Gentlemen Prefer Mischief (13 page)

“Wouldn’t you like some lemonade, Lily? I for one am quite parched.”

“Oh. No. I… that is…” She tried to pull her hand from under where it rested on his, a small struggle as he pressed his hand with seeming obliviousness on hers. “I want to take the evening air.”

“Then I shall join you.”

“Surely you wish to continue dancing? There are so many lovely ladies here tonight.”

“But I want to go outside with
you
.”

His words made her heart beat faster even as she knew he was only toying with her and that she must discourage him, however much she didn’t want to. But before she could think further he was leading her through the terrace doors, away from the light and music.

She found herself standing alone with him on the far side of the terrace under a softly shining moon. And suddenly a whimsical part of herself was insisting that maybe there was a way to cure herself once and for all of her fascination with Lord Perfect.

Hal watched Lily’s face, wondering if she was aware of how beautiful she looked. A torch stood to the side of them at a distance, put there to supplement the moonlight. The edge of its glow fell against her white-blond hair and limned it with silver that seemed to shine out from within, like a personal incandescence. Her gown was a soft white silk satin, richly lustrous and trimmed in silver cord that traced along the tops of her breasts and made a sort of belt that reminded him there was a slim waist underneath, and a soft-in-the-right-places body. She looked like something ethereal, a moon nymph, perhaps. Or, more likely, one of the goddess Diana’s band of warrior maidens.

She also looked—the thought made him smile—calculating, like someone choosing moves on a chessboard. Doubtless plotting something.

“Tell me, Lily,” he said in a soft voice. “What ever happened to the carefree girl who wrote in that journal?”

Her eyes lifted upward toward the dark sky, which was anointed with a profusion of tiny stars, like salt shaken on dark velvet.

“You
would
want to talk about the journal. It’s all about you.”

He chuckled. “Though I will admit to finding the picture painted of myself through your young eyes fascinating, I’m much more interested in that dreamy girl who had such a grand imagination. Do you use that imagination anymore?”

She seemed to consider his words seriously, but then she did generally take things seriously, to a fault. “I suppose I use it to think of yarn colors.”

“Probably the most unromantic words ever uttered on a moonlit terrace.”

“I’m not trying to say romantic things.”

“I know. Tell me, Lily, why are your brothers so industriously lining up dance partners for you when, lovely as you are, you need only smile and the gentlemen will come running? You don’t want to be courted—but why?”

She kept her hands folded in front of her, a vision of composed femininity that he itched to ruffle.

“I like my life just the way it is, and that’s something over which I would have little control were I to marry.”

“The shawl business and your plans for the school.”

“Yes.”

“Then do you mean to be a spinster?”

“Perhaps I simply haven’t thought about marriage particularly. Perhaps I was merely busy and forgot about it.”

He laughed. “You are either a bold liar or the most unusual woman I’ve ever met.”

His words fell into a silence on the terrace as she made no response. She was looking at him intently, her eyes serious and focused, but her brow was furrowed as if she were struggling with some thought. He found his eyes drawn to the pretty, pert bow at the center of her mouth, which was currently pressed against her bottom lip.

She cleared her throat delicately. “Would you kiss me, please, Hal?” she said.

What?

The steady look she was giving him told him that he’d not misheard her. But what the devil was she up to?

“You would like me to kiss you?”

“Yes. I was thinking about… the things I’ve said no to in recent years. And, well, you’re right.”

“I’m right?” This was new.

“Yes. I’d like to experiment a little. Like we did in my chamber,” she said in the straightforward tone of one ordering a coat from a tailor.

He’d never been asked for a kiss before. Asked with eyes, yes, and hands. But never bluntly, in words. Somehow, it seemed like the very way Lily would want to be kissed. With
her
deciding, her issuing the invitation and being in control.

“Hmm,” he said, “I would say the kiss in your chamber was an exploratory kiss. But what about other kinds, like scorching kisses? Or long kisses? Or desperate kisses?”

