Seven Wicked Nights (44 page)

For a suspended moment, he was immersed in the simple pleasure of having his cock in a woman, but around the edges of that was this flicker of more. They weren’t too young this time. This time they were old enough to know there was nothing new in the world and that they did not invent passion, they created it between them, and it was that which was new and rare. He hissed as her body closed and softened around his cock. Nothing existed for him but her and his cock and the feral bliss of their connection.

“Crispin.” She grabbed his shoulders, and angled her hips. Her breath stuttered. “My God, Crispin.” Her head dropped back and, Lord, she softened around him just enough, and now he thrust the way he wanted, needed to. He leaned in to kiss her exposed throat. So tight around him, she gripped his cock, all of it, and with a shout that was part demand and part plea, he rolled her onto her back and let the imperative of sex take him.

She pushed her hips toward him and drew up her knees, and he shoved her skirts up higher, out of his way. That flicker of
more
stayed with him, and he closed his eyes to deny what that meant. Instead, he found the angles that made her groan with pleasure and the ones that sent him racing to orgasm.

Her body tensed, and he concentrated on bringing her again, the two of them partially on their sides, his hand between them, his mouth at the side of her throat, hard enough to leave a mark, kissing her until she cried out, and he felt the contractions of her passage around him. He remembered everything that had made her moan before, but he was caught up in their desperation, urged on by the sounds she was making, by the roll of her hips against his, the grip of her arms around him.

He planted his hands by her head and pushed up so he could watch her face and leverage the weight of his pelvis with his thrusts into her. More selfish this time, but then she wrapped her legs around his hips and rocked into him, and he didn’t feel selfish at all.

His balls tightened, and he thrust into her harder. Hard enough, hard enough. So close and then he was tumbling, soaring toward exquisite pleasure and then falling into it, and he had just enough presence of mind not to come inside her. Barely.

When he returned to his senses, he opened his eyes, but he was still in a sensual stupor and had few thoughts but those that centered around his physical repletion. He drank in her face and the warmth where their bodies still touched. Pelvis to pelvis, her thighs at his hips, his softening member between them.

The rain had stopped while they’d been lost in each other. She wound her arms around his shoulders, and then his head, and pulled him down for a searing kiss. Afterward, when he’d pushed up to get his weight off her, the fierce sadness in her eyes made his heart swell again.

Her fingers brushed his cheek, pushed away the damp. “We ought to go, my lord.”

He loved the sound of that honorific, the way the words left her lips soft and intimate and offered him her submission and her possession of him. He needed a few more breaths before he trusted himself to speak, and then she did first.

“Before you catch your death.” Her hand lingered at his cheek, and he turned his head to kiss her fingers. She snatched her hand away. “That tickles.”

“I don’t want to go.” He nestled against her. “I’m perfectly warm.” He drew her nearer and breathed in the scent of her body, of sex and the damp heat of them both. “I can think of ways for us to stay warm.”

“Oh, we’ll just live here, then. In the stable.”

“It’s my stable. We can do what we like here.” She didn’t know, he thought. She didn’t know what this meant to him, how shocking it was to feel he was home after ten years at sea with nights spent dreaming of stripping her naked and burying himself inside her.

She gave him a push, but she was already retreating from him, and he didn’t know how to bring her back. “Obstinate as ever, aren’t you?”

“I haven’t changed.”

She looked away. “That’s not so.”

He dipped his head to her ear, nipped her there and said, “Except, I think my prick is bigger, don’t you?”

That made her laugh, and then him, and that was just like them, to be bawdy and find it amusing, as if they were the only lovers ever to speak crudely to each other. She turned her head to his chest, shoulders still shaking. Well. It was a fine joke, wasn’t it? He kissed her again and realized it wouldn’t take much for him to be ready again.

She pushed at his shoulders. “We should go. It’s late.”

