Charity’s fingers trembled as she plucked at the buttons of Anthony’s coat, fighting both the clutch of his arms and the taut pull of the wool as she struggled to free him from it. But she required his cooperation to remove it from his body, and with his arms wrapped around her, relieving him of the garment was an impossibility. The right sleeve caught upon his shoulder, pulled tight. Too tight to strip off of his arm.
He issued a muffled laugh, his lips crushed beneath the frantic press of hers.
“Charity,” he mumbled.
“We really ought to talk.”
Talk? Talk? “Are you mad? No!”
“No?” he echoed, baffled.
“No!” Charity grabbed a handful of his cravat, settling onto the balls of her feet as she yanked him closer.
“There is exactly one thing,” she said, in a searing hiss, “that I wish to do at this moment, and it is most certainly not talking. Now, be good for me and take off your fucking coat.”
His eye widened at the command, at the insistent tug of her fingers upon his coat, the fierce and determined yank upon his cuff.
“In your sister’s drawing room?” he uttered, though he released his hold upon her long enough for her to wrench his sleeve down.
“Yes. Yes.” Right here, right now. There was a storm roiling in her chest, and it would burst her open at some point, probably sooner rather than later. They would have to talk, certainly. But it did not have to be now, when at this moment—
When at this moment, he was no one else’s but hers. When there was no marriage to delicately avoid consummating. When every desire that she had restrained these last two months could at last be satisfied.
Another kiss, desperate and aching, and Anthony surrendered to her demands, shrugging out of his coat and letting it fall to the floor. There was the rumble of a groan in his chest as she pressed herself against him and nibbled at his lower lip. Whatever meager claim she might have laid to patience evaporated. His waistcoat went the same way, stripped off in a hurry. Charity heard the split of a seam as she tugged it from him, tossing it aside. She ripped at the buttons of his shirt, tearing at the fabric. In the distance, there was a faint pop, as of something very small sent flying with a great deal of force, and she knew he’d lost at least one button to the careless tearing of her hands.
She grasped handfuls of the soft linen of his shirt, pulling it from where it had been tucked into his trousers, yanking it off over his head. And then—ah, the heat of his bare chest, sprinkled with coarse, dark hair. For a moment she pressed herself close to savor the sensation of it, as his fingers caught in her laces in a desperate effort to untie them.
And there. Practice and experience had yielded some improvement. Her lungs expanded as the constriction of her laces eased, and she slipped off her sleeves to let the gown slide to her feet. Still there were too many layers between them, and she managed her stays herself, leaving him to pluck at the strings of her petticoat until it loosened and fell to the floor.
He sucked in a breath as she tore off her chemise, and she realized she had never actually been naked before him. Not entirely. Not like this. Because there was an intimacy in it that would have been unwise between them; a blurring of lines that, once crossed, could not have been undone.
She was going to cross every one of them this evening. With relish.
Anthony reached for her like a drowning man might grab for a lifeline, and she danced nimbly away from the grasp of his fingers with a spry leap that freed her from the clinging fabric at her feet and a whirl that sent her tangled hair flying into his face.
“No,” she said, as she let her chemise fall from her fingers and flutter to the ground. With one hand she jabbed a finger at the sofa.
“There. I want you there.” There was something decidedly feral about the quality of her voice, revealing a raw sort of aggression, of possessiveness. Greedy in a way she had never been over a man in her life, avaricious and hungry. She had never once conflated lust with love, and while she had had numerous experiences with the former, she had never known the latter. But now they were intrinsically linked in her mind, in her heart, in the heat that bloomed between her thighs. For this man alone.
And good, sweet man that he was—he obeyed without question. With the pure, unceasing devotion of a man who would have followed her to the ends of the earth had she asked it of him.
“Here?” he asked as he settled there, shifting just a bit as if his trousers had grown too tight for comfort. Buttoned up tightly behind the fall, there was a noticeable bulge tenting the fabric.
“Yes. Good.” Lamplight and shadow played across his face as she approached, and this time she did not sidestep the eager reach of his hands. Those rough fingers sought to touch every part of her as she straddled his lap, sliding up her arms, over her shoulders. Sweeping down her spine in a caress that elicited a shiver and a prickle of chill bumps. Coming to rest at last upon her hip and over her bottom.
