The Scandal Before Christmas (14 page)

The song rose, soaring slowly through the empty trees. Her voice was clear and bright, and so soft and intimate and powerful, it was angelic. When she sang, everything about her was clear and bright.

How had he ever thought her plain? He must be even more of a shallow, ramshackle bastard than even he had thought. Too shallow and ramshackle a fellow to deserve her.

But he had somehow earned her, and keep her he would. By hook or by Pinky’s crook, which the old cherub leaned on heavily to make his way through the deep, wet snow with an armful of ivy.

“I’ll just take these in for the mistress.” Pinky toddled vaguely off in the direction of the house. Leaving them alone.

Alone with the idea Ian had been drawing up in his brain. His father had been crudely specific in his quest for Ian to get him another heir. But if he did beget that heir on Anne, then not even the Viscount Rainesford could gainsay the wedding.

And with both his invited and uninvited guests, including the coachmen, all at the house with Pinky—and most likely to be kept there by the canny old tar— the small carriage house was empty. The hayloft there would provide just enough comfort and warmth for the endeavor.

It wouldn’t take much to get either of them so inclined—they had both been on fire for it last night. And in the bright, flat light reflecting off the snow, he would be able to see her, and look his fill, even in the dimness of the hayloft.

Ian paused with the axe resting in his hand. He would peel back her cloak, and open her coat buttons, and untie her laces and fill his hands with her—

“Ian?” She was so close it startled him out of his daydream. “Are you all right?”

Apart from a rousing cockstand, thankfully hidden by both the long hem of his sea coat, and the fall of his breeches, he was. And to prove it he simply gathered her into his arms.

“I found some mistletoe, to bring the spirit of the spring into the house.” Between their almost-touching bodies, she held up a tiny sprig of green. “It’s an ancient country tradition. It would be powerful bad luck not to honor the spirit of the season.”

He took the sprig from her hands, and threaded it through her hair. “And how do you think we ought best honor that spirit?”

“By kissing beneath it.” She held tight to his coat sleeves, drawing herself nearer.

Ian nuzzled at her ear. “We ought not dishonor the spirit.”

“No.” Her words were nothing but breath and anticipation. Nothing but nascent want. “We’d best not.”

“So.” He kissed his way across her throat to the other ear. “I suppose that means that you’d like me to kiss you? On your lips?”

“I would be much obliged”—there was nothing left of her voice but a thin, taut string of breath—“if you would make it a good one.”

“Oh, Miss Lesley, you
are
a clever, naughty girl to taunt me so. You have no idea how very, very much I like pert intelligence.”

“I was hoping you would show me. And Ian?”

“Yes, my love?”

“I’ve been thinking.” She tilted her head to the side, and gave him a small, rather shy smile that struck him as clear a ship’s bell. It was a winsome smile. In fact, it was
his
winsome smile, the smile he had tried to give her that first afternoon on the beach, to win her over.

Ian’s gut tightened from something beyond hunger. “What of?”

“I might have chanced upon a solution. Your father seemed concerned with…” She took a steadying breath. “Making sure we had not fully…”

Hunger flooded his veins. But still he could think. And speak. “Consummated our bond?” he supplied.

“Yes. Consummated.” She nodded, gingerly trying out the dangerous word. “What if we did? What if we did … do that and if I were to…”

“Get with child?”

She looked up, and finally met his gaze with eyes glowing with topaz hope. With desire. “Yes.”

The word was like a rumble of thunder rolling through him—every part of his body vibrated with anticipatory heat. The rush of blood from his brain nearly made him stumble.

But he did not. He was sure-footed. And sure-handed. He was sure.

Ian picked her up in his arms and forged his way through the snow to the stable. He set her down on the threshold and followed her in, rubbing his hands together and clapping the snow off his boots to ward off the cold, damning himself for his impatience.

Ian felt his own body quicken and heat another ten degrees at just the sight of her, standing and looking at him with her innocent lust shining in her eyes. He would make it good for her.

