Addicted (26 page)

“Enjoy your ride. I trust that your activities this evening will not alter your plans to attend dinner with me on Friday.”

“Garrett—”

“Good evening,” he muttered before turning his mount around and tearing off down the path. Nodding goodbye, Wallingford galloped off after Garrett.

As she watched Garrett and Wallingford race along the path, their greatcoats billowing out behind them, she said on a strangled breath. “Take me home.”

“Why can’t you give in to what I see in your eyes, Anais?”

“I told you, people change.
I have changed.
”

“And along with that so have your needs? Your desires? Don’t deny what you feel. I see the same desire in your eyes as that night I made you mine in the stable. The hunger is there. The yearning is there.”

She knew it was. Knew she could not hide it and so she spurred Lady into a run, racing back to the stables, trying to outrun the man she feared she could never leave behind her. He wasn’t what she needed in her life. He wasn’t the right choice. Yet she could think of nothing but feeling him deep inside her. Even as she hated herself for hurting Garrett, she could not stop herself from desiring Lindsay.

15

Anais was struggling to free her boot from the stirrup when Lindsay’s strong hands wrapped around her waist, dragging her from the saddle. Her breasts brushed along his chest while she waited impatiently to feel her boots touch the ground. Instead of setting her down, he wrapped her leg around his hip and cupped her bottom in his hand, silencing her outraged gasp with his hungry, demanding mouth.

He was ferocious in his kiss, in the way he sought and captured her mouth. Not breaking the kiss, he stepped to the side, taking her with him until he pressed her up against the stable wall, tearing the cloak from her shoulders. Flinging it to the ground, he continued to kiss her wildly as he rubbed his tented breeches against the apex of her thighs.

Gasping for air between his demanding kisses, Anais felt his fingers seek the fastenings of her gown. With a mastery that stole her breath, he shoved the bodice away from her shoulders, revealing the thin shift she wore beneath.

She tried to release her death grip on his shoulders and cover
her breasts with her arms, but he reached for her hands and kissed a hot path down her throat. Releasing one of her wrists, he thrust aside the chemise, baring her swollen, sensitive breast. Greedily he fastened his mouth to her nipple, which was curled into a tight little bud, and sucked, pulling the tender flesh deep into his mouth until she could feel his tongue curling around it.

Anais cried out, a keening moan that came from some place deep inside her. His roughness, his commanding aura, called to all her secret fantasies. Her womb tightened in response to his hands and mouth, and arousal dampened her thighs. He felt it, too, he must have, for he raised her skirts higher and pressed closer, stimulating her with his pelvis as he broke the seal of his mouth on her breast and looked up at her.

“You’re aching for it as much as I.”

The embarrassing rush of her wetness directly against his breeches jolted her into awareness. She squirmed against him, not knowing if she wanted to run or push herself wantonly against the hard phallus that was pressing urgently against her sex.

Shifting his hips, he rubbed her—in the right spot—between her swollen sex so she could feel the shape of him combined with the friction of the material working her into a frenzy.

She moaned, unable to do anything but arch her back and rest her head against the stable wall, still trying to fight her desires. But her strength was evaporating and she could not even speak let alone gather the might to struggle out of his grasp.

“Touch me, angel.”

The haunting need she heard in his voice made her open her eyes. The need was there, shining in his eyes. The need for her body, the need for her.

Lindsay reached for her hand. Anais felt the contact of his face beside hers, the warmth of his breath caressing her cheek. “Touch me.”

With trembling fingers she grazed his cheek, watching her fingertips touch his sun-kissed skin that was warm and covered with the faintest dusting of stubble.

“I need your touch…” His breath was harsh against her ear and she felt the tips of his fingers glide down her throat and along the tops of her breasts. Sighing, she clutched his hair as he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked slowly, erotically, in a rhythm that was unhurried and sensual.

“Oh, God,” she panted shakily when she felt his finger slide up her thigh and over her garter until it reached the cleft of her buttocks. She was trembling in anticipation. She wanted his hands all over her, caressing her, loving her.

