After the Scandal (40 page)

The action broke the kiss, but Claire didn’t seem to object. Her head fell back, and she groaned her approval to the air over their heads, helping him draw the material over her head. She flung it aside as he reached for the tapes of her petticoat, pulling it free of her waist and following the same torturous path up her torso. “Tanner,” she hissed at him, her breath full of insistence.

Her stays had already been cast aside, so there was only the thin lawn of her chemise left, and he tortured them both by slowly drawing the thin material tight against her skin. So he could tongue her breasts again through the veil of the fabric, kissing and sucking and laving her harder, showing her his hunger and need.

She was the one to pull the chemise off, to yank it over her head and collapse against him, so that at last they were flush against each other, skin to skin, heart beating against heart.

He plied his lips to the hollow under her ear, kissing and nipping his long way down the sensitive side of her neck, teaching her that a wealth of sensation could be evoked from thorough attention to this lovely swath of skin above her collarbone. All the while his hands were stroking up and down the curve of her waist, his fingers fanning across the sweet curve of her back and his thumbs making light sweeps against the side of her belly.

He urged her closer, rounding his palms over the taut flesh of her bottom, cupping her sweet arse, and pressing her against his achingly erect cock, still held in check by the thick cotton of his breeches. But he did nothing to appease his fingers’ need to touch her sweet cunny or rake his hands through the soft blond curls at the entrance to her body.

Not yet. Not until she said so.

She had to be the one to ask or take the initiative. Each step of their physical intimacy needed to be made without any kind of force. He did not want the ghost of Lord Peter Rosing between him and his exquisite girl. He wanted her all to himself.

All his to worship. All his to tease and delight. All his to satisfy.

He kissed his way along the line of her collarbone, across the hollow at the base of her neck, and out again along the straight line of delicate bone, until she arched her back and scored his chest with the soft pebbled peaks of her breasts.

His own heart was hammering away like an anvil inside his chest.

He felt, more than he heard, the deep sound of satisfaction sighing out of her before she pushed away. Not with any great force, but just enough so he, who was trying to be vigilant to any such move, felt it instantly and let her go.

But she only pushed away enough so that she could duck her head down to kiss him on the mouth again. A decadent, slippery slide of a kiss that made him long to make her slippery and ready beneath him.

Except that that wasn’t how it was going to go. He wouldn’t put her beneath him. He wouldn’t press his hunger into her and succumb to the weight of his desire, or stretch his body over her. Not this time. Maybe even never.

It did not matter. She would be worth any price.

The price of his sanity seemed an easy thing to pay when her hand scrubbed down the soft skin of her belly, telling him with her articulate instinct what it was that she wanted.

She wanted him to touch her.

“I am going to touch you, my Claire. I’m going to touch you, and finger your lush little cunny.”

He couldn’t tell if the sound that flew from her lips was excitement or distress. But she didn’t pull away—she tightened her grip on his shoulders. He spread his legs wider, pushing her open, laying her bare and vulnerable before him.

He concentrated on the sweet slide of her body, combing his fingers through the soft hair that covered her mons and shielded the delicate pink flesh of her sex. He cupped her, pressing the heel of his palm against the edge of her cleft, rubbing just enough so she gasped and pulled herself tight against him, and just as quickly levered back, so he could continue to touch her so intimately.

She was light and heat and soft, slippery need, encouraging him with her breathy sounds of frustrated delight.

He eased his fingertip along her delicate folds and was rewarded for his patience with the slick feel of her body preparing itself for him. He slid his finger into her tight sheath, exploring her, watching her face for her reaction, but she closed her eyes and buried her head against his shoulder but made not a sound.

“Look at me.” He needed to see her face—to see what she was thinking. “Look at me while I finger your lush little cunny.”

Her answer was a gasp and the tight grip of her hand around his neck. He could not tell if it was pleasure or disgust that drove her.

“Do you like that? Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” Heat was blazing across her cheeks. “Yes. You shouldn’t say that,” she whispered.

