“You worry about yourself, Your Grace. I’ll worry about me,” she tossed over her shoulder.
She faced him as she unbuttoned the last button and smiled. For all his arguing, he had removed his clothing as she’d asked and now lay across his bed in all his naked glory. Oh, and there was glory to it. He truly was magnificent, a beautiful specimen of the best a man could be. Muscled and toned and hard and hers.
She shimmied the dress away slowly and stood before him, as naked as he was. He caught his breath, a loud inhalation in the quiet room, but he made no move to touch her or control what was happening. Perhaps he was too exhausted by what he’d shared. Or perhaps he just wanted to surrender to her tonight.
Either way she felt a swell of power that this man who could control any situation or person within his reach would concede any quarter to her. That took trust. A trust she most certainly hadn’t earned considering all the ways she was lying to him.
He sat up on his elbows and tilted his head. “You’re thinking, Lydia.”
She smiled slightly at his easy read of her turbulent mind. “Am I? And what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing except I want you to be busy touching me, not analyzing everything that is happening.” Now he did reach out a hand, but his blue eyes didn’t leave her face. “Please.”
Thepleasewas said so softly and with so much need that she couldn’t resist it. Slowly she climbed onto the bed and crawled toward him. She ignored his outstretched hand as she caged him in with an arm on either side of his head. Her hair fell down around them in a curtain and her body brushed his as she lowered her lips and kissed him once more.
He opened to her with a soft sigh, and she took and took and took, drinking deeply of this man who so enthralled and captivated and frustrated and terrified her. This man who she had tried to avoid for most of her life and now she couldn’t get enough of.
This man she wanted beyond reason, even though she couldn’t truly have him, not in either life she had created for herself, as Lydia or as Adelaide. He was out of reach, stolen from time.
And in that moment she didn’t give a damn. She gently straddled him as she continued to kiss him, feeling the hard thrust of his erection pressed between her legs. But she didn’t take him, even though she was slick and ready and aching for him. No, tonight was about comfort. She hadn’t even begun to offer that yet.
She dragged her mouth away from his, sliding down his body. She’d had experience before, of course. She hadn’t been a virgin the first night Graham touched her. But what she’d done back then was nothing like what she shared with him. She was driven to touch him, to hold him, to taste him, to take him into her body. Her needs controlled her as she kissed along his shoulders, his collarbone, and finally dragged her tongue across his nipple just like he had done to her so many times.
He arched slightly under her ministrations, his muscles rippling beneath her touch as his eyes came shut and he groaned her name under his breath. Only itwasn’ther name, and Adelaide flinched at the evidence of the falsehood she had so carefully crafted.
Then she forced those thoughts away and surrendered herself to Lydia. She dragged her fingers down his stomach, tracing a pattern with her nails across his skin before she gently cupped his cock and stroked it once, twice. He lifted his hips into her with a garbled curse, and she smiled against his skin.
Pleasuring this man was the gift of a lifetime. Not for him, for herself. She would surely remember every single one of these moments long after this thing between them was over. But she refused to think of the end. She focused on this moment.
And dragged her lips even lower. His skin tasted like man and heat and Graham. She memorized every flavor as she licked his hip and then found herself face to face with his cock.
She looked up at him and found him staring down, his eyes wide and filled with breathless anticipation.
“You don’t have to,” he grunted.
She smiled at him. “I don’t have to do anything, Your Grace.”
Then she lowered her mouth over him and took him inside. She’d heard her friends at the theatre talk about this act. She’d even walked in on a lightskirt performing it on another actor once, so she wasn’t entirely uninformed. But seeing and hearing were very different from doing. She wasn’t fully ready for the hard and soft of Graham against her tongue, filling her mouth as far as she could take him.
She also wasn’t prepared for the pulse of hot and heavy need that cascaded through her, setting her on fire as she began to take him. His hands fisted against the coverlet and his neck dipped back, revealing the veins and tendons there. She watched him as she took him with her mouth, slowing her strokes when he moaned, adding her tongue when he seemed to like it, gently fisting the length she couldn’t manage to take into her throat.
She could feel him easing toward the brink. She wanted to push him over, to give this man pleasure without asking for anything in return. But he was Graham. Of course he wouldn’t allow for that.
He sat up and caught her arms, pulling her mouth away as he dragged her up his body and smashed his lips to hers. She slid over him, straddling him once more, and cried out with pleasure as he speared into her body with one long thrust.
His kisses were desperate and needy, but so were hers. She began to grind over him, her body clawing for pleasure, milking him for his as his fingers dug into her bare hips and moved her harder and faster over him. She threw her head back as the orgasm flamed through her, jolted her hips without control.
He pushed hard up into her, and then he cried out and she felt his seed spill into her body before he flopped back against the pillows, dragging her still twitching body over his where he held her like he would never let her go.
Adelaide lay on her side facing Graham. He was sprawled on his stomach, his face turned toward her, gentle in sleep. She was doing a math problem in her head. A calculation of how deep a mistake she had made tonight. Graham had spent inside of her. Not a problem, perhaps, for a woman like Lydia Ford. A woman like that could leverage a child into a windfall from a man like this. He’d pay to protect her child. She would go on as before.
No one would be hurt.
Only Lydia Ford didn’t exist. Lady Adelaide did. And if her math problem wasn’t correct, she would end up swollen with a child, ruined forever, perhaps out on the street if her aunt reacted as poorly as she had the last time Adelaide had fallen. And that time it had been private. Easy to hide.
Only the math in her head told her that a child was not very likely. So perhaps there was nothing to fear.
Except that she had gone too far with Graham tonight. Not because of making love. Because he had given her so much of his soul.Lydia. He’d given Lydia his soul.
