8. Impossible

IMPOSSIBLE

J eremy winced.

He’d damn near spilled his bleeding heart.

“You weren’t talking about Ollie just now, were you? You were talking about… us.” Lydia’s hands gripped above his knees. Seeing the lace of her gloves, her delicate hands resting on his thighs, had him… floundering. “Please, Jeremy. I need to know.”

No one else could make him feel this way, and certainly not as easily as she did, with just a simple touch. If she moved her hands just a few inches higher… He closed his eyes.

“I didn’t want you to have to decide. It would not have been fair.”

“Decide what, between my brothers and… myself?” She squeezed hard, her fingers digging into his muscles. “ Tell me , Jeremy. Tell me so that I can understand. Tell me so I can either fix whatever it is that’s caused you to hate all of us or move forward without you.”

“You can’t fix it. No one can fix it. Don’t you think that if anyone could, I would have done that already?”

But perhaps he could tell her some of it. He could tell her just enough so that she could forget about him—forget about the past.

He drew in a sharp breath. He’d let go of her four months ago, and it had hurt like hell. Watching her find someone else… The sharp breath evolved into a painful ache.

“I never wanted you to have to choose between your family and me.” He kept his eyes lowered, unable to look at her. But that was all he would say. It was all he could say.

Because the reason had to do with so much more than just himself. It had to do with the honor of his family, the betrayal of her brothers, and most importantly, his brother’s memory.

He’d been livid after hearing Lucas’s suspicions. Arthur would never commit treason. His brother had not been a traitor.

Shame and guilt attacked him for even considering it.

Damn Lucas. Damn Blackheart.

Damnit, Arthur !

“But why…?” The bewildered pain in her voice had him staring into her eyes, glistening with confused tears, making them look more emerald than blue.

She was completely separate from all of those reasons, and yet they had changed the course of her life.

“It has nothing to do with you.” His voice caught.

“But, Jeremy. You are wrong.” One of those tears overflowed and trailed down to the corner of her mouth. “It has everything to do with me— with us.”

He sat frozen, loyalty to his brother warring with his heart. Because she was right. Their future together had been shattered by Lucas and Blackheart’s betrayal. By her brothers’ deplorable accusations.

Arthur was his flesh and blood. His brother would never…

She held his gaze even as she continued to cry, the tracks shining on her cheeks. He wanted to kiss away those tears so desperately. The desire nearly broke him.

No longer able to bear it, he tore his gaze away, staring blindly out the window instead.

“Please, Jeremy.”

“Your brothers…” It was all he could say. “I can’t?—”

“But it is my brothers you are angry with. It isn’t me that you hate.”

“God, Lydia, I could never hate you.” Quite the opposite.

Was he telling her too much? Was he making this worse than it already was?

“You told me to stay away from you.” A hint of accusation flashed in her eyes. Deserved. Well deserved.

“You need to… allow me to complete the renovations for the orphanage. Allow me to do this for you while you attend balls, garden parties, and river parties. We… Us. Cannot happen. An arrangement between the two of us is impossible.”

He’d said it. So, why didn’t he experience any relief?

“Impossible?”

One of her hands slid up to his groin, and he practically burst into flames. She wasn’t touching him, but she was close.

“Lydia.” He grasped her wrist.

“I am unconvinced.”

She was more stubborn than she had been last spring. In that short time since he’d sent her away, she had changed from a demure young lady to a headstrong woman.

And, God in heaven, she was even more tempting now. More beautiful. More powerful.

Utterly irresistible.

Her fingers uncurled beneath his hand and splayed over the fabric of his trousers, dangerously grazing the stretched material confining his damned unruly cock.

She leaned in. “I’m not a child to be kept locked away, to be protected from the ugliness in the world.” Her voice sounded throaty… sensual.

Her pupils were dilated, diminishing the blue so that the glints in her eyes were like stars in a moonless sky. Her softly rounded cheeks were flushed, heated. And her lips…

Her lips were parted, shining, and inviting him to do things he doubted she even knew possible. He stared past them, into the darker reds and tender textures, imagining other flesh he craved to know.

“You don’t hate me,” she insisted, leaning in, her hands resting on his arm, sweet breath fanning his jaw.

“No.” He clenched his fists, willing his heart to slow.

And then she touched her tongue to his earlobe.

“Lydia.”

“Tell me again this is impossible,” she demanded in a whisper. “I dare you to convince me.”

His willpower, which he’d always considered ironclad, chose that moment to shatter most spectacularly. Faster than lightning, Jeremy had her seated across his lap, one arm behind her and the other roving over her arm, the curve of her hip.

“ You are impossible,” he said. “Damnit, it’s you.”

He’d tried, by God, he’d tried. He claimed her mouth and then deepened their kiss. Her whimper vibrated between them.

“Not impossible,” she countered when he released her mouth to trail kisses down her neck.

But the two of them together like this was, in fact, impossible.

A voice of reason raged inside his head, even as his heart sang and his body breathed giant gulps of relief to hold her again.

