Gentlemen Prefer Mischief (8 page)

Over him. Yes, it was awful and she wished so much that she hadn’t. But she couldn’t admit to him how painful the experience had been—it was far, far too private. “I was merely young. It’s not a crime to… have dreams.”

As she said these vague, easy words she didn’t mean, the kind of words with which one might comfort a fussy child who’d failed at some endeavor, something shifted inside her, an assertive rising up of longings she was used to ignoring.

His eyebrow went up skeptically, as if he didn’t believe her. “Then you won’t mind if I read this? You’re not ashamed?”

Oh yes, she was. Terribly ashamed of all those things she’d written. But she was also very, very tired of the shame she felt over that book, over her younger self, over every little misstep she took that she told herself was a mistake. She was sick of the hard inner voice of judgment that was always with her.

How
much
had
he
read?

Still not looking up, he said, “I’ll ask again, since you avoided answering before: What is going on in my woods and whom are you protecting?”

He was doing it on purpose. Awful, skilled teaser that he was, he knew that the sight of him looking at her journal would be excruciating. He casually turned another page, and she contemplated rushing across the room and simply grabbing the book from him. And discarded it. She’d had years of living with her brothers to get better at keep-away, and a direct assault had never once been successful. Also, he was far taller than she was.

She forced herself to sound surprised. “I?”

He glanced up, his eyes glinting at her. “Oh, would you just confess the details and get it over with, Teagarden?”

Of course she couldn’t do that—it was Nate’s secret, and a dangerous one, too, for him. No, she’d have to be creative if she were going to get her journal back.

She took a few steps closer to him.

“So… I smell good to you.” She made herself chuckle, which wasn’t terribly hard because she felt giddy and off balance. “Or is
good
how you would describe the exasperating scent of violets?”

Was she witless, to be flirting with him like this? And more importantly, was it working?

He finally looked up from the book, which he held open at his chest. “Stop trying to distract me.”

Very well, it wasn’t working. Or at least, not that he would admit. But now that they were standing closer, she thought his eyes lingered on her face. She gave him her calmest look while inside her heart was whirring. He closed the journal to her vast relief, but he didn’t put it down.

“I’ve remembered,” he said, “that there was a family rumor about a treasure buried in those woods. I always thought it was nonsense, but now I’m beginning to wonder.
Is
this all about a treasure buried on my land? And if so, is your accomplice thinking to take it? Because I’m sure we won’t have to have a conversation about how wrong that would be.”

With each word he said, her heart raced more with worry for Nate. Hal was too suspicious and too clever. She needed to change the subject before he probed any more and tripped her up somehow—and she had to get her journal back.

She moved closer purposefully, hoping to count on the element of surprise. She stopped a few inches from him and, holding his gaze with hers, made a quick grab for the book. But his reflexes were too fast, and in an instant it was high above his head, at the end of one of those endlessly long arms.

He laughed. “Not very original, Lily.”

It wasn’t, and she did need something original, something he would never expect her to do.

She let her eyes wander to his chest, to the mother-of-pearl buttons on his forget-me-not tailcoat. With a slow, deliberate motion, she put her fingers on the top button.

He was looking down at her, but he didn’t stop her or try to move her hand, and she undid the button.

She snuck a glance upward and saw that he hadn’t lowered his arm, or maybe he had a
tiny
bit. Her glance took in his look of surprise before she returned to the close examination of his buttons. She was shocked at herself as well, on the one hand. On the other… she thought of all those times she’d allowed herself to fantasize and write and draw when she was younger. She’d already imagined doing something so bold as this to him, and paid for those imaginings in shame. He’d already read at least some of them. What did she have to lose by actually
doing
them?

A whiff of leather hung in the air about him, from his ride over doubtless, and that dry and woodsy scent of his soap that made her think of the heart of the forest. An ought-to-be-illegal scent that certainly wasn’t putting her on the path to prudence, because while he watched her, she undid his next button. There were three, and as he was standing still and silent, one arm at his side and the other raised with her journal in his hand, she undid the third button. His tailcoat shifted open.

“What are you doing?” His voice was husky.

“I… hardly know.” She gave herself permission to slide the flat of her hand under the opened front of his coat. He wore a dark blue and white striped satin waistcoat, and beneath its smooth cloth and that of his shirt she felt the muscular contours of his chest. He was hard and warm and alive under her hand. She moved upward slowly and felt, with a jolt of wonder, the beating of his heart, a strong thudding against her palm.

