Danger Wears White (25 page)

“I don’t know, but I think not. My brother may be a mere viscount, but his wealth is considerable.” The smile faded. “We have not acted in accord, but recently we cleared the air. I’m not saying it will be smooth from now on, but our new understanding is growing easier for both of us.”

He gazed down at her, a question in his eyes, but she couldn’t tell what he wanted to do or ask.

He released his breath in a sigh. “I trust you, of course I do. Nick’s parents’ marriage was dynastic, arranged by our mother’s parents, the Duke and Duchess of Kirkburton. There was never any love between them. His father died just after Nick was born, and just over a year later, my mother married my father, Thaddeus Beaumont. As soon as it was decently possible. That was, and continues to be, a love match. My father loved my mother for a long time, but he was a mere Cit and she was the daughter of a duke. She earned her right to marry as she wished the second time by marrying Nick’s father. I was less than a year after their marriage, so but two years exist between my brother and I. Indecent haste, Hamlet called it. Not quite. My mother gave her late husband a year. Thaddeus tried to be a good father to us both, but Nick always resented him, and me.”

She touched his hand. “May I ask, do you—that is, are you full brothers?”

He gazed at her, sincerity in his eyes. “I’m not sure. Knowing my mother, I doubt it. The viscount was a sickly man when she married him, earlier bouts of illness weakening him. My mother was his last chance of getting an heir. My father stayed away during her marriage, or so I understand.” He smiled and touched her nose. “I was the favored child. I admit it freely now. Nick played tricks on me and forced me to take the blame for his wrongdoing. I received many a beating that should have been his, but I wanted my brother to love me. He never did. Or he didn’t want to. I—I’m not proud of the next part.” He bit his lip.

She touched his chest and traced her finger around his nipple. It hardened under her touch. “If you don’t wish to tell me, I’ll understand.”

He shook his head. “You should know everything about me. I want you to. You will understand why relations between my brother and me are not precisely sunny. When I was eighteen, he pushed me too far. We both fell in love, or thought we did, with the same woman. We fought a duel, and I pierced him in his shoulder, low down. By then I resented him bitterly, all the small hurts he’d inflicted on me over the years coalescing at that part. But that was no excuse to contemplate fratricide. When I delivered the killing blow and thrust my sword through his heart, I thought him dead. I panicked and ran off to join the army. I joined as a private, took the King’s shilling, and went where they sent me. I had served six months before my father tracked me down and bought me a commission.”

Brothers fighting over a woman? No wonder Nicephorus had flirted with her. He’d wanted to get his revenge. “But your brother isn’t married, is he?”

“The lady in question married someone else. She rarely comes to London, but when she does, I wonder if it was she or if our rivalry had to come out somehow and that was it.”

He stroked her from breast to waist, gazed at her nipple as it crinkled. “Knowing what I do now, I don’t think either of us were ever in love. She was beautiful, but she had very little between her ears. As a wife she’d have bored either of us within the space of a year. She was also helpless. She can’t hold a candle to your resourcefulness, my love. Or your beauty.”

Imogen tried not to show her reaction to Tony’s casual endearment. How did he mean that? Did he love her as she loved him? Courageous though he claimed her, she didn’t have that final piece she needed to ask him. His tones were matter-of-fact, as if it stood to reason that he would say that.

He’d fought a duel? “Were you in disgrace after the duel?”

“No. We never named the lady, and our seconds swore that the injury was the result of an accident.” He smiled ruefully. “She didn’t deserve the notoriety she received anyway, but it was a nine days’ wonder, soon over. Nevertheless, she accepted an offer from a much older man. She seems very happy with him.”

“Does she know what she did?”

He traced a line around her navel. “No. And she did nothing to deserve society’s opprobrium. Nick and I did it all. Now, with our new rapprochement, if I’m to become an earl, I would prefer to tell him before the matter becomes public. If he dislikes it—”

She lifted her hand from his cock and put it over his. “You must refuse.”

“If you don’t put your hand back where it was I will request that the earldom is changed to a marquisate or a dukedom.”

