Wicked (28 page)

"Now drink it."

"Is it poisoned?"

"With love," she purred, smiling.

"What kind
of love?"

"Sex love."

His grin flashed, familiar, warm. "To your health, mademoiselle," he silkily drawled, and lifted the glass to his mouth.

"Am I allowed to touch you now?" she teased.

"Be my guest," he said with a wave of his hand, his mood abruptly altered. And when she straddled his hips and smiled at him a moment later from very close range, he delicately touched her marzipaned nipple and said, "Dessert."

Reclining on the chaise, he drank his brandy leisurely, savoring the sight and scent of her, reaching up to touch her lightly, his fingers brushing the flaring swell of her breast, sliding upward to the warm hollow behind her ear, slipping down her jaw and across her mouth. "You could bring a eunuch to orgasm," he whispered, stroking the delectable fullness of her bottom lip.

"I thought I might have to."

"A temporary fit of terror."

"Since abated."

"Oh yes," he huskily breathed.

She could feel his erection on her back, the warm, velvety skin rubbing against her in a leisurely rhythm. And when she leaned forward to take his empty glass, his penis slid sensuously between her buttocks. "Now for dessert," she murmured, setting the glass aside, lifting her breast slightly so the bright red cherry grazed his mouth. "Take your t
i
me. . . ." she murmured, a torrid undertone in her words.

He did. He sucked away the sweet confection with deliberation and finesse and then licked off all the syrupy residue left on her nipples, shifting back and forth between her thrusting breasts, scrupulously democratic in his ministrations, fair and equitable and so exquisitely tactile, she suddenly climaxed in a fierce, panting tremor.

"You're so easy," he teased, sliding his tongue across the underside of her breast before falling back against the soft cushions
.
"And safe."

Her eyes were shut, the air felt like silk on her heated skin, her body strummed and throbbed like the hum of bees on a hot summer day. And she wondered with both languor and a ripple of alarm whether she'd ever have enough of h
i
m. Then his words registered in her brain. "Safe?" she queried, opening her eyes.

"You can't possibly get pregnant doing that."

"You're fixated."

"Damned if I'm not," he grudgingly murmured, talk of babies and romance like a nail in his brain.

A small flare of annoyance disrupted Serena's blissful reverie. "I'm
not
intent on marrying you."

"I've heard that before."

"I don't care what you've heard before," she said, glaring at him. "So are we not making love again? Is that what you're saying?"

"Jesus, Serena, relax."

"I find it offensive to be compared to all the grasping women in your past. And I don't care to be penalized for their sins."

"Penalized?" The word trembled between them. "Is there some quota here?"

"No, I suppose not, bu
t
..."

"Lord," he said, grinning, "I've fallen into nirvana. You want to fuck
more?"

"
I don't know about more, but . . . well . . . you can't expect me to get a taste of this delicious pastime and then just
s
top."

"Convince me." Amusement shone in his eyes.

"Meaning?"

"I don't know if I care to make love again," he said.

"Are you serious?"

He arched his eyebrows and shrugged.

"Bea
u
—" she began heatedly.

"You probably could change my mind." His drawl was honeyed and blissfully wicked.

"Oh." A tiny small sound of revelation. Then she smiled and arched her back and stretched leisurely. "Let me think of something," she murmured. "Something safe," she delicately noted.

"As long as you're happy, you mean." He smiled faintly.

"Isn't that the point?" Her gaze was as innocent as virtue. "Now if you'll just move down a little," she said, with a demure little pat on the chaise cushion, "I'll continue my pursuit of happiness."

And when Beau slid lower on the chaise, Serena rose up on her knees and said, "Look up."

He chuckled when he lifted his gaze to her lush genitals poised above his face. "Are those for me?" he cordially inquired.

"There are only two."

"I see that, and very pretty too." Two marzipan cherries were lodged in her pink pouty labia. "If you want me to taste them, you'll have to come closer," he whispered.

She did and he did and it grew very hot in the shade of the portico as he licked and ate at her and tasted the sweetness of Serena Bl
yt
he and marzipan candy. Her orgasm trembled down her braced thighs that time and up to her brain in a slow, sensuous burn and he held her up so she wouldn't crumple on top of him and said, "You're welcome," when she thanked him.

She licked his belly later at the place where she'd been seated and the marzipan had liquified and then moved down his body, following the feathery trail of dark hair that ran through his navel and down his lower stomach to curl luxuriantly at the base of his rigid penis.

He stopped breathing for a second when her mouth touched the glistening tip and deciding in a split second that he'd been celibate far too lon
g
—
a
t least five hour
s
—
h
e pulled her up, rolled her under him, and damning the consequences, proceeded to live up to the unspecified but expected quota.

He slid into her so easily, he felt as though he'd found his long-lost home and she said, "Thank you" again in a whisper that further roused him, her innocent gratitude, her open need for him intoxicating, her hunger for sex, for him, like an aphrodisiac.

She was at his mercy, craving what he could give her but he wasn't so sure his appetite for her was any less dependent. He'd already decided to stay at the villa as long as the dispatches would allow. And in his current heedless disregard for even the stark fear of fatherhood as his body plunged and thrust into her, he considered alternatives for delivering the messages to Palermo.