She didn’t notice the moment when the arm over his head came down to join the other one in pulling her against him, but as soon as she was in the circle of his arms, her senses elevated to a new level of
him
. It felt extremely good. She thought she could stand there in his arms for a long time.

Remarkably, some few of her wits remained unbefuddled, and these alerted her to the hard contours of the book now pressed against her back. But most of her attention was on all the places where her body touched his.

“Lily Teagarden,” he said, his voice low and soft. He leaned over to put his mouth to the skin where her shoulder met her neck and dragged his lips against her, and her breath caught. His lips made their way upward along her neck, leaving a moist trail that he teased with the almost unbearably sensual heat of his breath as he hovered over her. “You surprise me.”

She was surprised, too. Surprised to find that she was standing in his arms and that suddenly all she wanted to do was surrender. To
him
.

This shocking awareness brought her to her senses, at least enough that she could act. Slowly, incrementally, she let her arm drift behind her hip, where the journal was pressed. She held his attention by pressing her cheek against the side of his face as he worked his maddening mouth up under her ear. Her knees had almost turned to jelly by the time her fingers finally closed over the edge of the book.

With a quick, sharp tug it was in her hand, and she stepped away from him with a wobble. Before he could take it back from her, she pulled the bodice of her gown away from her chest and jammed the book down in front of her breasts.

She’d outfoxed him.

He’d come to her room in search of the book, feeling justified in doing so as she’d already been in his bedchamber. Once she’d arrived—as he’d hoped she would—he’d thought to tease her with the book, though to what extent he’d not planned.

But now his heart was pounding. This wasn’t just playful teasing, it was sexual play, and she was far better at it than he would have thought she’d be. She’s a tart, aging virgin, he told himself in an effort to damp down his lust.

She’s not that old
. Perhaps twenty or twenty-one, though her manner was often older, like that of a spinster schoolmistress. But what she was actually, and especially compared to him, was fresh, and untouched, he’d wager, by any actual
experience
. As pure as a white lily.

Looking at her as she stood there, her bodice absurdly shaped with the journal stuffed down it and her pretty pink mouth curling smugly, he was charmed and vexed in equal measure, and he decided that in battles with Lily from now on, all was fair.

“Well,” he said. “That’s twice you’ve used your body against me to gain advantage.”

That brought bright color to her cheeks; they reminded him of creamy, pure camellia blossoms. The sight of pink spreading over them, and the awareness that they must be warming, was startlingly erotic.

“I… hmm,” she murmured, as if she’d been choked by his blunt words. He chuckled darkly and stepped closer so that he was almost touching her.

“You wish to say that you’re not accustomed to using your body to your advantage?”

“Of course not,” she said hoarsely.

He leaned in so she could feel the heat of his skin brushing her cheek. Her violet scent teased him. “But perhaps you have
imagined
it?”

“No,” she started to say, but he didn’t need an answer, and he stopped her mouth with a kiss.

Such a soft mouth. Young, unspoiled lips. A small, delicate tongue that had surely never uttered curses or gossip, or ever shouted in despair. He suddenly wanted to drink her in.

Lily was amazed: Hal’s lips were on hers—he was kissing her! She was being kissed!

Her
first
kiss
ever.

A whisper of a kiss, as light as the wings of that butterfly she’d imagined him to be. But a kiss, definitely. Her suddenly girlish heart was beating fit to bursting from her chest with the nearness of him. With the feel of his mouth against hers. So new… a marvel.

His lips lifted and hovered and pressed, barely there, against the bow of her top lip, as though he had all the time in the world. She wanted him to have it, and to spend it on her. His lips brushed ever so lightly against the corner of her mouth. So tender as it was, his touch felt like an affectionate exploration, and she didn’t care that affection was unlikely; she wanted only to accept what he was doing and not think about it.

Her bottom lip felt neglected, and he seemed to know this because he dipped his lips lower, as teasing as a whisper whose words she couldn’t quite hear. His mouth parted just a little against the fullness of her lip and tugged at her with moist friction. Hot yearning raced through her.

In a distant corner of her mind she acknowledged that he was very skilled. That he knew exactly what to do, that some of what he was doing to her was probably
tactical
in some way, to gain some advantage over her. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about that, or about the murmuring inner voice that wanted her to know she shouldn’t be kissing him.

