A Taste of Desire (16 page)

Really, this whole situation was laughable—or perhaps one day she’d look back upon it and feel so.

“That’s because you are not listening closely enough.”
Certainly one absurd statement deserved an equally absurd response.

Lord Armstrong answered her with one undaunted forward movement. When Amelia attempted another step backward, she encountered the hard edge of her desk.

He was going to kiss her, his intent clear in his eyes. A silent yearning had taken root within her, setting her blood pulsing wildly and starting a dull throb at the apex of her thighs. She watched, transfixed, as his mouth drew closer. Not only was he about to kiss her, she was going to permit him the liberty … again.

Then, in a flash, he was gone, his movements a blur. By the time she regained a portion of her bewildered senses, he was beside his desk looking the picture of equanimity.

Then she heard it again. The knock. The sound she’d thought was the frantic beating of her heart had been someone knocking on the door. Her face went up in flames. She sat down with an abruptness that knocked the next breath from her, laid her hands flat on the desk and willed them to stop their god-awful trembling.

Lord Armstrong issued the terse command to enter and made a show of sopping the coffee from his trousers with a clean handkerchief.

The door flew open. Sarah entered with her smile and sunny disposition. If Amelia had been inclined to grand shows of physical affection, she might have hugged her.

“Good morning, Thomas, I wondered if—” Sarah halted. Espying her brother, her eyes grew round and her mouth formed a perfect o. Then she giggled, a girlish sound that reminded Amelia of innocent mischief making. “What happened to your trousers?”

The viscount shot her a dark look and ceased his ineffectual wiping. “I’m glad I’m able to amuse you this morning. What do you want, brat?”

How different the word sounded when used in reference
to his sister, exasperated but warmly affectionate. Certainly not the tone he’d used with her.

“I—well, I came to find out if I could assist Amelia again today.”

Amelia nearly groaned aloud. The innocence of youth also had its drawbacks. How she wished the girl knew when to keep her mouth shut. She half expected a bolt of lightning to zigzag down from the sky and impale her right where she sat. That was just the sort of day she was bound to have.

“What do you mean ‘again’?” the viscount asked in a deceptively soft voice. Though he addressed his sister, he affixed his regard on her.

Amelia swallowed hard.

Sarah’s gaze bounced between them several times before responding. “Um—I helped Amelia with some …” Her voice trailed off as a storm gathered in the viscount’s eyes.

“Did I do something wrong?” Sarah asked, after a moment of charged silence.

“No, you did nothing wrong. If anyone—” Amelia began.

“Amelia will not require your assistance any longer,” the viscount cut in smoothly.

Sarah shot a glance at Amelia as if she expected her to contradict her brother.

“Yes, Sarah, I shan’t be requiring your help again.”

Sarah sighed in the dramatic fashion of a girl who could turn even the most minor events into something fit for a fiction novel. “Fine, then I shall have to find something else to do today since Miss Jasper is sick in bed with a cold.” She turned back to her brother. “Oh, and mother says she hopes you don’t intend to keep Lady Amelia holed up in the study all day.”

Amelia choked back a bitter laugh. If only the viscountess knew the full of it. Lord Armstrong’s response was low and unintelligible.

Sarah issued them a cheery farewell and went on her way.

The viscount wasted no time after the door closed before
stalking toward her desk. Standing, he had her at a disadvantage, and he knew it. But she’d be damned if she’d acknowledge it by bolting to her feet looking the least bit intimidated and defensive.

“If you ever use my sister again, I’ll paddle you so hard you won’t be able to sit for days. Now, you have two choices, you can either clean up the mess you made or you’ll be rubbing elbows with the scullery maids. Which is it to be?”

If he’d delivered the first smack of the threatened paddling, Amelia couldn’t have been more horrified.

“What, not the two choices you expected? What did you think, that I would kiss you again?” He searched her expression, and whatever he found there made him exclaim softly, “Lord, is that what this was all about? You wanted another kiss? Well, you’re going to have to work on your approach. There are much easier ways to get what you want, and dousing a man with coffee is definitely not one of them. However, since you’ve gone through all this trouble, it would behoove me to oblige you.”

