Something Reckless (12 page)

“Don’t look away,” he whispered, turning her face back. “Look at me.”

She didn’t obey him, instead keeping her gaze focused firmly on the floorboards beneath her bare feet. Jeremy clenched his teeth.

“Remember, you promised to give me anything I desired. Look at me.”

Penelope couldn’t hide the way she flinched, but finally she lifted her chin. It was too dark to tell if she looked at his face or not, but he didn’t press her. Not yet.

“You are beautiful,” he said softly. “You don’t know how much
you drive me mad. How deseperately I want to taste you, touch you, how much I want to claim you. You do that by merely standing there.”

Her breath caught on a ragged gasp that bordered on a sob.

Jeremy ignored the tightness around his heart and cupped her chin to tilt her face up at just the right angle. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he promised as his lips drifted down to hers. “And then I’m going to finish what we started at the ball.”

Her groan was lost as he caught her mouth. He meant to overwhelm her, overpower her with his passion and draw out her own in equal measure. But somehow, it didn’t work out that way. Instead, he barely brushed her lips, dragging his mouth back and forth against hers in a gentle, soft rhythm.

When her mouth opened on a sigh, that was the first time he breached her lips. He dipped his tongue inside, tasting mint and a hint of some kind of liquor she’d probably drunk for liquid courage before his arrival. He smiled against her mouth as he traced her tongue with his own, sucked her in ever so gently.

Penelope dug her fingers into her faceless lover’s forearms as her knees began to shake. How could a kiss so fully arouse her? Make her so weak? Kisses with her husband had never made her melt.

But she was beginning to realize, both through her conversation with Jeremy and with every touch from this other man, that her experience with George had not been one that represented everything sin and pleasure could be. For the first time, she understood there was so much more.

The stranger wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her closer, pressing her to his body until she could hardly tell
where he ended and she began. He rocked against her, cupping her naked hips and grinding into her until she felt the very insistent presence of his harsh erection pressing between her thighs.

Penelope was shocked that her first reaction to the intimate touch was a shameful desire to open those same legs and offer herself to him. Despite her statement not ten minutes ago that she could not allow him to breach her body with his own.

Now that stipulation seemed foolish. Because she wanted to surrender fully. To give her entire body over to this man to do with as he pleased.

But before she could do something so foolish as beg him, he swept her up and deposited her onto her bed. His hard body covered hers, pressing her deep into the soft coverlet as his mouth found hers a second time. Penelope clung to him as wave after wave of pleasure washed over her. Gentle at first, but growing in intensity and fervor. Soon, she would be swept away.

She squeezed her eyes shut and surrendered herself to his ministrations. Lost on a sea of pleasure, her mind went blessedly still, quiet, for the first time in what might have been years.

Until one persistent image cropped up. A vision of Jeremy Kilgrath leaning over her, claiming her mouth with his.

With a gasp, Penelope wrenched her lips from her lover’s. No! She couldn’t, she wouldn’t think of Jeremy. Not now.

“I have been dreaming of your taste for two nights,” her mystery lover whispered before he dropped another kiss to her lips.

Penelope forced her focus back to the man who lay over her,
his breath teasing her skin with infinite gentleness. As her mind faded, she smiled, but then his words sank in. He wasn’t talking about the taste of her kiss. He was talking about…

“So sweet,” he murmured as his mouth slid down her flushed flesh. “And tonight I can’t wait to taste you again. All over, Penelope. Everywhere.”

Her hands bunched against the coverlet and her back arched against her will as his hot lips branded her throat. He sucked gently on the delicate, sensitive column, and she was shocked when heated wetness flooded her thighs. God, what he could do to her in just one touch.

And he was promising so much more to come.

His lips moved lower, lower until he hesitated at her breasts. She looked down at the misty shadow of his body. He was staring at her breasts, and she blushed. He might not be able to see her clearly in the dim light from the dying fire, but surely he noticed her shortcomings. George had often complained that her slender frame made her breasts too small. He’d told her how ugly and unwomanly that was. How her body was the reason he could not perform his husbandly duties.

The stranger cupped the small mounds, covering them completely with his big hands. She turned her face, unable to bear his scrutiny or judgment.

“Why do you look away?” he asked as he spread his fingers. Her nipples popped out between the didgits.

She blushed. “They are…they’re not pretty.”

His head jerked up. “Who told you that?”

She shook her head. She had already made humiliating confes
sions about her marriage to George to Jeremy. She wasn’t about to repeat them to this man.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Someone very stupid,” he muttered and he lowered his head. “I think they are perfect.”

