Three Proposals and a Scandal: A Sons of Sin Novella (9 page)

And the world caught fire.

Elias sank deep into an ocean of desire. Marianne’s lips were lush and sweet and responded with an irresistible mixture of hesitation and eagerness. The eagerness pleased and surprised him. Gently he bit on her plump lower lip and tugged it down. She moaned and opened with a swiftness that blasted him with heat. She was warm and supple in his arms, more alluring than a thousand fantasies.

Her scent invaded his senses, rich and flowery. Lilies and honey. He felt dizzy, drunk, mad, like he’d downed a bottle of champagne.

No, something more complex. The finest burgundy. Marianne Seaton was as unforgettable as a great vintage. Unique.

When he slid his tongue into her mouth, she made another muffled sound, this time of shock. After an instant’s uncertainty, she softened against him. Her clumsy ardor betrayed that tonight marked her first kiss. That struck him as unbearably sad. Her martinet of a father had done his best to teach her unquestioning duty, to bring up a compliant doll. It said something for Marianne’s resilience that despite that relentless training, she emerged as such a fascinating woman.

Not wanting to startle her from whatever spell held her, he withdrew after the most fleeting taste. The foray was an unspoken promise to return. He kissed her cheeks, her nose, her stubborn chin. He took nothing for granted, desperate to steal what joy he could from this miraculous capitulation before she remembered that she despised him. For eons, he’d imagined having her close, discovering the sensuality that he knew lurked untapped inside that gloriously curved body.

When at last she shifted, anguished denial rose like a floodtide. Instead of pushing him away, her hands plunged into his hair, tugging in silent encouragement. She leaned forward with a natural welcome that left him reeling in thrilled astonishment. Through his thickening daze, strategy had clung by its fingertips. When the woman he’d wanted for so long returned his kiss, strategy found no purchase in the avalanche of sensations.

Elias spread his hand against her straight, slender back and brought her closer. He defied a remorseless fate to rob him of this chance. His tongue swept more ruthlessly into her mouth.

How far she’d come since she’d ventured into his arms. This time she met his incursion. The rasping glide nearly blew off the top of his head. He played with her mouth, nipping and sucking and giving glancing little kisses, then surprising her with a more thorough exploration.

He bent to taste the smooth skin of her neck and shoulders, pushing her gown aside. When he bit the curve of her throat, she started and gasped.

“Elias,” she sighed, and it was his turn to shiver with pleasure. Through the storm of kisses, she’d inflamed him with wordless murmurs, but this was the first time she’d spoken his name.

“My love,” he whispered and kissed her mouth again. Her heat was more addictive than opium. Her generosity was as arousing as the touch of her skin.

Kissing had been wondrous enough, but her swift capitulation tested the leash on his hunger. The devil inside him whispered that it would be easy to push her down onto the chaise longue behind her and achieve an incendiary end.

But he didn’t want her to regret what they’d done. Despite her passionate response, he didn’t fool himself that tonight’s encounter meant wholehearted surrender.

Dear sweet God, what he’d give for such a surrender.

Until she offered that, he had to stay on the side of innocence. Despite the burn of her mouth against his. Despite her incoherent murmurs goading him on.

Her kisses turned into the most exquisite torture, but he’d rather face the hangman than curtail this chance to touch her. These kisses might be all she ever granted him. He plundered her mouth, reveling in her unfettered response, her muffled sighs, the way she tugged him nearer.

Breathing roughly, she withdrew a fraction. He felt that distance like a chasm.

“Elias.”

This time triumph didn’t stir his blood. He already knew what the next words would be.

“Elias, please…” The broken plea emerged as she raised a shaking hand to his chest. “Please stop.”

For one sizzling instant, he pretended not to hear. She liked their kisses. He didn’t mistake that. He could coax her into yielding more.

But she was trembling and while he wanted her beyond endurance, he also loved her. He couldn’t make her less than she was. That wasn’t love.

He felt like he scraped away his skin with a blunt ax when he forced his arms to loosen and his feet to retreat a pace.

Her blue eyes were hazy with arousal when she raised them to his. “Thank you,” she whispered, lips red and swollen after his voracious kisses.

