If He's Sinful (17 page)

He lifted himself up on his forearms to look at her. Her lips were kiss-swollen, her eyes a hot blue that he now knew was caused by desire. She wanted him. He wanted her. The greedy man inside him said that was enough. It shamed him to think he was becoming like his father. Although his father would never have paused to try and talk a woman out of allowing him to enjoy her favors, and that thought comforted him.

“You are an innocent,” he began, thinking she might not truly understand how close she was to being deflowered in her parlor.

Penelope did not really want to discuss the matter, especially since such talk was rapidly cooling the heat he had stirred within her. “Innocent but not ignorant. Ashton…” She wriggled her hand beneath his fine linen shirt and echoed his soft gasp when she stroked the taut, warm flesh of his chest. “I manage a house filled with the bastards of my relatives. Artemis and Stefan prove that my father was as faithless as yours. I live a short walk from a part of London where every sin known to man can be purchased. I may be innocent in body, but I know more than I like to. I know where this will lead and I know I want to follow.”

“I am not free—” Her fingers over his mouth stopped his words.

“I know that, too, and know that you may never be.” She lifted her fingers and slowly traced the shape of his mouth with her tongue. “Fly free with me, Ashton. Let me soar with you for a while, at least until you speak vows to another that neither of us wish to break.”

He stared at her, his body crying out to take her at her word while his mind lectured him on what was expected of a gentleman. The truth of her words shone in her eyes. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. The madness she stirred in him was a shared one. Ashton stood up and held out his hand.

“If we are about to tumble into sin, Penelope Wherlocke, let us at least retain enough dignity to do so in a bedchamber,” he said.

She grasped his hand, nimbly hopped off the settee, and led him to her bedchamber. He knew where it was, but allowed her to take the lead. Ashton had hoped the walk to her bedchamber would cool his blood enough to restore his good sense, but his blood continued to pulse with need every step of the way. He shut the bedchamber door behind him the moment they stepped into the room and then he looked at her. Her undone gown was sliding off her shoulders, her full breasts almost completely exposed, and he decided good sense could go to the devil. For once he was taking what
he
wanted and he would deal with the consequences later.

Penelope saw Ashton’s hesitation and feared that he had regained control of his desire. She nearly laughed with joy when he caught her up in his arms and strode to her bed. She was already wrapped around him when they fell onto the bed. Drugged by his kisses, her passion running hot enough to blind her to everything around her, she only became aware of how rapidly he had divested them both of their clothes when his warm flesh pressed against hers.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered, crouching over her so that he could study her from head to toe and enjoying the way his body burned with hunger for every silken inch of her. “So soft.” He ran his hand down her side from shoulder to thigh and then bent his head to slowly lick the hard tip of one plump breast. “As sweet to the taste as the finest nectar. I have ached for you since that night at Mrs. Cratchitt’s.”

“As I have ached for you,” she said and lightly stroked his broad, smoothly muscular chest. “And I think we have talked enough.”

“Yes.” He ground out the word between tightly clenched teeth and then fell on her, almost able to hear the last thin thread of his control snap.

The moment his mouth closed around the aching tip of her breast, Penelope lost the ability to think clearly. She became deeply immersed in the desire racing through her veins, a desire stirred higher and higher with his every kiss, each stroke of his tongue against her skin, every touch of his hand. Her need was so great by the time he slid his hand between her legs that she barely even flinched over such an intimate touch. He kissed her as he stroked her there, his fingers dipping inside her. The ache he created there was not soothed by his touch; it grew worse. She needed more but did not know how to ask for it.

Ashton knew he could wait no longer to possess her. He had dreamt of loving her slowly, of bringing her pleasure over and over, but he would have to fulfill that dream another day. If he did not get inside her soon, he would empty himself upon the sheets. He began to ease himself into her, groaning as her wet heat began to close around him. When he met the shield of her maidenhead, he kissed her and thrust hard, tearing through the barrier like some ancient marauder and capturing her gasp of pain in his mouth.

“It hurts only the once. I swear it,” he said as he spread kisses over her full, soft breasts.

“I know.” She wrapped her body around him again, holding him as close as she could as the pain eased and the pleasure returned. “What next?”

“Is the pain gone?”

“Oh, aye, I just feel so deliciously full.”

Ashton groaned and began to move. He intended to go slowly, to be gentle, but the way she quickly caught and matched his rhythm, the soft sounds of pleasure she made, destroyed that gallant intention and need ruled him. When she gained her pleasure, her body rippling beneath and around his, he thrust deep inside her and let his own release take him beyond all rational thought.

Penelope was just shaking herself free of the bliss he had given her when Ashton climbed out of bed. She was so relieved when he did not immediately start to get dressed that she blushed only faintly when he fetched a wet rag and cleaned them both off. She pressed as close to him as she could when he climbed back into bed and pulled her into his arms.

“Penelope, I mean to get free of Clarissa and—” He sighed when she yet again pressed her hand over his mouth.

“No promises. No raising of hopes. What will be, will be. Let us just enjoy what we share,” she said.

“I am working to escape their trap, you know.”

“I know and I pray you succeed. For your own sake, if naught else. There are just too many complications for us to speak of a future now.”

He grimaced. “I know, which is why I should never have even kissed you.”

“Why not? I like your kisses.”

Ashton knew she was not as blasé as she attempted to sound, but he laughed and kissed her. She was right. There were too many knots to untie to speak of any future for them now. But as he began to make love to her again, he promised himself that he would get free of debt and of Clarissa. Then Penelope would not be allowed to hush him when he tried to speak of their future. He knew now that the only future he wanted had Penelope Wherlocke in it.

