How to Woo a Widow (5 page)

“Y-es.” She heard the catch in her voice and was both frustrated and strangely elated. While one part of her certainly did not think becoming involved with him was a good idea, another more treacherous part reveled in it. It had been a long time—so long—since she’d felt a man’s touch and her body exalted in his every caress.

“I think,” he murmured against her palm, the touch of his tongue sending a jolt straight to the softness between her thighs. “I think you like what I do to you, sweet Portia.” She looked down to find his eyes smoldering up at her. Good lord, she thought, he’s exquisite. How will I ever find the strength to tell him no?

“Of course I do,” she said aloud, hoping her voice sounded normal. “You are an accomplished lover, I have little doubt. I cannot fault your technique, sir. It is not your fault that your touch leaves me cold.”

Instead of the outrage she’d hoped to provoke, however, he laughed, still holding her hand firmly in his grip.

“If that is the case, dear lady,” he said with a grin that she felt down to her toes, “then I shall simply have to work harder.”

And with that, he tucked her hands behind his neck and leaned down, taking her lips with his own. There was nothing tentative in his touch. No questions. This was an assault on her very senses. The feel of his soft lips against hers, the gentle prod of his tongue as he pushed inside her, his strong arms holding her tight—it left her feeling at once cherished and overwhelmed. Never. Not with William, not with any of the gentlemen who had courted her since his death, had she felt the kind of desire that spread through her now like wildfire. For the first time she felt gloriously alive, with feeling, with wanting, with love.

“There,” he whispered against her mouth. “You do not seem cold right now. Perhaps it was a chill?” She could not hold back a sigh as she felt his lips work their way down her chin, to the sensitive place below her ear.

“Perhaps,” she said on a sigh as his tongue traced a path down into the dip of her collarbone.

“Or,” he murmured, his hands busy with the fastenings at the front of her riding habit, “maybe you are mistaking temperature for something else.”

She felt his elegant, but oh so masculine fingers parting the front of her bodice with the skill of an expert. The sear of his bare skin against her own was sheer heaven. “You may be ri—” The words on the tip of her tongue disappeared as she felt his mouth tracing a path toward her nipple, which had hardened in expectation of the caress. Too caught up in the moment to react to her body’s betrayal of her mind, she arched her back to give him more access. “Oh…Tony…”

He whispered soothing nonsense words as he continued on his path downward to her breast. Dear god, she was beautiful. Tony reveled in the softness of her pale skin, the weight of her in his arms. When he closed his mouth around her and sucked, she bucked beneath him, crying out before he could reach up to smother the sound.

“Shhh, darling,” he crooned against her skin. “We don’t want anyone coming to our little nest to investigate.”

He thought perhaps that reminder of where they were and what they did would spoil the mood and bring her to her senses, but when he looked up into her eyes a light shone there that told him she was fully aware that this interlude might have consequences. And he was both relieved and honored when she gave him a little nod that seemed to acknowledge the fact. He rose up to kiss her mouth, his passion for her and his relief at knowing she would not resist him making him rougher than he could control. Opening her mouth more fully to his sensual assault, she seemed to thrill in it, to savor every thrust of his tongue. He shifted a little and used one hand to raise her skirts, then lifted her to straddle him. He felt her hands grasp his shoulders as his hand moved across the soft skin of her thigh, inching closer to the center of her passion. She stifled a cry as he delved a finger into the slit of her pantalets, and reveled in the slick evidence of her passion. Teasing her entrance with first one finger than another, he felt her frustration as he kept his hand just out of reach as she rotated her hips in an effort to rub against him.

“Easy,” he whispered against her neck, loving the feel of her breath against his chest, the weight of her across his thighs, in his arms. When he finally plunged his fingers into her welcoming warmth, they both exhaled sighs of relief, before he began to thrust slowly in and out of her in a rhythm she soon echoed with the rise and fall of her hips. His own sex strained against the fall of his breeches and he gritted his teeth even as he exalted in the pleasure he gave her.

