The Heir (20 page)

“I would like a little of the same for myself,” he whispered, arms going more tightly around her. “You will oblige me?”

“Oblige?” Anna’s brain had clearly slipped its leash, and Westhaven was hard put not to gloat.

“Let me come against you,” the earl urged, his voice intimate with anticipated pleasure. “The couch will do.” Hearing no objection, he hoisted her from the desk and laid her down on the long sofa.

“Lovely,” he whispered, coming down on top of her.

On top of her
, thank Christ, he was at long last on top of her.

He blanketed her there on the couch, for the first time laying his half-naked body over hers, though he was careful with his weight. His lips found hers, his hand strayed to her breast, and he thought he heard her sigh “lovely” as she lifted up her hips, trying to stroke herself against him again.

“Easy,” he murmured, nipping at her earlobe. “I promised not to remove my own clothing unless at your request; you will have to oblige.”

Or, he reasoned, he could come in his knickers like the schoolboy he’d once been. But Anna was tugging at his falls and gently extracting his cock from his clothing.

“Much better,” he breathed, feeling himself grow more aroused now that he was free of his clothing.

He took his time, though it had been a long, frustrating week, apparently for them both. There was a hint of revenge in the languor with which he went about this loving. He kept his kisses slow and sweet, and he only gradually let her have the full weight of his hips, snugging his cock low against her belly. But Anna took a little revenge of her own, as her hands were free to roam his back, his chest, into his hair, over his features. He groaned quietly when she found his nipples then less quietly when she fastened her mouth on one and her fingers on the other.

“Oh, love, I can’t… Jesus, Anna…”

She eased off but didn’t desist completely, and then he felt her tilt her hips, the better to trap him against her. Her arms urged him to rest on her more fully.

“I like it,” she whispered, kissing his cheek. “I like your weight on me, like you being around me, above me.”

Encouraged by the rasp in her voice as much as her words, he began to thrust with more purpose, firmly putting aside the temptation to shift his hips and hilt himself in the wet heat of her. Her tongue found his
nipple again, but this time he arched his back to make the angle easier for her.

“Your mouth, Anna,” he rasped, “please…
God in heaven
.”

She wrapped her legs around his waist, suckled at him, and clamped her hand tightly on his buttocks as he thrust hard against her. When the warmth of his seed coursed onto her stomach, she held him all the more closely, until he levered up on his elbows and stared down at her in the firelight.

He lasted only a moment, suspended above her, before she slipped a hand around his nape and urged him back down against her. He capitulated to her silent request and was soon breathing in counterpoint with her, as naturally as if they’d made love every night for years. She traced patterns on his back, sifted her hands through his hair, and took his earlobe in her mouth for the occasional nip.

“One of us,” the earl said, “is going to have to get up. I nominate you.”

“Happy to serve,” Anna murmured drowsily. “But can’t fit it onto the schedule just at the moment.”

“Suppose that leaves me.” The earl sighed and heaved up, first onto straight arms then to his feet. His stood above her, brooding down at her half-naked, utterly relaxed sprawl so long she self-consciously moved to close her legs.

“Don’t,” he said, but it was a request, for all he didn’t state it as such. “Please. You are lovely.” But he moved away, sensing her defenses were weak, and she needed a moment. When he turned back to her, he’d pulled up his breeches but not buttoned
them. To his shamelessly primitive delight, she’d not covered herself, not sat up, nor in any way disturbed the wanton pose in which he’d left her.

“Let me.” The earl sat down at her hip and began to dab gently at her with his dampened handkerchief. He made a sensual game out of it, stroking the cool cloth over her stomach, up under her breasts, and down to her sex. When she shifted her dressing gown, likely thinking to afford herself some small modesty, he applied a gentle pressure to the inside of her thigh.

“Let me,” he repeated. He held the cloth against her, and Anna closed her eyes, her blush evident even by firelight.

