Cheryl Holt (8 page)

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” As if he’d
hurt
the accursed nuisance. How could Ian conceive he would?

“She isn’t some jaded doxy from town. She’s a chaste, honorable gentlewoman.”

“Chaste!” he scoffed. “She is no virgin.”

A virgin couldn’t have had the skill to kiss like she did. With full engagement of hands, tongue, and body. His balls wrenched on recalling how lusty and bawdy the interlude had been.

Kissing Emma Fitzgerald had been thrilling, intriguing. She put her heart and soul into the embrace, relishing
the episode in a way his other lovers never had.

He regularly wallowed in carnal activity, but it had grown so tepid and routine. When had the newness and excitement worn away? When had he last kissed someone—and really meant it?

Since he generally paid for his pleasure, the foreplay leading up to the ultimate act was a waste of energy. Why delay gratification with frivolous, feigned ardor? His paramours weren’t consenting to gain physical satisfaction. They were in it solely for the cash they could earn, so why pretend it was more than an uncomplicated business transaction?

“Don’t you dare pursue that asinine contract you signed with her.”

“After her shenanigans, she’d deserve it if I did.”

“She’s desperate. You’re ousting poor people!”

“They’re malingerers and—”

“You can be such a prick!”

He and Ian rarely quarreled, and the testy comment set a spark to John’s temper.

Though his anger was immature and unreasonable, he bristled at having his competence maligned. His whole life, he’d had to listen to his father’s harsh criticism that he’d never amount to anything, that he had none of the necessary characteristics to be a viscount.

His sainted, deceased older brother, James, was to have inherited the title, but he’d drowned in a boating accident when John was a child, and John had had to repeatedly hear how he couldn’t fill his dead brother’s shoes.

After having constantly been told that he was a failure and an imbecile, he’d spent two decades bolstering everyone’s low expectations until his conduct was ingrained. With his father’s death the previous year, the
responsibilities were his own, even though he hadn’t wanted them.

For as long as he’d been able, he’d avoided assuming his obligations, but he couldn’t keep dodging them. The fiscal situation was dire at all the properties, and he grasped what had to be done to correct their father’s mismanagement, was prepared to make the difficult choices.

Who was Ian to oppugn his abilities?

As Ian had resided in John’s home for the prior twelve years, and reaped quite an affluent standard of living due to the largess yielded by the Wakefield estate, who was he to complain about how John chose to salvage it?

“What would you suggest? That I cancel the evictions simply because she batted her pretty brown eyes at me?”

“I don’t give a shit what you do with your holdings,” Ian acerbically claimed. “It’s entirely your affair. All I’m saying is: Don’t maltreat her.” There was a dangerous pause, then he added, “Or I guess you’ll finally have to answer to me.”

What the hell was he ranting about?

Ian stalked off before John could ask him.

Irritated, hungry, hungover, he walked to the sofa and slouched down, sipping on his libation and contemplating his pathetic state: no genuine friends, no money in the family coffers, a brother who loathed him, a mistress he couldn’t abide, a purported fiancée who lied to herself and professed to be in love with him merely because her overbearing father demanded she be.

How had he ended up at such a pitiful juncture?

Voices floated down the hall, and he strained to make out who it might be, though he was positive that Ian was being his charming, gracious self and personally
welcoming Miss Fitzgerald into the house. Shortly, a solitary set of footsteps was briskly winging toward him, and he heaved a sigh of resignation.

Ian had extracted a petty revenge, giving Miss Fitzgerald specific directions as to John’s location, and in a few seconds, she marched into the library.

She was garbed precisely as she had been the morning before, same severe hairstyle, same drab dress, and he fleetingly wondered if she only had one. How sad for someone so fetching to have such scant opportunity for individual embellishment. If she’d belonged to him, he’d accouter her in red to accentuate the color in her cheeks, and he’d decree that, whenever they were alone, she have her hair brushed out and flowing down, and he’d—

“Wakefield, you’re drinking!”

“Yes, I am, Miss Fitzgerald.” Rudely, he tipped his whisky at her, then imbibed in a deep swig.

“Your companions are still on the premises, too! Your mistress is here! I saw her coming down the stairs.”

