A Scoundrel by Moonlight (18 page)

He wanted to say something clever to disperse this choking cloud of emotion. But yet again simplicity won over false bravado. “You’re so beautiful.”

She must have heard his reverence because she looked him square in the eyes. He watched uncertainty melt into trust. And something he didn’t want to name. Because if he did, he’d have to name the same thing in himself.

“So are you.”

Her openness charmed him. Hell, everything about her charmed him. Particularly her nakedness. To ease the solemn atmosphere, he smiled and caught her hand. “I’m blessed. A gorgeous girl with bad eyesight.”

Eleanor laughed, as he’d intended. And as he’d yearned to do since he’d first seen her, he took stock of her loveliness.

Any attempt to make light of what happened was doomed. Words jumbled in his throat. He’d dreamed for so long of this moment. Now she stood bare and willing before him. Tinged gold in flickering firelight.

Tenderly, Leath slid a wing of hair aside, revealing her breast. He feasted his eyes on her. On the white skin. The sinuous lines of breast and hip. The long, lissome legs. The
flat belly with its neat navel and soft nest of curls below. Curls darker than her moonlight hair.

She exceeded his fantasies—and in his fantasies, she’d been exquisite.

Raising his eyes, he saw that she watched him with that deep seriousness that was so innate to her. He tried to smile reassurance, but he was too moved to succeed. What emerged wasn’t what he wanted to say at all.

“Are you sure, Eleanor?”

N
ell trembled with nerves and anticipation. The urge to wrench the sheet from the bed and huddle into it was almost irresistible. She only kept still because if she betrayed her abject terror, his lordship would surely decide against fulfilling his nefarious plans.

While she was frightened, she also wanted. Desire triumphed over trepidation. Just.

She shifted from one foot to the other. Her grip on Leath’s hand tightened and she swallowed to moisten a mouth arid with fear. “I’m sure.”

“You don’t sound it.” His expression warmed with the tender smile that always made her feel like she stood in sunlight, but nothing hid his edginess. His jaw was sharp and a muscle in his lean cheek jerked in an erratic dance that echoed the bump and skip of her heart.

She struggled to inject a wry note into her voice, but all she achieved was breathless uncertainty. “I’m standing here without a stitch of clothing, my lord. The die has been cast.”

His smile faded. “I’ll know you’re sure when you call me James.”

She stepped into the shelter of his body. This was like standing beneath a huge oak tree. He was like oak, true and strong and deeply rooted where he’d grown.

“I know this is wrong.” Nell’s voice was scratchy as though she hadn’t used it in a long time. And so low that he bent his dark head to hear her. “It goes against everything I was taught.” She confessed the miserable truth. “When my sister fell victim to a wicked seducer, despite how sorry I was for her, I thought she’d been a fool.”

He winced. “Yet here you are in a wicked seducer’s arms.”

She summoned a smile. “I wish the wicked seducer was holding me closer.”

“I never want you to think this was a mistake.”

She had a nasty inkling that she might. Not now. Not tonight. Not while they were together. But when he made his brilliant society match and resumed a public life that left no place for an illicit arrangement with his housemaid? Then, oh, yes, then, she’d wonder about her choice.

She raised her chin, battling to ignore the fact that she was as naked as the day she was born. How on earth had she ever believed that this man ruined Dorothy? Right now, his principles struck her as a complete nuisance.

“I’ll regret denying what I feel tonight.” Impatience sharpened her voice. “Leath, I’m standing here, begging you to touch me. How much more must I do to convince you that if you don’t take me to bed, I’ll spend the rest of my life sorry that I missed this chance?” She frowned and wondered if perhaps she’d mistaken his reluctance. What if chivalry wasn’t at the root of it? “Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

His lips twisted in self-mockery. “You know how much I want you. I can’t hide it.”

Her gaze shifted to the front of his breeches. A gasp of awe—and, she had to admit, apprehension—escaped her.

Bitterness tinged his laugh. “I’m a selfish lover, Eleanor. Once I have you, I won’t easily let you go.”

She shivered, this time with anticipation. “I like the sound of that.”

Dear heaven, if she let him stew on his scruples, she’d be as virgin tomorrow as she was now. What a sad outcome that would be. She drew his rich scent into her lungs and told herself to be brave. She’d been brave coming to Alloway Chase. She could be brave in pursuit of pleasure. Still her legs were wobblier than jelly as she linked her arms around his neck, feeling the silky tickle of his hair against her fingers. “Kiss me.”

