The Secret to Seduction (16 page)

It was a kiss calculated to shock, to melt bones. He meant her to feel it everywhere in her body, to arouse her so swiftly she would be able to respond only with whatever instinct she possessed.

Odd that he should feel this supposedly calculated kiss everywhere in his own body.

Her mouth softened with his, her surrender nearly complete.

“Here.” He whispered the rough order against her mouth, taking her wrists in his hands and lifting her arms up to fit around his neck. Quiet triumph surged when her hands clasped there, and her shawl drifted to the floor. In the moonlight he saw the dark of her nipples peaked against her night rail, which was so worn it was nearly as soft as skin itself. He spanned her slim waist with his hands, savoring the supple warmth and curves of her. “Kiss me, Sabrina,” he ordered in a hoarse whisper, nuzzling her silky cloud of hair aside to touch his tongue to her ear. The heat of her swift breathing against his throat, the brush of her fingers against the crisp hair at the back of his neck, made him frantic. “Kiss me back.”

He returned his lips to hers. And glory of glories, she kissed him back. She found the rhythm of it, and they eased together into the hot languor of the kiss, the kind of kiss that dissolved time and seemed to become its own world, that demanded more, more, more.

He lifted his lips, feeling oddly drugged.

It’s only a kiss.

“My lord, I . . .” Her voice was frayed and dazed.

No quarter.

He touched his lips to her throat and tasted her delicately, felt the fine wash of gooseflesh rise. A tiny sound caught in her throat, a whimper of pleasure. Her fingers moved instinctively through the fine hair at the nape of his neck, and her body pressed against his, and desire nearly cleaved him in two.

“Are you wondering what you’re feeling, Sabrina?” he murmured against her throat and kissed her pulse. “Are you wondering what you want? What your body wants?”

“I—” A choked whisper.

“It’s this,” he said hoarsely. He cupped her buttocks and lifted her abruptly, just a little. And then he let her body slide down slowly and hard against his erection.

And she moaned, a choked sound of raw pleasure, and clung to him.

No quarter.

“And it’s this, Sabrina.” She leaned against the wall now, and he scooped a hand beneath her thigh and swiftly lifted her leg and thrust against her, moved his hips in a slow grind against her night rail, against where he knew she was hot and slick, against where he knew her body craved him.

Her head fell back and she sucked in a sharp breath, and her nails dug into his shoulder.

“Move with me, Sabrina. I swear to you, there’s no danger of anything but pleasure.” His voice was a shamelessly wheedling rasp. He was dangerously close to begging, like a damned boy rutting with a chambermaid. “I swear to you, it will be exquisite.” He whispered it, made it a promise. He nuzzled her ear again, breathed his next words there, made sure his cock still fit snugly at the crook of her legs. “Take it, Sabrina, what your body wants. Take it now. Or I’ll walk away, and you’ll never know.” And this last was a threat.

He felt the trembling tension in her, and with a strength of will he didn’t know he possessed, he loosened his arms. He wanted her to choose. He wanted to know which was stronger in her: passion or propriety. And he wanted her, God help the scoundrel in him, to choose passion, because he wanted somehow to conquer her, to prove his point to this too-clever girl. To somehow make her understand the way he lived his life.

Mostly, he conceded, he just wanted with an unreasonable, unconscionable ax-edged want.

She tipped her head back, looked up at him, her swift ragged breath echoing his, her lashes lowered, eyes heavy-lidded, inscrutable in the dark. He wondered if she hated him in that moment, or hated herself. He wondered whether he ought to mind.

And then her head dropped and rose, twice, the shallowest of nods. She wanted.

And he knew only triumph.

And this time it was he who groaned when she rocked her body against his, taking, as he’d urged her, what her body wanted. A low primal sound dragged up out of him as he buried his face against her throat, and pulled her closer still, tightly against him, pushed his fingers up through her hair, opened his lips again against the delicate skin beneath her chin. He knew no man before him had ever before pressed his lips to that soft, soft place.

“Yes,” he rasped. Found her mouth again. She’d learned already how to demand from him. Lips meeting and blending again, tongues tangling, her fingers in his hair, his hands roaming her back, holding her tightly against him. Silvered in moonlight and striped in shadow, with an audience of marble statues, they rocked against each other, and somehow, for Rhys, this slow, clothed, adolescent dance was more erotic than if he’d mounted her nude.

Very quickly he could feel her begin to unravel in his arms, feel the tension tightening her limbs, hear her breathing coming rough, staccato. Her movements against him swifter, more precise, as she found the source of her pleasure; he knew her release was coming upon her.

So lightly, lightly, he touched her nipples, skimmed them with both palms. She arched, gasping.

He wanted her to know there was more. And perhaps it was cruel, but when this was done, he wanted to leave her wanting, wanting. Wondering.

And even so, he felt the enormous tension gathering within him, and he was astounded. He knew he was about to spill in his trousers in a way he hadn’t since he was thirteen years old, and it could not be helped, and he didn’t want it to be helped.

“
Rhys
—”

He cupped a hand behind her head and pressed her face against his chest so his name wouldn’t echo through the gallery. Her body shook with its first ever release, and he held her, reveling in it, even as moments later his own shocked him, racked him with a bliss unexpected, with a sweet lightness.

“
Sabrina.
” The name emerged from him involuntarily. A whisper.

He held her, rested his cheek against her hair, as the two of them fought for even breath again.

It was he who released her finally, opened his arms, stepped back. And from his distance he watched carefully, to see if she would flee, or scream.

He could hardly believe he’d done what he’d just done. And yet he couldn’t find it in himself to be sorry.

She backed away a little farther from him, and stood quietly, as though stunned, her eyes lowered. And then she covered her face with her hands.