“I can make it so good for you. Let me, Anais.”

“Yes.” The word was a hushed whisper, her agreement issued before she could stop it spilling from her lips. She was at the mercy of her own needs now.

He unfastened the facings of his breeches, her hand slipped down between them, stroking his phallus as it parted the fabric and stretched against her hand.

“Do you ache for it?”

“Yes,” she answered on a shaky breath.

He brought the head against her curls, rubbing it slowly against her slick flesh. Their gazes were locked in a way that was far more intimate than even the way their bodies were touching. Their need—their souls—were exposed. Every aching desire, every thought, every inch of hurt was mirrored in their eyes.

“Invite me in, Anais. Invite me to join you inside your body.”

She felt strange, as if she were floating. As if the weight of the past months had magically been lifted from her shoulders.

“Come to me, Lindsay.”

Slowly he entered her, angling her hips forward and up so that the moonlight shining through the stable window illuminated their bodies. She watched in the silver glow, Lindsay’s body sinking into hers. His thick shaft glistened as he retreated before slowly pressing forward again. She had never seen anything more wondrous than Lindsay’s body becoming part of hers.

Over and over she watched him thrust into her. She heard her heavy breaths, knew she was breathing too heavily, too fast, and he looked up from their sex and watched her. Unable to hide her response, she looked away and raised her arms above her head so that she could wrap her hands around the beam at her back. Closing her eyes, she stopped thinking of everything except the feel of the rhythm of their bodies together.

So damn beautiful…
Lindsay kept saying the words over and over, chanting them as he watched Anais’s little quim sucking him into her body, milking him with its silky, tight walls until he could not keep up the slow, unhurried pace.

How wanton she looked with her round breasts, covered in a damp chemise, thrusting forward, bouncing with the rhythm of his hips. Her head was thrown back and her lips parted with each thrust of his cock.

The dance of cock and cunt enticed him and he thrust harder. She took him, telling him with her little whimpers that she was aroused and enjoying—no, needing—what he was doing to
her. As he watched his cock, thick and hard, fill her quim, he felt a primitive possessiveness steal over him.

Beautiful, tight cunt, he thought, feeling his seed shoot up from his testicles. He was going to fill it full, to give her all of him. He felt her quim tightening around his cock, milking it. She screamed his name and he thrust again, but this time he parted her slick folds and flicked her erect clitoris with his finger in time to his stroking cock.

Immediately she bucked against him. Pressing forward, she wrapped her arms around him so that she could bury her mouth in the collar of his shirt.

Milk me. Let me spend inside this beautiful tight cunt.

She stiffened, reached for his hand to stop his assault on her clitoris, but he pressed harder, ignoring the way her fingers clutched his wrist.

“Please,” she cried, her lips pressed against the bare skin of his throat, “please make this exquisite ache stop.”

He sunk his cock deep inside her as he continued to circle her clitoris. She was panting against his throat as she cupped his neck. Her free hand was gripping his shirt as her body began to jerk in his arms.

Her quim contracted in pleasure, increasing his, and he came, his seed rushing out and splashing deep inside her. It was the most exquisite sensation to feel himself spending everything he had inside her. And then he felt it, the hot wetness from her eyes as her tears trickled down her cheeks and on to his.

“You were made for me.
Only me,
” he whispered harshly as he buried his face into the crook of her neck, not caring if he appeared weak or vulnerable, for he was weak. Anais was his
weakness. “How beautiful you are during orgasm. How wonderfully perfect you are after it.”

She let him hold her for long minutes as their breaths slowed, but then she tried to push him away. He only held her tighter to him and pressed his erection, which was still hard, deep inside her. “We must forget what we’ve done tonight, Lindsay. You must let me go.”

Hysteria was slowly rising in her voice as the reality of what they had just done began to sink in. She needed to run, to get to her room and wash herself clean of his seed. Anais began to struggle in his arms, forcing him to break his hold on her.