His lips wrapped around one nipple and Penelope’s hips bucked up against his stomach at the shocking, tugging, heated sensation that rushed from the point of contact all the way through her body, settling as a pounding pulse between her legs.

“So responsive,” her faceless lover said, and she heard the smile in his voice. “So sweet.”

He moved to the opposite nipple and suckled it, at first gently, then increasing the pressure until the tip was distended and throbbing with pleasure so keen she felt like she could fall over the edge just from this touch.

Hearing every pant, feeling every arch of Penelope’s hips, made Jeremy mad with desire. There was something so seductive about giving her pleasure. She had never felt it before, at least not from the touch of a man. And he was giving it to her. Slowly, deftly dragging the feelings from her body until she was weak beneath him.

He’d never felt so driven to give that kind of pleasure before. Certainly, he had never been called a selfish lover. He knew how to make a woman come, and he prided himself on leaving a string of satisfied ladies in his wake.

But there was a difference between making certain a lover experienced pleasure and giving her something without thinking about himself. He was aware of his hard cock, of course. He felt that driving, pulsing need to take Penelope, even though she said
she couldn’t allow that. He
wanted
to drive home inside of her and come as she pulsed around him like a hot, wet glove.

For the first time, though, those desires weren’t as strong as the need to bring her pleasure.

He looked up as he blew a slow gust of hot breath over her wet nipple. There was just an orange glow in the room from the fire now, but Penelope’s eyes glittered in the dying light. He caught a glint of white as her teeth sank into her lower lip while she bit back little moans and sounds of encouragement.

She was so close to the edge.

Jeremy slid lower, dragging his lips over her bare stomach. Her skin was so soft, so smooth. Like satin beneath his tongue. Every touch made her quiver, each stroke made her hands fist into the coverlet with increasing force.

He glided down farther, nuzzling the bare curve of her hip. He could smell the sweetness of her desire already, and his cock hardened even further with the scent. She stiffened when his mouth grazed her thigh, her entire body going tense just as it had the first time he did this two nights before.

But this time, he was going to make sure she didn’t run. He cupped her hips, keeping her steady as he brushed the faint stubble on his chin across her sensitive skin. She let out a little cry and her legs fell open out of instinct.

He took what she hadn’t meant to offer, moving his hands to the inside of her thighs and opening her even further. She was wet already, swollen by his touch, her flesh quivering in anticipation of what would happen next.

His own fingers trembled as he cupped her sex and felt the heat burn into his skin. Penelope bucked against him, helpless to
keep a loud, strangled moan from bubbling from her lips. Slowly, he opened her, peeling aside damp folds to reveal her in the low light. Her hips arched up and he took the silent invitation, pressing his mouth to her straining flesh and tasting the proof of how much she wanted him, wanted this, no matter how much she argued against it or worried over it.

He stroked her, tasting her honeyed sweetness, exploring every weeping inch of her slit. Her breath grew short and then ceased entirely as she trembled beneath his touch. He was relentless, purposefully driving her toward release at a speed and intensity he normally would have reserved for a second or third time he made love to her.

But with Penelope, everything was different. In part, this was an education. And he wanted her to feel with an immediacy, just how pointless it was to fight the tide.

And the other part was that he wanted to make her come. He wanted to hear her scream out her pleasure, to feel her hips crash against him, to taste the nectar of her release as it washed over his tongue. He wanted that with a powerful drive that bordered on obsession.

With gentle strokes, he moved toward the hard nub of her clit, exposed by the strokes of his fingers. When he licked over it, Penelope cried out and her head lolled to the side. He tasted it again, teasing her, playing with her like a cat with a mouse. She arched, whimpering her pleasure with weak mewls of pleasure.

He sucked her clit into his mouth at the same moment he slipped one finger into her clenching sheath. Penelope sat up partially, looking through the darkness as her cries grew louder. He delved into her with his finger, curling against the hidden bundle
of nerves deep within her even as he sucked the hard nub of her pleasure with force. She wasn’t even trying to stop her cries now. They echoed in the room around them as her hips arched up to meet his strokes.

The crescendo was approaching, her trembling body made that clear. But before she came, Jeremy wetted another finger in her juices and glided it between the globes of her backside. As Penelope exploded, he slipped the wet digit into her, filling her completely.

At the forbidden touch, Penelope’s orgasm intensified. Her hips ground against his mouth and hands and her wetness doubled as she shivered and shook out her pleasure. Even after she collapsed against her pillows, spent, the tremors went on, little earthquakes of pleasure that exploded on his tongue.