“Is she up and about already?” he flippantly inquired.

“You’ve violated every term of our agreement—and we haven’t even commenced!”

“There is no agreement.”

“Oh, yes there is!” She stomped over to him and snatched his glass, tossing the contents into the hearth. He was so astonished that he didn’t even object. Furious, she hovered over him, hands on hips, ferocious as any put-upon governess he’d annoyed as a lad. “I’m not about to let you worm your way out of it!”

“Miss Fitzgerald, I know I have a miserable reputation, but you can’t realistically presume that I would permit you to disgrace yourself into being seduced by me! Despite how noble your cause!” He strove to look conciliatory. “I was jesting.”

“I wasn’t! Your promises may not hold any value to you, but mine are sincere and earnestly made!” Flabbergasting him, she went to the door and turned the key in the lock. “We’re proceeding! Whether you want to or not!”

What on earth did she propose?

He actually suffered a frenetic moment when he worried that she was going to force herself on him. The notion was so absurd that he laughed aloud, a robust, hearty belly laugh such as he hadn’t enjoyed in ages, but his mirth faded when she sauntered to the windows and closed the drapes, tightening them so that no one outside on the path could see in.

With a smile as old as Eve’s, she advanced on the couch, and before he could register a protest, she climbed on top of him and straddled his lap. Her knees were balanced on the cushions, her thighs cradling his own. She rucked up her skirt and lowered herself so that her privates were in contact with his phallus, and his cock jumped to attention, swelling his trousers, as she temptingly shifted across it, then she leaned forward, breasts to chest, her lips inches from his own.

“I can stay for two hours, Wakefield, and we have so much to do.” She threaded her fingers through his hair, sifting through the curly locks at the back, then she bent down and initiated a kiss, her delectable mouth uniting with his, the impact electrifying and magnificent.

The woman was an absolute mystery, and he was stumped as to how he should carry on. He’d tried to humor her, he’d tried to warn her, he’d tried to frighten her, but nothing had succeeded, and he couldn’t fathom how to make her desist and depart.

As it was, her fabulous anatomy was pressed to his, setting off sparks in numerous erotic spots. His erection was so hard it was painful. Those marvelously enticing
lips of hers were molded to his own, yet he was sitting like a nitwit, inert as a marble statue, hands at his sides, and declining to participate as was imperative.

For once in his despicable life, he’d resolved to act the gentleman that birth and breeding said he was. He had no intention of encouraging her, or of progressing down the road she seemed determined to travel.

He would save her from her folly!

She licked across his bottom lip. “Kiss me back, Wakefield.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can.”

“This is wrong.” Had those words come from him? What was happening? In her presence, he was becoming a certifiable prude!

“You’re right, but we’re going to do it anyway.” She caressed his shoulders, his chest, massaging in languid circles.

“Don’t do that,” he ordered, but without any punch behind the command.

He took hold of her hands, halting the circular motions, but she linked their fingers together, in a dear manner, much as if they were adolescent sweethearts. Like a contented cat, she arched, thrusting out her breasts and rubbing them up and down, her aroused nipples poking at him in a way that incited his manly instincts.

“Imagine how grand it would feel to have my hands on you,” she said, breathless and eager. “To have my mouth on you. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Shocked that she would raise the possibility, he could only stumble around for a reply.

Was she insane? What man wouldn’t plead to have those ruby lips envelop him? What a lush haven she would be!

The image she painted, of her kneeling before him,
undoing his pants, slipping those slender fingers inside to manipulate and tease, was more than he could tolerate. He was a mortal human being, not in the habit of denying himself.

Restraint was stupid! Hadn’t he cautioned her as to the consequences if she persisted? Yet she was foolish enough to throw herself at him, to offer the most succulent of delights. He wasn’t about to resist.

Reaching for her, he took over the kiss, intensifying it, and she groaned her acquiescence. His hands roamed downward, to her buttocks, clasping the two globes and using his grip as leverage to stroke her across his raging phallus.

He was so ready! So fast! What was it about her that attracted him so? A brief kiss, and he was set to spill himself in his trousers like a callow boy!

