She threw up her hands. “He would say my father’s death was not worthy of grief. He would laugh when people referenced his illness. And once, deep in his cups, he held up a bottle of brandy in my father’s study and told me it was my father’s favorite, but that he would never drink of it. He smiled with such cruelty, such violence that I wondered then if he had…he had…”
“Poisoned it,” Finn whispered. “That is troubling, but?—”
“Please don’t say but,” she interrupted. “I’m not asking you to believe me. I explain all this to you without any thought that you would do anything about it, except understand why I cannot and will not ever go back to my family. To my cousin.”
Finn let out his breath in a long exhale. “I understand, Esme. I hear you. If you believe this, if it very well might be true, there is no way youcouldgo back. And I understand why you would leave everything behind.” He hesitated. “Was the…was the story you told me before I knew your identity the truth?”
She flinched and stepped away. “Yes. I left and I became a lightskirt for a time, then a pugilist. Does that trouble you more now that you know I was born a lady? Because I’m not ashamed of what I did to survive.”
His brow wrinkled and he stepped toward her. He touched her cheek, his fingers splaying out with the most exquisite gentleness as he stared down into her eyes. “Nor should you be. I admire you just as much now as I did when you first told me. And I grieve just as much that you were forced into such a difficult position in the first place.”
Her breath hitched as she stared into the brown depths of his gaze. His kindness was like a balm on her battered soul and that was so utterly bewitching, but it was also dangerous. And yet she still couldn’t step away from him. Not when he was so damned handsome, not when she wanted him as much as she had the night before. And he wanted her—she could see it in his eyes. Truly her, not some masked temptress that he enjoyed chasing.
“So you won’t tell him?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. Never.”
There was such a firmness to the way he said those words. A solid truth that she found faith in when her world had contained little of it for the last two years.
He was still stroking her cheek and she leaned into his fingers and smiled at him. Then she lifted up on her tiptoes,wound her arms around his neck and drew him to her. He took a short breath before their lips met. It was gentle at first, almost exploratory despite the pleasures they had shared the night before. But when she parted her lips, when she sighed into him, his arms came more tightly around her, he made a low groan from deep in his throat and he claimed her.
She lifted into him, tasting him, drowning in him, trying to get closer to him even when all the layers of clothing and propriety separated them. When one of his hands came into her hair, his fingers bunching against her scalp, she tilted her head and the kiss deepened further. Everything else spiraled away, leaving only desire, leaving only need and want and the tingling of pleasure through every nerve ending.
He pulled away slightly, staring down at her with wide eyes that almost looked like they were filled with disbelief. “Esme,” he whispered.
She nodded, answering a question he hadn’t asked but she saw nonetheless. “Yes, Finn. Yes, yes, yes. Take me upstairs, please just take me upstairs and let’s forget everything but pleasure.”
CHAPTER 9
Finn’s head was spinning as he stared down into Esme’s gorgeous face. She wanted him. And God knew he wanted her, even if some gentlemanly part of him was telling him this was now wrong because of where she’d started in life. Unfair, he realized. She had no less value no matter where she had begun, nor deserved any less from him.
“Please,” she repeated, her voice shaky.
He swallowed hard and then bent his head to kiss her again. God, she was sweet and he wasn’t strong enough to resist her. So he wouldn’t. He would give them both what they craved and decide what to do next afterward.
He somehow managed to pull back a second time and caught her hand. Her fingers laced through his, almost like they were made to fit, and she smiled at him. He drew her through the chamber, through the door, up the stairs. His thumb stroked the top of her hand relentlessly even as they moved through his dim hall and toward the set of double doors at the end. He couldn’t stop touching her, he needed it just as he needed breath in that charged moment.
When they reached the door to his chamber, he paused, trying to find some control again. He faced her and said, “Youowe me nothing. I want this to be for your pleasure, not out of fear or repayment or anything else.”
She pressed her hand to his chest and he knew she could feel his heart pounding there through his waistcoat and linen shirt. “I do this because I want to, Finn. Just as I did last night. I do this because whatever this heat is between us is irresistible.”
He nodded and pushed the door open, revealing the antechamber within. He heard her soft intake of breath as she entered the room, bright from lamps and the glowing fire. It was a fine chamber he and Marianne had worked hard on over the years since he inherited. They had slowly transformed it from the austere coldness of their father’s taste to the warmer, more inviting one of his own.
Esme glanced at him. “It’s lovely. But I want a bed, my lord. Is it that door?”
She pointed to the door by the fire and he nodded. She walked away without another word and he was shocked that as she did so, she shed her gown, leaving her naked beneath just as she had been at the Donville Masquerade.
“Don’t make me wait,” she tossed back over her shoulder without looking as she disappeared into his bedroom.
He didn’t have to be asked twice. He rushed after her, unbuttoning his waistcoat as he did so. He entered his bedroom and stopped to stare at her climbing up onto his bed, settling back on his pillows. She looked like she belonged there and he wanted to keep her just where she was for days, weeks, months, doing what he was about to do over and over until neither of them could recall a life outside these walls.
“Are you going to stare all night, or join me, my lord?” she asked. “Because I can start without you if you need a moment.”
She snaked a hand down her body and settled it between her legs, opening them wider so he could see her stroke her sex.
“Bloody hell, Esme,” he grunted, and crossed the room in a few long steps. He covered her with his body, loving how her naked curves rose up beneath him, and claimed her lips, this time with more force and passion.
She made a little cry of pleasure and wrapped her arms around him, meeting his tongue stroke for stroke, her nails raking against his shoulders through the fine linen of his shirt. He rocked against her, his body out of control in the pleasure any touch created. Even through his clothes, she made him ache, made him throb for her.