Her eyes widened a bit. “Yes,” she whispered.

Hal had thought to addle Lily a little out on the terrace, tease her into acquiescing a bit—and here she was, asking for it. Was she up to something? He didn’t care. He wanted her, and he didn’t care how she came to him.

He leaned closer. “So… scorching,” he murmured. “And what if I want to touch you, Lily? Would that be part of your plan?”

She blinked, as if beginning to realize that what happened might not be under her control.

“Touch me?” Her voice was hushed, a little strained, and her eyes were dazed.

He leaned closer still, until he was only a few inches from her tilted-up face, his mouth just opposite hers. “Yes,” he said, something turning over inside him. “I want to touch you.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered weakly. She lifted her mouth a little closer, expectantly, and the beginnings of trust he read in her eyes tugged at him.

“Give me your hand,” he said, and she slipped her hand into his. He led them down the short flight of steps that met the lawn, and pulled her out of the circle of torchlight and around to the far side of a thick old cherry tree.

He guided her back against the tree. Her expression was obscured now in the shadows, with only the moonlight and the glow of the manor behind them to counter the vast darkness of the fields before them, but he could see the intent light in her eyes. So like Lily, to bring focus to whatever she did.

He planted a hand on either side of her head, steadied himself, and moved forward to kiss her. Scorchingly…

He paused, lifted a hand to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. A very pretty, endearing little apricot of an ear.

“I doubt your brothers would approve of what we’re about to do. Being that they’re evidently intent on you marrying someone soon.”

He thought he heard the sound of teeth grinding. “I’ll be twenty-one next month, Hal. I can and do make up my own mind.”

“Yes, you do,” he said. And kissed her.

Oh
my
, Lily thought as he took possession of her mouth. His tongue licked cleverly along the line where her lips met, inveigling his way inside, and she opened to him. Pleasure trickled through her as his hot mouth came against her.

She realized then, with the partial awareness that a drugged person might have, that he’d been making love to her with his words and his eyes ever since they’d come onto the terrace. He couldn’t be sincere, though she’d felt a wave of tenderness for him when he’d stopped himself to be certain she wanted to do this. But she didn’t care about sincerity or reason or moderation now. Her only sense was of wanting him to kiss her more.

His mouth moved on hers in hot, greedy exploration, and she sighed, her body softening against him. The ridge of his erection pressed against her, a shock… and a pleasure. This hardened part of him was intruding against the propriety that was meant to surround maidens—and she wanted him right where he was. She pushed her hands through his surprisingly silky hair and over the warm skin of his scalp, feeling she was gaining secret knowledge of his hidden places.

Dear God, she should stop right now, cut off the wildness surging inside her, but for once she wasn’t going to listen to the voice of censure. She ached for him, and all she cared about was where his hands would go next. Would he touch the skin bared by her scooped neckline?

He broke their kiss to drag his moist lips along her jaw and down her neck, his breath huffing against her, her own seeming as loud as a horse off the gallop. She shoved her hands up the back of his coat and spread them upward over the shifting muscles beneath his shirt. An unladylike moan escaped her, and she didn’t care—he felt that good. Strong, tall, hard, male. So different from her and the very thing she’d been craving without knowing it.

“Can you feel what you’ve done to me, Lily?” His voice husky and deep at the base of her throat, he crushed his hips against her, making her feel his hardness more.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I love it when you say yes. It’s a new language to you, isn’t it? The language of not-denying.”

“Yes… yes…” Her words melted into a hum of pleasure. Sweet, hot yearning pooled damply between her thighs.

He grunted against her neck and tugged at the shoulder of her gown, inched it down on one side with slow intention. She shuddered as he bared her breast to the cool night air, and while he kissed her collarbone and made a leisurely exploration of the base of her neck, she admitted to herself that there were volumes of wicked things she wanted him to do to her. She arched her back, willing him to find all the places where she needed him.

