A Gentleman Undone (23 page)

S
HOCK UNFURLED
from her head to her toes like a sail dropped down from a ship’s mast. Her bent arms and the reticule were pinned between their bodies; now she braced her outspread hands on his chest and jerked her head back. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” Had she raised her voice? No. Some dependable corner of her brain stayed mindful of their surroundings, the need for discretion, even as her breaths came shallow from the spinning and the shock.

“One minute.” No part of his hold on her slackened. “Sixty seconds.” His mouth was so near she could taste the words as he said them. “We’ll never refer to it afterward. Nothing will change.”

Was that possible? Could a man and a woman give themselves up to passion, even for sixty seconds, and walk away unsinged? Surely things must change.

But maybe she didn’t care. His bare hand at the back of her head flexed gently, not like a hand that meant to force her to his will, but like a hand that couldn’t get enough of the way she felt.

His breath came warm and ragged against her lips, her
cheeks. A faint flavor of cloves came with it, no doubt from his tooth-powder. He’d cleaned his teeth before setting out tonight. Perhaps with this purpose already in mind.

She might touch her tongue to them, to his clean imperfect clove-scented teeth.

Dear Lord. Of all the factors that could sway a woman into kissing a man. Clearly she was not in her right mind. Drunk on her success at the table, like as not. Their success, rather. She couldn’t have done it alone.

Her hands trailed down his chest, over his ribs, to either side of his waist. He shivered once, but didn’t otherwise move. He would wait for her word.

“Sixty seconds.” She flicked one wrist and her reticule hit the floor. “Make them count.”

His mouth closed the distance between them, more patiently this time. His lips brushed over hers and the tiny beard-bristles brushed after, raising gooseflesh all up and down her arms. He was sweet and slow and masterful and he filled up all her perception with the smell of bay rum.

But with only sixty seconds they couldn’t afford patience. He had no time to be sweet or slow. She sent a hand up his spine to the very short hairs at the nape of his neck—if only she had time to take off her gloves, and rasp those hairs against her palm!—and when she’d taken a firm hold at the back of his head, she sent her tongue right into his mouth and ran it over his teeth, space between and all.

He made a sound in his throat. Perhaps he wasn’t used to bold women. But clearly he didn’t mind. He stroked his own fingers down the back of her neck, encouraging her, and a moment later both his hands were at the front of her gown, finding their way under the outer layer to run wild over the purple silk.

Yes. This was exactly what he ought to do. It was right he should read the contours of her corset, and mold her hips, her thighs, with his hands as though she were wet clay. She did feel a bit like wet clay, or warm wax, or some other thing that would take whatever shape he cared to give her. He’d backed her against the wall somehow without her noticing and now she pressed her shoulder blades into that support and swayed and twisted under his touch.

Had it been sixty seconds? Never mind. She found the fastenings that held her overdress together at the bosom and she undid them, deftly, that he might put his hands there too.

Such large hands he had, and so capable. The left one slid over her hip, up her waist, silk bunching before it, and settled, finally, over her breast. His breath roughened in her mouth; he shook that gathered silk free that there might be but one thin layer lying flat over the part of her body he touched; the thinnest possible barrier between his palm and the nipple he’d provoked into ripeness with his kisses and his sculptor’s hands.

Thank Heaven—oh, she’d go to Hell for such blasphemy but surely she’d reserved her place there long ago, and at all events thank Heaven she’d cut her chemise down to the top of her corset and left off all her petticoats. Because now she understood the reason for the existence of purple sarcenet. His thumb moved slowly over her nipple, an excruciating tease made doubly excruciating by that cream-smooth knit stuff preventing her from truly knowing his touch; triply excruciating by the way his tongue caressed the curve of her lip, echoing the leisurely strokes of his thumb.

She arched into his touch and he broke off the kiss. She could feel his head angled to watch, though surely he couldn’t see anything through the darkness. His right
hand came to her left breast and his touch felt … wondering, almost worshipful. The touch of a man who’d never put his hands to a woman before, or perhaps the touch of a man who’d come near to dying and meant never to take earthly pleasures for granted again.

