The Scoundrel's Lover (23 page)

“I insisted on darkness so that you would not later fire those who tied you up,” he explained.

“Unlike you,” Marcus roared, pulling against the binds that were seemingly impossible to break.

“You won’t fire me,” Abbot said with a small smile. “Or if you do, you’ll change your mind soon enough.”

“And why would I?” Marcus asked, glaring a hole in his friend.

“Because I make this place run as much as you do.” He turned to leave. “And because your mother likes me.”

“What the hell is this about?” Marcus snapped, but Abbot was already tugging the door behind him.

“You’ll see,” his friend called out before he shut the barrier, leaving Marcus bound to the bed and utterly at the mercy of…whatever was going on.

He thrashed a few more times, but unless he broke the bed, it was evident he wasn’t going anywhere. “Damn it!” he shouted.

The door to the chamber opened in that moment, and he caught his breath as Annabelle stepped inside.

She was not wearing a mask, though it likely didn’t matter in the middle of the day, with only his turncoat staff in residence. She wore a dark green gown, stitched with black flowers all along the skirt. Her hair was bound loosely so that little tendrils fell along her cheeks and her neck. She was utterly, perfectly, gloriously beautiful, and he turned his face so he wouldn’t be swayed by that fact.

“What is going on, Miss Flynn?”

She shut the door and quietly turned the lock. Then she moved to the wall and slid down the privacy screen that blocked the peephole hidden there. As she latched it, she said, “You are going to hurt yourself flailing around like that, Marcus.”

“Untie me,” he growled.

She turned to face him. “No, I think not.”

He strained against the binds. “Annabelle.”

She sighed. “I won’t release you, Marcus, so stop acting a fool and be still.”

He shook his head at her retort, but relaxed against the bed. “Explain yourself.”

She nodded. “I will.”

He watched her as she calmly strode to a small table by the fire. She reached into the drawer there and drew out a very sharp pair of scissors. As she approached him, she smiled.

“No need to worry, I have no intention of hurting you.” She set the scissors aside and began to unlace his boots. As she removed them, she said, “I only want to make you more comfortable and ready.”

“Ready for what?”

She glanced up his body as she drew one boot away. She caressed his foot gently, sending shock waves of reaction through his body.

“You mustn’t be angry at Mr. Abbot,” she said, ignoring his question. “He didn’t ignore your order to refuse me in every way. It was a letter from my sister-in-law that drew him to me. And once I explained myself…and begged a little…he was convinced I was in the right. He is only doing this because he cares about you.”

“Cares enough to have me trussed up by my own staff?” Marcus barked, though he watched unblinking as she removed his second boot. She tossed it away and slid her soft fingers beneath his trousers, caressing his legs as far as she could reach.

“Again, my plan, not his.”

“Why?” he growled.

She snatched up her scissors and quickly cut a long line up his trouser leg. He jerked away, and she stopped. “I am sorry, and I assure you I will pay for a new suit for you, of course.”

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, but didn’t flinch when she cut the other leg of his pants.

“I’m undressing you. Obviously, I would normally simply have you stand and do this in a more conventional way, but since you would likely make your escape or turn the tables on me, I can’t risk that. So cutting away your clothes must do.” She smiled up at him, utterly wicked. “I must admit, I’m rather enjoying it. Are you?”

“You shouldn’t be here,” he panted.

She snipped a few more times and then tugged. His trousers fell away around him, leaving him naked from the waist down. She smiled at his half-hard cock.

“You don’t really think that,” she insisted. “But I knew you would say it, and that is why I have resorted to this kind of plan.”

“What plan?” he asked, tracking her as she moved to his shirt. Thank God he had left his jacket in the office upstairs, for she didn’t hesitate before she began snipping away a second time, shredding the fabric of his fine shirt like it was nothing.

“I made a terrible mistake,” she said, setting the scissors aside and rending the shirt open with her bare hands.

Now he was naked, and he stared up at her. “I’m guessing this moment is not that mistake.”

“No.” She reached up and cupped his cheek. It took everything in him not to lean into the touch, not to turn his face to kiss her palm. “My mistake, my love, was in running from all the beauty and passion and love I found in you. My mistake was believing I needed something different than the perfection right here before me.”

He shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re saying—”

“I do.” She leaned in closer, close enough that he felt her breath on his face. “I love you, Marcus Rivers. I love you with all that I am.”

For a brief, unguarded moment, Annabelle saw Marcus’s true reaction to her confession. He lit up, joy and relief on his face, but then he covered it. His expression went hard and heartless.

“I don’t give a damn,” he ground out.

