Tempting a Devil (12 page)

When he got to the door, there was a rough desperation in the way he shoved it
open until it banged against the wall. He dragged Harry through the door and literally threw her into the room, slamming the door behind him. She spun to face him and they stood there staring at each other, their chests heaving like they’d run a race from the park to the square. And then they were kissing. Harry wasn’t exactly sure who moved first, or how it happened. But she had her arms wrapped around his neck so tightly that no one could have gotten her off him without doing one or both of them harm. And he was no better. Harry could hardly breathe for the strength of his embrace around her middle.

They kissed roughly, with an urgent passion that Harry had never known, had never even suspected existed. She needed that kiss like she needed air and water. Their tongues clashed, wet and slick and hungry for the taste of the other. She ran her hand up to the back of his head and grabbed a fistful of his hair, just to make sure he didn’t try to stop kissing her. He made a deep sound in the back of this throat, half grunt and half groan, and Harry knew it was a good sound. She answered it with a moan as he slanted his mouth across hers, deepening a kiss that had already reached so deep inside that her stomach rippled with the intensity of it and she had to move her hips against Roger to ease the ache of it.

Roger ripped his mouth from hers and looked around. Then he picked her up with his arms still wrapped about her middle, her feet dangling, and carried her over to the wall next to the door, slamming her back against it. Without asking permission, he tore the ribbon holding her hat, ripped it off, and threw it aside. He cupped her cheeks, not tenderly but possessively, and then ran his hands up into her hair, dislodging pins. He made an impatient sound and let go only to yank his gloves off. The left one wouldn’t come off, so he gripped it in his teeth and tore it off, spitting it onto the floor, and then his
hands were in her hair again and he was kissing her, holding her head the way he wanted it, pressing her into the wall with his body.

Harry lost control of the situation, if she’d ever had it. But oddly enough, she didn’t care. She let Roger do what he wanted to her, gave herself over completely to his desire. It was a heady feeling, knowing that she would get just what she wanted without having to fight for it. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held on for a moment, but then she had a revelation. Just as she wanted Roger to do whatever he wanted to her, he wanted her to do the same to him. And what she wanted was to touch him. She wanted to feel that marvelous backside in the palms of her hands. So she slid her hands down his lower back, fumbled under the tails of his coat, and … there. Her head fell back against the wall as she squeezed the tight mounds and they flexed at her touch. She and Roger both groaned at the same time and he thrust his hips against her. His hands went from her head to her bottom and he gripped her hard through the layers of her skirt, pulling her into him.

While they rubbed against each other, Roger placed slow, sensual, wet kisses along her jaw and down her neck. He stopped at her décolletage and kissed the exposed top of one breast and Harry gasped. She allowed instinct to guide her as she raised her leg and wrapped it around his waist, forced to move one hand off his rump to do it. But that was all right. She clutched the back of his head with her free hand and held his mouth to her chest.

Roger yanked on her skirt until it was no longer between them, grabbed her leg and held it up around his waist as he adjusted his stance. Suddenly they fit together like a hand in a glove. His sex was a hard ridge against the sensitive flesh between her legs, and
she cried out as he thrust and a bolt of ecstasy shot straight from her sex to her head.

“Yes,” Roger ground out, his voice strange and deep and wonderful against her breast. “Like that. Can’t wait.” He repeated the movement again and again and Harry mimicked him, meeting him in a violence of passion, desperate to feel that hard piece of him driving against her over and over, making her feel like she never had before. She felt wild and hungry, a savage need driving all thought from her head except Roger and never wanting the pleasure to end.

She loved the sound of them, their rough panting and grunts and groans and the stiff sound of the fabric of their clothes rubbing together. “I want you naked,” she admitted, her voice so breathless she could barely get the words out. She gripped Roger’s neck, her hand wrapped around his nape, as he thrust hard against her and she had to bite her lip to keep the loud shout of pleasure locked in her throat.

“Yes, later. Again. Later.” She laughed, a mad sort of laugh, completely out of control because what they were doing had made him incapable of speaking a complete sentence. She let go of his backside in order to burrow her hand under his waistband so she could cup his hot, hard, naked bottom only to realize that she still had her riding gloves on. She moaned in frustration.