He ran the tip of his tongue slowly over the fullest part of her mouth, and her lips parted and he nudged them farther apart with his. The warmth and wetness inside his mouth was a revelation, a sensation she could never have imagined, simply because it had to be experienced. She was struck with this: how could you ever
know
what you hadn’t experienced? You could yearn to experience it, and the yearning could be an experience in itself, but you couldn’t
feel
it. She knew that now, was being taught it in every slow, knowing exploration his mouth made of hers.

His tongue stroked hers softly, and she stroked him back, wanting more, wanting whatever he was going to give her.

She settled her hands above his elbows and ran them up the outsides of his arms, amazed at the hard curves of muscles beneath the fabric. Amazed… she was amazed by him, by the experience of kissing him.

His hands moved to either side of her jaw, holding her steady for his kiss. Hot on her skin, they slid down her neck, their incremental journey making flames of desire lick her. He reached the tops of her shoulders and lingered there, his thumbs stroking the bare skin of her clavicle, exposed just above the high, scooped neck of her gown.

His mouth traveled along her jaw, depositing shivery little kisses on a path to her ear. “Teagarden,” he murmured, “you’ve turned out so beautiful.”

The shock of his words was how much her heart thrilled to hear them from him. They were like a strong liquor, and she only wanted more. She clutched the fabric of his sleeves, unbalanced and urgent and thrilled.

Pressed tight against the stiff cover of her journal, her breasts felt fuller as they strained against the book and the taut fabric of her gown. His hands traced the outside curves of her breasts and shaped their contours with his fingertips.

Hal could almost feel the thorny wall Lily kept raised around herself falling away. Here was Lily softened by desire, and the sight, the feel—the sound of her little pants—was nearly unendurably erotic. He rubbed the sides of her breasts, pressed plump by the book in her bodice, a crazy mix of reverence and lust boiling up in him.

A whimper escaped her as his fingers found the edge of one partially crushed nipple and teased it with a fingernail. He traced the slender curve of her waist and the swell of her hips, their kiss turning wilder. Moving his hands lower, he cupped her sweet bottom, and they both gasped when he pulled her against his stiffened cock.

A little shocked sound hummed from her mouth into his, then sighed into a moan. Her hands slid along his shoulders and touched his neck—small, slim, nimble fingers that knew their way around yarn. Their questing touch on his earlobes—his earlobes, for the love of God—only made him ache more.

Wanting nothing but to pull up her skirts and explore all the dark mysteries she kept hidden, he was more lost to her with each moment. She was like an oyster, craggy and hard with graduated layers of shell, but inside soft and glistening and a feast for the senses. And the pearl that he now dearly wanted to discover…

He had not, thank God, entirely lost his mind, though he intuited she was intoxicated enough with the adventure of her first foray that she might want and allow anything.

He reluctantly moved a hand from her arse, up her straight back, and around to the front, not allowing himself to linger over those maddening slim curves. Smiling a bit against her mouth, he stroked his fingers along the tops of her breasts, and she pressed against them, not realizing that he’d changed his immediate goal, however reluctantly.

Lily, her senses alight as they’d never been in her life, didn’t at first realize what Hal was doing. And then, with a cruel stab of disappointment, she understood what he was reaching for.

The awareness that he’d had a different goal the whole time she’d been in his arms was crushing, and she stepped back fast, away from him.

“I should have known.” Hurt disappointment gripped at her, but she pushed it away and stoked anger instead—anger at him, yes, but more at herself for indulging her feelings. She crossed her arms hard and the book dug into her chest, and she was glad for the physical discomfort. She never should have let herself want him.

He didn’t say anything, just stood there, the open front of his tailcoat reminding her of her idiocy.

“Why?” she said, hating how husky her voice sounded. She swallowed against the lump forming in her throat. “Is it that you just had to tease me again?”

“Actually, that wasn’t the kind of teasing I initially had in mind. But come,” he said, doing up his buttons, “you’re not angry, are you, over a little playfulness?”

She closed her eyes, trying to collect herself, wondering how she’d convinced herself that kissing him was a good idea. She’d slipped up, lost her way, and she needed to atone for that somehow, to silence the part of her that felt so ashamed at how much she’d wanted him.

She forced a coolness into her voice that she didn’t feel. This knave of a man had just shown her a new and enchanting side of life, and now she must turn away from it. “I don’t know what happened, but this was my fault. I assure you it won’t happen again.”

He was brushing his hands down his front, smoothing the cloth, returning himself to his usual polished condition—she kept her eyes from the fall of his breeches—and he looked up at her.

