A Wild Night's Bride (10 page)

***

At DeVere’s insistence, Phoebe had stripped down to only her shift and stockings before creeping under the covers and removing these items as well. He had lingered half-dressed, waiting with confident certainty for what was to come. Nevertheless, Phoebe cried out in surprise when Ned burst through the door.

“Get out, DeVere. You can’t have her.” Ned retrieved Phoebe’s shift and gown from the end of the bed and tossed them to her. “Get dressed,” he commanded.

“What if you are too late?” DeVere taunted.

“Am I?” His rage-filled gaze flew to the bed where Phoebe had yanked the covers to her chin. He’d apparently noted DeVere’s state of partial dress.

“You had your chance, my friend,” DeVere said with a twitch of his lips. “After all, I had a wager to win, and she agreed to it.”

“Because she’s lost her livelihood, you ass! Not because she wants you!”

“How do you know what the girl wants?”

“Damn you for a rutting sod!” Ned exploded. “And double damn you for taking unfair advantage of her.” Ned’s fist crashed into DeVere’s jaw, dropping him instantly to the floor. He spun toward Phoebe, raking a hand through disheveled hair. “Tell him! Tell him you don’t want him.”

Phoebe stared back in wide-eyed astonishment. “It’s true. I don’t want him...I never did. I want you.”

C
HAPTER
N
INE

Watching as her words penetrated his fog of astonishment, Phoebe bit her lip in nervous anticipation.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” he said. “I won’t take advantage of you.” Although his words said one thing, the dilated pupils, the tic in his jaw, and his erratic movements all betrayed agitation, an inner struggle.

“You deny you want me?” she asked, letting the covers slip just enough to reveal the milky white tops of her breasts. The air crackled with the coiling tension, yet he still made no move toward her.

“It’s not that!” he said. “It’s just you don’t
need
to do this. I’ll give you the money. No strings attached. You can buy the cottage in Bath or do with it as you please.”

“No,” she said, masking her mortification of being rebuffed once more. “I don’t want your money! If you don’t want me, I won’t take it.” She averted her face. “I have my honor, and I have my pride.”

“Your pride? You call it pride to
sell
yourself?”

His words filled her with fury. “I am not a harlot! I pledged to help DeVere win his wager. That was all. It was strictly a
business
arrangement between us. Nothing more.”

Ned looked to DeVere who still hadn’t stirred. “Then it was a bad bargain altogether, as I think it highly unlikely he’ll be holding up his end of it.”

“Only because of you!” she cried, looking to the lifeless body on the floor. “My God! Have you killed him?” She scrambled out of the bed, sheet clutched to her breasts, and knelt by DeVere to feel for a pulse.

Ned cocked his head to one side. “He’s breathing but, indeed, out cold. He should recover in a few hours. He did the last time I took him down. DeVere is nothing if not resilient, but I daresay, he won’t be frolicking with anyone for a while.”

She glared. “What was your point in all of this?”

“It wasn’t right for him to exploit your weakness. For that’s what he does, you know. He can’t help himself.”

“So you take it upon yourself to act as his conscience?”

His jaw clenched. “If need be. When I must.”

“But there was no need,” she said. “We’re consenting adults. I was not coerced. I told you earlier that I sought a protector. This wager was just a much simplified means to the same end but with no attachments, no involvement. Then
you
had to come along and—and ruin everything!”

“Ruin!” His large body loomed over her. “What the devil does that mean?”

“That you don’t want me but can’t stand to see me with anyone else either!”

“It’s not like that! You can’t understand how it is.” He clawed a hand through his hair.

“You’re right. I do find you impossible!”

“Damn it! It’s
not
that I don’t want you.” He retrieved her cast-off shift and offered it to her with a shaking hand.

“You’re trembling,” she whispered. She gazed up into his face, and what she saw made her heart seize.

“Because I want you so much, my bloody teeth ache! My entire being is about to explode for want of you!”

His confession took her breath away. “Why then?” She exhaled. “Why do you deny yourself when I do not?”

“Because I’m a rutting animal. That’s why!” His face was contorted with a mixture of anguish and rage. “And my damnable, unslakable lust killed my wife!”

His face, his words filled her with a momentary panic. “Impossible,” she reasoned aloud. “You loved her. How could you have killed her?”

His visage grew grim, his eyes dull. She could see the supreme effort he made to control his rioting emotions. He continued in a hoarse voice, “I nearly lost her when Vesta was born. She had a number of miscarriages after that even though the physician said she should not try to carry another child. Yet she wanted to give me an heir. I tried to restrain myself and could not. She died giving birth to our son.” He choked out the last words with tears streaming down his cheeks. He dropped to the floor beside her, his big body racked by a miasma of grief.

Phoebe’s heart wrenched at his self-torment. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said soothingly. “We are all mortal and know not when or how we will be taken from this earth. You showed your love through worship of her body, and she wanted to reciprocate that love by bearing your children. It was natural. It was right. You have no need to torture yourself. It’s been three years. Can you not forgive yourself?”

His violent burst of emotion spent, she pulled him to her breast, holding him tight, comforting him, stroking his hair. How she longed to be loved like that. Moved to her very soul, she feathered kisses on his jaw, his cheek, his eyes. She closed her own as her body stirred. “We all have the same need...to love and be loved. It is not a fault to manifest this need with the desire for physical intimacy.” She realized with a pang that her words echoed the yearnings of her own heart.