Finally, he withdrew, reveling in the soft sound of distress that left her lips when he no longer filled her in every way. He slid up her body and kissed her. She opened to him immediately and he was well aware that she tasted her own essence on his lips.

But she didn’t withdraw, and that left him certain that he had been right about Penelope Norman all along. She
was
a creature of sensuality and sin, despite her protestations to the contrary. And he was sure that after a few hot nights with him, she would be changed, altered enough that she would surrender her fight against excess. He might not even have to blackmail her.

“Did you like that?” he murmured, nuzzling her ear.

Her arms came around him and she stroked her fingernails along his spine through his linen shirt. He shivered at the feeling.

“More than I should,” she whispered. “This is wrong. So wrong, considering who I am and what people believe I stand for.”

He drew back, unable to determine her expression in the dark. But there was a resignation in her voice that he wasn’t sure he liked.

“There is nothing wrong with pleasure, Penelope,” he said softly. For so many reasons, he wanted her to understand that.
Believe
that.

“Wrong or not,” she replied as her fingers tightened and she pulled him closer. “I want more.”

Jeremy sucked in a breath at that confession. Damn, the woman was a natural temptress. How could she not know how irresistible her touch on his back was? How the heat of her flesh made him want to slam his cock into her and have her in every animalistic way possible? How he wanted to make the room blaze with light and see her body in all its glory?

How could she not understand that she was torment embodied?

“I would give you everything,” he said, rolling onto his back and pulling her to straddle him.

Although he was fully clothed, his cock immediately settled against her wet pussy. He could feel her ready heat through the woolen fabric and he rocked up against her. She made a strangled moan at the friction.

“Not everything,” she whispered as she leaned down and captured his lips. “Just more.”

Dawn’s first light was starting to pierce into the room when Jeremy rose from his spot beside Penelope and began gathering his discarded clothing from around the bed. As he dressed, he couldn’t help but relive every sensual moment.

He had brought her to orgasm three more times with his mouth and fingers before she collapsed into a shaking, exhausted pile and fell into a deep slumber.

But he hadn’t come. Watching her awaken to intense, powerful pleasure had been enough for him at the time. Once she was asleep he hadn’t wanted to find completion in his own hand. So he had simply lain there, watching her sleep for the last hour.

He still burned with desire, but he was also…at peace somehow. He had debauched the woman his friends called the Ice Queen. He had made her arch and beg and rock with pleasure. It would be easy enough to blackmail her now. End this madness.

Except, as he fastened his trousers, he realized he didn’t want to end it. Not yet. He felt like he was at the beginning of a journey, not the end. Like there was so much more pleasure to be had and to teach.

There was no harm in a few more nights of pleasure with her. Perhaps he would even convince her to beg for his cock.

After that…
then
he would be satisfied. He was certain of it.

He bent to press a kiss against her bare shoulder and Penelope rolled onto her back with a sigh that brought him to rock hard readiness in an instant. The sheets were tangled around her legs, her bare breasts offered up in the dawn light so beautifully that it took every ounce of strength in him not to simply capture one hard nipple and make her cry out in pleasure one last time.

But no. Not now. If she woke, she might recognize him in the rapidly increasing light, and he didn’t want to be discovered. So instead, he bent down to press a second kiss against her lips, then he moved to the window and made his escape.

As he picked his way down the window ledge to a tree branch and finally to a remarkably sturdy trellis, he couldn’t help but think about last night. The details of Penelope’s surrender, of course, but more than that. He thought about the catch of her breath, the pleading of her voice, the way she’d said she was wrong for submitting to his touch, despite wanting more of it.

He was unsatisfied with the evening’s events, he finally decided as he walked down the alley behind her home to the well-hidden carriage that had been waiting for him all night long.

Unsatisfied physically, yes. As he settled into the plush leather seat, he was forced to shift around his still hard erection, a harsh
reminder that he hadn’t coaxed full surrender from his adversary.

But it was more than physical need that made him feel restless. Penelope, despite her acquiescence to his touch, her needy moans, her cries of pleasure, still held back a great deal. She’d found utter completion at his skilled touch, but in her mind, she had been able to keep herself separate from him.

He most definitely needed another night with her. Two nights, perhaps, to whittle away at her final shreds of resistance. To make her see, for once and for all, that she was not the proper, cold woman she wanted the world to believe her to be. To make her feel wanton and alive and needy.

