Heiress Without a Cause Page 13

  He stepped toward her, cupping her chin in his hand and nudging it up so she was forced to meet his eyes. “I never thought I would like to be called ‘your grace,’ but you could make me crave it.”

  She swallowed, her mouth dry as she saw the raw need in his eyes. She took a step back, and he caressed her face as she pulled away. His touch was soft, almost tender, and there was no doubt that he still wanted her — he closed the distance between them, placing his hands low on her hips as he guided her into his embrace.

  “I am sure you are still an innocent, despite your profession,” he said, grazing a kiss on her forehead. “And I don’t believe you would throw yourself away on any of the bounders loitering at the theatre,” he continued, sliding his hands down the curve of her hips to rest on her derriere.

  “But I’m not a saint, Mad.” He pulled her even closer toward him, and she could feel the hardness of his arousal against her belly. “I could be more dangerous to you than anyone if you don’t take care.”

  This was madness. The very name he called her should have been a warning. But her desire to experience all those delicious feelings that his kisses created overrode her prudence. “I don’t want you to be a saint, Ferguson.”

  She watched the battle between honor and hunger play out on his face. Honor was on the verge of winning, and some instinct drove her forward, arching into him and offering up her mouth. She would die of embarrassment if he set her aside...

  ...but then she felt his right hand leave her bottom to rest on her neck. “You are going to be the death of me,” he muttered.

  His lips claimed hers. She opened for him immediately, wanting the heat of his mouth to reignite all the need still smoldering within her. His hand at the base of her head held her tight. She couldn’t move away from him — but she wouldn’t have moved away from him even if she was free to go. She wanted to get closer, until there was nothing left between them. She had the strangest desire to twine around his body, like ivy on a lamppost, supported by him and yet capable of pulling him down.

  She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, using her hands to press him deeper into the kiss. He groaned in response, and his free hand caressed her bottom, running across the curves encased by her tailored breeches. The heat was building again, and she moaned as the seam of her breeches rubbed against that increasingly sensitive bit of flesh between her legs.

  He broke away at the sound and she opened her eyes. He grinned at the disappointment on her face, grazing one last kiss on the corner of her mouth. The grin made him seem younger, less cynical, and her heart ached for the man he might have been.

  But Ferguson wasn’t focused on introspection. He fixed his eyes firmly on a different prize. “I told you that the next time I kissed you, I would punish you for this abuse.”

  She didn’t understand his meaning until he started to unbutton her jacket. Then she remembered his reaction to her bound breasts in the coach and blushed. “How do you intend to punish me?”

  He ignored her question, making quick work of her jacket, waistcoat, cravat, and shirt. Tossing them aside, he skimmed his hands down her sides, exploring the contrast between her bindings and her soft flesh. She shivered as he splayed his hands across her belly, his thumb tracing a line around her navel.

  Then his hands came back up. He ran his thumbs over her nipples, still trapped within their linen prison. She felt them hardening, coming to life for him, and she arched toward him, hoping this time he wouldn’t stop before she understood what was building inside her.

  He dipped a finger into the hollow between her breasts, and she gasped as his callused skin rubbed against her soft flesh. He retreated slowly, teasingly, pulling the end of her bindings with him, and her breath hitched as the knot came free.

  “Turn,” he commanded softly.

  She looked up into his face. His eyes were sharp with need and his mouth glistened in anticipation of their next kiss. But there was a playfulness to his smile that told her everything she needed to know.

  Her heart might be in danger.

  She certainly hoped her virtue was.

  But Ferguson wouldn’t hurt her, regardless of what transpired between them.

  So she turned away from him, and the top layer of linen came away in his hands. She felt like she was dancing a new kind of waltz, and he partnered her perfectly, pulling the cloth with just the right amount of tension to keep her turning in place. And when she faced him again, he caught her chin, tilted it, and gave her a languorous kiss that kept her blood simmering.

  “Again,” he whispered, pulling away and tightening his grip on her bindings.

