A Man Above Reproach (21 page)

“If something had happened to you,” he said, pain on his face, “I never would have forgiven myself.”

He lifted her back to the headboard, not giving her a chance to speak. He trailed kisses along each expanse of flesh that was exposed as the robe shifted. When he spoke, he branded it into her skin. “But I also realized… that you are not a fragile woman. I have been too
delicate with you. No more. You have no need to be coddled. I want your real name, darling, and I will have it tonight.”

“Eli,” she breathed, feeling helpless against his assault. After making the conscious decision to tell him everything, he was doing a good job of making her forget it all.

“Yes. How jealous I am that you have a name to groan.”

He had somehow gotten her into a most vulnerable position and now his expression had lost any mischief. He knelt between her legs, untying his shirt with languor. His passion made him look dangerous, as if he would not be denied anything he wanted. She was transfixed for a moment, her eyes feeling greedy for the glowing skin of his tight chest.

“The robe, love. Shall I take it off for you?”

The matter was not up for discussion. She could not get her hands to move, so he obliged, untying the belt and whisking it from her frame. She watched it flutter like a leaf behind them. For a moment, she felt too bare, until she saw the look on his face. He had frozen, except for two fingers on his left hand, which traced her body, now open to him.

“Heaven help me,” he murmured, his digits trailing across her nipples so lightly that she jumped beneath him. She had never seen the glazed look in his eyes before, as if everything else in the world had fallen away, his bed an island unto itself. His to plunder. He leaned into her again, kissing her until she felt deranged. The minute their naked skin touched, every thought flew out of her mind and was replaced with a sheer need that she could not even name.

Elias drew back again to look at her, expelling a breath that sounded frustrated. His hand wandered down her torso and her eyes shut of their own accord, the last image of him burned on her brain, his hair tangled and mouth quirked, bare chested but still in his trousers.
His fingers danced in a repeat of their performance on the settee, but now more unhurried and intimate.

“Keep your eyes closed,” he said against her ear.

She tried to form a sentence, but it came out as
oh-oh-oh
.

His lips left her ear, following a map down her neck with lengthy stopping points at each breast and then the soft swell of her stomach, where his tongue made a remarkable appearance at her belly button. She gasped.

“Mmm.” He smiled against her skin. “I will never give this up, my darling. Your face in passion—I mean to see it again and again.”

His head moved down, nuzzling the soft curls that lay between her thighs. She realized she was holding her breath and clutching his arms, which were taut and braced against the bed.

“Across that piano bench,” he spoke as he kissed the center of her pleasure, first tentatively, exploring as if the very notion of time belonged to him, “in a carriage, in a closet. My library, then your bookshop. I will exhaust you.”

She felt his teeth on her inner thigh and had to hold back a most unladylike squeal. Shapes and motions replaced words and under his considered ministrations, a blinding white light began to build behind her eyelids. She felt as if she was rushing forward, but toward what, she did not know. His hands moved toward her bottom, supporting her and affording his mouth better access. She was shivering so much that she feared she would lift right off of the bed. Whatever he had her nerves chasing, it was getting closer with every flick of his tongue.

His hand covered her mouth as she climaxed, stifling the reflexive noises he had extracted from the breakable part of her, this desperate release of moans spilling into his palm. He pressed a cheek to hers as she gasped, the hard length of him straining against fabric and pressing her sensitive core, so that she could not stop her hips from circling
in urgency. She needed him inside, but he had stilled, smiling down at her with triumph.

She realized it was his name that she was panting: repeatedly, insensibly.

It took all of Elias’s self-control to not just plunge into her, but he called on reserves he had never used before, breathing as evenly as he could muster. She was his, he saw, her eyes had changed. The barriers she used as a defense collapsed into frantic little gulps of air and she could not seem to stop her pelvis from grinding against his.

He knelt back, still between her legs. He couldn’t help the victorious grin on his face. She was still watching him, her hands tracing his chest in an anxious, impatient dance. He divested himself of his pants, trying to keep calm. It was not easy, not when he had been waiting so long for this.

“Darling,” she whispered. “Come here.”

Elias was happy to obey, wrapping a hand around the back of her neck to kiss her, taking his time to explore her mouth. He nestled between her thighs, painfully hard at her entrance. Every moment he spent kissing her, she grew more insistent. Her voice cracked against his mouth.

“Now,” she pleaded. “Now, please, please.”

“Soon,” he said, staying as immobile as he could, while she shifted and came perilously close to taking him in. A groan broke out of his mouth, but still he hovered, just the tip of his shaft throbbing against her. She looked a bit frenzied.

“Elias, I want…”

“I want your name,” he said. “Your real name.”

“I… oh, I…”

He stared down at her, the eyes that seemed so sober in the light of day now blazing with heat. He moved his length against her, relishing the sweet torture and the way she bucked in need. She was magnificent and she belonged to him. He was hers just as certainly.

“My name is Elias Alistair St. Cyr Addison and I am the Duke of Lennox, and I have a lot of courtesy titles that I shan’t make you endure now. I want
you
. Not Josephine Grant, not the bluestocking… you. Your name, madam.”

She reached up and wrapped her hand around his neck, into his hair, drawing him into a measured kiss. He entered her with that movement, sheathing all the way to the hilt, and she arched with a whimper.

“Analise,” she confessed hotly into his ear, as if the word were being wrenched from her. “But call me whatever you want.”

“Analise,” he repeated, lost to the feeling of her surrounding him, being inside of her. “Ana.”