Chapter Ten

“When will ye and Radmoor marry?”

Penelope forced herself to continue calmly with her sewing, but inwardly cursed Artemis for his blunt question. Finishing the neat row of stitches on the little shirt she mended gave her a moment to try and plan out the best way to answer his question. She finally raised her eyes to gaze at him with what she hoped was an expression of gentle confusion.

Ashton had done his best to creep away unseen just before dawn but she had known it was a wasted effort. There were no secrets in a house filled with Wherlockes and Vaughns, even one where many of the occupants were too young to have a full knowledge or control over their gifts. She had almost told him so, wanting him to come back to her bed and hold her, but she held silent as he kissed her and slipped away.

All the boys over seven were gathered in front of her and not one of them looked as if they believed in her guise of innocence. She would try to divert them from the matter but she would not lie. That, too, would be useless and could easily hurt their feelings.

“And why should his lordship marry me?” she asked. “S’truth, I believe he is already spoken for.”

“And I think bedding the virginal daughter of a marquis ought to take precedence over all other promises made,” snapped Artemis.

“Artemis, I may be innocent but I am also a woman full grown; a spinster in some eyes.”

“That does not make his seducing you acceptable.”

“Not even if I wished to be seduced?” she asked, and sighed when Artemis and the other boys looked even angrier. She was disappointing them and that hurt.

“Your reputation,” Stefan began.

“I have none. No one save my family even knows me.” That stung but she ignored the old pain. “And if the world did learn about me, once they learned about this place, I would have no good name to protect anyway.”

“Because of us. Because we are all bastards.”

“That seems unfair,” muttered Olwen, his scowl causing him to look uncannily like his father, her uncle Argus.

“It is unfair but a lot of what society does is unfair,” she said. “If all were fair and as it should be, I might have met Radmoor at some ball or soiree, we would have flirted a little, danced, and perhaps he would have courted me, learned to care about me, and asked to marry me. But here we are. I have naught and he needs money to keep his family out of debtor’s prison. He may escape Clarissa’s clutches, but he will still need to marry an heiress.

“I love him. I know he desires and cares for me. This is not just some careless lusting. Should we deny ourselves because some cruel twist of fate makes it impossible for us to be together as man and wife? I truly believe that, if not for the need to save his family, he would marry me. He said as much.”
Or tried to
, she added honestly, but she would not tell the boys that she had silenced him each time. “I decided that was good enough.”

“Do you think fate will be kind and fill his purse so that he can marry you?” asked Artemis.

“Nay, so you need not sound so derisive.” She smiled a little, knowing it was a sad expression, when he blushed a little at her reprimand but still looked angry. “He makes me happy, and just for a little while, I want to be selfish and hold fast to that.”

After a heavy silence and a lot of exchanged looks laden with silent messages she did not quite comprehend the meaning of, Stefan sighed. “Then it would make you unhappy if Artemis challenged him for a duel to defend your honor.”

“Very unhappy.” She cursed her own stupidity for not foreseeing such a consequence.

“I do not like this,” said Artemis. “It is not right of him to take advantage of how you feel about him.”

“He does not know,” Penelope said, the hard note in her voice telling them that she did not want him told, either. “He calls it madness, and enchantment, and fears he is behaving as badly as his father, who was a faithless scoundrel and left his family in dire straits. I know my own heart and that is enough. S’truth, at this time I believe it would be cruel to try and make him fall in love with me.

“And who can say? Mayhap fate
will
be kind and give him what he needs so that he is free to choose me if he wishes to. Then I shall certainly do my best to make him see that what we share is far, far more than a passing madness.”

“And what shall you do if he does marry another?”

“I will endure the pain and cure myself of this madness. I will
not
continue to be his lover. He would not ask it of me, either, as he is truly an honorable man. Right now he does not feel bound because he never asked Clarissa; she and Charles tricked him into that betrothal. If he says vows to a woman, however, he will keep them.”

She could tell that they were still unhappy with the situation, but her word that she would not become some married man’s mistress, no matter how much she loved that man, appeared to have taken the edge off their anger. Penelope could understand their worries and their anger. Every one of them was the result of some affair, shunned by many as if that were somehow their fault. They did not want her to entangle herself in the sort of thing that had tainted their lives. She loved them all, and appreciated their concern and their outrage on her behalf, but she could not let them dictate how she lived.

A movement in the shadows at the far corner of the room caught Penelope’s attention. She squinted and soon made out the spectral shape of a too plump woman of middle years. When she saw that Conrad was also squinting into the shadows, she sighed. Conrad shared her gift. It was enough to confirm what she was seeing.

“Our neighbor Mrs. Pettibone has died,” she said as she put aside her sewing basket and moved toward the ghost.

Alone. I am alone
.

“Not for long, Mrs. Pettibone,” Penelope said. “If you would just let go of this corporal world, you would move on to a better place and join the loved ones who passed before you.”

Alone. I am all alone
.

Penelope frowned. It was not unusual for one who had recently died to be terribly confused, but she had the distinct impression that the woman was speaking of far more than just discovering that her spirit was now separated from her body. “Artemis, I think Mrs. Pettibone has died unattended. I thought she had three daughters.”

“Her daughters are in the country,” he said. “They will not be back for a week, mayhap longer. I am not sure.”

“Well, you are a clever fellow. Think of something to tell the watch so that he will feel compelled to go into the Pettibone House. The last thing her poor girls need is to come home to find their mother a week dead. If you know, or can discover, exactly where her girls have gone, I will send them word to come home now.”