Regency Rogues Omnibus (82 page)

Yet...

That was the whole point that she was half avoiding, while half strenuously convincing herself to accept. She had to have sex with Brynmore. Now! Before they went in. It was the only way that she would have a chance to convince the patrons of The Order about this act they intended to put on. And, if she were going to have bravado and pose as unaffected, then she needed to not dissect this, but just do it!

Kit turned toward the door to her bedchamber. Then, when she reached the door to Brynmore’s bedchamber suite, she stopped with her hand raised to knock. She had no idea how she was supposed to act, how she was supposed to go about this or how to initiate sex. Be that as it may, that was the point! She needed to get a handle on what she needed to do.

“And ... and, this will be like practice,” she muttered.

So she was just going to have to pretend. Also she had a feeling that it was past time to start because she could foresee large amounts of it in her future. Any other feelings she had she brushed aside, shutting the inner door on them for the interim. The conduct she was going to assemble was going to be the boldest action ever attempted in her life.

Brynmore turned his head to the knock on his door. He was sprawled, shirtless on top of the bed linens, with his hands propped behind his head. He’d been thinking about his plans, brooding and too restless with introspection to sleep. He still had his boots on with half an idea to take an early morning wander outside, to go anywhere to clear out and center his thoughts. Aye, he’d been brooding and restless, half the time fighting the persistent knowledge that Kit was in the bedchamber next to his. His quietly intense planning in the undercurrents of his mind had yielded a few answers. Too little for the amount needed, but it was a start.

Startled at the sound from the knock on his door, it blanked everything from his mind, except for the fact that it could only be one person who was knocking.
Kit.
Then, the facts of that knowledge flashed visions of her, wholly nude, right to his groin. “Bloody hell!” he swore under his breath, banishing the image to Hades as he stopped his body from instinctively lifting upright. Nay, he forced himself to lie still and play impervious male to this new and unexpected turn of events. He could not imagine what the lass could want past midnight, while the devilish male lust inside provided a thought. She wants you.

Brynmore grimaced at his inevitable baser side, as he called, “Come in, whoever you be.”

Through silted eyes, Brynmore watched the door open. His gaze first caught wisps of gossamer blue, until his sight took in the whole of what entered his bedchamber on bare feet. His cock instantly thumped and he felt his entire muscular structure tense with an explosion of lust, quickly followed by reins of restraint. He fought to remain lying unaffected on the bed, while his belly muscles rippled and his breath hooked for one long second. Only his eyes would not obey his restraint as he devoured the sight of Kit swaying softly into the room, wearing a seductive see-through fluffy night gown. It was see-through when she moved further into the room, stopping between the bed and the door, putting the light from the flames in the fireplace behind her. He could see the distinction of her legs leading upward to the succulent promise of the sultry cove between her thighs.

His gaze traced the shadowy thatch between, following the slender curve of her hips, up to the bottom of her breasts etched in half circles. Her breasts showing soft, but firmly shaped conical mounds, clinging outwardly in the see-through light blue material. Brynmore crossed his heavy knee-high booted feet at the ankles with a flummoxing of nonchalance as his gaze halted on dusky nipple circles and tips taunt and jutting.

In his peripheral vision he picked up soft buttercup-colored waves of short blond hair framing Kit’s comely oval face. He knew her lips were lush, her eyes smoky colored, but anxious, and the desires that made him a man shouted that she was here for
sex
.

He was lust-stung, but also stunned. Caught off guard by this advance. Perhaps, if he had one chance of thinking forthrightly, he could comprehend the reasons for Kit’s barely clad presence in his bedchamber past midnight. But his mind was latched onto dark, sweaty, and vigorous couplings. He was bloody lucky to still be lying on the bed and not leaping forward to consume Kit right on the floor.

“We ... we have to talk,” she said, with a voice that sounded half-whispered huskiness to him.

Talk!
Right,
he thought. “Do ye often want to talk to men while yer fairly nude in their bedchamber, lass?” Brynmore watched Kit’s right hand jerk, lift, and then press, palm down over her lower belly near the top of her mound. His upper lip curled as his inner thighs twitched with one heated tremor.

