“Ah yes. I remember.” His mouth descended on hers now for a blazing kiss, and she returned in kind, sliding a hand underneath his coat to his waistcoat then undoing his buttons.
Somewhere, distantly, a soprano hit an eye-watering note, and it resonated through her like a tolled bell.
“I don’t like seeing you with other gentlemen,” he said in a low, possessive voice. His teeth caught her lobe, not gently, and she bit her lip. “I especially don’t like watching them touch you.”
“You do not own me,” she said, tipping her chin back.
“No? But I want to.” He palmed her breast and made a pleased noise at the back of his throat. “I want to be the only man permitted to touch you here.” There was a savage, primal light in his eyes, and all the words she had been meaning to say—about how he had no right to claim on her—died on her lips.
This, she liked.
Thisshe liked very much indeed.
He ran both hands around her waist and down to her backside, squeezing her and pressing her against his erection. “It drove me half mad to watch you up there with him.”
“If this is half mad, then I would gladly do it again.”
“No.” With one hand, he pushed up her skirts; with his other, he slid two fingers between her thighs. Her eyes closed in relief. How long had it been since someone had touched her there? Weeks—since she had returned to London from WorthingtonHall at the end of April. Five weeks at least. Maybe longer. “I don’t want you to see him again. Do you understand me?”
“This was not the plan,” she managed.
“The plan? Do you think I planned this?” He caught the nape of her neck in his hand and dragged her in for another rough kiss. His other hand worked between her legs, plunging inside her with a roughness that only added to her pleasure. “When you ended things between us, I hadn’t intended to think about you again after we parted.”
“But you do?”
“I wanted to take you on the balcony at Lady Peterborough’s ball,” he told her, and she squirmed, breathless and wanting. “I wanted to push you against the wall and hold a hand over your mouth to stop you whimpering as I made a mess of you in front of all the other guests.”
She clenched helplessly around him. “I would have let you.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t deny you because I had no desire to—” She could not think with his finger crooking inside her, finding the place that brought about her peak the fastest. “You are to be married.”
“I am not yet.”
There was also the matter of payment; she had given him her favours for free, because she had wanted to, because she had liked him. But if he was insisting on being her only lover, and if she accepted, then she would need more from him.
It galled her to admit it.
“Did he expect to go home with you tonight?” he demanded.
“No.”
“Good.” That single word was vicious, and he pressed the head of his cock against her slickness. “I am not even close to being done with you.”
The audacity of the statement thrilled her, although she did her best not to show it. “And if I am done with you?”
He took the crook of her knee, lifting it to one side as he pushed himself inside her. She made a muted sound of satisfaction. That was always how it had been between them.
“Quiet, love,” he said, one hand across her mouth. Then he leant in closer. “Liar. If that were true, you would not be here.”
True, she could not deny it. Just a few walls away, thetonwere gathered to listen to an opera, and if she made too much noise, they would inevitably risk discovery and ruin. Many things could be forgiven behind closed doors, but this was sordid, even for her.
He was right: she did delight in it.
When they both found completion, he would be gentle again, tender, but until then, he gave her this, and it was what she needed. The streak of cruelty that always heated her blood and made her hate him, just a little.
Everything was so much heightened when there was an edge of pain to the pleasure.
