An Introduction to Pleasure (27 page)

“Yes. I suppose there is that, too.” He shrugged. He still wasn’t entirely certain that her reason existed.

She wiped her tears away and then stared at him for a long, appraising moment.

“I am glad you did not succeed,” she said softly. “And you don’t wish to do such a thing again, do you?”

“No. Not anymore.” He was surprised that those words were true. He had said them before, of course, to others, even to himself. But never had they been truer than when he looked at this woman.

She smiled at him and his heart stuttered. He turned away and stared at the flowers again. He recognized this feeling growing inside of him. He had felt it once before. It had driven him to change everything about himself. It had made him a better man, albeit utterly briefly.

It was love.

He had sworn never to love anyone ever again and he’d meant it. Even if he hadn’t, a man didn’t love his mistress. Well, some men did, though it inevitably led to problems with second families and scandal.

Certainly,
he
didn’t love a mistress. Especially a temporary one like Lysandra. She would leave him in a short time, move on to another man who she would likely be bonded to for years. He had to let her go for her own good, as well as his.

He turned back and offered her both an arm and a false smile. “Come, let’s go back up to the house. I find myself tired.”

She nodded, but as she slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, she leaned up to kiss his cheek. “Andrew, I’m happy you told me. I know it was difficult, but I’m glad you trusted me to enough to share this with me today.”

He nodded, though he didn’t have enough confidence in himself to speak. Slowly, he led her back to the house. Once inside, he pressed a kiss to her cheek.

“I need to take up an issue with Berges. Will you excuse me for a while?”

She looked at him, uncertainty on her face. “Are you angry with me?”

He touched her face. “No. Far from it.”

She nodded, though her eyes said she didn’t fully believe him. “Perhaps I’ll read for a while up in our chamber.”

He nodded and watched as she moved up the stairs and down the hallway. Once she was gone, he walked to the little set of stairs that led down to the area below the kitchen and main living area of the estate.

He found the butler in the small room that he called an office. A cramped, but highly organized space Andrew had always admired. From here, his servant ruled the house like a mini-king.

“Hello, my lord,” the servant said, removing his spectacles and rising to his feet when Andrew entered. “I wasn’t informed you had returned from your walk with Miss Keates. I apologize that you had to come searching for me.”

Andrew waved off the apology and shifted uncomfortably.

“Had I heard that Miles…er, the Marquis Weatherfield was visiting his brother in the shire?”

The butler’s brow wrinkled, and Andrew didn’t blame him for the confusion. Weatherfield was one of his old cronies from the days before his marriage. His younger brother owned a stretch of land in the shire, which was how they had met. But the man hadn’t darkened his doors for years because he had been one of the friends Andrew went out with the night his wife died.

“Yes,” Berges said slowly. “I heard something to that effect through gossip.”

Andrew nodded. There was no relief that what he’d heard was true. And yet he pressed on.

“I see. Send word to him, will you? I’d like to see him tomorrow, if possible.”

The butler nodded, his motions once again slowed with confusion. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I will send a message to their manor right away. Is anything…
wrong
, my lord?”

Andrew hesitated. Everything was wrong. What he was about to do was wrong. But it was the only answer.

“No,” he said as he turned from the door. “Nothing. Let me know when you have a response from him. Good day, Berges.”

Then he left the servant and went to find Lysandra. Tired or not, he wanted to spend every moment he could with her. Before everything changed.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Lysandra was seated at the dressing table in the room adjacent to the bedroom. She was staring at her reflection, but not with seeing eyes. Her mind drifted to everything Andrew had said to her that day. Every emotion that had darkened his eyes and his mood.

And then there was the confession of his desperate suicide attempt.

She shivered. The very idea of it made her sick. Sad. And so desperate to save him, even though he didn’t seem to want to be saved. He wallowed in his pain, his grief. He tortured himself, just as his brother had said at the opera that night that seemed a hundred years ago.

And now she knew why.

Suddenly, Andrew strode in, slammed the door behind him and crossed the room, his eyes boring into her. She got to her feet in an instant, ready to greet him, though she had no idea what to expect from him with that expression on his face.

“And—”

She didn’t get any further. His mouth crushed against her, his arms came around her, and he dragged her up and against him with so much force that she could scarcely breathe. His mouth assaulted her, his tongue driving hard between her lips, his lips bruising. But she opened to him, as she always did and gave herself over to the hard, demanding kiss. There was something so passionate in it, so…desperate.

She drew back with a start. That was it. There was desperation to his kiss, to his expression as they stared at each other in the firelight.

“Andrew?” she whispered.

He shook his head and began unbuttoning her gown. “We’ve talked enough, Lysandra.”

She stared at him as he worked on her dress, his gaze focused entirely on his task. Something had happened since they returned to the house. But what? Or was he simply digesting what had happened between them in the short time they’d been apart and was panicked by it?

She opened her mouth to speak again, but he cupped her face for another heated kiss. This time he was gentler, but it took an effort for him to be so. All that desperation was still present in his kiss, along with all his desire for her, all his attempts to give her as much pleasure as he could.

He had done as she asked and told her the truth. If a heated coupling was what he needed in response to that then she wasn’t going to deny him. In truth, denying him was impossible, so she relaxed against him in utter surrender.

At that, he pulled away, slipped his hands beneath the opening in her gown and stripped it from her shoulders. Her chemise followed and soon the entire contraption of her dress was on the floor, leaving her only in her stockings and slippers.

She moved to remove them, but he shook his head.