Of all the things he’d ever accused her of, this was by far the worst. Not to mention it made her appear pitiable and utterly pathetic. With little but her pride to act in her defense, Amelia sprang to her feet in a rustle of skirts and marched over to his desk. She snatched up the rag from the bucket of soapy water and with as much dignity as one could manage in the given situation, began to lower herself to her knees.

But her knees barely brushed the floor when she was hauled to her feet and into Lord Armstrong’s hard embrace. The wet rag fell from her startled hand to the floor.

“What—” She let out a gasp and clutched his shoulders for balance.

“Damn, but you are the most obstinate, willful, exasperating female—” He covered her mouth in a searing kiss. Amelia resisted for the time it took his tongue to penetrate the wall of teeth guarding the inside of her mouth, a task
requiring only seconds. With that citadel breeched, her lips parted in helpless wonder, in hunger. She felt completely out of herself, drifting on a plane of pleasure that grew with every slow thrust of his tongue. Then his hands were on her bottom, squeezing and dragging her closer until she could feel his erection nudging her center through the inconvenient bulk of silk and cotton petticoats. Amelia whimpered and strained to get closer.

He abandoned her lips, which elicited a moan of protest. His mouth scored her cheek and then her chin, anointing every spot with a feathery kiss. Her head fell back with a soft groan, and he took advantage of the full access he now had to the long line of her neck. Her nails scraped his scalp, the feel of his hair soft and silky between her fingers as she pulled him closer.

She’d never known the spot behind her ears was so sensitive until his mouth settled there, the surge of his breaths its own caress. Amelia drank in the sounds of his pleasure and the scent of male heat, starched linen, and—coffee.

Reality descended down on her with pride crushing force. Her body immediately became rigid as she jerked her hands from his tousled strands to give his shoulders a hard shove. With a grunt and a bewildered look, he took a step back, his hands falling to his sides.

Good Lord, what was she doing? What was wrong with her? Earlier, she’d thought him mad when in truth
she
had to be the mad one.

For several moments, neither spoke, her labored breathing the only sound to fill the lengthening silence. If the viscount had been at all affected by the kiss, his expression revealed none of it.

“I need to change.” His gaze flickered down to her skirts. “And so do you.” With that, he strode from the room.

Amelia glanced down, and on her silk skirt, plain for all to see, was a large coffee stain.

That evening under the light of the tallow candle in her bedchamber, Amelia penned a letter to Lord Clayborough. The pen pierced the paper in several places as if her words weren’t enough to convey her growing sense of urgency. And she despised that feeling of desperation.

Amelia was also tempted to write to Elizabeth, but could not bring herself to burden her with the horror of her circumstances when her friend, the Countess of Creswell, happily awaited the birth of her first child in four months.

After sealing the letter and placing it on the bedside table to give to the footman to post, Amelia crawled into bed doing something she rarely did: she fretted. She’d always thought it was nothing but a wasted bit of emotion signified by heavy sighs and persistent worry, which accomplished little and solved nothing. However, she had to concede that the matter of her physical reaction to Thomas Armstrong did call for something, if not fretting itself, then something close in association.

The truth of it was she couldn’t trust herself around him—alone with him. Nothing seemed to be able to change that. The kiss that morning had punctuated that point quite emphatically and her dress—the coffee stain raising not an eyebrow from Hélène—acted as a glaring reminder. She was
no better than the women he’d taken to his bed. In actuality, she was worse, for hers hadn’t been a courting with the expected flowers, pretty words, or gestures of adoration. No, he had her succumbing when only two minutes before she would have gladly seen him hung, drawn, and quartered. Embarrassment didn’t come close to describing her feelings.

If only she could send the letter to Lord Clayborough by messenger as she had done in London. A story of a farmer who’d found two bags of letters near his barn—letters two years old—had circulated through London two months ago. Since then, Amelia hadn’t fully trusted the post. However, this wasn’t her house and these weren’t her servants to utilize at will. Moreover, she’d never be able to manage something like that with the viscount in residence.

