Chapter Sixteen

J ess closed her eyes, held her breath, and simply let go.

She didn’t let herself wonder if kissing him was wrong or if she were betraying her sister by allowing him to pull her into his arms like this. She refused to think about what it meant that she longed to be kissed and touched by someone who still kept so many secrets. She didn’t dare let herself consider what it meant that her fingers itched to run through the silky dark curls at his nape, that her body yearned to press as tightly against him as possible, that part of her ached for even more.

All she knew was how wonderful she felt, and at that moment, that was all that mattered.

He slid his mouth over her cheek to her ear, where he placed a slow kiss to her earlobe.

“I wanted it to be you,” he murmured. It wasn’t the confession she wanted from him, yet it still made her heart swell. He trailed his mouth down to her throat, where she was certain he could feel her racing pulse against his lips. “When that message arrived in the box, I wanted you to be woman who was waiting for me.”

“I was worried you wouldn’t come if you knew it was from me,” she whispered, her fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders to prove he was real and not simply another dream.

“Not come to you? Never.” He nipped lightly at her earlobe as if in punishment for doubting him, and she gasped at the jolt of pleasure-pain.

“I should have sent you on a wild goose chase,” she admitted. “You would have deserved to be mistreated by a woman after the things you said to me at Lady Holkham’s. The way you behaved… You were absolutely beastly.”

He lifted his head just far enough to gaze into her eyes. “I am so very sorry for that. I hated wounding you that way. You didn’t deserve it.”

Her mouth fell open. He was… apologizing? “Then why did you?”

“I had no choice.” Before she could press him for a better answer, he lowered his mouth to her neck. “Will you forgive me?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Then shall I kiss you again, Jessamyn?” he mumbled against her skin as his lips found her pounding pulse in the hollow at the base of her throat.

“Yes.” This time, the single word was a plea for mercy.

She was betraying her sister—how could she not be? But the longing she felt for him warred with her loyalty to Amanda…and won. God help her, she wanted him all for herself. So she leaned into him and brought her mouth to his, and when the tip of his tongue traced lightly over the seam of her lips in silent cajoling to open, she parted her lips and surrendered.

A groan rose from the back of his throat. He lifted his hand to cup her face, then slipped his tongue between her lips in a smooth, delicate glide. She caught her breath. Soft, sweet, so unbelievably tender… His kisses had never been like this before. He wasn’t kissing her so much as reassuring her, and every deep plunge into her mouth and every slide of his tongue over hers made her ache with longing.

When he took her bottom lip between his and sucked, the pull of it tugged all the way down her body to land with a thud between her legs. She couldn’t help the soft whimper that came from her and surprised them both.

When she felt him smile against her mouth, her legs turned boneless, and she sagged against him to keep from falling. His arms tightened around her as if he knew she needed his support, but instead of keeping her pressed against him, he eased her gently back a step. Her hip hit the stone ledge behind her, and she sank down onto it, her bottom perched on its edge. Thank God, because what his kisses were doing to her now made it impossible for her knees to support her any longer. She would have said it was sheer heaven except that it felt far too wicked.

So did his hands as he swept them up her sides. Her skin beneath her gown tingled in the wake of his fingers, which remained chastely at her sides and frustratingly nowhere near her breasts. She remembered the feel of his mouth on her nipple and craved it. Too embarrassed to ask for that, she simply arched her back toward him and hoped he understood what she needed.

He trailed his fingers suggestively down her neck but frustratingly stopped at her collar bone. “Do you want me to touch you?” he asked hoarsely, as if reading her mind.

Yes, please touch me! “If you’d like,” she answered instead, her voice trembling as much as the rest of her.

“I’d like that very much.” He leaned in and whispered into her ear, “And I hope you like it, too.”

Oh, she would! Since their encounter in the garden, she’d scarcely thought of anything else except the feel of his hands and mouth on her, and once again, that wonderful ache stirred inside her. What would he say if she asked him to touch her right there, between her legs, where the ache throbbed the strongest? He’d think her a wanton, although with the way his hands slipped behind her back and made quick work of unbuttoning her bodice, she didn’t care as long as he kept touching her.

