Seducing the Rake (Mad, Bad and Dangerous Heroes) (30 page)

“You saved me. Can’t think—ahh—why.” His head fell, nestled in the hollow of her shoulder.

Pleasure flared to life beneath his lips. Chessy made a choked sound. She tried to shove away, but he caught the folds of her jacket and held her still. “Sorry—I was such a damned fool.”

Instinct made her flippant. “Which time? There have been so many occasions you’ve been a damned fool, after all.”

“You’re right. Usually am a fool.” He ran his stubbled cheek against her breast. The rough friction made her shiver. And then came the question she’d been fearing.

“It’s—t’morrow. Tell me … about the letters.”

She didn’t move. She didn’t want to remember that, not now. All she wanted was to drift along the dark currents and feel him safe and warm beside her and pretend it could last forever. “Later,” she whispered.

“Now.”

In desperation she slid her fingers through the amber hair matting his chest. “Later,” she murmured as she tugged lightly.

He groaned. “L-later…”

He began to whisper, openmouthed against her sensitized skin. Hot words, dark words, they poured over her like whiskey and silk.

Her jacket gaped wider. The warm curve of her breast spilled into his fingers. Chessy bit back a moan as he palmed the lush curve and then eased his mouth around its crimson, raised center.

“No, Tony—we cannot.”

But she barely heard herself. She closed her eyes. “I have to go—I can’t—”

His nail trapped the other hot, thrusting peak he’d uncovered. She bit back a sob of pleasure when he rolled the budded crest between his fingers.

She had to end this. “Stop, Tony. You c-can’t. You’re still weak.”

“Too weak. Damned true enough.
Dying
—for you. Kiss me, Chessy.” His voice was thick. “Kiss me until I burn up. Until we both burn.” He tongued a hot, slick path across her breast. “Love me, Chessy. I need to feel you wrapped all around me in love.”

Chessy closed her eyes against a hot press of tears.
Love him? How could she help it?

She’d loved this man for ten years, ever since the day he had strode onto her father’s boat and demanded to see the little wretch who had been stealing all his fish.

That wretch had been her, of course. And once she’d thrown off her battered hat, Morland had realized she was a female.

He’d threatened to take her over his knee and flay her hide. Instead he had tossed her overboard, then jumped in to join her.

There the golden days had begun. The laughter had started.

And it had all ended the day he had left without even a farewell.

Oh, yes, I do love you, Tony Morland. Far more than I should. Far more than you will ever know. And that’s the only reason on earth that this is happening between us.

He closed his eyes and made a ragged sound, somewhere between a laugh and curse. “No laudanum in those witch’s brews of yours? Like hell there wasn’t!” He shuddered as he felt the curve of her against his cheek. Slowly he brushed his tongue across her breast.

Chessy whimpered. How would
he
taste? How would he feel if she touched him where his hair clung dense and bronze across his chest and along his taut waist? At his lean, muscular thighs?

Dear heaven, was she losing her
mind
?

She tried to pull free, but Morland’s fingers flattened, driving her down against the bed. He twisted and took the first taut bud gently within his teeth.

At the rough, erotic movement, Chessy drove her heels into the quilt to keep from moaning with pleasure.

“Sweet … like tight little berries…” He tasted his way around the crested flesh, slow and reverent, missing nothing. Blindly Chessy shoved at his hand, trying to marshal what was left of her reason. But reason fled when he slid one muscled thigh atop her legs and stretched his big body over hers.

Like this, he made her feel tiny and fragile, a soft, beautiful thing caught beneath his hardness. And there, at the curve of her stomach where he rose hot and hard in arousal, he made her feel aching and empty.

Almost without knowing it, Chessy shivered and pressed up against that daunting length of blade-hard muscle. He groaned and adjusted himself to her. Hardness coaxed softness, and softness answered with a heated challenge of its own.

“Sweet—little thief. My beautiful enchantress. I can’t be logical or honorable. Not tonight. Let me love you, Chessy. Let me show you just how beautiful you are.”

In the darkness around them every ragged breath, every rustle of fabric became intimate and endlessly erotic.

His knee inched between her legs. Chessy shuddered and opened to him, to the blind pleasure he offered. Without regret or reservation.

Just like in her dreams, in all those hot, forbidden fantasies she had lived on for the last ten years.

“Do you understand, my heart? Let me please you. From now until morning comes.”

She tried to refuse.

She fought to stay aloof and sane, but her body, lithe and taut and well-honed from years of discipline, had ideas of its own. It moved to its own rhythms now, drunk with a dark power that urged her to take every pleasure this man would show her in his care and trust.

He groaned and kneed her legs apart wider, then pressed into her. Only his breeches separated them now, along with her jacket. Blindly Chessy shoved at the folds of silk, sighing when they slid free. She wished that his breeches were gone and he would sink down upon her with nothing but heat and naked skin.

“So warm.” He gripped her thigh. Open-handed, he moved slowly upward until he could climb no more. Until he met heat and a tangle of black curls.

He groaned when he found what he’d been searching for. The softest part of her, where her heat met his fingers.

Dream-driven, love-blind, Chessy arched against him. How long she’d wanted, waited, dreamed of only this…

He caught her hips and held her, open to his fevered gaze.

