Chapter Thirteen

Edie knew she should not be so bold as she attempted to catch her breath. But how could she not speak, when Frederick was threatening not to touch her? Her hands still reached for his.

His eyes still met her gaze.

They were fiery. Edie’s gasp caught in her throat as she saw the unhindered desire flood through him.

“I’ll want things.”

Well, she knew what that meant. She did not need to be an experienced harlot to understand what Frederick wanted.

And she should have felt scandalized. She should be outraged he was even thinking it, horrified that he would suggest it. She should stand up, march out of here—adjusting her gown first, naturally—and resolve never to permit herself to be left alone with the viscount again.

But she didn’t.

How could she, when want he clearly wanted was… what she craved?

“Because otherwise I’ll want things… things you can’t give me.”

“Can’t or won’t?” she repeated.

Quite what had come over her, she did not know. It was not the sort of statement a young lady should be making, let alone twice—quite the contrary. She should have fled the instant it had become clear just what Frederick Chance wanted from her.

Everything.

But she could hardly deny the desire within—desire that had been awakened the first moment he had kissed her.

In that library, there had been no right and wrong. There had been no rules, no ton —no flourishing rose. All there had been a person who’d enjoyed the touch of another.

Besides, Edie hardly knew how to control herself around this man. It was nigh on impossible for her to hold back when she knew how delectable he tasted, the blast of agonizing heat that flooded her when he touched her like…

Like he did.

Edie swallowed. “You… You still don’t say anything.”

Frederick had remained still as all these thoughts had hurried through her mind, but he finally spoke. “I… I am surprised.”

Heat blossomed across her collarbone. No polite young lady should admit to even knowing about such things, much less wanting them!

Yet though Edie was certain what Society demanded of her—not that anyone could ever, ever find out about this conversation—she was minded to do the exact opposite.

She was a lady. And he was a gentleman.

And London seemed a very, very long way away.

“Frederick,” Edie said softly, squeezing his hand. His fingers were entwined with hers now, and she had to take a deep breath before there was enough air in her lungs to continue. “We went into this by accident—”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said dryly. “I most definitely wanted to kiss you in that library.”

Her skin tingled at the revelation, but she managed to continue. “I mean, we sort of… well, fell into this pretend engagement—”

“It was your idea in the first place, as I recall,” Frederick said, lip curling into a grin.

“You know what I mean!”

“I most certainly do.”

“And so I thought… Well.” Edie hesitated. There was still time enough to retreat, to prevent herself from saying what she wished to.

Then she and Frederick could return to being pretend betrotheds, and no one would be any the wiser.

But she would. And she would regret not attempting to take this opportunity, she knew. With every fiber of her being.

“And as we are in this situation, more or less accidentally,” she continued, “I think… I think we should get as much pleasure as possible. As we can. As you’ll give me.”

Frederick’s eyes flashed with desire. “You have no idea what you do to me when you speak like that.”

“Oh, I think I do,” Edie whispered. “Let me show you.”

She lifted his hand that was entangled with her own, and for an instant, there was a flash of shock in his widening eyes—but whatever Frederick had thought she was going to do, it was different from what actually happened.

Pressing his hand against her heart, Edie smiled nervously as she felt her pulse throb in his fingers. Her rapid heart rate. Her rapidly increasing heart rate.

“Desire is one thing,” Frederick said, his voice halting. His hand did not leave her breast. “But—”

“We have one night—for I doubt we shall ever find ourselves in such a situation again,” said Edie. “Though now I think about it, I am not sure what we will do about Mrs. Teagan. If she hears—”

“You had to bring a chaperone,” Frederick muttered.

Edie tapped him on the shoulder with her free hand, glorifying in the intimacy. “You invited her! You know there was no possibility that I could have come here alone!”

“I suppose not,” he said, eyes glinting. “And by complete coincidence, it turns out that Mrs. Teagan’s guest bedchamber is on the east side of the house… and mine is on the west. As is yours, as chance would have it.”

