Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

P en Sutton was like the finest port, mysterious and decadent and utterly intoxicating. Surrendering to the temptation to see her one last time had been a mistake. A thoughtless weakness. But he could not regret it now, with her lips warm and soft and sweet beneath his. Nor could he regret it as he found the pins keeping the glory of her rich auburn hair from him and plucked them away.

Her curls spilled heavy and silken around her shoulders, framing her face, unleashing the soft scent of flowers and seductive woman and her . All the hunger and yearning he had so ruthlessly quelled by every means possible rose to the surface, demanding to be answered.

He gave in.

Gave in to the magic that was purely Pen. There was something wondrous about this woman. She was bold and brazen and beautiful, lush in every way a woman ought to be, her body seemingly made for his. But there was also her sharp mind. Her quick wit. He admired her intelligence every bit as much as the rest of her.

He broke the kiss, his breathing harsh, his heart pounding, body aflame, head roaring with desire. The gentleman within him demanded he issue a warning before this progressed too far beyond his control.

"I should go," he said, though those three words cut him like a blade as he issued them.

Her lips were dark and swollen from his kisses, and he knew the driving urge to see her naked beneath him, to watch her hazel eyes as he sank his cock deep inside her.

Those eyes were glazed with passion, fixed on his now. "Stay."

His cock went painfully hard. "If I do, I cannot promise I will be able to put an end to this."

"If you do, I cannot promise I'll want you to put an end to it," she countered, her boldness making him go more rigid still.

He had to have this woman.

On a growl, he kissed her again. Their lips slammed together with a mutual lack of finesse that only served to heighten his need. Her hands were on him, roving over his body with a familiarity that belonged to a lover. Pen Sutton was a woman who knew what she wanted and was not afraid to take it.

And what she wanted now was him. She told him without words, hungrily returning his kisses with an ardor that undid him. Told him as her hands slid inside his coat and urged it off his shoulders. As her clever fingers slipped each button from its mooring on his waistcoat.

The knot of his cravat was next, and when it was gone, she set her lips where it had been, kissing his exposed neck, nipping him with her teeth.

God, yes. He should have known that being with her would be wild. He wanted her mark on him. For her to scratch and bite and suck. His little hellion could have her way with him all she liked.

Together, they worked his shirt over his head, and then they moved to her gown. It was a simple affair, easily removed along with the rest of her garments until she was clad in nothing but a simple chemise, her full breasts straining against the soft fabric. He took a moment to behold her, hair spilling down her back, her arms shapely and creamy, the slimness of her ankles, the perfection, even, of her toes.

"You are beautiful," he rasped.

More beautiful than she had been draped over the French sofa that night. He took her face in his hands and kissed her deeply. Together, they made their way to her bed at the opposite end of the room, mouths fused. When the edge of the mattress abutted his thigh, he paused to whisk away her chemise as well, leaving her completely bare to his roaming, appreciative gaze.

He wanted to be inside her now, to sink his cock into her wet, tight heat. But he had to pace himself, to savor her. He could not devour her all at once. Guiding her hips until her back was to the bed, he urged her to seat herself.

"I want to see you," he said thickly. "To taste you."

He dropped to his knees, longing making his hands tremble as he caressed her waist and then lower, guiding her legs apart. Auburn curls parted as she opened for him. Her cunny was glistening, pink perfection.

His head dipped, fingers sliding through her slickness to allow his tongue to find her plump clitoris. He strummed over it lightly at first, enjoying the way she tasted, musky and womanly with the same hint of flowers that perfumed the rest of her skin. She made a throaty sound of wonder and he licked down her slit to her entrance before thrusting his tongue inside.

He was rewarded by her moaning his name. "Oh, Garrick."

Not Lord Lordly. Not milord. Just Garrick. Good. He wanted to simply be a man this evening. To be her man.

He returned his attentions to her pearl, latching on to it and sucking as he had done her nipples before. Her reaction was every bit as exquisite. Her hips rocked, undulating against him, as she cried out, her thighs clamping on his head as if to hold him there, just where she wanted him.

