I Kissed a Rogue (Covent Garden Cubs) (25 page)

“No, what I mean is I didn’t understand how you felt then. I’d never been in love. I didn’t understand what it was, how it made you vulnerable.”

“And you understand now?”

“Yes.”

Her gaze met his, and his chest tightened unaccountably. The way she looked at him made him want to take her in his arms and kiss her until she cried out his name, even though at the moment he loathed her more than ever. He pulled on the loathing and tamped down the lust. Brook raised one eyebrow indifferently.

“And who was it you finally fell in love with? Or were there many?”

She laughed bitterly. “Only one man.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I am all agog with curiosity. Who is the unfortunate man?”

She looked down, then raised her eyes until he saw the tears shimmer on her lashes. “You.”

Brook took a step back. “Is that some sort of jest?”

“I wish it were. These last few days, I’ve fallen in love with you.”

“Why?” The word sounded harsher than he’d intended.

“Do you think I want to fall in love with you, a man who hates me and with good reason? I didn’t want to love you. I tried not to. I tried to fight it when you saved me from Seven Dials, when you married me, when you didn’t scream at me even though I ruined your flat.”

He laughed. “I wanted to scream.”

“Then you should have! Perhaps that would have ended my infatuation. Instead you kissed me and fought Beezle for me and took me away to that hovel you call a cottage.”

“Exactly! I’m no prince sweeping you away to a castle.”

“And I’m not so shallow as to be swayed by a beautiful house—not anymore. If you didn’t want me to love you, why did you take me to bed? Why did you touch me and make me feel things I’d never felt before? You made me want you, and then just when I was my most confused, my most muddled, you brought the damn cat inside!”

She covered her mouth as though she hadn’t meant to utter the curse.

“The damn cat?”

Her cheeks turned redder.

“What does that cat have to do with anything?”

“It means you are not a brute. I wanted to think you callous and unfeeling, acting only out of lust. But you’re not. You cared about that cat. You do have a heart.”

“You can’t start thinking that way.” Brook paused. Had he just told her not to believe he had a heart? “It was only a cat.”

“And kittens! And there are those children you wrote the letters about. The ones you saved from a life of thieving in Whitechapel or St. Giles.”

Bloody hell. He’d forgotten about the children.

“And you’ve been knighted for bravery. Even I read about how you saved Viscount Chesham’s brother from an opium den and reunited Lady Elizabeth with her parents. You’re a hero.”

“I can’t deny I have my good points, but I have my bad too.”

“Like what?” She put her hands on her hips.

“I was acting out of lust. I took advantage of your innocence when I took you to bed.”

“I’m your wife, as you pointed out. You can’t take advantage of me in that way.”

“But I don’t intend to stay married to you.” He pointed a finger at her. “See?”

“And yet all you’ve done is give me pleasure. You haven’t even been selfish enough to take your own. I’m still a virgin, for God’s sake!” She frowned. “I am still a virgin?”

“Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Do you see why I’ve fallen in love with you?” She paced away, flinging an arm out as she spoke.

She was angry and beautiful, and he could still see through her chemise. And she loved him.

“This is perfect for you,” she said. “You can have your revenge. You can treat me ill, crush me just as I crushed you.”

“I would never do that.”

She threw up her arms in frustration. “Of course not! That just makes me love you more!”

“Fine.” He crossed to her and grabbed her hand, pulling her to the bed.

“What are you doing now?”

“Something reprehensible, something guaranteed to make you hate me.” He lifted her into his arms and carried her the rest of the way to the bed.

Instead of struggling, she wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’ll never hate you.”

“We’ll see.” And he claimed her mouth with his.

Fifteen

Lila sank into his heat and the velvet softness of his lips. She adored his lips and the many, many ways he used them to bring her pleasure. His kisses were alternately light, then demanding. She never knew what to expect, and after the first few drugging kisses, she ceased attempting to anticipate, ceased thinking at all. Her mind drifted, and she allowed sensation to overtake her—the way his tongue slid in and out of her mouth, the way his teeth bit her lower lip lightly, the way the coverlet felt on her bare legs when he laid her down.