There was such a look of twinkling innocence in his eyes that Edie could not nothing but laugh at. “You planned this!”

“Oh, I hoped,” said Frederick, finally removing his hand from her chest but using the opportunity to pull her closer to him. “Goodness, I hoped.”

A thrill of anticipation trilled up her spine.

He had hoped? He had thought of this—thought of her, wanted her… wished to lie with her as one?

For that was what they were speaking of. She could finally articulate it within herself, though she did not yet have the bravery to say it aloud.

She wanted to enjoy amorous congress with Frederick Chance, Viscount Pernrith. And he wanted to enjoy it with her. And there was nothing to stop them—no father to interrupt them, no brothers or their wives likely to visit, no Mrs. Teagan close enough to overhear…

Edie stiffened. “I… You must understand… “

Frederick frowned as she faltered. “Yes?”

How was one supposed to say this? It was hardly as though she had much experience. “I… It’s just, I don’t want to have to read about this in the scandal sheets. I mean, the whole point of this engagement pretense was so my reputation as the flourishing rose—”

“And I don’t want to read about it in the newspapers, either,” Frederick said dryly. He lifted her hand to his lips, delicately kissing the very tips of her fingers. Bliss rippled down her arm. “You don’t have to worry, Edie. I can be careful—I can take precautions. You’ll be safe.”

Edie’s stomach squirmed.

Because she was safe. Frederick made her feel safe, and cared for, and as though she could be her absolute honest self.

And he made her feel in danger. In danger, on the edge of an indulgent precipice she had never jumped off before, but could do soon.

Perhaps that was why there was this aching feeling between her thighs.

“So… So, we are agreed?” she whispered.

Frederick examined her closely for a moment and her lungs tightened. If he said no … and he was within his rights to do so. She would not wish to have to argue with a man to lie with her.

Perish the thought.

Then he swallowed, his throat bobbing, and she knew before he had said the words.

“Let me take you to bed, Edie.”

He did not need to say anything more. Edie leaned into him, claiming the lips she knew were her own, and tried not to whimper as Frederick’s fingers clutched her to him.

How could she ever go back to a normal life after this? Seek a different husband, go through a new Season on the marriage market? How, after sharing such intimacies, could they ever be parted?

But she could not think of parting now. Not as Frederick’s tongue was sparking shivers of elation through her body, his tongue twisting in the velvet warmth of her mouth.

Edie gasped with disappointment as he broke the kiss, and he seemed to know precisely why as he chuckled.

“Patience,” Frederick said softly as he started to trail kisses down her jaw to that delicate spot below her ear. “Patience… “

Patience? She was melting—that was what she was doing. Edie could feel herself slowly softening into the sofa with every kiss he delicately placed on her skin. His cheeks were rough—he hadn’t shaved again—and the friction between stubble and her neck only heightened the indulgence.

By the time Frederick had kissed down her neck and reached her collarbone, Edie was fairly certain her bones were nothing more than honey.

“Frederick.” She moaned, hardly knowing what she was asking but knowing he would have the answer.

He most certainly did. His fingers moved lightly at first, then slightly more firmly over her breasts, teasing a sensation from them that Edie had never known before. Her back arched without her having to instruct it, and Frederick’s groan in response told her that whatever she had done had to be right.

Just as her mind was spinning and her body tingling and she was wondering what on earth could happen next—

“Oh!”

Frederick’s thumb had grazed her nipple through her stays and gown. Oh, it harkened back to that ecstatic moment when he had managed to free that same breast in the library. The sensations then, the shocking intimacy of the moment—

“More.”

It did not take anything else to encourage him. Frederick’s breathing was heavy, blossoming over her skin as one hand gently caressed her breast, while the other…

Edie’s eyes snapped open—when they had shut, she could not recall. “No!”

