Page 11 of Chloe and the Devil (Regency Spinsters Alliance #2)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lucien, unable to look at or acknowledge the existence of any of the other guests except Chloe, was therefore a witness to the fading of every bit of the excitement and happiness which had been in her eyes just seconds earlier when their eyes first met.

He turned his narrowed and steely gaze upon the two young ladies who were obviously just taking their leave. He recognized them as the two granddaughters of the very wealthy and influential Lady Roxborough. Two young ladies Gabriel had informed him were also members of the Spinsters Alliance to which both Chloe and Lily belonged.

Lucien would not be happy if, by word or deed, either of those young ladies had admonished Chloe for showing her pleasure in seeing him again.

The exact same pleasure Lucien felt in seeing her again.

His afternoon had been productive, even if his impatience to be with Chloe again had also made it deeply irritating. None of the people he had spoken to had admitted, when confronted, to stealing a journal from Chloe. Nor had Lucien sensed any of them were lying. The number of people remaining who could have done the deed was narrowing rapidly.

In fact, the young and giggling ladies now walking away from Chloe were two of the four remaining members of the Spinsters Alliance who needed to be questioned on the matter. Georgiana Stapleton and Rose Appleby were the other two.

But they could all wait, because tonight, Lucien wished to spend time with Chloe. The woman he recognized he was becoming as obsessed with as Gabriel was with his lovely Lily.

Did that obsession worry Lucien?

It did not!

Chloe was the most beautiful, the most fascinating, the most intelligent, the most passionate and responsive woman Lucien had ever had the pleasure of knowing. Of wanting to know. He was desperate to be the eager recipient of all that passion again as soon as possible.

“Where is your great-aunt?” he demanded the moment he reached her side.

She gave a surprised laugh. “Good evening to you too, Your Grace.” She gave a curtsey, mischief gleaming in her eyes as she looked up at him from beneath lowered lashes before straightening.

“The hell with proprieties.” He took a firm grip of her arm. “You know this house better than me.” He rarely, if ever, attended balls and certainly couldn’t recall being in Lord Blakeley’s home before now. “Where can we go to be alone?”

“It is early still, so I doubt anyone has found reason to escape to the privacy of the library as yet?—”

“Take me there,” he instructed.

“Lucien—”

“Would you rather I kissed you in front of all the other guests?”

Chloe gasped. “You would not dare!”

His mouth curved into a derisive smile. “If you think, for even a moment, that I am in the least interested or concerned about the opinion of a single other person present here this evening, then I must inform you, my dear Chloe, that you are sadly mistaken.” He sobered after making the pronouncement. “Which means you have precisely thirty seconds—and that is on the generous side—to take me away from this hellish crowd and into the privacy of the library, before I decide to kiss you in front of all of them!”

Chloe blushed a becoming shade of pink before she turned and hurried down a hallway to their left. Lucien followed her, still holding firmly on to her arm.

He looked quickly about the candlelit library, ensuring they were completely alone before turning to lock the door, taking Chloe in his arms, and claiming the softness of her lips with his.

He instantly felt the strains of the day ease and put the thought of his meeting with Chloe’s blackmailer later this evening to the back of his mind.

Those thoughts were instantly replaced with the rising passion that was never far away now whenever he was able to be alone with Chloe.

Even when he wasn’t alone with her!

Which should have been a problem, but had become something which Lucien simply felt no further wish to concern himself with even thinking about. The situation was what it was.

The Fates, or some other unnamed entity, had decided Chloe was to be his destiny. After initially fighting the notion, Lucien no longer had the strength or inclination to continue to do so.

* * *

Whatever Chloe had expected of this evening, it was certainly not this. Lucien had always been the most in-control and circumspect of gentleman she had ever known. His behavior this evening was anything but either of those things.

And for the moment, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Their heavy, ragged breathing, as their kisses grew increasingly passionate, was the only sound in the room besides the crackling of the fire in the hearth. They might have been the only two people in the house—in all of London!—even the sound of the other guests not permeating the solid oak door keeping them at bay.

“You are becoming as necessary to me as breathing,” Lucien groaned as he held her in his arms and tasted and kissed the length of her throat.