He came down on top of her, his weight braced on his elbows but his heat covering the length of her. She used her arms wrapped around his neck to pull him closer and urge his warmth to surround her. Her fingers slid through his close-cropped hair, liking the way the spikes of it felt on her sensitive flesh. She worked her way down and over his broad shoulders. She could feel the muscles underneath the lawn shirt he wore, hard flesh so different from her own.

Lila had always imagined herself married to a man who would one day be a duke or marquess—a man who wielded great power politically. But those men seldom exerted themselves beyond the occasional shooting party. The man splayed over her was strong and honed from hard labor, respectable labor. This was a man who found the lost, who saved the damned.

Her hands skimmed down to his back, felt the way the muscles bunched and tensed with her touch. He liked her touch on him, which gave her hope. Maybe he didn’t hate her quite as much as she’d supposed. Maybe he could even come to love her one day.

His hands grasped her arms and pulled them away from his back. He pushed her back on the bed, holding her locked into place. For a long moment, their gazes met in the firelit dark. His breathing was harsh and erratic but his grip was solid and strong. She could not have broken it even if she’d wanted to.

She didn’t want to.

“You don’t like me touching you?” she asked.

“I like it too much. If I’m to do this well, to do this right—”

Lila shook her head and closed her eyes. “No, no! I’m falling in love with you again. Do this badly and wrong.”

He nodded solemnly, though she saw the way his mouth quirked with amusement. “Badly and wrong. I will do my best.”

Careful of her injured wrist, he wrenched her arms over her head, pinning them with one hand at the edge of the bed. His other hand slid down her body, roughly ripping her chemise down to expose her upthrust breasts. Lila gasped, her body arching for him even as her mind protested that this was shocking and indecent.

He made a low groan deep in his throat and then he was kissing her again, not roughly but softly and tenderly. His hand came up to cup her cheek and his thumb smoothed over the heated flesh. He pulled back, rubbing his callused thumb over her swollen lips, parting her mouth and slipping inside.

He tasted of brandy and bergamot, and she flicked her tongue over the pad of his thumb. His eyes seemed to grow darker, and she lapped at him, circling the round digit, learning its texture.

“Suck,” he murmured, his voice low and husky. The sound made her entire body tingle with awareness.

Lila did as he bid, sucking lightly on his thumb and then taking it deeper into her mouth and applying more pressure.

He pressed his body hard against her, and she could feel the evidence of his arousal at the junction of her thighs. He was stiff and hot, much like the thumb in her mouth.

Gradually, he withdrew his thumb, rubbing the wetness over her lips. “That is not the sort of thing a man should do with his wife,” he muttered.

“Then it’s reprehensible?”

“Oh, I can think of a dozen ways to make those skills you just honed very,
very
reprehensible.”

“What does a man do with his wife?” she asked. Her nipples puckered at the scrape of the lawn on her flesh. “Show me.”

He dipped his mouth and kissed the spot just below her jaw, tracing his tongue lightly over her skin until she shivered at the soft heat of his breath on her earlobe.

“Make it bad.”

His teeth closed on her earlobe and he nibbled his way up until she shuddered when his breath teased her ear. “Very bad,” he whispered.

He still held her hands imprisoned with one hand, while the other slid down her shoulder and between her breasts. Her skin quivered with anticipation as the trail continued down her belly, pushing the material of the chemise away until she was naked beneath him. His hand trailed back up, over her thigh, skimming the hair between her legs, making her stomach tense, and then finally closing on one breast. He kneaded her flesh until it felt heavy and full, and then his fingers plucked at the nipple until it was hard and throbbing.

He lowered his mouth, taking it gently into his mouth, teasing it as she’d teased his thumb, and then sucking gently at first and then harder until she cried out with desire. Her hands strained against their prison.

“I want to touch you,” Lila said.

“Not yet.”

He repeated his actions on her other breast, this time his sucking seemed to attach to an invisible cord that pulled between her legs. Her hips arched, pushing her pelvis against the hard length of him, wanting to feel the friction there, where she knew what the outcome would be.

