The Scoundrel's Lover (19 page)

She gasped. “Wh-why?”

“Because I’d spent my life like an animal in a cage. I acted as such,” he explained. “I ran ten times in that first year. I also shouted at them. And I stole from them twice.”

Her lips parted. “What did they do?”

“Quietly and kindly broke me, like the skittish colt that I was.” He smiled. “They brought me home and spoke to me compassionately. They could have sent me to the workhouses or even had me transported, I suppose. I was old enough for either. But they didn’t. And after a year, I began to calm. They offered me their name and I took it. They offered me education and I drank it in. But mostly, they offered me love. And I soaked in it.”

“They sound like amazing people,” she whispered, blinking at the tears that shone in her eyes.

“Calliope is remarkable. Funny and free. Oliver was the most decent man I ever knew. He died ten years ago and left me the club. I doubled its profits in a year and tripled it in two. I wish he could have seen that.”

Annabelle smiled. “I’m sure he does, Marcus. I’m sure he sees it and they are both proud of you. You should be proud of yourself.”

“But now you see why I owe your family so much. Without the intervention of your brothers, intervention on behalf of a boy they shouldn’t have given a damn about, without your father taking matters into his own hands, I would likely be dead.”

She gazed up into his face, understanding on her features. “I’m so glad they were the men they were and saved you so you could become the man you are.”

He blinked, once again caught up in her beauty. Then he shook his head. “He came by to see me often, you know. Your father. First man to sign up for lifetime membership to the club. Your brothers soon followed suit, and with them came more and more.” He shrugged. “They were my patrons, I suppose.”

“I think they would say friends,” she whispered.

“And I have repaid them by seducing their sister, his daughter,” he said.

She cocked her head. “Is that what you are doing? Seducing me?”

“Didn’t I?” he asked.

She got up slowly and moved to his chair. As she lowered herself into his lap, she shook her head. “You and I
both
knew exactly what we were doing when we started this affair, Marcus Rivers. I’m no shy wallflower, that is certain, and I do what I desire. That much of me, at least, is a Flynn.”

“Annabelle,” he whispered.

She gently covered his mouth with two fingers. “Please don’t tell me why I should walk away, Marcus. Or what I should do or don’t do. Right now I don’t want to hear it. Right now I simply want to be in your arms. I want to feel your body against mine. I want
you
.”

He shivered as she pulled her hand away and replaced it with her mouth, driving her tongue against his, demanding what she believed he would withhold.

Except he hadn’t been about to deny her. Instead, she had interrupted him in a far greater folly. He had been about to tell her that he loved her.

Because that was the truth that burned in his heart, his blood, his soul. And only her desire had saved them both from its destructive power.

Annabelle trembled as her hands found Marcus’s jacket. She slipped them inside and she reveled in his warmth. It was proof he was alive, he was here with her. Knowing that he very nearly hadn’t been, that he had likely only been saved because of her family…it struck a fear in her that was far more than mere empathy for an abused child. The very concept of Marcus not existing was…

Horrifying.

She pushed the jacket from his shoulders slowly, allowing herself to feel every inch of his shoulders, his arms, as she did so. He stared up at her, his green eyes dark and filled with desire and…and something else. Something deeper and richer, utterly terrifying.

She blinked and returned her focus to tugging his jacket out from the chair behind him. She tossed it aside before she moved on to his shirt. But she continued to feel his stare as she worked on every button. Continued to be surrounded by warmth that had to do with far more than body heat.

She had to get her head out of the clouds. Marcus Rivers couldn’t
care
for her. Want her, certainly, but anything deeper had to be a mistake. It had to be a case of her overlaying her own strange feelings onto him. She simply had to forget those feelings, pretend they didn’t exist. It was the only way.

Her fingers moved faster over his shirt, pulling it open, nearly popping the buttons free as she struggled to strip him down and find the passion between them rather than the emotions she didn’t want to face.

He didn’t move as she did so, he didn’t stop staring at her face, and finally she made herself look at him.

“Annabelle,” he whispered, lifting his hands to cover hers. “There should be no desperation here.”

She caught her breath, watching how their fingers intertwined. His hand was bigger than hers by far and yet it looked so right closing around her flesh. As if they fit in ways she didn’t want to comprehend.