“No, I like you like this,” he murmured before he began removing his own shirt. She reached up to help him and soon he was as naked as she was. As ready as she was.

He kissed her once more, and as he drove his tongue into her, he lifted her up, cupping her against him as he carried her backward toward the wall next to the fire. Her back hit the hard surface, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders for balance.

They were eye to eye now, and he held her gaze as he lifted his hips and glided into her waiting body.

Lysandra’s eyes went wide. She had never considered that sex might be possible like this. But it felt like heaven. Wicked heaven filled with utterly fallen angels, but heaven nonetheless.

He pressed one very gentle, almost chaste kiss to her lips and then began to drive, pounding her against the wall with fast, hard thrusts of his hips. He pushed her toward orgasm with a drive, a desperation and a violence she’d never felt before. She couldn’t fight it. Not when he was hitting her clit with every thrust of his hips, not when his hard, heavy cock slid inside her so perfectly.

She came within moments of his first thrust, but he didn’t slow his pace, not even as she cried out her release. If anything, her orgasm seemed to encourage him. He cupped her tighter, gasping each time he thrust into her, the muscles in his neck grew tight, his face reddened, and then he cried out.

“Fuck!”

His come splashed hard and hot into her, sizzling across her overly sensitized flesh and making her pussy ripple with the last echoes of pleasure. He tipped his head forward, resting his forehead against the wall beside her, as his panting breaths slowed to normal.

“Andrew?” she whispered.

He glanced at her briefly, then carried her, their bodies still tangled together, to the bed. He laid her down there, covering her with his warmth and began to kiss her again with just as much abandon as if he had never fucked her against the wall in an animal display of lust.

Lysandra knew she should stop him. She should demand why a few moments apart had inspired him to such a desperate, heated display of passion. But she couldn’t. Not when he was beginning to move inside her a second time, not when he was holding her so tightly she could believe it would last forever.

Instead, she kissed him back, pouring her passion and love into him and hoping it would be enough to fix whatever was broken inside of him.

Andrew rubbed his eyes before he began to pace his office a second time. After a night of pure passion with Lysandra, one where he had made love to her again and again and yet still hadn’t purged the desire to do so from his body, he was exhausted. Yet he had to be his best, his most awake, because Weatherfield would be arriving any moment.

What was he doing? Why had he invited a long-former friend to his home? The idea, which had seemed so right the day before, now seemed more and more idiotic with each passing moment.

But it was too late to stop the tide. There was a rap on his door, and Berges appeared.

“Lord Weatherfield, my lord,” he said as he opened the door a fraction to reveal his old friend.

Miles was a handsome man. Tall, with dark hair and darker eyes that Andrew had heard women swoon over endlessly. The two men had been friends since their teenage years, rampaging through the countryside looking for girls to debauch and trouble to cause. They had even shared a woman or two during steamy nights of passion.

“Callis,” his friend said as he stepped into the room, hand outstretched. “Good to see you, friend.”

Andrew swallowed hard and took the offering. “Yes, good to see you, as well. Here, sit. Would you like a drink?”

His friend lifted both eyebrows. “No. Not of whiskey, at any rate.”

Andrew shrugged. “Tea, then? Or coffee?”

“No.” Miles leaned back in his seat to stare at Andrew. “You look well. Better than the last time I saw you.”

Andrew wrinkled his brow. “When was that?”

“Passing by in London probably two years ago. You didn’t see me, that was clear. Hell, I don’t think you saw anything around you.” His friend shook his head. “Dark times.”

Andrew shifted. His old friends had all been permanently ousted from his life after the death of his wife. He hadn’t realized any of them gave a damn anymore.

“Well, it was a long time ago.”

“I hear a woman may be part of the change,” his friend said with a teasing smile. “If that’s true, I would damn sure like to meet her. She sounds like a miracle worker.”

Andrew shifted. He wasn’t about to get into the subject of Lysandra, not yet. The very idea that anyone was talking about her…talking about
them
, gave him great pause.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” he said instead, as a way to change the subject.

Not very subtle, as Miles gave a slight, knowing smile.

“Well, I do love my brother, but he and his wife are utter bores. And to be honest, I was quite curious when I received a message on your behalf.”

Andrew tilted his head. “Curious?”

“Oh yes.” Weatherfield leaned forward. “You must know why, Callis. After all, you haven’t spoken to me since…well, since Rebecca’s death. Then you made it very clear that you wanted nothing to do with me or any of our old friends.”

Andrew shifted. He
had
lashed out at anyone close to him in the weeks following her death. Especially the friends he had been drinking with the night of her death. Like Miles.

“I apologize for that,” he said softly.

His friend shrugged. “You weren’t yourself, and for good reason,” he said. “But to have you suddenly reach out to me, ask that I come see you, I couldn’t resist that mystery.”

“You’ve obviously heard I have a new mistress,” Andrew said, shifting.

“Oh yes,” Miles laughed. “It’s all the talk. The questions abound. Will you return to your old ways? Who is this girl who tempted you back to wickedness? Why is your father stomping around in a rage about it at every party?”

Andrew squeezed his eyes shut. Yes, those were the very questions he had hoped to avoid. And yet now he was the center of a mild scandal.

“She isn’t permanent,” he said softly, but he couldn’t help but think of Lysandra, naked on his bed. Lysandra, holding his hand as they strolled through the gardens. Lysandra, talking to him long into the night about books or the current state of the middle class in London. All those things felt very permanent.