Page 22 of How to Seduce a Viscount (Wed Within a Year #3)

‘You’re too modest.’ She pressed him back down. ‘You needn’t act the monk with me. I like a man with some experience under his belt and a little discernment. Now, shall we get back to the brandy?’

‘Yes.’ He sighed the word as she took the stopper out of the decanter and drizzled careful droplets on his membrum. She bent her head to him and drew her tongue along his ridge until his breath came in shuddered exhalations as wave after wave of pleasure shook him. Had he ever been so worshipped?

She laved him as if she took great pleasure in pleasing him, as if this was pleasure for her as well. She mouthed the tip of him and he wound his hands into the depths of her hair, searching for something to anchor himself in the sea of sensation washing over him.

‘Wren—’ he called her name in warning. He would not be able to withstand it much longer.

She lifted her head from between his legs and his breath caught at the sight of her wet lips, the smokiness of want in her silver-grey eyes, an absolute passion-fantasy come to life.

He wanted to remember this moment always.

She gave him a smile, knowledge in her eyes as she crawled up his body and straddled him.

She bent to his mouth and kissed him, letting him taste the brandy and sex on her tongue.

‘Me on top this time, you promised,’ she whispered against his mouth, her hand guiding his membrum to her entrance, her hips rising up and then lowering as she slid onto him.

She began to move and his body ran riot, his eyes feasting on the sight of her.

Her hands in her hair, drawing it up, letting it spill through her fingers, and drawing it up again.

Her breasts thrust forward against the fabric of her chemise, nipples hard and pink beneath.

He filled his hands with them as she sighed her joy and his body gathered for completion.

Too late, he realised his mistake. He was not in control.

She was. Would she think to come off him in time?

His hands slipped to her hips in warning.

He struggled for coherency. He was nearly too far gone to care about anything except the sight of her—her eyes shut, her head thrown back, her long lovely neck exposed.

She was lost entirely to the pleasure riding them both.

She opened her eyes at the last and leaned over him, her hair a curtain about them both as if this moment existed out of time and sealed his climax with a kiss.

He spent in glorious release, his mouth swallowing her cries as she joined him there on pleasure’s shores.

It had been beautiful, stunning and irrevocable.

He hoped she wouldn’t pay for it, but the thought echoed in his mind even as the echoes of pleasure lapped his body— for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Somehow, in some way, they would pay.

Wren never would have guessed such a reaction to love-making existed.

That having done it once, she’d want to do it again.

Once was usually enough to erase any mystique a man might hold.

Men without their clothes were an antidote to many desires.

But not this one. Luce Parkhurst was not an antidote. He was an addiction she wanted to feed.

Sex with Luce Parkhurst had not cured her of infatuation or curiosity. It had instead inflamed both. She’d been reckless with him just now, confident that the calendar was on her side, that she could afford this indulgence just the once.

His hand was at her breast as they lay together, listening to the room—the tick of the mantel clock, the occasional pop of the fire from the warm flicker of flames.

‘This is the kind of peace I’ve only ever dreamed about,’ she said softly.

‘Warmth, security, comfort.’ She did not dare define ‘comfort’ too much for fear of crossing an unspoken line.

They owed each other nothing but the moment.

She expected nothing. They had lives that needed to carry on beyond this affair.

‘You shall have those things when you retire.’ Luce drew a circle through the thin fabric about her areola, his voice offering quiet reassurance in the dark.

She wanted to argue with that. Wanted to point out that she had those things now because of him.

It was his arms that created the warmth, not the fire.

His arms that offered her security and provided the comfort.

She could not duplicate those things on her own.

‘You have those things without retiring.’ She looked up at him, proffering the small challenge. ‘You’ve had them all your life. I envied your family, you know. Through the earl, I could watch you all from afar. I thrived on your letters and reports like some children thrive on fairy tales.’

‘Grandfather read them to you?’ Luce gave a laugh. ‘They’re hardly reading for a child.’