With a sigh, he pushed away and fumbled to get himself decently back into his breeches. When he’d done that, he helped her arrange her clothes, too, or would have except that she lay on the blanket with her hair beginning to dry and glint with indisputable red, and her pale legs exposed and her lower belly, too. He thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful than her sex. A bit of the old guilt nipped at him, and he embraced that, too. Fucking his friend’s sister was wrong, but he couldn’t bring himself to care at this moment. Not then and not now.

He set his palm on her thigh, and then on the inside of her thigh. He’d scraped her there during their frantic coupling. When he thought to look at her face, he found her watching him with eyes that killed him. He slid his fingers upward, covered her sex, and, still watching her face, slid a finger inside her, one then two. “I’m no green boy, now,” he said. She was getting slicker, and his two fingers moved in her easily. “If we didn’t need to get home, I’d prove that beyond your ability to speak.”

She pressed her head back because he’d pushed his thumb between her folds and along the flesh there. Her breath caught but she managed to say, “You could try.”

“Anything for you, my love. Anything.”

“What’s this?” She put a hand on his breeches. “Are you rising to the occasion, sir?”

“I think I am.”

And she gave him a wicked smile that melted him inside, and made him forget about Magnus and the fact that she was going to be married, and he didn’t stop her from unbuttoning the fall of his breeches nor say a word when she took him in hand and drew back his foreskin. “You once liked me very well on my knees.”

“Yes.” He sat up, then stood and stared into her eyes and understood that this was to be their very last time. “Please.”

He buried his fingers in her hair when she took him in her mouth, and he let her bring him that way and all the while he told himself that if she could walk away from this, then by God, so could he.

Afterward, they tidied up as best they could, at last feeling the cold and damp, and they headed for the Grange. The sky hadn’t cleared, though it wasn’t raining, and the ground was thoroughly soaked. Dozens of tiny puddles lurked in the thick grass and made the footing uncertain. At the stone fence, he lifted her over again and did not put her down as quickly as he should have. He leaned in and kissed her, hard and fast before he released her.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t do this.”

Since she knew the way, he followed her through the fields. The path was muddier than when he’d tromped through here heading the other way, and the clouds were getting that heavy look while the air turned colder and thicker. They gave up trying to keep themselves out of the muck and just trudged through the field.

He kept a hand around her waist because that was what a gentleman did when he was escorting a lady across treacherous terrain. Before he was quite prepared to return to reality, they were at the Grange. Fat drops of water hit them as they dashed for the front of the house, running now and laughing for no reason other than it seemed right. The very moment they reached the path to the door, the rain became another torrent.

At the door, Portia turned, face to the sky and thrust a fist into the air. “Curse you, god of rain, curse you!”

He fumbled with the door, and when he got the thing open he grabbed Portia’s other hand and pulled her inside, they were still laughing.

Until he turned around and saw Mrs. Temple standing in the foyer, a look of utter betrayal on her face.

Chapter Six

W
ITH FINGERS CLUMSY FROM
the cold, Portia worked at the buttons of Crispin’s greatcoat, so heavy on her shoulders. She didn’t dare meet Eleanor’s eyes. She couldn’t bear to see that wide-eyed hurt again. She wasn’t Eleanor’s equal, not fit to be in the same room as her.

This time, she’d betrayed more than Crispin and her brother’s trust. She’d hurt Eleanor, who did not deserve that, and she’d betrayed Jeremy, the man she was supposed to marry. Again. She wanted to weep with the horror of how badly she’d failed.

Hob appeared at the top of the servant’s staircase. He came to a full stop, eyes wide when he saw the condition the two of them were in. Both of them soaked to the skin, her in Crispin’s hat and greatcoat, muddy shoes, and water dripping everywhere.

“Hob,” Eleanor said in a light voice. God, what a brilliant performance. You’d never guess now, that her sister-in-law thought there was anything the least untoward about this. “Do help Lord Northword with his wet coat.”