For a quiet moment, she stood there, her breathing settling. And he simply watched, as emotions he could guess at warred within her, and she struggled with them, quietly, with dignity. He knew admiration then.

He also, again, knew triumph.

“And that’s what it feels like, Miss Fairleigh, to lose control,” he said softly.

She dropped her hands and her head jerked up, and she stared at him. He wondered if he should prepare to be slapped.

Instead, he saw her jaw set.

“It wasn’t I who lost control, Lord Rawden. I believe it was
I,
in fact, who had it the entire time.”

She watched him as the truth of this sank in. Rhys froze, realizing it.

And then she turned swiftly on her heel, dipping to gather her dropped shawl, and walked swiftly from the room, wrapping it around her.

He would have thought her downright composed had she not left her candle burning in the hand of Perseus.

Sabrina didn’t know how she’d found her room again in the absence of a candle; some internal homing instinct must have led her there while her mind and heart ricocheted between horror and exhilaration. She slid the bolt on the door and walked to her bed, sat down on it almost gingerly.

She thrust her knuckles against her mouth to stop a hysterical laugh. Or was it a sob?

Well, now she understood. She’d been thoroughly humbled, in fact.

She’d been twined with him, her mouth joined in heat, her body straining to be closer, closer, wanting to climb inside him. Some primal wisdom in her had taken over and had known, somehow, that it was in his power to give her shattering release. Her body had understood everything his poetry described, seemed to possess its own wisdom and will and wants, even as her mind couldn’t fully give shape to them.

And that devil had given her a
choice.
He’d known she would take it, because he was, after all, The Libertine, and he possessed the secret to seduction. He’d read her like that piece of music by La Valle and had all but orchestrated, leading her little by little—oh, she could see it now, all those little moments—to that moment in the statue gallery.

He was a dangerous, dangerous, bad, bad man. Bad man.

Oh, dear God, he tasted heavenly.

She lowered her face into her hands and breathed deeply into them. And yet that was a mistake, because she could still smell him on her hands, the masculine musk of sweat and salt and desire.

She wanted him all over again.

We are all animals, Miss Fairleigh.

And because her hands smelled of the Earl of Rawden, she once again did what he’d done. She skimmed a hand lightly over her own breast, to see if the shock was the same. And it was similar, but it was not the same, of course. Because it was a man she wanted.

Not once the entire time had she thought of Geoffrey.

And instinctively she knew she would never experience that sort of pleasure with the curate. And not once had she thought of Sophia Licari, and whether the earl might have gone from her to the soprano.

It hadn’t mattered. She hadn’t cared. Thought had played no role whatsoever, let alone will.

So much for will.

She breathed in deeply to steady herself. Breathed out again. She didn’t know how she could possibly face him again.

And then she looked up and caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror, flushed, agitated, distressed, delighted. And it was entirely his fault. And suddenly this made her angry.

She was made of sterner stuff than that.

Things would go on. And if the Earl of Rawden had a shred of decency in him, he would leave it be. He’d made his point. Thoroughly.

As he’d done, no doubt, with dozens of women before her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

S
YLVIE, WE’VE HAD a message in return from the vicarage in Tinbury. The vicar is away at present—something about performing last rites for some poor soul?—but the housekeeper has sent a message back to us. She says he does have a daughter named Sabrina, whom he adopted when she was a very little girl. But she isn’t at home, either! She has gone to visit a Lady Mary Capstraw. How does the vicarage manage without anyone in it, I ask you?” Susannah groused.

“Do you know Lady Mary Capstraw?” Sylvie asked Susannah. They were seated across from each other on matching velvet settees in the drawing room of the Grantham town house, imbibing strong tea.

Susannah turned to her husband, who had just strolled into the room, dressed for an evening at White’s. “Kit, do you know a Lady Mary Capstraw?”

“Capstraw…Capstraw…oh! Lord Paul Capstraw. Pleasant chap. Military type. Has said scarcely a word since he’s been married, but I’m not certain he misses the need to talk. Besotted with his wife.” He smiled at Susannah, as this described him, too. “She travels rather a lot, from what I’ve heard. Dragging Paul along with her. Haven’t seen Capstraw in ages.”

“Shall we next send a message to Lady Mary Capstraw?” Susannah asked eagerly.

“I’ll try to learn where to send it. Capstraw hails from the Midlands, as I recall. Still, finding Mary may seem a bit like chasing the wind, Susannah.”

“We have to try,” she said firmly.

“Of course.” Kit’s answer was blithe. “And we shall find her.”

As cool, as penetrable, as opaque as a glacier.

Rhys chewed his lamb, regarded Miss Fairleigh over the tiny flames of the dinner candle, and let the metaphors slide through his mind the way a pious man might slide rosary beads through his fingers. An attempt to soothe himself. She was laughing at something Wyndham had said—it hadn’t been too terribly funny, but she was polite, Miss Fairleigh was—and she’d spared a glance or two for the earl during the soup. A cool, impenetrable, opaque
glance.
She’d said something about the flavor of the soup, and he’d said something inane in agreement.

“We’ll have mud to contend with when the snow melts. I wonder when again the roads will be passable?” Sabrina said to Wynhdam.

“Determined travelers will find a way,” Wyndham said cheerily.

Four
days
of this. No blushing, no stuttering, no hiding in her room feigning illness, no weeping, no fawning. Four days since that evening, and somehow she had contrived to always be in the presence of a servant, or of Wyndham or Sophia. He saw her at meals. He saw her for cards. She retired early. He was never alone with her.

Not that he wanted to be.

It was very nearly insulting, he thought in amusement. He’d conducted an experiment with a girl who allegedly could not be seduced, which had concluded with the two of them grinding against each other in the statue gallery. She seemed entirely unaffected. Perhaps the green hills of Tinbury bred girls with stiffer backbones after all.