Chapter 19

F uck.

The accurate answer had in fact, been fuck.

Latimer didn’t make love. This lady? Livian, she was different in any and every way from any woman he’d ever known and every time he had her in his arms proved unlike any other time before her.

With a hiss, Latimer lifted his hips, and plunged himself up inside her hot, tight, center.

“Lachlan!” she cried.

He gritted his teeth. Bloody hell. Nothing would ever feel as good as being inside this woman.

And it would be unlike this with any woman after her.

The duchess, don’t you mean… A needling devil in Latimer’s voice jeered him with the fate he’d never wanted, and wanted even less now.

He shoved thoughts of his future, of Livian’s future, far from mind, and lived in the moment. Men born in the streets were taught that from the very start. No day was promised.

Breathing heavily, Latimer took Livian’s mouth in a punishing kiss, swallowing her sultry groans.

“God, there’s not a woman like you,” he panted between each kiss.

She moaned into his mouth. “You said all women were the same.”

“Yea, but I hadn’t met you, sweetheart.”

Those truthful words Latimer let slip terrified the everlasting hell out of him. They also sent Livian into a frenzy.

Keening and weeping, she rode him as he’d begged.

Or maybe his words had nothing to do with her body’s wild response.

Aye, that made more sense. As he plunged himself inside her over and over, and his cock ached, his panic eased.

When all was said and done, Latimer had been the one to teach Livian about sex. That was the sole reason for this all-powerful connection between them and his fascination with her.

Unlike DuMond, who’d gone mad for his virginal partner, the knowledge he’d been the first to possess her would not only be good enough for Latimer but also all he needed after she was gone from his life.

They’d part ways, and he’d relish in knowing it’d been he who’d schooled her in bed-sport and how emotions had absolutely nothing to do with coupling. When in the throes of passion, men and women were as base and primordial as untamed beasts.

And a beast was what he was now. His hips lifted of their own volition.

Perspiration built at Latimer’s brow as he gave her more of what she needed.

She whimpered his name.

Groaning, he shoved her bodice down and palmed her breasts. “I want another taste of your big nipples, love,” he panted.

He pushed the silken-soft mounds together and raised them to his lips.

Latimer flicked his tongue back and forth quickly over each pebbled peak until Livian’s speech dissolved.

“ Lachlan !” she rasped.

The way she made his name an entreaty sent the temperature of his blood soaring.

The shock of seeing her had hit him with the reminders of all the salacious things they’d done at The St. George.

He didn’t need bloody words. He just needed to be deeper inside her—and now. Then they could be done with one another.

Grunting like the animal, he taught her they were, they moved as one.

Breathing hard, he sank his fingertips sharply into Livian’s buttocks and forced her eyes open. “If you think this feels good, love, wait for what’s the come,” he promised huskily.

“What is t-to—?”

“You, Livian. You are.” Without ever taking his eyes from hers, Latimer gripped Livian’s hips and eased her slowly off his length before guiding her downward the same moment he thrust.

Moaning low and long, Livian let her head fall back.

Latimer molded his fingers into her supple hips and kneaded the flesh as she rode him.

As Livian slid down his length to meet each of his upward thrusts, her breathing grew more ragged.

Their bodies settled into the rhythm as old as time. He jerked his hips up and she sank onto his length, taking him deeper and deeper. Over and over again.

With their arms wrapped about one another, Latimer and Livian strained to get closer.

Their sweat-slicked bodies came together in an unholy frenzy.

“Lachlan,” she begged.

“You want to come so bad,” he whispered, jerking his hips up hard enough to pull an anguished cry of desire from her lips.

He swallowed the rest of her lusty scream. “Shh, darlin’, we cannot make noise,” he enticed. “Or we’ll be forced to stop. You don’t want that, do you?”

She panted and keened.

“Of course you don’t,” he crooned. “You love when I’m filling you.”

Livian grew crazed, rising and falling violently on his cock.

Somehow, through the agony of unslaked lust, a tight smile formed on Latimer’s lips. Words may have failed the beauty in his arms, but with the violent way she rode him, like a prized stallion she’d tame or die trying, none were needed from the enchantress.

His smug, male amusement proved short-lived.

His cock twitched and the ache in his ballocks grew.

Gritting his teeth, Latimer drew on a lifetime of strength and restraint to keep from spending, wanting her to climax first—hers mattered most and more.

Her unbridled passion threatened to drive him mad with lust. Before Livian, none of his encounters touched his soul and now, every sexual encounter between Livian and Latimer went all the way through his soul.

Their thrusting took on an erratic frenzy.