“I’ve thought of you constantly since the garden party,” he murmured against the side of her neck as his mouth teased at the delicate flesh behind her ear.

Her hands tightened on his shoulders. “No, you haven’t.”

A low chuckle stirred from him as he nudged down her loose bodice and focused his attention on unfastening her front-tie corset. “Are you always so contrary, even at moments like this?”

“Yes.” When he pushed down her chemise and revealed both breasts to the shadows, the cool evening air tightened her nipples into hard points despite the heat of his gaze. As if mesmerized by the sight, he slowly stroked them with his fingertip. She moaned softly, “Oh, yes… Please, Lucien.”

“As you wish.” He lowered his head and captured her right nipple between his lips.

The gentle suck pulled all the way through her and curled her toes in her slippers. She lost her breath, never before feeling as sinfully wonderful as this.

Taking her reaction as encouragement, he pulled her deeper into his warm, wet mouth, then began to flick the tip of his tongue playfully against her nipple while his hands slipped down her back and squeezed her bottom. The dual sensation was overwhelming, and she sagged against him, so bonelessly that he encircled her hips with his large hands and lifted her to seat her fully on the ledge. Not for a moment did his mouth leave her.

She ran her fingers through his hair and reveled in the silky softness of his dark curls, then caressed his cheek when he slipped her nipple from his mouth and gazed longingly up at her.

“What else do you wish for, Jessamyn?” he murmured as he traced a delicate pattern across her bare breasts with his fingertip. “What other pleasures can I give you?”

She swallowed, hard, yet it wasn’t enough to quash the nervousness inside her. “If you touch me,” she began, her voice far huskier than she intended, “if you caress me where…” Her voice trailed off. Her body knew exactly what it wanted from him—no, what it needed —but how did she ask for such a wanton thing?

“Caress you where?” he prompted rakishly and punctuated that by darting his mouth down to nip her bottom lip. Then he soothingly slid his tongue across it. The pleasure-pain he gave her was just as torturous as his sweet kisses to her breasts had been earlier. “Tell me.”

Heat flared in her cheeks. Good Lord, he was going to make her say it! But she also knew that if she did, he would reward her for it. Deliciously. So she whispered, “Between…my thighs.”

“Does it ache?”

She closed her eyes and nodded.

“Is it throbbing in time with your heartbeat?” To make his point, he touched the tip of his tongue to her racing pulse in the hollow at the base of her throat.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Then let me soothe it for you.” He sealed that promise with an open-mouthed kiss that left her breathless and her head spinning so rapidly that she was barely aware of his hands on her legs, sliding her skirt up across her thighs until the fabric puddled in her lap.

He glanced down at her legs, bare except for stockings tied with red satin ribbons. Oddly enough, she wasn’t at all embarrassed to be sitting there in front of him, nearly naked except for her layers of clothes encircling her middle. No, when he raked his hot gaze over her, what she felt was…

“Beautiful,” he rasped out, then silenced the reflexive denial on the tip of her tongue with a kiss to her lips, one that soon turned plundering and possessive. She thrilled in the sensations that washed over her, in the strangely proud feeling that a man like Lucien Grenier would stare at her like that, would touch her and kiss her as he’d done. As he’d promised to do even more.

“Touch me,” she reminded him. “You promised.” She sent him a crooked smile she prayed hid her nervousness. “And a gentleman always keeps his promises.”

He paused with his hands resting on her legs, just above her knees. “I’m not feeling very gentlemanly right now.”

She clasped his lapels and leaned up toward him. “Then let me have the rake.” She brushed her lips along his jaw. “I’m certain he knows what to do with me.”

He gave a faint groan at her challenge and massaged her bare thighs, as if fighting with himself over giving the intimacy she craved. “You want me to touch you…like this?”

He slid his hands up only an inch, barely a movement at all. She whimpered in frustration.

“Not like that,” she forced out, resisting the urge to grab his hand and put it where her body yearned for it to be. “Higher.”

“Here, then.” Anticipation pulsed through her, and she held her breath. But his hands only moved incrementally higher, frustratingly stopping at mid-thigh.