He gifted her with his most disarming smile, furrowing his brow and tilting his head to starboard to tease her. “Are you sure, Anne Lesley? Are you quite sure you’re ready for me to rend you asunder?”

Her voice held the whisper of a smile. “You said you would make love to me.”

“And so I did. And so I shall.” He stepped closer, and kissed her.

And fell under the spell of her wide, pliant lips and honeyed taste. He kissed her until he began to think of backing her against convenient stall walls and having his way with her there without bothering with the hayloft.

His lips were on her mouth, and his hands were in her hair. And he was finally, finally going to do exactly as he wanted. She was already kissing him back, already returning his heated, open-mouthed kisses with a fervor all her own, and he felt himself falling into her softness and sweet, intense solemnity.

Ian saw it then—her beautifully refined passion he had mistaken for rage. It wasn’t anger that had burned in her luminous brown eyes, it was passion—all the passion she must have denied herself for years. All the passionate thoughts and passionate feelings that had lived behind the wall of her tongue-tied shyness. Not just physical passion, but a passion for life, a passion for living, and living right. He saw all the life in her.

She wasn’t a wren at all. He had been fooled by her camouflaging plumage. She was a small, nimble sparrow hawk—a small, swift, elegant falcon.

*   *   *

His kiss was everything he was—confident and brash and exuberant and strong. So strong and sure and powerful, she felt as if the strength of his hands along the line of her jaw were the only thing holding her up.

Because she couldn’t feel her knees. She could only feel the rough, taut texture of his lips, and taste the tang of rum-laced coffee on his tongue. She could only hear the rush of his breathing, and smell the sharp, heated spice of his body. She could only understand that this, more than the hand-holding, or foot-rubbing, was at last
pleasure
.

So much pleasure it left her shaking—quaking like an aspen in the winter wind.

He wasn’t shaken at all. He looked solid and sure, and in his right senses, as if he were well used to the powers of such pleasure—well used to the ride. But his voice had none of that surety. It was softer, blunted around the edges, as if he had taken a blow to the head and could not see straight. “My God, Anne.”

She drew the pins from her hair slowly, one by one, for the first time not caring if she loosed a riot of curls springing from her hands, unladylike and untamed.

His sigh of satisfaction was very nearly a groan. “I like your hair down—I love it. I want to tangle my hands in it.” He matched action to words, and set his hands drawing through her hair, tugging on her scalp sending streaks of warm, tingling sensation sliding deep into her belly and back out to surface just below her skin.

He was on her, around her, picking her up in his arms, slinging her legs around his waist while he walked into the harness room and set her upon an empty work table there.

He leaned his forehead against hers, and looked at her with those fathomless blue eyes, as if he could see all the way through her. As if he could see who she really was inside—the passionate person she was in the privacy of her own head. The person she felt herself to be when she played the pianoforte. Clever and intelligent.

Not shy. Never again shy.

His fingers emboldened her to do the same, to spear her fingers through the short waves of his hair. To find the sensual delight for herself in the feel of the thick, glossy strands slipping through her hands, as well as to give him pleasure.

He kissed her again, pressing his height and his weight and his being upon her, giving her everything of him. His mouth was on hers, and his hands were around her back, and at the back of her neck, holding her to him, supporting her as kissed and kissed and kissed her.

Under his tutelage, her skin—the plain, ordinary covering of the body she had lived in for two and twenty years without noticing—now felt extraordinary. It felt sensitive, alive to every change within and without. Something fierce and finer than heat blossomed under the surface of her skin. “It feels like I’m new.”

“You are new. We are new together.”

His voice was low and heartfelt and sincere, and set off an answering, indecorous thudding of her heart within her chest.

He let go of her, leaning his hands onto the table on either side of her, hemming her in, tipping her back farther and farther. “Anne? Will you say my name?” he whispered against her lips.

She smiled, and breathed it out on an exhalation. “Lieutenant Worth.”

“Anne.”

She laid her lips alongside his ear. “Ian.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, and slid them down her arms and around her waist, drawing her lightly against his chest. He pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. Heat and something more, something that must be longing, slid under her skin. “Say it again, Anne.”

“Ian.”