His mouth traveled lower but just a bit, and lingered. If only he would kiss her breast, but he was teasing her with his endless, maddening, exquisite dallying. With his hands on either side of her, she was imprisoned, held there for his plundering, dizzy with desire.

But not entirely helpless. She fumbled at the front of his breeches and yanked his shirt upward, desperate to feel the skin and muscles she’d touched through his shirt, to have her hands on the body about which she’d wondered with varying degrees of desire for four years. There was no saying she didn’t want him desperately now.

The fabric came loose—he groaned as though a torture had deepened, the sound of him
suffering
because of her touch making her feel as if liquid was pouring through her, soaking her—and she worked her hands upward, sliding them against the flat, hard muscles of his abdomen.
Ohhh
. The heat and tautness and aliveness of his flesh lit her hands. She was hot, throbbing with heat all over.

His hand—warm, large, the skin a little rough and creating exquisite friction—skimmed over the rounded, bare edge of her shoulder and down her arm as if he meant to leave no chance for the night air to cool her.

“I’m willing to bet,” he said, his husky voice sliding inside her, “that you’ve never had a man’s hand here before.”

“No,” she whispered, slumping against him, enfeebled with desire.

“Or here.” He worked his hand slowly sideways, across the top of her breast, and spread it over her fullness to cup her.

Scorching…
oh
. And melting… Her legs quivering, she slid a little down his body.

“Steady on,” he tugged her up, husky laughter in his voice.

His head dipped and he kissed the upper swell of her breast. Yes. So good. His mouth moved lower in kiss-steps, and she’d never wanted anything so much as what he was going to do, what he surely must do, what she so needed him to do.

Kiss… kiss… kiss… His taunting lips moved, maddeningly, with seeming ambivalence toward the tip of her breast, while his hand pulled the other side of her dress down. Now she was bare from the waist, offered totally to him, her whole being anticipation.

He paused in his kissing and pulled his head back, and she wanted to cry out from frustration. He was panting, his eyes glittering hard in the moonlight.

“Tell me what you want.”

She shook her head. She could never speak such words.

He read her silence. “You don’t want to say?” He leaned over and dragged his moist lips slowly down her breast, drawing a shudder from her. And stopping short again.

She kept silent. Stood there frozen in movement but burning inside, her senses alive and wanting. The ache between her legs hummed urgently.

He lifted his hand and pinched her nipple.

She moaned. The bite of pain was exquisite, and it only made the wanting deepen.

He dragged his moist lips across her breast again, drawing closer to the dark rouge circle of skin.

“Still nothing to say?” His breath rushed hot against her puckered skin.
Ohhh
. She couldn’t take much more of his teasing. Hal, always teasing. A master at teasing. Had she known on some level he would be accomplished at
every
kind of teasing? Had she guessed that there was a kind of teasing that was exquisite torture?

Her only reply was to push her hands down his front, past the waist of his breeches. He sucked in a breath. Her fingertips touched crisp hairs. Dangerous territory. Forbidden and fascinating. With a single, daring fingertip, she stroked the silky, hot tip of his erection.

With a groan he moved his head and finally closed his mouth over her nipple. Desire bloomed in a mad rush between her legs.

His hips began a rhythm that met something within her—the something that had lain dormant, unknown because untasted: the need to join herself physically to a man. She’d felt inklings of it with him, but never the full-bore insistent desire, and now it was alive in her. Now she
wanted—
and knew
what
she wanted. She pushed her hands past his hips, to the firm, high swell of his buttocks, and pulled him against her.

He grunted. Ground his teeth. “Ah, Lily, you know what you want, don’t you?”

“I—” A breathy whisper. “Maybe.”

He exhaled, the barest hint of a chuckle that was saved from smugness by its being shaky.

Leaning lower, he tugged up her skirts, and the night air sighed against her leg as one side of her gown opened a space for him. His hand brushed the outside of her thigh, teased the bare skin under her bottom, and then moved around to her front. Her mind was on nothing but his hand and what he would do with it. He slipped it between her legs.

She moaned.