But then she whispered, "I need your cock inside me all the time," and such protracted erotic possibility erased all but feverish sensation from his mind.

At the same time Serena was painting Beau, a footman was depositing mail on the large partner's desk in the office at Seth House. The door closed quietly behind him and the Duke and Duchess of Seth smiled at each other over their papers. Outside a light rain fell, the windows were streaked and dappled with water, lamps illuminated the desktop where Sinjin and Chelsea were going over bloodstock reports. Tomorrow's sale at Tattersalls
'
held some racers of promise.

"A letter from Da
m
ien," Sinjin said, lifting out a folded sheet from the stack of correspondence. "And here's one for you from Jane Maxwell," he added, handing it across the green leather desktop. "Do you want to see the invitations now?" At her refusal, he set several missives aside and continued sorting through the mail. "Why is Edward Du
ff
erin writing to us?"

"Some hunting party I suppose," Chelsea murmured, slipping a small silver knife under the waxed seal on Jane's letter. "Did you know Vivian's in London again?"

Sinjin looked up, Damien's letter open in his hand. "Again?" His gaze was speculative for a moment before he shrugged away his curiosity. "As long as I don't have to see her, I don't care where she is. All the better for Damien, I'd say." His attention returned to his brother's letter. "A damned shame he won't divorce her," he murmured. "Beau stopped in Lisbon, Damien says. Did you know he was planning on that?"

"He didn't mention it. Jane's in Lisbon too," Chelsea noted, reading the first few lines of her note. "I thought she and Tom were still at Hammond Hill."

"He was reassigned to embassy duty in Lisbon last month," Sinjin said, his gaze racing down Damien's startling message. "Listen to this, darling. Apparently Beau's taken a fancy to a young lady and intends to dance with her tonight ... or si
x
—
n
o, seven nights ago now," he added, checking the date on the letter. "Da
m
ien seems alarmed or concerned, I can't tell which; he goes on to say this girl is traveling to Italy with Beau."

Chelsea stopped reading, her brows raised in surprise, the relinquishment of her son's long-standing dance wager of less consequence than the fact that he had a woman on board the
Siren.
"Doesn't he abhor women on long sea journeys?"

"So I recall him saying," Sinjin ironically noted. "Damien describes this paragon of womanhood in glowing terms and Beau must agree if he's welcomed her aboard for the entire trip."

"Who is she?"

"A Miss Serena Blythe from Gloucestershire. She's impoverished, Damien relates, although since charming Beau, I suspect she's improved her finances."

"So cynical, dear. Are you saying she's a fortune hunter?"

"That would be my first guess."

"And your second?"

A faint smile graced his handsome face. "A cyprian with an imagination."

"So you don't think a well-bred girl could fascinate our son."

"I think he has an aversion to girls of good family. Partly it's his age. Young women bent on marriage are to be avoided when you're twenty-two."

"That would be
most
difficult aboard the
Siren."

"Yes, wouldn't it?" Sinjin quietly said. "A
ver
y
resourceful ploy by Miss Blythe."

"Like mine when I met you."

"Your proposal did have a certain, ah, shock value," Sinjin replied, the recollection bringing a smile to his
face.
⁷

"Perhaps it takes something inspirational to catch the attention of the Sainted Pair," she murmured, her eyes twinkling. "One has to give Miss Blythe credit for audacity."

"A powerful allure to our wild young son, I expect. Although by the time he returns, Miss Blythe will no doubt be forgotten."

"You didn't forget
me."

"But then, darling, there's only one like you in all the world," he murmured, his voice affectionate.

"You resisted me for months."

"Until you convinced me with a dose of cantharides." He smiled at the memory of how she'd slipped the aphrodisiac in his cognac that night at Seth House.

"Resourcefulness isn't exclusively a Gloucestershire trait, darling."

"For which I consider myself the luckiest of men. A shame Damien couldn't have been so fortunate. But then," the Duke murmured, recalling his brother's attitude, "he was always too kind to women."

"Unlike you."

The Duke shrugged in a kind of apology or acknowledgment, realistic about his past and the women in it. "I was looking for different things."

"We know what you were looking for, darling, as did all of England. Do you think Damien was ever in love with Vivian?"

Sinjin gazed out the window for a moment as if trying to remember. "We weren't very close when Damien married," he finally said. "I'm not sure."

"I don't suppose there was any doubt Vivian was intent on capturing Damien's fortune."

"She didn't marry for love," Sinjin retorted, his dislike of his sister-in-law evident in his acerbic tone. "Hopefully, Damien will divorce her someday. He
did
add Emma's name to his letter in closing this time. But perhaps he'
s
—"

"Did he
really?
Show me!"

"—
o
nly being courteous," Sinjin finished, handing the sheet to his wife.

She cast him a disbelieving look. "Da
m
ien isn't known for his spontaneity. My heavens," she exclaimed, glancing at the signature and smiling broadly. "I think you might warn the family barristers to begin lining up support in
Parliament."
⁸