Chapter 16

“Put the tray on my desk, please,” Lord Severn instructed the servant before nodding his dismissal at her and turning back to Lori. “Come and sit here and I will clean your wounds.”

“I can do it. I don’t need—”

“Lorelei.”

He didn’t raise his voice, but something in his tone made her pulse quicken and her body began to rise from the chair with no instruction from her brain.

Lori mentally chided her traitorous flesh, crossed her arms, and pressed her bottom firmly back down on the chair. “You like to order people around, don’t you?”

He rolled his eyes. “ Please let me help you with this. In addition to your arm there are scratches on your face. It will be easier for somebody else to care for both. If you like, I can ring for the maid, and she can assist you.”

His patient tone was more annoying than his commanding one.

“Fine.” She thrust to her feet, stomped over to the chair, and dropped into it gracelessly.

“Good girl.”

Lori bared her teeth.

Predictably, he chuckled at her glower and then proceeded to carefully bathe the side of her face and neck. “I beg your pardon,” he said when she flinched. “Is it very painful?”

“No, only a little sore. Does it look bad?”

“The scratches will probably heal quickly but I think you will have some bruising.” His jaw flexed and his pale gaze slid from the grazed flesh to her eyes. “I wish I had apprehended the brute earlier and spared you this.”

Lori swallowed at the intensity in his eyes. “I am just grateful that you were there at all.”

He gave her a long, brooding look and then turned back to the wound and applied a medicinal smelling salve. His touch—as businesslike as it was—sent sparks of heat skirling through her veins. He was such a large man, and yet so very gentle. Tender, almost. Soothing…

“You seem adept at treating wounds,” she said, choosing to speak—even if it was something stupid—before she began to moan. Or purr.

“I must have a natural aptitude as this is my first foray into the world of nursing,” he said, a small smile tugging at his lips. Once he replaced the lid on the tin of salve, his eyes flickered over her, and he frowned.

“What is wrong?”

“I have made a clean spot on your face. I am going to wash off the rest of this muck.”

Lori had forgotten all about the horrific cosmetics. “You don’t have to do that. I can—”

“Lorelei.”

Again, the word was soft yet too compelling to ignore.

“What?” she asked in a stupidly breathy voice, unable to look away from his eyes.

“Let me do this for you. Please.”

After a moment, she nodded, unwilling to trust her voice.

He added more hot water to the basin and proceeded to wash her with the same care he’d used to tend to her injury. He snorted softly when he peeled off the black beauty spot. “I haven’t seen one of these since I was a boy. I had a great-aunt who wore them.”

“I had only seen them in stage plays until this evening,” she admitted.

When he’d cleansed her to his satisfaction, the water in the basin was cloudy.

“That is revolting,” Lori said, eying the flannel cloth he’d used, which had been white and was now a sickly gray. “Why on earth would people tolerate wearing cosmetics all day, every day?”

“Probably because they did not possess skin as lovely as yours.”

Heat immediately crept up her neck at his compliment—which seemed all the more flattering for the matter-of-fact way in which he delivered it—and Severn smiled.

She gave an exasperated laugh. “You said that on purpose! Just to make me blush.”

“Yes, I did. But that does not make it any less true. Hold still, there is just one last thing.”

Before she could ask what, he began plucking pins out of her hair, his large hands quick and deft.

There was such a feeling of unreality to it—Lord Stand Fast Severn, the King of the Rakes, serving as her lady’s maid—that Lori couldn’t think of anything to say or do except sit there and watch, rapt, as he carefully deconstructed the horrendous coiffure.

Dorian, her only lover, had never tended to her with such tender care—or any care at all, really. And Dorian had never—not even when he’d been rutting in her—caused a fraction of the bewildering and pleasurable sensations currently rampaging through her body like a fever.

She was sweating and her lungs felt the way they had when she’d fallen off those piled up packing crates and knocked the air from her chest. Thinking—at least thinking any rational thoughts—was impossible. All she wanted to do was feel more of his big hard body against hers. She desperately wanted him to touch her the way he had done that night at the ball, when his hands and mouth had roamed her person with a possessive intent that made Lori regret refusing his shocking invitation to go to his house every night since.

“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m not going to stop at just removing your face paint and hair pins.” He punctuated his words by tossing aside the last pin with a soft ping .

