One Night with a Rake (Regency Rakes) (15 page)

Georgette started to untie her wrapper.

“Not so fast,” he said. “There are some things a man likes to do for himself.”

“But I thought—”

“That I can’t wait to see you naked? You’re right, as always,” he said, taking over the job of unbelting and removing her wrapper. “But as much as I want you, I want even more for this to be good for you. So we must go slowly.”

“You’re sure?” She leaned against him and nearly ruined his resolve. “That doesn’t feel right. I think…fast would be good.”

“It is.” The urge to bend her over and show her just how good a hot, hard rut could be was almost irresistible. “But not the first time. Trust me.”

He struggled to hold her gaze and lost the battle. The swell of her breasts beneath her lacy night shift called to him. Under his scrutiny, her nipples drew into hard points beneath the thin fabric.

“You see, it’s not just a question of fitting the right parts together,” he said as he kissed along the top of her bodice. He let his fingers trail down her arms from her shoulders to twine with hers.

“Really?” she murmured. “I would have thought that’s the main point.”

His body cheered this line of thinking with a raging cockstand. But if he was going to talk her out of the royal duke’s suit, he needed to offer her more. “It’s meant to be a joining of spirits, as well.”

“A joining of spirits?” She laughed, then covered her mouth with her hand. Then all mirth fled from her face. “Is that what you told all the other women you’ve been with?”

“No.” It never would have occurred to him before. The mindless couplings of the past few years all blurred into a mass of tangled limbs in his memory. For the first time, he wished he didn’t have those images in his brain. He wished he stood before Georgette offering her as clean a slate as she brought to him. Then he’d be filled with only her.

Perhaps he could be in any case. If he loved her long enough, strong enough, Georgette would banish thoughts of any other.

He was a rake. A ruin. A cad who’d agreed to bring her shame in order to save his family from scandal.

But if she could somehow love him, it might be the saving of him.

He bent to show her how.

***

His kisses were absinthe. Poppy juice. Hashish. Not that Georgette had ever tried any of those highly addictive, mind-altering substances, but after reading lurid accounts of their use, she’d imagined their effects on numerous occasions. Her imagination hadn’t come close to the drugging effect of Nate’s mouth on hers. She was going all soft and liquid inside and couldn’t care a whit.

He encircled her waist with his big hands, snugging her close. The hard warmth of his body against hers made her feel cosseted and safe.

But she knew whatever else this madness with Nathaniel was, it was not safe. Not in the least. Her belly jittered as she waited for whatever came next.

Nate cupped her cheek, tracing her bottom lip with his thumb. The sensitive skin tingled. Then he started to unbutton her night shift.

Her skin prickled with self-doubt. What if he was disappointed with her?

He showed no sign of it as he lowered his mouth to her neck. His warm breath feathered along her jaw and tickled her earlobe.

When he straightened and looked down at her, his gaze lingered over her bared breasts. A smile spread slowly over his face.

“You have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?”

His words flowed over her like warm honey, heating every part.

The moonlight played a little trick of light, encasing him like an aura, glowing brightly for a moment. Then the glow faded along with his smile, and his deep eyes warmed to burnished cobalt. If she’d heard the rustle of leathery wings unfurling from his broad back, she wouldn’t have been surprised.

My
dark
angel.

He bent and claimed her mouth in rough possession.

She didn’t protest. Instead, she answered his kiss. Then he slanted his mouth across hers, tasting her, teasing her lips open. His tongue toyed with her and she made a little noise of impatience.

He drew back just a little. “We must learn control, Georgette.”

“It appears to me like you’re the only one who gets to be in control,” she said testily.

“Right now, I have to be,” he said with a catch in his voice. “But it’s myself I’m controlling. You can’t imagine how badly I want to throw you down and—”

“Why don’t you?”

A low growl escaped his throat and he bent to whip her night shift off in one smooth motion. Then he scooped her up and carried her to the waiting bed and lowered her into the feather tick. Nate lay down beside her, pulled her close, and plunged his hand between her legs to cup her sex.

Life roared inside her, shaking its fist at the retreating memory of the dead girl on Lackaday Lane.