He latched onto the side of her neck with his lips, sucking deeply as he panted loudly through his nose, his thrusts hard and sharp now, faster and rougher. And Harry knew something wonderful was about to happen. She felt damp and empty and aching inside, her sex throbbing in anticipation. She had never, ever throbbed before Roger had touched her yesterday. “Roger,” she said in a shaky voice, frightened and desperate at the same time.

“Yes. Now. Now Harry. Give it to me.”

As the indescribable pleasure hit her and her sex clenched tight she cried out, digging her fingers into his neck and his behind so hard that she knew she must be hurting him, but she didn’t care. Couldn’t care. She rode the waves of pleasure selfishly, rubbing against his sex without an ounce of shame just for the feel of it, the mad pleasure it brought her. And then Roger cried out, thrusting against her and shuddering in her arms, and she knew with a wonder born of amazement and desire that he felt it, too, felt this unholy, selfish, insane, marvelous pleasure.

Chapter Eleven

It took at least a minute before Roger was capable of rational thought. During that minute he simply stood there holding Harry’s leg still wrapped around him, panting into her neck. And then it hit him how ludicrous this whole situation was.

He’d just come in his breeches like a schoolboy, while both he and Harry were still fully clothed. He’d tossed her into the room like a common strumpet and dry humped her against a wall without one ounce of tact or consideration. And he had no idea what to do about it.

“Roger,” she inquired sweetly, “would you be so kind as to put my leg down? I don’t believe I can do that for much longer.”

“Oh, of course,” he said quickly, and then awkwardly helped her get her foot to the floor. The leg tried to collapse under her and he grabbed her and propped her up against the wall. Her skirt was folded up on itself, still exposing most of her leg, and he hastily brushed it down with one hand while keeping her upright with his shoulder.

She began to laugh. “I can’t believe we just did that. I’m a mess.” He glanced up at her in dismay. She was trying unsuccessfully to tame that wild hair of hers again. Considering what they’d just done, he thought perhaps her hair was the result of trying to bury all that passion under too many rules. Her wild streak had to escape somehow.

He straightened and looked down at his ruined, wrinkled, rather damp clothes. “I believe I am the one who is a mess.” He held his arms out to the side and looked pointedly at his breeches. “Is there somewhere I can try to repair the damage?”

Harry blushed, which was charming but rather disingenuous since she’d just been riding him like her own personal stallion. “Oh, yes,” she said, clearly embarrassed. She waved vaguely at the door. “Upstairs. Um, on the right.”

He wasn’t sure how to take his leave of her. Oh, this was painfully awkward. Should he bow, as a gentleman would when leaving the presence of a lady? That seemed rather cool, considering, but she was too embarrassed for a kiss. He hesitated, and she looked at him strangely. So he just turned and left the room. Not very well done on his part, surely. But he was uncharacteristically flummoxed by their encounter.

He kept reminding himself as he washed up that he wasn’t to actually consummate this affair. Harry needed help, so he was going to help her. What she didn’t need was either an unwanted pregnancy or an undesirable marriage, and the chance that one would occur and lead to the other was enough to keep Roger’s cock far away from Harry. Well, not too far. But not near enough to cause permanent damage. He couldn’t allow himself to lose control like that again. If he hadn’t been in a headlong rush to touch her, he might have truly taken her there against the wall. It was possibly the first and last time his unruly desires had saved him.

By the time he returned to her, he was not only more presentable but a great deal calmer. Of course he’d been disconcerted. He certainly hadn’t planned on a sexual encounter with her this afternoon. He thought he’d have more time to build up to it, to prepare for it. But something about her and the moment … he mentally cleared his throat as he stood before the closed door of the little parlor where she waited. None of that. It was a delightful, unexpected interlude and nothing more. He’d lost a little control, true. But he hadn’t been with a woman in months, and she’d been tormenting him recently
with sexual invitations. He’d been an explosion waiting to happen. Quite literally. And so it had happened, roughly and urgently, and—dammit he had to stop thinking like that.

He threw open the door planning on entering the room with purpose and authority. Since Harry was on the other side, he should have known that was an ill-conceived plan. As soon as he stepped in and opened his mouth to speak, she held a finger to her lips and said “Shh!” She peeked around him out into the hall from where she sat on the sofa and pantomimed for him to shut the door. He did so, feeling like an errant little boy.

