Simply Wicked (9 page)

She bucked against his fingers, raised her hips to shove against his face. No finesse now, only the play of body on body in a race for completion and a release he wanted more than anything. She spasmed against his three thrusting fingers, and he couldn’t hold on any longer, letting his cum spill down her throat in hot urgent pulses.

When she released his cock, he rolled away onto his back and stared up at the white-painted ceiling. Interesting that in the final throes of passion, women acted much like men, so greedy for completion that it all became about the pursuit of the purely physical.

“You did well, young man. You have excellent stamina. Any woman should be glad to have you in her bed.”

Anthony opened his eyes and regarded the redheaded woman.

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His lips twitched at the thought of her giving him a certificate of approval for him to display on his bedroom wall to impress his future wife.

“Thank you. I enjoyed it.”

Her smile was warmer now.

“I’m delighted to hear it.” She waved her fingers at him.

“Now off you go, I have another man to train in half an hour.”

Marguerite pressed her fingers to her lips as she watched the man pleasure the red-haired woman with his mouth and fingers. Would she have the courage to demand such delicious things from a man? More to the point, would Anthony let her tell him what to do like that?

Lisette elbowed her in the ribs. “He’s rather nice, isn’t he? I wonder what his name is.”

“Ssh.”

Marguerite was curious herself, but she had no intention of letting Lisette know that. The man’s body was muscled, his buttocks tight and high, his chest lightly furred. And his cock . . .

She refused to think about how big and hard he looked, how wet and ready to slip inside a woman’s most secret place and give her what she needed.

She licked her lips as the woman lay back on the bed and invited the man to straddle her. In the candlelight, she noticed thin diagonal white lines marred the smooth surface of the man’s back. At the base of his spine it looked as if someone had tried to carve their initials into his skin. Even through her arousal, her stomach tightened. Who could’ve done that to this man?

“Lisette?” she whispered. “He appears to be scarred.”

Lisette shrugged. “A lot of Englishmen look like that; it’s a legacy of their public school education.” She patted Marguerite’s arm. “I promised to meet David; come and find me when you’ve finished watching.”

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attention to the room. How barbaric the English upper class were, sending their boys away from home at such a young age and leaving them to the tender mercies of men who often didn’t have their best interests at heart.

She watched the man suckle the woman’s breasts, wondered how he managed to stay so erect for so long. In her limited experience, men came far too quickly. A deep longing stirred inside her, and her womb clenched, releasing its own cream as the man reversed his position and settled to lick and finger the woman’s sex again.

She wanted that feeling so badly. With a furtive look up and down the narrow passageway, she slipped her hand through the pocket opening of her dress, pushed her petticoat out of the way and settled her fingers over her mound. Oh, God, she was so wet, so ready to be taken . . . Her body easily yielded to allow two of her fingers inside.

Could she treat Anthony like this? Tell him what she wanted, make him go down to his knees and service her? The last time she’d tried to be sexually adventurous had proved a disaster.

Memories of Justin and his friend Sir Harry Jones assailed her, the terrible complexities of unrequited love. Was she brave enough to try again?

The red-haired woman started to come, her cries filling the room. Marguerite climaxed too, closing her eyes against the ecstasy in the woman’s face as she sucked the man’s cock to completion. There was power in this for a woman, but was she prepared to wield it again?

When she found the courage to look back into the room again, the man had gone, leaving the woman on the bed. Her satisfied smile made Marguerite jealous. Trying to pretend that her intimate life had died with Justin hadn’t worked at all. She had to come to terms with her needs and find what she wanted.

Marguerite brought her fingers to her lips and inhaled her own scent. She wanted to make a man beg for her, but she wanted 72 /
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to be made to beg even more. The salacious thought shocked her to the core. Was she more like her mother than she had ever imagined? Did she still crave the forbidden, the sinful, the unknown?

With a moan, Marguerite ripped off her mask and stumbled along the passageway, her hand on the wall to aid her flight. She pushed open the door that led back into the main hallway and collided with a hard male body.

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“Marguerite?”

She looked up into Anthony’s surprised face and wanted to cry. Of all the people to meet at this embarrassing moment of self-revelation, why did it have to be him?

7

“I was looking for my sister.”

Marguerite blurted the words out as Anthony stared down at her. Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked on the verge of tears. Her slender body shook in his arms. A silver mask fell from her fingers, and she made no move to pick it up. He glanced back at the door she’d exited from.

“In there?”

She pulled out of his grasp and ineffectually patted her hair.

“I just took a shortcut to avoid walking along the main corridor alone. I’m not really supposed to be here tonight.”

“Neither am I.”

She started back along the hallway, almost running in her eagerness to get away from him, but he kept after her, his gaze fixed on the back of her head.

“Marguerite, will you slow down?”

She came to an abrupt halt and turned on him.

“Why? Do you want to tell me what you are doing here?

Didn’t you say you wanted to keep away from this place?”

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Unaccustomed resentment filled him.
Dammit, he’d come
here for her.

“
You
said you never came here at all.”

She walked off again, reached the main staircase and started down to the main salons. He followed her, catching her arm at the bottom of the stairs.

“Marguerite, are you angry because I am here or because I found you here?”

She glared up at him. “Both.”

Well at least she was being honest. He drew her away from the staircase toward the servants’ door.

“I’m sure you have a key to the private areas of the house.

Let’s go through here.”

He followed her onto the darkened landing beyond the green-baize-covered door and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. The starkness of his new surroundings was a huge contrast to the lavishness of the salons.

“Men are such deceivers.”

“Not all men, and who says I was deceiving you?”

Her eyes flashed a challenge at him. “You’ve had sex. I can smell it on you.”

“I didn’t, really, I was just . . .”

