A Wicked Pursuit (26 page)

She heard the rip of cloth, and she grinned, pulling him back down to her. She was feeling reckless and abandoned, sufficiently reckless and abandoned that she reached for the buttons on the fall of his breeches.

He grunted as her fingers blindly found him, circling velvety, hot male flesh instead of cloth. Goodness, he was large, she thought, as he sprang forward against her hand.

“Damnation, Gus, don’t,” he said, sucking in his breath. “I’m too primed already.”

She didn’t understand, but she didn’t have to, either, not when he kissed her again. He slipped two fingers inside her, easing and widening her and sleeking inside her at the same time. Impatiently she raised her hips to welcome him farther, craving more, and suddenly it wasn’t his fingers at her opening, but his cock, pressing into her. She started and twisted as he pushed harder, surprised by the fullness and the little sting that she realized must have been her maidenhead.

He paused, panting, and gazed down at her. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said gruffly. “Trust me that it will be better.”

She nodded, her own breathing ragged, and reached up to cradle his handsome face in her hands. She’d followed him this far. Why would she stop trusting him now?

But when he slowly began to move inside of her, she gasped and her eyes widened, startled by his cock stroking her from deep within while his linen shirt grazed her bare nipples. With her hands on his shoulders, she tentatively began to move with him, trying to answer his rhythm. She raised her legs to push against him, and he groaned, which she’d already learned was a good sign. She lifted her legs higher, wrapping them around his hips, and groaned herself when his cock slipped even deeper into her.

“That’s it, Gus,” he said, grinding against her. “You have all I can give.”

Ordinarily that would have made her smile with joy, but she was beyond smiling now. The heat that he’d been building within her was like a wildfire now, and each time he withdrew and plunged back in only made her burn hotter still. She slid her hands beneath his shirt to find his bare back, her nails digging deep into his muscles as she rocked with him.

Everything was building now, higher and higher until with a suddenness that stunned her, she soared free, her body releasing and convulsing around him. With a long groan, he came, too, pounding into her again and again before, exhausted, he dropped on the bed beside her.

She felt his cock slide from her passage, with a little gush of their mingled spendings, and when he reached for her, pulling her close, she smiled and curled into him. Only now did she realize how, in their haste, they hadn’t even kicked off their shoes, and with misguided guilt she thought of how Father would be furious if he ever saw shoes on the best bedchamber counterpane.

Foolish, foolish, she thought, drowsy and sated and safe. Oh, she’d never felt as safe as she did now with his arm around her. No, better than safe: She felt cherished. He’d promised her he’d make this better, but she’d never expected, never imagined, never dreamed it would be like this.

She felt as if this coupling had somehow bound their souls together as well, as if all the kissing and teasing and laughing that had served to draw them closer this summer had only been a prelude to the intimacy of this moment. She was his now, and he was hers. It was as simple, and as complicated, as that.

He brushed her hair aside to kiss her nape. “My own Gus,” he murmured. “Are you all right?”

“Of course,” she said, smiling that he’d show such concern. “I’m with you.”

He grunted and pulled her closer. She thought of asking after his leg, but then decided not to. If they’d done anything to hurt it, she would have known by now, and it was better if she let him think she’d forgotten about it entirely. Which, really, she had.

She smiled, drifting a little closer to sleep.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said softly, so softly she wasn’t sure at first that she’d even heard it. But then he said it again, and she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t. “I’m sorry, sorry for all of this.”

She had to answer, and she twisted around to face him. “Why should you be sorry for anything, Harry?”

He did look sorry, his blue eyes melancholy. “Because it wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said. “I rucked up your petticoats and tumbled you like some common tavern wench, and I’ll never—”

“Hush,” she said gently, pressing her fingers across his lips to silence him. “That’s nonsense, Harry. That
was
perfect, because it was with you. Why would you wish it any differently?”

“Because I love you, Gus,” he said gruffly. “There, I’ve said it, and I hadn’t meant to do that, either. I love you.”

She stared at him, forgetting to breathe. She’d never doubted that she loved him, but to hear the same words from him now, here, after what they’d just done, was almost too much for her.