  It took six slow, torturous revolutions before the last bit of cloth fell away — six long, aching kisses that brought her to a boiling point of need. He kissed her again, pulling her into the circle of his arms, and this time her bare, sensitized nipples grazed against his jacket. She gasped into his mouth as first one hand, then a second, came up to cup her breasts.

  He shifted away from her, pulling back to watch as her flesh came back to life under his gaze. She always felt hot pinpricks of sensation as the blood rushed back after her bindings were released, but this time the feeling was heightened as his hands warmed her skin.

  “God, Mad, if you knew how I’ve dreamed of this,” he said, his voice reverent.

  Her desire was so high she could barely think, let alone be shy about standing in front of him in only a tight pair of breeches and her high-heeled shoes. But still, she was shocked when one arm slid underneath her to lift her up against him. “Put your legs around me,” he ordered, and she did as he asked, her breeches dangerously tight against the center of her need. She didn’t understand, dimly thought of protesting — but then his mouth claimed her nipple, and in the fire of her response, it all became clear.

  He tormented her slowly, first one breast and then the other, until she was moaning incoherently in his arms. She leaned in, nearly sobbing in his ear as her moans turned to inarticulate pleas. He didn’t stop, and the combination of his tongue and teeth toying with her still-recovering flesh made her understand the madness he had warned her of.

  His punishment — which had long since turned to worship — ended before she reached the mysterious peak he was driving her toward, and she didn’t know whether to be disappointed or grateful for the reprieve. But when he set her on her feet and tried to renew his assault on her mouth, she broke away. She had dreamed of him too, and she reached out greedily to tug at the first button of his jacket.

  He didn’t move to help her, but he didn’t make her stop. He played with her hair as she worked on the buttons, and she felt her hairpins falling to the floor as he pulled off her wig. Before she could finish untying his cravat, he was running his hands through the mass of her hair, letting it tumble down her naked back.

  “I’ve waited to see your hair too,” he reminded her, brushing it from her face before attempting to kiss her again.

  She stood her ground, placing her hands on his chest and pushing him the smallest fraction away from her lips. “Your jacket first, if you please.”

  He chuckled, shrugging out of his tight jacket and letting it fall to the floor. He tossed his creased cravat on top of the jacket before unbuttoning his waistcoat. Soon it was gone too, and she reached up to tug at the drawstring of his shirt. The shirt came open, and she brushed her thumb across the Adam’s apple that had been hiding behind his neckcloth. He groaned and captured her hand in his, kissing it before pinning it to her side.

  But then he tugged the tails of his shirt from the waistband of his trousers. She swallowed as the hard planes of his stomach were revealed. He pulled the shirt over his head in one motion, and everything rippled in a most delightful way.

  He was a Greek statue come to life, a god disguised as a man, slipping out of his costume to claim his maiden. She had felt his muscles when they danced, knew he was strong by the way he held her suspended in his arms while he tormented her breasts, but nothing had prepared her for th
is. He wasn’t overly large, nothing like a farmhand — he was perfectly proportioned for his height, the kind of specimen a painter would kill to have as a muse.

  His chest was broad and sculpted, crowned by tiny nipples that she wanted to torment as much as he had tortured hers. His trousers were slung low on his hips, and she swallowed as she saw the indentations of his pelvis below the well-defined muscles of his abdomen... and the slight trail of dark hair that led her gaze to the unmistakable bulge in his trousers.

  “Those green eyes will be my undoing,” Ferguson said, kissing them closed to stop her exploration of his body. Before she could protest, he picked her up again, cradling her in his arms and striding toward the bed.

  She should have been nervous, but in that moment, his arms were the safest place in the world. He shifted her weight against his chest so that he could pull back the coverlet, and then he laid her on the sheets.

