Page 29 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Burn Book of Lady M

Devyn Winter, Captain, His Majesty’s Army: I think I might like to keep this one, actually.

* * *

At the after party at Drysdale’s estate, she’d excused herself to her chaperone and said she was going to the ladies' retiring room. Miss Kelley made no argument or offer to go with her, likely she knew Moria’s intent.

Moria looked past all the eyes turned in her direction and made eye contact with Devyn, who was in conversation with his brother.

And in a few minutes, he’d found her on the terrace outside.

“Did you know? About the play, I mean?” he asked, coming to sit beside her on a stone bench.

“It’s just a story,” she shrugged. A play meant both as a jab at a girl who collected hearts like insects in jars and praise of her at the same time?

“I’ve lived through much worse,” she offered, bunching up her skirts so that she could sit with her knees underneath her, leaning her elbow on the back of the bench and her chin on her hand so she could face the beautiful man next to her.

Difficult in a dress this form-fitting, but not impossible.

She could breathe better like this, curled up next to him, than in a ballroom. When had that happened?

He arched his brow. “A story highly dramatized for audience appeal, I’m sure. Thought I’d have to fight my way out of that theater the way that Duke and so many of those so-called gentlemen were looking at you—”

“You aren’t the first man to want me, Devyn,” she interrupted.

“Maybe you’ve been wanted, but not by men.” His throat bobbed as he looked down at her, shaking his head. “Only so-called men who saw you as a pretty, dutiful lady… a bauble. Men who don’t admire your honesty or your wit.”

She felt the callous of a fingertip as he pushed a strand of hair from her face.

She closed her eyes against the sharp wave of longing that sprang forth with his caress, his body so indelibly close.

She willed him to continue, to continue talking or to continue touching her; but she wanted.

Her mind and her body wanted so much more of him.

All of him that there was to receive and to take.

She wrapped an arm about his nape, her fingers exploring the downy tendrils of dark hair and spurring him to speak.

“Such men would run at the first sign of your having opinions or use you and push you away. Those “men” couldn’t find their spine if they were kicked in it,” His voice, low and guttural and possessive, did things to her that she felt in her core. “Those men, they aren’t me.”

Hell no, they weren’t.

She hadn’t thought a man like Devyn real until she’d found him. She didn’t intend to let him go.

But that wasn’t what she said.

“What would a man like you do with a woman like me?”

Could he read all of the insinuations in her eyes, roaming over the width of his shoulders and down the rest of his body everywhere her hands wanted to?

He smiled, the effect beautifully sinful on those lips of his. “Guess you’ll have to marry me to find out.”

She rested a hand against one of his sharp cheekbones, the warmth and stubble of his skin radiating through the gloves she wore.

“I think you should know that if you wanted me, you and your misplaced sense of honor don’t have to propose matrimony…because you wouldn’t be…ruining me…Devyn.”

He reached for her again, pulling her closer to him, eyes intent and dark. “Christ, woman. Are you listening? It doesn’t matter what or who is in your past, I want you to be my future.”

She didn’t let him finish. She couldn’t wait to hear the rest of his words, she’d heard enough.

Her lips searched his, taking them both in their possession all at once.

The press of his tongue into hers had her pressing more of her into his grasp.

One hand slipped beneath his jacket, hitching up his shirt to better access the smooth expanse of his abdomen.

The warmth and tautness of his skin ratched the pace of her heart.

She felt him suck in a breath, chasing it back into her own mouth.

Moria wasn’t good at declarations. She wasn’t good at baring her soul. This? This she could do. Displays of affection that both shared what was on her heart through her greedy hands and sated her lust all at once.

* * *

It was Devyn who pulled back.

“That’s not an answer, Moria.”

Why did she do this?

Just when he shared himself with her, she distracted him with lustful hands and lips thinking he wouldn’t notice she didn’t match his sentiments.

He knew she felt the same. He’d witnessed enough of her mollifying and terrifying the weak men who didn’t deserve her to know he’d have been cast aside long before if she didn’t want him back.

