Reckless Viscount (7 page)

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

The low vibration of his voice invaded her blood, speeding her pulse.

“I don’t know,” Abbigael answered in earnest. The tension permeating her body made it difficult to speak above a quiet murmur. “I feel I should be.”

“Hmm,” he responded thoughtfully, “perhaps.”

He lifted his hand toward her face and brushed his thumb across the crest of her cheekbone in a light caress. Sensitive goose bumps rose up on her skin. She caught her lower lip between her teeth to stop a gasp from escaping. She didn’t want him to know how acutely his touch pierced her composure. At least she could be grateful that in the darkened hallway, he could not possibly see her moonstruck expression.

He swept the back of his knuckles down the side of her throat.

“What is your name, Miss Granger?”

Abbigael frowned. His question distracted her from the sensations he was sparking along the surface of her flesh.

“We are not well enough acquainted for you to ask me that.”

His laugh was a warm rumble and amusement was thick in his voice. “Have it your way.”

He slid his warm hand around her nape, gently delved his fingers into her hair as his palm cupped the base of her skull. At the same time, he slid his other hand around the curve of her waist until his fingers splayed wide against her lower spine.

“What are you doing?” she gasped. Her heart jumped against her ribs and her breath caught helplessly in her lungs as she became overwhelmed by a sense of expectancy so acute it was almost painful. His body was warm but unyielding against hers, and she flattened her hands against his chest, trying to create a semblance of distance between them.

“Irish, I’m going to kiss you now.” His words were uttered with deliberate promise. His mouth was close, so close that as he spoke his gentle breath disturbed the wisps of hair that fell against her temple. Chills of heightened sensitivity raced across her skin and a wild fluttering erupted in her belly.

“No, you’re n—”

His mouth swiftly closed on hers, stopping her protest, as if he had been waiting for her to speak to find her lips. He pulled her more deeply into the curve of his body, taking advantage of the subtle yielding that accompanied her surprise.

In that brief and shuddering moment when his lips laid claim to hers, Abbigael realized she had been anticipating this almost from the very first second she had met his inquisitive gaze in the Silverly library. Even so, it was nothing like she had expected.

Though he held her securely, he made very little demand in the possession of his kiss. His gentleness amazed her. Very softly, he brushed back and forth against the surface of her lips. Such a delicate friction that teased her into wondering what it would feel like to have his lips pressed more firmly to hers. She lifted her hands to his shoulders and rose up on her tip-toes, mindlessly seeking to assuage the curiosity he inspired.

He obliged by wrapping his arm more securely around her, crushing her against him. For a second, she lost her breath and dizziness threatened. Then the lovely pressure of his lips on hers softened the rigidity of her spine, and it seemed only natural to relax against him and allow the steady flow of warmth through her limbs. And when the tip of his tongue traced the seam of her lips, sparks floated behind her eyes.

She turned her head away, breaking the kiss. “It’s too much,” she gasped.

“It’s nothing,” he murmured against her temple, though the swift pattern of his breath proved he had not been unaffected.

Abbigael didn’t argue. Knowing she shouldn’t, she remained in his arms for another long moment. She simply didn’t want to deny the pleasure of being held so firmly, the warmth of his body, the intimate sense of connection. No matter how inappropriate.

Had it been so long since she had known the comfort to be found in the closeness of another human being that even a rogue’s scandalous embrace could be preferable to nothing at all?

A lump of emotion rose in her throat and she swallowed hard, trying to dislodge it. Tears pricked at her eyes and she tensed with the influx of painful reality.

As heady as the moment was, he was right. The embrace meant nothing. Abbigael wanted so much more.

“You must let me go.”

He did, though with obvious reluctance.

“Irish…” he began, but Abbigael interrupted him.

“Don’t,” she whispered desperately as she stepped around him. “Don’t speak to me again. Don’t approach me, don’t acknowledge my existence. You are not what I want.”

Then she found the handle of the door and opened it only far enough to glide through the opening into the stark and glaring light beyond.

Chapter Six

Leif Riley rolled onto his stomach, shoving aside the silk brocaded pillows and velvet tasseled coverlets that shared the bed. Satin sheets chilled his skin and the scent of the previous night’s companion still clung to the pillow beneath his head.

The lady was an old friend, a rapacious young widow with enough wealth to scorn the need for a regular protector. And enough sexual appetite to seek Leif out every now and then for a little bed sport.

He shifted again and felt the exhaustion that weighed down his limbs. He furrowed his brow against the thick knot of a headache behind his eyes.

A
lot
of bed sport. And a lot of champagne.

For all of the liquor and wine Leif had consumed in his lifetime, one would think he would reach a day when he could wake up without the evil aftereffects of overindulgence. On the contrary, Leif was perpetually doomed to the suffering of horrid hangovers. Certain libations were more dangerous to him than others. And as much as he enjoyed it for its light and bubbly characteristics, champagne always settled in his skull like a dry, pulsing rock by the next day.

He must have been exceptionally tired, or thoroughly foxed, last night to stay in this room even after his guest left. To think on it, he didn’t even recall the lady’s departure.

He flopped heavily onto his back, throwing a forearm across his eyes. Not that he needed to shield them from any intruding light. He had carefully designed the room to keep its occupants blissfully ignorant of the passing of time. His gesture was more an attempt at restraining the disturbing thoughts that ran rampant through his throbbing skull.

His twenty-eighth birthday was swiftly approaching.

And he felt old.

Not old in years, nor even in the stamina and strength of his body. His income depended upon his physical attributes and he did what was necessary to maintain a clean muscled physique.

No, he felt his age in his experience.

In some respects he had lived far more than a man thrice his age. The years of drunken dissipation, sexual license and social irreverence had long been wearing on the structure of his soul.