His head bent, his mouth finding the side of her neck. The shadow of a new growth of beard upon his jaw scraped her tender skin. A gasp rolled up her throat as her head tipped back, reveling in the sensation, the delicacy and reverence of his lips on her skin—the barely-restrained hunger beneath it.
The heat of his breath fanned her flesh, and he made a ragged sound in his throat as she found the buttons of his fall, struggling to free him from the last remnants of his clothes. Even in the chill of the room, a mist of sweat broke out upon her skin. He burned her with his hands and his lips, seared her senses, and threatened to boil away the last of her scattered thoughts into so much vapor.
There. The last of the buttons gone, and he muffled an agonized sound against the hollow of her throat as she wrapped her hands around the rigid length of his cock and stroked. He choked out a foul word, his thighs tensing, turning to granite beneath her. His chest heaved with a few frenzied breaths, the tenderness of his hands upon her turning greedy, grasping.
And she—laughed. For the simple joy of making this one man lose his mind with desire. Lose his control. Lose each ingrained inhibition and every last shred of reserve.
His head lifted, his eye narrowed into a fierce glare. Through the tightness of his throat evident in every wheezing breath, he asked, “You think this is amusing?”
“I do,” she purred, and gave a savage grin as he shuddered and tensed his jaw against another firm stroke of her fist.
“I think it is delightful.” She bent to press her lips to his ear, touched the tip of her tongue to the shell of it.
“I think, at some point in the near future, I am going to have a great deal of fun torturing you just like this. And I think you are going to be a very good boy, and let me. Won’t you?”
Another stroke, and assent burst from his lungs with the anguish of a man stretched upon a rack.
“God, yes. Anything.”
And he meant it, she knew. Anything she wished. Anything at all.
“Good,” she whispered sweetly against his ear.
“Such a good boy.”
A violent shudder rippled down his spine. His voice rasped against her cheek.
“Please. Let me take you to your room. Let me…take you.”
No. A bed was for a sort of sweetness she was not capable of at this particular moment. Later, perhaps. As a dessert. But now—now she intended to gorge herself upon every bit of wickedness in which their relationship had been forged. Built in secret moments on sofas, in carriages, in gardens. It was only right that it should be consummated the same.
“No,” she said, pressing at his chest.
“You are going to lie down. And I am going to take you.”
“I haven’t even got my trousers off,” he protested as he nonetheless maneuvered himself into the position she had demanded.
“My boots—”
“Leave them on. I don’t care.” She’d not shed her stockings. The delicate silk rubbed the wool of his trousers as she straddled him once more. He breathed a sigh of relief as she loosed her grip on his cock—only to give a deep groan as she rose onto her knees, positioned him between her thighs, and sank down upon him in a smooth stroke.
Yes. Perfection. The way he grabbed for her in sheer desperation, clutching her hips in an iron grip. The strangled sound he made as his hips helplessly bucked up into hers. The way he filled the aching emptiness inside of her as she came to rest, her hands braced upon the wall of his chest. At last.
“Christ.” He swallowed hard once, again.
“Nothing—nothing has ever—felt so good as this.” He forced his hands to release her hips, slid them up her sides, found the globes of her breasts. Stroked the pads of his thumbs across her nipples.
“Ahh.” Her head fell back. A lift, a fall. He stroked her from within; a fulsome presence inside of her. The broad head of him rubbed some place of incredible sensation within her with each plunge, sending sparkles of dark starlight careening through her veins. His breath came in gasps, in pants. He braced his booted feet upon the sofa behind her, lunging to meet her with every fall of her hips.
It was too good. She had wanted this for weeks. Longed for the feeling of him moving inside her. A violent zip of pleasure rippled up her spine on the next stroke, as his hips nudged hers in exactly the right way.
“Ah, yes!” she cried, and her knees trembled with the force of it.
“Touch me like I showed you. I want to come with you inside me.”
A rough sound emerged from between his clenched teeth. His fingers left her breast, curved over her thigh. His thumb slid through the curls at the apex of her thighs, finding with unerring precision the bead of her clitoris. And he watched, riveted, as she rose and fell in smooth strokes, watched her take him again and again. His thumb never left her, using the copious dampness of her body to glide in firm, rhythmic circles.