She shook her head. “There will always be desperation, Marcus, in something so temporary.”

She’d said the words as much for herself as for him, but she saw them hit the mark. His bright eyes dulled a fraction and his mouth tightened. He slowly released her hands and pushed to his feet, making her stand with him so she wasn’t deposited on her backside on the floor.

“Yes, a good point,” he said, his voice as strained as his face.

He caught her elbow, and suddenly she was being rushed out of his office, through his chamber door. Only then did he spin her around and strip the buttons along the back of her gown open with no effort. He tugged her dress off and kicked it aside, then followed suit with her chemise.

He turned her to face him and looked her up and down. She felt no shame in his frank appraisal, only desire for him. Desire for his touch.

“Lay down on the bed,” he ordered.

She cocked her head. “Will you not remove your clothing?”

For a moment his lips pursed, as if he were considering not doing so. But then he pointed to the bed. “Lay down and I will.”

She did as she had been told, settling onto his pillows as she watched him finish taking off the shirt she had unbuttoned. He sat down on one of the chairs in his bedroom to remove his boots, and his trousers followed after that. She sucked in a breath.

It was amazing to see this man naked. Every time it took her breath away. She stared at every curve of muscle, every stretched inch of skin from his chest to his stomach to his hard cock. Then she reached for him. He obliged her silent order by coming to stand beside her.

She dragged her fingers over his stomach, his hip and around his back. There she found the scar. When she first saw it, she’d been surprised and curious. Now she touched the ridge of hard skin and flinched at what had almost been lost.

“Don’t worry, love,” he whispered as he leaned over, covering her, pinning her to the bed with his weight. “It doesn’t hurt now.”

She closed her eyes as his mouth slanted over hers. She wrapped her arms around him, clinging to his as he kissed her until time melted away and everything in her world was reduced to his tongue touching hers. She lifted into his kiss, reaching for more. And he gave it, his hands gliding down her body until he cupped her breasts and began to gently glide his thumbs over her distended nipples.

She gasped at the electric zing of pleasure that rocked to her sex. It clenched at emptiness, waiting for him to fill her.

But he wouldn’t. That was their bargain, at any rate. She would never feel him flexing inside of her. At the moment, that fact was as painful as if he had taken her breath.

But she ignored the loss and instead focused on the pleasure. She slid her nails against his back, eliciting a chuckle from his lips that was lost as he began to glide along her body with his mouth. She tensed as his tongue replaced his fingers on her nipple and his hand moved lower until he covered her sex with thick fingers.

He spread her open, smoothing his index finger at her entrance. Then, slowly, gently, he pressed inside. She jolted and he looked up from her breasts.

“If I am gentle, I won’t breach your barrier,” he explained as he began to pump his fingers in and out in a smooth rhythm.

She found herself lifting into his hands, turning her head at the stretching of her body for him. But it still felt so empty. She wanted what she’d seen in books over the years. She wanted his cock filling her. His cock driving into her even though it seemed impossible that he could fit inside.

She grunted her dissatisfaction and he stopped moving. Slowly he withdrew his fingers, licked them clean and then rolled to his side next to her.

“Am I hurting you?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Then why the unhappy face, Annabelle?”

She pressed her lips together. She had been the one to set the boundary for him that he would not penetrate her. It would be unfair if she were to change the rules now. So she lied.

“I only want to touch you too, Marcus,” she said.

He licked his lips. “Do you remember what we saw when we looked through the peephole to the lovers one of the first nights you were here?”

She nodded and understood completely. “You want to do what they did?”

“Pleasure each other at the same time.” He nodded and lay back. “Will you straddle me as that lady did her lover?”

Annabelle blushed as she turned to face the foot of the bed and then draped her leg over Marcus. His cock was just below her, and she took him in hand, focusing on him instead of her own slight embarrassment.

She stroked over him, brushing the head of him against her face. She felt Marcus stiffen beneath her, his breath sucking in, and smiled. It was always a pleasure to make him shudder. With gusto, she took him into her mouth and began to plunge him deep within her throat.

She smiled around him as his hips lifted toward her. But the smile faded as he buried his tongue deep into her sex behind her without warning or preamble. She gasped as he stroked her, driving her toward orgasm with relentless tasting, teasing, sucking that had her grinding her body against him.