“Oh god, Tony,” she whispered against him as her movements became more frenzied, and he pressed harder, faster within her. When her crisis came he captured her mouth and her moan of release, continued to stroke his firm fingers into her even as he reached between them to unbutton his breeches. When he took his hand away to take hold of her hip beneath her skirts, she whimpered in frustration but was soon exhaling a sigh of relief as he replaced his fingers with his pulsing cock.

“Yes,” Portia whispered, her voice lost in the passion of the moment. “Yes.”

The feeling was incredible. Still sensitive from her first orgasm, Portia felt the clench of her sex around him radiate outward to her toes and fingertips. Tony was big. And for a moment she closed her eyes against his achingly slow penetration. But the human body had a great capacity for adjustment, she found, and even as she marveled at the feeling of fullness rejoiced that it was Tony she felt at last within her.

Beneath her fingers she felt the flex and relaxation of his shoulders as he lifted her by the hips and thrust once more to the hilt into the softness of her body, filled her with his glorious heat. It was powerful, elemental, this current that ran between their bodies. That joined them in this dance as old as the stars. She lost herself in the sheer joy of it. Listened to the sounds of the wind in the trees, the moist noise of their coupling, the gasps escaping them both as they came together again and again.

Then, before she even knew it was upon her, Portia felt the clenching begin within her. Felt her body begin to clasp him even as he pulled back and thrust in again.

“Yes, darling,” Tony said as he brought his mouth down on hers just as she cried out and the shudder of her release washed over her. She felt his body begin to tremble against hers as his thrusts became faster and at last he moaned against her mouth and followed her into bliss.

When Portia came back to herself, her forehead rested against his shoulder while his arms remained wrapped round her clasping her naked bosom against his fully clothed chest. A muffled snore startled her out of her languor, however.

She leaned back to see that indeed, Tony’s long lashed eyes were closed.

“Wake up!” she hissed into his ear. “I cannot believe you are asleep sitting here in the park for the whole world to see.”

He lifted one lid and yawned. “I hardly think my sleeping is the most scandalous thing the whole world would see if they were to stumble upon us, my dear.”

Portia tried to extricate herself from him, but he kept his arms wrapped tightly around her.

“Besides,” he continued, peering up at her now through slightly parted lids. “A man always needs a bit of a rest after pleasuring a woman within an inch of her life.”

Portia rolled her eyes, though she did mentally concede that whole ‘inch of her life’ point. “And what do you suppose I was doing while you were so busy pleasing me?”

“Hmmm.” He frowned as if giving the matter a great deal of thought. “I’m not sure. Don’t you remember what you were doing?”

“I suppose I was being pleased,” she huffed. “Though I do recall it was more of a give and take exchange rather than the one-way activity you implied.”

“Ah, then there you have it,” his brows rose as he leaned back to get a better look at her. “You were pleasuring me as well.” He yawned again. “I’m glad we’ve got that sorted. Otherwise it would have kept me awake nights.”

“I don’t think a marching band would keep you awake nights,” she muttered.

“What’s that?”

His eyes were suspiciously guileless but she knew he was laughing at her. And she couldn’t help but laugh too.

“You are a rogue,” she declared, kissing him lightly on the lips.

Of course a simple kiss led to something more and they were beginning to press more firmly against one another when Tony pulled back.

“Enough, you wicked woman,” he said, lifting her from his lap and smoothing down the skirt of her habit. “I will not let you take advantage of my person again. A man has his pride you know.”

“Hmmph,” she replied, pulling the front of her riding habit together and fastening the buttons. “A rogue and perhaps a roué.”

“A roué, madam?” he asked, buttoning his breeches and pulling his cuffs to fall elegantly to his wrists. “If you were a man, I would demand satisfaction.”

“If I were a man you would not have already gotten satisfaction.”

“Indeed.” He grinned. “You’ve a point there.”

“Shall we wander back to our horses, sir?”

“I think it might be best if we were to exit this area separately. I might be a rogue and a roué but I would not like for my fiancée’s name to be sullied with gossip.”

She turned from brushing out her skirts to stare.

“Fiancée? Are you mad?”

“No more mad than any fool in love, I should think,” he returned.

“But, Tony, I cannot marry you.”

“Why the devil not? You just made love to me on that dashed uncomfortable bench. If that doesn’t imply a certain level of commitment I don’t know what does. Though I will grant you I didn’t much care at the time.”