“Why not? It is a crude, dirty word. But I’m a dirty man, Claire. I’m the Tanner.”

“You’re my Tanner.” She kissed the edge of his ear, softly, gently, and then with more force as his fingers played upon her, and her body began to understand its rhythm. She rocked against the insistent pressure of his hand, enough that her body pressed itself forward, grazing against his cock, straining within his breeches.

“You’re almost ready for me, my Claire. You’re almost wet and lush enough to take me. Almost.” He slid another finger inside her, exploring her, stretching her tight cunny, all the while, letting his thumb graze the nubbin of her clitoris to heighten her gratification.

And gratified she was. “Yes, yes, Tanner. Tanner, please.”

He wrapped his other arm around her nape and pulled her mouth down to his, kissing her with all the heat and urgency and need he no longer wanted to hide.

“Open my breeches,” he urged against her lips as he stroked her and stoked the fires of her passion.

She worked with focused energy, quickly dispensing with his buttons and shoving the flap down, out of the way, and his arousal sprang free of his breeches.

“Take me.” He could hear his voice slipping into the old way, tumbling into the rough, guttural intonation he had tried for years to train out of himself. But it was no use. He could be no more than he was. “Take me in your hand. Show me where you want me—”

She already was, grasping the long length of him, to press his cock against her mons, to show him unequivocally that she wanted them joined.

“Yes.” The word was an exhalation through his teeth, but he could barely hear it for the sound of his heart in his ears.

She was there, open and pink and bare and his. Waiting for him.

He slid his hand out of her and grasped her as gently as possible by the waist, because he didn’t feel gentle. He felt tense and taut and on the very very edge of something bigger and more powerful than desire. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe and didn’t need to, because his cock was pushing against the lush, slippery warmth of her entrance and easing into her sweetly tight body.

He made himself take a lungful of air, and then another, and he could hear the harsh cadence of his breath, and he tried, tried to go slowly and ease the way. But he was going so mad with the need for her, with the need for the tight friction of her cunny gripping him and the sweet bliss of the joining of their bodies, that he could no longer think.

He could no longer watch her carefully or touch her gently or take his time. There was no more time. There was only now, and the pleasure that ripped him in two when she rocked her hips to seat his cock inside her.

She gasped, and went still and tense, holding herself tight against him, as if she could keep him from moving again.

“Oh, God. Claire. Claire. Are you all right? Are you—” He kissed her open, gasping mouth and kissed her tightly shut eyes and pressed his care and concern and love against her pleated lips. “It will get better. The pain will go away. It will leave us, and leave the pleasure behind. I promise you.”

He was babbling again, crooning the soft words into the delicate shell of her ear, kissing and stroking her to ease away her pain and stoke the embers of her pleasure back into flame.

But it was working. She drew in a deep, shaky breath, and then another, and kissed him back, just a little. And then a little more. And then more still when his hands stroked up her sides to cup and fondle her breasts.

He pushed her away from him so he could see—see everything from her flushed face all the way down the pale, pinked slide of her body to the triangle of golden blond hair that hid the joining of their bodies. So he could see her crush her lower lip between her teeth. So he could see her nipples crest into tight, pink peaks. So he could see the softening of her belly when she finally relaxed and began to move against him.

And then he wanted to see it all and feel it all, as she slowly began to undulate in a sweet, sinuous motion, sliding her body against his, sending him rocking against the hard edge of his pleasure, over and over, and over again.

He grasped the glorious round globes of her tight little arse, and quickened her pace, helping her move, adding force and strength to the dance of her body upon his. “Yes, Claire, yes. Just like that. Just like—”

Like that.

Heat and light and pleasure and pain and bliss burst behind his eyes and blinded him with the bright force of her love. And he was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Claire had never felt so alive. And so very exhausted. And so very, very happy.

She was sure she ought to be embarrassed to find herself naked but for her garters and stockings, draped across Tanner’s equally naked chest. But she didn’t seem to care. It seemed the very nicest place to be.

