A Rogue by Any Other Name (21 page)

Dear M—

Having received no reply from you in English, I thought perhaps you might respond to alternate languages. Be warned, there is (likely incorrect) Latin ahead.

Écrivez, s’il vous plaît

Placet scribes

Bitte schreiben Sie

Scrivimi, per favore

Ysgrifennwch, os gwelwch yn dda

I confess, I had one of the Welsh kitchen girls help with that last one, but the sentiment remains.

Please write—P

Needham Manor, September 1816

No reply (in any language)

As part-owner in London’s most luxurious gaming hell, Bourne was no stranger to temptation. He specialized in sin. He was a personal acquaintance of vice. He knew the pull of emerald baize stretched across a billiard table, he understood the way the heart raced at the sound of hazard dice clattering in one’s hand, he knew the precipice upon which a gamer teetered when waiting for that single card that would make—or lose—a fortune.

But he had never in his life experienced temptation as acute as this—the call to sin and wickedness that rang in his head as he watched his new, virginal wife writhe upon his fur coverlet in nothing but a linen shift.

Desire shot through him, thick and intense, and he fought to keep himself from reaching down and tearing her night rail in two, baring her to his eyes and his hands and his mouth for the rest of the night.

To claim her as his.

Anger lingered, now mixed in heady combination with desire as she blinked up at him, slow and languid in the flickering candlelight. The whisper of a smile she offered him made him want to strip bare and climb onto that bed with her to rub the fur coverlet across her pristine skin and show her precisely how glorious depravity could be.

She blinked again, and he thickened, his perfectly tailored trousers suddenly too tight. “Michael,” she whispered, a hint of pleased discovery in her tone that did not help matters. “You are not supposed to be here.”

And yet he was, a fox leaping into a henhouse. “Were you expecting someone else?” The words were harsh to his ears, filled with a meaning that she would not understand. “It remains my bedchamber, does it not?”

She smiled. “You made a joke. Of course it does.”

“Then why am I not to be here?”

The question seemed to bother her. She wrinkled her nose. “You’re supposed to be with your goddess.” She closed her eyes and rocked into the fur again with a low hum of pleasure.

“My goddess?”

“Mmm. Alice told me that you do not sleep here.” She tried to sit up, the fur and the feather bed making the movement difficult, and Michael watched as the edge of her nightgown slipped, devastatingly, beautifully, down the slope of one bare breast. “You are always so silent, Michael. Do you try to intimidate me?”

He willed his voice calm. “Do I intimidate you?”

“Sometimes. But not right now.”

She crawled toward him, kneeling in front of him on the bed, one knee pulling the fabric taut, and Bourne found himself praying that her night rail would fall an inch more . . . half an inch. Just enough to bare one of her perfect pink nipples.

He shook off the thought. He was a man of thirty, not a boy of twelve. He had seen plenty of breasts in his day. He did not need to lust after his wife, swaying before him, testing the strength of her nightgown’s fabric and his sanity, all at once.

Indeed, he had not returned in a fit of lust. He’d returned because he was angry. Angry at her for nearly marrying Tommy. For not telling him the truth.

She broke into his thoughts, and he caught her by the waist to steady her. “I am sorry that I am not perfect.”

Right now, the only thing imperfect about her was the fact that she was clothed.

“What makes you say that?”

“We were married today,” she said. “Or perhaps you do not remember?”

“I remember.” She was making it impossible to forget.

“Really? Because you left me.”

“I remember that, too.” He had returned, ready to consummate the marriage. Ready to claim her as his and eliminate any doubt that they were married, that Falconwell was his.

That
she
was his. His, and not Tommy’s.

“Brides do not expect to be left on their wedding night, Michael.” He did not reply, and she brazened on, raising her hands to his arms, clutching him through layers of clothing. “We do not like it. Especially when you forgo an evening with us for one with your . . . raven-haired beauty.”

She wasn’t making sense. “Who?”

She waved a hand. “They’re always raven-haired, the ones who win . . .”

“Who win what?”

She was still talking. “ . . . It doesn’t matter if she’s raven-haired or not, really. It just matters that she exists. And I don’t like it.”

“I see,” he said. She thought he’d been with another woman? Perhaps if he’d been with another woman, he would not be here, wanting
her
so much.

“I don’t think you do see, actually.” She wavered, watching him carefully. “Are you
laughing
at me?”

“No.” He at least knew
that
was the correct answer.

“Shall I tell you what else brides do not like on their wedding night?”

“By all means.”

“We do not like to sit at home. Alone.”

“I imagine that goes with not liking being left.”

She narrowed her gaze and lowered her hands, swaying back, enough for him to tighten his grip and hold her steady—to feel the soft warmth of her beneath her shift, reminding him of the way she molded to his hands . . . to his mouth . . . to the rest of him. “You mock me.”

“I swear I don’t.”

“We also don’t like to be mocked.”

He had to take control before he lost his mind. “Penelope.”

She smiled. “I like the way you say my name.”

He ignored the words and the unplanned flirtation in them. She did not know what she was doing. “Why aren’t you in your own bed?”

She tilted her head, considering the question. “We married for all the wrong reasons. Or, all the right reasons . . . if you’re looking for a marriage of convenience. But, either way, we did not marry for passion. I mean, think about it. You didn’t
really
compromise me at Falconwell.”

A memory flashed of her writhing against him, pressing up into his hands, his mouth. The feel of her. The taste of her. “I am fairly certain that I did.”

She shook her head. “No. You didn’t. I know enough to understand the mechanics of the process, you know.”

He wanted to explore that knowledge. In depth. “I see.”

“I know there’s . . .
more.
”

So much more. So much more that he wanted to show her.
So much that he had planned to show her upon his return home. But . . . “You have been drinking.”