He tensed with surprise. His lordship was used to taking the initiative.

She’d been painfully conscious of her nakedness, but with her skin sliding against his, the promise of the night to come charged through her like runaway horses.

He swallowed a groan and placed his hands around her waist. Hunger lit his eyes to silver. “Eleanor—”

“Kiss me.” Deliberately she pressed her hips forward until she met that impressive bulge in his breeches. Despite her instinctive hiss of shock, her heart swooped like a swallow learning to fly.

Another deep breath. More heady scent.

Courage, Nell.

“I want you.” Her voice was steadier than it had been all night. “I’m not afraid.”

She saw the moment he abandoned every consideration except desire. His hunger incinerated her fear to ash, making
her declaration true as it hadn’t been when she’d spoken. His grip firmed. His chest brushed her breasts as he inhaled.

“My beautiful girl…” he whispered and took her lips in a kiss unlike any before. Perhaps because this kiss wasn’t an end in itself, but a doorway to more.

With unconcealed sexual intent, he nipped sharply at her lip. She shifted and moaned as heat pooled between her legs. Curiosity throbbed inside her. The curiosity to know the man she loved as her lover. Her craving built for ultimate connection.

Every inch of her hummed with need. Pleasure sang through her veins—pleasure tinted with frustration. She growled low in her throat as his hands drifted over her body. The devil merely laughed and nibbled at her neck as if savoring her impatience. He brought her to the brink then held her over the void in an agony of suspense.

“Leath…” she forced out. “I’m ready.”

“Not nearly, sweetheart.”

His rough tone offered some compensation. If this seduction threatened to shatter her, at least she wasn’t alone. She bit his chest, making him jump. “Stop tormenting me.”

“Enjoy the journey.”

“I want to arrive,” she protested, biting more fiercely.

“Little cat,” he muttered, burying his hand in her hair and pulling her head back until she met his blazing eyes. “If you bite me again, I’ll bite back.”

“I’d like that,” she gasped, even while in the far reaches of her mind she wondered where calm, sensible Nell Trim had gone.

“So would I.” He nipped her shoulder through cascading hair. She shivered under his teeth, even though he wasn’t nearly as ferocious as she’d been.

“I told you I want you,” she said helplessly, running her
hands over his chest and digging her nails into his skin. At this rate, he’d be a bloody mess. Right now, she gloried in marking his body. If only she knew how to mark his heart.

“Not enough.” He sounded almost angry.

So did she. “You’re so smug.”

Leath grabbed her dancing hands and kissed her fists. “If I’m not careful, I’ll rip you to shreds.”

If she’d been in her right mind, that would make her take to her heels. In her het-up state, his warning tugged at her as inexorably as the moon tugged at the sea.

“Please…” she sobbed, rubbing against him. She loved the hair on his body, fascinatingly different from hers, coarser, warmer, so male.

“Stop trying to flay me and be patient.” He kissed her again and this time his hands trailed down her back, making her wriggle.

“More,” she insisted.

He laughed breathlessly and cupped his hands beneath her bottom. When he hoisted her high, the angle of his kiss transformed to flashing pleasure. Instinctively she twined her legs around him, pressing her heels into his buttocks.

This new position placed the hot, needy part of her fiendishly close to that alluring hardness. His breeches became a major irritation. With a long moan, she slid against him and felt a spark of sensation, akin to those dazzling, astonishing reactions that had roared through her when he’d played with her breasts.

Intrigued, she tried it again and basked in his fractured groan. “Stop it, you witch.”

“I like it,” she said breathlessly. “Don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” he muttered, burying his face in the curve of her shoulder. Without following her down, he swung her onto the bed.

“My lord?”

He stared at her sprawled across the sheets. His expression made her dig her fingers into the cool linen.

“Leath?” She bit her lip and the frenzy inside her expanded, changed to something she’d never felt before, despite knowing that she loved this man with every breath in her body.

“You’re remarkable,” he whispered, as if he spoke in a church and not in a bedroom where he claimed a new mistress.

Her heart slammed to a stop, then hurtled off again. He’d looked at her with desire before. He’d looked at her with affection. What she read in his face now went deeper. He looked at her as if he’d never beheld anything so perfect, as though she lit his world the way he lit hers.

