The house guests having long ago sought their chambers and the sprawling house quiet, Alice sat in Lord and Lady Guilford’s libraries.
Sleep had proven elusive.
As such, she’d gathered her book, abandoned her chambers, and sought out a distraction that had always come from literature.
That same leather volume, however, now rested beside her, forgotten and useless.
Her knees drawn close to her chest, Alice rested her cheek atop them, and stared absently into the impressive flames that still raged in the hearth. Rhys’ parting words echoed around her mind.
Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet…
Just seventeen words from Bentham’s work… and they’d thoroughly transfixed her since Rhys murmured them in his silky baritone hours earlier. Four hours, if one wished to be truly precise. And since they’d parted, he’d retained hold of her thoughts with an unrelenting tenacity.
Alice rubbed her chin along her cotton robe.
Who was Lord Rhys Brookfield?
Conversing so freely with her on Bentham’s works one instant, and bringing her to blush with nothing more than his crooked half-grin, the next? He was equal parts scholar and equal parts charming rogue. And together, they made for an alluring gentleman who robbed a woman of sleep.
And for a brief moment when they’d been alone outside, she’d believed he was going to kiss her. The burn of his grey gaze had sent heat racing through her, driving back the winter’s chill. And she’d wanted his kiss. Yearned to know the crush of his mouth against hers.
Her betrothed had never kissed her. At first, she’d marveled at him for being unlike the rogues and rakes whispered about in Society. Henry Pratt was a gentleman in every way. Alice, however, had quickly tired of politeness. After weeks of his courtship and then their betrothal, she’d yearned for his embrace. Only, it hadn’t been a wild, burning passion that filled her; a need to feel his arms about her. Rather, it had been a frustrated curiosity to have her first kiss.
Having grown impatient, it had been Alice who’d taken matters into her own hands—both literally and figuratively. With him across from her reading poetry one visit, and her maid deliberately sent off for refreshments, Alice joined Henry on the sofa. She had looped her arms about his neck and pressed her lips to his.
Slightly damp, soft… and cold, there had been an absolute emptiness to Henry Pratt’s kiss that had left her hollow. Wishing for more. Yearning for a glimpse of the thrilling excitement written of in those romantic tales she’d read since she was a girl. All through that exchange, she’d told herself that all women surely felt the same way in a man’s arms. That the fluttering sensations and quickening of one’s heart captured on those pages of romantic novels was just that… words of fiction. And when Henry had jerked away, ending that sloppy embrace, a deep-seated shame had consumed Alice.
Not because of the wanton display that had earned a stinging rebuke from a blushing Henry, but because she’d been so very glad the embrace had been over.
That kiss she’d stolen had been her first… and her last…
Something told her, despite her conclusion that no embrace could stir a woman to grand passions, that being in Rhys’ arms would be altogether different. Somehow, she knew with a woman’s intuition that when Rhys kissed a woman, that lady would plead for more, and give over her reputation and pride just for the thrill of that embrace. All the while, knowing that one could never be anything more to him. She picked up her book, fanning the pages distractedly. No, with their every exchange, he’d reiterated time and time again that the last thing he desired was a respectable match.
Why, his failure to rejoin the party for parlor games was proof enough that even the exchange that still held her enthralled hadn’t been so very important to him. And the truth of that left her… bereft.
The faintest groan of a floorboard slashed across her pathetic musings.
Her heart did a funny leap.
It was as though she’d conjured him with her thoughts.
Still in flagrant disregard of proper dress, Rhys entered the library, similar to how she’d last seen him—sans jacket. And sitting as she was, in the corner, Alice hunched her shoulders in a bid to make herself as small as possible, using the opportunity to study him. A new, less rumpled, but equally crisp white shirt had replaced the previous article he’d donned. The garment hung loose. She stared on unabashedly at the olive-toned skin exposed, the hint of tightly coiled curls upon his chest. As he started across the room, she dipped her appreciative gaze lower, to his narrow hips and buttocks.
He stopped at the sideboard, moving a hand over the collection of decanters.
Cravatless, shirtless, shoeless, he was every last inch of his remarkable frame the forbidden rogue that young ladies such as herself were so often warned of, and schooled to avoid.
Alice gulped. Announce yourself…
She would… eventually. Later. Soon.