“Just a little.” She sighed, looking over his shoulder into the darkness of the room beyond. “Michael, you promised me adventure.”

“I did.”

“A
nighttime
adventure.”

His fingers tightened at her waist, pulling her to him. Or maybe she was simply swaying in that direction. Either way, he didn’t stop the movement. “I promised you a tour of my club.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want that tonight. Not anymore.”

She had the most beautiful, blue eyes. A man could lose himself in those eyes. “What do you want instead?”

“We were married today.”

Yes. They were.

“I’m your wife.”

He stroked his hands up her back until his fingers slid deep into golden curls, taking hold of her head and tilting her just so, perfectly, so he could lay claim to her and remind her that he was her husband.

He, and no one else.

He leaned in, brushing his lips across hers, light and teasing.

She sighed and pressed closer, but he pulled back, refusing to allow her to take over. She’d married him. She’d given him the chance to restore his name and his lands. And tonight, he wanted nothing more than to give her access to a world of pleasure as his thanks.

“Penelope.”

Her eyes drifted open. “Yes?”

“How much have you had to drink?”

She shook her head. “I am not in my cups. It seems I drank just enough to find the courage to ask for what I want.”

She’d had too much, then. He knew it, even as her words sent desire lancing through him, “And what is it you want, darling?”

She met his gaze head-on. “I want my wedding night.”

So simple, so direct. So irresistible. He took her lips again knowing he shouldn’t, and kissed her as though they had all the time in the world, as though he was not dying to be a part of her. To be inside her. To make her his. He sucked her full lower lip between his teeth, licking and stroking with his tongue until she moaned her pleasure at the back of her throat.

He released her mouth, kissing across her cheek, whispering, “Say my name.”

“Michael,” she said without hesitation, the word trembling at his ear, sending a shaft of pleasure straight through him.

“No. Bourne.” He took the lobe of one ear into his mouth and worried it before releasing her and saying, “Say it.”

“Bourne,” she shifted, pressing against him, asking for more. “Please.”

“There will be no turning back after this,” he promised, his lips at her temple, hands reveling in her softness.

Her blue eyes opened, unbelievably light in the darkness, and she whispered, “Why would you think I would turn back?”

He stilled at the question, at the honest confusion in her words. It was the drink talking. It had to be. It was inconceivable to think that she did not understand what he meant. That she did not see that he was nothing like the men who had courted her before.

“I’m not the man you had planned to marry.” He should confront her with Tommy. But he did not want another man’s name spoken in this moment. In this place.

She was already making him weak.

She smiled, small and perhaps sad. “You are the man I married nonetheless. I know that you don’t care about me, Michael. I know that you only married me for Falconwell. But it’s rather too late to look back, isn’t it? We are married. And I wish to have a wedding night. I deserve it, I think, after all these years. Please. If you don’t mind too much.”

His hands moved to the collar of her nightgown, and, with a mighty tug, he rent the clothing in two. She gasped at the movement, her eyes going wide. “You ruined it.” Bourne groaned at the wonder in the words. At the pleasure there.

He wanted to ruin more than the linen.

He brushed the night rail down her arms until it pooled at her knees, leaving her pale and naked in the candlelight. The too-dim candlelight. He wanted to see every inch of her . . . to watch the way her pulse raced at his touch, the way she quivered as he stroked the insides of her thighs, the way she clenched around him as he entered her.

As he claimed her.

He eased her back onto the fur, aching at the way she sighed as her back rubbed against the soft mink, as she learned the sheer decadence of skin against fur. He leaned over her, claiming her mouth until her hands were tangled in his hair, and she was pressing up against him. Only then did he lift his lips from hers and whisper, “I’m going to make love to you on this fur. You’re going to feel it against every inch of you. And the pleasure I give you will be more than you’ve ever imagined. You will cry
my
name as it comes.”

He left her then, removing his clothes, carefully arranging them in a neat pile on a chair nearby before returning to the bed to find that she had covered herself, one hand across her breasts, the other pressed to the triangle of curls that hid her most private parts. He stretched out on his side next to her, one hand propping up his head, the other smoothing over the soft swell of her thigh, up over the curve of her hip, across her rounded stomach. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, her breath coming in harsh little bursts, and Bourne could not help himself. He leaned down, licking the curve of one ear, nibbling at the lobe before asking, “Never hide from me.”

She shook her head then, blue eyes wide. “I can’t. I can’t just . . . lie here. Bare.”

He nipped her earlobe again. “I didn’t say anything about just lying there, darling.” He lifted the hand that was covering her breasts and slipped one finger into his mouth, licking the pad delicately before scraping it gently between his teeth.

“Oh . . .” She sighed, her gaze rapt on his lips. “You’re very good at that.”

He slowly extracted the finger and leaned down to kiss her, long and lush. “It’s not the only thing I am good at.”

Her eyelids flickered at the erotic promise in the words, and she said, softly, “I imagine you have had much more practice than I have.”

It did not matter that he had been with other women in that moment. All he wanted was to learn Penelope. To be the one to show her pleasure. To be the one to teach her to take it for herself. “Show me where you want me,” he whispered.

She blushed, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “I couldn’t.”

He returned her finger to his mouth, sucking carefully until her blue eyes opened, finding him, ethereal in the candlelight. She watched the movement of his lips, and the moment was so intense, he thought he might spend there and then. “Show me. Say, ‘Please, Bourne,’ and show me.”

Courage flared in her eyes then, and he watched with keen pleasure as that finger, the one he’d made love to, trailed along her breast, circling the puckered, straining tip of it. He swiped the back of one hand across his lips as he watched the movement, as she tempted him beyond belief.