“We shouldn’t…” she whispered with the last vestiges of sense.

“Shh.” He stroked her there, his fingertip silky and knowing, and she forgot why they shouldn’t do this. Such earthy heaven, such yearning, such a thing that she would never have allowed herself to want. Hal exploring her most secret place… a sensation she never could have dreamed of, because how could such incredible pleasure be imagined without tasting it first?

He pressed slow, sweet kisses against her cheek, her neck, her breasts, all the while using a single fingertip to make her dizzier, weaker with desire, desperate for some sort of release. She wanted to move against him, press herself to his hand, but the ghost of who she was restrained her.

“Let yourself go,” he whispered in that husky voice.

She didn’t know specifically what he meant by letting herself go, what that would entail. And yet, she also did. It was an allowing that he meant. Letting the exquisite sensations overtake her, letting
passion
rule her. She’d never wanted anyone or anything to overtake her—and now, suddenly, she did. She wanted
him
to do it.

Yet some unconscious, long-restrained part of her resisted.

“Lily,” he said softly, “you were made for this.”

The note of tenderness in his words undid her, and that was it. She gave herself over to passion, pressed against his hand, and let him carry her up and over this summit he’d been climbing with her.

Sweetness welled up within her. Then a rush of peace, a kind of joyful nothingness.

He held her in his arms, her face cradled against his chest. Bliss.

She gradually became aware of his erection straining hard against her and thought of how he had just… pleasured her. Expertly.

He’d known exactly what she wanted. Probably he knew what all women wanted. But he had been tender also. Generous. It had all felt genuine.

She thought how he was left now, with himself still—obviously—wanting.

Affection for him had stirred deeply in her tonight. Forcing herself to regard him as a wastrel had helped keep her from liking him, but there was so much more to him than what she had allowed. He was smart and kind and witty and knowing and sensual. And tender. It was the tenderness that was undoing all her resolutions, that was making her want—against everything she’d ever thought about herself or him—a deep connection with him. Friendship, yes, but something much more.

And maybe this was what she’d been afraid of: that once she’d opened the door to her heart even a crack, something would rush in and she’d lose all control over herself.

Her gown was still pooled at her waist, and she pulled it up over her shoulders and adjusted it back into place while he tucked in his shirt and straightened his coat. She looked up at him. His eyes shined down at her, shot through with starlight, and she thought she read softness there, along with desire. His smile was rueful, an admission that they’d shared something in which he’d been left behind.

“Do you know what pillow talk is, Lily?”

She blushed. Funny that words would make her blush when actions hadn’t. “I can guess.”

He laughed softly, leaned in a little to brush his chin against the side of her cheek. “It’s when a man and a woman have come to understand each other a little more, and they are then a little more open to hearing each other. And so,” he said with, always, that hint of laughter in his voice, that underlying bent to tease, “I think it must be a very good moment for you to tell me what it is you are up to with this Woods Fiend business.”

She was, it turned out, as much of a fool as she’d been afraid she might become. She’d been right. What they’d just done had meant nothing to him. It had been a moment of playful fun in the service of something he wanted, when to her it had felt like her eyes opening.

The slamming, harsh voice of remorse filled her head. Scolded her. Demanded she despise herself and her weakness.

But. She felt a little changed now. The night felt different, the moonlight, too. She felt spangled, glittering… as though she were alive now to secret layers of things she hadn’t known about before. And she didn’t want to go back to the way she’d been. She’d just tasted some of what men and women could do for each other, and it had been a wonder.

So this was something of an answer to the shame that wanted to reproach her: how could something which had brought her that peace she’d just known, that joyful emptiness, and yes, that pleasure, be shameful? With his tenderness and his expertise, Hal had shown her that there was a beauty to her body and what it could do. There was something a little sacred in what had just happened that made her feel in awe. Also a bit afraid.

But now she knew that for him there’d been an ulterior motive. She hated that—and yet, was this so different from when she’d begun unbuttoning his waistcoat so she could get her book from him?