“Fault? Assurances? It was only a kiss, Lily. In which we both participated. No one was harmed by it.”

But she did feel harmed by it. It had been far more than a kiss, even if essentially nothing had been transgressed, and she felt unbalanced and muddled, and she hated to feel that way. She hugged the journal tighter against herself.

“
Why
do you want my journal? I can’t believe it’s really so interesting to you.”

He shrugged, though something about his eyes made her think he didn’t feel as lighthearted as he wished her to believe. “It was just play, each of us taking the journal back.”

“That’s all you’re ever after, isn’t it? An amusement for the moment, another folly. Something to kill the boredom of having everything you want or need already.”

He just looked at her for several moments. “There’s no need to be so harsh.”

“Of course there is. I don’t—I don’t
do
things like this.”

“You mean like kissing men in your bedchamber? Is there a set of rules?” he said, then cocked his head. “There is, isn’t there? Rules you’ve made for yourself: Things I Shan’t Do, or How I Shall Keep to the Way of Righteousness.”

It was so foreign to her, this carefree way of behaving. “Is nothing sacred to you? Or of enough value that you would practice restraint?”

“Certainly there are things that are important to me. But making myself feel bad over kissing a willing woman isn’t one of them. Passion is part of life, Lily. Or can’t you admit that?”

That word made her uncomfortable.
Passion
. How could he speak it? It was so embarrassing. It was unruly, it was earthy, it spoke of the way she’d let herself go when she was sixteen and writing in this stupid journal pressed to her chest. “Stop using that word.”

“Why? Is
passion
too much for you? How about passion for books? Is that allowed? Diana has a passion for gardens. I’ll wager you have one for yarn.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous.”

“Well, you felt strongly enough about your shawls to come to Mayfield and ask for help. They’re important to you because you make them, with a lot of care and, I’m willing to bet, a passion to get them just so.”

“I…” Her voice was dry, a speechless wisp. He’d stolen her words with his twisting talk of passion, with the way he was framing her as a woman she didn’t recognize, and the way he was making free with her secret shawl work. “It’s not the same.”

He laughed. “It’s not, and yet, it is. It’s about letting yourself go, isn’t it? Giving in. Investing yourself entirely.”

He was right, she did have a passion, but it wasn’t for yarn, however much she enjoyed making those shawls—it was a passion to do something of worth. But how could she admit that to him, a man who might laugh at her dreams? Yet suddenly, she felt so goaded that the words came spilling out of her.

“Do you want to know what I care about? I care about the children of Highcross, the ones whose families can’t afford shoes and horses and tutors and even food sometimes. How can I care about my own
pleasure
when people are lacking so much?”

He sucked his teeth, quietly watching her for long moments. She couldn’t believe what she’d just said, how bald it sounded—and yet it was also true.

“You’re using the money you make from the shawls for somebody else, aren’t you?”

She crossed her arms. How had she come to be admitting her most deeply held cares and beliefs, and to such a shallow man? But suddenly she was so tired of the secretiveness, especially over something that she
knew
was good.

“I’ve been selling the shawls I make to earn money to establish a school for the village girls,” she said defiantly. “For girls who would otherwise know nothing of life but caring for other people, doing their sewing and cooking and cleaning. There, are you going to laugh? Will you expose me for being in trade?”

“Of course not,” he said quietly. “There is nothing I would mock in what you are doing. It is very good.”

Something turned over inside her at the kind, serious way he received her words. A yearning something that made her want to embrace him.

“I would only suggest,” he continued, “that amid all the charity you feel for others, you develop some for yourself.”

She frowned. “What are you talking about? I have a rich life, everything I need.”

He lifted a hand and brushed it against her cheek. “Thou dost protest too much. You are wise about many things, Lily, but in some ways you are very, very young.” And he walked past her and quietly through the doorway, leaving her—calm, reasonable Lily—wanting to scream.

What did he know about wisdom, a man who wasted his money on follies and rode horses drunk and read her private journal with no remorse and laughed too much?

She jerked the journal out of her bodice and sat down on her bed, her lips still burning from kissing him and her whole being overcome with fractiousness. She was furiously aware that her room now felt empty as it never had before.

What had happened to her? Somehow he’d left with the upper hand, never mind that the journal was in her possession. And she
missed
being in his arms—in the arms of a man who used his time and considerable funds pursuing pleasure and diversion. And even that—her idea of him—seemed askew now as well.