Or mayhap she’d simply remain tucked in the corner, and he’d fail to notice that she’d been here admiring him like some empty-headed ninny. For the truth remained: he was a remarkable specimen of chiseled male perfection.
Her gaze worked over his broadly powerful frame before lingering on his bare feet. For the masculine strength that spilled from his heavily-muscled physique, there was something also so very tender in the sight of him so.
“Would you care for a brandy, Alice?” he drawled.
Shrieking, Alice jumped up. Her book sailed to the floor, landing indignantly on its spine with a near-deafening thwack.
His hip perched on the edge of the mahogany piece, Rhys lifted his snifter… and then his eyes caught on her gaping night wrapper. Thick, golden lashes, most women would have sold their souls for, swept down, hooding his gaze. She gasped and swiftly belted the garment.
“N-No,” she squeaked, humiliation bathing her cheeks in heat. “No brandy that is. Thank you,” she spoke quickly, her words rolling nonsensically together. “You must be wondering at my silence.” Hush now, Alice Winterbourne. Hush. Her tongue, however, moved without a care for her silently pleading logic. “I intended to call out a greeting, but I was…”
Ogling you.
He lifted a single, elegant brow.
Alice winced, wishing the Aubusson carpet under her feet had a hidden passage so she might disappear within. Even with the length of the room, a knowing glitter sparkled in his eyes. “Reading,” she lamely settled for. “I was engrossed in my book,” she repeated as he joined her.
Belatedly, Alice rescued the forlorn volume and held it aloft. “Do you see?” she blurted. Good God. She cringed inside.
The ghost of a smile teased the corners of his lips. “I do… see.” And something in that slight emphasis suggested, he very much did. That he’d seen entirely too much. Rhys dipped his eyes to the lace trim that ran the length of her wrapper. “First, meeting over snowballs, then over cheroots, now brandies.” Rhys motioned for her to sit.
She chewed at the inside of her lower lip. Having been alone with him several times before, she’d risked scandal. To remain closeted away in this room, with him in flagrant dishabille and her in her night garments, would have her dancing with ruin that no lady could ever recover from.
“That is probably the wise decision,” he murmured. “Your leaving.”
There was a challenge contained within that statement. Alice set her jaw.
With stiff movements, she reclaimed her seat. Placing the book on her lap, Alice folded her hands primly atop the leather volume.
Taking a sip of his brandy, Rhys settled his broad frame into the peculiar pale green upholstered mahogany chair. Women’s figures carved into each arm, it was a strange seat at odds with the simplicity of the other décor.
With one hand lazily cradling his glass, Rhys draped his spare palm along one etched beauty. His fingers grazed the décolletage, and there it was again… that wild fluttering in Alice’s chest. Compelled by his every movement, she stared transfixed by his long fingers stroking back and forth along the swells of the woman’s breasts.
Back and forth.
Back. And forth.
From over the rim of his glass, Rhys’ unswerving gaze met hers.
If he expected her to hastily avert her eyes, he knew her not at all.
That distracted caress kindled a yearning low in Alice’s belly. The stirrings of desire she’d accepted solely as false words printed in books, now proven wrong by Rhys Brookfield… and an engraved armchair.
The wondering that had slithered forward earlier that night reared itself once more. What if Rhys, in fact, had assignations planned with another lady and Alice was nothing more than an in-the-way distraction? A stone pitted in her stomach.
Alice caught a lone curl and twisted it around her finger distractedly, until his gaze caught on that movement. She abruptly stopped. During your exchanges with gentlemen, be nonchalant. Never show emotion. Miserable Mrs. Belden’s frequently echoed lecture rattled around Alice’s mind. Who would have believed a single lesson from the old harpie would have proven useful? “Do you know, Lord Rhys, it occurs to me you also happen to be missing from all the planned festivities.” Also conspicuously absent had been Miss Cunning. Alice’s stomach muscles clenched. “Why is that?” she asked, dropping her elbow onto the arm of her chair.
Contrary even in drink, Rhys swirled the contents of his glass in a counterclockwise circle. “Truthfully?”
“I’d rather you did not lie to me, if that is what you’re asking.”
He grinned and then leaned forward, conspiratorially. “I was… avoiding certain guests.”