She dove into her own work to center herself, and they fell into a similar rhythm as they pleasured each other. Their strokes began to match, as if they were truly joined in the most intimate way. Annabelle shuddered as her orgasm built, built, and finally as Marcus sucked hard on her clitoris, she exploded. She cried out, his cock falling from her lips, riding him hard as he brought her through the wild tremblings of her release, forcing more and more pleasure on her until she begged him to stop, begged him to continue.

She fell forward as the tremors began to fade, panting.

“God, I want to be inside of you,” he murmured.

His words made her open her eyes. She stared down at his still-hard cock and once again her fantasies took her to places where she could not go. But it seemed Marcus could read her mind, for he shifted suddenly, sliding from beneath her and curling his body around her from behind. She felt his cock against the slippery entrance to her body, and it took all her self-control not to simply back up against him. She was so wet, she had no doubt he would slide in without trouble. And then she would be his in every sense of the word.

He slid along her entrance without breaching her. “I want to feel your body milk mine with your orgasm, Annabelle. I want to stroke inside of you until you scream out.”

She shut her eyes. He was seducing her with those words, with those images. She couldn’t do it. Why? She was having a hard time remembering why.

Respectability. Yes, that was it.

“I can’t,” she all but sobbed.

He stopped rubbing against her, and for a moment it felt like the world had stopped spinning. The room was perfectly silent.

Finally, he said, “You can’t with
me
. You won’t.”

She looked at him over her shoulder. His face was a hard mask. She couldn’t read his emotions in his expression. But she heard pain in his tone. Faint, but there.

“I can’t,” she repeated. “I want—”

He turned his face. “I know what you want, Annabelle. I understand the concept of your respectability. Please don’t reiterate it.”

She rolled over and got to her knees to face him. “It’s not…” She shook her head. “It’s not easy for me either, Marcus.”

“It must be easier for you,” he growled. “You don’t feel—”

She dove toward him and cut him off by kissing him. She didn’t want to hear how he felt in this charged moment when it might sway her to change her mind about promises made and actions determined long ago.

She felt his hesitation, but then he crushed her to him, holding her so still and steady that she had no chance for escape.

“Fine,” he snapped as he pulled away. “You won’t allow me this. What will you give? Because I want to be inside of you, Annabelle. I want to claim you, I
need
to claim you.”

She swallowed. “My mouth, my hands, are they not enough? What would be enough?”

He stared at her, holding her gaze even as he wrapped an arm around her waist. He massaged her hip, not gently, but purposefully. Then he cupped her backside, and she shivered with the intimate touch. But just as she had begun to relax, he slipped his fingers between the globes of her buttocks and pressed against the entrance there. A forbidden, dark thrill of pleasure pulsed from where he touched and she stared at him, unable to blink or think or move.

“Here,” he growled.

Her lips parted. “Can you…can you do that?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Will it hurt?” she whispered.

His hesitation spoke the answer before he said, “At first, but I will make sure you receive more pleasure than pain, Annabelle. And in the end, this will be better. Your proper husband—” he spat those words, “—will never think to take you here. So this will always be only mine. Only
ours
.”

She stared at him. What he was suggesting was terrifying not only in the act, but also in the emotion he implied. If she allowed him to take her…
there
it would be a secret that hung between them even long after he had exited her life. He would take a part of her with him. She would keep a part of him.

And it would hang within her marriage. She knew it. And she didn’t give a damn.

“Yes,” she whispered, as desperate to offer him a claim as he was to stake one. “Yes.”

He groaned with desire and yanked her against his hard chest. He delved his tongue deep into her mouth before he turned her so she was once again facing the foot of the bed. She moved to her hands and knees out of instinct and held her breath as she waited for what would come.

But he didn’t merely jam himself inside of her. To her surprise, she felt his fingers against the rosebud of her bottom once more. He pressed them to her. They were wet and slick with more than just her juices. She peeked over her shoulder to find he had retrieved some kind of oil from a drawer in the small table beside his bed and was using it to lubricate her. The pressure of his fingers was gentle as he opened her and then slipped one digit inside.

She gasped at the shock of being entered so, and he froze, letting her become accustomed to the breach.