“Loo—” Lori’s voice cracked like an adolescent boy’s. She cleared her throat. “Looking at you how, pray?” Her attempt to sound chilly was dismal.

“You know how.”

“What—what might you do if I don’t stop?”

His lips tightened and he slowly slid his fingers into the sausage-like curls, capturing her gaze as he gently raked his hands through her heavy tresses. “You have beautiful hair,” he said, his disconcerting eyes finally releasing her and moving over her face until he was regarding his fistful of curls which he then lifted higher, until he could bury his nose in the tangled locks. His eyes drifted shut as his chest expanded and he murmured, “Even that hideous rose perfume can’t entirely hide your scent.”

Lori gawked. “You—you know my scent?”

He opened his eyes. “Why do you smell so damned good?”

“I, er, wasn’t aware that I did. My sister-in-law makes soap with calendula and—”

“You smell like summer.” He inhaled another lungful. “And fresh bedsheets.”

Lori laughed. “Bedsheets? That doesn’t sound very—”

“You drive me mad.” He growled, releasing her hair and moving his hands to her waist.

The room rocked around her.

Except it wasn’t the room, but Lori who was moving as Severn lifted her onto his lap as easily as if she were a toddler.

“What are you—”

His lips crashed down over hers and she opened her mouth to let him in, not waiting to be asked.

His chest rumbled with approval, and he stroked into her with suggestive thrusts.

Lori did something she wanted to do since the very first time she’d seen Severn and carded her fingers into his jet-black over-long hair. Although their hair was alike in color, the texture of his was far silkier and finer than her own coarse strands.

He purred when she grazed his scalp with her fingernails. “Yes, please,” he muttered against her parted lips before resuming his kissing.

She lost herself in a blizzard of sensations, reveling in the erotic caresses of his hands on her waist, hips, and back, drowning in the heat and hardness of his chest and luxuriating in the way his big body completely surrounded hers, dominating her with his size and strength.

And then—just as suddenly as he’d fallen on her—he put her at arm’s length, his expression raw and aroused. “ Damnation! ”

“What?” she asked, the word sounding as woozy as she felt.

“Regardless of what you’ve heard about me, I don’t deflower virgins.”

Lori frowned and yanked her hands from his hair, not caring when she snagged some strands and made him wince. “I never claimed to be a virgin.”

One of his eyebrows shot up.

She couldn’t help laughing at his skeptical expression, although it was a laugh borne of annoyance rather than humor. “Do you really think I would lie about something like that just so you would keep touching me?”

He opened his mouth, but Lori scowled both at him and her stupidly heating face, and said, “Let me go!” But when she tried to push off his lap, his hands encircled her waist easily holding her in place. Not that she struggled terribly hard.

“You didn’t even know how to kiss properly that first time,” he said.

“Just because I’d never properly ”—she sneered as she spat the word—“k-kissed a man before doesn’t mean I am an innocent,” she retorted, stung and mortified at the thought that he’d noticed her lack of skill.

“Of course not. I beg your pardon for saying such a stupid thing.” His pitying look was almost worse than his disbelief. “I know not all men care for such intimacies.” And then he hesitated, opened his mouth, but then closed it.

Again, Lori tried to back away, and again he held her in place. She settled for crossing her arms and jabbing her elbows into his chest. Lovely. Now she would have sore elbows to go along with her bruised feelings. “What?” she demanded, annoyed when he continued to stare at her. “Just say whatever it is you want to say, my lord.”

“Were you forced?”

“No, I was not. So you can take that careful, pitying look off your face—as if you are anxious that I might shatter like glass if you do or say something wrong. I’ve had a lover, my lord—only one, unlike some people”—he snorted, but she ignored him. “But it wasn’t”—Lori broke off and chewed the inside of her cheek, just what words was she looking for? How could she explain the paltriness of her sexual experience without sounding even more pathetic than she already did?

After a moment, Lori gave up looking for careful words and simply said, “The man I—I fucked ”—she gave him a mulish look, daring him to comment on her vulgar language— “was a selfish clod and kissing wasn’t the only thing that did not hold any interest for him.” Her face flamed, but she plunged onward. “Let me just say that my experience didn’t make me want to rush out and repeat it.”

“Did he not give you an orgasm?”

Yet again, Lori was rendered speechless by the raw, direct words he used.