‘They were for me. Your grandfather caught me in his office one day, sitting in a corner reading a letter from one of you. He said if I liked them so much, he’d read them to me at night before I went to bed.

They were like my version of Arabian Nights, all those adventures.

I knew that was what I wanted to do, what I was made to do.

’ She nestled her head into the corner of his shoulder.

‘Your grandfather is a good man. You have a good family, Luce. You’re very lucky.

I would give anything for a family of my own. ’

She’d never voiced that secret out loud to anyone.

There’d been no one to tell, no one to entrust that secret to.

Not even the earl. If the earl knew, he would probably have pulled her out of the game and tried to find her a husband.

He was a problem solver like Luce. He couldn’t stand to let a problem remain unresolved.

She couldn’t let him do that. It wasn’t as simple as merely finding a man.

She wanted to love that man the way the countess had loved the earl; the way the Parkhurst husbands and wives loved each other.

Luce reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers. ‘Perhaps you will have a family in retirement. Maybe that’s the best reason of all to leave the game. You’ll have a chance to make your life over completely.’

‘Your brothers didn’t have to leave the game to have that.

You don’t have to leave the game. I hear you’re an uncle now and about to be an uncle again in the summer.

’ She held their hands up to the firelight, watching the flames play through them.

He did not have to tell lies to have a family.

That would not be the case for her. Lies would be the foundation and protection of any family she sought to create.

They could never know the real her and that web of deceit still might not be enough.

She caught the grin on his face. ‘I am. My sister, Guenevere’s, baby was born at the end of December.

I stopped to see him on my way home from Kieran’s wedding.

They named him James Henry. James is one of the former Duke of Creighton’s names and Henry is of course for my grandfather.

So, young Jamie is named after two great men.

And you’ve heard right. Mary and Caine are expecting.

They announced it over Christmas. Grandfather must have told you.

That information is still fairly new.’ He gave a laugh.

‘I think we’ve officially entered that season of life where everyone will be having babies.

I expect to be overrun with nieces and nephews over the next ten years. ’

From the sound of it, he wouldn’t mind that season of life a bit.

‘You like children. You haven’t stopped smiling since you started talking about them.

’ She could easily imagine him with a child on his shoulders, trotting them through the library, stopping to have them take a book down from a high shelf, or playing in the snow outdoors with them, showing them how to make a snowball.

It was too easy to see him here at the abbey—the abbey finished, a family of his own surrounding him.

She swallowed against the emotion it raised.

He would go on to his dreams while it seemed unlikely she would ever find the right man for hers.

Because she’d already found him and she could not have him.

Luce Parkhurst was not for her. She had to leave the game and he had to stay.

He was an earl’s grandson, a viscount in his own right, and she was a street rat.

He was honourable and noble. He wrestled with his conscience and measured the greater good against his own happiness while she withheld information from him about his beloved brother.

She was not truthful and yet she had her reasons.

Surely, her heart argued, Luce would understand that.

Neither of them were as white as snow. Moral ambiguity was a part of a Horseman’s life as much as it was a part of any Sandmore agent’s life.

She hoped there would be clemency for her. In that they were alike.

She snuggled against him. ‘Sometimes I can’t decide if we’re alike or different.

You love winter and I love summer. You love the cold and I love the warmth.

You want to leave the game and I want to stay because I have nothing and no one outside of it and you have everything—a home, a title, financial security.

But then I think beneath the surface of all that, we both love England.

We’ve dedicated our lives to its safety.

We have lived similar lives edged in danger that have shaped who we are.

We’ve had experiences, travels, and educations that few can understand or appreciate outside of ourselves.

What do you think, Luce? Are we more alike or are we different? ’

Her answer was a quiet snore. She gave a soft laugh and smoothed back his tangled hair.

Well, would wonders never cease? Luce Parkhurst was human after all, and it only made her love him more.

That would be yet another secret she’d have to keep to herself.

No good could come of telling anyone, especially not Luce.