Reckless Viscount (26 page)

He could see the amazement then the startled dawning of understanding in her perceptive gaze. And ultimately the deep-red blush of shock and an awareness that couldn’t be taken back.

I’m a bleeding idiot!

Any man who knew his arse from a hole in the ground knew not to bring his innocent bride to a room where he had spent years entertaining paramours of all varieties. He imagined he could hear an echo of pleasured gasps and sighs and smell the pungent musk of sex.

He opened his mouth to say something and nearly choked on the air he involuntarily sucked into his lungs.

What could he say?

After an unknown number of long, excruciating minutes, she settled her crystalline gaze on him. Proud and direct in spite of her obvious distress.

“Is this where you sleep?” she asked in a tone that triggered a subtle twitch in his right eye.

“No,” he replied, his jaw tense.

She swept another glance about the room.

Leif stood stiff and unmoving, resisting the urge to shift his weight from one foot to the other. He felt like a school boy caught diddling himself in the water closet.

She kept her gaze averted. “Is there another room?”

Forcing himself into action, Leif crossed the room to her and reached for the door, opening it wide.

Silently, she preceded him into the hallway. He suffered a quick internal debate regarding whether he should start checking each of the other bedrooms to see if any of them were inhabitable or simply take her to the only other room that had been in use since he purchased the house ten years ago. He decided he couldn’t do worse than he had already tonight and he led her to his Spartan bedroom near the servant’s stairs at the end of the hall.

He pushed open the door, and with a bow of his head, he gave a grandiose and self-mocking sweep of his hand, gesturing for her to enter.

She passed by him without looking up as she crossed the threshold.

Stepping in behind her, he leaned back against the wall next to the open door and crossed his arms over his chest. There was no point in closing the door when he expected they would be back on their way out in another minute.

The night was on a surefire track to disaster.

He could have planned this so much better, he silently chastised himself. Where was the great seducer now?

She perused the room much as she had the previous one. Only this time, he could not see her face. He didn’t have to follow her gaze to know what she saw. A room of bare necessity illuminated only by the glowing embers of a fire Mrs. Hempstead must have lit and left to burn down.

He kept his gaze narrowed and eyed the slim curve of her spine and hips with covetous yearning. He desperately wanted to strip the layers of clothing off her body and feel every line and dip and bend with the bare surface of his palm. He wanted to kiss every shadowed crevice and taste the musk of her pleasure.

His cock stiffened painfully in response to his thoughts and he shifted his stance against the wall.

She turned then to look at him.

For once, he couldn’t read the expression on her face.

He tried to appear calm, unaffected, indifferent. But every muscle in his body was fully taut and his chest was so tight that breathing caused a perceptible ache.

“That other room,” she began softly, then paused to trace her tongue over her lips. “Is that where you bring your women?”

He wished he could tell what she was thinking in the tone of her voice, but she gave nothing away.

“I have a past. I won’t deny it.”

She lifted her chin a subtle notch higher. “I know. Lady Blackbourne told me that you pleasured women for money.”

Leif clenched his teeth then forced his jaw to loosen. He would strangle Anna when he saw her.

“I only took what was willingly offered.”

“You used them,” she accused blandly.

“The using was mutual,” he growled.

“Did you love them?”

Leif swallowed the defensive urge to scoff at the naïve question. Instead, he took a deep breath and answered as honestly as he could.

“Love is just a word men and women toss about when they are trying to get something from each other.”

“That is a very jaded perspective.”

“Based on experience, sweetheart.”

She didn’t reply and the tension in his body was becoming unbearable. He still wanted her with an unbelievable urgency that began to feel more and more doomed as the silent seconds ticked by.

He had never felt so deeply entangled in a woman’s reaction. There was an odd hint of desperation hovering in the muted light of the room. He feared the desperation came from himself and that suspicion created a feeling in his bones that was both disturbing and incredibly arousing.

He prepared himself for her rejection.

It was fine. He would find her another room, then he would go find himself a very deep barrel of whisky to drown in. They would have to talk about their situation in the morning. They were still married. He may have lost her, but he still needed her fortune. He couldn’t afford to lose that.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Watching her, waiting for the disgust, the anger, the dismissal, Leif caught the exact moment when her features shifted.

Her graceful brows arched gently and her thick lashes swept down against her cheeks then lifted again to reveal the bright glow in her eyes, shining like pin-points of crystal fire in the shadowed room. Her lips were parted and the soft swells of her breasts lifted and fell with each breath.

She walked toward him. Slowly. Deliberately. Her gaze was trained down and to the side as if to avoid meeting his eyes directly.

“Did you…?” she began then stopped and licked her lips, took a deep breath and began again. “When you took your women to that room, what did you do to them?”

Something akin to the pain of suffocation swelled in his chest. “You know the answer,” he answered darkly.

She stood directly in front of him, her breasts mere centimeters from his crossed arms, her forehead inches from his mouth. Her scent surrounded him. Rain-soaked wildflowers.

“I mean, specifically.” She met his eyes then and a shot of need went through his chest. He clenched his hands into fists to keep from grasping hold of her and pulling her hard against him.

“Did you kiss them?”

His throat tightened and he didn’t understand her questioning, but he had promised her honesty. “I did.”

“Like this?” Her voice was barely over a whisper, but he heard the words like a roar of thunder in his ears. She lifted her hands to brace them against his forearms and rose onto her tip-toes. Everything was in slow motion as she tilted her face and pressed her lips to his mouth.