“For kissing you or for stopping?” Despite his best efforts to edge back from the precipice, his hands curled against her waist. It would take so damned little to give passion its way.

“For stopping.” To his admiration, that alluring mouth curved. “And for kissing me.”

She remained within his grasp. After such long and wounding discouragement, he wasn’t about to give up the privilege of touching her until she made him. Even if this wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy the beast stirring after those untrammeled kisses.

He was as hard as a ship’s mast and only the most painful exercise of restraint stopped him from taking advantage of her willingness. She didn’t know how close he’d verged to ripping away that pretty dress and showing her how much he wanted her. The craving to push onward beat like thunder. He was hellish near to shoving her against the wall and proving in the most basic way that they belonged together.

Of course she didn’t know. She was an innocent, despite her courage and cleverness. Tonight her innocence kept her safe.

Her innocence and his love.

The words “I love you” hovered so close, but her reaction the last time he’d expressed the full extent of his feelings kept him silent. “I’d like to kiss you again,” he said gruffly.

“I’d like that, too, but it would be wrong.”

The regret in her voice made the beast strain against its bonds. Her admission that he didn’t yearn alone fed dangerous appetite. “Why?” he asked with sudden heat. “You’re twenty-five, Marianne. A lovely woman shouldn’t be a stranger to pleasure. It’s such a damned waste.”

Her blue eyes widened. “Pleasure?”

“Yes, pleasure,” he snapped. “More than you’ll find in a few kisses, however heady.”

She raised a shaking hand to glistening lips. They were so physically attuned, he felt like he touched her at the same time. “That’s wicked.”

He smiled. “No, merely human.”

“I should go,” she murmured without moving.

Elias stared down into her perfect face. The widely spaced eyes. The gentle arch of her brows. The voluptuous mouth that had always lured him. Now he’d tasted that mouth, he feared no wine would ever compare.

A puzzled frown creased her forehead. “Why are you smiling?”

“Because you’re here. You appeared out of the music like a spirit.”

Mockery lit the rich blue eyes. “You summoned me.”

“Now I know that I can, I’ll do it again.”

Humor faded. “No. Tonight is special.”

A reminder that this might be the only time he kissed her. Recklessness surged. Damn it, he’d make sure she never forgot him.

He cupped the delicate line of her jaw. He felt rather than saw her tiny start at the contact. This was like trying to lure a wild creature to his hand. A fluttering bird. Any second, she might take fright and vanish forever. The knowledge that her urge to flee was at least as strong as her will to stay made each second a prize. “For me, too.”

Her skin was warm beneath his fingers. No man who touched her would believe she was the ice maiden people called her.

Because he felt that the untouchable goddess Lady Marianne Seaton was real and vivid—and eminently touchable—he spoke the words that had burned in his throat since she’d drawn away. “I could show you more.”

That winsome little frown reappeared. The same numskulls who called Marianne Seaton an ice maiden said they found her as lovely and impassive as a statue, but Elias had never thought that. He’d immediately recognized her essential shyness.

He stroked her satiny cheek. “Let me show you more.”

Trouble shadowed her eyes to cobalt. “I’m not—”

He smiled tenderly. “Something just for you.”

“You’re trying to ruin me,” she whispered. Pain scored his heart as she stepped back, breaking his hold.

He shook his head. “On my honor, no. I swear you’ll leave as pure as you are now.”

“What’s your reward?” she asked with a hint of grimness.

“My reward is your pleasure.” He shrugged. “I won’t lie and say I don’t want more. But I’m not an impulsive boy. I can control myself. You’re safe, Marianne.”

“Am I?” She stared at him as if weighing his soul.

“You have my word. I’ve watched you so closely. You devote your life to making other people happy. Tonight I offer you a gift—an hour of pure self-indulgence.”

She swallowed, her white throat working. “And you promise that nobody will know?”

“Nobody.”

“It’s…tempting.”

Defying his impulse to seize her, he stepped away to allow her space to decide. Although he knew that in letting her go, he risked losing her. “An interval of selfish enjoyment. I can guess nobody has ever offered you that.”

