The Trouble With Being Wicked (34 page)

He gritted his teeth. “God, Celeste. You make me want to come.”

“Is that so, my lord?” she murmured breathlessly. She watched him beneath her lashes, breathing hard, her damp breasts jiggling as she increased the pace.

He watched those quivering handfuls of flesh, never ceasing his assault on her sensitized pearl or his bucking demands to be taken deeper. “God, yes.
Yes
.”

She leaned forward and flattened her palms against his iron-like chest to ride him harder. Intense pleasure rewarded her, spreading through her like liquid heat. She clenched around him as tight as she could and savored his fingers digging into her hips in response.

“Now, Celeste.
Now.
”

She pushed her hips against his one last time, then scrambled off his lap. Falling between his knees she took him back into her mouth. He watched her hungrily as she wrapped her mouth around him and drove him deep into her throat.

“Oh,
God
.” He thrust his hands into her hair. Gooseflesh spread over his thighs and he gasped for breath. She nearly choked with the depth of him.

When his seed ceased pumping, she rolled her tongue over his silken flesh and the flat underside of his head until he jerked away.

She smiled, pleased with herself, and trailed her fingertip down his brow to the tip of his nose. “You’re welcome, my lord.”

He made a guttural noise. Then he grabbed her wrist and pulled her back onto his lap, wrapping her in his arms and holding her against his chest.

Despite his arms around her, she felt empty. These visits in the middle of the night weren’t enough. She needed more of him. She wanted to see him in daylight, wanted to laugh as she strolled on his arm. Attend dinners with her friends. Be with him any place where she would know she was more to him than this turn between the sheets.

He had made it clear there was nothing more for her than this.

When he awoke a short while later, she handed him his clothes. “Good night, my lord.”

He stared, dumbfounded. “That’s all? I’m dismissed?”

She wrapped her arms around herself, then thought better of it and retrieved the blanket from the seat of her chair. She fashioned it around her nude body and lifted her chin. “Yes. You may go.”

He opened his mouth. Hurt and confusion darkened his eyes. But she wouldn’t be persuaded to let him stay. Forcing him to take his pleasure and leave was the only way to pretend this was a business arrangement. For it had become pathetically undeniable that she’d made the egregious mistake of developing a
tendre
for her protector.

No. She’d done much, much worse.

He finally accepted she truly meant for him to leave. He left. She crawled naked into her bed, alone. The smell of him on her skin brought back every poignant memory of his hands on her. Ash was quickly becoming something she needed, like air or water or her imported French soap.

Foolish girl.
She was in love with him.

Yet these midnight calls were slowly killing what little of her heart she had left.

* * *

With every drop of blood in him, Ash didn’t want to go. But she was adamant, and he guilt-ridden.

Another man might have bolted at the first hint of such obvious warning signs. His mistress, almost in tears, showing him to the door. Not Ash. He didn’t want to leave her now any more than he’d been able to avoid her in Devon, or keep himself from her bed tonight. Good God, he was reprehensible. Why had he encouraged a domestic fantasy he had no intention of making real? Reading to her before the fire, as cozy as man and wife? A pair of spectacles and a prim dress didn’t make her a lady. And when she’d taken his prick in her mouth and brought him to ecstasy—God, she’d left no doubt in his mind she was the farthest from a lady he could get.

He walked the short distance to his coach feeling more confused than he’d felt when he’d arrived. He couldn’t keep pretending he was only testing himself. He
was
like his father. He relished clandestine, forbidden sex. He knew it now. Must have always known it. Why else had he fought so hard to be better? To deny the man he was inside?

But was his lust so reprehensible? She’d found her way into the deepest, darkest part of him, and what had happened? He was happier than he’d ever been. When he’d made love to her the first night, he’d realized he’d never truly made love with a woman before. It wasn’t her vast experience, or the seven years since his last experience, that had brought them together in an act so beautiful he’d wanted to weep when he’d seen her tears. It was her.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t give her what she wanted. He couldn’t marry her. He was using her, keeping her near for his own selfish reasons. And he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

He cringed, thinking of the last time he’d crossed her threshold almost a week ago. He’d sought her out in the blackest hour of night, desperate to feel her, single-minded in his resolve to have her. He’d wanted her, wanted to repeat the first experience, but he’d been afraid. What if Montborne was right? What if it wasn’t whores in general, but this one who attracted him? What would he do if he could only ever want this one, unsuitable woman?

He hadn’t asked what she’d wanted nor had he given in return. He’d only taken what he’d needed and sneaked away in shame as soon as he could untangle himself from her sheets. For the next six days, he’d proceeded to regret his misuse of her. He’d stayed away. He hadn’t even sent a note. Out of shame and fear, and his empty longing for more. Always more. Wishing it could be different and knowing it couldn’t.

Tonight he’d cracked. Marched right to her door when the realization came to him that he might not see her until the next day, or the next, or maybe never, if he didn’t come to her tonight.

She was his mistress, nothing more. He shouldn’t care if he was hurting her. Yet no matter how often he reminded himself she was a trained professional, he couldn’t help remembering the Miss Smythe he’d first been attracted to. He ached for those innocent days in Devon. To forget everything he knew about her now and only remember the soft parting of her lips when she laughed. Her pride in her home. The way she took to his sniping sisters, even though he really wished she hadn’t. Her brave, beautiful attempts to tease him. She lived in the moment, yet he was coming to realize she didn’t live recklessly or make choices lightly.

