Sinful (9 page)

He wanted to strip her of that innocence, to tutor her to pleasure. He wanted her to know passion, and he wanted her to learn it from him. Her hand left his shoulder and rested low on her belly. He placed his hand on hers, rubbing it in soft circles.

“Do you ache for it, Jane?”

Her teeth chattered, her whole body trembled, but she wasn’t cold, indeed she was warm, so very hot. Together their hands moved, him bringing his palm lower and lower until it rested between the apex of her thighs, which squeezed their joined hands like a vise.

“You feel it here?” he asked. “Release the pressure then, Jane,” he encouraged. He lifted his hand, and felt, as well as heard, her small palm move between her thighs. Her breath caught in her throat, and she made an inarticulate sound that aroused him.

“I burn, Jane.” His tongue traced the cleft of her breasts, while his thumb circled and hardened her nipple. Jane whimpered with each probe of his tongue, and he rubbed his engorged, throbbing cock against the soft vee of her thighs as her hand played overtop her gown.

This is where he wanted to be, between her thighs, cushioned and welcomed. He wanted inside her, to feel her quim sheathing him, tightening around him as he took her deep, rocking against her.

He shoved against her and she cried out, shocked, alarmed, frightened by the size of him. She tried to push away from him, but he followed her, pressing his chest against her, pinning her against the wall of the carriage. She was panting now and her fingers were tightening in his hair, at times almost painfully clutching, and it drove him wild. No, she was not afraid, he thought with relief, just anxious and eager.

“Matthew,” she panted between brushes of his lips and the plunging of his tongue. “I ache, I burn, I hurt.”

“I will fill that hurt, Jane,” he promised. He reached for the tapes at the back of her gown and opened them, clumsy in his hurry. But he needed her. Needed to feel her, taste her. The bodice came free and he pulled it away from her skin. She had pressed herself against the wall, arching her neck and thrusting her breasts forward. His hand brushed the hot skin of her breasts, and he slid his mouth lower, wetting a wet path down to the full swell. His hand resting beneath her breast, he could feel the delicate ribs beneath her skin, could feel her breast quivering against his thumb in anticipation and escalating desire. He felt reckless now. Any pretense to gentleness was slowly being eaten away by his own mounting excitement.

“Ask me,” he murmured against her, his mouth coming so close to her nipple. “Ask me, Jane, to suckle you.”

“Take me in your mouth,
please,
Matthew.”

He went to his knees, his tongue trailing along the soft tip of her nipple. It furled and budded. He opened his mouth, then slipped the nipple inside and sucked, slowly, drawing it deep and hard between his pulling lips. He imagined that her insides were already tightening and she was feeling her honey
slide out of her body. He wanted that honey on his mouth, his tongue. He wanted Jane in the worst possible way. And he was going to have her, naked and spread and completely at his mercy.

Oh, God,
Jane chanted over and over in her mind. What was Matthew doing to her, making her feel this way? He was suckling her so deeply, slowly, erotically that her entire body felt weak. When his strong palm reached the apex of her thighs, she whimpered, and instinctively spread her legs, allowing him to shoulder his way between them. She felt herself blush as he ran his hand along her curls. When he skimmed his finger along her wet cleft, she whimpered in anticipation.

“I want you there,” she cried, shoving his hand against her. He made a growling sound then was fully atop her, capturing her mouth with his. His kiss turned greedy, frantic. His hands were everywhere. Sliding down her arms, her hips. His fingers cupped her buttocks, then slid up to knead her breasts. He took her nipples between his thumbs and fingers, squeezing, rolling, pulling until she gasped beneath him, all the while kissing her with unfettered passion.

Jane had never felt anything so sinfully wicked in all her life. Her body was awakening, flickering to life, as it responded to his touch, heating her flesh as he made her burn for more. Her breasts ached for his lips, his tongue. The place between her thighs throbbed with a longing that was much stronger than when she pleasured herself.

She mewled as he settled his body more intimately over hers. He felt hard and heavy. The throbbing length of his arousal rubbed against her thigh, burning her. He groaned deeper and plunged his tongue in and out of her mouth as he pressed his erection rhythmically onto her leg.

“Touch me,” he breathed harshly as he rocked his hips against her.

She clutched him tightly, stroking him through his trousers as she had that night at the hospital. Needing to feel him in her hand, she tore at the buttons with trembling fingers. She was clumsy and unschooled, and impatiently he tore at them, opening them, freeing himself onto her palm.

“God, yes, touch my cock,” he moaned as he pulled at her nipples. His words, so dark and full of need, urged her open. Jane cupped him, feeling the hot length of him scalding her palm. Exploring him, she ran her fingers up and down, her hand firming as it slid up the thick length. His breath quickened, rasping harshly against her neck as her hand worked up and down his shaft.