“I’m going to please you now, enchantress. How long I’ve wanted you here while I loved you.”

Chessy gasped at his lazy foray of teeth and tongue at the aching heart of her sensation. One minute he was slow, the next he was urgent. One minute he was gentle, the next he was blindingly thorough.

His strong fingers tightened, curving over her hips to hold her steady beneath his sensual exploration. Dimly, so dimly Chessy heard ragged sounds of passion echo around her. His? Hers? Or were they one now, one reckless being forged of fire, blind with hungers too long denied?

Pleasure broke over her in a liquid rush. Her closed eyes watched color kindle and swirl while she heard his hot, whispered vows. Love sounds, dark sounds, they reached out and trapped her.

And Chessy shuddered, wanting all those words, wanting everything that Tony had to give. She wanted
him,
reckless with desire, groaning as he buried himself deep and hard inside her.

But he didn’t give her that completion.

His breath was an exquisite torment on her love-sleek skin. “Here. So damned sweet,” he whispered.

His tongue slid over her, velvet on endless velvet. With each movement he gave her all the dark, aching fantasies she’d had to live upon for the last ten years.

They were the very same fantasies
he
had
lived on.

He gripped her pale thighs and covered her, missing nothing with his tongue. He gave her light dancing over her trembling skin; he gave her color, spun up in bright, soaring tendrils. Then he gave her vast, blinding pleasure that caught her close and wrenched her inside out and Chessy dug her feet into the damask quilt, arching with the dark violence of his mouth against her.

There she hung—mindless, shivering, utterly stripped in body and soul before the blond lord she’d always loved.

And then the world exploded into color and texture. Into driving sensation. Every pore held the smell and taste and touch of him until her blood screamed for dark, sweet things she couldn’t even begin to name.

His mouth closed around her and Chessy cried out as her body changed, shaping itself to his.

In love. Boundless love.

And he followed her, giving without greed or haste, caught on the same quicksilver sea where dreams took wing. She taught him hope and the chance of innocence reclaimed, while he taught her to trust bravely and completely.

There in the lush hour before dawn, their hearts met somewhere beyond living and just this side of dying. It was a place … infinitely beautiful.

North of night.

South of the sun.

Where old promises had begun.

“Tony! I didn’t know—”

“Yes, my beauty. Feel this joy I can give you. Take it from me now—” He shuddered as his beard-rough cheek grazed her inner thigh. “Chessy. Sweet Chessy—how much I’ve always loved you…
”

When she could breathe again, when her blood stopped singing and her brain crept back to sluggish life, Chessy stared at the man who had just brought her to the edge of delirium.

A wave of color swept her cheeks.

The earl laughed, low and husky. His eyes glittered. “You look like a cat. A sated, spoiled, and very clever little cat.”

“No—don’t. How could I-It’s wrong, terribly wrong.”

“You didn’t dream of that, back on board your ship in the hot tropical night? You didn’t think about me doing all those sweet things to you?”

Chessy swallowed. The color in her cheeks flared higher.

An answer in itself.

Morland smiled darkly, though desire rode him still. “Tell me you did.”

Chessy nodded, unable to forget all those heated dreams.

He caught a shining strand of blue-black hair and carried it to his lips. “There’ll be no right and wrong in this big white bed, my beautiful thief. Tonight there’s only what is and what can be. Only what we want or don’t want. What we
need
or don’t
need.”

His eyes blazed over her sleek body as desire burned, raw and unassuaged. “And what I want now—what I
need
now—is you. All the ways I’ve ever dreamed of having you. For
you
were always the beginning and end of every fantasy I ever had, Chessy.”

He clenched his jaw, fighting back the driving urge to take her fast and hard beneath him. Instead he focused on the pain. Only that would keep him sane now, immune to the dazed desire in her glorious violet eyes.

“Do you know how many times I’ve dreamed of loving you, of having you beneath me like this?”

He watched surprise flash through Chessy’s desire-glazed eyes. “You didn’t know that, did you?” He gave a bitter laugh. “I was careful to hide how I felt. But now there’s no need to conceal or deny what we both want.”

Slowly, bone by bone, he moved up her body. “I can feel you, Chessy. Hot and trembling. This makes you tremble, doesn’t it, my love?”

Chessy sighed as he slid his breeches away and brought his straining skin against her. His fingers curved over her hips. He let her feel his heat and the unleashed force of his arousal.

Chessy gave a low, choked moan. “Please—oh, Tony—I want—”

“Tell me what, my love.” He was moving now, parting her sleek petals. “I’ll give it to you, Chessy.”

“Y-you. Oh—
this.”

Morland felt her nails score his back. His arm was throbbing, and his knee ached.

But he thought only of her.

His head fell. His hard mouth molded the soft bud already distended with need. He gave her her fire and sharp discovery while Chessy whimpered and twisted beneath him, wanting him inside her. Wanting him as reckless and love-drunk as
she
was.

But he refused to be hurried. He tongued his way to her other breast until she squirmed in need.

“Tony—
now
—”

“You’re sure, Chessy? You have to tell me it’s no mistake.”