Pleasuring the Lady (The Pleasure Wars) (25 page)

He sighed. “No one ever did. His lordship was very good about keeping his strikes where no one would see. Or if we did end up bruised in obvious places, we were sequestered away from the world until we had healed. Once I was locked in my room for eight weeks while my arm healed after he broke it.”

She sucked in her breath and couldn’t hide the horror and pity on her face. “You must have despised him with every fiber of your being.”

He nodded. “I was seventeen when he died, and despite the fact that she was but fifteen, my sister and I celebrated by getting rip-roaring drunk on that bastard’s best scotch and burning every portrait of him that hung in the country estate. Not one servant intervened to prevent it.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Portia’s face. “That must have been incredibly satisfying. I had never thought of doing such a thing with my own father’s portraits, though our relationship was not quite as damaged.”

“It was satisfying in a way, but it didn’t erase the torment. My sister especially suffered. Even after he was gone, she sometimes woke crying, unable to be consoled. And when she came out, I think she sabotaged quite a few potential matches. I’ve learned recently that her happy relationship with Richard was also one she resisted thanks to our father’s legacy of violence. Thankfully, the man is persistent and she has the happiness she deserves now.”

Portia nodded. “They do seem very well matched and vastly content together.”

For a moment, there was silence and Miles could only hope they were finished with this subject. But then she tilted her head.

“What about you, Miles? Do
you
have the happiness you deserve?”

He shook his head. “Of course. I have my freedom, I have money, I do as I please without answering to anyone.”

She didn’t seem particularly impressed. “Independence isn’t the same thing, I don’t think, as happiness.”

Miles shook his head. “You sound like my sister now. She forever tries to convince me that there is benefit to answering to
someone
.”

Portia thought about that a moment. “I think I tend to agree with Tennille.”

He laughed. “I would think you, of all people, would relish the idea of independence after everything you’d been through.”

“Not being forced to beg for my every need is certainly quite refreshing, do not mistake my meaning,” she agreed. “But, Miles, don’t you want someone to care enough about you to have an opinion about what you do? A true friend, someone who sincerely loves you, will risk your wrath to give you their real opinion, even if it varies from your own and you do not ask for it?”

“I would prefer to be trusted to make my own mistakes,” he said, voice unexpectedly tight as he tried to ignore the truth to her words. He needed no one. She couldn’t seduce him into believing otherwise.

“All right, so you make your own choices. But once you have made them, I would think having someone by your side would be better.” She shrugged. “But I have not experienced your past, I do not judge you for what you think is best. And what do I know of what lords desire, anyway?”

He examined her face closely. There was such a softness to her features, such a welcoming expression that he was warmed to his core even if he claimed not to want to feel such a thing. Telling her these deepest secrets should not have given him such relief, and yet it
was
a relief to whisper these darkest moments of his life. To admit he wished his father dead and did not mourn him.
 

And didn’t that prove her argument against complete independence?

He pushed the thought aside.

“If you think you do not know what this lord desires, you are a fool,” he said, touching her cheek with the back of his hand. She leaned into it with a smile. “I desire
you
at present and we are about to arrive at our home, where I shall take you upstairs and prove that to you once and for all.”

She smiled, though for a moment a tightness remained around her lips. But she covered it and nodded.
 

“I cannot wait.”

As the carriage slowed, he took her hand, warmed by her soft skin, warmed further by her acceptance and ability to understand him. Only those emotional connections were ones he had denied for a long time. They were ones he would continue to deny no matter what she did.

He had to.

Portia sighed as she looked at herself in the mirror one last time. Bridget had helped her change into a gorgeous new nightgown that had only arrived for her that very afternoon. After arranging her hair in long, flowing curls down her back, the maid had left her.
 

The mirror had never been a friend. She had too often seen her flaws there rather than her strengths, but Miles kept insisting she was beautiful, and in the flickering candlelight, she saw flashes of something she could be pleased with.

And things that still made her blush, even after dozens of times in Miles’ bed. The gown was made of a nearly sheer black fabric that draped across her curves and left little to the imagination. Lace covered her breasts, but the dark pink of her nipples wasn’t hidden by the small scraps.

She shivered, turned away from the mirror and moved through the sitting room that connected their two chambers. At Miles’ door, she hesitated. He was waiting for her through that door. And they would make love all night.

Only it would be different now. Not only did she know secrets of his past she doubted he had shared with anyone, but she had admitted to herself that she loved him, despite the folly of that feeling.

Everything had changed. Nothing would ever be the same.

With a deep breath, she opened the door and entered, but she hadn’t gone three steps when she skidded to a halt. Miles was already on the bed, naked, his cock half-ready as he waited for her.

She could hardly breathe as she stared at him, perfection embodied in his rippling hard body and confident smile as he looked her up and down.
 

“I was pondering breaking down your door to find out why you were taking so long, but this was definitely worth the wait,” he murmured.

Her eyebrows lifted. “You would break down an unlocked door?”

He laughed. “To get to you in that scandalous nightgown…most definitely.” He crooked a finger. “Come here.”

She was frozen in place for a moment as desire, anticipation and a swell of powerful love rushed through her. This man was hers, perhaps not forever, but for now. And he wanted her, needed her, possessed her in ways that had changed her forever.

He chuckled. “Do I need to come collect you?”