She bit her lip against a scream that likely would have roused the entire household, her back caught in a trembling arch as the pleasure crested in a great wave. Her nails carved divots into his chest, her fingers tingling, her toes curling.
A muffled grunt, and she felt his thighs tense beneath her.
“God, I can feel you! I can’t—ah!”
And she felt him. Every helpless throb and jerk, the liquid heat that poured inside her with each pulse of his seed. For a moment she luxuriated in the feel of this; a sort of intimacy she had never before experienced, had never before wanted to experience.
At last she wilted, coming to rest against his chest, tucking her head against the curve of his shoulder. Beneath her breasts, his chest expanded as he sucked in great lungfuls of air. But he turned his head to kiss her forehead, and his arms slid around her, hands rubbing away the mist of sweat upon her back.
This was peace, she thought. The kind she had hoped to find when she had ended her career. She had just never expected to find it with someone else—anyone else. Had never expected to find someone who would make her feel cherished, adored, safe and protected.
“Now,” she whispered against the curve of his throat, “I will take you up to my room.”
“Later,” he countered in a low murmur, as if anything louder might have disturbed the calm tranquility which presently surrounded them.
“The after bits, remember. I want those first.”
***
“I can’t find my waistcoat,” Anthony said as he peered through the darkness beneath the sofa in the faint hope that it might have somehow ended up there. He’d managed to find and don his shirt, his coat—but the waistcoat seemed to have disappeared entirely, and the lamp did not burn brightly enough to make the locating of it a simple task.
“Probably I’ve got it here somewhere. I wouldn’t worry too much over it,” Charity said, and he turned to find her still stark naked but for her stockings, a bundle of clothing held in her arms.
“What?” A startled laugh drifted from his lungs.
“You can’t go up naked.”
“Why not?” she inquired with the haughty arch of a brow.
“It’s not far. And besides, the whole household is asleep.”
“It’s not yet midnight.”
“Mercy and Thomas are the parents of a four-month-old daughter,” she said, “who is presently teething. They sleep at any and every available opportunity—when they are not sneaking about for a tryst.”
Surprised, Anthony could only utter, “Really?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with a little laugh.
“I’ve been here hardly a day and I have already caught them in flagrante delicto.” A rueful shake of her head.
“I have, regrettably, seen far more of my brother-in-law than I would have preferred. But suffice it to say, provided we are quiet enough not to wake Flora, no one will ever know.” And she turned and sauntered for the door, and he was treated to the sight of her lovely bare arse as she went.
Christ. Not twenty minutes, and already he wanted her again. With a ferocity that should have disturbed him. And well she knew it. The ends of her tangled hair twitched over the small of her back as she turned just at the threshold, shifted the bundle of clothes to one arm, and crooked a finger at him.
He followed. Of course, he followed. They crept through the shadows, up the stairs, down the hall. In just a few moments, he would have her in a bed at last. After so many weeks—hell.
“My carriage,” he said on a low groan.
“My driver. My damned trunk.” He’d forgotten all of them in the chaos of the last hour or so. Every damned thing but Charity had slipped his mind entirely.
“I have to—”
“I don’t believe that’s necessary,” Charity said as her hand closed around the handle of a door near the end of the hall. She pushed the door open, and the warm glow of a fire in a hearth spilled out into the hallway.
“If I know Mercy—ah. Yours?”
Anthony peered around her, spotted a trunk pushed up against a wall, wedged between a large, comfortable-looking armchair and the side of a wardrobe.
“Mine,” he sighed in relief.
“Probably she’s already handled your driver and had your horses stabled for the evening,” she said as she slipped into the room.
“She’s become eerily efficient of late. Ah, there.” She let the clothing tumble from her arms into the seat of the armchair in a horrendous mass of wrinkles and flounces and laces.
He hoped his waistcoat was in there somewhere.
Charity perched upon the edge of the bed—a massive thing draped in a rich counterpane and bordered by thick curtains—and braced her hands at her sides in a manner that she had to know put her breasts on display perfectly. With a wicked smile, she stretched out one leg, wiggling her toes.
“Help me remove my stockings?”