He didn’t, either. Not usually. Not until he’d met her.

She hadn’t shared these parts of herself with other men. He was sure of it. Her body, perhaps, but her heart? She felt something for
him
. The regret dulling her eyes wasn’t a trick of his imagination.

“Would you marry me? Now that you know what I am?”

He’d never realized how thoroughly a few words could terrify a man. He wasn’t ready to let her go, not even close. He was in love with her.

His stomach clenched. She hadn’t sent him packing yet, but she would. She was strong, his Miss Smythe. She was close to concluding he wasn’t good for her. It was only a matter of time before she dug her heels in and barred her door. Perhaps he ought to let her, for he had little to offer her in exchange for the pleasure she gave him.

His paused at his coach and turned to look at her door. It was closed. The only light in the terraced house beckoned to him from her square window. He should be in there, with her. He loved her. As impossible as it was to believe, it was true. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had happened. He only knew that when he was with her, he felt whole. He never felt the need to be impeccable. Only a better man. For her.

But his hands were tied. He wanted a wife. She wasn’t fit to marry. Their disparity was hardly his fault, and no matter how he wished it otherwise, she must accept that. He’d given her more than he’d ever thought possible. What more did she want?

But he knew. It haunted him, in the back of his mind. She wanted him to marry her. If he did, his sisters would be unmarriageable, his family name ruined and he a laughingstock.

He couldn’t do that to his sisters, not when they were so close to spinsterhood already. He would never ruin their chances for families of their own.

He climbed into his coach and tapped on the roof, his stomach suddenly heavy. He’d known there were more than enough reasons why he couldn’t marry Celeste, but thinking them all at once while the pain in her eyes was still fresh made his situation feel hopeless.

A whip crack sounded. The coach lurched into motion. He settled against the squab, turning over ideas as he searched for the most logical answer. There had to be a solution, one agreeable to all. He couldn’t marry Celeste, nor could he keep her after he married. He couldn’t hurt a woman the way his father had hurt his mother, by keeping a wife and a mistress at the same time. He’d find the right woman or he’d take no wife at all.

Which was it to be, then?

The answer came to him instantly. He’d rather have Celeste.

Outside his coach’s window, terraced houses blurred into each other. In this part of town, there were mistresses behind most of those closed doors. Kept women, who, unlike Celeste, depended on a protector. He smiled grimly, recalling how adamantly she’d bargained against accepting his money. His beautiful little dove answered to no one, for she owned her own property and paid her own way.

Remembering the cottage she’d loved so well, it all seemed so logical. He
could
have her. It would be easy enough for her to move into the cottage she already owned and adored. Wasn’t it his fault she’d fled Brixcombe in the first place? He could bring her back. Then he could visit her whenever he wished, none of this waiting until the middle of the night business for appearances. She would be his mistress and he would never marry. It would be an easy sort of arrangement, all parties satisfied.

He smiled in the darkened interior of the coach. He could be near the woman he loved. It could all be done in a fortnight. They could retire to Brixcombe and never look back. Surely she would agree.

He flexed his hand, squeezing the velvet cushion seat. He had to ask soon. He couldn’t allow her to end their liaison now, not when he’d just gotten used to the idea he loved her. God, he felt like an ass for not even realizing he’d fallen in love with her until today. When had that happened, exactly? When he’d first seen her at the cottage? The day she’d taken tea with his sisters? The night he’d kissed her, despite his every reason not to?

Perhaps the first time they’d made love. The soaring euphoria that had carried him through the hours and days since was a feeling so beautiful, he’d almost wanted to tell her. But that was exactly the sort of thoughtless, selfish behavior only a man would act on.
“Celeste, I do love you, but you spoke truly. I will not marry you.”

His excitement dimmed. He had two sisters. He knew something of the way women’s minds worked. What was obvious to him wouldn’t be as clear to her. Women didn’t aspire to second-class positions, even if what he was prepared to offer her far outshone any reasonable expectation she should have on him.

But he had to ask. He had to know that she would be with him forever, for he couldn’t risk losing her a second time.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Two days later, Ash still hadn’t broached the subject with her. He dipped the tip of his pen into a pot of ink and stared blindly at the correspondence spread over his desk. Asking Celeste to give up her life in London when he wasn’t prepared to give her everything in return was a dangerous bet. Women weren’t logical about these things. It could turn badly in a second and he’d be left without her company at all.

He scratched out the last line he’d written to his solicitor, then crumbled the missive altogether. As long as she allowed him into her bed, he’d be terrified of offending her.

“They say you’ve taken up with Celeste Gray,” Montborne said, sidling into the doorway of Ash’s library.

Excellent. Just what he needed, on the tenterhooks of his fragile sanity.

He concentrated on the blank page before him, not bothering to look up. “A man is allowed to sow his oats here and there,” he replied. “Even soggy ones.”

“I said that when you were looking for a few nights with a bored countess. But a courtesan? I told them they’re mad.”

The pen plopped into the inkwell. Ash settled his palms on the arms of his chair. “And if it’s true?”