The morning following, Amelia had been at her desk a full fifteen minutes before the viscount arrived. With yesterday’s kiss still vivid in her mind, Amelia kept her gaze focused on the papers in front of her, feigning a concentration that had all but abandoned her the moment he’d stepped foot in the study.

“Good morning, Amelia.”

The way her senses responded to his polite greeting—the words tripping over every nerve end—one would have thought there’d been an intimacy in his tone. Amelia sent him a quick glance and issued a brisk nod. Two things about his appearance registered immediately, the first of which she’d have done well not to notice: His dimples made him look ridiculously appealing. Secondly, he was wearing riding clothes, which suggested he would be spending most of the day down at the stables instead of in the study with her. Certainly a comforting prospect.

“Put away the contracts,” he said, striding over to his desk. “We are going riding this morning.”

Amelia’s head snapped up to stare at him wide-eyed. He gazed across at her, a mild smile shaping his mouth.

“I would rather not,” she said in lemon-tart tones, having recovered from her bewilderment.

He chuckled. “Think of this as part of your duties, although I thought you’d enjoy the fresh air. Your father spoke many times of your skill on a horse. I rather thought you’d be eager to take up the reins again.”

That her father had anything kind to say about her was preposterous. The viscount was fabricating things as usual.

“I do not recall going riding with you listed on the duties you presented me with when I arrived.”

He laughed again, the dimples in his cheeks deepening. “I believe I mentioned there would be additional tasks. Think of this as one of those.”

Amelia viewed the work on her desk and then the accursed filing drawers. This was like being asked to choose between strawberries and cream drizzled with chocolate and boiled mutton and potatoes; there was no question as to preference. “I’m hardly dressed to go riding.” She gestured at her flowered dress in a halfhearted protest.

The lucid, sane part of Thomas wished he hadn’t seen the reluctant yearning in her eyes. It added a dimension of vulnerability to her otherwise prickly disposition.

Quietly, he asked, “Will it help if I tell you this isn’t a request but an order given by the viscountess herself?”

Thomas, my dear, why don’t you take Lady Amelia riding? I can’t imagine the poor girl intended to be cooped up in the study for most of the day.

She stood, the movement as graceful as a ballerina. Apparently, a combination of his mother’s backing and the lure of the outdoors was an inducement she could not refuse.

“Well, as it’s under the viscountess’s directive, I shall go and change into something more suitable.”

The other part of him, the one that had him semi-hard watching the innocent provocation of hips and legs moving
in feminine unity as she crossed the floor and exited the room, could have made a meal of her right then and greedily come back for more.

Lord, he was in trouble.

Nothing was turning out as he planned. Although her response to him was more than he’d hoped for, the ferocity of his response to her could have split the Rock of Gibraltar clean in two.

The answer to his dilemma was quite simple. Just stop kissing the damn woman as each kiss turned him inside out, upside down, the memories living on to torment him endlessly.

Stop kissing the woman.
This time the command echoed in his head with more force. He’d just have to accomplish his ultimate goal without further physical intimacy. A rather novel idea and one he’d do his best to employ.

However, fifteen minutes later, Thomas began to seriously doubt whether he had the required restraint to follow through on his recent vow. The erection straining the brown wool of his riding breeches forced him to remain seated behind his desk.

She strode into the room, a mass of dark silken hair, long limbs, and pert breasts. Her attire was nothing short of scandalous. But for two slits in front and back running from hip to hem, what she was wearing resembled a skirt. And beneath the heavy, dark blue material, fitted leather breeches encased a pair of legs finer than any that had ever graced the Argyll rooms. A man had never envied a pair of breeches more than he did at that moment.

Now he understood why trousers on women were not permissible in society. Swallowing hard, he tried to keep his expression blank while lust, raw and primitive, accosted him from all sides.

“I am ready.” She had stopped just inside the room.

“Yes, most assuredly you are.” His words were an indiscernible utterance under his breath while he entertained
lurid thoughts of spreading her out on his desk and taking her, driving into her body until she reached her peak, convulsing around him in a mass of quivering flesh and silken limbs. Then he’d find his own release in the tight, wet clasp of her body.