“I love you,” he said again, more forcefully. “You needn’t stare at me like I’ve grown another head, Gus. I love you, and I’d rather hoped that you—what the devil?”

“Miss Augusta?” That was Mr. Royce, knocking and addressing her from the other side of the bedchamber door. “Are you within, Miss Augusta?”

“She’s occupied, Royce,” Harry called. “Go away.”

“You can’t say that to him,” Gus said, sitting up. “It must be important for him to come here. What is it, Mr. Royce?”

“I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Augusta,” the butler said through the door, “but there is a footman waiting in the front hall, sent in advance of His Grace the Duke of Breconridge. His Grace should be arriving here shortly, and I thought you would wish to be advised.”

“My father.” Harry pushed himself upright, stunned. Here he’d been in the middle of the most important conversation of his life with the most important woman in it, only to have his father interrupt. It was the one sure thing for which his family could be counted upon—no matter how far away they might be, they would still always appear at the most inopportune moment possible.

“Your
father
!” Gus wailed. “Your father here
now
!”

She flew off the bed before Harry could stop her, frantically shaking and smoothing her skirts and tugging her shift and stays back over her bare breasts.

“He’s not here yet,” Harry said, hating to see her covering herself again so soon. He’d spent weeks speculating what her breasts were like, and the reality had so far exceeded his speculation that he could have happily enjoyed them the rest of the day. “It’s only the running footman he’s sent ahead. We still have a little more time.”

“But His Grace will be here soon enough, and I must be downstairs to greet him,” she said, her anxiety like a palpable, growing force in the room. “I want to make a better start with him than I did with His Grace your cousin.”

“You were fine with my cousin.” With a sigh of regret, he began putting his own clothes to rights, buttoning the fall on his breeches. He still had so much he wished to say to her, but there was no point in even trying when she was like this, and again he groaned over his father’s exquisite timing. “Sheffield found you most charming.”

“He couldn’t have found me anything, Harry, because I scarcely said a word in his company,” she said, trying to pin her gaping bodice closed with the few pins that remained. “I found him
daunting
. Oh, look at me! Do you have any notion where the pins went when you pulled them out?”

“I dropped them,” he said honestly. “At the time, I’d other things to consider.”

She was standing before him with an odd, self-conscious look on her face. “Forgive me, Harry, but I believe I must make use of your washstand. Turn around, if you please, and don’t watch.”

Dutifully he turned around. It seemed peculiar that after all they’d just shared—and what she’d freely let him see—she’d turn suddenly modest when it came to washing herself. But then, this would all be new to her, and he smiled to think that he’d been her first lover, and if he had anything to say about it, her only one, too.

“I don’t want you to be daunted by my father,” he said, raising his voice as he still sat on the bed with his back to her. “He wouldn’t want that, either. He may be a duke, but he’s really quite ordinary.”

“He’s not ordinary at all,” she said with despair. “He’s not even an ordinary duke. He’s the Duke of Breconridge, and he has royal blood, and he’s vastly wealthy and powerful
and
he’s friends with His Majesty.”

“You can say most of that about me as well, Gus,” he said, “and you manage not to be daunted by me.”

“You’re different because you’re you,” she said with succinct, if not exactly comprehensible, logic. “Am I presentable now, Harry?”

He turned back around and felt that now-familiar little jounce when he saw her. She wasn’t a beauty in the tedious, predictable way of regular features and a classical profile, but to him she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She stole his breath away; there was no other way to describe it. He loved her round face and her freckled nose, her wide, pale gray eyes and her pink mouth like a rosebud, because he loved her.

He especially loved how she looked at this moment, a little ruffled and rumpled, with her hair disarrayed and her skirts mussed, because he was responsible for it. But with her mouth still swollen from his kisses and her eyes with that heavy-lidded satiety of a well-pleasured woman, there was also no doubt what she’d been doing, and the way her skirts were creased mostly in the front, where he’d pushed them up and crushed them, was the final telltale sign.

His father would see it in an instant, too.