Severn mistook her startled silence for a lack of comprehension and said, “Women can experience sexual climaxes just the same as—”

Lori shoved at his massive chest, but he didn’t budge so much as an inch. “I know that you dolt!”

His lips quivered slightly, making her want to hit him again. “I beg your pardon. I had no inten—”

“What he did or did not do is none of your concern. Perhaps I should interrogate you about your sexual history.”

“I will answer anything you like.”

“I thought gentlemen did not kiss and tell?”

He smiled. “I never said I’d give you a list of names.”

Jealousy at the thought of him having a list —and how long it likely was—stabbed at her, twisting a knife in her chest. “What a lovely offer. But I believe I will decline your generous offer. Any discussion of your amours would be a long one—surely lasting well into the New Year—and I have more important matters in my life.”

Rather than be offended, he grinned. “Maybe not that long.” His smile slid away. “But I don’t want to talk about past lovers right now. I don’t want to talk about anything.” His hands closed on her hips, and he brought her closer, the action spreading her legs wider, until her sex was pressed against something impossible to mistake. “I’ve been hard for you since the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

“My lord exaggerates.”

“Not by much.” He lifted his hips slightly and her eyelids fluttered when he grazed her in exactly the right place. Or the wrong place—unless she wanted to lose her few remaining wits.

“Stop trying to pull away, Lorelei.”

Her body became pliant at his command, an involuntary physical response that was infuriating and one she should immediately take steps to root out. Lori squared her shoulders, scowled, and said, “Stop barking orders. You already said that you did not—”

“Shut up, Lorelei,” he murmured, and then claimed her mouth with a kiss so enticing and commanding there was no possible way Lori could have resisted, even if she’d wanted to.

He released her an indeterminate time later, and she was foolishly pleased to see he was breathing every bit as hard as she was. “There is one more thing that needs—”

“Shut up, Fast.” Lori indulged in a brief, smug smirk as she used his own words against him. “You needn’t say it. I already know what thing you mean.” After all, she’d heard it before from Dorian, hadn’t she? True, Dorian had waited to share the brutal truth with her until after he had taken her maidenhead.

Lori supposed she should look on the bright side. Lord Severn, for all his rakish ways, was at least not promising to love her forever as a way to lure her into bed.

“What thing do you think I mean?” he asked, his brow creased.

Lori no longer recalled the exact phrases Dorian had used to shatter her innocence and transform her from an openhearted, trusting girl into a scarred, cynical woman, but she would never forget the gist of his cruel words. And she never ever wanted to hear the same sentiment—either unexpurgated or dressed up in pretty language—from another man’s lips as long as she lived.

She met Severn’s questioning gaze with a blasé smile she was far from feeling. “I know that you want the same thing I do.”

“And what is that?”

“A few hours of mutual pleasure and nothing else.”

He blinked. “Er, that’s all I want?”

Lori gave a derisive snort. “That is all any man wants from a woman like me.” He opened his mouth, but she went on before he could offer up some weak demurral and irritate her. “Don’t worry, my lord. You needn’t fear that I am on the catch for a husband. I don’t believe in marriage.”

“I think you might have mentioned that once before.” He stared at her, his expression…odd and unreadable.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“What am I looking like?”

“Like a stunned carp.”

He laughed. “No! Was I?”

Lori shrugged away both his strange expression and playful banter and said, “I understand what we are about here, my lord. We are from two distinct social classes and this”—she gestured from his body to hers— “is the only sort of association there can ever be between us. I may be inexperienced, but I am not a fool. Nor am I such a ninny that I need you to look out for my honor . I am the only one who gets to determine when and with whom I share my body. I give you my word that I have no expectations of you beyond tonight.” She paused for emphasis, and then said, “Understood?”

He hesitated, and said, “I understand you.”

Lori ignored the pang of disappointment she felt at his quick, easy acceptance—as if she had wanted him to argue and insist that he wanted something more…meaningful from her.

She was such a romantic fool.

Lori thrust aside her disappointment and said, “And there is one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“I do not want to fall pregnant.” Lori hadn’t considered that possibility when she’d been with Dorian seven years ago and it had just been sheer dumb luck that she had not conceived.

His mouth pulled up on one side and he lifted a hand and cupped her jaw on the unscraped side of her face, his warm palm oddly reassuring. “I promise I won’t make you pregnant,” he said, lightly caressing her cheek with his thumb.