Once he had done that, she would be forced to see herself in a new light. Then his final duty would be easily accomplished. It would be simply to convince Penelope to stop encouraging her friends’ uprising against the men.

Yet even with that comforting thought in his exhausted mind, Jeremy still didn’t feel completely at ease as his carriage turned into the wide drive of his London estate.

Penelope picked absently at the lacy edging of her mother’s tablecloth. Dorthea’s voice echoed loudly around her, yet Penelope wouldn’t have been able to repeat even the broadest topics of her mother’s never-ending tirade if her life depended upon it.

She was too distracted by her increasingly troubling thoughts. Thoughts of last night. Thoughts of her mysterious lover, whom she had surrendered to without hesitation. Well, one hesitation. She had stuck to her stipulation that the man not breach her
body with his cock. Somehow she had hoped that would make the experience less intimate, less altering.

But she was wrong.

And yet, it wasn’t the memory of the faceless man’s heated touch that kept her frustrated and confused. It was because the Duke of Kilgrath’s handsome face had intruded into her over-stimulated mind again and again. No matter how she tried to fight it, his image came back while her lover did so many wicked things to her body. Seeing Jeremy’s face in her mind had only made the experiences all the more intense. In fact, his image had pushed her over the edge of release not once, but multiple times.

So she was not only a hypocrite with her body, but with her mind. She was a woman who railed against sexual excess and yet let a stranger touch her intimately while she fantasized about another man. Unfaithful, even to a stranger.

She rubbed her eyes in an attempt to ease the sudden pounding in her head.

“You are not even attending, Penelope!” her mother said as she slapped her palms down on the table in front of Penelope.

She jumped at the sudden action and jerked her gaze up to her mother’s. “I’m sorry, I did not sleep well last night. But honestly, Mama, this is not a new conversation!”

Even without being fully aware of the topic, Penelope could say that with certainty. Her mother only ever spoke of three subjects: Miranda’s fortunate match to Ethan Hamon and his huge annual stipend; the belief that her as yet unmarried daughters must make equal, or even better, matches, as soon as possible; and she desired that Penelope remarry.
Now.

None of the topics inspired Penelope to respond. She didn’t share her mother’s view on any of them.

“How can you be so cold to your sisters?” her mother wailed as she sank into a chair next to her.

Penelope sighed. Well, at least she knew which subject her mother was going on about this afternoon. “I don’t know why you insist that my status has any bearing on Beatrice or Winifred. I was married to a respectable man with a tidy fortune. I am accepted in the correct circles of the
ton
. What more could you possibly want of me?”

“I told you, I want you to stop your foolish conversations about the behavior of the very men your sisters are likely to wed.”

Her mother shook her head, and for a brief moment Penelope saw true concern in Dorthea’s often blank expression. She was such a flighty, mercenary woman, and yet Penelope had long ago realized that all her mother’s rantings sprung from some kind of misguided beliefs. She wasn’t trying to be wicked or horrible. She simply could not help her behavior.

With a sigh, Penelope reached out to cover her mother’s hand. “I never intended for my thoughts to launch some kind of movement, Mama. Truly, I was only talking. The fact that others have taken up this…this
banner
was as much a shock to me as it was to anyone.” She shook her head. “But Mama, surely you do not really wish for either of my sisters to marry a man who would flaunt his mistresses in front of them? Or treat them with utter distain except when he wished to create heirs and spares? Would that make them happy?”

Her mother’s lips thinned. “You must remember what it was like to be poor, Penelope. If your sisters had money, had stability,
they could learn to live with other disappointments in their marriages. It is what women do.”

Penelope patted her mother’s hand absently. Dorthea had not been born into the upper sphere of the
ton
, but entered it after her marriage. Penelope vaguely remembered some unpleasant scenes in which her mother had been given the cut direct. It must have hurt Dorthea terribly.

How many other disappointments had she endured in the years before her husband’s death? As much as the family had adored him, Thomas Albright had not been perfect.

“I would wish more for them than that,” Penelope whispered. “Living a loveless marriage just for the sake of financial comfort…it is a poor trade.”

Dorthea pulled her hand away with a scowl. “You are impossible!”

Penelope sighed. “This is a subject upon which we will never agree, I am afraid, Mama.”

“Then what about Miranda? You know that people talk about your estrangement,” her mother said, rising up and pacing the room again with frantic energy. “And yet you refuse to speak to her.”

Penelope shut her eyes. “That is complicated.”