  He lay down beside her, propped on one arm as he examined her naked breasts. He seemed fascinated by them, as though he had never seen anything so perfect — and she knew she misinterpreted his gaze if she believed that, since he’d surely had mistresses more well endowed than she. She tried to turn onto her side, to cover herself with her arm — but he placed a hand on her belly and kept her flat on her back beside him. “Stay still, Mad. I only want to give you pleasure.”

  He leaned over her, kissing her again as his hand fumbled with the fastening of her breeches. The placket came free and she felt his hand sliding under the loosened waistband to tangle in her curls. But his movement was constrained by her men’s garb, and she whimpered in his mouth as she tried to tilt herself up toward his hand.

  Ferguson laughed. “If you didn’t look so damned delectable in these breeches, I would insist you burn them.”

  She flushed at the compliment. He didn’t linger over his words, moving to kneel at her feet. He pulled off her bejeweled shoes, then removed her breeches and hose. She imagined herself from Ferguson’s vantage point — hair tossed wildly around her face, lungs heaving as she gasped for air, breasts straining for his touch. Her legs had fallen open as he stripped her, and he was staring at her sex. She felt moisture there, like she was somehow hungry for him, and she blushed as his gaze intensified. She tried to close her legs, to draw his attention away from that private part of her, but his hand shot out to grab her ankle.

  “Madeleine,” he groaned. He knelt between her legs, pulling her ankle up as he sank into the mattress, nudging her other leg away with his knee, until she was spread before him like an offering. He leaned down and placed a kiss on her navel, and her hands balled into fists. The thin scrap of sanity she still possessed told her she should push him away, but her blood was thrumming with the need to pull him closer.

  But he didn’t move up her torso to kiss her. He slid lower, skimming his hands up to her hips as though he intended to hold her in place.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, propping herself up on her elbows to watch him. The need was still there, but whatever her body wanted, she hadn’t expected this.

  He lifted his head, and his blue eyes were hazy with the same desire that flooded her veins. “Do you trust me, Mad?”

  She nodded slowly, hypnotized by his hunger.

  He grinned at her. “Then trust me when I say you will love this.”

  She watched his head dip again, his dark hair stark against her pale skin.

  Then he kissed the very center of her need. All her thoughts shattered, her mind wiped clean as every nerve focused on what Ferguson was doing to her.

  He wasn’t slow, and he wasn’t quick — he somehow found the exact tempo that would have her begging in his arms. He flicked his tongue across her aching nub once, twice, ten times, until she tried to arch off the bed under the hands that held her down. Just as she reached the pinnacle of the need building inside her, he slipped away, laving the folds around her entrance, his tongue dipping into her slick passage and adding to the moisture his ministrations had wrought. And when her breathing grew a fraction less ragged, and her thoughts began to return, he restarted the process, returning to torment her until she was writhing beneath him again.

  She lost count of how many times he did this, but she felt like her whole body was flushed, her legs quivering around him as he continued his onslaught. She had long since fallen back onto the bed, biting her lips to quiet the moans she couldn’t contain. She didn’t know how much more she could take...

  ...and then his wicked tongue stopped, just long enough for him to breathe a command. “Come for me, Madeleine,” he whispered, his breath hot against her sex. Then he stroked her with his tongue, harder and faster than before, and she felt all of her need coiling for him, spiraling up, tighter and tighter to a point that almost felt like pain. Just as she reached the top, his hand found her breast, and the unexpected caress was enough to push her over the edge.

  The world exploded around her, and she screamed his name as her whole body shuddered in climax. Without his hand to stop her, she drove up toward him, almost violent in her need — and he followed her movements, kept his lips locked around her as he wrung every last sensation from her.

  When it was over, when his movements had subsided to a few feathery kisses on her inner thigh and a slow circling of her nipple with his thumb, she floated in the warmth of her flushed, sated body. She could have stayed there for hours, content as long as he still touched her. But he placed a final kiss low on her belly, right above her thatch of curls, and the kiss felt like a goodbye.

  He started to pull away, but she caught his hand before it could leave her breast. “Why are you stopping?” she asked, her voice sounding hoarse and breathy even to her ears.