Brook’s mouth slid down her belly, exploring her until gooseflesh appeared. She couldn’t help but strain in anticipation of the feel of his hot mouth on that secret part of her. Finally, he couldn’t hold her hands any longer, and he released her, grasping her hips in a rough grip and angling them upward. His mouth skimmed her hip bone, moving slowly inward until she felt his breath tease the sensitive spot between her legs.

She parted her legs, needing him to touch her there, kiss her there.

“What do you want?” he murmured against the skin of her thigh.

She wrapped her hands in his hair and guided his mouth where she wanted it.

He shook his head. “Oh, no. Not this time. You must say it. Say what you want.”

She inhaled sharply. He was making good on his promise to act the reprobate. How was she to say out loud what she was hardly willing to admit even in the darkest parts of her mind?

“Brook.” Her voice sounded breathless with entreaty.

He nudged her legs wider with one stubbled cheek. “Say it, Lila.”

“Your mouth,” she whispered. “I want your hands and your mouth on me.”

With a whispered curse, his mouth was on her. But the light touch of his tongue was gentle and teasing. She arched her hips higher, wanting more pressure, more heat, but he continued to tap at her center lightly while one finger played at her opening.

“I could tease you like this for hours,” he said. “I could make you so senseless with need you’d reach down and pleasure yourself to escape the craving.”

She shook her head. Touch herself while he watched? Never.

“That would be reprehensible.” He sat and yanked his shirt over his head. Lila sucked in a breath at the sight of his glorious chest limned by the firelight. She couldn’t stop her hands from sliding over that sleek skin, ending on the flat plane of his taut belly.

He lifted her hand and placed it over the bulge in his trousers. She tried to pull back even as her curiosity was roused. What did he look like? What would the flesh there feel like with her fingers wrapped around it?

“I could enter you fast and hard. Is that reprehensible enough for you? Would you hate me for taking you like a brute your first time?”

Lila nodded, though the idea excited her more than scared her. She wanted to feel him move inside her, wanted that hard length of him sliding in and out as his fingers had.

“You’d hate me, and that would be easier for both of us.”

But instead of opening the fall of his trousers and doing as he threatened, he skimmed his hands under her bottom and raised her up. His mouth closed on her core again, teasing and tapping until she writhed against him. Her hands dug into his shoulders, and she heard the quick cries of passion filling the room. She should have been mortified that such sounds came from her mouth. Instead, Brook’s fingers dug into the flesh of her bottom, urging her on.

Finally, with the delicacy of the first blooms of spring, she came apart. She unraveled like a coiled ribbon, opened like a rosebud. Every particle of her body let go, sinking into the oblivion of sensation.

If this was his definition of reprehensible, she would ban commendable deeds altogether.

She felt the bed shift, felt him move, and opened her eyes to see him push his trousers over his hips.

His bare hips.

Her gaze lowered, but in the darkness she could only make out the vague shape and form of his manhood. Her heart sped up as she realized what he would do now. She trembled with fear and anticipation. She wanted this.

Bending over her, his lips met hers again. This time when he pressed against her, there was no clothing between them. He felt like warm velvet against her entrance. The gentle pressure of him there made the delicate flesh throb. His hands cupped her breasts, brushed down over her waist and hips, lifted her until he was poised for entrance.

Her gaze met his, and she couldn’t read his expression. This was his chance to make her hate him. She had heard the act could hurt the first time if the man was rough and uncaring. But she had also heard that a considerate husband would take care when he claimed his wife’s virginity. If Brook loved her, even a little, he would not hurt her.

Slowly, he entered her, and she felt his thickness spreading her. He slipped back out, then in again, and that ribbon inside her coiled with need. The second time he entered her, he went slightly deeper, and she liked that, like the way he filled her. This was not bad at all. Perhaps he was a small man or perhaps the rumors of pain had been exaggerated.

He withdrew again, and she wrapped her legs around him, urging him to continue.

“Are you hurt?” he asked. He was the one who sounded as though he hurt. His voice was tense and low.