Lady Varney's Risqué Business (9 page)

He took her mouth with ravenous delight, trailing kisses across her cheek and down her throat to her bodice. His hands molded her to him and suddenly, she felt his fingers lift her skirts and slide to her pussy. Caress her seam. “Darling, I am so delighted you wear none of those ridiculous pantaloons. You are so plump and wet for me,” he murmured, and what words came next became a serenade of all the endearments he had declared in his cottage and all that still lived in her heart.

He undid his flies, and plunged up inside her. Against the cupboard, she braced herself and gave over to the rapture of his possession.

He was warm and turgid and—

Something shattered.

Tinkled all around them.

“Don’t move,” he warned as he held her tightly.

“
What?”
she asked soundlessly, her cunt so full of him, her breasts so needy of his kisses she thought she’d scream.

Blinking repeatedly to clear his vision and his head, he glanced about them. “Dear God, sweetheart, we’ve broken the family crystal.”

She surveyed the tiny room and the astonishing wreckage. “Justin. Oh, hell! We’re in the butler’s pantry!”

“So—we—are,” he murmured, fucking her so decidedly with each gruff word. “I’ll fix it.” He spread her thighs wider. “Christ, you are so hot for me, my darling woman. How can you deny this between us?” he whispered as he gave her the repeated thrill of his cock, the friction a wild torment that had her moaning.

“I’ll scream with this,” she told him in a rush. “You do this too damn well.”

He chuckled as he pumped her. “Don’t dare scream, Puss. Just feel.”

And oh, did she.
His cock was thick, hard, forceful and so talented that she hung on him, her cunt pulsing, milking him dry.

They hung there, her head to his shoulder, his arms tight around her.

“I must go first,” she whispered as he made to withdraw and she groaned at his loss.

He reassembled her dress, his flies, then lifted her chin and gave her a sweet peck. “I adore you, Lady Varney. Now leave me to pick up the pieces.”

Would that he could also pick up the pieces of her heart, so broken that she could not have him all the time, any time, for the rest of her life.

* * * *

Sunday morning at eleven, Kitty kneaded her hands in her lap, gazing at the man seated across her friends’ dining room at another table. It had been four days since their last meeting—their last assignation—and she swore she could feel Justin’s formidable body.
Still inside me.

This bright morning, Justin Belmont was attired for the occasion in morning coat and top hat. Looking splendid, Justin had arrived early to the wedding of his friend, Bruce Claymont, to Kitty’s friend, Lucy Darlington. Throughout the ceremony in the tiny chapel in the square, Kitty had felt Justin’s eyes upon her. And true to expectation, each time her gaze sought him, he examined her, head to toe.

Now with the wedding breakfast well underway at Lucy’s parents’ townhouse, Justin made his way toward her. “Where is Maggie today? Has she left you to me alone?”

She told me as much last night.
Kitty set her teeth. “She is not feeling well.”

“A headache?”

“Nausea.”

“Ah. It’s what comes of love matches.”

Kitty glanced toward her friend Lucy, and the smile wreathing her face made Kitty understand the full meaning of the word envy. “You’ve seen the scandal sheets? How someone found my fan in the pantry?”

He nodded, looking horrid. “The gossip
du jour
.”

She clutched her stomach. “Do not make light of this.”

“Sorry, darling. I should have seen it there before I left, but I was in such a rush, I didn’t.”

She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry, too. I should have had my wits about me. But I—”

“I was the same.” His gaze was consoling and incredibly sympathetic. “Undone. Wanting you.”

She inhaled, sat back. He was so kind, so sweet, so unlike Henry. “Tell me what happened after I left the pantry.”

“I cleaned up the glass. Found a kitchen maid who hailed the butler. Then I apologized and offered to purchase new glassware.”

“But how did you explain why we—you were there?”

Justin shrugged. “I lost my way in the house.”

“He believed you?”

“I thought so.”

They stared at each other for a long moment in which she expressed more gratitude with her eyes than with her words. “As soon as someone connects the broken glassware to my fan, we will be done for.”

“Not if you marry me, we won’t.”

“Do not begin that again,” she warned beneath her breath.

“I must.”

“
Why
?” she asked him, stood and said, “I must find the ladies’ retiring room. Excuse me.”

She made her way out of the dining room, but Justin was hard on her heels.

In the hall, she spun on him and stamped her foot. “Following me is so obvious. Go away.”

“No. You must listen to me. About the roses.”

She put her hands to her ears and strode down the hall.