She nodded. “I deserve that, I think. But I don’t accept it. I did however, expect it, which is why you are currently tied naked to a bed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I knew you would deny me, partly out of your pride and partly because you think you must protect me from what I want. So I thought of that first night when I came here. When you had my brother tied to a bed so he could sober up. And I thought, what a marvelous idea. So I arranged it. And now we have all day to talk together. With the door locked and the peephole latched, even if your evening’s festivities begin, no one will interrupt us. So you are mine. In body, at least. And I hope, very soon, in soul and spirit.”

She smiled at him. How could she not? He was trying so hard to remain detached but his body betrayed him. His cock was hardening with her every word, her every touch. He wanted her.

And if she was forced to do so, she would use that against him.

“You want a respectable life, Annabelle,” he spat. “You will not find that with me. So leave.”

“Yes.” She sighed. “My respectable life. I did say that, I did reach for it. And when I obtained that one thing I thought I wanted more than anything, I found it to be very, very empty.”

He glared at her. “What do you mean?”

“I received a proposal from an earl,” she confessed. “Yesterday.”

His jaw set. “Then I don’t understand why you aren’t gleefully announcing your engagement and planning for a life.”

“I
am
planning for my life.” She shrugged. “A life with you.”

“Annabelle—”

“Do shut up, Marcus. I don’t want to have to gag you,” she said with a shake of her head.

He pressed his lips together, his frustration plain on his face, and she took the rare opportunity of his silence to continue.

“Do you know how utterly bored I was in Society? Do you know how hard I had to work to not only to fit in but to give a damn about those fops? It was
torture
, Marcus. Worse torture was the fact that I would think of you every moment I was pretending to be the kind of woman one of those men would want. I thought of your touch.”

She glided her hand across his stomach and enjoyed how his breath hissed out. “I thought of your kiss.”

She leaned in and dragged her tongue across his nipple. “I thought of all that passion which bubbled unfulfilled between us.”

She stared at his cock and then reached for it, stroking him just once, just enough that he lifted his hips. “But more than that,” she confessed, backing away. “I thought of
you
. Of how easy it was to talk to you, to share with you. Of how you offered me kindness without a thought to how that made you look. You respected my mind, you pleasured my body…you gave me everything I ever wanted. You gave me more than I thought I deserved.”

He shook his head. “Annabelle, please. Please don’t say these things. You told me what you wanted, I would hate myself if you walked away from it. And you would hate me too. Perhaps not today when you’ve convinced yourself that your second choice is good enough, but some day.”

“You think you are my second choice?” she asked, sitting beside him on the bed. His hands flexed, and she knew he wanted to touch her.

“You wanted—”

“I told you, he asked me to marry him. And I found
he
was my second choice. In fact, he wasn’t my choice at all. There was only you, Marcus. And I should have realized that a long time ago. I should have known it from the moment you first kissed me. Hell, from the first moment you met me and all I could do was watch you, half intrigued, half terrified of you.”

His brow wrinkled.

“Yes, you had that much impact on me. Even all those years ago.” She shook her head. “But I was foolish and driven by fears and desires I was certain could make me become someone else. But I-I don’t want to be someone else anymore. I want to be Annabelle Flynn.
Your
Annabelle. I want my dark desires and my wild heart to have a safe home with yours.”

She stopped talking and watched him, waiting for his response. She could see how much her words moved him. She could see him fighting against his wants, his feelings for her and his desire to protect her, and probably himself, from what she asked for.

And the second won out. His face hardened to steel and he looked at her with a mask of disdain she would have believed entirely if she didn’t know him so well already.

“Go away, Annabelle,” he spat. “I don’t want you. You were a game, a ruse, a toy. And I’m tired of you.”

She nodded. “That is why you didn’t take my virginity?”

He glared at her. “It wasn’t worth anything to me.”

She bent her head with a long sigh. “I can see you intend to be difficult. I hoped that wouldn’t be the case, but one cannot always have what one wants. So now I suppose we move on to the second part of my plan.”

He rolled his eyes, but she could see interest there where he tried to hide it. “And what is this second part?”

She stood up from the bed and quickly stripped open her gown that she and Serafina had agonized over just for its ease in removal. As she shed out of it, she revealed the rosy pink chemise beneath. The very sheer chemise that left no curve to the imagination.

“I am going to…how would you put it, my darling…I’m going to
fuck
you.” She watched his eyes widen and his cock grow hard at her very direct words, and smiled. “It seems your body will betray you even when you say you don’t want me.”

“Damn it, Annabelle,” he growled, pulling against the binds again. “You
know
I want you. But don’t do this, you’ll regret it.”

She ignored him and focused instead on his body. His beautiful body that she had wanted for weeks and only experienced in limited, yet very satisfying, ways. And now he was hers.

All hers.

She got back on the bed next to him and leaned over, kissing his flesh gently, savoring his heat and flavor. She felt him tugging those binds, straining to escape so that she couldn’t force him to feel what he felt.