She slapped his shoulder. “You impossible devil!”

“Don’t blame me.” He chuckled as if at a private joke and captured her hand. “Teasing a woman to the point of distraction, then denying her satisfaction, is what we rakes do.”

“Then bring back the gentleman. Surely, there’s one somewhere inside you.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth and placed a lingering kiss against her palm. The soft caress of his lips shot up her arm and made her breasts feel suddenly heavy.

“Then how about this?” he murmured. He swept his hand along her inner thigh and up—

Her breath caught as his fingers finally found her aching core. She tensed against his hand, only to relax when he began to gently caress her in long, smooth strokes along the seam between her legs.

“Is this what you craved, Jessamyn?” He nuzzled his mouth against her temple. “My hand on you like this?”

“Yes.” She choked back a whimper of desire. Yet his teasing fingers only heightened the throbbing ache inside her just beyond his fingertips.

She buried her face against his neck. Her entire attention was focused at his fingertips and the way he teased them against her. Tender and slow, agonizingly gentle, he delicately caressed her outer folds as if he were afraid she might stop him even now. But there wasn’t an ounce of willpower anywhere inside her that wanted to stop this encounter. His warm touch was too wonderful to deny herself, the goodness she’d finally glimpsed in him too much to resist.

A groan escaped him. “You’re so warm and wet…”

Embarrassment crashed over her. Her body had betrayed her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

He cut her off with a kiss, then explained against her mouth, “That’s a good thing.”

“It is?” She didn’t know if she could believe that.

“A very good thing. Because it lets me do this.”

Before the question could rise on her lips, his finger slipped inside her.

“Lucien!” She tensed at the unexpected invasion, and for a moment, she forgot to breathe.

But he didn’t stop his caresses. Instead, he stroked deeply inside her. Every smooth sink of his finger into her tight warmth made her heart stutter, only for fear to grip it with every slow retreat that he’d changed his mind. What he was doing to her was simply torturous…and absolutely exquisite.

“Is that better? Does it soothe the ache as you wanted?”

She shook her head against his shoulder. Not at all! If anything, it had the exact opposite effect. Her entire body felt as if electricity were balling up low in her belly now, and his touch only inflamed it.

“Then how about this?” He slid a second finger inside with the first.

The wide stretch of her intimate folds as he filled her brought a moan to her lips. Her thighs were spread open wide now, shamelessly so, and she simply didn’t care, not with his caresses stroking so deliciously inside her, not with the spicy taste of his lips once more claiming hers…and certainly not when a mounting wave of pleasure began to lap at her toes and climb up her limbs toward the throbbing ache at her core. She trembled uncontrollably, her hands frantically grasping his shoulders and her toes curling in her shoes, as she tried to fight off the inexplicable urge to…to…oh, she had no idea what exactly! But she felt it sweeping toward her with the speed of a runaway team of horses.

His thumb flicked against the hard little nub buried deep in her folds, and her hips bucked against his hand, bringing his fingers deeper into her warmth, spreading her even wider. He ground the heel of his hand hard against that most sensitive place—

She cried out as a wave of pleasure broke over her, swamping her helplessly beneath its power. She clung to him, breathless and boneless, as she fought to catch her breath. But she had no strength to do anything other than melt against him and absorb the incredible sensations that sped through her with the rapid pounding of her heart. Her fogged mind barely registered the loss of him as he slowly withdrew his fingers from her warmth or how his arms shook as they encircled her and pulled her against him.

But she felt the brush of his lips against her temple, heard him whisper her name so lovingly… His tenderness nearly undid her, and she squeezed her eyes shut against their sudden stinging.

She should have been ashamed of her body’s reaction to his touch, but she simply couldn’t find a drop of remorse anywhere inside her. Except…

Except that she could feel his hands carefully pulling her shift and stays back into place, could feel his fingers buttoning her bodice and straightening her dress.

Her heart lurched into her throat. Their encounter couldn’t be over—not so soon! She’d barely had any of him to herself, this man she now knew possessed goodness beneath his black exterior. Every tender kiss and selfless caress he’d given her only proved to her foolish heart how wrong she’d been about him. The very last thing she wanted to do now was part from him.