In two steps, he pulled her from her chosen path and swung her into the family library. Pressing her against a stack of books, he braced his hands on either side of her head.

Blocked, she fumed and fussed, then said, “Very well. Tell me about the roses.”

“They have sprung their first blooms now. Rich reds and creamy whites. They have grown, changed. They need more space to mature. Some must be transplanted soon.”

His declaration melted a cold, hard part of her deep inside. “They must be lovely.”

“They won’t be for long.” He caught a teardrop from her cheekbone.

“No?”

“They need someone to tend them properly.”

“You have a gardener.”

“I have no wife. And I need one, my darling. I need you.” He wrapped his hand around her nape and sank his fingers against her scalp. His lips brushed hers.

“I’m not a good bet, you know I’m not.”
And there is your uncle’s demand for a rich heiress.

“You married an old man and endured him. Marry a young man and enjoy him.” He kissed her then, his tongue darting inside to tantalize her with the promise of a different life.

“I want you. I do,” she told him. “But I cannot take the chance.”

“That I’d berate you? Badger you? Insult you? That’s what he did, isn’t it?”

Daily. Hourly.

Justin kissed her again, sweetly, desperately, lovingly. “Am I like him?”

“No. Never.” She put her palm to his flies, and beneath the superfine wool, she felt one piece of hard evidence that he resembled Henry Varney in no way.

He crushed her hand to his cock. “I mean to have you.”

She fought to undo his buttons. “Do it then.”

He glanced around the dim wood lined walls. “Here.”

Following his line of sight, she saw the map table. “You wouldn’t.”

“I will,” he told her and tugged her to the center of the room where a large table held maps. He lifted her and put her on it, her knees bent over the edge. “Let me raise your skirt, madam. I need to kiss your pretty pussy.”

Someone gasped.

Kitty halted. Her gaze met Justin’s.

Something plunked to the floor.
A book? A shoe?

She gulped.

He seized her hand. As he pulled open the door, he whispered, “
Wait.
Have you left anything?”

* * * *

One ostrich feather.

Kitty let her eyes drift shut at the ribald memory of what she and Justin had done and said in that library. And what she had left there.

Oh, blast it all! The damned feather from her hat had become the subject that tickled everyone in the broad sheets for more than a week. “How many ladies wore ostrich feathers to the wedding breakfast of Lord and Lady C last Saturday?” asked one tabloid until they had a tally of three. Three women.

“One of which is me,” Kitty fretted as she sat with her sister at Lady Anna Grey’s garden party eight days later. “Now they attempt to find the owner of the fan in the Martindales’ pantry and match them!”

Adjusting her broad brimmed straw against the sun, Maggie fought hard to suppress a smile. “They’re just selling papers, Puss.”

Kitty scowled. “They should focus on discovering who the other person was in the Darlingtons’ library!”

“An
assignation
!” Maggie put a hand to her heart in feigned horror. “
Imagine
!”

“Oh, you are no help!” Kitty couldn’t stop herself from laughing.

“Just don’t go off with him here.”

Kitty froze. “He’s here?”

Maggie giggled. “Just so. Don’t look now, but he’s talking with Susanna Curtis.”

Susanna? Kitty could not resist turning to see how the two of them got on.
My God.
Susanna had not yet decided if she would accept Justin’s invitation to his cottage in Kent. His invitation to seduction.
Though why go to Kent, when he seemed to be doing a marvelous job of it right here?
Kitty wiggled in her chair while Susanna batted her long pale lashes at him, amused. Enthralled. And Justin grinned like a man enchanted.

“
Oh
,” she seethed, jealousy coursing through her veins like lava. “How
could
he?”

“Mmm. She is lovely.”

“Whose side are you on, Maggie?”

Her sister stared at her in utter exasperation. “My dearest sis, make up your mind. Do you want the man or not? Is he the man of your dreams? Rich, titled, kind, generous. Or is he simply a man whose gender alone you condemn because you’ve not the courage to see he is so different from Henry?”

Kitty considered her younger sister’s words for a long minute. “When did you grow so mature?”

“When you helped me learn to be a woman who used my head.”

“
Touché.
”

Kitty turned to admire dashing Lord Belmont. So changed from the privateer who captured her and saved her more than a decade ago. So very much the same man. Was she being feather brained not to admit she loved him? Wished she could marry him?

“There is the matter of money,” she said to Maggie. “His uncle demands it.”

“I don’t know, Puss, but I would say there must be a way to get round that. You said you have nearly paid off Henry’s debts with the fees you earned from Justin.”