“I ... I,” she hesitated, and then she seemed to find a firmer voice. “Yes, for this I do,” she finished.

Well hell, Brynmore thought. All that left him with was a hard prick, still wondering what the bloody hell she was up to. He muttered a curse under his breath as he lifted upright and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He was amazed he managed to stop there with his boot heels making a soft thud on the plush rug laid out on the wooden flooring. As he moved, he watched Kit falter, stepping backward.

The chest of a bull rider or a weighty wrestler
was all Kit could think. She’d never seen a man’s bared chest as magnificent or appealing to her senses. Her gaze skittered from the molded mounds of sinew, covered like a pelt of fur with dark brown hair, up to Brynmore’s eyes of green-edged potency. She felt her body flush as if an internal moan of desire swept through her at the bridled lust shimmering in Brynmore’s eyes. She tried to catch her bearings. No man had ever looked at her like this before and she’d never gazed upon a man’s physique, his presence, which she wanted so much.

Except for the abundance of hair on his face and hanging loose just above his shoulders. That part of him between his incredible eyes and his brawny fit chest looked like a bristly bear. Her ardor did not really care, as images of rubbing naked all over him flashed through her mind. Kit shoved that aside, trying to retain control. She had to be strong, confident, and in control. Not a besotted fool in Brynmore’s hands. So she latched onto that bush of hair he had on his face to gain control, even as she was secretly amazed that she was able to pull off her words and manner.

“You need to shave,” she asserted, tilting her head in what she hoped was a seductive manner as she let one sleeve of her nightgown fall off her shoulder giving it a slight undulation, until it hung above her elbow.

“I do?” he smirked at her.

“If we are to have sex you do!” she blurted out. She could not believe that she was doing this.

Brynmore laughed once, outright and sharply, moving the mounded muscles on his chest. Kit’s temper flared instantly. “Sex?” he said. “If anything, we will naught but fuck, lass.”

The word he used struck like lightening in her mind, and then sizzled down through her body straight into her sex. Oh lord! This man would fuck. And a woman would feel it to her core, she thought. Instead, she struggled to act brazen and confident, running the tip of her tongue slowly over her lips, even though they trembled. She imagined only she was aware of the trembling and that he could not see it. However, something did affect him as she saw his gaze riveted to her lips.

“So you’ve realized that to fool The Order, we have to fuck now to gain some pretense of intimacy?” Kit said wishing that she had a glass of water to gulp. Nevertheless, she said the whole without a hitch, especially that one prurient word, while her hand slid caressingly over one hip.

“
No
,” Brynmore said, cutting the word sharply like the edge of a knife. Then he stood, walking toward her. It took every ounce of willpower Kit possessed not to retreat, but she stood firm, until Brynmore’s presence shrouded her with his heat and male scent. He stopped so close in front of her that Kit had to tilt her chin upward to look at him. Her mouth opened to argue, but his voice continued, stopping her.

“We’ll have to fuck like rabbits from now until then to fool anyone that ye are anything but a shy... Nay, sweet wife!”

Kit’s hand leaped upward and back gathering strength, then began to swing before she realized that she could be capable of striking anyone. It was pure, furious instinct! A flash reaction and Brynmore caught her hand before she could come in contact with his face. Yet her voice was not halted, as she angrily exclaimed, “How dare you insinuate anything about me! You ...
you
barbarous bear!”

He tugged her hand captured beneath his large paw and she toppled forward to land against his chest. “I’ll dare anything, lass, and you’ll let me! That is the point. And this fire you are showing, that is what we need. Tis more seasoned and worldly.”

Kit wanted to stomp on Brynmore’s foot ... or punch him in the gut. How dare he call her attitude sexually inexperienced and unsophisticated? Only other sensations were snatching her attention, like her lightly veiled breasts rolling against Brynmore’s chest. The heat radiating off him was incredible as his free hand landed on her bottom. A big hand with fingers splayed some right over the crease as he grabbed hold and lifted her lower body against him. Her mound pressed vividly over a hard ridge beneath his britches.