He slid his fingers along her cleft, making her sensitive spot swell up to be stroked like a tabby arching her back. His mouth was at her breasts, suckling her hard. When he nipped her lightly, she cried out in aching joy.

She wondered briefly if this was only another of her vibrant fantasies. Perhaps she’d wake in a moment and find herself still in her own bed with her night shift rucked up to her waist and her body straining in helpless need.

But there was nothing imaginary about the way her nethers throbbed.

“What,” she gasped, “are you doing to me?”

“Loving you,” he said, his voice passion-rough. But speaking seemed to have settled him a bit because he slowed his relentless pace. He continued to stroke her, but not in a heated rush. He drew out the torment.

Georgette closed her eyes as his fingertip invaded her. She spread her legs to give him room to delve in and find that she was already wet and slick and aching to be filled. Then his blessed fingers pulled out of that empty place and circled her sensitive spot again, teasing and petting, whipping her into a stiff little peak.

“Hot and wanting,” he whispered. “You’re a goddess, Georgette.”

His mouth tugged at her nipples.

She was spiraling into that hot dark place again. His lips on her bare skin were both torment and delight. She groaned with need.

He rose up to plant fevered kisses on her neck, her jaw, the corner of her mouth, her closed eyelids.

“Make that noise again,” he warned, “and I’ll spread your legs and take you right now.”

“Do you promise?”

They rolled together in a tangle of arms and legs, kissing, stroking, straining against each other, skin on glorious skin. She felt him hard against her thighs, pulsing strong.

“Wait, wait.” She shoved against his shoulders and came up for air. “We haven’t…I mean, how do we…”

“What is it, woman?” His chest heaved.

“What if…I mean, there could be a…” She sat up. Looking down the fine length of his body to his swollen member, she nearly forgot the rest of what she’d intended to say. She was surprised to find she was panting shallowly.

“Could be a what?”

“A child.”

He traced a circle around one of her taut nipples, watching it with absorption as it drew even tighter. “Georgette, you’re trusting me to take your maidenhead. Don’t you think you can trust me with this as well?”

He bent down for another kiss, not as frantic as the last, but more insistent. One of his knees wedged between her thighs, pushing them open.

She didn’t fight him.

“It’ll be all right,” he said as he positioned himself. Just the tip of him entered her.

She throbbed, a deep, low drumbeat between her legs, but she narrowly resisted the urge to squirm down and take him in. She felt so
empty
, but she was still self-possessed enough to want reassurance on this most important point.

“Nate, I don’t want to be found with child while I’m still unmarried. I don’t want it very much.”

“You won’t be,” he assured her, sliding slowly in, hot and hard. He stopped his forward progress when he met the barrier of her purity. “I’ll never see you shamed.”

That was all she needed to hear. She draped her arms around his shoulders and squeezed. “I trust you.”

“Good,” he said. “This may hurt a bit.”

He thrust forward and filled her in a single rush. She gasped at the shock of it, but she expanded to receive him, stretched to the limit, swollen and achy. He held himself motionless, willing them to maintain control, but in her heightened state of awareness she could feel the blood coursing through him, throbbing with heat.

He was as primed as she.

Nate cradled her cheeks with surprising tenderness after that sharp rending. The shock of it had made her gasp, but then the sting faded. The emptiness retreated.

Not so the ache.

There was no going back now. Perhaps there never had been. From the moment she’d first seen him again, coming to her rescue there at Madam Bouchard’s disreputable brothel, Nathaniel had become both her secret hero and her darkest villain. He filled her mind and heart as surely as he now filled her body.

He drew a ragged breath. “Are you all right?”

“I will be.”

“There shouldn’t be any more pain.” He raised himself on his elbows to look down at her, his face taut with need. “Tell me if I hurt you.”

“You won’t.” She pulled his head down and suckled his earlobe. He began moving inside her and it was nothing short of a revelation. She loved holding him like that, wrapping herself around him.

Slowly he lowered his mouth to hers and began a rhythm with his tongue to echo the thrust of his hips. She rose to meet him, desperation making her sob into his mouth.

The wanting was so keen, a knife’s edge from pain.

He smelled of leather and sandalwood and tasted of aged whisky, all smoke and peat. It might only have been minutes. It might have been hours. Time expanded and contracted around them as they moved together, skin on skin, with no way to tell where one left off and the other began.