Immediately, Frederick froze. Then he leaned back, placing his hands above his shoulders. “I’ve stopped—I am sorry, did I hurt… I was rushed, but dear God, the things you do to me, Edi—”

“It’s not that. It’s just… “ Edie struggled to right herself. It wasn’t just that her bones were still liquids, but every inch of her seemed weighed down, throbbing with an ache that had still not been satisfied.

But she couldn’t let him think he had offended her. “It is only—I did not mean ‘no.’ I meant, not here.”

The concern in Frederick’s eyes immediately died away. “Ah. Right, then. My lady.”

Offering her his hand, he gave her a deep and penetrating look that spoke of heat and need and craving.

Edie swallowed. There was still time, she knew, to tell him she had changed her mind. He would think none the worse of her, she knew. Frederick would never countenance the idea of forcing a woman, even if she had consented most freely only minutes before.

And nothing had happened.

Nothing yet.

Edie reached out and took his hand. “Let’s go.”

Wickacre Hall was strange in the gloom. She had only seen it once in the light, and shadows appeared to leap from every corner as they stepped silently into the hallway, hand in hand. The staircase creaked under their steps, and Edie was certain the gentleman beside her could hear her pulse thundering painfully.

The guest bedchamber in which Frederick’s driver had placed her small trunk was the first door on the left. Edie paused by it when they reached it, but Frederick tugged her arm as he kept walking.

“Where are you going?” she hissed, tightening her grip on his hand but still being pulled forward.

“To bed,” Frederick teased, casting a look over his shoulder. “Where did you think we were going?”

“But… “ Edie looked back at the guest bedchamber. Where on earth were they—

“Don’t you want to see your future bed?” said Frederick softly as he opened a different door and pulled her through. “Well, the viscount’s. But the viscountess would always be welcome there.”

Her mouth fell open as they stepped out of the corridor and into the room.

Firstly, because it was not real, and she so desperately wished it could be. There would undoubtedly be a different tenor to the comment if this… if all of this had been real.

A real engagement. A real affection. A real courting that led to a real conversation with her father. A real growing of knowledge, of intimacy. Real wedding planning. A real wedding, and afterward, a real wedding night in which two people who loved each other could come together.

Edie swallowed. And none of it is real, is it? It couldn’t be.

And the second reason her mouth fell open was the room itself.

“It’s a tad more opulent than my taste,” said Frederick ruefully as he closed the door behind them, not letting go of her hand. “It’s not the sort of thing I would have chosen.”

It wasn’t the sort of thing most people would choose, as far as Edie was concerned, but that did not make it any less spectacular.

The person who had ordered the furnishings and ornamentation had evidently been to Rome. And Greece. And Venice, and perhaps Marseilles, and a whole host of other European cities that had culture and beauty on every street corner.

There were paintings everywhere. Landscapes, and details of statues—and real statues. Three plinths held more carved miniatures than Edie had ever seen. There was brocade, and gold leaf, and the ceiling had been adored with a geometric pattern painted in reds and blues and golds. Candles had been lit in candelabras on every available flat surface, and a roaring fire flickered in the grate. The curtains were a thick velvet, flowing all the way to the carpet, which appeared to be made of the same fabric. And the bed—

Edie swallowed.

The bed was quite magnificent. And large. Most definitely large enough for two.

Well. She was doing this, then.

“You can stop at any point, you know.”

Edie looked around and saw Frederick watching her closely with a lilting smile.

“I hope I have proven that by what happened downstairs,” he said quietly. “I would never—I want you to come to me freely, Edie.”

There was no other response to that other than stepping back into his embrace and pressing, for the first time, a kiss upon his lips that came from her own instigation.

Edie allowed herself to be lost in the kiss just for a moment before she pulled back. “I want you, Frederick.”

The growl in his throat spoke of a passion she had never seen in him before, and his rough tugging at the ties of her gown were matched only be the eagerness with which she attempted to undo his buttons.