His excitement fueled her own, and when finally his hand cupped her intimately, her thighs fell open. Immediately his fingers slid inside her—filling her. She moaned at the invasion, the feeling of fullness and the slickness that pooled there.

“My God,” he whispered thickly. “I cannot wait to watch your cunt take me.”

Oh, yes, she wanted that, too. To see his penetration of her body. It was base and primitive, yet Jane wanted it. To watch her body accept him.

But then he was sliding down the length of her, parting her slick sex with both hands and she could not think any more thoughts. Stubble grazed her thighs as he lowered his head to her flesh, the sensation sending jolts of awareness straight through her.

He licked her then. His hot tongue scorched a path up the length of her, each time using the flat of his tongue to fully cover her sex. He opened his mouth, covering her, kissing her there as he had her mouth. She was wet, sticky, mortified that he would know, that he would feel and taste…

“No,” she whimpered, squirming in his iron grasp.

“Don’t pull away from me,” he murmured, his finger stroking that sensitive part of her. “Just come for me, Jane. Come…”

With deliberate strokes, he sucked and teased, and then, when her body tightened and bowed beneath him, he sucked harder and made the world shatter around her.

“Matthew!” she cried, gasping, clawing at his hair.

“Let me take care of you,” he whispered.

“Oh, God, please, Matthew,” she begged, struggling for air. “Yes,” she cried, then began to shake uncontrollably in his arms.

His lips and tongue tasted the sweet skin of her throat and the swells of her breasts. Her hands were fisted in his hair, clutching and tugging, begging him for more.

“Jane, come home with me,” he whispered softly against her ear. “Let us take this passion where it wants to go. No questions. No demands. Only pleasure.”

Jane couldn’t think. She felt as though she had died and been reborn in Matthew’s arms. The pleasure…she had never felt such bliss. Her whole body seemed to glow with it.

“Let me paint you, Jane. Let me inside you.”

She swallowed hard, trying to think, to not be impulsive and rash, but “yes” was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

“When, Jane?” he asked while he nuzzled the soft patch of skin beneath her ear. “When will you come to me?”

“In two days, that is my next afternoon off.”

“An afternoon is not enough, Jane. I need more than a few hours with you.”

She tried to think, and didn’t want to. Getting more time off would involve lies and deceit. She didn’t want to lie, yet she could not stop thinking of spending hours with Matthew.

“In two days,” she whispered, “I will spend the night with you.”

Jane buried the guilt she felt for lying to both Lady Blackwood and Richard. She was not proud of what she had done, but she could not change her mind now. She was meeting Matthew today, and he was taking her somewhere where they could be together. She didn’t care where that somewhere was, what mattered was that she’d be with him.

The past two days had felt like a dream. He had written her darkly sensual letters that promised every kind of forbidden pleasure. Pleasures that would be hers in a matter of moments, when Matthew pulled up to the sidewalk in his elegant carriage, to carry her off, like Hades had done to Persephone.

Meeting him like this went against everything she believed in, but she was too weak to resist the temptation he offered. She had never been tempted, never known how pleasurable it could be to heed the cry of enticement.

She would not feel guilty, she told herself for the thousandth time. It was only going to be one more time.
One night.
She
would give herself to him because she was, she thought with startling amusement, falling in love with Matthew.

Could one love a man one knew nearly nothing about? Was it love or simply lust? Some might say it was only lust, but she would argue it. Love, albeit tender and new, was what was in Jane’s heart. She knew it was silly, that it could never be, and that come the morning it would be done. But tonight, she could share that love, indulge it, gift it to him, and it would be enough, it would have to be.

Their spheres were different. Their worlds divided by class, money and titles. She could not live in his world, and he could not live in hers. But they could forge a new world tonight. One that transcended the realities of their birth and social standing. It would be a world based on mutual passion, of shared feelings. Of love, Jane thought.

The sun peeked through a cloud, and Jane tilted her face to the warm rays. It was a glorious day. A fine day for an assignation.

The clatter of hooves drew her attention, and she glanced down the street to see a familiar set of gray horses cantering along the cobbles. The street was busy, and Jane moved to the side to avoid being jostled by the crowd.

Excitedly, she watched the carriage pull to a stop, and the door swing open to reveal Matthew. Butterflies circled in her stomach like mad, but Jane quelled them as she watched him, looking like a dark angel, descend the carriage steps.

He stood in front of the carriage, his head turning left and right, scanning the bustling street. With a frown he drew his pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket and flipped the silver lid open before settling it back into his pocket.

With a deep breath, Jane walked through the crowd toward him. He glanced at her, then turned his attention back to the iron gates of the hospital.
He didn’t know her.

Of course he didn’t, she reasoned. She had worn a veil the last time they had been together, and the times before that, his head had been bandaged.

“Hello,” she murmured as she came up to him.