“Ha! Complicated my foot. You
will
reconcile with her. She will be arriving any moment and I expect you to—”

Penelope shot to her feet as her heart lodged firmly in her throat. “What? Miranda is coming here today?”

Her mother nodded.

“Yes. It is far past time you end your silly feud. You must get
over your jealousy over her marriage,” Dorthea said with a definitive glare.

“I am not jealous!” Penelope gasped. “I was
never
jealous.”

Except, there was a little voice in Penelope’s head that said that wasn’t true. For the first time, she realized perhaps she
had
been jealous of Miranda. After all, her sister had surrendered to her baser needs, gone against every rule, been utterly selfish…and had ended up with a seemingly happy marriage to a man she adored.

While Penelope had sacrificed herself on the altar of familial responsibility, done what was expected, and been unhappy. Unfulfilled, Penelope had wilted for years, even while she watched Miranda bloom.

And perhaps jealousy
had
been as much a part of their estrangement as Penelope’s reaction to the passionate scene she had intruded upon between Miranda and Ethan.

As if on cue, a footman stepped into the doorway. “Lady Rothschild.”

Penelope gripped her hands behind her back as Miranda stepped into the dining room. She wore a stunning peacock blue satin gown with a low neckline that would have been shocking if not for the mass of translucent white lace that provided some modesty. Miranda’s eyes shone, partly from the flattering color of the gown, but partly from a happiness that burned bright from the inside.

Penelope shifted uncomfortably. It was most definitely jealousy that burned in her chest presently. And the bitter, horrible feeling had nothing to do with Miranda’s pretty gowns or Ethan’s large fortune or anyone’s higher title.

It had to do with love. Passion. Contentment. Her sister possessed what Penelope could not even fantasize about.

The two women met eyes across the room. Miranda’s gaze softened, gentled as she stared at Penelope, and Penelope had a strong urge to rush across the room and wrap her arms around her sister. To whisper her secrets to Miranda as they had just a few years before.

To trust her, even though Miranda hadn’t trusted Penelope with her own dark secrets.

Instead, Penelope turned aside. “I-I cannot stay.”

“Penelope!” her mother snapped, glaring at her when she pressed a brief kiss to her mother’s smooth cheek.

“I have some things to attend to,” she lied. She shot Miranda another glance as she edged around her to the door. “Good-bye.”

Bolting into the foyer, she motioned to the butler that she needed her carriage. As the man stepped outside to summon the vehicle, Penelope heard the dining room door snap shut behind her. Slowly, she turned to find Miranda leaning against the barrier, staring at her.

“You look tired,” her sister whispered.

Penelope squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to keep the distance she had maintained for so long. It was almost impossible when Miranda was close enough to touch.

“Thank you,” she managed to say with a chill to her voice. “I appreciate the compliment.”

Miranda ignored the snipe and stepped forward. “You don’t look physically tired. If anything, you are more beautiful than ever. But you are…
soul
tired.” Her sister shook her head. “And there is such pain in your eyes.”

Penelope caught her breath as she spun back around to stare with unseeing eyes out the open front door. God, Miranda knew her. Even now, when Penelope hadn’t allowed a civilized word to pass between them for over two years. Her sister could still pierce through her outward appearance, just as had always been the case. Except for the one secret Miranda had been able to hide.

Penelope had judged her sister for lying about Ethan. For making a trade of her body for his money, for his assistance. She had been angry, she had been cold.

But after what she had experienced last night, she could no longer judge Miranda for anything anymore. She couldn’t judge anyone. And if Miranda looked closely enough, she would see that fact, too.

Her sister’s hand closed on her upper arm, a gentle touch that brought tears to Penelope’s eyes.

“You know if you need me…”

Penelope shook her off as her carriage pulled around to the door. “I must go.”

She bolted without a backward glance, running out into the warmth of the afternoon and ducking into her waiting carriage without even waiting for assistance from a servant. As the door shut behind her, she dared to peek out the window to see Miranda walk up to the doorway and stare after the carriage as it slowly pulled away.

Penelope covered her eyes. How had her life become so complicated? So confused? And how was it that she had no one in the world to confide in.

No one but Jeremy Vaughn, of all people. He knew about the
man who had written her. He knew the man wanted her. He hadn’t judged her for that correspondence.

Perhaps he could help her make sense of the topsy-turvy existence she had somehow found herself a part of. A world where the desires she feared were suddenly acceptable, the choices of the sister she shunned were now understandable, and in which she wanted one man while coveting another.