Chloe thrilled at his words, even as she arched her neck to allow him greater access, her arms clinging tightly about his waist. Lucien had been that for her for a very long time.

“My need to make love to you is bordering on raging out of my control,” he admitted, his searching lips warm and hungry against her skin.

Again, happiness burst inside Chloe upon hearing this confession from a man she knew usually had a will as strong as steel and just as coldly determined.

But, ecstatic as she was at learning how much he wanted her, there was something else Chloe wanted… “What if I wish to make love to you first?”

Lucien stilled, his breathing erratic as he raised his head to look at her searchingly. “What does that mean to you?”

Chloe’s gaze did not flinch from meeting that piercing one. “I wish to give you the same release you gave me that night in your carriage.” Her cheeks burned, but she still refused to lower her gaze. “When you kissed me earlier, I felt how hard you were, down there, how long and thick.” The heat in her cheeks deepened. “I wished more than anything to be able to see and touch that hardness.” She swallowed. “To do more than see and touch.”

A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. “Is this another one of your fantasies?”

“It is.”

“And did your mother’s books tell you how to go about giving a man that pleasure?”

“They did.”

In truth, at the time of reading about it, Chloe had thought the description of a woman baring a man’s cock, holding and stroking it before taking the tip in her mouth, and then sucking and laving it with her tongue, while at the same time cupping and squeezing the balls beneath, sounded fictional.

It no longer sounded that way since she and Lucien had become intimate. In fact, Chloe ached to do all those things with him.

“Have you ever been with another man in that way?” Lucien rasped, his eyes glittering coldly.

Chloe gasped her surprise at the question. “Of course not. I want you, Lucien.” She felt the tension ease from his body as she pressed closer against him. “Only you.”

“You are aware of what will happen if I allow you to do this?”

“Yes.”

“And if I insist you swallow every drop of release I give you?”

To swallow down Lucien’s essence, to have a part of him inside her, sounded the height of eroticism to Chloe. “I will accept it gladly,” she assured hungrily. “Please, Lucien,” she pleaded. “Please!”

* * *

Lucien knew he should forbid such an intimacy. Especially when they were in someone else’s crowded home where a ball was taking place outside the room the two of them were secluded in.

He should.

But he knew he wasn’t about to do so.

He had learned earlier today, after making love to Chloe, that taking himself in hand no longer satisfied his need for this particular woman. The thought of having Chloe touching him , of her taking his cock into her mouth, pushed him beyond his ability to even think of refusing her.

“Very well.” He nodded abruptly. “Do you want me to continue standing or…”

“In my mother’s book, the man’s knees threatened to buckle beneath him when he—when he reached the zenith of his pleasure.” Chloe’s cheeks were so red, they looked incapable of absorbing any more color. “As I am sure you would not like that, I suggest that we move so that you are sitting on the couch and I am kneeling on the floor between your thighs.”

His smile was wholly self-derisive. “Your thoughtfulness is appreciated.”

Chloe gave him a teasing smile. “I aim to please!”

Lucien had no doubt that Chloe was about to please him greatly. More so than any other woman had in all of his eight-and-thirty years. Because it was not only passion and desire and a need for release he felt when he was with her. It was so very much more than that.

* * *

Chloe would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit to being nervous as she knelt between Lucien’s parted thighs and began to unfasten his pantaloons.

Reading about something and actually carrying out those actions herself were two entirely different things. For one thing, there had been no mention in the story Chloe read of the woman’s hands shaking so much that she had difficulty unfastening even the large buttons on her lover’s pantaloons, despite having removed her gloves first. For another, this was Lucien , not some faceless stranger Chloe felt no connection with.

The knowledge of who he was and what he was to her almost overwhelmed Chloe. His heat surrounded and drew her in. His scent, a mixture of male spices and musk, invaded and claimed all her senses, drawing her even deeper into that well of desire.

His cock, when it sprang free after she had finally managed to unfasten all the buttons and untie his drawers, was every bit as long and thick as she had felt earlier today, and reached as high as his navel.