“No.”

The word was a mere filament of sound. The house settled around them in slumbering silence. It was like they were the sole two people awake on earth.

He’d hesitated to mention anything beyond this encounter because reminding her of his hopes was the surest way to drive her off. Now he dared. “Accept this, even if you’ll accept nothing else from me.”

She stood regarding him for so long that he became convinced she meant to deny him. And herself.

Then she straightened and gave a stiff nod, as if accepting a challenge to a duel.

He supposed in her own way, she was.

“Very well,” she whispered. “Show me pleasure.”

Marianne braced for smugness. But she couldn’t mistake the joy transfiguring Elias’s face. The sheer brilliance of his male beauty enthralled her. And soothed the tigers of uncertainty clawing at her stomach.

“Oh, my darling,” he murmured, and encircled her in his arms. “I swear you’ll never be sorry.”

After all those kisses, she should be familiar with his touch. Still her unruly heart leaped. His embrace felt like coming home after a long and dangerous journey. Which was lunatic when giving herself over to his caresses was the riskiest step she’d ever taken.

When he’d described her as a self-sacrificing cipher, something in her soul had rebelled. He’d asked her about secrets. Well, tonight would become her secret. Every woman should have something to dream on when she was old.

Tomorrow commonplace reality would set in. She’d play the dutiful daughter and obey her father and marry Desborough. She’d go to Desborough’s bed a virgin and set her face toward finding purpose as his wife and the mother of his children.

But first, first she’d accept Elias’s gift. Fate gave her this chance. She’d never before been free. A greater gift than pleasure was the gift of freedom.

She closed her eyes against a mist of tears and hid her face in Elias’s chest. His strength gave her a temporary haven from the world’s endless demands.

Gradually her heart’s race calmed. Her blood started to pump sluggish and heavy.

When she’d consented, she’d expected Elias to jump on her. He knew as well as she did that they had one night and the hour was already late. But he held her as if they had all the time in the world. She’d never felt so cherished.

Every night, alone in her chaste bed, when she didn’t need to feign control to herself or anyone else, she’d pretended she was with him. The actuality of Elias Thorne was so much more arousing than her most feverish imaginings.

Eventually she became conscious of things outside the sweet comfort. The crackle of the fire. The edge of cold beneath the flames’ heat. The more alluring heat of Elias’s body. The slap of raindrops against the casement windows. The soft music of his breathing.

All the busy, ceaseless, exhausting requirements of pleasing her father, pleasing the world, faded. Instead, she found peace. Peace that descended like a soft fall of dark feathers.

Gradually her tension flowed away. When his hands began to glide over her body, she stood too spellbound to be afraid. She felt connected to this man in a way she’d never felt connected to anyone. He’d called pleasure his gift to her. She counted the quiet as another gift.

Gently, he stroked her back and arms and shoulders. She leaned into his body. Nobody had touched her like this. Beyond politeness, nobody ever touched her at all.

Elias was right. That seemed a miserable waste.

Was this slow seduction a ploy to force her consent? She couldn’t believe that. His music had created a covenant of honesty. At least for this forbidden interval. She might be making the biggest mistake of her life, but he couldn’t sacrifice this opportunity to discover the touch of the one man she’d ever wanted.

When his hands spanned her waist and slid down to shape her hips, she squirmed. He pressed her against a hard male need that set her instincts jangling.

“Shh,” he whispered without releasing her.

Immediately she quieted, his voice smoothing her prickling timidity. No danger could compare to the promise of his desire, the cessation of bitter loneliness.

Once she left this room, more loneliness waited. Viewed from the circle of Elias’s arms, that prospect was unendurable.

She gasped when he swept her up in his arms. “Elias.”

He smiled at her, teeth white in his tanned face. “I won’t drop you.”

“Actually,” she admitted shyly, “I think if you let me go, I might float.”

“I’ll never let you go.”

Marianne was so lost that not even that sounded threatening. She curved to fit him and hooked her hand around his neck. His hair was a fraction too long and it tickled her fingers, soft and warm from his skin.