Unraveling the Earl (17 page)

Again, Georgie cried out, the sound curling around him,
drawing him into a whirlpool of dark desire unlike any he’d ever known.

Georgie’s legs parted, her back curled, her pinkening ass on
display.

Placing his hands on the heated flesh, over the faint
outline of his fingers and palms left in the wake of his punishment, he
caressed her soft skin.

Georgie hummed low in her throat, urging him on.

He dipped into the shadowy seam, followed it down, swirled
one finger around the tight little rosette he found. He tapped the puckered
hole twice before continuing on to his goal.

“You’re wet for me.” He circled her cunny, gathering the
moisture and spreading it over her folds.

“I shouldn’t allow you such liberties,” she said, her voice
soft and trembling.

“You will.”

Henry prodded her quim with two fingers, pushed in to the
first knuckle, her soft, slick flesh already shivering with the prelude to her
first climax.

“Please,” she begged, tilting her hips to take his fingers
past the second knuckle.

“Please, who?”

“Please, Master.” She gave him the words on a sigh and he
withdrew his fingers and added a third.

“Sweet mercy,” she whispered as he burrowed his way into her
body, slowly and relentlessly.

“Do you want me to stop?” Henry forced the words out through
clenched teeth, knowing he would not stop regardless of how she answered.

Georgie shook her head, her braids swaying with the motion.

“Say the words,” he commanded.

“Don’t stop, my lord master.” She squirmed against his
invasion even as she relaxed, her silken walls softening, allowing him to
plunge deep.

“You are a bad girl.” He withdrew his fingers until only the
tips remained within her snug heat.

“Yes.”

“Say it,” he ordered, driving into her once more.

“I…I…am a bad…girl,” she gasped.

“Do you want to come?” He pulled out to the first knuckle.

“I want what you want,” she said, her voice dark.

“Come for me,” he commanded, his fingers thrusting deep, his
thumb riding the crease of her ass to stop over the puckered rose. He pressed
against the tight hole, too gently to penetrate the portal yet firm enough that
she felt the forbidden touch.

Bowing her back, clawing at the wall, Georgie climaxed
around his invading fingers, rhythmically clenching him hard enough to twist
the digits around one another as he held them buried within her spasming cunny.

Henry rode out her release, one hand buried between her
legs, the other splayed across her ass, fingers flexing, squeezing the firm,
round flesh.

His cock was agonizingly hard. The blood roared through his
veins, pumping through his heart so fiercely he felt each beat in his head, in
his abdomen, running down his shaft.

He’d never felt more alive, more in the moment, more in
control of his body and his raging desire.

Withdrawing his hand from between her legs, smiling when she
moaned in protest, he stepped back.

“On your hands and knees,” he said, his voice firm, steady.
“I’m going to fuck the living daylights out of you now.”

Georgie complied, easing down the wall and scooting back
until her hands and knees rested on the Turkish carpet.

“Good girl,” he praised.

“Your bad girl, Master,” she replied in a velvety whisper.

Lust coiled tight at her words, threatening to send him over
the precipice on which he teetered. He fought it back, found the amazing place
he’d been only moments before, and dropped to his knees behind her as he pushed
his trousers down.

“Spread your legs.”

She hesitated for only a moment before obeying, giving him
room to wedge his knees between hers.

He gripped her hips hard, held her steady, brought the
throbbing head of his cock to her cunny and, in one powerful stroke, thrust
into her, hard and deep.

Georgie moaned, her spine curling as she tossed her head
back.

Henry withdrew and thrust again, and again, setting up a
rhythm that had the woman before him clenching her fingers in the carpet, canting
her hips to take him deep, and deeper still, tremulous sighs and throaty
whimpers falling from her lips.

He worked over her, bringing her to the edge of abandon
before wrapping one arm around her, trailing his hand down her belly to sift
his fingers through her curly hairs where he hovered just over her clitoris.

Georgie tilted her hips forward, undulated and bucked
beneath him, chasing the touch he withheld, the release that only he could give
her.