She sucked his nipple gently and the struggling stopped.

“Damn it,” he breathed, his eyes shutting.

She smiled against his flesh. She’d won for a while, though she had no belief that he wouldn’t fight her further. But for now she swirled her tongue around and around the flat disk of his nipple, sucking and stroking until he groaned, and she moved to the opposite one. She repeated her actions there for a while before she began to inch down the apex of his body.

“I love kissing you,” she murmured against his flesh. She stroked her cheek against his stomach. “I could do this all day long.”

He groaned, and she smiled up at him.

“I won’t. I have far more interesting plans for you.”

“Please don’t,” he whispered again, but there was no heat to the denial. He wanted her, he had only convinced himself that he couldn’t feel that way. That he
wouldn’t
.

“But I must,” she said, meeting his stare. “I must, Marcus. And you know why. In your heart you know why and you want me to give myself to you. It’s all right if you’re afraid.”

He stiffened. “I’m not afraid.”

She tilted her head. “Of loving me, I think you are. Of sharing yourself completely with me, not just this way with our bodies, but more, you are. Of taking what you fear I don’t understand, you are. But I love you. And even though I’m afraid of the future, too, I’m willing to face it if I have you at my side.”

She smiled at him, watching as pure disbelief crossed his face. And then she slid lower down his body, pressing kisses to his muscular hip. He jolted at the contact. At the brush of her hair across his cock.

She turned her face, resting her cheek against his hip and leaning in close to his hard erection. He was ready for her, with his body she had already won. He was trying to protect her, even though he admitted he wanted her.

“You frightened me the first time I saw this,” she admitted, reaching out to drag one fingernail across his length. “But I began to crave it. Dream of you sliding me beneath me and slipping deep inside. Today it won’t be a dream.”

He tensed, but made no further protest as she wrapped a hand around him and stroked over his heat. She shifted, pinning his legs with her body, and darted her tongue out over him. It was a familiar act and her body swelled with increasing desire as she did it. And she was happy for it too. Despite all her careful confidence, she was nervous about seducing him. Nervous at surrendering herself.

And nervous about what would happen once she eventually loosened his ties and gave him the freedom to reject her.

“I love you, Marcus,” she murmured between long licks of his cock.

“No,” he moaned, his tone both pleasured and pained.

“Yes, I do. Denying it won’t make it change. I love you.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and he squeezed his fists as he struggled, this time emotionally, with her words.

She straddled him, positioning herself over him, and his eyes flew open again.

“Wait, wait, you can’t be ready,” he grunted. “Not when I haven’t touched you.”

“I want this,” she insisted.

“Then come up here. Straddle my mouth and let me ready you so it won’t hurt as much when you finally…when we finally do this.”

She stared at him. “You would pleasure me despite your misgivings?”

He nodded. “I don’t want to hurt you more than I have to, Annabelle. Come here.”

His voice changed slightly, and she smiled. He loved her. In that moment, she knew it even though he denied it over and over. He loved her and this was his act of love even though he was angry and hurt and lost.

She slid up until she was able to lower herself over his mouth. She clung to the headboard of the bed as he began to lick her, parting her folds with his tongue, finding her clitoris by feel.

She rocked against him, riding the strokes, reaching for the pleasure that was already sparking between her legs.

“Come,” he whispered against her sex. “Come for me.”

She arched her back as he sucked her clitoris and followed his order instantly. Pleasure cascaded through her and she trembled in its wake, her hips jerking as he continued to suck and lick her tender flesh.

As she began to come back down from the high, she slid away from him and looked into his eyes. “You can’t tell me you don’t love me.”

He said nothing but merely watched as she moved back to her original position, poised above him for the claiming of her virginity.

“Go slowly,” he finally whispered. “Go bit by bit.”

She nodded and opened herself, lowering onto his cock. He pressed into her sex, then began to glide inside until it was an inch and then she flinched as pain rippled through her.

“A little more,” he urged, and she did as he asked, taking more of him, more of him until he was fully seated in her, their bodies flush. “Now hold still. Is there much pain?”

She stared into his eyes, in wonder at the fullness in her sex, the stretching from their bodies being joined. “A little,” she admitted. “But not as bad as I thought it might be.”

“For some women it is terrible, for others not as bad,” he explained. “And my God, Annabelle, you are heaven.”

She smiled. “I wondered when you would admit it.”

“And now you must move. If you don’t, I won’t be able to control myself and I’ll lift you off this bed.”

Her eyes went wide. He had a wildness in his stare that told her how much he was struggling for control. She rolled her hips, mimicking the acts she had watched here between couples, the drawings she had observed over the years. She moved and eventually she found the rhythm that came naturally between them. She clung to his shoulders, rocking over him as the pleasure he had created with his mouth began to slowly build again with the movement of her body.