That might be true, that last one. That might be his case. She’d think on it later. “Use your mouth,” she said now, and her voice was all harshness and need, perfectly fashioned to puncture the illusions of a worshipful man.

But no, he liked that too. He muttered something hot and unintelligible; it ended in low, velvety laughter, and then his mouth was where she wanted it and nothing else mattered in the world.

She pushed herself up on her toes and arched harder, to make this as easy as it could be to him so that he might never, never stop. Because here, in fact, was the reason for sarcenet. She’d been so wrong before. The sweep of his tongue, dragging the fabric to and fro where she was so sensitive. His hands locking her in position, one between her shoulder blades and one at the back of her waist to keep her in thrall to his exquisite torture. His wet mouth dampening the silk, adding sweet complexities to the sensation and meanwhile marking her, staining her, fixing her with a badge visible to any observer, a memento of just what he’d done.

He didn’t do
enough
. If he would only grind himself against her, as any decent man could be expected to do, he might finish her off before he had a chance to remember that business of stopping at sixty seconds.

She sent her hands round behind him. Filled her palms and splayed fingers with those particular muscles that would power a man as he drove into a woman, once he was properly persuaded.

He replied with the edges of his teeth, unleashing a riptide of pleasure that nearly buckled her knees. Good.
She knew how to have this conversation. She slipped one hand back round to the front of him, down and down between their bodies, and, oh, good Lord. He’d told the truth.

Well, of course he had. She’d never truly doubted him. But to take his dimensions on faith was one thing. To have the evidence at hand was something else entirely.

She took a grip. Nankeen and man, with his shirttail and a thin layer of linen between. He hissed, a sharp indrawn breath that cost him his hold on her nipple. She could feel his hands and arms go tense. His whole body went tense; she could sense it even in the parts that didn’t touch her because the air between them had stilled so.

“Wait.” A single hoarse syllable, and her stomach dropped like a partridge shot out of midair. He was remembering all his reasons; the lady in Camden Town and everything else.

She couldn’t let him. “Wait for what?” Her hand tightened and stroked up his length. “You’re as ready as I’ve ever felt a man to be.”

“I’m not. I don’t—” His breath caught and he shuddered as her palm slid back the other way. Say what he would, he wanted this.

Her fingers found the first of his buttons and tipped it through the buttonhole. She would give him what he wanted. She would make him forget. They would be guilty together, throwing off everything either one knew of propriety or obligation to gratify the appetites of a moment, and together they would—

“No.” The voice might carry a note of pleading, but the sudden iron grip at her wrist was all command. He put his other hand to the wall and pushed away with a wrenching motion, as though she were some spider who’d snared him in treacherous silk. “No more.”

Her hand fell empty at her side. Her skin ached already for the loss of his touch. What had happened to her? A month ago she’d at least had the decency to feel shame during that moment when she’d mistook his sister for a lady he was courting. Tonight she didn’t care. She only wanted to possess him, and all the ladies of Camden Town combined would not be enough to stop her.

Only he could do that.

“I’m sorry.” His voice shook. He’d leaned against the wall an arm’s length away, face to the wallpaper by the sound of his breaths. “I’m sorry, Lydia,” he said again. “This isn’t what I want.”

A candle-flame of sympathy flickered, but she would give it no air. She wasn’t that sort. Corruption crawled in her veins, heedless lust fired her every nerve, and countless wadded-up scraps of anger filled the cavity where a woman’s warm heart ought to be.

This isn’t what I want
, he’d said.

As if she hadn’t held the evidence in her hand.

I
SEE.”
M
ISS
Slaughter’s voice hit the air between them like a sheet of ice, frigid and breakable in equal measures. “My congratulations, then. You counterfeit expertly.”

Did she suppose he needed her help to feel wretched? “You know that’s not what I mean. I’ve already admitted I desire you. I just …” Confound it, would she even understand? “I want to be better than this. I don’t want to be the kind of man who ruts with someone else’s woman in the hallway of a gaming hell.”