“Ask me for it,” he ordered, leaving her hanging just there,
straining and stretching to reach his teasing fingers. “Beg me, Georgie.”

“Please, Henry, please.”

He pressed two fingers over the pulsing jewel and she
swiveled her hips, pushing against his fingers,

Gripping her hip hard, he used his knees to force her thighs
wider apart and drove deep, grinding against her folds.

Pinned between his hand on her mound, his fingers pressed to
her clit, and his cock buried within her tight quim, he halted her desperate
movements and took over for her, giving her the pressure she craved, the
rolling tempo she needed.

“Damn me…so good,” she gasped around a stuttering breath
only seconds before laughter, dark and fragmented, erupted from her and her
inner walls clasped him tight, milking his shaft, drawing a ragged groan from
him.

Seated deep inside her body, so deep he imagined his cock
battering her womb, Henry rolled her clit between his fingers and rocked
against her folds, absorbing her orgasm, allowing it to push him that much
closer to his own.

He felt the power of his domination flow through him. He
controlled the woman before him. He ruled her pleasure, commanded her body, and
demanded her obedience.

As her laughter dwindled to gasping moans, as her fingers
released their grip on the carpet, Henry withdrew from the tight confines of
her cunny.

“Roll over, love,” he ordered, gripping her hip to assist
her in turning on to her back.

When she was sprawled across floor, her hands resting palm
up beside her head and her long legs open in welcome, he knelt between her thighs.

“Henry,” she whispered, looking up at him from beneath heavy
lids, her cheeks rosy and moisture dotting her brow.

“Again, Georgie,” he growled, coming over her and capturing
her hands, twisting his fingers through hers and pinning them to the carpet as
he brought his throbbing cock to the entrance of her body.

“I don’t think I can,” she murmured.

“You will.”

Slowly, inch by painfully hard inch, Henry breached her
body, sliding effortlessly into her wet heat until he was seated deep within.

“Yes,” she sighed, her legs coming up to curl around his
hips.

Lust roared through his veins, roiling in his abdomen and
pulsing down his shaft, urging him to seek his own satisfaction. Henry fought
back the need to plunder, to pound into her warm channel until he found relief.

Instead he took Georgie at a leisurely pace, driving deep
only to withdraw and plunge into her silken heat once more. Over and over he
came into her body, his eyes open on her, drifting over her flushed face, down
to the pulse beating in the hollow of her throat, to her small breasts rising
and falling with each labored breath she took.

Lifting his gaze to hers, he found her looking back at him,
her eye glazed and unfocused, her lashes fluttering with each heavy stroke of
his cock into her snug quim.

Georgie met each thrust, her hips rising from the floor, her
breath leaving her in soft sighs that mingled with his own panting breaths.
Slowly, ruthlessly Henry forced her to climb the cliff once more, valiantly
holding on to his desire, battling back the urge to let go, to give himself up
to the pleasure.

He’d never felt so connected to a woman in his life, never
known what it was to time his breaths to hers, to match his heartbeat to hers,
to witness her passion unfurl and build, to know that her pleasure, her need
was tied to his, that he alone could set her free.

When Georgie tossed back her head, when she let loose a
soft, tremulous cry and convulsed around his shaft buried deep within her body,
Henry knew a joy unlike any other he’d ever known.

Releasing her hands, he dropped over her, wrapping his arms
around her and pulling her tight against his chest, his mouth claiming hers.
Georgie’s arms wound around him, her fingers digging into his back, her nails
scouring his flesh, as she met his kiss, her tongue delving, twisting and
turning, pushing him beyond control.

Driving his tongue deep into her mouth, Henry withdrew from
her tight, clenching cunny, pressed his shaft against her belly and allowed the
joy, the unbearable pleasure, to take over, coming long and hard in her
embrace.

“Do you never sleep?”

Georgie looked up from the remnants of her life scattered
about on the floor to find Henry sitting amid the tangled bedcovers, knuckling
the sleep from his eyes.