“You look lovely,” he assured her, which was true. “Absolutely lovely. My father will be enchanted.”

“Truly?” she asked, self-consciously smoothing her hair again.

“Truly,” he said, touched by her insecurity about meeting his father. It was hard to believe that the same Gus who briskly oversaw a houseful of servants could be so intimidated at the prospect of his family. “I should warn you that if he’s come racing all the way back from Naples, he’s going to be much more concerned with my leg than with you, at least in the beginning.”

“That’s why you must be spruced up as well.” She picked up his coat from the floor, critically brushing some invisible dust from the dark wool before she held it out for him to put his arms in the sleeves. “I want him to see that I’ve taken excellent care of you. You’re his heir. You’re important to him. Likely he already blames my family for you being hurt in the first place, and I want him to know that I’ve done my best to—to—oh, Harry, why am I being so
foolish
?”

Her face crumpled, and she bowed her head into her hands. At once he took her into his arms, the most natural of all things for him to do, and held her close. He liked holding her, comforting her like this. She’d done so much for him that it felt good to be able to do the same for her. He felt responsible for her, the way a man was supposed to.

“You’re not foolish, Gus,” he said. “Not at all.”

She snuffled against his shoulder, doubtless leaving a few tears for his sharp-eyed father to spot. He fished in his pocket for his handkerchief and handed it to her.

“It’s natural for you to feel a bit, ah, unsettled, under the circumstances,” he continued, hoping he was sounding manly and consoling. This was new territory for him as well. In the past, his customary response to weeping young women was to depart as quickly as possible. But this was Gus. This was different. “But you’re never foolish.”

She lifted her head and blew her nose noisily into his handkerchief. “Nor am I a spoilsport.”

“No,” he agreed, though he’d forgotten all about that. Even the chamber horse seemed like eons ago. “I’m not sure I’d love you if you were.”

At last she smiled through her tears, like the sun breaking through the clouds, or at least the sun if it had acquired a red nose. He couldn’t help but smile back.

“I do love you, you know,” he said, and with his fingers beneath her chin he lifted her head to kiss her, lightly, sweetly, because that seemed right, too.

But what wasn’t right was having Royce again at the door, informing them that His Grace’s carriage had been spotted on the upper road. There was no denying Father’s imminent arrival after that, and as swiftly as they could, he and Gus made their way downstairs to the front hall, with Gus rushing briefly belowstairs to address the servants in regard to the house’s latest guests.

Gus had suggested that Harry wait in the nearest drawing room where he could sit in a chair, but he’d insisted on being here in the hall. He hadn’t seen Father for nearly a year, and despite the duke’s inconvenient arrival, Harry was looking forward to the reunion. He wanted to see Father as soon as he arrived, and as a matter of pride Harry also wanted to greet him not as an invalid, but upright and on the mend, albeit with the support of the crutch.

But his main reason for being here now was to be at Gus’s side, exactly where he belonged, and where she needed him to be.

She came bustling from the servants’ hall just as Father’s carriage drew up before the door. She stood beside Harry, so close that her skirts brushed against his legs. Addressing the servants had obviously helped her with her nervousness. She once again appeared the composed mistress of the house, and Harry didn’t miss how she’d paused long enough to clip her silver chatelaine to her waist, the dangling keys a badge of her role in the household. He was inordinately proud of her, his own dear Gus, and he was determined to show her to best advantage to his father so he’d feel the same about her.

He saw how she purposefully raised her chin and swallowed, the little ripple of anxiety along her throat. He would have taken her hand in his to reassure her, but she’d already clasped her hands before her, another of her no-nonsense ways of bolstering her confidence. Instead he leaned over, whispering in her ear so no one else could hear.

“Remember that I love you,” he said. “Whatever else may come, remember that.”

She turned toward him quickly, her flash of a smile bright and endearing. “I love you, too, Harry.”

She loves me:
There it was, the first time she’d said it to him, and he couldn’t help but grin in return. She loved him! He hadn’t doubted it, not really, but to hear her speak the words aloud was like the most magical incantation, a spell that sealed his happiness.