“But nothing has changed, Tony. I am still James’ sister. I am still older than you by any number of—”

He held up a hand as if asking for silence.

“If being James’s sister and our age difference are the only two objections you can give…”

“But they are…”

Tony stepped closer, pulled her to him and gave her a hard kiss.

“You are right. They are perfectly nice objections and I am wrong to sneer at them. But what if I am able to fix them?”

She stared at him as if a horn had begun to grow from between his eyebrows. “How can you ‘fix’ our age difference? Or the fact that James was my brother? I hardly think they can simply be…”

“Hush, darling or you’ll spoil the surprise. Give me a week.”

“A week?”

He frowned. “It looks like a perfectly normal little bower but it’s really an echo chamber. Extraordinary.”

“Ha. Ha.”

“You’d better get out there to your mount before someone comes and steals your horse.”

He patted her on the rump and merely shrugged when she turned and gave him an outraged stare. “I shall see you next week. Promise me you won’t go haring off and marry someone else in the meantime.”

“I hardly think it’s necessary, but you have my word.”

“Excellent,” he said to her retreating back.

When she was gone, he let out a long sigh. How the devil was he going to convince her to marry him?

But with the memory of her taste still in his mouth, he knew that he’d find a way. He had to. There was simply no other way around it.

And for the first time since he’d returned from the Peninsula, Tony let out a whoop of joy. “I suppose there is something to this love nonsense,” he told his horse as he set a foot in the stirrup and mounted.

As if in response, the horse shook his head and breathed out a huff.

“Quite right, old man,” Tony agreed. “Quite right. We humans are a mad bunch.”

Chapter Six

Portia spent the intervening week alternately trying to forget that the incident in Hyde Park had even happened and obsessively recalling every tiny detail.

She tried to forget while she was at Hatchard’s while she browsed the latest novels from the Minerva Press. But the title Almack’s Affair reminded her of the kiss last Wednesday night.

She tried to forget while she and her Mama indulged in an ice from Gunter’s, after an afternoon of shopping in Bond Street. But the tart lemon flavor reminded her that Tony liked lemon curd.

She even tried to forget while seated in Lord Vale’s box at the opera. But the soprano’s gown was exactly the shade of Tony’s eyes in the throes of passion.

It would have been more useful to count the things that did not remind her of Tony, which included Mrs. Woolton’s pug and her own pinkie toe. Though she was quite sure she could find some connection between Tony and the toe if she thought hard enough.

As for the remembering? Well, that was confined mostly to the nights, while she lay in her distressingly empty bed.

She now sat in the drawing room of her house in Berkley Square exactly one week after the Hyde Park Encounter (as she had taken to calling it). And read page 34 of Madame D’Arblay’s Evelina for the third time and tried not to think about the fact that it was one week after the Hyde Park Encounter. Tony had promised to call on her one week later and she trusted that he would.

She’d given up on the novel and was trying to unravel a knot in her needlepoint when a loud knock sounded on the front door of the house.

Her heart leapt up, but she ruthlessly schooled ignored it, like a master ignoring a dog’s plea for table scraps. It would not be Tony, she said to herself. All week she’d allowed herself to hope and it was high time she stopped this pining for something that was obviously not going to happen.

So when the butler brought her a calling card on a silver tray with the corner folded down to show the caller had appeared in person, she was prepared for disappointment. But perhaps she’d not been as prepared as she’d hoped, for upon seeing the name was not that of Lord Anthony Leighton she felt her erstwhile bouncing heart sink.

“Show him up, Jameson,” she said on a barely suppressed sigh.

Really, it was ridiculous of her to pine so. And hadn’t she decided not to accept Tony’s marriage proposal anyway? Her previous objections, that the age difference between them was too great and that the old scandal would be raked up if their names were linked, still stood. And aside from that, she had heard last evening at Lady Witherington’s soiree that Tony was on the cusp of proposing to Miss Milling, the young lady whom his mama had dragged after him into the dark walk at Vauxhall. Which was for the best, she told herself firmly. The hollowness she felt in her chest was simply indigestion.