“I’ve been thinking,” she mused, stretching her leg out to
ease the stiff muscles after nearly an hour spent on the hard floor.

“A dangerous pastime, that,” he said around a yawn.

“To be sure,” she agreed, her gaze wandering over his
sleep-tousled hair and whiskered face. He was too beautiful by half. And too
bloody sweet for the likes of her.

“Your…er bottom isn’t sore, is it?” Henry flashed her a
sheepish smile.

“Not at all,” she assured him.

“I apologize for that bit of rough handling. I don’t know
what came over me. I’ve never struck a woman in my life.”

“Another first for me,” she teased. “You needn’t apologize.
I quite liked it.”

Henry ducked his head but still she saw the flush that
spread over his cheeks. “What time is it, love?”

“Just past four.”

“Damn, I’ve slept the day away,” Henry groused. “Have you
been awake all this time?”

“I closed my eyes for a time.”

“What have you been doing?”

“Oh, a bit of this and a bit of that,” she answered. “I set
the kitchen to rights, had a bath, started a stew for your dinner.”

“What a domesticated little lady you are,” he said with a
smile, the boyish, rather lopsided one that never failed to soften her heart,
no matter how hard she tried to remain untouched by his charm.

“Don’t be fooled,” she warned. “I am only luring you into my
web.”

“I am already ensnared in your silk threads.”

“Are you?” Georgie eyed him warily, suspecting the time had
come to either reel him in or release him.

The smile drifted from his face as he tilted his head and
studied her. “What’s amiss, love?”

“Are you going to help me to find my mother, Henry?”

“Have I not said I would?”

“Actually, you have not,” she said, fighting the sudden,
inexplicable urge to rail at him. “You have said precious little all day.”

“I’ve been sleeping a good portion of it,” he replied, his
voice cracking and she suspected he was fighting not to laugh.

“Precisely.”

“You are angry because I’ve been sleeping?” he asked and
there was no mistaking his amusement now.

“I am not angry,” she answered with a sniff. “And if I were
it certainly wouldn’t be because you’ve been sleeping when you might have been
helping me. But you haven’t actually said you would help me.”

“Georgie,” he began, openly grinning.

“Don’t Georgie me,” she cried. “I’ve kept to my part of the
bargain.”

“Yes you have,” he agreed.

“I’ve cooked and cleaned and played Betsy the maid,” she
continued, the words pouring from her in a jumbled mess. “I braved the storm to
tend to your horses and milk your blasted cow. I’ve given you food and fine
wine and I would have fornicated with you seven times over had you not slept
the day away!”

Henry tossed off the covers and swung his legs over the side
of the bed. “How can I help you, love?”

“Oh, never mind,” she replied, flinging her hands in the
air. “I don’t want your help if I must browbeat you in order to gain it.”

He rose naked from the bed to look down at her, a frown
wrinkling his brow and pulling at his lips.

Georgie swept her gaze over his body, not the least
surprised to find his shaft heavy and swollen.

“Georgie, what’s come over you?” he asked, his voice soft
and hesitant.

“You are the randiest man I’ve ever encountered,” she
grumbled, her pique falling away as suddenly as it had arisen, leaving a
twisted coil of anxiety lodged in her belly.

“Only when you are about.” Henry stretched his arms above
his head, the motion thrusting his cock out and she suspected he’d done so on
purpose, the handsome devil.

“Put some clothes on, my lord,” she ordered, smiling despite
the edge of panic she felt. “You aren’t going to distract me with your fine
physique yet again.”

“Have I been distracting you?”

“Only every chance you get. We might have progressed to
discussing my search after breakfast had you not diverted my attention with
your games.”

“My games?” he repeated with a throaty chuckle. “I don’t
remember asking you to play Becky the maid.”

“Betsy,” she corrected primly. “And of course you asked me.
You practically begged me with your fond remembrances and wicked imaginings.
What choice did I have? A mistress caters to her master’s every whim.”