He muttered it into her neck, marking her with her name as he thrust forward, at first taking his time, teasing her with the slowness. Her fingernails clutched his back as he moved in her, gaining speed from his sheer need to take her. Her legs wrapped around his back as they fell into a rhythm, the same rhythm they had been weaving with words since they met. He sagged, burying his face in her shoulder, his hips rocking back and forth feverishly. He was unable to hold himself up anymore as he found his release, explosive and sightless, on the lovely sound of her true name.

After a moment, he sank back against the pillows, pulling her against his chest.

“And your surname?” he grinned, his breathing still not recovered.

“Do not push your luck,” she whispered, wrapping more tightly around him.

“Just tell me, Ana, for goodness’ sake, you know I will find out.”

“Quail,” she admitted.

“Analise Quail,” he pronounced with satisfaction. “The woman I adore.”

He felt her turn to peek up at him in the dark, but he did not open his eyes nor try to mask the placid smile he wore. He had an arm around her like a bolt of steel. He would not let her get away, he resolved. Frost was right, probably for the first time in his life.

“What is your middle name?” He opened his eyes a slit, showing her a line of glittering black amusement.

“Edith.”

“Gads, horrible,” he grinned, stroking her hair. “Does not suit you.”

“Oh, what, Elias Alistair St. Cyr Addison is any better? Affected, dear.”

“I am a duke,” he sniffed.

“Are you? I had quite forgotten.”

“Lovely,” he exhaled. He scratched her back, unable to keep his hands from moving over her creamy skin. He relished the feel of their bodies against each other, with no artifice, and repeated her “new” name to himself like a mantra. “I would love to forget that I am a duke. You will feel the same when you are a duchess. I suspect you will hate it for a while, or no—come to think of it, there will be so many things for you to control that I would be in danger of losing you to management of the estate and ambitious charity endeavors. We should schedule an hour at the end of the day, before bed, for brandy and conversation.”

“Elias,” she said, sobering. “You must stop this nonsense.”

“Analise,” he growled back, loving how the effect of her real name shook her. “No more of this. I will sooner marry a goat than any woman other than you.”

“In the afterglow of a tryst.”

“In the light of day as well.” He tightened his arms around her. “Do not cheapen what is between us. What do you think about moving to Oxford with me? After Alessandra makes her debut, of course. I
really do not want my seat in bloody Parliament, spending the rest of my life arguing with old men. It is not unprecedented to give up the mantle. We may stay in London during the Season, but really we have choice of my estates. The one closest to Oxford would allow me to continue my studies and perhaps you could…”

“Eli,” Ana said, pulling the blankets around her. He briefly mourned the sudden demureness, but then he saw the look on her face. “Stop. You are lovely, and that was lovely, but there is still… another matter we have to discuss.”

“Yes, the matter of Mr. Digby and the Dove. I know you usually do not appreciate my meddling,” he said gently, “but while you were bathing I took the liberty of informing your girls and Thackeray of the danger. I have put a watch on the Paper Garden. I do not think that Digby will be quick to retaliate, however, having been bested by—”

“—a duke,” she finished. “I know. The advantage of your title will likely save my life.”

She turned back to him, her heart absolutely in her eyes. It rendered his in half to see it. He held in a breath, feeling that she was about to let him in. Finally.
My Analise
, he repeated in his head like a mantra. She turned back to take both his hands in hers.

“Eli, what I am doing at the Dove, I have done without the benefit of a title. I gave up any ties I had to the nobility when my mother and I left for Scotland. When I returned, I took up the management of the Paper Garden, which was a gift from my father to his mistress. Her name was Josephine Grant. She had no family, and so it was fairly easy for me to pretend to be her heir, a touch more difficult to destroy the public records once I had convinced the solicitors that I was her daughter. What I did not know then was that my father had left a mound of debt tied to the Garden. Miss Grant had never been able to pay them off, but the writs still survived. When I began using her name, they found me. It was all I could do to keep my head above water when
I found the position at the Sleeping Dove. I did not want to sell my body, thought I could not, but playing the piano was a talent I acquired during the education of my youth.”

Elias did not even move, afraid that it would stop her talking.

“My father—he was a baronet, I may as well tell you—dallied to the point of notoriety in Staffordshire. It ruined my mother’s life and all of our reputations. At the Dove, I saw a parade of men like him, going through woman after woman with no regard for their well-being. I wrote the book. Every woman in the Dove has to rely on these horrible men to earn money for food and to have a roof over their heads. There is not another option available to them… so few are the occupations that women can pursue. What’s worse, they have no hope of education by which to make their own ways in the world. Is this fair?”

He shook his head.

“No, darling. It is not.”

“Writing the book did not seem enough. When I found out that Mother Superior was selling girls to groups of nobles, I started employing some of the ladies, so that they could cut down on their time at the Dove or leave it altogether. I taught some of them to read. They stayed with me until they could find some way to support themselves. If I had not given them shelter, they would have likely joined the ranks of the women Mother Superior sold to the highest bidder. I believe she is pawning them as pets, or worse, there are whispers that she used to deal with Dashwood’s Hellfire Club. What she does—she
does
, Eli—is sell girls to peers who will pay to do whatever they wish with them. I cannot think too long on what happened to the unlucky ones.”

His limbs were working now, so he pulled her toward him. Elias settled against the pillows, enveloping her, hoping that it was reassuring. In reality, he was burning with anger at Mother Superior and her atrocious business.

“They should not be able to get away with this.”

“But… you know why, do you not?” She looked up at him, her gaze hard, as it must have had to be to endure all the years she spent at the Sleeping Dove. “You are a brilliant man, Elias, surely you do. The men that Mother deals with are—”