He turned to her with a groan of capitulation, capturing her lips. As her kisses became more fevered, his greedy mouth claimed hers, taking total ravenous possession. He possessed her mouth with an agony of hunger, his fingers tangling in her hair and demanding more. He savaged it with lips, teeth, and tongue. Her hands roamed his body of their own accord with a touch no longer designed to comfort, but to arouse. Tearing at his clothes, the forgotten sheet slithered to the floor.

Phoebe found herself on the floor beneath him. Incited with a ferocious need, she moaned into his mouth, twined her arms about his waist, pulling him closer, her body seeking, demanding his hard heat. Lost in this passionate hunger, time and place receded from conscious thought, slipping away toward blessed oblivion...until a set of heavy footfalls and the jangle of keys jarred through the erotic trance.

“Someone’s coming!” She jerked away, frantically grabbing at the abandoned sheet and scrambling for various articles of scattered clothing. Ned lurched to his feet and threw the coverlet and pillows back into place. Simultaneously, they looked to DeVere.

“Good God!” Ned exclaimed. “Where do we put him?”

“In the dressing room. Hurry!”

Grabbing DeVere by the ankles, they dragged his inert body across the parquet and through the dressing room just as the outer doors opened.

“I swear I heard something,” a shrill feminine voice declared.

“Probably just one of the footmen,” a baritone replied.

“There should be no footman about the king’s chambers when he is not in residence. Do you see this?” she asked. “Reeks of brandy.”

“Damn! I forgot the flask!” Ned whispered with a suppressed groan.

“What footman would be drinking brandy unless he filched it from his betters? There’s a rogue afoot, and I intend to find him.”

“My good woman, look around you. The room is empty; there’s naught out of place.”

“I tell you there’s sommat amiss,” she persisted.

Ned cast a panicked gaze around them. “They’re going to search. What do we do?”

“There!” Phoebe pointed. “The closet.”

Dragging him by the shoulders, they somehow managed to pull DeVere into the tight space, prop him up, and close the door of the linen closet, for that is what it had turned out to be. While Phoebe’s heart already raced at the close call and the lurking danger of discovery, the pace quickened to a wild gallop at the realization she was naked and back to chest with Ned.

She closed her eyes and held her breath at the sound of approaching footsteps. Still acutely aroused, her body trembled in mixed trepidation and exhilaration of a blatantly sexual variety. A pair of warm hands settled at her waist. She slowly exhaled. Hot breath caressed her nape, eliciting a quiver low in her belly. Warm lips brushed the juncture of her neck and shoulder as his hands cupped her breasts. She inhaled sharply, but dared not breach the silence even with a whisper.

One of his hands left her breast while the other traced and teased her nipple, filling her with delicious tingles. His body was a solid wall of heat behind her. His hard, pulsing erection pressed against her backside, filling her with aching want and sending a flood of wet heat between her thighs. She bit her fist to suppress a moan.

His hands continued their play, one skirting the outside of her body, hip to thigh and back again, the smoldering flesh of his palm lighting an inferno of sensation along the surface of her skin while the other continued to taunt, tease, and tweak her nipples.

The jangling sound approached the door. A key rattled in the lock just as Ned grasped the handle. With his other hand, he covered Phoebe’s mouth, his low sibilant
shh
tickling her ear. His tongue followed, hot and wet, tracing the curve of her lobe, finding and gently biting the tip.

“It must be the right key,” the female voice grumbled. The doorknob shook. Ned held it firm.

Her gaze riveted to the door, Phoebe felt fumbling behind her and the hard, hot heat of Ned’s freed staff stroking along the crevice of her buttocks.

“Well, it seems to me a waste of time, m’um,” the guard replied. “A closet door can hardly be locked from the inside.”

His hand slid down the plain of her belly. Phoebe ground against him and felt the smile on his face. With precision born of expertise, he found that secret place of exquisite sensation.

“Humph!” the female replied and withdrew the key from the lock all while Ned’s clever fingers worked their magic—stroking, sliding, strumming, making her body sing with rivulets of pleasure. Overtaken with raw need, she squirmed, aching to receive him, to feel the slide of his sex deeply within her. With blinding bliss building and coiling within her, she could barely contain her whimpers against the growing need for release. Her body tensed, her breath seized, her world blurred, and the very moment the footfalls receded, her world was racked by explosive quivers of ecstasy.

***

In that close, dark space, Ned’s senses were acutely filled with her—the silky smoothness of her skin, the deliciously malleable weight of her breast, the soft, round globes of her arse, the very air he drew in was redolent of her musky essence.

Dear God,
he wanted to cry out in rapture when his fingers met the welcoming, wet heat of her quim. She climaxed easily under his skilled touch, sending his thoughts careening. Her muffled cry broke all restraint. Unable to hold back, he plunged deeply into her slick and decadent wetness, overwhelming his senses in a madness of lust borne of long-suppressed need.

She gasped. He turned her head and caught the ragged exhalation with his mouth, mingling her moans with his own while continuing the mind-numbing plunge and drag. She arched her back, thrusting her arse, grinding, urging, and meeting his need to go deeper, harder. The pressure mounted, his sac contracted. With a hiss between clenched teeth, he abruptly withdrew and spent hot jets that made his body convulse and his knees buckle.

Quivering with aftershocks, he held her tightly, panting into her hair, his mind devoid of any thought beyond taking her into his own bed and doing it all again and again.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

Phoebe was shaken, dazed, and incredulous. She had
never
experienced what he had done to her—had never known her body and soul could be melded as one and transported to such a pinnacle of mindless rapture. He held her against him in a silent grip of iron as if he were thinking the same thing.

They stood thus for a long moment, bodies and skin slick with sweat, breathing ragged, the musky tang of sex filling their senses, afraid to move or speak, fearful of breaking the fragile and incredible erotic spell.