He’d felt dead inside for so long. He would pay later for giving in to these emotions. He should push her away, run out the door as far as his feet would take him.

Except this was his house.

“Lydia,” he sighed, his hands wandering over her supple curves. How had he imagined he could live without her?

He’d clung to his need to absolve Arthur’s name, but he’d not been living. He’d merely been existing.

Her hands snaked around his neck, and she turned to face him, placing herself in an even more inappropriate position. Knees bent, bracketing his thighs.

By god, she was straddling him.

This. How long had he needed this? Needed her?

Memories of when she was a young girl flitted through his mind—and earlier that year, when she’d stood beside him at his brother’s funeral. When she’d met him on the bridge that separated his property from her brother’s.

When she’d hesitantly given him permission to kiss her.

He’d known Lydia for most of his life, and all the while, he’d expected to marry her.

Knowing what awaited the two of them had been akin to living with a wonderful promise—a promise that his future held good things.

Exciting, joyful things.

Without the promise of that future, all color had drained out of his life.

He stroked her silk-clad ankles, hidden beneath her skirts. Locating the small indents there, he traced his fingertips over them. So fragile. Feminine.

Sensual.

He then ghosted his palms over her calves, rounded her knees, and edged them up the length of her thighs.

All hidden in the billowing fabric of her skirt. Hidden treasure.

“I need you, Jeremy.” She slowly rolled her hips against him.

She could not know what she was saying—what she was doing.

“So badly.” She exhaled.

The heat of her center pressed down on the bulge in his trousers. Trouble. She was steering them headlong into trouble. And rather than drop anchor, he raised the sails, intent on traveling full speed ahead.

He’d deal with the trouble when they got there.

Jeremy tugged at her sleeves and lowered her bodice. How many times had he dreamed of doing this while courting her? Soft, creamy skin captured his gaze. A pink flush appeared, and he groaned.

The reality of Lydia in his arms, of her flesh bared beneath his gaze, surpassed any dream he could concoct on his own.

His prim and proper debutante was rocking against him. As he laved and suckled and nipped with his teeth, he realized that he had indeed been correct in the assumption he’d made before.

Because Lydia Cockfield did, in fact, taste like love.

Lost in the haze of this… wanting, Lydia knew she should stop. Ladies do not do this.

Not in the privacy of an isolated meadow, not in an earl’s Mayfair townhouse, and most definitely not with a gentleman who was not her husband.

But… this was Jeremy.

“Oh,” she gasped.

His mouth summoned hot jumpy sensations… all over. She wanted closer to him.

She was well aware of how a woman and a man came together—in the dark, in a bedchamber, the lady in her nightdress, the man wearing… Well, she wasn’t certain of that, but she knew that he’d eventually be…

Exposed.

Jeremy’s body was hard precisely where she needed him to feel hard. Caught up in the pressure building between the two of them, she imagined all manner of scenarios. Some that involved activities that would resemble the marriage act and others that were, well… unimaginable. Only she did imagine them. Even now…

Frantic, she lowered her hands to his falls but before she could begin to unfasten them, he stopped her.

He was right here. She was in his arms and yet…

He was unreachable.

“Not… like this.” His voice came out gravelly, rough.

She lifted her lashes to stare into his eyes, her lids heavy as she struggled to focus.

“But…” Was that her making that whining sound?

His gaze pinned on her, he jerked his hips up and prodded… Precisely where she ached to be prodded.

“Like this.”

She could barely hold her head up.

He pulsed upward again, and then again, building on the friction she’d been chasing.

“Jeremy.” Her head fell back this time, and she would have fallen off his lap if his hands weren’t gripping her waist. He’d located her center and felt harder than before. Like wood, like steel, he ignited more heat—more wanting. White light danced over her skin at the same time little bursts of lightning sped through her veins.

“Let go, sweet, like that.”

Let go.

Let go ?

Wasn’t that what she was doing?

The settee was shaking now, knocking against the table behind it. His butler or housekeeper could come along any moment, wanting to know what on earth was happening in here.

She allowed herself a split second to glance toward the closed door and when she swung her gaze back to him, she was surprised to see a bead of perspiration dotting his brow.

“What if someone comes?” she asked.

“Precisely what I’m hoping for.” His eyes flashed teasingly but then closed again, and squeezing her hips tightly, he growled.

The knocking sounds grew louder as his thrusts carried her closer…

Closer to… something.

And then she doubted she’d care if the king himself strode through the door.

Jeremy shuttered, something shattered, and then the most compelling feeling of completion rolled over her. At some point, she’d fallen forward, and they were all but gasping into one another’s mouths.

“Jeremy.”

“Are you all right, sweets?”

“I am, but…”

“What is it?” He stared at her in concern.

“The vase. I think we broke the vase.”

And in that moment, her hope that everything was going to turn out perfectly fine grew even stronger.

Because Jeremy Gilcrest threw back his head and laughed.