“Wasn’t it?” she said, her voice a sultry brush against his mouth.

He pulled back to look down into the blue-gold foundries of her eyes. There was a lusty haze there, but he saw the love too. It made him brave.

“Not for me.”

“You want to hear me say it?”

With a calloused finger, he tipped up her chin. “I want to hear you say it.”

He watched her throat bob and her eyes lock onto his. “Very well,” she lifted her head proud like a queen, “but you didn’t get on your knees to ask the question.”

This woman.

“Woman, I’ve been on my knees for you since that willow tree and you know it.”

He didn’t know what he was expecting, another heated rejoinder or witty setback, her usual avoidance maybe; but it wasn’t tears.

The watery laugh through tear-studded eyes sounded so much like joy it almost sent him to his knees.

He’d made that smile crack through her surfaces, he’d made her eyes glint like that, and he’d made that sound come out of her that he instantly wished he could bottle, not just for his own ears, but for hers, so she could hear it later.

It was something solid, something real, something he could say he gave to her.

Moria was crying, he hated that he was making her cry, even as he removed her glove to place the ring on her finger. He didn’t wait for her answer, he took her hand and placed a kiss on her palm. She held up the ring to study it in a stray beam of moonlight.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, “Like you.”

He chuckled. “I’m not sure it or I are worthy of you, but—”

She shut him up with her mouth again. She was leaning toward him and kissing him fiercely, stealing all of his air in a kiss that poured all of her affection into him and scrunched up his nose.

Her breasts pushed against his chest. He snaked a hand around her waist and one around her jaw.

His entire body responded to her, mirroring everything she put into that kiss.

“I think a display of your ...skills…would accomplish that. You told me you intend to make me come with your ring on my finger.”

The brute in him thrilled at the way her pupils dilated and her cheeks blazed. She was biting at her lip as he dropped to both of his knees in front of her.

“Here?” she squeaked, “Now?”

The shriek to her voice thrilled him even more. He was already moving underneath her skirts, working to move her drawers out of the way.

“Can you wait? Because I can’t. I’m hungry.”

To punctuate his words, he kissed his way up her leg, the silk of her stockings tickling the stubble on his face.

He’d shaved earlier, but his beard grew back fast. He planted a kiss to the underside of her knee, feeling her toned legs shake, then parted her knees.

He felt her writhe under his attention, the way she grabbed his hair and pushed him forward, rocking her cunt into him.

Both hands wrapped underneath the perfect globes of her tight arse, bringing her to his mouth. Above him, he heard her whimper. He was going to have her dripping for him. The fact that they were at a party where they could be discovered by revelers inside the ballroom only added to the thrill.

Still, he took his time. He lathed, sucked, nipped, and licked at her like his last meal.

“God that’s so…so good, Devyn.”

He could feel how close she was in the way her thighs squeezed tighter around his neck. In response, he cupped a hand around the globe of her arse and gave a gentle squeeze.

He gave her slow, small flicks of the flat of his tongue, and then varied them with faster, broader strokes as she rode his face. At the sound of her desperate groan, he used the friction of his beard against her to bring her even closer to release.

She was so sweet, so damn sweet, and so soft against him. He’d known she would be, but watching, feeling, her melt above him, being the cause for it, was a shot right to his groin.

She arched her back and he felt her legs quiver beneath him in response.

With an indulgent swipe of his tongue, he licked her and then slipped one of his fingers inside her to aid the concentrated efforts of his mouth.

The tight feel of her seizing around him drew a moan out of them both at the same time.

The stone pavers dug little needly pin pricks into his knees. The pain a counter point for the pleasure they both sought. He sped up, using both fingers and tongue, her holding onto his hair frantically through her skirts.

He added a second finger, stretching her, as she gasped, “Devyn, don’t stop. I’m going to-”

And then he felt her shatter around him.

He was there, under her, taking all of her wetness into his mouth.

He suckled her, still letting her ride his fingers as she came again on his hand.