Hob bowed and said, as he went to Crispin, “I was about to walk out to find thee, Miss.”

“As well you didn’t. You’d have got drenched, too.” She meant to match Eleanor’s aplomb and failed miserably at that, too. A shiver cut short her attempt to wipe water out of her face. She’d hardly minded her wet clothes and hair before, but now she was miserable inside and out. She managed to get the greatcoat unbuttoned and off her shoulders. Hob took it from her without a word.

“What on earth possessed you to go outside in weather such as this?” Eleanor’s smile was sweet, so sweet.

It was on the tip of her tongue to confess everything. Every horrible impulse, every awful, unworthy thought, and beg for forgiveness. She ought to confess all the ways in which she’d traded a few moments of bliss for her very soul, but Crispin plucked his hat off her head and dropped it on the table by the door and her words went unspoken. “Before you take my coat, Hob, see to sending a maid to help Miss Temple out of her wet things, won’t you?”

“Yes, milord.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Eleanor gave a clear, silvery laugh, but Portia knew she’d forever tainted relations with her sister-in-law, and very likely Magnus, too. Eleanor smoothly transferred her attention from Hob to Crispin. “Do take his coat. Lord Northword will catch an ague if he leaves it on.”

Crispin lifted a hand. “Well, now, Hob, I can hardly remove my coat in front of ladies, can I? I’ll not be so indelicate.” On the table, a damp ring formed around the brim of the hat, slowly spreading outward. “I’ll need my valet directly, if you’ll see to that as well.”

“Aye, milord.”

Portia could not summon Crispin’s cheer nor Eleanor’s sweetness. Every glance, every word flayed her to the bone. Eleanor might as well have been there at the stable block, watching Portia fall into sin.

“You were gone so long Magnus was worried.” Eleanor picked up Crispin’s hat and handed it to Hob. He accepted it with a bow and headed for the stairs.

“We were caught in the rain,” Crispin said easily.

“Quite a downpour. We were worried.”

“Did you not hear or see how it came down, Mrs. Temple?” He turned part way to her so that half his back faced Portia. He spoke so gently. “Forgive me that, ma’am. I know how intensely you feel everything.”

She set her fingertips over her heart. “I do, my lord.”

“I know I would have worried had I been in your place and my sister-in-law had gone out in such weather.”

“Yes, my lord. Precisely.”

“There was nothing we could do but take refuge where we could.”

“Which was?”

He spread his hands. Water dripped from his sleeves onto the floor. “As you can well imagine, no place very dry. There was a tree. Not a very big one, I’m afraid. Not so far from the creek at the back of your property.”

“A tree.”

“Yes. A tree.”

It didn’t matter what Crispin said, or what excuses he made, or how convincing he was for any of it, Portia knew every word was a lie. Eleanor’s expression remained calm and pleasant, but dread curled in the pit of her stomach. That smile lay so heavy on them, around them, between them, that she could not react in any way.

“Thank you, Lord Northword, for going after her.”

“You’re quite welcome, Mrs. Temple.”

“My dear Lord Northword. You ought to change into some dry clothes.” Portia felt horrible. Eleanor was a woman incapable of malice and accustomed to thinking the best of everyone, and here they were, deceiving her. “You’ll take a chill if you don’t.”

Crispin set a hand on the back of Portia’s shoulder, no longer the man who’d kissed her senseless. Not the man who’d made love to her in a way that obliterated the life she’d built without him. He’d retreated behind a pleasant facade, and she was unbearably aroused by him. “You as well, Portia.”

She nodded, but Eleanor detained her with a hand to Portia’s arm. Crispin bowed to them and headed for the stairs.

“You’ve no idea how worried Magnus was for you,” Eleanor said.

“We were caught in the rain.”

“I do not understand why you would go outside at all when you did not feel well. And to make Lord Northword chase after you.” Eleanor’s smile faded. “I cannot imagine what people will say when they hear the tale. It’s bound to follow you, my dear.”