His Mistress by Morning (27 page)

Where the devil had this minx come from? Whatever had happened to Hermione’s mousy friend, who had seemed more akin to the draperies than to his father’s lush and very ripe fertility statues?

Would you ruin me, Lord Trent?
Her question continued to rattle about in his mind until something else, something even more unsettling, hit him.

What if her query wasn’t a question but a request?

Ruin me…

“Wha-a-at?” he finally managed to stammer, sounding like the worst sort of country greenling.

“You heard me,” she said, moving closer, sliding across the room like a sultry cat. “Would you ruin me?”

Since he couldn’t manage the words, he forced himself to shake his head.

Never,
he thought as he tried to recall the dull spinster whose name he could never remember.
Well, not intentionally ruin,
he amended as she moved closer, his fingers itching to trace the line of her bodice, the curve of her breasts.

What the devil was he thinking? This was Miss Charlotte Wilmont. A respectable lady. “Miss Wilmont,” he managed to say.

“Lottie,” she corrected.
“Lottie.”
The name rolled off her lips in a slow purr, echoing again through his wayward thoughts.

Lottie, my love, come to me.

His gaze flew to hers, unsure if he’d thought those words or actually said them aloud.

The sparkle in her eyes suggested he had said them aloud—or that she knew his every thought. For the last time a woman had looked at him like that she’d been his…mistress.

He shook his head. “Miss Wilmont, I think you should…I mean, we must…”

She quirked a single brow at him and sauntered closer, slowly and seductively, all hips and curves and dangerous wiles, her head tipped slightly, a knowing smile on her lips.

Where the hell had a spinster learned to move like that?

And that light…oh, to hell with that light in her eyes…it beckoned like a wrecker’s lamp across a storm-tossed sea—promising no sanctuary, no safety.

Demmit, he
was
going mad.

She took another tempting step toward him, and now he could smell her. Violets. Soft and enticing.

Ruin me.

Oh, there was no doubt now, hers hadn’t been a question.

“Miss Wilmont, you are a respectable woman.” Even to his ears, his statement sounded like it was more for his benefit than hers.

“Not a lady?” she asked.

“Yes, well, of course, but…” Thank God every lady in London didn’t possess Miss Wilmont’s sudden charm. The entire country would be lost.

“But what?” She’d eased herself right up in front of him, and she’d done it so seamlessly that one second he’d been holding his own against her, and then she was before him, his defenses breached, his desire finding the voice he’d been struggling to rein in.

“I’m a gentleman,” he told her.

“I’ve always found you a bit rakish.” She glanced up from beneath her lashes and her eyes twinkled as if they held some secret knowledge that not even he was privy to.

Him? Rakish? Why, of all the foolish…

Yet even as much as he would like to tell her that her suggestion was utter nonsense, for everyone knew he was the sensible Marlowe, his shoulders straightened, he found himself rising up to his full height, and he had the nearly uncontrollable desire to take her in his arms and show her just how rakish he could be.

Ply her gown from her body, undo her garters, pull the pins from her tangle of brown hair, and make love to her on this very carpet.

His gaze met hers and he had the distinct feeling she wouldn’t be opposed to such a scandalous notion. That she desired him as much as he…

Sebastian tried to breathe even as she rose up on her slippers, on her very tiptoes, and caught his coat lapels to steady herself.

Then she tugged him closer. “Sebastian,” she whispered, her intimate use of his name sending a thunderbolt of desire through his already throbbing senses. “Kiss me.”

And instead of waiting for his reply, she did just that, pressed her lips to his, without any coyness, without any pretense, without even waiting.

In one swift kiss, Miss Wilmont ruined him.

For a moment, he stood there, stunned and in denial. This wasn’t happening.

Not to him, of all people.

He wasn’t rakish. He was sensible. And sensible gentlemen didn’t…

But Miss Wilmont did. Her tongue swept over his lips and he groaned, a sound that seemed to rumble from his very soul, full of need and desire and a passion that he didn’t know he possessed.

But she did. Her fingers twisted tighter into his jacket, claiming him, gathering him closer yet.

His manhood, already stiff, went rock hard as she came up against him, his entire length throbbing to life.