She didn’t require his help for that, but he knew it was not what she was truly asking. She only wanted to tease, to play—to incite him to that same helpless arousal she had so many times before. And it seemed some sort of miracle that this beautiful, clever, utterly fascinating woman wanted him. Was there a luckier man on the whole of the earth? He was about to go to bed with the woman he loved, and who loved him in return.
Not that he’d told her in so many words. Not that she had told him. An oversight to be rectified.
She gave a little hum of satisfaction as he went to his knees before her.
“Mm. I quite like seeing you down there.”
Anthony pressed a kiss to her thigh, just above the ribbon holding up her stocking.
“I quite like being down here.” He pulled the tie loose and rolled the silk down an inch at a time, peeling her stocking off her foot.
“I went to your flat,” he said as he worked at the second ribbon.
“The instant I received your letter. But you had already gone.”
Her shoulders hunched, her gaze flicked downward.
“I couldn’t stay,” she said simply.
“You were going to marry Lady Cecily.”
“I wasn’t,” he said.
“I wasn’t, and I knew it as soon as I learned our marriage had been annulled. Like a bolt from the blue. I knew I was never going to want her. Not the way I wanted you. I could never have loved her as I love you.”
“But she is—she is so damned perfect,” she said, and there was such a plaintive pout within the cadence of her voice that he bit back a laugh.
“It is very jealous and petty of me, I know—”
“I like you jealous and petty,” he said.
“She’s a lovely woman. But I told her I had no intention of courting her—”
“You did?”
“Of course. And, happily, Lady Cecily had no intention of agreeing even if I had. She’s got a gentleman of her own whom she intends to marry.” He rose to his feet once more, just long enough to shrug out of his coat and pull his shirt off over his head. Then he took a seat beside her to tug off his boots.
“I am utterly exhausted,” he admitted with a sigh as he tossed first one boot aside, and then the other.
“I had no idea where I might find you. I had to beat down Chris’ door at an egregiously late hour and beg him to tell me where I might find you.”
“Chris?” Her brows knitted.
“He wouldn’t know. He’s not the sort to pay attention to things like that.”
“In fact, he did not know,” he said.
“But his wife made a reasonable guess. At least, she gave me a general direction.” He slid his trousers off his legs, went to work on his own stockings.
“Of course, I couldn’t leave at such an hour of the night. So I went home, slept rather poorly, and rose before dawn to pack. And then, of course, I had to get clearer directions, as I hadn’t the faintest idea of who Baron Armitage was or where in Kent he might happen to reside. I visited the solicitor, paid a call upon Lady Cecily, and came straight down. I’ve been traveling since mid-afternoon. And if you had simply stayed where you were meant to be, none of it would have been necessary.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, in a choked little voice.
“I couldn’t stay. I thought I was going to have to watch you marry her, and I couldn’t do it.” She made an odd sound in her throat, a strangled little noise—and he wrapped an arm around her waist and pressed her face to his shoulder.
“I could only say goodbye in a letter,” she said, her voice muffled against him.
“I have never had the least trouble seeing a man off with a smile before, but I couldn’t do it for you. I couldn’t have managed even the pretense of happiness about it.”
“Because you love me?”
She shoved weakly at his shoulder.
“Yes, of course I love you, you absurd—mmph.” He smothered the final dregs of her diatribe with a kiss.
“There,” he said.
“That’s all I wanted to know. You are forgiven.”
“Forgiven!” Her mouth dropped open in shock.
“For your brief flirtation with cowardice. I know it is because you are unaccustomed to such emotions. And so long as you promise not to run off again—”
“I’m considering it at this very moment.”
“—Then I will have faith that you will, eventually, grow more comfortable with them. Because I do have to be told,” he said.
“I need that vulnerability from you. Just as you insisted on it from me in the very beginning.” To be open and honest and trusting.
“I lay my heart in your hands. But I want yours in return.”
“Yes.” She laid her hand over his heart, the softness of her palm warming his skin.
“I have no experience with it. But I do love you, Anthony, and I will tell you.”
“Often.”
A shred of a laugh whisked against his cheek.
“Yes. As often as you like.”
“Good,” he said, and turned to bear her back upon the bed.
“Start now,” he said as he crawled over her, as her hands lifted to wrap around his neck and plunge into his disheveled hair.
“And don’t stop until I tell you.”