“Anna Seaton.” He leaned down and brushed his lips over her heart. “The pleasures you and I could share…” He said no more, feeling strangely off balance by their encounter. He set aside the cloth, pushed the halves of her clothing even farther to the side, and climbed over her again.

He wasn’t ready to bounce up and take himself upstairs to bed, wasn’t ready to dive back into the last few pieces of correspondence, wasn’t ready to pour himself a brandy and take it up to his balcony. Completely out of character for him, all he wanted to do was stay here with Anna, holding her and being held by her.

The feeling was mutual, he guessed, as Anna’s arms went around his shoulders. She kissed his cheek, and with her hands, urged his head down to her shoulder. Westhaven obliged, keeping himself awake by force of will.

This situation with Anna was proving more complicated than he wanted it to be. With Elise, he would have been out the door by now. She had accommodated him, but in hindsight, Westhaven saw it was barely even that. Elise had never let her fingers drift over his scalp like this, making delicious circles on his skin. She would never have clutched at his buttocks, the better to hold him to her. Elise would never—probably not even if he’d asked it of her—put her mouth to his nipple.

And he would most assuredly not have asked it of her, not in a million years.

You shouldn’t have had to ask.
He could hear Anna’s tart tones in his head, even as he knew the thought was also his own.

Anna was different, he conceded. Just how different, he hadn’t accurately seen when he’d initially proposed. She held him at arm’s length, or tried to, then capitulated with sweet abandon, leaving him disoriented, so great had been his pleasure.

“Love?” He raised up on his forearms and brushed her hair off her forehead. “How are you? You’re too quiet, and you leave a fellow to fret.”

“I am… beyond words.” Anna smiled up at him. And he knew what thoughts were stirring in her busy brain: She should be vexed by this turn of events, troubled, dismayed, and she would be—soon. But not just yet, not with her body still languorous and pleased with itself, pleased with him.

He kissed her forehead. “I hope you’re beyond words in a positive sense.”

“I am.” She sighed and stretched, bringing her pelvis up against his.

“None of that.” He smiled and nuzzled at her neck, then slipped lower, going up on his knees to take a nipple into his mouth. Anna merely cradled his head against her and sighed again.

“Next time,” he murmured, resting against her sternum, “I will know where to start. You have sensitive breasts, my dear. Inspiringly so.”

“None of that.”

“None of what?” He raised his face to regard her in puzzlement.

“None of that next-time talk,” Anna clarified. “This was a lapse.”

Westhaven hung above her, considering, even as he ignored the considering being done by his cock. “We need to discuss this, and for that, you will have to be decently covered.”

“I will?”

His took his weight and warmth away from her and fortified himself with the disappointment in her voice.

“You will.” He sat at her hip and began to straighten her clothing, but paused to brush his thumb over her pubic curls. “When this next time comes around, that we are not going talk about, I will put my mouth on you here.” He closed his fingers over her sex. “You will enjoy it, but not half so much as I.”

She looked surprised then intrigued as he closed her buttons and bows, and the earl concluded she was a virgin to oral sex as well as orgasms. Mr. Seaton, God rest his lazy, inconsiderate, bumbling, unimaginative, selfish soul, had much to answer for.

“Up you go.” He tugged Anna to a sitting position then settled down beside her and wrapped an
arm around her shoulders. Her head rested against his chest, and her hand stole onto his bare stomach.

He yawned sleepily. “I should put on a shirt if we’re to have a meaningful discussion.”

“You needn’t,” Anna assured him. “It won’t take long at all to tell you this sort of thing has to stop.”

“Going back on your word, Anna?” Westhaven leaned over to kiss her temple and to again inhale the fragrance of her hair.

“I agreed not to seek another position until the end of summer,” she reminded him. The glow in Westhaven’s body faded a tad with each clipped syllable. “I did not agree to become your light-skirt.”

“Were you a virgin, you would still be considered chaste.”

“But I wouldn’t be for much longer if this keeps up.”

Westhaven knew some genuine puzzlement. “I will not force you, Anna.”