“Lottie,” he growled into her ear. “Lottie, you minx, what are you doing to me?”

To his delight, she shivered in his arms. “I thought it
was obvious.” Her body moved again, against him, with him, molding to him, exploring him.

Ruin me.

Images assailed his imagination.
This brazen chit, gloriously naked, her bare legs twined with his, her body arching to meet his. And he was inside her, stroking her, her passionate cries urging him on.

Sebastian! Oh, now, Sebastian!

His body tightened anew, and he jolted back to the moment at hand. To the woman in his arms. He sought her lips eagerly, with a newfound passion, kissing her, tasting her, devouring every bit of the desire she offered.

Overcome with need, he swung her around and pinned her up against the door so he could press himself into her. Instead of protesting, she responded with a deep moan of desire, pulling up her skirt so she could wind a leg around him, so she could ride against him.

He lost any sense of reason, any bit of sensibility. Instead, he freed a breast from her gown, his thumb rolling over the nipple until it hardened. And now it was her turn to tremble in submission, in unanswered desire.

He pressed against her harder, rougher, letting his other hand roam beneath her upraised skirt, to run over her soft, trembling thigh, to that very hot and wet place that was so very ready for him.

Their mouths, once fused in a heady kiss, wrenched apart, even as his fingers found her, as her hand closed brazenly over the front of his trousers, as her fingers traced the length of him.

Gone was the spinster. Lost was Miss Wilmont. The respectable lady fled in the wake of this dangerous, passionate awakening.

In her stead stood a vixen who seemed to understand his every desire, aroused his every need…

And she’d awakened this rakish side of him that he’d never known he possessed. Unleashed this dark stranger inside him, this reckless, dangerous man who seemed to know exactly what she wanted…and just how to give it to her.

He leaned over and captured her bare nipple in his mouth and sucked, long and hard, pulling it into his mouth and letting his tongue tease the taut peak. She arched toward him, opening herself to him, and he continued while his fingers did much the same dance over another tight, hard spot.

She was wet and slick, and he flicked his finger over her until she was rocking against him, murmuring something unintelligible but perfectly understood.

Ruin me…Ruin me now…

Somehow, she’d gotten his breeches open and freed him, running her hand up and down him, her fingers tracing a dangerous, teasing line over the wet tip.

Testing him, begging him.

Her hips arched again against his hand, seeking out what she held.

In a flash, he saw her, naked and resplendent in satin sheets, her brown hair shimmering in the candlelight, her body hazy in a sheen of need, writhing and calling to him.

Oh, Sebastian! Now, Sebastian!

And there he was.
Throwing himself atop her, reckless and rakish. Thrusting into her, hard. Claiming her body as his, filling her, stroking the waves of her need with sure, long thrusts.

“Demmit,” he swore as he caught her hips and raised her up, ready to fill her right there and then, even as he tried to fathom how he’d come to this.

This rakish, dangerous desire. This uncontrollable need.

“I’m going to ruin you like this,” he told her.

“I wouldn’t call it ruin,” she said breathlessly, as her body moved all-too-willingly against his.

Then into his hazy, desire-clouded thoughts came a voice that jolted Sebastian back to sensibility.

“Charlotte? Charlotte, are you still down there?”

Hermione!

It didn’t take Sebastian but a moment to take in the sight before him and consider what his sister would discover if she ventured into the library.

Miss Wilmont all topsy-turvy and tousled. Her eyes smoky with desire, her lips swollen from the force of his kisses. All but ruined, utterly and so completely.

Then he took another glance at this disheveled, gloriously aroused woman. He’d done this?

“Charlotte?! Where are you?” Hermione’s insistent voice clamored yet again.

Sebastian glanced once more at Charlotte, then shoved her into the middle of the room.

“Do something,” he whispered, waving his hands at her rumpled, half-on gown.

“Like this,” she teased back, pulling her bodice down lower and coming toward him.

Gads, this was going to be a disaster, he thought, even as his gaze went hungrily back to the site of her perfect breasts.

She looked like a veritable Helen of Troy, one of
Townley’s Grecian beauties, one of Arbuckle’s seductive oil-bound belles.