Sweat slicked their skin. At the noisy slap of his flesh against hers, his balls drew up so tightly he gritted his teeth to keep from driving hard and fast until he flooded her with his seed.

“Would you even be able to stop were a guest or servant pass by and hear us making love?” he tempted her with the forbidden. “Or would you come long and loud for all to hear?”

Livian’s eyes grew almost feral.

As he’d known would happen, the wicked painting he’d given sent her over.

Latimer swallowed her screams as she wept in his mouth, and came in long, rippling waves; the walls of her tight channel clenched about him.

Their rhythm took on a greater urgency. They arched and strained and mated like the beasts he’d told her they were, while Latimer felt like the weakest mortal as he made love to her.

He jerked.

With a stunned gasp, he found himself coming with her in an orgasm so explosive his feet curled up and cramped, and white light flashed in his vision, blinding him.

“Yes,” he hissed. “So. Fucking. Good.”

Groaning, he kept coming in deep, unending rivulets, flooding her with his seed just as she reached a second climax and collapsed in his arms.

They remained that way, clinging to one another; their ragged, uneven, breaths filled the music room, then settling into a soft, more measured tempo.

“Good?” he whispered, kissing her lips.

She rested her head upon his shoulder and gave one of those shy, little nods that would never not drive his desire through the ceiling.

Burying his head against the curve of her neck, Latimer sucked and suckled her skin wanting to mark her.

Nay, needing to , so the world knew she belonged to him.

If even just for this short time.

Latimer held her; his arms wrapped about her trembling frame, the same way she held her slender limbs about his quaking body.

Their ragged breaths came in a matching time.

Until time passed, and their breathing returned to a slower, sated cadence.

When had sex ever left him shaken? Never. The actual and immediate answer was—it hadn’t.

All he knew was, in his entire existence, not one single thing had felt more right than being in Livian Lovelace’s arms. It was a place he didn’t want to leave.

But with the power of his orgasm fading, the threat on the other side of that locked door loomed greater.

Reaching between them, Latimer fished a kerchief from inside his jacket. Still not ready to set Livian away, he continued to hold her while he gently wiped the remnants of his seed and her juices from between her legs.

After he’d finished, Latimer placed a kiss on Livian’s shoulder. And another. And another.

“Oh, God, Lachlan. What have we done?” Those words were whispered so faintly, it took a moment for Livian’s horror-laden whisper to register.

With frustrating ease, Livian scrambled off his lap so swiftly she knocked his arms free and stumbled backward.

She tripped over her skirts. Latimer shot a hand out and caught her before she tumbled onto the floor. “Hey now, love,” he said soothingly.

Wild-eyed, she stared at the place where Latimer’s fingers circled her wrist. Horror wreathed every expressive line of her ivory complexion.

Gasping, she jerked herself free of him. “This should not have h-happened, Lachlan.”

In the greatest irony of Latimer’s miserable life, a vise cinched hard in his chest, in a place that felt dangerously close to where his heart resided.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he drawled, striving for relaxedness on the outside, all the while failing on the inside. “A few moments ago, it’s all either of us wanted to happen.”

“Yes!” she rasped, her eyes wild, errant curls hanging about her face. “Desire compelled us, but that is all it was and is between us.”

A dark, unpleasant feeling sent his belly churning. “Oh, yes, Livian?” he jeered, his voice sharp and riddled with frustration and anger. “And here I thought at the inn, you’d declared us friends.”

“You were right,” she whispered.

She stared at him with her big eyes filled with such pain it nearly ended him.

Unable to find his voice and ask for clarification, he shook his head instead.

“Men and women can’t be friends,” she said softly, sadly.

He narrowed his eyes.

They’d been more than that, but that’d been back in Hitchin, which seemed a world away.

And I want to go back to that.

“We are more than that, Livian,” he said quietly.

A palpable tension built in the very air they breathed; so that there wasn’t enough between them.

Livian turned her palms up. “We weren’t really anything, though.”

Fury blazed to life within him. “The hell we weren’t, sweetheart.” A hiss exploded out from between his painfully gritted teeth.

“ You said it, Lachlan,” she gently reminded.

He drew back. “What the hell are you talking—?”

“At The Saint George’s Inn,” she explained. “‘This isn’t anything but sex… there’ll be no feelings involved. We aren’t something more. We’re nothing.’”

Nothing.

Latimer drew back.

He shook his head, but it continued to spin. I couldn’t have said that…

But he had.

I just…didn’t realize how bloody wrong I’d been.

Something primal raged within—feelings that weren’t lust but somehow even more omnipotent.