An odd lightness suffused her breast as the tension went out of her. “Your… mother?” she ventured, hating the hopeful edge she was unable to conceal.
“My mother?” he snorted. “She is, of course, a given.” His expression tightened. That affable demeanor lifted and, in its place, came the cynical, hardened shell of the person whose company she’d come to enjoy these past days.
Wounded eyes… strained smile… slumped shoulders… you have all the makings of a heartsick miss…
Her heart tugged. Rhys presented a flawless image of indolent rogue to the world. Until now, she’d failed to see that Rhys, too, had known hurt. She, just like everyone else in Society had seen the surface and never searched for anything more of him. Shame filled her at her own self-absorption. What secret pain did he carry?
When silence marched on and it became apparent he intended to say nothing else, Alice prodded him to continue. “So there is another you’re avoiding…”
Leaning back, Rhys stretched his legs out so the heels of his feet brushed her toes. An electric charge tingled at the contact; a thrilling shock like when she’d run in her bare feet across the carpets at Mrs. Belden’s.
“My mother is matchmaking at this house party.”
“Yes.” As a motherless girl, Alice lamented the absence of a caring, loving mama in her life. And then she’d born witness to the ruthless manner in which the dowager marchioness sought to maneuver Lettie into a respectable match. From that moment on, she’d acquired a whole new view on mothers and daughters. “She is always matchmaking,” she pointed out.
Rhys steepled his fingers, resting them on his flat belly. “She has now hand-selected my bride,” he muttered, that terse utterance at odds with his languid pose.
Alice’s leg jumped and the book again tumbled to the floor. Heart racing, she bent to retrieve the leather volume. All the while, her mind swirled.
He hadn’t been speaking about the dowager marchioness matchmaking Lettie with one of the gentlemen present. He’d spoken of himself. Her chest constricted.
Miss Cunning.
“Yes, well, my mother has never been circumspect in her attempts with any of my others siblings. I trust she wouldn’t change now for my benefit,” he drawled.
Cheeks burning, Alice jerked upright. She’d spoken aloud. She swallowed a groan.
Rhys sipped his drink. “The young lady is my mother’s goddaughter.” And breathtaking and able to make him laugh. Those two thoughts made her want to suddenly cry. “It was expected my brother would marry Lady Lovell’s eldest daughter.” The Baroness Webb… Henry’s sister-in-law. “And since the connection was never made between our families…”
“It falls to you,” she whispered. Why did the idea of him wedded to that dark-haired beauty clutch at her insides, scraping them raw?
He lifted his glass up, toasting that statement. “My mother certainly hopes so.”
Nonchalance, Alice. You must be nonchalant. Alice fanned the pages of her book. “And you do not see yourself marrying her?”
He blanched. “Little Aria? Egads, no.”
Little Aria? Tall, splendorous in her beauty, she had the look of the damned fertility goddess Diana painted upon the urn in her uncle Percival’s office.
“She is a child. Seven and ten years of age.” He furrowed his brow. “Almost eight and ten.” He knew that intimate detail about the young woman. It spoke to that close familial connection; one that the dowager marchioness was determined to solidify.
“She’s not so very young,” she said haltingly. At seventeen, Alice had given her heart to Henry… and now, she was just two years older than Miss Cunning.
Rhys downed the remaining contents of his drink in one long swallow; the muscles of his throat worked rhythmically. He grimaced, and then set the glass down on the table beside him. “She’s certainly too young for a man nearing thirty.”
In a Society where ladies married men two decades their senior, the eleven years Rhys spoke of was insignificant. Nonetheless, she’d not debate him on the lady’s suitability as a bride for him. For shamefully selfish reasons… even as she would never trust her heart again to any man, she abhorred the idea of Rhys married to the stunning beauty.
“We make quite the pair, don’t we,” she brought herself to say, instead. “Two individuals brought together because one,” she motioned to herself, “is avoiding her former betrothed, and the other,” she pointed to him, “his future intended.”
Rhys laughed. That booming, masculine sound was filled with amusement. Jumping up, he collected his glass and returned to the sideboard. The soft clink of crystal touching crystal, and then the steady stream of liquid pouring filled the library.
It did not escape her notice that he hadn’t refuted her latter claim. Alice curled her fingers over the arms of her chair, leaving little half-moon marks upon the ivory upholstery.