Hermione’s determined step trod down the staircase. “Charlotte? Whatever is wrong with you? Are you in there reading one of Mother’s French novels? She keeps those on the top shelf for a reason.”

Now that Sebastian had wrenched himself out of Miss Wilmont’s arms, his sensible nature roared back into some semblance of control. “Get dressed,” he ordered softly, straightening his own clothes as fast as he could.

She did so, slowly and seductively, and it was all he could do not to bolt the library door shut and claim her once again.

No! No! No!
he told himself.

Remember Miss Bird. No, that wasn’t it. Miss Burton. Oh, demmit, what was her name?

Burke! Miss Lavinia Burke and her ten thousand a year.

Then he looked at Lottie, and the comparison sent a chill of dread through his impassioned limbs as he watched her pull her tumbled curls up through her fingers and pin them back into some semblance of order.

If you could call anything about Charlotte Wilmont ordered.

Just as she finished, the door swung open and Sebastian found himself hidden behind it.

“There you are!” Hermione said, a bit of annoyance to her words. Then again, his sister was easily annoyed. “I was calling you from the second landing. Didn’t you hear me?”

“No, I fear I’d succumbed to the charms of…”

Sebastian held his breath.

“…a delightful bit of poetry. It was quite stirring.”

His body quaked and stirred, responding to her softly seductive words like a hound to the horn.

“You look flushed,” Hermione said. “Are you feeling well?”

Quite well,
he would have told his sister if she’d been talking to him. Why, he’d never felt so alive, as if he’d been awakened from a long sleep, restless and ready for something unexpected, something one only found in dreams.

“Really, Charlotte, are you listening to me?” Hermione asked. “You don’t look well. Should I call for my mother?”

His mother? Why not just invite in Lady Parwich from across the square and the rest of Mayfair, for that matter?

Meanwhile, Charlotte had picked up the volume of Coleridge and moved to the door. Her hand reached behind it and out of Hermione’s sight. “Oh, heavens, don’t bother your mother. Truly, I feel glorious,” she said, her fingers tracing a line along his lips.

Sebastian nearly moaned, his body hardening anew.

“It was a wonderful evening,” Hermione enthused. “I just wish Rockhurst had noticed me. If you weren’t my best friend, I’d be quite jealous over the attentions he paid you.”

Sebastian froze immediately. How had he forgotten Rockhurst? The earl had been more than attentive to Lottie tonight.

Miss Wilmont, he corrected himself. Better to think of her as Miss Wilmont, proper spinster, than Lottie-the-vixen-meant-to-tempt-his-soul.

“I have no interest in him,” Charlotte demurred, her hand stroking Sebastian’s stubbled chin, his lips, the line
of his jaw. “Besides, Rockhurst doesn’t like poetry. I could never be interested in a man who didn’t adore Coleridge.”

Hermione sniffed. “You and Sebastian. He loves that fellow as well. Though its hard to believe, considering how stuffy and proper my brother is and how scandalous those verses are. That’s why Mother keeps them up on the top shelf—so Viola won’t read them.”

Her touch became too much for Sebastian, and his newly awakened rakish side demanded revenge. He caught her hand and kissed the palm, then drew one of her fingers into his mouth and suckled it.

When he heard her stifle a gasp, he smiled. Served the teasing little minx right.

Hermione’s gown rustled. “Are you sure you’re well, Charlotte? You look odd.”

“I was just thinking of which poem I was going to memorize in the event I can’t find Herr Tromler.”

“You’re not thinking of reciting one of Coleridge’s verses, are you?”

“Actually, I was,” Charlotte said.

Sebastian’s mouth opened in shock, and she was able to free her hand.

“But Charlotte,” Hermione protested. “You’ll cause a scandal if you recite one of those verses!”

“Yes, I know,” she said, leaning quickly behind the door and winking saucily at Sebastian before she ducked away, following Hermione toward the stairs.

“Sebastian will never fall in love with you if you find yourself embroiled in a scandal,” his sister advised.

“I wouldn’t worry about your brother. I think you will find him quite changed.”

Sebastian would have liked to argue with her, but that
would have required him to reveal his position. Cause the scandal that Miss Wilmont seemed all too determined to create.