Pleasure crackled like heat lightning along every nerve. Bliss swallowed her whole, filled her, pressed tight and overflowing into every crevice. She couldn’t hold another ounce of joy.

She didn’t know what the morning would bring. She didn’t care. Georgette decided she could die at this exquisite moment and count herself the happiest of women.

Then, all of a sudden, she sort of did.

Nate was in dire straits. Her inner walls pounded around him while her limbs bucked with the force of her release. He had to pull out. After he promised she could trust him, he couldn’t risk spilling himself into her.

She whimpered when he withdrew, but he swallowed it with another kiss. Then he moved down her body, kissing, kneading, licking.

Nate nuzzled between her legs, drunk on her scent, desperate to draw this loving out, desperate to sink into her sweet flesh and find release.

She chanted his name, arching herself into his mouth. He devoured her for a moment, only pulling back when he thought he detected the slightest pulse of a contraction in the soft lips of her sex.

His balls tightened in response to her need.

Without even realizing he’d done it, he found himself poised to slide into her wet channel once again. His cock urged him on.

He couldn’t seem to help himself. He had to be inside her.

He rushed in with one long stroke and she molded around him in a warm, wet embrace. To his joy, she wrapped her legs around him and crossed her ankles at the small of his back. Who’d have guessed his little virgin would take to rutting with such abandon?

His balls drew up into a tense mound, coiled for release. He held himself motionless, willing the urgency to subside so he could revel in the joy that was Georgette a little longer.

Only
a
little.

His heart pounded in his cock.

But when he looked down at her, at the soft gape of her mouth, the way her brows tented in distress, he knew he couldn’t keep her suspended so near release any longer. He had to let her go.

She pulsed once, squeezing him at the base of his cock with her slick inner walls.

He covered her mouth with his and flicked his tongue in, loving her with his tongue and his cock in tandem. She moved beneath him, urging him in deeper with little noises of desperation that threatened to shred his control.

A
little
longer, please
.

It was such a selfish thought, but she seemed to have heard him.

She turned her head away. “I can’t—”

He felt it start. Her insides contracted around him again, pulsing in waves. It was like being born, but instead of going out, he was trying to come in.

Pleasure, sharp as a blade, sliced through him, rending him soul and marrow.

Her whole body convulsed.

He bit his lip, trying to stop his body from emptying his seed into her. Pressure shot up his shaft and he jerked himself out before the first hot spurts began. Georgette glowed beneath him like a being aflame.

The world began pulsing. Dim. Bright. Dim. Bright. Slowly at first, then ever faster as his body strained against her and he poured himself out on her soft belly.

Georgette, oh my Georgie.

Her name wove through his brain like a half-remembered song. He wasn’t able to find the end of it, and it kept repeating in rhythm with his release. It got all tangled up in the joy of Georgette’s warm body under him.

“That was over too soon,” he murmured into her hair.

The last spurt escaped from him and his muscles went limp as a dead man.

“Well, you’re right about that,” she said as she stroked his head and neck. “It was over much too soon.”

Nate buried his nose in her hair and clutched her tight. He could scarcely believe his good fortune. She’d come to him. Now he only had to convince her to stay.

“That’s what you think,” he said, rising up to look down at her. “Give me a few minutes and we’ll start round two.”

Her laugh warmed him to his toes. Nate got up, wet a cloth at the small commode fitted with a ewer, and returned to wash her inner thighs gently. She’d given him more than her innocence. She’d given him her trust. He was determined to deserve it.

“Mmm, that feels nice,” she purred as he ran the cool cloth over her.

“I know lots of ways to make you feel nice.”

She grinned up at him. “Show me.”

He sank back down onto the bed, covering her with a hailstorm of kisses. There were so many variations on this randy theme. If he could only keep her here till dawn broke and the chambermaid came to clean the hearth for the start of a new day, she’d be his.

Permanently.

***

Georgette had dropped off to sleep at some point, sated and lethargic. She didn’t know what jerked her to full wakefulness, but suddenly her eyes were wide open and her ears pricked at any sound.