Rhys stilled and then slowly turned, a bottle and glass in hand. “That is it.”
That is it.
Bitterness made her tongue heavy at that dismissive end to their discussion. “Of course.” She glanced to the gilt bronze and marble mantel clock. “It is late and it wouldn’t do for us to be seen together. Particularly given your mother’s intentions for you,” she forced out.
Before she took a step, he set aside the burdens in his hands. “Not the evening, Alice. Our arrangement.”
She puzzled her brow. “We don’t have an arrangement.” Except… “Other than the one where I promised to not be the downtrodden, doleful miss you accused me of—”
“Not that arrangement,” he cut in.
“Oh.”
He grinned, that smile dimpling his left cheek. “Why, I’m going to court you.”
Her pulse accelerated. “Court me?”
His smile deepened and he was across the room in five long strides. “It is perfect.”
“Perfect,” she breathed. Alice knew she sounded like a lackwit parroting back his words, and yet… she sought to muddle through his every pronouncement.
“There’s Pup Pratt.”
Alice whipped about, searching for the stodgy person in question.
“And then there are my mother’s matchmaking plans for me,” he went on. “A pretend courtship would be mutually beneficial.”
And just like that…
Of course. He spoke of a false courtship. Nor should she even entertain a true one with him… or anyone for that matter. The last thing she wanted, desired, or needed was a gentleman in her life… and a roguish one at that. So, what accounted for the disappointment that now filled her? Rhys stared expectantly back; smug, entirely too pleased, he had the look of one who’d discovered the true meaning of life.
Needing distance between him and her tumultuous thoughts, she wandered around the sofa. As she paced the length of the ivory seat, she trailed her fingertips along the scalloped top. “And just how will a faire semblant de faire la cour benefit me?”
Rhys continued forward and, standing at the opposite end of the sofa, he matched her pacing. “Pup Pratt has every intention of protecting you from my unscrupulous advances.” He held her gaze squarely. “But if my intentions are honorable, a gentleman who adheres to propriety truly cannot make a nuisance of himself.”
It was a silly plan and yet…
Alice came to a slow stop.
She didn’t wish to be bothered anymore with Henry thrusting himself back into her life and looking after her as though she had ever truly mattered to him.
A warm, strong hand settled on her shoulder. She gasped, glancing up at Rhys.
How was it possible that a man of his sheer power and size could move with such stealth?
“And there remains the obvious truth,” Rhys whispered against her ear, delicious shivers tingled down her neck. “My courting you, his seeing us together, will drive him mad with jealousy.”
Odd, he spoke of her stirring envy in another man. Yet with her back brushing against his chest, their bodies touching with the hint of intimacy, she could not so much as dredge forth a memory of Henry’s face. She could only think of the man beside her, the one whose presence stirred an unfamiliar yearning low in her belly. Alice fought her body’s pull. “What happens when the house party is over?”
He lifted his shoulders in a too-casual shrug. “Near the end, you can break it off.”
Her lips twitched. “You want me to throw you over?” When most gentlemen’s pride were too big to endure a public humiliation, it spoke depths to his confidence.
Rhys waggled his golden eyebrows. “There is a first time for everything.” Those teasing tones startled a laugh from her.
She swatted at him. “You are incorrigible.”
“Oh, quite,” he demurred. Rhys tapped the side of his mouth. “Before the end of the house party,” he continued with all seriousness, “you shall realize I’m not the reverent gent you desire. You’ll create the scandal of your choosing.”
Her amusement faded. “I’ve already made a scandal of myself before, Rhys,” she said quietly. “I have no desire to travel that path again.”
“You care too much about what the ton thinks,” he murmured, dusting his knuckles over her cheek in a butterfly caress. “Even so, the only guests present are my siblings and their families who’d fight the king himself to protect one another—my roguish self included. And lifelong friends of my mother’s who desire a match between me and their unmarried daughter.” Miss Aria Cunning.
No, with Lord and Lady Lovell’s aspirations for their Diamond of a daughter, they’d certainly not breathe a complaint against Rhys, not when there was still a chance of their daughter marrying him. Her stomach muscles contracted.