“A perfect mistress.” Henry pulled the sheet from the bed
and wrapped it around his waist, tying the edges together over one lean hip.
“You are certainly that. Perfect, I mean.”

“Oh, good Lord,” Georgie drawled. “To be sure, if you start believing
that you’ll be sorely disappointed.”

“You’re the perfect woman for me,” he argued, lowering
himself to the floor so they were separated only by her most precious
possessions between them.

Caught by the smile that curled his lips and the sleepy softness
in his blue eyes, Georgie was slow to react to his sudden nearness. Before she
could whisk her borrowed robe over her extended leg, Henry’s gaze found the
jagged round scar just beneath her right knee and the long thin line of
puckered flesh that bisected it and continued down her shin.

“’Tis nothing but an old childhood injury,” she said as his
lips parted on the obvious question. “I took a fall down a flight of stairs.”

“Does it pain you still?” He reached out one long finger as
if to touch the circle of raised and mottled flesh and the neat incision left
by the surgeon’s scalpel.

Curling her leg back, tucking the unsightly scar against the
soft Turkish carpet, she lifted a frayed letter and offered him the single
greatest truth of her life along with the lie that had colored the last four
years of it. “Most days I hardly remember my fall or the folly that led to it.”

“What’s this?”

“Connie’s letter to my father and further proof that I am no
one’s perfect woman, should you need it.”

Henry tilted the paper to catch the meager light that
trickled through the windows. “Hmm…
I should like to make you aware…you might
have guessed as you do not make a practice of negating the chances…”
he
looked up with a frown.

“Go on,” she urged. “You’d best read the entirety of it.”

“Lydia does not concur, seeing as you abused my trust in so
despicable a fashion but as she also betrayed me…announce the arrival of…What
the bloody hell?”

“Announce the arrival of your son, George, who was born on
this, the third day of March, in the year of our Lord 1811,” Georgie finished.
“Until I was sixteen I believed the date of my birth to be the fifth of March.”

“This makes no bloody sense,” he spluttered, tossing the
missive to the floor. “How did your mother come to believe she’d given birth to
a boy?”

Instead of answering him, she sifted through the rubble of
her past until she found the small purse of worn leather. “This was tucked into
my blanket when Lady Hastings delivered me into Millie Graham’s arms.”

He took the purse and balanced it on his palm as if
measuring the worth of the coins within.

“Ten sovereigns,” she said. “I was conceived on a wager, two
in fact, the first a pound a piece from various gentlemen, most of whom were
related to you.”

Henry’s finger curled around the purse and a frown pulled at
his lips but he made no reply to her revelation.

“It seems that the men in your family started each Season
with a friendly wager as to which of the debutants would take your mother’s
fancy,” Georgie continued. “In defense of your uncles, they could not know that
to George Buchanan five pounds was four pounds more than he had in his pockets
after he’d added his pound to the purse.”

Henry remained silent, his gaze steady on her and his jaw
clamped tight.

“How he deduced Lady Hastings would choose Connie is
anyone’s guess. Perhaps that part was blind luck, but when her choice was made
he saw an opportunity to double his winnings. He wagered his gains that he
could seduce the newest angel.”

“With whom did he place this second wager?”

“Your mother.”

Henry tossed the purse to land atop the letter as if the
coins within were live coals.

“It’s rather funny, isn’t it?” Georgie paused a beat on the
chance he might see the humor, continued when he only looked at her in silence.
“I owe my life to your mother.”

Henry tilted his head to study her as if she were an oddity
he’d spied at the circus.

“Millie made this the first night I spent at River’s End,”
she continued when he remained silent, offering up a charcoal sketch on a torn
piece of foolscap.

Henry barely glanced at it.

“A rather crude rendering I know, but certainly the
Hastings’ crest.” Georgie drew in a deep breath, nerves skittering. “If you’ve
any further doubts as to the friendship between our mothers, as to whether they
spent Connie’s confinement on one of your estates, you might consider reading
your mother’s diary.”