A long vein ran the length of that thickness, pulsing when Chloe’s fingers curled about but could not meet around that girth. The skin was surprisingly smooth and soft, like silk encasing steel. The top was red and moist and flaring out above the tightness of the skin beneath.

Instead of thinking it ugly, Chloe found it beautiful. A work of art she wished to explore.

It might not be to everyone’s taste, of course, but she believed she had never seen anything so fascinating. Or so deliciously tempting.

She moistened her lips as she glanced up to where Lucien lay slumped down on the couch, watching her from between narrowed lids. “May I?” she prompted huskily.

He smiled slightly, no doubt at hearing her voice the same question he had to her earlier today. “You may do exactly as you wish with and to me.” He confirmed that was the case when he repeated the same answer she had given him then. “I know I shall enjoy it, no matter what you do,” he encouraged gruffly.

It was all the reassurance Chloe needed to continue. She now curled both hands about the girth of his cock as she lowered her head before parting her lips to take the bulbous tip into her mouth.

* * *

“Dear God…!” Lucien groaned his pleasure the moment the heat of Chloe’s mouth engulfed the whole of the top of his cock. His hands moved, without him realizing it, to become entangled in the softness of her hair to hold her in place.

He let loose another involuntary groan of ecstasy when he felt the soft rasp of her tongue licking and then delving into the slit at the cockhead.

That rapture shot down the length of his cock to his balls, before fanning out to claim the rest of his body.

He no longer slouched almost boneless, every part of his body now tense and taut as his hips began to thrust up, pushing his cock deeper into Chloe’s mouth. He couldn’t seem to stop, pushing deeper, and then deeper still, until his cockhead hit the back of her throat and she began to gag.

Bringing Lucien back to an awareness of exactly what he was doing, and with whom. “I am so sorry.” He sat up with the intention of prying her gently off his cock.

His movements stilled when Chloe, without losing her grip on his cock or ceasing her lapping and licking of his cockhead, glared up at him through dark lashes.

Eyes that visibly glistened with unshed tears, but at the same time sparkled with a determination which warned him against even thinking of attempting to remove his cock from her mouth.

The stubborn tightening of her lips about his shaft and the fierce sucking of the cockhead in her mouth rendered him incapable of doing any such thing.

Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on Chloe. Watching her was making him even more aroused, as her hands began to pump his cock to the same rhythm as she once again sucked the head deeper and deeper.

Finally, it was the movement of her throat, brushing against his cockhead, which signaled the end of his control.

“Chloe, I am going to come!” he warned desperately. “If you do not wish me to— Oh!” Lucien’s breath left him in a rush as Chloe answered him by tightening her fingers and sucking harder.

The pulsing release of his cum shot the length of his cock before flooding her mouth, where it was quickly swallowed down before another spurt could take its place. Then another. And another. Lucien believed he had never come so hard and for so long in his life.

Chloe, his beautiful, undaunted Chloe, continued to swallow every drop of his essence.

Even when that release had ceased, she kept her lips clamped loosely about his cockhead, keeping that bulbous top resting against her gently lapping tongue until Lucien’s breath had returned to normal.

He was finally able to think again too. To focus. To look at Chloe and see how dark her eyes had become and how flushed her cheeks were. Saliva and cum glistened at the sides of her mouth and on her chin, no doubt from where Lucien had spilled so hotly and so copiously that she had been unable to swallow it quickly enough.

Those thoughts alone were enough to cause his cock to pulse as it attempted to harden once more. It was too soon after his last release, of course. But that did not mean Lucien didn’t long for a time when the two of them might be able to rest together in each other’s arms until passion overcame them a second time.

Chloe looked up at him, a question in her eyes.

“We have been absent long enough and must return to the ballroom if your reputation is not to be irrevocably damaged.” Lucien refused that invitation with regret. “Once I have returned you to your great-aunt’s side, I must take my leave if I am to meet the blackmailer in St. James’s Park.”

Reminding them both, Lucien saw by the deepening of the shadows in Chloe’s eyes, of the threat hanging over her position in Society.

Not that Lucien had any intention of allowing that to happen. He would swiftly and silently dispose of this blackmailer—without feeling a single moment of regret—to prevent such an outcome, if it became necessary for him to do so.