As it turned out, it was far more difficult than Edie had expected to unclothe a man while his lips were dragging across your nipples and your knees felt like they were about to collapse.

“Frederick.” Edie gasped.

That only seemed to egg him on further. As her gown slipped to the floor in piles of silk, she clung to his shoulders, hardly knowing how she was still standing up, such tremors of passion were pouring through her.

Frederick lifted his head from her breasts, but only, it seemed, to concentrate better on the ties of her stays. “How do you get out of these damned things?”

“With great difficulty.” Edie gasped, finally able to reach his shirt buttons. “Whoops!”

Her frantic need to get the man she craved out of the shirt that was keeping her from seeing more of him had led to an inconvenient tug. Buttons flew all over the room as the shirt fell limply from his shoulders.

But she could hardly formulate a true apology. Not when the distraction of Frederick Chance, Viscount Pernrith, without a shirt was before her.

Edie trailed a finger along his collarbone. Strange, how sensual a throat and clavicle could be on a man when it was so often hidden by a cravat. As her finger meandered farther down, wiry hair brushed against the softness, lower and lower until—

“Oh,” she gasped, eyes wide.

How he had managed it, she did not know. Somehow, while she had been occupied by the delights of his chest, Frederick had managed to remove—

Well. Everything.

And there it was. She may have been an innocent, but she was not uneducated. Her father, perhaps in an effort to protect his beautiful daughter, had encouraged her governess to be more edifying than most, but there were also books on art in the library and some of the classical statues reprinted in the engravings had been most instructive. Edie had had a theoretical understanding of what lay—or in this case, what stood—underneath a man’s breeches, but seeing it as it were, in the flesh…

His manhood was magnificent. Thicker than she had expected, and dripping at the end. And somehow so… enticing.

“You’re naked,” Edie whispered.

“And you’re not,” said Frederick, a wolfish, hungry grin on his face. “But I can soon solve that.”

He was as good—or as bad—as his word. Before she could say a thing, his fingers had made light work of the final tie of her stay, allowing both stays and undershift to fall to the floor.

And there they were. Utterly naked.

Edie swallowed. “N-Now what?”

Though she hated how her voice shook, Frederick did not appear much concerned. To the contrary, he smiled and once again offered her his hand.

“To bed.”

The coverlet was a delicately embroidered soft silk, and it caressed every inch of her skin it encountered as Edie carefully lay down. Pulse thumping, hardly believing she was doing this, she found it a great comfort when Frederick joined her on the bed and pulled her close, lying next to her on his side.

“Ready?”

Edie nodded, though precisely for what, she did not—

“Oh!”

Frederick’s hand had gently flickered over her waist, up over her hip, but had then slid gently to the area between her legs. Tilting her slightly so she rolled onto her back, Edie looked deeply into his hazel eyes as he slowly, slowly inched her legs apart.

Revealing… Well. The most intimate part of her.

“Kiss me.”

Frederick obeyed at once, and she squirmed against the bed as his tongue delved deeply within her mouth, sparking the pleasure she was coming to expect from—

“Frederick!” Edie moaned in his mouth.

His tongue was no longer the only part of him that was delving into her. Gently, very gently, he had slipped a finger along her slick folds, and then tenderly inside her.

The aching need that blossomed between her legs made Edie’s eyelashes flutter. How could anyone keep their eyes open at such an intrusion—at such exquisite sensations?

“Again?” Frederick breathed against her neck, nuzzling her as his finger stilled.

Edie swallowed. “Again—ohhh… “

It was impossible to speak from that moment onward. While his lips worshiped her own, sometimes darting down to kiss her neck, blossoming heat onto her skin, his fingers were not idle.

The stroking was flawless. Every fraction of an inch that he moved, bliss washed through Edie, not merely fading away but building on the last wave of delight.

It was all she could do to cling on to the coverlet as the scalding ache built, building and building until there was nothing she could do but surrender to the budding ecstasy.