“You won’t have to,” she bit back. “I will spread my legs for you just as eagerly as I did tonight.”

“With results just as pleasurable, one hopes, but we’re talking past each other, Anna. Why won’t you let yourself enjoy my advances? That’s the real issue. If you have a reason of any substance—a husband somewhere, a mortal fear of intercourse, something besides your silly conviction earls don’t marry housekeepers— then I will consider desisting.” He punctuated his comment with a soft kiss to her neck.

“Keep your lips off me, please.” Anna straightened away from him but didn’t move off the couch. “I cannot think. I do not even know right from wrong when you start with your kisses and your wandering
hands. You don’t mean to do it, but you leave me helpless and lost and… You have no clue what I mean, do you?”

“In truth,” the earl said, urging her head back down to his shoulder, “I do. You would be astonished, Anna, at how surprised I am at the way matters have progressed between us, and I am not often surprised.”

“Well, then,” Anna huffed, “all the more reason to give up this courting you seem so bent on.”

“Can’t say I agree with you.” His lips grazed her temple again, completely without conscious thought on his part. “And you have yet to name me a single reason why you could not wed me. Have you taken holy orders?”

“I have not.”

“Have you a mortal fear of copulating with me?”

She buried her nose against his shoulder and mumbled something.

“I will take that for a no. Are you married?”

“I am not.” And because he heard what he wanted to hear and insisted on hearing, the earl missed the slight hesitance in her answer.

“So why, Anna?” He bit her earlobe gently. “Those were my teeth, not my lips, mind you. We’ve gone only so far as lovers, and already you must know we would bring each other pleasure upon pleasure. So why do you play this game?”

“It isn’t a game. There are matters I hold in confidence, matters I will not discuss with you or anyone, that prevent me from committing to you as a wife should commit.”

“Ah.” The earl was listening now and heard the
resolution with which she spoke. “I will not pry a confidence from you, but I will make every effort to convince you to confide in me, Anna. When a man marries, his wife’s goods become his, but so too, should her burdens.”

“I’ve given you my reason.” She lifted her head to regard him closely. “You will leave me in peace now? You will give up this notion of courting me?”

“Knowing you are burdened with confidences only makes me that much more convinced we should be wed. I’d take on your troubles, you know.”

“You are a good man,” Anna said, touching his cheek, her expression both solemn and sad, “but you cannot be my husband, and I cannot be your wife.”

“I will content myself with being your suitor, as we agreed, though now, Anna Seaton, I will also be encouraging your trust, as well.” He kissed her palm to emphasize his words. “One last question, Anna.” The earl kept hold of her hand. “If you were free of these obligations that you hold in confidence, would you consider my suit then?”

He was encouraged she couldn’t give him an immediate no, encouraged she’d offered him the smallest crumb of a confidence, encouraged they’d been more intimate with each other than ever before—encouraged, but also… concerned.

“I’d consider it,” she allowed. “That is not the same as accepting it.”

“I understand.” He smiled at her. “Even a duke mustn’t take his duchess for granted.”

Anna fell asleep in the secure circle of his arms, her weight resting against him, his lips at her temple. As
he carried her to her bedroom, the earl reflected that for a woman who insisted there be no next time, Anna had certainly been reluctant to bring an end to things this time.

It boded well, he thought, kissing her forehead as he tucked her in. All he needed to do now was gain her confidence and meet these obligations she was so determined to carry alone. She was a housekeeper, for pity’s sake, how complicated could her obligations be?

Anna awoke the next morning with a lingering sense of sweetness, of stolen pleasures not quite regretted, and—most incongruous of all—of hope. Hope that somehow, she might find a way to extricate herself from the situation with Westhaven that didn’t leave them enemies. Westhaven was doing exactly as he said he would: He was giving her pleasure, pleasure beyond her wildest imaginings, pleasure she could keep for herself in memory long after her dealings with him were over, and she would give a great deal to see that those memories were not tainted with a bitter parting.