She scowled. “How can you promise something like that?”

“Because I don’t have to put my cock inside you to give us both a great deal of pleasure,” he said, the heat in his eyes palpable.

Lori’s heart skipped at his confident, vulgar, and enticing claim and she opened her mouth so she could draw in more air.

His thumb slid across her cheek to her mouth, and he lightly traced the shape of her lips. “I’m going to make you feel so good, Lorelei.” He pressed his thumb against her lower lip and when she opened for him, he slid inside. “Suck.”

Her breathing hitched as she closed her lips around him, the skin salty and slightly rough.

A low growl issued from his chest and a muscle ticced in his temple. For a moment he looked like a man who was wrestling with some incomprehensible mental puzzle.

As quickly as the expression had appeared it vanished and was replaced by a slack, almost lazy smile. “You saw me that night when you peeked inside.” It wasn’t a question, which was just as well because Lori was in no position—either mentally or physically—to answer just then. “You saw the woman kneeling at my feet.” He paused and then added, “ Servicing me.”

Lori had seen, and it was a mental image that had intruded on her—both during her waking and sleeping hours—with worrying frequency in the weeks since.

He began to slide his thumb in and out of her mouth. “Suck me harder—use your tongue.”

Lori’s sex clenched, the action setting off a distracting cascade of pleasure. Why in the world was sucking his thumb so very arousing?

“Yes, just like that,” he praised, making her realize that she wasn’t just sucking him, but tonguing and nibbling him as well. “You have beautiful lips, Lorelei. As arousing as they look and feel on my thumb, I would love to see them wrapped around my cock.”

There was that word again: cock. Her eyelids fluttered and her heart pounded so hard it felt as if a horse was galloping over her ribs.

“Shhh, don’t look so worried. I am not going to ask you for that,” he said, misreading the reason for the shudder that ran through her body. His lips curled up at the corners. “At least not tonight.” He withdrew his thumb, rubbing the moist pad on her lower lip with an almost yearning look before lowering his hand. “I want to use my mouth on you.”

Lori had a vague idea of what he meant, of course—she had read about cunnilingus—but was, yet again, shocked that he would put such a thing into words. Not that she didn’t like his naughty suggestion—or want what he was offering. Indeed, at that moment, she could not think of anything she wanted more. But when she tried to force out the word yes, she discovered her throat had closed up. So she nodded.

He smiled. “Use your words, darling. I want to hear you say you want it.”

Lori’s face burned, but she refused to let him have the last word. “I want it.”

Once again, he moved with impressive speed and strength, lifting her with him as he stood, turned, and then set her gently on the chair he’d just been occupying. Heat kindled in his eyes as he sank gracefully to his knees in front of her. “Spread your thighs for me.”

Lori glanced around the room. While it wasn’t brightly lit, it certainly wasn’t dim. “You mean to do it… here ?”

“Yes, here. Open for me.”

She unclenched the muscles in her legs but couldn’t seem to make them move.

“There is no shame in changing your mind, sweetheart.”

“I haven’t changed my mind,” she retorted, and then saw by his faint smile that he’d known exactly what to say to goad her into doing his bidding. She snorted and shook her head at him, amused despite herself. And then she did as he bade her, feeling exposed even though layers of petticoat and skirt covered her sex.

“Very good,” he praised in a quiet voice as he eased between her knees, nudging them wider. “Tell me, Lorelei—are you wet for me?”

In keeping with her inarticulate behavior this evening, she gawked at him in open-mouthed stupefaction.

He chuckled. “Sorry, love. Did that shock you?”

“You know it did,” she shot back, far angrier at her incessantly blushing skin than at Severn and his naughty taunting.

“But in a good way, hmm?”

“I refuse to feed your already oversized self-esteem.”

He grinned, the expression so boyishly wicked that he looked like some other man for a moment—some younger, more carefree version of himself. “I know you would never lie to me, but I think I should check and see for myself.” He slipped his hands beneath the layers of fabric. But rather than reach immediately for her sex, his fingers closed around one of her ankle boots first, and then the other.

“Shouldn’t I remove my boots?” she asked.

“Absolutely not.”

Lori couldn’t help thinking that his big hands felt like hot manacles as he gently but inexorably spread her wider.