Rhys moved his mouth closer. He was so close that, as he spoke, his lips touched the shell of her ear over and over; tiny, too-fleeting kisses. “You want to say yes.”
Delicious thrills of awareness raced through her. Alice’s head tipped sideways as she reflexively opened herself to him. “I want…” you. I want you…
His long lashes swept down. “What do you want?” he enticed, like the Devil himself with that forbidden fruit cradled between his fingers.
Somewhere along the way, they’d ceased speaking about games of pretend and reality had stepped in. “I want you…” Those three words came garbled, heavy with her need for this man.
“Yes, Alice. Tell me what you want?” he breathed against her mouth.
“To c-court me,” she blurted out the safer thought. Did that throaty whisper belong to her? The wanton, sultry tones, unfamiliar to her own ears, brought Rhys’ lashes down all the more, concealing those grey irises. But not before she caught the glitter of desire there.
Desire for me. He desires me.
Since she’d been jilted, Alice had believed herself undesirable; a woman easily thrown over, and hardly one to rouse a man to true passion.
And there was something so very heady in this newly discovered woman’s power.
Rhys’ hot, piercing gaze lingered on her lips. Then, cupping her nape, he covered her mouth with his, kissing her as she’d always dreamed, kindling a desire she’d believed she could not feel.
There was nothing hesitant or searching in this kiss. He slanted hard lips over hers again and again, laying claim to her mouth with a primitive possession that weakened her knees.
Melting into him, Alice gripped Rhys lawn shirt hard; the heat of him penetrating that fabric and burning her fingers. A growl of masculine approval rumbled from his chest. Sliding his arms around her, he filled his palms with her buttocks. She moaned as he drew her between the “V” of his legs. The hard length of his sex prodded her through the thin barrier of her night shift.
Rhys swept his tongue inside her mouth; hot, tasting of brandy and cheroots.
Hungry for him, wanting this moment to stretch on forever, Alice met each bold thrust and parry of his tongue. Heat exploded in her belly, spiraling quickly through her like molten lava. Her hips began to move and, unlike with Henry, there was no shame in this moment, in her response, in her simply feeling. There was only a primal hungering to know every last mystery of Rhys’ embrace.
He drew back and a soft, shameless cry burst from her at the sudden loss.
But he only shifted his attentions elsewhere. Touching his lips to the corner of her mouth, he trailed them lower to her jawline. Then finding the delicate shell of her ear, he took that flesh between his teeth and gently suckled.
“Rhys,” she moaned, his name both a prayer and a plea.
Tangling her fingers in his loose curls, she luxuriated in the satiny softness of those strands. He was a fallen angel, cast from the gates of paradise, and now master tormenter to mere mortals.
“So beautiful,” he breathed, dragging his hot mouth down her neck. He lightly nipped and suckled at the place where her heart wildly pulsed. She dimly registered him working his hands between them, loosening the ties of her wrapper.
The cooler air was a sough upon her heated skin. He freed her breasts, cupping the mounds in his palms, drawing them together. The sensitized tips pebbled from the cold, from the anticipation.
And then he took one of those tips between his lips, suckling her.
Alice’s cry reached to the rafters; the desperate, aching sound of unfulfilled desires echoing in her ears. Of their own volition, her legs fell open in a wanton invitation.
He switched his attentions to the other, neglected peak.
Her legs gave out and he caught her under her knees. Effortlessly carrying her to the ivory sofa, he lay her upon the velvet squabs and followed her down. Resting his weight on his elbows he continued worshiping the swollen nipple. Flicking his tongue over the pebbled bud, circling it, before taking it in his mouth, once more.
Rhys dragged her skirts up, slowly until her legs lay naked. Reaching between them, he palmed the soft thatch of curls shielding her womanhood.
“Please,” she begged, not knowing what she pleaded for. All she was had been reduced to a bundle of nerves incapable of anything but feeling: a desire that was both excruciating and exquisite.
Please.
It was a single word that had fallen from the lips of all Rhys’ previous lovers.
Only this breathy, pleading, one-syllable utterance was different and for very many reasons.
Sweat beaded on Rhys brow, and a single bead rolled a path down his cheek and fell like a lone teardrop upon her breast.
Alice’s long, golden lashes swept up. “Rhys?” she whispered, the uncertainty underlining his name wrenched at him.