“Come here,” she whispered so loudly she might as well have spoken normally. She gestured to the seat next to her on the sofa. He noticed she had the tea service now and his stomach rumbled, so he went without protest. When he sat down and looked at her questioningly, she grinned mischievously. “I just didn’t want anyone to know you were back yet. Mandrake made some horrid promise to return and see if there was anything else you might like once you were no longer indisposed.”

Roger actually blushed. “How did he know where I was?”

“I told him,” she answered blithely. She reached forward and plucked a little cake from the tray and then she climbed up onto her knees beside him. Before he could ask what she was doing, she’d hiked up her skirt and swung around to straddle his lap. He opened his mouth to protest and she shoved the cake in. “There,” she said with satisfaction. “I knew you’d be hungry. Men are always hungry.”

She leaned over and nuzzled his neck just above his recently rearranged neck cloth, while he choked and tried to chew the rather large, very sweet cake. He was trying to catch Harry’s errant hands. She appeared to have a fascination with his chest and
shoulders, and had his jacket and waistcoat unbuttoned alarmingly fast. And all the while she was devouring his neck with love bites and wet kisses. He captured her hands and held them to his chest with one hand, holding her hip with the other to keep her still. “Mmph,” he said around the cake.

Harry looked at him with a frown. “What?” She was trying to tug her hands free and Roger shook his head at her.

“Tea,” he gasped after he finally managed to swallow.

Harry frowned harder. “All right,” she said. She climbed off him and poured him a cup.

After Roger drank the entire cup in one swallow, he firmly put the cup on the table. “Harry,” he said in a voice sure to dash her ardor, “we must stop. As you said yourself, Mandrake could return and that would be a very bad business.”

Harry looked suspicious. “You avoid intimacy with me more than other men seek it. Why?”

“I what?” he asked incredulously. He gestured at the wall behind them. “What was that? I certainly didn’t avoid that.” He took a deep breath. “And I need to apologize for it.”

“Apologize?” It was Harry’s turn to be incredulous. “Roger, that is the most lovely thing that has ever happened to me that involved the participation of a man. And as such, I want it to happen quite frequently. But naked as often as possible, please. When can we do that? Naked, I mean.”

Roger just blinked rapidly at her for several seconds. He hadn’t expected this, that Harry would be such an eager lover. Although now that he thought about it, he should
have. She’d always been adventurous when they were children. In spite of the fact that she hadn’t seemed to enjoy their first encounter in the garden, she had most definitely enjoyed today’s interlude. “Aren’t you a bit sore? Surely naked can wait another day? Or two?” he asked in desperation.

Once Harry was naked, there was no possible way he wouldn’t take her. He was no saint, and had never aspired to be. Naked women ought to be bedded, that had always been his creed up to this point. How was a man to change direction so abruptly? He had set himself a monumental task, and there was absolutely no way he could do it. He knew his weaknesses; and naked women were a particularly fond weakness.

Harry shook her head with a grin. “No. Not sore.”

“Yes, well, you see,” Roger stumbled through an excuse. “I should have taken more time with you. Yes, I rushed our first encounter.” He was nodding, as if he could get her to agree with the force of his head moving. “The next time we, uh, yes, I’d like to have more time. And at night. It should be at night. What if someone had walked in?”

“I have come to the conclusion that I have an excellent staff,” Harry said with pride. “No one will walk in.” She reached for him and Roger scrambled up off the sofa.

“I … have an appointment,” he said. “And as I told you, you deserve more time and attention than I gave you today. I was a complete churl. No finesse at all.”

Her eyes widened and it was as if she’d suddenly had a divine revelation. “Roger, it’s you, isn’t it?” she asked. “You need more time to recuperate.” She was nodding now. “Mercer told me about that. He needed at least a day before he was capable of relations again. I know some men just haven’t the stamina to do that more than once.” She looked at him as if he were an invalid. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to rush you or make you feel
uncomfortable. And you needn’t apologize for how quick it was, either,” she said, adding insult to injury. “I completely understand that, as well. And I don’t mind, really. Prolonging it wouldn’t have made my completion any better.”