He knew it and had been ignoring it.

But now, as exhaustion weighted his body and the thunder of too much alcohol clouded his brain and he couldn’t dredge up a single memory from the night before that made it all worth it, Leif wondered if mortality itself limited how much revelry and wickedness a man could take. Did there arrive a day when a man simply had to stop?

He growled in frustration and threw a fist into the lush bedding at his side. Did such an option even exist for him?

In a rush of angry energy, Leif rose from the bed in one solid fluid motion, accepting the punishing rush of pain through his skull at the motion. Fully naked, he left the plush boudoir and stalked down the hallway. He had no fear of encountering servants along the way. He could only afford to employ Langley, a decrepit old butler who rarely strayed far from his room on the ground floor near the front door, and a part-time maid/cook/housekeeper who only came around in the evenings.

He entered the bedroom at the far end of the hall and noted the light filtering through the heavy curtains in front of the single window. It was full day.

This room was Leif’s personal bedroom. It was barely larger than a closet and had likely been intended for a senior servant, certainly not for the master of the house. Leif had furnished it with only the necessities. A narrow bed was set against the wall and was dressed in plain white sheets and a pearl gray coverlet completely void of extra adornment. A chair, a wardrobe and a dresser with a wash bowl stood stoic against another wall. Aside from an oval mirror, the only other wall dressing was an old painting of Leif’s childhood home. The frame was battered and scarred and the surface of the image was covered by layers of dust and grime, but the painting held the honor as the focal point of the entire room.

His mood darkened and he crossed to the dresser to splash his face with cold water from the wash bowl. It didn’t help to clear the fog of malaise from his brain. With a growing sense of surrender, he turned and went to sit on the edge of his bed, thinking of how easy it would be to slip back into the welcome oblivion of numbing sleep.

That was when he caught sight of something odd.

Right in the center of the chair next to his bed was a small green apothecary bottle spouting a collection of spindly wildflowers from its top. Leif tilted his head and eyed the unexpected addition to his room through a bleary gaze.

He hadn’t had a housekeeper who lasted more than six months since he’d moved to London just over ten years ago. Each of them had their own reasons for moving on. But his current housekeeper, Mrs. Helmstead, had been with him for nearly a year now. Leif suspected it had to do with the fact that the spry old woman was more than a touch batty. She was forgetful and odd, and at times truly believed herself to be in charge of a grand country estate rather than a part-time servant at a bachelor’s residence in town. But she didn’t seem to mind Leif’s personal activities, or maybe she never noticed. She always had a bright smile when he happened to cross her path, and occasionally, she left him little surprises like these.

Leif reached for the fragile glass bottle with a rueful smile.

Where on earth had the woman found the flowers? They were nearly half dead and were certainly not the kind that could be found at one of the street vendors. Leif waved them beneath his nose and instantly thought of a slight wisp of a woman with fair reddish hair, large sea-green eyes surrounded by a fringe of sooty lashes, delicate elfin features and a lush pink mouth that tasted like strawberries and held the warmth of the sunrise.

There he went, waxing poetic again.

The girl had him twisted around and the shock of that single stolen kiss still lingered in his blood.

His guileless Irish lass had been decadence and innocence together in a potion more potent than any alcohol. He couldn’t recall the last time the pure force of his own desire had risen so quickly. And easily. At the first gentle touch of his lips to hers, pleasure had streaked like lightening through his veins. Her slight weight and delicate curves, her intrinsic warmth and vitality, her tentative response and the profound sweet taste of her nearly undid him.

But he had held back. He had somehow resisted the fierce desire to plunge his tongue past her lips and explore the inner recesses of her mouth. He had denied himself the pleasure of dragging her skirts to her hips so he could delve his hand between the soft flesh of her thighs.

Even though the force of his reaction had come upon him unexpectedly, to a man who had mastered lovemaking as if it were a skilled art form, loss of control would have been unacceptable. Somehow, he had managed to keep a tight rein on the pulsing needs of his body and forced himself to accept just a sip of the passion he would have loved to unleash more fully.

The span of his entire sexual history, starting with a schoolmate’s mother who had taken a liking to him one holiday, did not include a single virgin. His expertise was firmly seated in pleasuring women of a certain degree of experience who were all well acquainted with sex for the sake of pleasure alone. Women who expected to be pushed to the limit in the pursuit of greater heights of ecstasy.

A proper young lady would die of shock from the things he would wish to do in bed, and he would hate to see even a flicker of disgust in those translucent eyes as he sought his pleasure. No, it was best he accept this one as off-limits, he thought with a sharp prick of regret.

Leif set the small vase back on the chair and glanced at the clock. It was later than he thought. Rather than drag the hip bath up to his bedroom and lug buckets of water up the stairs two by two, Leif preferred the option that took far less effort. But if he was going to get washed up, he needed to get his use out of the kitchen before Mrs. Helmstead arrived.

Two hours later, Leif was finishing the intricate knot of the stark-white cravat around his neck while Mrs. Helmstead sang a terribly off-tune limerick about a sailor with two wives as she swept the upper hall. His hair was expertly mussed in the current fashion and his face was clean-shaven to reveal the strong lines of his jaw that many ladies claimed was his most attractive feature aside from his devilish eyes. He leaned toward the mirror set above his washstand with a frown of concentration as he carefully tied the neckcloth so the frayed edges were tucked away and the threadbare spots were concealed.

Feeling much more human now that his body was clean and his mind fresh and sharp, the malaise that had bothered him upon waking was almost completely gone. He had a full evening ahead of him and he intended to make the most of it. Lady Wharton was fresh out of partial mourning and had been sending out subtle signals over the last few weeks that she may be interested in some male companionship. It was time to see if the wealthy widow was ready for a lover.