The moon that had brightened Nathaniel’s chamber earlier had set, throwing them into near total darkness. Only the soft glow from the banked fire allowed her to see the chest for his clothing along the far wall and the pair of chairs with a chess table arranged between them before the hearth.

Georgette turned to look at the man whose head rested on her pillow. Nathaniel’s face was in shadow, but she could imagine it in repose. The frown line between his brows would have relaxed. There’d be no tension in his jaw, and Nate would look far younger than his years.

She resisted the urge to stroke his cheek, to feel the stubble of his beard under her palm. The man had richly earned his rest. She wouldn’t disturb him now.

Instead she eased out from under the linens and went in search of her discarded night shift and wrapper. With an ear still cocked for sounds of others stirring in the great house, she dressed quickly.

Georgette supposed she ought to feel a bit saddened about losing her innocence, but instead a satisfied glow warmed her chest. She might still be facing a loveless match, but no matter what the future brought, she’d remember this night till she was dust. It was the night she’d come fully alive.

And she had Nathaniel to thank for it.

She padded toward the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

His voice seemed loud enough to wake the dead and she whirled to shush him, her warm feelings toward him dissipating in irritation.

“Do be quiet, Nate. What does it look like? I’m going back to my own room.”

He was out of bed and across the room to her in a couple heartbeats. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want to be found here, of course.”

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to his warm nakedness. “Stay, Georgette. It’s hours till dawn.”

She doubted that. Her sleep had been so deep and restorative, she felt as if she’d slept the clock around. Surely the sky would begin to brighten to pearl between one breath and the next. “No, Nate. I need to leave now.”

The hardness of his groin against her belly was making it more difficult for her to keep her resolve by the moment. She’d thought that ache between her legs had been fully assuaged, but it flared to life again.

He brushed her lips with his. “Would it be so terrible if we were caught together?”

She blinked in surprise. “What happened to your promise not to see me shamed?”

“You wouldn’t be. I’d do the honorable thing and marry you.”

But
only
if
he
were
cornered
into
it.

If he’d spoken a word of love, she might have given up, accepted the fact that her family was going to be bitterly disappointed in her, and followed him blithely back to his wicked bed.

But Nate hadn’t spoken of love.

In fact, all night long while he played his lover’s games on her willing flesh and did all those filthy, lovely things to her, things that made her cheeks heat and her body rouse afresh with remembered pleasure, he’d never uttered a single word of love.

Why had she not noticed that till now?

Now he spoke only of duty—and grudging duty at that. It would be “not so terrible” for them to be found together. If that wasn’t damning the idea of marrying her with faint praise, she didn’t know what was.

“I know better than to expect honor from a rake,” she said, trying to extricate herself from his arms, but he wouldn’t let her go. “I came into this room of my own free will. Do you intend to hold me prisoner?”

“We all choose our own prisons, my lady,” he said darkly. “Are you telling me you still want yours to be Windsor Castle?”

I’m telling you I don’t want to be
your
prison, Nate.

But she couldn’t say that. It would be tantamount to admitting that she wanted him when he clearly would only take her as his wife under duress.

“I’m telling you I want you to let me go. Now.”

He didn’t twitch so much as an eyelash, but she felt tension building in his muscles. She began to think he meant to cart her back to his bed and take her again whether she willed it or no.

A dark part of her was disappointed when he released her.

“Go,” he said raggedly. When she reached the door, his voice stopped her again. “Next time you have an itch, madam, kindly find some other willing cock to scratch it. But mind you do it quickly. I doubt you’ll have such freedom once you’ve become royal.”

His words were a punch to her gut. She didn’t mean anything to him. He was merely “scratching an itch.”

She fled from the room. She didn’t bother with stealth. She tore down the corridors and up the curving stairs, not stopping until she bolted the door to her own chamber behind her.

She wouldn’t even have cared if she’d been discovered at that point. All that mattered was putting as much distance as possible between herself and that hateful man.

Georgette leaned against her door because she was trembling too much to stand without support. She hugged herself to keep from coming apart.

During the delirious days when she battled with scarlet fever, death had drawn close. It hovered at the foot of her bed. It leered from the darkened corners of her room. But she hadn’t felt this hollowed-out emptiness, this sense that part of her had already died.

Until now.

She slid to the floor and wept.