But when she lifted her head from his shoulder and searched his face, she knew that was exactly what was happening. He’d stoked that yearning need inside her with his kisses, then satiated it with his touch, and now he was putting an end to their encounter. Yet her aching body told her there were so many more pleasures they could share, so many more wonderful sensations that accompanied the full joining of bodies.

What greeted her in his expression, though, wasn’t a desire for that.

It was regret.

Dropping her gaze to his chest, she loosened her arms around his neck and lowered her hands to his lapels. She suddenly felt very cold and strangely alone, even though he stood right in front of her. “Are you sorry you touched me like that?”

“God no.” He lifted her chin so he could place a lingering kiss to her lips. He hesitated before asking, “Are you?”

She twisted his lapels in her hands. “I regret…that you stopped.”

A low groan rose from him as he cupped her face between his palms, and this time when he kissed her, there was nothing about it that spoke of tenderness. It was a kiss of raw, yearning desire.

When she grew breathless, he tore his mouth away and rested his forehead against hers.

“If we hadn’t stopped,” he rasped out, his voice hoarse, “I would have taken your innocence.”

“I would have let you,” she returned in the same hoarse rasp.

“I know.” His shoulders slumped, and he squeezed his eyes shut as a look of pain darkened his face. “And that’s why I had to stop.”

Before she could argue, he kissed her again, and the taste of his regret was bittersweet on her lips. He stepped back and reached up to push her flimsy dress straps into place on her shoulders, then dropped his hands to his sides. “I’m a gentleman at heart, remember?”

She stared at him through tear-blurred eyes. The pain of his rejection overwhelmed her, and she couldn’t keep her voice from cracking when she countered, “I think I prefer the rake.”

She pushed him back and slipped off the ledge, pausing only to snatch up her discarded mask and cape before turning to leave. She didn’t care what he thought of her flight, if he would think her a goose or a coward. Oh, but she certainly was a fool! To fall for his charms a second time, only to be rejected again, and this time, when she’d been so certain she’d glimpsed true goodness inside him—

His arms encircled her from behind, stopping her.

She stilled immediately in his embrace.

“Dear God, Jessamyn…you have no idea how much I want to make love to you,” he murmured as he drew her back against him until she felt the hard bulge of his erection pressing against her bottom. “How it’s taking every bit of willpower I possess not to pull you to the ground right now, strip off your dress, and bury myself inside you.” He drew her hair aside so he could place his mouth against her ear. “Or not even bother with removing your clothes—just yank up your skirts, pin you against the wall, and take you right there, fiercely, until you cry out in passion and every burning ache of desire has been quenched.”

She closed her eyes and begged for mercy in the form of a whispered, “Lucien…”

His hands swept up her body, and God help her, she couldn’t stop herself from arching against him.

“I would lick my tongue over every sweet inch of you, exploring, tasting…” When his hands massaged her breasts, her body remembered the feel of his bare hands and mouth on her, and despite the layers of clothing covering her, her nipples hardened instantly. “Drinking you up until I had my fill of you, until I’d selfishly brought you all kinds of wonderful pleasures. Hours and hours of exquisite torture, my love, until I’d memorized your every precious secret place.” As if to demonstrate that promise, he stroked his hand between her legs. Instantly, a consuming ache beat once more beneath his fingers. “I would ravish you in every way imaginable and beg you to do the same to me.”

Yes! A sob of unbearable yearning tore from her. I want all that. I want you to—

“And I would ruin you, my beautiful Jessamyn.” His hold on her changed. His hand dropped away from between her thighs, and instead of giving her desirous touches, he now held her firmly clasped in his arms, as if he were trying to protect her, even from himself. “I would selfishly destroy all that is good and light and wonderful about you, and you would hate me for it.”

Her voice choked. “I would never—”

“Because I don’t deserve you.” He sucked in a ragged breath that left his body trembling in its wake. “Because I can never marry you.”

The anguish that pierced her nearly broke her. Somehow, she found the strength to utter the wretched truth—“Because you’re a duke, and I will never be part of your world.”

He corrected quietly, “Because I cannot marry anyone.”