He kissed his way down the sensitive tendon below her ear, and her skin caught fire. He kissed her, hard and purposeful, holding nothing back. He kissed her with heat and passion, with tongue and teeth, and a hunger she was beginning to recognize in her own wants.

He was everything and everywhere, his hands at her face and in her hair, holding her tight against him. He was everything she felt, the smooth probe of his tongue, the firm possession of his lips, the sharp edge of his teeth as he took her lower lip and worried it between his own. She felt the rough rasp of his morning beard against the sensitive skin of her neck and chest. He was everything heat and passion, and he was showing her how to be so.

He levered himself back so he could look at her, and turned his attention to her small breasts. “You are exquisite—perfectly rounded, made for my hand.” He dragged his thumbs across the tightly furled peaks, until bliss was blossoming within, and she was arching her chest into his hands, letting her head fall back, and her eyes fall shut so she could not see, and could only feel. Blindly seeking pleasure and release.

He followed his hands with his mouth, and closed his lips around her sensitive nipple, licking and sucking her, sending shards of want and need and omnivorous hunger prowling deep into her belly. The sound of shocked surprise came from so deep inside her that it was barely audible by the time it winged its way out of her mouth.

Anne kept her eyes closed, and let her mind concentrate on the feeling of her body. Let herself feel the cool air as it made her nipples contract, and made the flesh along her belly pebble up with gooseflesh. She felt the pleasurable tension begin to snake through her body, and she wanted to move, to appease the strange need to feel more.

“Shh,” he said as if sensing her need, stilling her with his words, making her quiver with anticipation when he stepped between her legs, and gently pried her knees apart as he kissed her again, diverting her attention with his clever tongue from the hand that reached down the side of her leg to drag up the hem of her skirts. And then his hands were back at her breasts, fondling her until heat and something else, something bright and shining budded to life within, teasing and swirling into her belly. Between her thighs, her body clenched into a pleasurable ache.

Which Ian seemed to understand. “Hold your skirts up for me, Anne. Please.” His voice had gone to pieces, each word a shard of sharp urgency.

She hauled the material back tight against her waist, baring herself to him. She closed her eyes, and turned away.

“Open your eyes, Anne. Open your legs for me, please. Wider. Please, Anne. Yes.”

She did open her eyes and followed his focused gaze to the tangle of dark curls at the apex of her thighs. Her body seemed to shift deep inside her, loosening a shaft of pleasure within.

She watched his hands come to rest upon the pale white skin of her thighs. “Anne.” His voice brought her back to meet his gaze. “Tell me what you like. Tell me how you want to be touched.”

“Yes.” She wanted to—she wanted to meet him measure for measure in this dance of passion. She closed her eyes, and concentrated on the sensual tug of his hands against the sensitive flesh of her upper thighs.

“Yes.” He gathered her to him, cradling her against his chest with his forehead resting against hers, as he watched his hand part her folds.

She felt open and vulnerable and wanting and waiting, and when he touched her she felt her muscles clench with delight. Pleasure, heavy addicting pleasure lapped up through her torso until she was arching toward him, trying to get closer to him, and closer still.

“Anne. Your sex is so soft and wet and warm and tight.”

Anne had never heard the word used in such a way before, but she knew from the tone of his voice, from the heat and gravel of his words, what he meant.

He slid one long, articulate finger inside her, and a little ripple of delight radiated from her core, growing stronger, becoming a wave of sensation and heat that surged within her, making her gasp and pant with delight and want.

“Yes,” he encouraged her. “I want to hear you. Do it again. Always so quiet, so composed,” he whispered, as he worked his hands under her skirts to cup her bottom and pull her closer to the edge of the table. And then he bent her backward to take the tight, needy peak of her breast between his lips.

She made a loud, inarticulate, animal sound at the shock and almost overwhelming pleasure that shot through her, streaking deep into her belly and radiating out to the very tips of her fingers.

“Oh, yes. That’s it, Anne,” he whispered, his breath harsh and strained at her ear. “I want to make you lose that calm, collected composure. I want to make you scream.”