The feverish desperation, as much fear that her nerve might fail as desire, drowned in this new feeling. A feeling that would sustain her whole life, whatever happened after tonight.

The stark honesty on his face was devastating. She closed her eyes. The words “I love you” hovered too close to slipping out.

When the mattress sagged, she opened her eyes to see that at last he’d stripped off his breeches. But before she could discover the mysteries of his body, he slid between her legs, supporting himself on his elbows as he rose.

Leath surrounded her. The arms that caged her were heavy with muscle. His shoulders and chest filled her view. She raised her knees to frame his hips and brushed the black hair back from his broad forehead. “Show me,” she whispered.

He turned his head to touch a kiss to the racing pulse at her wrist. When he took the beaded peak of one breast between his lips, she cried out at the pleasure, then again
when he stroked between her thighs, finding a place that radiated wild sensation.

As he slid one long finger into her, she felt a subtle stretching. She started, then again when he brushed his thumb against that extraordinary place. She was slick and hot. He didn’t seem to mind.

By the time he stroked her deeply with two fingers, she was quivering and panting. The world began to whirl and she dug her fingers into his impressive biceps to keep her balance. What he did pleased her, but it also pushed her toward some end that ranged beyond reach.

He settled more firmly between her thighs. She stared up at his face, knowing that the moment had come. He looked uncompromising poised above her, his weight on his hands. She’d have been afraid, except in his eyes, she saw breathtaking tenderness.

She stroked his jaw, feeling the prickle of beard. His expression softened. Carefully he pushed her knees higher, opening her. He brushed against her and she whimpered with surprise. He was so hot and hard, and even without seeing him, she recognized his size.

Leath kissed her sweetly. “Trust me, Eleanor.”

She arched upward. “I want this.”

“Dear Lord, so do I,” he said with brief humor, and she choked back a laugh even as he shifted forward.

She felt a probing pressure, then a slow stretching. Not painful, but uncomfortable. The sheer strangeness turned her rigid.

“Don’t fight me, Eleanor,” he said unsteadily.

In the firelight, she saw what it cost him to proceed so gradually. The skin on his face looked too tight for the strong bones beneath, and his lips thinned and lengthened over his straight white teeth as he struggled for control.

He edged further and she tried not to resist. This possession didn’t hurt, but it felt alien. With one hand, he caught her under the hips and angled her up. The pressure changed, but still felt awkward. She bit back another whimper and sank her teeth into her lower lip.

He kissed her. She lay so stiffly that it took her a few moments to respond. When she softened into the play of his mouth, something inside her softened too. He made a low sound of approval and inched forward.

“Are you all right?” he asked gruffly, raising his head. He looked different. His eyelids were heavier and his pupils were so large that his eyes turned black.

She ran shaking hands over his shoulders and down his back, feeling the force of his restraint. His skin was damp and his breath emerged in jagged bursts. “Yes,” she said, although she wasn’t sure.

There was still no pain, but nor was there much pleasure, if she discounted the kiss. After his incendiary caresses, this wasn’t what she’d expected. With every touch, she’d begged for more. But this intimacy made her feel hemmed in and invaded.

His sandalwood scent flooded her senses. Sharper and stronger than his everyday self. Smoky with arousal. The part of him inside her was as hard as oak and just as unforgiving. She squirmed to settle him more comfortably, but it didn’t help.

Gasping, he rested his hot face against her shoulder. “This will improve.”

That stirred strangled laughter. “I hope so.”

“Relax.”

“Easy for you to say.” Before he could respond to her remark, she turned her head to kiss his temple. “I trust you.”

“Right now I’m not sure I deserve that,” he said grimly.

Her fingers clutched his shoulders. His muscles tensed and his hips retreated. Then on a guttural groan, he advanced and something inside her tore.

She cried out and dug her nails into his back. Squeezing her eyes shut, she told herself she could endure this. She loved him, she could endure this.

He stopped moving. For a long time, she didn’t even feel him breathe.

What he’d done had hurt. She’d known it would, but the pain stunned her. Tears trickled from under her eyelids.

When he moved, she braced for more pain, but the worst had passed. She still felt stretched beyond the bounds of nature and pinioned to the bed. Opening her eyes, she found Leath watching her with a devastated expression. He looked like he’d suffered worse than she had.