He ignored her and gave her his back. Jane swallowed back the slight.

“Are you looking for someone?”

He turned and glared at her, and Jane actually shrunk back, shocked by the change in his expression. “Yes, but not the likes of you,” he snapped.

Rendered mute, Jane stood there for long seconds, trying to breathe. With a scathing glance he took her in, from the top of her green bonnet to the tips of her scuffed half boots. His assessment, she knew, was not a positive one.

His rebuke stung. And for some ungodly reason, her hand automatically flew to her hair. She saw how he was staring at it, the bright red hue beneath her bonnet. She could not bear to see the way he was looking at her—
right through her
—without seeing her. He did not see a woman. He did not see Jane, the woman he had been so passionate with two days before. He saw… Jane swallowed hard and looked away, hating the weakness of her spirit. She was more than this, a wilting flower. She was stronger than this. But damn it, this hurt.

It hurt because he was the man responsible for making her burn. For making her feel like a woman. It hurt because it had been a trick. An illusion. And it hurt most of all because he did not see her, the woman she was behind the unfashionable spectacles and garish hair.

“Is there something you need?” he asked in a most uncivilized tone.

“No,” she whispered, glancing away so he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes.

“Do I know you?” he asked, suspicion growing in his voice. “Have we met?”

She could hear the fear in his voice, and it killed what remained of the hope she held in her heart. She searched for anything to say, anything at all that might save her further humiliation, but her pride would not let go.

“Do you…do you know who I am?” she asked quietly, at last able to look up at him. His eyes…Jane was struck breathless at the sight of them. They were dark blue, the color of india ink. Faint bruising marred his eyelids but it in no way detracted from his handsomeness. The way he looked at her, with those beautiful eyes glaring at her, cut her to the quick.

His gaze narrowed for a brief second as if he did, indeed, begin to recognize her, but he straightened and stepped back. “Should I know you?” He looked her over from the top of her cap to the tips of her worn boots as if she were an insect on a stick that he found rather revolting.

“From the hospital,” she said, adopting her native cockney accent, while disguising herself from him. Jane shoved her wounded pride aside and instead tilted her chin up a notch and stared him down through the lenses of her spectacles.

His mouth worked, and Jane saw the horror in his eyes. He was afraid she was his lover. He was horrified by the thought of it, and Jane was just as horrified that she had allowed herself to be such a fool. Men were men. They all wanted beauty. Such shallow, fickle,
heartless
creatures.

“Yer ’ere to meet Jane,” she grumbled, and he saw his expression grow hopeful.

“Yes, have you seen her?”

“Yes, I expect she’s on her way ’ome by now.”

“Home?” he thundered, his expression growing dark. “We planned to meet here.”

“Oh, she had no plans to meet with you, milord,” she
countered, growing more venomous by the second. “She paid me a crown to wait ’ere to tell ye she wouldn’t be coming today, or any other day fer that matter.”

He looked crestfallen, and Jane, for an instant, felt badly, but the stinging of her pride and the burning ache of her heart soon shoved any softening feeling aside.

“What do you mean she’s not coming?” he growled. “We had an appointment.”

“She changed ’er mind.”

He swore, and slapped his gloves against his thigh. “I don’t believe this.”

Jane wondered what was so incredulous to him, the fact that Jane had not fallen into his grasp, or the fact that Jane, as a poor, working woman would have the audacity to turn down a lord. Either way, it made her rage and seethe inside. She had grossly misjudged him. That had been her own fault. A fault she wouldn’t allow ever again.

“Would you give her this?” he asked. He reached into his pocket and removed a silver case. He pulled out an ivory card and handed it to her.

The Earl of Wallingford.
Jane nearly choked on her tongue. Wallingford was her Matthew?
The
Wallingford? The man was the most vile, most reprehensible skirt chaser in the realm. She knew of his infamous reputation, even with her limited association with the ton. Lord, what a fool she had been. His exploits were legendary. His callous attitude toward women shameful. He was a beast, a misogynist, and Jane felt abused and violated that she had allowed herself to be taken in by his silky tongue.

How had she not recognized him? she wondered. She had met him once, while she had been visiting Anais. Wallingford and Anais had been friends for years. Jane didn’t expect him to recall their introduction, for she was nothing but a servant
in his eyes, nothing worth remembering. But why had she not realized who he was? How had she not remembered his rugged handsomeness?

Because he was beaten. Because he was in the East End, her mind tried to rationalize. Oh, Lord, what the devil had she done?

“I will give you half a crown,” he muttered, “if you tell me where she lives.”

Jane glared at him, and turned her back, preparing to leave. He reached for her and held her arm in his grip. “All right, a crown. Tell me where to find Jane.”

“She doesn’t want to be found by the likes of you.”

“All right, five pounds. Now give me her direction.”