She rolled her head to the side to look at him. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was open, slowly drawing in air as if it were an elixir. But he was the elixir. Quite magical.

“Claire.” His voice was full of a slow wonder—as if he had just discovered her, naked and draped all over him—for the very first time.

“Yes.” She heard the laughter in her voice and felt the happiness bubbling up from within. From the well that finally felt full.

“We should not have done that,” he said. But there was no heat, no purpose, in his voice.

“Really?” She was too happy to do anything but tease him. He needed teasing. Poor lamb. “Did we do it wrong? Ought we try again?”

“Yes.” His gaze finally focused upon her. “We ought to do it again, and again, and again.” He brushed his hand through her hair and pulled her closer to kiss her forehead. “But not now. You’ll be sore, and I’d be a brute. And we still have a killer to catch.”

“Now?” Claire was too comfortable, and too tired, to want to do anything but crawl under the covers of his bed and sleep until next Thursday.

“Yes, now. Because I want to marry you. And do
that
again and again and again. But I can’t marry you with a false charge laid against me. And Rosing must be stopped once and for all. It is, as you’ve continued to remind me, past bloody time.”

“Oh. I wish you had killed him when you had the chance.” The moment she said it she was ashamed of herself. “No. Forgive me. I don’t really mean that. I’m just tired.”

“I’ve wished I did, too. At least a dozen times since last night.”

“Don’t. And don’t think I wish that on you. I don’t. You did the right thing. Because you’re not an animal, Tanner. You’re a gentleman, and you did the right thing.”

“If I were a gentleman, you, my darling girl, would not be naked on my lap.”

“I prefer to think of it as
you,
my dear duke, naked under
my
lap.”

Claire felt his chuckle reverberate through her as he slowly disengaged their bodies and set her gently off him. “Either way, we must wash and dress, and find Rosing while Hadleigh is astir. If he is not still downstairs ratting around to try to find me, he is no doubt trying to find a magistrate who will leave his dinner and bother himself enough to have me taken up on his charge. Or maybe he’ll be lucky, and find one who can simply be bought.”

“Can he do that?” Despite all that had happened—all she had seen of the world in the past day—Claire was still shocked. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

“Life is rarely fair, Claire. Not unless we trouble ourselves to
make
it so.” He hitched his breeches up, and disappeared into his dressing room, from which he returned with lamp and a basin and ewer. “I’m sorry it’s not warm, but needs must.”

He handed her a soft flannel, and then began rather unaffectedly to wash himself, dipping his cloth into the water and running it over his lovely lean body, leaving droplets of water to sheen off his beautifully golden skin.

“Stop ogling me, Claire, and get yourself washed and dressed, or you’ll find yourself flat on your back on that bed, and then your father will see me strung up regardless of any charges.”

“I’m dressing,” she groused. “Even though I
had
rather ogle you.” She did as he asked, though she was more modest and withdrew to the dark dressing room to wash and attire herself in her chemise and stays. But as to the lacing—

“May I?”

He was at the door, ogling her this time. He was dressed in his rough, dark rig again, and she imagined he’d have another disreputable old redingote in his wardrobe to replace the one he’d traded away to Tilly Wheeler, to turn him back into a highwayman.

“Are you going to draw your pistols and have Rosing stand and deliver?”

“Nothing so obvious. I prefer a less visible approach.”

“What about me?” she asked as she gave him her back to tighten the laces. “I’m hardly invisible in that gown.”

He turned to look at the muslin, draped over a chair like an inanimate ghost in the fitful moonlight. “I do wish you had something darker. But there isn’t— Ah.” His eyes narrowed and then brightened, and his lips, those clever taunting lips, spread wider in that marvelously piratical smile. “Actually, the muslin is perfect.” He handed it to her.

“Perfect for what?”

“Looking innocent.” He had the back buttons done up in a flash and was striding back to his chamber. “While I shall look quite the opposite.” He began to fill his pockets and belt with guns. “We’ll use the difference to our advantage.”