She wanted to fight him, to push away, as her confused mind asked anxiously, where were the kisses and the long romantic buildup that any woman deserved and desired? Yet she banished those feelings away. She had to show Brynmore that she was made of a tougher spirit than he imagined. She could masquerade worldly attitudes, with the cold-hearted best of them. Besides, she was uncommonly furious. It was like a challenge that she had to beat Brynmore. More... she wanted to dominate him and take control and show the handsome, brawny oaf that he’d met his match! So she ignored the fire in her loins, the biting pleasure in her nipple tips, and the aching in her firming breasts. If she yielded to those sensations too much, it would make her weak and pliable beneath Brynmore’s hands. And it seemed as if he understood her intention of coming here without further explanation. It seemed he agreed wordlessly to the idea, but he also envisioned much more. Well, she would not shy away or back down. She could do this.

With her hands free after he plastered her body against his, she lifted her hands strongly and grasped the sides of his beard. She tugged downward, making him hiss, as she practically climbed up his body with her lips zeroing in toward his mouth.

She growled with as much feminine ardor as she could manage. “Then we will
fuck
like bunnies!”

Brynmore jerked his head, even with her fingers tugging his beard, so that her lips missed their target and she only caught the side of his lips with her mouth. “Fucking perverts dinna kiss,” he reprimanded her sharply.

Kit instantly retaliated by biting the side of Brynmore’s bottom lip. “Bloody hell!” he cursed, with a sharp bellow. “But that’s what we need, lass, blood.”

He smeared his bottom lip and the pinprick of blood, where her teeth had grazed, over the side of her top lip. She could feel it, taste the tinniness, smell the light copper-sweet smell as she jerked her lips away and her head back in confusion. She hung onto him as if he were a tree she had climbed, halting halfway to the top, with his hand bracing her buttocks.

“Blood?” she asked in confused disbelief with her breath panting.

“Aye.” His warm breath washed her face, smelling of whiskey and mint. “Blood will be our fetish, my sanguinary pet. However, we will discuss that later as the second part to our plans.”

Pet?
Just the word from Brynmore’s lips, his deep tenor voice and the connection made from the word to her, was like a heated caress straight into Kit’s sex. She found herself blurting, “What is the first part?”

“Fucking,” he said. Then, he turned and began carrying her to the bed, just as she was, hanging to his strong hardened body. “But with wildness, like a fire is lit beneath us.”

Kit felt the back of her knees hit the bed as Brynmore lifted both his hands to clasp her wrists and tug her handhold’s free. Then he pushed, sending her flying, until her spine hit the bed. She gasped, wondering if the wildness he spoke of was a personal desire he was trying to hide beneath the guise of well-thought plans. Yet it did not matter, she needed to prove that she could rise to any occasion. She needed to prove that she could simply fuck and not fail emotionally, like a soft woman looking for romance might.

Kit rolled to her side, then she came up on her knees facing Brynmore. The nightgown she wore had fallen off both her shoulders, while the collar barely hung on the peaks of her nipples. She fought the urge to shield herself. “With your boots on?” she asked, a bit scornfully.

“Aye,” he retorted, sneering with a challenge.

Kit knew pain flashed in her irises for brief seconds before she could catch it, then she horribly, found herself asking, “Why are you doing this?” She tried to make her exclamation sound strong. A type of return challenge, only she knew Brynmore clearly understood her intention. He saw she was asking not why were they going to have sex, but why was he so intent on making it so distant and unfeeling, as if he were a crass boor that thought no more than to fuck her as if she were a receptacle of use and nothing more.

Brynmore’s returning gaze was fierce, but half of it was restrained sexual intensity. He knew he could lie. He knew that he should lie. He thought Drummond would, in this situation, and he knew Harrison would too, to get the job done. Then he suddenly wondered if that were the truth. When he thought about the women that they’d found and loved now. That was the simple truth Saxon revealed beneath other words he’d used when he offered his advice. It all melted into one thing. Honesty. That was what kept Saxon and Joelle together through their ordeal and not ripped apart. It was that leap of faith. A man could be sly with his feeling or he could choose to enact a part with clever intentions that it was the best formula for a mission. However, dishonesty between partners seemed more likely to tear them apart, than build a strong front. Even though, as a man, his first gut instinct might be to control a woman with logic, thinking that he could better protect her.