  “For you,” he said shortly.

  She threaded her fingers through his. From the bulge in his breeches, he must be desperately uncomfortable. She and Amelia had read enough risqué poetry and scandalous picture books when Aunt Augusta was away to know what that bulge meant — and what was supposed to happen next.

  “Don’t stop for my sake,” she whispered, pulling him toward her. “I do not want this to end until you’ve had all of me.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Ferguson felt the resolve in her fingers, heard the need in her voice, saw the way her eyes focused with fascinated greed on his manhood. He had even tasted how much she wanted him, drenched with desire and already opening for him.

  But he couldn’t deflower an innocent, no matter how much she wanted him to — or how much his cock ached for her.

  He rose to a kneeling position on the bed, still between her legs, his hand extended since she refused to let him go. “Mad, I won’t ruin you, regardless of what we want.”

  She sat up, her legs spread wide around his thighs, uninhibited by her nakedness. “What you did to me was the most pleasurable experience I’ve felt in my entire life,” she said, reaching up to pull his lips toward hers. “If that is what it means to be ruined, then I accept my fate.”

  He allowed her to kiss him, knowing it was suicide but unable to deny the temptation. She was still inexperienced, but her wild enthusiasm made up for her artlessness. His past mistresses were well versed in giving a man pleasure — but he had never been harder than he was at this moment.

  She was going to kill him. He groaned and pulled away, grabbing her shoulders with his hands so she could not follow. “Ruin doesn’t just mean a quick fuck and a bit of pleasure,” he said, harsher than he meant to be. “Ruin means being cast out of society. Ruin means destroying your life, destroying your family. It may even mean raising a bastard child who will be punished for your mistakes. I sincerely doubt you are willing to accept any of that.”

  Madeleine set her jaw, and he knew that he was lost. “I am acting on a public stage, pretending to be your mistress, and at constant risk of someone with half a brain recognizing me. All it takes is a moment, and I will suffer the exact fate you so kindly predicted. And if I’m not ruined, I will grow old as Alex’s spinster dependent, wit
h nothing but memories of these few weeks to feel like there was a reason why I lived.”

  Her green eyes filled with tears, and before he could think, he brushed her hair away from her eyes. “Don’t pity me,” she snapped.

  “I feel many things toward you, but pity isn’t among them,” he retorted. “You are the bravest, maddest, most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen, and why you think you are destined to be a spinster, I will never know.”

  She started to deny his words. He shook her shoulders. “If you truly want me to take you, I will. But after tonight, you will never again claim that you are meant to grow old alone. Is that clear?”

  She met his gaze straight on, her tears replaced by a need that scorched his soul. “I want to believe you. Show me, Ferguson.”

  He kissed her, his mouth devouring hers as though he could brand her, as though he could make her feel his intentions in their kiss.

  She kissed him back, and he lost himself in her. He wanted to touch all of her at once, and his hands were everywhere — kneading her breast, sliding down her spine, skimming across the cleft of her derriere, gripping her hair to pull her deeper into his kiss. She was writhing in his arms, and he could feel the tension building in her body. This was the kind of passion one might go a whole lifetime without ever finding — and he felt a savage thrill at the thought of making her his.

  He stopped his exploration of her body only to unbutton his trousers. Without breaking their kiss, he fumbled until the cloth fell away and his manhood sprang forth, the tip already moist. The need to bury himself inside her was urgent, unstoppable — only his rapidly evaporating control kept him from slamming into her like a beast.

  Madeleine felt that control in the way he stretched her out on the bed, in the quick, spare movements he took to peel off his trousers and toss them aside. His fingers found the nub of pleasure that his tongue was so well acquainted with. He stroked her, building her need even hotter as he slid one finger, then two, inside her. And he somehow kissed her with the same measured intensity he used to stoke her pleasure, the same tempo and masterful movements thrusting her closer to that delicious edge.