“You want me to pretend that this never happened?” he asked, clearly perplexed. “You want me to let you go and forget about what you found in my arms? Forget how I watched your body taking me in?”

“Don’t—”

“No, Anais! Don’t you dare act like this was nothing to you. That you didn’t enjoy every second of this—that you didn’t need this—
need me.
”

“I can’t be with you!” she yelled, trying to right her reeling senses. She needed to think. Needed a plan to make things right, but she couldn’t think, so instead she raged at him. “Why do you refuse to listen? Why can you not accept that I cannot—that we cannot—be what we once were?”

“Why?”

“This—” she waved her hand between them “—was a moment of madness—a mistake—”

“Don’t you ever call what happens between us a mistake. That
night with Rebecca was a mistake. What we just did, the love we made, that was beautiful—too beautiful to regret.”

She looked away, afraid that if she continued to look at the pain in his eyes she would ruin it all by throwing herself into his arms and weakening once more. “I was wrong to have indulged myself in this. I weakened to temptation and I will take the blame. But you must know that it changes nothing.”

His eyes darkened. He was going to ask her why she couldn’t be with him after allowing him to make love to her. She would have to remind him that the love they shared was gone. That she had given her heart to another. And it would be nothing but a scandalous lie.

“Is…is this because of Broughton?”

She nodded, crying. “Yes.”

His grip slackened and she slid down his body. Her legs felt wobbly, but she flattened her palms to the wall and steadied herself. He must have seen the hesitation, the fear that flickered in her face, or perhaps he saw shame, for he reeled back and glared at her. “Christ, what hold has he over you?”

She should say it now. Confess. Repeat the lines she had rehearsed over and over. The words she was certain would turn him away from her forever.
I no longer love you, Lindsay. My heart belongs to Garrett. My body belongs to him…

“Whatever has happened between us can be worked out. It will take time, but it can work.”

“It can’t because I am going to marry Garrett, Lindsay. My heart belongs to him. My body,” she choked out, “belongs to him.”

“What are you trying to say?” He gripped her about her shoulders. “Have you been letting him inside you?”

“We have nothing more to say to one another, Lindsay. This was a need in the night. It is meant to be forgotten.”

She stepped away from him, but he reached for her wrist. “Tell me that my fears are not true, that you have not slept with Broughton, that you have not—” His words died, strangled in his throat.

“The truth, Lindsay, is that tonight meant nothing.”

16

“You had no right to invite him to Lord Broughton’s dinner party,” Anais muttered to her sister as they stepped over the threshold of Broughton’s front door.

“Are you Lord Broughton’s event advisor?” Ann snapped. “I had no idea that the guest list needed your approval.”

Anais glared at her sister. “You are putting words in my mouth, Ann.”

“If you must know,” Ann said with a haughtiness that would do a queen proud, “Lord Broughton made the suggestion that I might think of bringing someone. After careful consideration, I concluded Lord Broughton was absolutely correct. I do need an escort tonight.”

“What he meant was, should he invite Baron Wilton’s son, you pea-wit. He certainly did not mean for you to bring
him
along.”

Anais was a little firebrand this evening, Lindsay thought, his gaze straying to her. Lindsay found himself grinning, enjoying this little spat between sisters. He doubted Anais knew her
voice had risen so much that he could hear every word. Hell, he could almost read every thought running through her mind.

Lindsay knew unequivocally that his presence there tonight disconcerted her. The icy facade she had clung to after their dalliance in the stable had never cracked—not once—but tonight it was virtually crumbling into a thousand shards.

Was she worried he might spill the beans to Broughton? He thought of the immense pleasure he could derive by telling his rival such a thing. He would never do such a thing, of course. He was not out to harm Anais. His only goal was to win her back.

In truth he would rather eat glass than take a meal at Broughton’s table, but he needed to know just what lay between his old friend and Anais. What secrets were the two of them keeping? He had to know if there was any chance—any chance at all—that he and Anais might be able to have a future.

“Unhand me, Anais,” Ann muttered through clenched teeth. “Lud, you’re making a spectacle of yourself.”