“You’ll understand my mistaking you for such a man, I hope.” Ice in bitter shards, now. “The part where you had my nipple in your mouth was particularly befuddling.”

Befuddling
didn’t come close. Astounding, staggering, spellbinding, electrifying. As long as he lived he would remember the way she pushed up on her toes to meet him, so sure of what she wanted and so shameless in demanding it.

Bloody hell. Why couldn’t he just do this? Why couldn’t he take what she wanted to give, and give what she wanted to take, and let pleasure answer for itself?

Because he’d told her he wouldn’t.
I’m not another lout looking to make use of you
, he’d said, and she’d begun to trust him. And damn it all, her trust meant something and she needed to know that he knew that. He felt, carefully, for the breeches-button she’d undone and did it back up. “The fault is mine, entirely. I was wrong to begin this, and grievously wrong to let it continue as far as it did. My actions dishonored us both.”

“It’s not in your power to dishonor me.”

Devil take him. Her every lashing-out just made him harder, made him want to take her back in his arms and shape all that fury into searing passion. “You’re right, Lydia.” Instead he must work to soothe her. “I’m sorry.”

“You said that already. In fact you said we wouldn’t speak of this at all. I had supposed you a man of your word.”

Bitter laughter seized him like a coughing fit: he was helpless to stifle the sound. “That was a resounding error on your part, I’m afraid.”

“I’m finished discussing this.” Smaller and tighter her voice went, and beneath it, a silken rustle that must be her fastening up the overdress of her gown. “I’m going to go get my cloak.”

“Wait.” His hand shot out and found her arm, every bit as soft as he remembered. “You can’t. You’re not …” God, could this get any crueler? “I left you unfit to be seen. I’ll get the cloak for you.”

She twisted from his grasp. “Believe me, Mr. Blackshear, I’ve survived worse indignities than a damp spot over one nipple.” Another rustle and the muffled clink of coins; she’d bent to sweep up her discarded reticule. “Save your pangs of conscience for your graver wrongs.”

Her words speared straight through him. She didn’t know, of course. There wasn’t any way she could. But for a moment, there in the darkness, she sounded like an incarnation of his own tireless self-reproach. Indeed he had such grave wrongs on his conscience as could make her want to scrub raw every place on her body where he’d put his hands.

He didn’t say so. She didn’t wait for a reply in any case. The purposeful tread of her slippers announced her retreat and he had a glimpse of her silhouette as she reached the faint light of the main corridor and turned left.

He waited the agreed-upon ten minutes, and made his way outside to the agreed-upon meeting place a block away. And it took another ten minutes of waiting, and five more of casting about the neighboring streets in search of her, before he understood she wasn’t coming. She’d gone back to Somers Town on her own, and left him behind.

S
TUPID. WEAK
. Gullible. Ineffectual.
Nearly twenty-four hours since the disastrous event, and she hadn’t yet found the word harsh enough to describe a woman who tossed away the singular opportunity of her life, and in such craven fashion.
Deficient. Contemptible. Fraudulent
.

“Hell and damnation, Lydia.” Edward lay beside her, his bare chest heaving. “I vow you’ll be the death of me.”

If only it could be the other way round. A woman might destroy her soul by whoring, but for all her most ferocious efforts her body still lingered, with its appetites and its aches and its power to drive her into jaw-dropping folly.

Her knuckles skimmed absently over Edward’s near arm. He was damp. She’d worked him to the point of exhaustion, and not once had she permitted herself to close her eyes and imagine other hands. He was her penance and her punishment for having cried, last night, from the minute she got into that hackney to the minute it stopped at her door.

If only he had not kissed her! If he’d set her down from spinning, and stepped away, and asked if she could guess how much money they’d won. Or if she’d stopped him when he’d pressed for sixty seconds:
It’s better we don’t. Think of how you’d regret it
. She would have gone home warm and fizzing as if she’d downed a glass of champagne on an empty stomach, and she would have recalled the exhilaration of that spinning embrace with pure untainted pleasure. She would have felt full, where now she felt so empty. And their partnership would have remained intact.