Hell, his explanation sounded weak even to his own ears.

He could hardly tell her he’d been improving his technique for her benefit. Marguerite took three steps away from him, her shoulders rigid, and her arms hugging her waist.

“Why didn’t you have sex with me?”

He struggled not to gawp at her. “What on earth is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I have turned into a figure of fun. A lonely widow who can’t do without a man in her bed. A woman reduced to arguing with a man about why he won’t have sex with her.”

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“I don’t quite follow you.”

She swung around to face him. “Of course you don’t; you’re a man.”

He spread his hands wide. “What do you want me to say, Marguerite? I’m sorry that I’m a man, I’m sorry that I didn’t immediately put you over my shoulder, climb the stairs and ravish you on our first meeting?”

“Now you are being absurd.”

“Then help me understand.”

She slowly raised her head. In the dim light, tears glinted in the corners of her fine eyes. “I told you I loved my husband so much that I couldn’t contemplate bedding another man.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“And yet the first time you kissed me, I kissed you back.”

He inclined his head. “You did.”

“And then . . . then I sucked your cock.”

He leaned back against the wall, tried to appear relaxed even as his body responded to that intimate memory. “Yes.”

“I lied to myself because I was afraid to admit I liked being bedded far more than a lady should.” She grimaced. “I want to be a chaste and pure widow, but I can’t seem to stop wanting.”

“I’m sure your mother would say that a woman is entitled to just as much enjoyment in bed as a man.”

She went still. “And do you agree with her?”

He shrugged. “Of course.”

“But it feels wrong to have such brazen thoughts, to want something so . . . basic.”

“Why?”

She looked at him and then away. “Because sex is such a powerful thing. Strong emotions can ruin people’s lives.”

“Are you thinking about your husband again?”

“No, about myself and my mother. The passion she and Philip shared almost destroyed her.”

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“But she found love with him, didn’t she, so wasn’t it all worth it?”

“For her, perhaps. For her children, it meant a lifetime of separation, of not knowing.” She sighed. “Please don’t mis-understand me, I have nothing but admiration for my mother, but I swore to myself that I would live a more conventional life and avoid grand passions if I could.”

Silence fell between them as he contemplated her. “Do you think your needs will shock me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Marguerite, nothing shocks me.”

She tried to smile. “I doubt it.”

“And what, if you were to be completely honest at this particular moment, would you want from me?”

She shivered. “Your hands on me, your mouth . . .”

His pulse quickened. “And if I offered you those things, in the spirit of honesty between us, would you be shocked by my behavior?”

“No, as I said, you are a man.”

“But if, as your mother insists, we are sexual equals, why shouldn’t you get what you desire?”

She didn’t speak, but her body angled away from him, poised for flight. He held out his hand.

“Marguerite . . .”

She turned slowly, and he pulled her hard against him. In truth, he hadn’t expected to be exercising his newfound skills quite so quickly, but he wasn’t about to let Marguerite down again. He sought her mouth, kissing her lips until she opened to him. Her hand curved around the base of his skull, keeping him close.

She moaned against his mouth, the plaintive sound enough to make him hard and encourage his hands to roam her body at will.

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“Please . . .”

He kissed her throat, her ear, the line of her jaw.

“What do you want, Marguerite?”

She grabbed his right hand and settled it over her breast. He ran his fingers along the edge of her bodice and the silk whispered back. Sliding the tip of his index finger below the fabric, he found her nipple already hard and ready for him. God, he wanted to taste her there.

He drew her back over his arm and bent his head, shoved aside as much of her bodice and corset as he could and settled his mouth over her breast. Her fingers tightened in his hair, urging him on even as his hand slid over her hip and rucked up her skirts and petticoat. He cupped her mound in his palm and held still.

“Do you want me here?”

“Yes, oh please, yes.”

He thumbed her swollen bud, felt her shiver in his arms and slid one finger through her slick wet heat, his heart pounding, his breathing as uneven as hers. This meant so much more with Marguerite; his desire to please her knew no boundaries. He began to move his finger in and out, wondered how his cock would feel doing the same, wanted to come at the very thought of it.

“More, give me more.”

He smiled as she arched against him, her sex pressing into his trapped hand, so demanding for such a petite woman, so sure of what she needed from him. She shuddered as he added two more fingers and pumped harder. Her whole body shook as she climaxed and clung to him as if he offered her everything a man could give her. For a glorious moment, he felt as if he could even be that man.

After she finished clenching and writhing against his fingers, he simply held her balanced on his palm, her whole body re-78 /
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laxed against him, as languid and satisfied as a kitten. Her curls tickled his face and he bent his head to nuzzle her neck.

“Better?”

She shifted in his arms. He reluctantly raised his head as she pushed him away.

“What did I do now?”

Her lips were swollen from his kisses, her hair disordered, her skirt creased, and yet she looked more beautiful to him than she ever had before. He found himself grinning at her like a fool and realized she wasn’t smiling back.

“You gave me what I asked for.”

“And that was wrong?”

She raised her chin to look him in the eyes. “No, it was . . .

wonderful.”

“Then why aren’t you happy?”

“Because you proved to me how much I want to be bedded.”

Anthony sighed. God, why were women so complicated?

At least a man took his pleasure and walked away without having to analyze every second of it.

“I’ll bed you if you want.”

She briefly closed her eyes. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

She moved suddenly toward the stairs, pausing to look over her shoulder at him. “Now I’ll be dreaming about you all night.”

“And that is a bad thing? I’ll be dreaming about you too.”

He held out his hand again. “If you really want me, come back inside and we’ll find a room.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . . I can’t.”

Anthony let his hand fall back to his side. “I’m not good enough for you now?”