into his arms he scarcely felt the weight of her. But perhaps too that could be attributed to the rush of desire coursing through him, rendering him all but mindless. Every part of her was curved and luscious. He buried his face in the fragrant curls piled atop her head as he stalked to his bed with her. He’d never again be capable of smelling the scent of orange without going hard.
But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but her, the blazing passion scorching the air, and the steps between where he stood and his bed. Six, as it turned out. Barely any distance at all but he rued each step for it stole seconds from him. Seconds where he could be upon her, stripping the rest of her undergarments away, parting her thighs.
Patience fled him.
He laid her upon the bed and allowed his dressing gown to fall away from his body, leaving him naked for her brilliant gaze. He’d never seen a lovelier sight than Clara half-dressed, stockings hugging her shapely calves, her ripe breasts about to spill from the top of her corset, mouth swollen from his kiss, and her gaze traveling all over him like a touch.
The ability to speak deserted him. Every practiced, pretty word vanished from his brain. Here he was, a man who’d fashioned fucking into an art, laid low by an inexperienced scrap of a woman. But then, words weren’t needed now anyway and his pride could bloody well go to the devil.
He joined her on the bed, and she reached for him, bringing him against her, holding him to her with a tenderness that undid him. He found her mouth, slanted his lips over hers, sank inside to drink in the dazzling wet heat of her. Sweet and delicious. He tore her corset cover away, his fingers tangling in the knot of her corset laces until it too was opened and gone. She helped him catch the hem of her chemise and shimmy it up over her body.
Finally. For the first time, he could see her glorious breasts unobstructed. No cloth hindrance now. Full and high, tipped with hard nipples as pink and inviting as her mouth. He lowered his head and took her into his mouth, sucking the peak, nipping it. A throaty moan wrung from her as her fingers tunneled into his hair, her nails raking his scalp.
Ah, Christ. She was a quick learner, his delectable tyro. He cupped her other breast, its yielding heaviness filling his palm as he rubbed the nipple with his thumb. His cock strained against the welcoming cradle of her cunny, reminding him he sought an even greater prize. He kissed his way down her creamy skin, his mouth learning the protrusion of her ribs, the curve of her waist, the hollow of her belly button. He pulled her drawers down over her hips, leaving her stockings in place, and pulled back to survey the bounty before him.
Pale thighs beckoned from above the wicked contrast of her black silk stockings. He swallowed as a fresh onslaught of lust careened through him.
At last, he could manage discourse. “Beautiful.”
A lone word and a vast understatement, torn from him. He skimmed her smooth hips, her warmth seeping into his palms. She was so soft, so perfect, and he needed to have her. To taste her. Gently, he began guiding her legs apart.
“Julian.” His Christian name again, a breathy drawl that sounded half rebuke, half plea. “You mustn’t.”
“I must.” He kissed her hip bone, thinking there was not a single part of her body he didn’t adore. “Relax, little dove.” His hand curved over her knee, still covered in silk, and urged it down to the mattress. She allowed him this liberty, giving in to his coax as her legs fell apart.
His hungry gaze sought the pink, glistening flesh of her cunny before traveling over her entire form. She was spread before him in erotic abandon, not a hair out of place in her coiffure, clad in nothing but her black stockings. He could gaze upon her like this a thousand times and it still wouldn’t be enough.
A strange heaviness shifted in his chest but he ignored it and bowed his head, worshipping her as she deserved. His tongue found the pearl of her pleasure. She tasted sweeter than he’d recalled from the brief hint in his carriage. Her hips jerked beneath him as he used his teeth. He soothed the nip with his tongue, gripped the swells of her arse in his palms, and angled her to him. His tongue played over her, seeking her wetness as though he could somehow take her in, consume her.
His balls tightened, warning him that it had indeed been too long since he’d had a woman. Though he wanted to prolong this torture for both of them, he wasn’t going to come on her thigh like some callow lad. There would be more time for exploring her. A lifetime, unless the person who’d had him beaten senseless had his druthers.
A chill skittered over him as he kissed his way back up her body. He wouldn’t allow ugliness to intrude on them now. This moment, this joining, was theirs alone. Battling demons could bloody well wait for another day. He kissed the place where her shoulder and throat met, dragged his mouth back to her ear. His fingers dipped into her slick, hot folds, building the pleasure he’d begun with his mouth into a crescendo.
“Spend for me, little dove,” he said into her ear.
She clutched at his shoulders, her body writhing and twisting beneath his. He knew that she was close. He tongued the sensitive place behind her ear and she shattered, crying out, shaking with the power of her release. With his free hand, he delved into her immaculate hairstyle, plucking all the pins he could feel until her long curls fell to her shoulders, unimpeded and glorious.
“Yes, love,” he whispered in encouragement when she began a tentative exploration of him. “Touch me. I’m yours.”
Her touch feathered over his chest, down his back to his buttocks. She kissed his cheek, his clenched jaw, his hair. “Wicked man,” she said against his throat. But there was no reproach in her tone. Only wonder mingled with desire.
He knew because he felt an echoing blend of the two himself, along with a fierce and unrepentant need to possess her. He couldn’t wait any longer. He positioned himself between her thighs, pressing his rigid cock to her slick entrance. “It will hurt, little dove. Only the first time.”
She shifted against him, bringing them closer together. “I’m yours,” she said then, repeating his words to her.
And he broke. He thrust into her in one swift stroke, tearing past her barrier. Clara stiffened in his arms and cried out. It took every shred of self-control he possessed to hold still and allow her to adjust to this new invasion. The primal impulses inside him screamed to conquer. She was so damn tight and wet.
He kissed her then, plundering her mouth as he longed to the rest of her, before breaking away. “I’m sorry, love.” Of course he never wanted to hurt her. He’d never taken a virgin before, hadn’t been one himself in more years than he could recall. His body and his mind were at war.
“Don’t be.” She moved, drawing him deeper inside her. Her breath hitched, the only sign of her discomfort. “I want this.”
Her reassurance was all he needed to hear. His hand caught in the heavy skeins of her hair, his fingers tightening instinctively, holding her still so that he could gaze down into her arresting beauty. He was no novice to fucking. Pretty nothings clamored in his mind, so many silver words he could string together and seduce her with. But as he sank deeper inside her tight sheath, his entire being splintered.
Suddenly, he was jagged fragments of himself. The old Julian, the experienced rake, the man who’d earned his keep by fucking his way through the ton, dissipated. All he was left with was what she’d fashioned him, a man desperate to claim the only woman he’d ever want.
So many wicked, seductive poetries he could have unleashed. And instead, only one word filled his mind as he thrust into her, giving in to a primitive urge. Mine. He tightened his grip on her hair, making certain she met his gaze, making certain she understood the finality of their union. There would not be a Virginia for her now, not unless they went together. Not from this moment forward. “Mine,” he said.
She arched into him, her fingernails raking scorching lines up his back, then to his neck, before finally settling on his skull. Her fingers tightened in his hair, holding him in a mimicry of the way he held her. “Mine,” she repeated back to him before leaning up on her elbows to close the distance between them. They kissed, open mouthed and mutually ravenous. She dropped her head back to the pillow, falling away from him, breathing heavy. “Mine.”
Yes.
He was hers. Nothing had ever seemed so right or true. A growl in his throat, he took her mouth with his, just as he sank inside her soft, wet heat once more. Hard and fast and deep, he went, and then he did the one thing he’d never done with another woman before. He spent inside her.