His gaze shifted to some point above her head and she
suspected he was still pondering the letter, taking in the ramifications and
attempting to fit them, fit her, into his orderly world.

“Oh, for mercy’s sake, Henry,” she exclaimed, tossing her
hands in the air. “It is not so terribly complicated. There are only three
plausible reasons for the mistake.”

“I cannot think of a single plausible reason,” he replied,
his words precisely measured and his voice strangely hollow.

“One.” Georgie held up a single finger. “My mother never
looked to determine the gender of her babe and, knowing she intended to give
the child away, the midwife did not offer up the information.”

“Not even remotely plausible.”

“Two—”

“Leave off with the fingers. I can count.”

Georgie curled her fingers over her palm and brought her
fist to rest over the pit lodged in her belly. “She wanted to punish my father
by telling him she’d born him a boy child, knowing men hold sons above
daughters.”

Henry gave a sharp nod. “Somewhat plausible. And the third
reason?”

“She somehow knew the Grahams,” she began only to stop and
drag a broken breath past lips that felt stiff and unwieldy. “Connie knew that
Millie had recently birthed a sixth daughter and that Himself flew into a rage
at being denied a son yet again.”

“And what?” he demanded. “Your mother thought to pass you
off as the much desired boy?”

“It is not so farfetched as it sounds,” she replied with a
shrug and a smile that hurt as it formed. The hurt, the piercing pain traveled
from her lips to a spot just beneath her breast when Henry surged to his feet,
nearly tripping over the sheet before he flicked it out of his way to storm
across the room.

“How long before they figured it out?” His fingers clenched
in the curtains and she half expected them to come tumbling down, rod and all.

“Millie knew straight away as I was delivered to her in a
wet nappy.”

“And Mr. Graham?”

“Some time later,” she replied, hoping he would not delve
any deeper.

“Goddamn it to hell.” His voice was soft, might have been
lost to the wind and rain battering the windows had she not been listening
intently, waiting for his reaction to this, her most carefully guarded secret
and the first step along the twisted path that led to her greatest shame.

Henry released the drapes and spun around. “You have left
out the most plausible reason of all.”

“And that would be?” she asked as she came to her feet,
balancing her weight on her left leg as the right was horribly sore from the
time spent on her hands and knees with only the soft Turkish carpet beneath
her.

“It seems rather obvious.” He dragged a hand through his
hair, leaving the tawny waves standing up on his head. “My mother was there.
Need I say more?”

“Oh, dearest,” she crooned, shaking her head as she stepped
toward him. “You cannot lay this upon your mother. I know she was mad there at
the end—”

“She was mad as long as I can remember,” he interrupted.

“I find that rather hard to believe.”

“Believe it,” he insisted.

“You really ought to read her diaries.” Reaching him,
Georgie laid a hand on his chest, felt his heart beating furiously beneath her
palm.

“Diaries? As in more than the one you stole?”

“Borrowed,” she chided softly. “There are dozens of them,
chronicling her life from childhood until just before she passed.”

“And you read them all?”

“Gracious, no,” she replied. “I hadn’t time, what with you
refusing to fall asleep until the wee hours and the threat of discovery from
early rising servants looming. No, I only read the one that marked the year I
was conceived. I did skim through the others to see if she made mention of
Connie. Alas she did not.”

Henry covered her hand over his heart.

“Please consider reading her diaries,” she whispered. “She
wrote quite eloquently and honestly of her life, of her hopes and dreams and
disappointments.”

“I don’t need to read about all of that,” he replied, his
voice shaking. “I lived it with her, remember? I know all about her hopes and
dreams. And believe you me, I know well enough of her disappointments.”

“Perhaps it is too soon,” she mused. “You are still
grieving.”

“I assure you I am not grieving,” he countered.

Realizing she was treading on thin ice, Georgie chose to
back track, to lighten her lover’s mood. “I know you believe it dangerous for
me to think too long on any given matter. But I do like a certain amount of
risk in my life so I’ve been thinking nonetheless.”

“We’re in trouble now,” he replied with a strained smile.