Her adept fingers drifted down to his cock. She played with it, squeezing, pressuring it through the fabric, until he was vigorously flexing, rabid for the next, in a frenzy to be bared for her ardent assessment.

She unbuttoned his shirt, then blazed a steamy trail down his neck, to burrow her nose in his chest hair. Snuffling and rooting about, her tongue flicked out in blistering bursts as she scooted across and found his nipple, nibbling with her teeth, then sucking at it until he was squirming and writhing beneath her.

Why wasn’t he cooperating?

With a sudden urgency, he needed to have her stretched out and spread wide. He was frantic to impale himself, to pleasure himself at her expense, and he grabbed her hips to rotate her, to ease her off his lap so that he could assuage his masculine drives, but as he made the move, she pulled away, her lovely brown eyes scrutinizing his own. Dismay and consternation furrowed her brow.

“You’ve recently lain with another. I can smell her perfume on you.”

Amazingly, he was embarrassed and baffled, and he couldn’t recall ever being so at a loss as to what he should say. He blushed to the tips of his toes, feeling as though he’d been caught in an unaccountable, compromising peccadillo.

She was so appalled—so hurt!—that he’d had a lover. With the troubled way she was studying him, he was overcome by the ridiculous impression that he’d been cheating on her, that he’d been detected and needed to beg her pardon or justify his behavior.

He didn’t explain himself! To anyone! He was the Viscount Wakefield. His conduct and comportment were not topics to be bandied about, and others knew better than to reprimand him. Yet Miss Fitzgerald deemed it totally appropriate to voice an opinion on the amatory subject, just as he sat there, thinking he ought to be profusely atoning.

It was one of the most ludicrous, farcical moments of his life.

“Miss Fitzgerald, you can’t expect me to have—” He was too mortified to finish the sentence!

“But you knew I’d be here”—she appraised him, hoping to find a reason for the incomprehensible—“yet you didn’t have the decency to wash first. Have you no respect for me? As a woman? As a person?”

Her grievance was real, her insult authentic, and he felt like the cad he was repeatedly accused of being. Oddly, at witnessing her upset, he was ashamed. He was so accustomed to dissipation and intemperance that it hadn’t occurred to him to bathe—not that he’d believed she was about to arrive!

But still, he was used to lechery, and had indulged so flagrantly, and for so long, that he’d forgotten how
those with a more normal life might view his proclivities. As Ian faithfully reminded him, he could be a disgusting fellow. Sometimes, he acted so outrageously that he even offended himself!

“I’m sorry.” The apology slithered out before he realized he was going to utter it. “I truly didn’t anticipate that you’d deign to visit. I’ve been up all night, and I—”

“You never made it to your bed?”

“No.”

“Wakefield!” she gently chided, and her tender intonation did something to his insides, causing his heart to twist and expand as though it didn’t fit between his ribs. “I suppose you haven’t eaten, either.”

“Well—”

“All you’ve done is carouse and tipple? Since yesterday?”

“Yes,” he admitted. His demeanor, when considered through her eyes, left him contrite and sheepish.

“Honestly! You must take better care of yourself!” With a sassy smile, she inquired, “How will you keep up with me if you don’t?”

How, indeed?

With a kind of envy, he observed as she deftly arranged and rebuttoned his shirt, then sprang to her feet, nimble and energetic, equipped to take on the world and reform it to her version of how things should be.

There must have been a time when he carried on with such enthusiasm, but he couldn’t remember when. Many activities that he’d previously treasured had lost their appeal. Sporadically, he managed to practice at fencing, but other than that recreation, not much interested him beyond his vices.

She walked to the windows and yanked on the drapes, jerking them open as far as they would go. Sunshine flooded the room, making his eyes burn and his
head pound. “Miss Fitzgerald! Do you mind?”

“Not a whit,” she impertinently responded. “What’s your butler’s name? Rutherford?”

“Yes. Why?”

He was reclined on the couch, an arm flung over his eyes to shield them from the onslaught of daylight, when abruptly, she was hollering into the corridor.

“Rutherford, come at once. I need you.”

“Good God, Miss Fitzgerald. Are you trying to raise the dead?”