God, she tasted so briny and sweet he had to adjust the hardness in his breeches.

He reached in his pocket for a handkerchief to clean her up.

“Devyn,” her name was urgent and frantic on his lips. “Someone’s coming.”

“I know, you. You just came on my-”

“No, I mean, someone found me out here alone.”

And then he heard her name on someone else’s lips. She was straightening her skirts to cover him. Dear god, how had she moved in skirts large enough to cover a grown man of his size?

“Darling,” she cooed, “Have you been looking for me?”

A young woman answered. “Everyone has been looking for you after that…performance.”

The voice was in front of her. Devyn tried to place it but it was unfamiliar.

“Just out here…taking some…fresh air.” Moria improvised, her voice sounded hoarse and flushed. Devyn fought the urge to shift his weight.

“Maybe you’ve had too much fresh air, you look…flushed.”

Devyn coughed before he could stifle it. Moria was fast. “Pardon me. I've got something in my throat, I believe.”

“Should I fetch your escort?”

He felt Moria reach out for the other woman’s arm, the cage her skirts made around him swaying in her direction.

“No!” she sounded frantic then gentled her voice, “I mean,” she said in a conspiratorial tone, “I think I might have…misplaced him?”

The young woman scoffed. “I don’t see how.

He seemed rather besotted. How you get both the dandy and pretty ones and the big and burly ones on their knees for you I wish I could figure out for myself.

Even after the play…he didn’t look fit to cower or run from such a show. And the thing with the chair.”

Devyn felt naive for previously having no inkling that debutantes talked this way.

“I’m so glad he isn’t here to hear you say as much. I’m sure his ego would never recover,” one of her legs nudged against him as she crossed her legs, a subtle but teasing graze of his cheek.

The other woman giggled. “If you find another, send him my way this time, please?”

Devyn planted a furtive kiss to the inside of Moria’s calf.

“Who says I’m looking for another?”

“Isn’t that why you’re out here alone?”

“You never asked, Gretchen, but he went inside to fetch me a refreshment, I believe.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Is he missing a boot, then?” the other woman asked in a whisper.

Devyn heard Moria gasp and look down. Belatedly, he realized the toe of his boot was sticking out from under her dress.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Ladies, I’ve been looking for you!” called a masculine voice.

Devyn willed his body to be still. It sounded familiar, but not quite close enough for Devyn to make out.

“Lord Clairville, I see you’ve met my friend, Lady Gretchen.”

Devyn covered his mouth with a hand to stifle a breath of surprise.

“I have. We set off in search of you and my brother and we got separated. I see she’s found at least one of you.”

Devyn was trying his damnedest to be so very still, but it was almost impossible at his size and even more so when his older brother made quips like that.

He felt her move her legs, the silk and linen underside of her dress scratching against his face.

An itch was hurtling through him. He brought a hand up to still it.

Before he knew it or could stop it, a sneeze sprang out of him.

“Achoo!” Moria covered, he hoped successfully. He felt the stupidest idiot in existence for proposing to this woman, making her come apart on a terrace, and hiding underneath her wide skirts.

“I don’t think she’s feeling herself this evening after the performance, my lord. Perhaps we should find your carriage?”

Devyn knew his brother. He heard the held back laughter and recrimination in the other man’s voice as he said, “If you’ll come with me, my lady, we shall find Miss Kelley and see to getting her out of her… misery.”

When they were both gone and Moria had ascertained that they were alone, she pulled Devyn up from his perch by his lapels, kissing him breathless. She was laughing against his mouth, and his arms were around her waist.

He kissed the top of her head. “My ring’s on your finger now,” he spoke between them, “and the taste of you lingers on my tongue.” He looked down, falling inside the cool, blue lakes of her eyes, “No going back, my tempest.”

Her arms squeezed his midsection. “Stay right here for a moment, just like this.”

He nodded, wrapping her in both arms; losing himself in the staccato of her heartbeat against him, the cool night air and the smell of flowers on a breeze, the sound of music and revelry just a few feet inside.