She shook her head. “Perhaps next time. At this moment, I need no encouragement to join you.”

She moved toward him, trying to remain calm as he kept his gaze glued to her. She slid onto the bed next to him and cupped his cheeks, dropping her mouth to his for a long, deep kiss.

When they parted, he chuckled as he placed his hands behind his head. “The lady takes charge, I very much like that.”

“Do you?” she whispered, dragging her hand down his throat to caress his chest with the tips of her nails. “Then I shall have to do more of it.”

“Do that,” he growled, watching as she let her hand slide down the taut muscles of his stomach. She peeked down his body. Her touch had brought him to full hardness, and she shivered as she wrapped her hand around his length and stroked him once, twice.

“I want to take you in my mouth again,” she whispered.

His smile broadened. “I would like that. But I want to do the same to you. Would you allow me to help us both have what we desire?”

“Both?” she repeated, her forehead wrinkling. “How could we pleasure each other simultaneously?”

He chuckled and slid down so he was lying flat on the bed. “Face downward,” he ordered her
 

She turned, her face close to his hard cock.

“Now straddle my chest.” His voice was strained with desire and he moaned as she followed his directions. He pushed at her long gown, flipping it up around her backside so that her bare pussy was revealed. Then he caught her hips and dragged her back.

She gasped. She was practically astride his face and he could just…

She broke off the thought as he smoothed a hand over her sex and parted her to allow his tongue access to the weeping slit beneath. He stroked over her, sucking the tender flesh.

She caught his cock in her hand again and swirled her tongue around the head even as she marveled at his skills with his mouth.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus simultaneously on the way his mouth moved on her, in her, and the hard thrust of his pleasure that was there for her ministrations. Gently, she wrapped her lips around him and took him as deeply as she could into her throat.

He jolted beneath her, his mouth ceasing for a brief moment as he grunted. Power surged in her, merging with pleasure until it was all a spinning, intoxicating mix. She increased the speed of her mouth as she took him inside, and all the while he lashed her sex with his tongue, tasting her, forcing her driving pleasure, her hips grinding against him as he took her to the edge of release.

But just as she reached the pinnacle, just as she lost all control, he pulled away. She hardly had time to register a reaction before he flipped her onto her back, his hands beneath her hips to lift them as he speared her with the same cock she had just had in her mouth.

She jolted as her orgasm rocked her. He thrust slowly, grinding his hips, keeping his gaze locked on hers as he claimed her, took her, drew out her pleasure until it bordered on pain. She was lost in the desire, lost in him. She clenched her legs hard around his hips and reached up, cupping the back of his neck to draw him down. When they kissed, she tasted her own earthy essence on his lips and she moaned with the decadence of that flavor and the act that had caused it.

As her body jolted with increased pleasure again, he clutched her closer, groaning into her mouth as he spent within her and collapsed into her embrace. She wrapped her arms around him, smoothing her hands over the muscles of his back as they panted together.

Finally, he eased up to look down at her, his gaze unreadable in the dying firelight. He was speechless for a long moment, then pushed her now-tangled hair away from her face.

“I wish—” he began.

She tilted her head in surprise at the truncated words.

“Wish?” she repeated on the barest of whispers.

He hesitated again, then shook his head before he pressed his lips to hers and began the slow process of stoking the flames of desire anew.

Chapter Nineteen

Miles paced his bedroom, unable to sleep despite the fact that he and Portia had spent a passionate night exploring each other. He turned and looked at her, sprawled naked across his bed, a tiny smile on her lips as she slept. Immediately, his body reacted as it always did, twitching to life and making very clear its demands to be inside of her.

But something else reacted too. Emotions swelled within him. The same ones that had nearly had him making confessions of caring for her, wanting their union to be real, wishing he had noticed her years before and surrendered to the strange, intoxicating web she now spun around him.

Statements which he could never say to her. Not only did he refuse to feel such weak emotions, but they would be desperately unfair to her. If she put too much faith in a true future, he would hurt her. And he didn’t want to hurt her.

This was his cock talking. He was enraptured by her innocent passions, by her trusting surrender, that was all. He needed a way to distance himself. To give her pleasure without muddying the waters of their marriage.

And there was one way to do it. One way to manipulate her arousal at watching erotic acts, at being watched while performing them. It would take her to the edge, it would push her over, but in the end it would be better for them both.

He nodded at himself in the reflection of the mirror above the small washbasin across from his bed, but the expression on his face was anything but pleased now that he knew what he had to do. He turned away and returned to the bed to curl his body around hers.
 

Tomorrow he would do what he had to do. Tonight he would pretend it wasn’t the only way.

Portia smiled at her mother, who was chatting happily about a rare trip out to the park around the corner, but her attention was continually brought back to Miles. Although he had been passionate and tender with her last night, today had found him cold, distant and obviously avoiding her.

Was his hunger for her sated at last?

She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat and forced herself to remain unfazed by the possibility.

“I’m so glad you are comfortable enough to go out, Mama. And that the cold didn’t stop you from enjoying the afternoon,” she said.

Miles cleared his throat. “Indeed. Perhaps next time Portia could join you.”

Thomasina lit up at once. “Oh yes, I would love that. And perhaps you could come with us as well, Miles.”

Portia watched him, saw a shadow pass over his countenance, saw him struggle to answer. Then he shrugged.