“Yes, yes, so close,” she whimpered, hardly knowing what she was close to, but knowing she needed it.

Desperately.

Frederick slipped a second finger inside her and twisted his thumb over the nub right in her core, and Edie cried out.

“Frederick!”

She was undone. Every part of her was cascading over the precipice of ecstasy, her body coming apart with every limb quivering. She wanted to ride this crest forever, her core pulsating around Frederick’s fingers as he mercilessly kept up the rhythm that had gotten her here.

When Edie was finally able to open her eyes, it was to see a delighted Frederick Chance above her.

“God, that was sweet.”

She squirmed on the bed as he slipped his fingers from her. “You… but you—I mean, you did not gain any—”

“Any man who brings their partner to pleasure should take pleasure in that,” Frederick said softly. “And you’re prepared for me now. Ready to go again?”

Again? Was it possible, then, to achieve such heights of ecstasy twice in one night?

Edie could hardly believe it, but she nodded eagerly, hungry for another taste of the decadence she had only just sampled.

For a moment, there was such a terrible absence of Frederick that she cried out.

“I’m here,” he said, swiftly returning. “I just had to get—fortunate I had some, in truth.”

She looked blearily at what he had in his hand, and saw a strange sort of…

“Oh,” she said, understanding dawning. She flushed. “And that is—”

“A preventative. A French letter. It… It prevents—”

“Ah. Good.” Well, what else was she supposed to say?

“Just let me—there.” Frederick groaned as he moved on the bed, nestling between her legs. “You are everything, Edie. Everything.”

Warmth flooded her cheeks as she reached out for him, her fingers splayed across his shoulders. “You’re everything, Frederick. It’s not me, it’s—”

They both moaned at the same time, just as the tip of his manhood pressed against her wet entrance.

“And I want you,” Edie said, emboldened by the sudden need that filled her. “Now. P-Please, Frederick.”

Leaning down, he kissed her long and hard and passionately, as only a husband would do to a wife—and at the same time, he slid his manhood slowly into her welcoming body.

And it was welcoming. Though Edie had not entirely worked out how something as large as that would fit into something like her , her body appeared to acclimatize well, swelling and opening for him.

More, the sensation was… pleasant. Very pleasant. Flickers of the sensual decadence she had only just experienced started to shimmer again through her body.

Edie arched her back, lifting her hips to meet his, and Frederick groaned as he fully sheathed himself.

“God, you feel—”

“Don’t tell me,” said Edie, flushing at how boldly she was speaking. “Show me.”

And he did. Through Frederick gritted his teeth at times and was obviously holding back, he once again began to build the sweet rhythm he had already proven he knew with his fingers.

It was all Edie could do to hold on. Waves upon waves were starting to pour through her now, and when Frederick shifted his angle, she gasped as he sunk deeper. With every movement, he sparked bliss through her body—and unless she was very much mistaken, he was taking as much delight in their coupling as she was.

“Come for me.” Frederick growled, fixing his eyes on hers as he slowly increased the pace. “Come, Edie.”

“I’m not—not there yet.” She gasped, writhing against the coverlet underneath him, desperate to get there.

Perhaps he understood her need, for Frederick slipped a hand between them, his thumb somehow finding her nub, and—

“Frederick!” Edie cried, her body pulsating with ecstasy.

And that was enough to push Frederick over the edge. Pumping furiously into her then shuddering heavily, he managed a cry of, “Edie, Edie—oh, God!”

And then he collapsed into her waiting, willing, and welcoming arms.

Eventually, Edie said softly, “I should return to my room.”

She hated to say it, but she could not deny the veracity of the statement. If she were found here—

Frederick did not open his eyes as he pulled her close, tucking her into his broad strength as though she belonged there. “This is your room.”

And that was when she sighed slowly, slowly, and allowed every inch of herself to relax.

Because he was right. This was her room.