He clenched his eyes tight.
Wishing he could be the wicked scoundrel the world took him for.
For if that were the case, he would toss aside Alice’s white linen nightgown, a scrap of fabric that exuded innocence from its cut to its color, and lay between her shapely thighs. But not only was she the sister of his business partner… she was also an innocent. “I cannot… forgive me…” he said, his incoherent apology hoarsened by unfulfilled desire.
Alice’s stricken eyes met his. Her body went taut under his and she angled her face away. “I see.”
He’d hurt her.
Leave it that way. It was far safer, wiser to let her believe whatever unintended slight he’d delivered.
His chest rose and fell in harsh spurts. Rhys cursed himself to hell. Cupping her cheek, he brought her gaze back to his. “Since the moment I came upon you in The Copse, I wanted to take you in my arms.” Her mouth parted and he brushed his thumb along the slightly fuller flesh of her lower lip. “I wanted to know the taste of you and the feel of you. So do not ever think for one moment that my stopping has anything to do with you.” It had everything to do with him clinging to the last shred of honor he had left in his miserable blackguard body.
“Is it because I’m Daniel’s sister?”
He grunted. The other man would be well within his rights to call Rhys out at dawn and put a ball through his heart. “There is that.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “I assure you, my rakish brother is hardly the one to pass judgment on my actions.”
Of course, Alice, the spirited minx, would never be contented with even that. Rhys dragged both palms over his face. For the truth remained, it didn’t matter how many women Montfort had tupped to earn his reputation, a young lady was altogether different. He let his arms fall. “Because I don’t dally with innocents.” Except, even as that admission left him, there was an inherent wrongness to it. Having Alice in his arms hadn’t felt like a mere empty meeting of two lovers. There had been an explosion of feeling and desire that consumed him still. He made to stand, but Alice shot a hand up, gripping his shoulder.
“But what if I want you to?” Her whisper was temptation itself and Rhys had an appreciation for the battle Adam had waged before his great fall from grace.
He closed his eyes, fighting for resolve.
As if sensing his weakening, her satiny soft palm glided down his cheek in a caress that forced his gaze back to hers. “Rhys, I’m ruined.”
“You weren’t discovered in a compromising position, Alice,” he said gently, needing her to see the difference. Rather, she’d been jilted and by a pompous arse who’d never deserved her. What a bloody injustice that she should find her reputation in tatters for Pratt’s crimes. Averting his eyes, he swung his legs over the side of the sofa. Planting his feet on the floor, Rhys dropped his elbows on his knees.
The soft rustle of Alice’s modest lawn nightshift and the faint creak of the sofa spring indicated she’d moved.
She touched his shoulder. “I shared but one kiss with my betrothed.” Red hot hatred for Pratt coursed through Rhys’ veins as Alice painted an image that was all too real of that bastard with his mouth on Alice’s, the way Rhys’ had been moments ago. “I was the one to initiate it,” she confessed; the shame tingeing that admission knifed at him.
“He was a fool,” he clipped out. If Rhys had been betrothed to Alice, he would have reveled in the right and pleasure of taking her in his arms so that, come their wedding night, there would have been no secrets between them.
A wistful smile curved her lips. “I do not disagree with you there. But that is not why I told you…” Her cheeks pinkened. “About Henry.”
God, how he abhorred the effortless way Pratt’s name fell from her lips.
Alice came up on her knees beside him. “After his betrayal, after,” she grimaced. “The Scandal, my reputation was destroyed, and do you know, Rhys? I didn’t care,” she whispered. “It didn’t matter to me that I’d never marry. I loved and lost in the most humiliating way.” Humiliating. Not devastating. Not heartbreaking. Did Alice realize that key distinction? “I came to accept that love and desire were rare gifts for some and I was not to be one who knew either.” Alice drew in a slow breath. “I won’t marry.”
He scraped a hand through his hair. “Your brother would rightfully skewer me at dawn.”
“I’m a woman,” she said simply. “Why should I be without choice?”
“Because it is the way of Society.” His protest came weak to his own ears.
Alice smiled wryly. “And you’ve always done what Society expects?” No, from his work as a self-made man to the woman he’d once offered marriage to, he’d reveled in flouting those conventions.