For a second, she missed the import of what he was saying. With a throaty chuckle, she did as he requested. He placed his hand over hers. “Like that. Firmer.”

She loved that he showed her, and she easily assimilated what he asked for. Gripping him harder and using a pumping motion had its desired effect, and he grew, hardened under her touch.

He rolled on to his back. “Would you do me the greatest honor of repeating what you did when we first made love?” The gleam in his eyes belied his formal tone.

Smiling in sheer delight, she sat up, enjoyed the caress of his eyes on her as she lifted her leg and straddled his powerful body. His cock jutted out, hard, the tip red and wet.

She recalled what he’d done for her once. Could she do that to him? The answer came as a resounding
yes
, if his moan when she licked that liquid from his cock head were anything to go by. Intrigued, she rolled the flavor around her mouth. Musky and intensely male with an aftertaste of salt. And an accompanying sound and hard jerk of his body. He hadn’t expected that.

Chuckling, she explored some more. She got the head into her mouth, but he was far too large for her to encompass completely. His fingers touched her shoulder and she glanced up. His blue eyes had turned to pure fire.

“God, Imogen, I don’t think I’ll survive this.”

He was forced to cut his breath short when she sucked, and then licked around the flange that separated the tip from the rest of his shaft. She cupped his balls, felt their texture, the soft bag with the two hard ovals inside. When workers on her estate had referred to them as “balls,” she’d thought they were round, but they weren’t. They were longer, like an egg. Although she took the greatest care, he still squirmed, and she discerned what he liked from the way his body leaped and jerked, as if in shock. He watched her, caressed her, so softly, but with trembling fingers.

And she did this to him. She was doing it, bringing him the pleasure he’d given her. Reciprocation was as delightful as receiving. Almost as good, but that feeling of soaring when he—ah yes, more liquid. She sucked, claiming it for her own. Everything, his taste, his abandon, it belonged to her and would to nobody else. Between them lay that unspoken pact, that this experience was for them alone, and in order to be so, in order to retain the perfect trust and sharing, it had to remain so.

This man had given himself to her today, and she had returned the favor. They had a lifetime to learn. She would probably need it if his several reactions were typical of him. His moans edged on to pain, but his touch remained gentle, until she tried that pumping motion he’d taught her. He writhed, almost pulling out of her mouth, and covered his eyes with one hand.

“I’ve unleashed a monster!”

She growled in mock response and gave him another playful lick. When she made a sound, it vibrated against him, making him extremely vocal in his response. He muttered imprecations and encouragement, one moment cursing her and the other pleading for her not to stop. Ever.

But when his balls tightened, he moved quickly, pulling her away with a cry. “No, no, I want to come inside you. You have me addicted to that, sweetheart. Ride me. Like your most fractious horse. Take me and ride me hard.”

Panting, she laughed up at him, eyeing his wet cock with fondness and delight that she had made him so hard, so needy. Such a big man, and she had reduced him to a pleading mess.

Pushing herself up, she slid up his body and dared to touch herself, sliding her fingers along her crease as he had done to ensure she was wet. Of course she was. Growling, he shoved her hand out of the way and did it himself, tweaking her clitoris, and then down to her opening, pushing two digits inside her with little effort. He moved them, wriggled them, and then withdrew. He touched something and she started with a jolt of sensation. “My goodness, what was that?”

“That, my sweet, was this.” Bringing his thumb into play, he grazed her clitoris with it, and at the same time did whatever he did inside her.

With a strangled groan, she closed her eyes as a sharp bolt of sheer pleasure shot through her.

“Now let’s see if we can do it with my cock instead of my fingers, shall we?”

So saying, he withdrew his hand and helped her to move so she hovered over his straining shaft. He steadied the thick column of flesh while she brought her body down onto him. When he breached her, she made a small involuntary sound deep in her throat.

“That feels wonderful.” He filled her up, completed her, although she hadn’t been aware of being half a person before.