The contact was brief and not nearly deep enough, but she pulled back to see his expression and waited.

“Not quite.” His reply was rough and gravely.

She leaned toward him again. This time, once her mouth covered his, her tongue swept like silk against his lips.

Unexpected bolts of pleasure shot through his gut to his groin.

Her tongue explored and lingered in his mouth. Teasing and coaxing by turn. Sparking a fire that burned him from the inside out.

Then she pulled away again. Her warm breath fanned against his moistened lips. Her eyes glittered with otherworld magic.

Never had a kiss so perfectly primed him for sex. He was ready to push her to the floor and drive into her body for the next century. Instead, he eyed her suspiciously.

Was this the end of it? Had she meant only to inflame him then leave him cold? It was a common female trick. One that had never worked on him before. However, if it was this woman’s intention to torture him in that way, he feared the rigid control he held over himself would crack and dissolve and he would crumble at her feet.

“Then what?”

Her soft words stirred the flames through his veins. When he didn’t answer her, she shifted her focus to her hands, moving them back and forth over his arms then up over his strained biceps to his shoulders. She glanced at him through the fan of her lashes.

“Did you undress them?”

Leif was beyond speech. At her gentle urging, he pushed himself away from the wall until he stood stiff and painfully erect as her pale, delicate hands moved to the knot of his cravat. She untied the cloth with swift dexterity then began releasing the buttons of his shirt. He was forced to move then as she urged his crossed arms to relax at his sides so she could finish opening his shirt down to the waistband of his breeches. Next, she ran her hands back up the surface of his abdomen, then his chest. Her touch was warm and confident and determined. She pushed his coat off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor behind him. Then she released the buttons at his wrists and grasped handfuls of his shirt above his waist to pull the material from his breeches. That too was pushed off his shoulders and down his arms to the floor.

She stopped then, her hands hovering over his chest. Her gaze caressing his bare flesh.

“Did you touch them?” Her voice had become low and sultry with her growing desire. The Irish brogue richening her words like honey.

No longer waiting for him to answer, she laid her palms flat against his pectorals. She held them there for just a moment, then she began to explore all the surfaces of his chest, shoulders, arms, even the corded length of his throat. Her fingertips danced and soothed, her palms warmed and kneaded.

He remained unmoving under her ministrations, terrified she would stop, startled by the intensity of his reaction to her gentle exploration. Such innocent caresses had no right to be so damned erotic. He knew that intellectually, but when her hands finally drifted over the muscles of his abdomen, there was no hiding how heavily his cock pulsed against the front of his breeches.

He risked lowering his eyes and saw the first sign of her uncertainty when her hands trembled ever so slightly near the waist of his breeches. He clenched his hands into fists so tight that if he had been holding lumps of coal, he would have turned them into diamonds.

Instead of loosening his breeches, she rested her hands on either side of his hips and brought herself forward until she melted into him. He felt every soft inch of her from her thighs to her breasts. Her breath spread across his collarbone.

“Did you kiss their naked skin?” she asked as she leaned forward and pressed her lips and then her tongue to a scar just below his shoulder.

It was all he could bear.

“No more,” he growled more harshly than he intended.

Ignoring him, she leaned into him with all of her weight, pushing her belly against his erection, wrapping her arms around his waist. Her innocent eyes, full of heat, met his willfully.

“I want to make love to you. I want you to feel what I have felt in your arms.”

Her whispered declaration hit him like a sensual cannonball. Claiming his breath, his strength, his ability to think.

“Then no more of the past. Only us. Only now.” Her eyes sparked with the light of raw desire as she settled her gaze on his lips.

But he wasn’t ready to kiss her yet. He wanted something else first.

He took her hand and flattened her palm against the tense surface of his stomach. Studying her face carefully, Leif leaned his shoulders back against the wall behind him and pressed his hands against the hard surface. Partly to brace himself as his legs had become unnaturally weak and partly to keep himself from grabbing her and pulling her into him. His thigh muscles burned and his shoulders braced hard against the wall in his effort to hold himself steady.

“Release me,” he demanded in a whisper.

Her eyelashes flickered and her hand trembled, but she didn’t hesitate to slide her fingers beneath the edge of his breeches until she found the fastenings. She loosened them quickly and then her hands were sliding along his hips, inside the edge of the breeches, easing them down.

He closed his eyes, the sight of her touching him was nearly too much to bear. The soothing balm of night air cooled him as he was finally freed from the confining breeches. It was followed by a warm and tentative touch that started at the base and traveled slowly along his cock to the very sensitive tip. His hard flesh jerked in reaction to the gentle stimulus, bumping against his stomach, pulsing with a delicious ache.

Her touch teased him. She offered him sips of pleasure with fingertips that danced over his length. Pleasure compounded with every second, making him harder and hotter than he had ever been before. He wanted the exquisite torture to go on forever, but after a few moments of her delicate fingers passing as light as butterflies back and forth over his strained tip, he couldn’t hold back.

Reaching for her hand, he wrapped her fingers fully around him. Her quiet gasp of surprise turned to a soft purr in her throat. With his hand guiding hers, he showed her how to stroke him fully from root to tip, then back down again, teaching her the right pressure and speed. Once he knew she had it, his hand dropped back to his side and he allowed himself to dive into the unholy sensations she invoked.

But he had underestimated the power of his reaction and how quickly he would approach a point of no return. The slide of her palm against his heated flesh, the sound of her breath passing quickly between her parted lips and the scent of her skin, so close but not close enough, was too much.