“This is different,” he said reluctantly. “This isn’t about my reputation.” Or the Earl of Montfort’s. It was about Alice’s. “You’ve been hurt before and have given up on the idea of love and marriage. But that does not mean, in time, you will not desire those very things.” An image flickered to his mind’s eye of some nameless, faceless gentleman laying her down, parting her thighs, and giving Alice the pleasure Rhys longed to. A growl started low in his belly.
“Don’t presume to tell me what I want,” she said matter-of-factly. “Or decide my future. If we make love…” Oh, God. He faltered, as those four words painted erotic images that would tempt and torture him long after this moment. “That is my choice. Just as you’ve chosen to live a bachelor’s existence, I would live now, not for Society or propriety but for myself.” Alice grasped his hand and drew it to her chest. He swallowed hard as she laid his left palm against her breast. His palm cupped the swell, reflexively.
“Alice,” he implored, in one last, desperate bid to do what was right.
“I want to feel, Rhys,” she breathed. “Make me feel again.”
And with those four words, the battle was lost. He would not take her virtue, but he would give her the night of pleasure she sought.
Rhys tangled his fingers in her silken tresses and brought her mouth to meet his.
Alice kissed with the same beautiful abandon she went through every aspect of life: fierce, unapologetic, bold. She parted her lips and their tongues met in a passionate dance. All the while, he worked his hands over her as he’d ached to these past days; exploring the curve of her flared hips, her buttocks.
She pressed herself against him; her breasts crushed against the wall of his chest. Through their thin linen garments, the heat from their bodies melded. Lifting her skirts once more, he bared her before him.
He touched his gaze on muscled legs that spoke of a woman who rode.
Guiding her back down, he palmed the soft thatch of curls between her thighs.
“Rhys,” she hissed, her hips shooting up.
His shaft swelled, straining against his trousers, as the aching need to take that which she offered wrought havoc on his honorable intentions. “You are so wet for me,” he rasped, slipping a finger inside her wet channel.
Alice whimpered and he thrust another finger inside her.
The glow cast by the fire bathed her face in a soft light, playing off the moisture that dampened her brow. Then, he began to stroke her. In and out. In and out. That primitive echo of lovemaking that fueled his desire.
Her speech dissolved into incoherent, gasping pleas.
With his other hand, he freed her breasts from her night shift and refocused on the perfect, pink crests. Lowering his head, he took one tip deep in his mouth at the same time he quickened his fingers in her sodden center.
Her body stiffened, the tension spilling from her slender frame; all the muscles of her heart-shaped face were taut, and then a scream tore from her. He swiftly covered her mouth, taking that beautiful shout of release as she bucked her hips into him.
And then she collapsed, her breath coming hard and fast.
His body throbbing from the ache of unfulfilled desires, Rhys dropped his head against her chest.
Of all the times for him to become… honorable. He tamped down an agonized groan.
“That was wondrous,” Alice murmured, her breath fanned his cheek.
He lifted his head from her breast, studying her.
Her eyes closed, a contented smile on her lips, she had the look of the cat who’d gotten into the cream. Male satisfaction filled him.
The loud creak of a floorboard slashed across their stolen interlude.
Surging to his feet, he glanced to the door.
“What is it?” Alice whispered, hurriedly sitting up.
Rhys held a finger up and trained his ears for a hint of sound.
The fire in the hearth continued to hiss and crackle but, otherwise, silence reigned.
“You should return to your rooms,” he said in hushed tones as he set to work righting her garments. Her loose, golden curls hung in a tangled mass down her back. “Here,” he murmured, guiding her around. Wordlessly, he sifted his hands through those strands, putting them to order.
When he’d finished, she faced him.
An awkward pall fell between them.
She cleared her throat. “Thank—” He narrowed his eyes, and that insulting expression of gratitude died on her lips. A word of thanks made this exchange nothing more than an empty meeting. And yet, mayhap, it was the late hour or, perhaps, it really was some peculiar hold this minx had claimed from their first meeting—this interlude had felt like so much more.
“Good night, Alice.”
She bowed her head. “Good night, Rhys.”
Long after she’d left, Rhys remained standing there, staring at the door she’d slipped out, unable to shake the ominous feeling that with the pretend courtship they’d agreed to, Rhys had made the greatest of mistakes.