She knew her eyes were glittering with rage. “Get yer paws off me, or I’ll scream for the constable.”

His lips turned mulish. “He’d hardly believe I was ravishing you, now, would he? You’re hardly the ravishing type.”

Jane gasped at his cruelty. “You’ll never find her,” she hissed. “She’s run off, far away from you.”

“Nothing evades me when I want it bad enough.” He dropped her arm and stared down at her. “Now then, how much is it going to cost me to get what I want out of you?”

Jane’s entire being filled with hatred for him. How had she misjudged him? How could this puffed-up, arrogant beast be her sweet Matthew? She looked up at him, stunned, trying to understand how there could be two so very different sides to him.

“Simple, as well as plain, I see,” he growled. “Here, there’s ten pounds, now tell me where to find Jane.
Now.
”

She took the money, dropped it to the ground and stepped onto the bill, grinding her boot on it. “There’s much for purchase on these streets, milord, but you’ll find I’m not one of the items.”

With a flare of her skirt and head held high, Jane strolled down the street and waved down a hansom cab. As they drove past the spot where she had waited for him, she noticed that Matthew—no, it was Wallingford now—was marching his way into the hospital.

She was right when she thought her world would look different if she got into that carriage with him. Her world had changed. It had gone from gray to black in the span of a kiss.

She was ruined now, broken by the Earl of Wallingford.

The rain was pouring down in a blinding sheet.

Heedless of the bone-raking chill of the wind and driving rain, Matthew gripped the iron bars of the fence and stared at the empty spot where he’d once held Jane’s hand.

Stark reality slapped him in the face. He had driven her away from him. What had he done? Had he been too bold in his embrace? Had he frightened her away because he had not been able to control his own lust?
Impossible.
She needed his touch as much as he had needed hers. He knew that—still knew it. It was something else. He could hardly credit how he should know such a thing. He just did. Damn it, he didn’t know why. And he needed to know. Needed to know why she hadn’t come to him in over a week. He needed to know almost as much as he needed her.

Every night, every morning, he had come to the hospital, hoping to find her, to glimpse her on her way to or from work. He had seen no one who resembled her. He would know her body, the way it curved beneath her cloak. He would recognize her voice, the way it soothed the storm inside him. But he had seen no one who he thought was Jane. The letters he had sent to the hospital had been returned to him, unopened. He had even gone to the hospital, inquiring after her. The nurse in charge had denied knowing a Nurse Jane.

She was hiding from him, but why?

Pushing off from the fence, he blinked away the rainwater that landed on his lashes. Ignoring the forked flash of lightning and the roll of thunder, he took another step back, unable to bring himself to look away from the gates of the hospital.

Damn her for not returning. And damn him for being such a pathetic fool. What a simpleton he was to come every day, hoping and praying he would find her. Christ, it was utterly pathetic, this slavish need he had in regard to her. How could a woman he knew nothing about become so vital to his happiness? Women had never factored into his happiness before, so why now, did this one?

The ugly truth stared before him and he forced himself to confront his mistake. He had been gravely wrong to believe that Jane was different from the women in his past.

Goddamn her, she had made him hope. Made him feel alive. Made him yearn. Well, no more. To hell with her. To hell with himself for believing in a woman’s goodness.

As he flung open the door to his carriage, his coachman leaned to the side from his perch. “Home, your lordship?”

“No,” he growled. “To Madame Recamier’s.”

“The bordello?” his coachman asked with a frown.

“Do you have a goddamn problem with that, Turner?” he snapped.

“I didn’t think—”

“You’re damn right you didn’t think. Henceforth, you will keep your opinions and your thoughts to yourself. I pay you to drive, not talk. If you’re not up to the task, I’ll find myself another coachman who can do the job.”

The young man’s face turned crimson. “Begging yer pardon, yer lordship.”

“I should say so. If you want to retain your post, keep in
mind the fact that the last bloody thing I want is a lecture from the hired help on my lack of morals. If I want a sermon, I’ll bloody well go to church, or better yet, I’ll pay a call on my father.”

Slamming the door shut, Matthew stretched out his legs and watched the rivulets of rainwater trickle down the glossed leather of his boots. Christ, he was in a black mood. A rage he had not felt for years was gripping him. The image of Jane standing beside him flashed before him. He thrust it aside, just as he thrust aside the feel of her lips beneath his. A feeling that was strongly reminiscent of guilt washed over him when he thought of the brothel he’d ordered his coachman to drive him to.

What was he doing going to a brothel? He wasn’t in the mood, nor the right frame of mind to take a woman to bed. However, it was not only his black mood that made him uneasy, it was something far more unsettling than that. It was his conscience that was jabbing at him.

Fuck her,
he spat viscously as he crossed his arms over his chest. He owed Jane nothing. He didn’t even know her last name. He doubted he would even see her again.