Placing her hands on his chest, she gazed down at him. He met her eyes, his own open and aware. “My love,” he said, and this time there was no mistaking his words or putting them aside as a vague fondness. “I love you, Imogen. You are my one true love, and you always will be.”

“I love you, too.” It seemed a paltry thing next to his fervent declaration, but none the less true.

He accepted her words with a short nod. “Never hide from me. Never shirk from telling me what I need to know.” He put his hand over hers, the one covering his heart. “I need you, my truth, my beloved.”

“Yes. Don’t let me run away or do what isn’t right. My strength, my heart lies with you.”

“I will never give you cause to regret your decision, my love.”

“I know you won’t.” And she did. She could depend on this man, her rock, the center of her existence.

She lifted up almost quietly, easing his body out of hers, and then came back down, leaning on her hands to keep her balance. He watched, his attention going to the place where they were joined, but he did nothing other than keep his body braced for her explorations. This was for her, she understood that.

“Can you feel that place I touched inside you?” he said.

She shook her head, her hair, now completely unraveled from its night time braids, the unruly curls tumbling around her shoulders. “But it feels so good.”

Placing his hands on her hips, he adjusted her, moved her back a fraction, and rotated his hips until she gasped and froze. He smiled broadly. “Aha!”

Squirming down, he moved again and hit the same spot, his erection grazing past the extra-sensitive place until she tried to move, the sensations shooting through her far too much for her to take.

Firmly he moved her back. “No. Wait. Melt into it. Let the feeling take you over, don’t be afraid of it. I’ll take care of you, Imogen. Always.”

She trusted him to take her wherever he wanted to and keep her safe, so she did as he bade, even though the feelings were intensifying all the time, growing more insistent. She opened her mouth, moaned his name, and responded every time he moved inside her.

With one hand on her hip, he guided her movements, so she could still move up and down, riding him as he said, the movements becoming part of her. They flowed past her, her body moving easily and fluidly, the feelings of cresting excitement pushing past all her safeguards, every warning her body might give her that it couldn’t stand much more of this. She held on, kept moving, his words of encouragement bathing her in warmth.

Warmth became heat. Imogen threw her head back, gasping for air, cries emitting from her with every hard thrust into her body. They entered a world of their own, where only this action was important, where nothing else mattered a damn. If she didn’t find her culmination, she’d die. She was sure of it.

Internal lightning tore through her, taking her with it to a place where nothing existed except this, except them. The vicious slash took her again, the double shock rendering her helpless in the midst of the storm. She had to remember to breathe, to draw air into her racked body. But it came with such joy, a freeing of her soul that she would want this all her life.

Pressure on the nub told her he was touching her, and as she came down, he pressed, driving her to a new place, even more than before. When she thought intensity was done, it grew more concentrated, the white light so blinding she opened her eyes, staring at the elaborately embroidered and padded bedhead. It meant nothing to her.

Lowering her head slowly, her hair tickling her skin, every part of her ultrasensitive, she saw that starkness, the open honesty he showed her without stint. Her body clenched around his, and finally he let go.

Heat gushed into her. Wetness touched her thighs, such was the generosity of his libation. Glorying in the sheer physicality of their loving, she laughed aloud, her body still not completely under her control. She shuddered with the aftershock of another smaller peak, and then another, a thrill shivering through her.

He slid his hands over her hips, urging her down to spread her body over his. With their bodies still joined, he held her close, murmured to her. He pushed back her hair, tucking it behind her ears, and he kissed her, gently at first, and then deeper, licking into her mouth in long, lavish caresses.

Imogen flung her arm around his neck and held on, slowly coming down from the heights, held securely, her head resting on his broad shoulder, her body supported by his. He finished the kiss and smiled at her.

“I love you,” she said.

“A feeling that is more than reciprocated. I love you very much. Adore you. I can’t imagine my life without you as the center, as the heart of it.” He kissed her again, lingering over her mouth.

Overwhelmed, she responded, hearing his words with wonder and a deep sense of recognition.

“Do you think you’re pregnant?” he asked.