“Back at the St. George, you and I were nothing,” Livian quietly repeated, and he wanted to kiss her senseless to keep her from again uttering that godforsaken and hellbent wrong phrase.

She flashed him a sad smile. “And here, Lachlan?” Livian waved a graceful, palm around the gilded music room. “At Her Grace’s house, we are less than nothing.”

We are less than nothing?

As she’d so accurately pointed out, he himself had been the first to speak those words. They’d been a throwaway reminder for the both of them, that after they parted ways, they’d cease to be.

I’m losing her.

Losing her?

That would mean Livian Lovelace belonged to him in some way. She didn’t.

Panic grew.

“ We never were ,” he growled, not realizing he’d spoken aloud words he’d only intended for himself.

“I know that, Lachlan,” she said, achingly. “That is what I’m…”

He swung his gaze to Livian’s and her words trailed off.

He wasn’t capable of being hurt or wounded, and yet whatever this tearing in his chest felt a good deal like what he imagined it would feel like. Latimer fought to slog his way from this quagmire and reached for anger to pull himself out.

“What’s this about?” he demanded.

“I…what are you…?”

“Throwing my words in my face,” he said sharply.

“I’m not throwing them in your face, Lachlan,” she implored. “You were clear with me from the start and have remained so. I’m grateful for that honesty. I’ve always known exactly what our relationship is and was, just as I’ve known all along the only thing that matters to you is wealth, power, and revenge.”

“All that matters to me is…?” Latimer released a malignant, scornful laugh. “Here you are, all morally affronted about me marrying for business reasons when you not only allowed the Duchess of Argyll to put a dowry on you but pick your husband out for you.”

Livian paled and drew back.

“What?” she asked weakly. “I didn’t…” She shook her head.

“You didn’t what?” he lashed out. “Ask for it? Want it? Either way, it didn’t keep you from taking what you desired—a rich, lordly husband whose household you can watch over, for the steep price of your dignity and body.” Latimer raked a scathing glance over her person. “And for this reason, we are no different, so do stop pretending as if we are, Livian.”

His harsh, lengthy admonishment left a heavy silence.

Livian finally found her voice and finished her earlier sentence as though he’d never interrupted.

“Know.” Shock and shame transformed her glorious features into a sad mask. “I didn’t know Her Grace fixed a dowry on me.”

Livian’s humble and truthful confession knocked the wind out of Latimer’s sails.

“You didn’t know,” he repeated, carefully.

“ That’s why I’ve received so much attention from Her Grace’s guests,” she said softly, and Latimer knew she’d ceased to see him and spoke only to herself. “ Now it makes sense.”

“That isn’t true, love,” he said gruffly. “You’re clever and witty and damned riveting. That’s why.” God, how he despised the low opinion she carried of herself. “As it was, they wouldn’t bother throwing their cap at a woman who’d already been declared for.”

Her eyes clouded, Livian blinked like she’d finally recalled she wasn’t alone.

“There is no betrothed, Lachlan,” she murmured.

“I don’t understand,” he said carefully.

Livian avoided his eyes when even the night he’d stormed her chambers, she’d boldly met his stare. “The Duchess of Argyll was gracious enough to host a gathering with eligible bachelors in the hopes I might find a husband amongst them.”

“Are you bloody joking?” he asked on an incredulous whisper.

Livian lifted her head enough to flash Latimer a sheepish smile. “I wish I were.”

She lifted her shoulders in a far-too-accepting shrug. “I’m not some noble lady like the duchess or some grand—even a good—catch for some gentleman,” she said so matter-of-factly. “As such, it is not as though I can go about making any match.”

Reeling, Latimer stared dumbfounded at the queen before him. Rage briefly blinded him.

How could Livian not know her worth?

“I’ll not tolerate that disparagement of you, from anyone, Livian Lovelace,” he said gruffly. “And least of all from you.”

“Come, Lachlan,” she gently chided. “You know I’m right.”

“I know the entire bloody ton combined can’t hold a candle to you,” he spat. “ That is what I know.”

A watery smile formed on her lips. “Oh, Lachlan. I actually do believe you mean that.”

He grunted. “Hell yes, I do.”

“I lied earlier,” she murmured.

Latimer’s brow dipped.

Livian went up on tiptoe and placed her lips next to his ear. “You are, and will always be, the dearest friend.” She placed a fleeting kiss upon his cheek.

Then, without another word, without a backward glance, Livian quit the music room.

Latimer stood there, staring at the door long after she’d gone.

Funny, she’d relented from her earlier claim they were nothing. She’d called Latimer her dearest friend.

And goddamn his miserable, selfish, blackened soul to hell for wanting far more than to be Livian’s dearest friend .