He released her, torturing them both by reverting to slow, teasing swipes of his tongue instead. She was deliciously wet and hot as flame, writhing against his mouth with wanton abandon that had him hardening in his trousers. He almost hated that he wore them still, as he was tempted to take himself in hand and stroke. But it was for the best, since he had no wish to spend like a green youth before he had even been inside her.

Instead, he used his fingers to pleasure her, parting her folds to sink into her to the knuckle. Her sweet cunny was drenched, gripping him hard, her body already clenching, then unclenching in the prelude to release. He returned to sucking on her clitoris while the heady sounds of her breathy moans filled the room, mingling with the wetness of his finger as it began to glide in and out in a steady rhythm.

She was tight. So tight, tensed around him. He could not wait to sink into that same inviting wetness with his prick.

Fuck.

He suckled her pearl, then lightly bit as he worked his finger deeper and then added another to join the first, stretching her. Her hips bucked, bringing him to the place she needed, and he thrust high and hard while giving her another long suck. Her release was instant. She tightened on him, nearly coming off the bed as her orgasm rocked through her. He stayed where he was, loving the pulse of her around his fingers, riding out the waves of her pleasure with his lips and teeth and tongue as her dew dripped down his chin.

He was drunk on pleasure.

Drunk on Pen.

But it was still not enough.

He tore his lips from her quim and rose, wiping her juices from his mouth with the back of his hand, feeling like a barbarian as lust and the need to possess her roared through him with libidinous fire. How beautiful she looked, naked and sated, her cheeks flushed, hair wild around her. He wished he could freeze this moment, preserve it in a painting that he might never forget the exact shade of her eyes, the fullness of her lips. That he would never forget the charmed evening she had been his.

Because she never would be again, after this.

He pushed the unwanted reminder aside as she reached for him, her fingers flying over the fall of his trousers, freeing him to her eager touch. And then, although it had never been his intention, she leaned forward, bent her head, and took him into her mouth. Slid from the bed to her knees before him as he clutched at the mattress and willed himself not to explode.

Her lips were soft and silken, exploring him hesitantly. As he looked down to watch the magnificent sight of Pen with her mouth on his cock, she swirled her tongue over the tip, catching a bead of mettle already leaking from his slit. He gripped the bed against a sudden, crushing wave of desire.

If she kept that up, he was not going to last.

"Enough." Gently, he disengaged himself from her, drawing her to her feet.

Her questioning gaze met his, searching. "Have I done it wrong?"

The breath left him in a rush, half laugh, half groan. "Christ no, darling. You have done it quite right. Too right. I do not dare trust myself." He kissed the bridge of her nose to distract himself from the potency of his need.

Her response was to help him off with his trousers. They spilled onto the bed together, wrapped in each other's arms, limbs entangled. Garrick settled them so that Pen was on her back, his body between her thighs, his weight resting on his forearms. He had not come to her tonight to make her his. But now that he was here, body poised to take hers, he could not fathom any other outcome.

He could still taste her on his lips as he bowed his head and took one of her nipples into his mouth. Her hands were on his shoulders, threading through his hair, nails raking down his skin. How right she felt, tucked against him, warm and soft and willing. How very much like his.

For tonight only, he warned himself. Any more than this would be unwise. He had responsibilities awaiting him, a betrothal that could not continue to be indefinitely delayed. But he would fret over that later, when he was capable of coherent thought. Now, all he wanted was the woman in his arms, with her gold-flecked hazel gaze searing into his, lips begging to be kissed.

He took the peak of her other breast into his mouth, loving the sounds she made, the responsive way her body bucked and writhed against his. Garrick's cock was stiff and high against her inner thigh, the warm, silken skin there a brutal tease of what was to come.

He longed to thrust into her, to fill and fuck her, take her hard and fast. But it occurred to him that he did not know just how experienced she was. The women he had known in the past had been far from innocent. He had preferred it that way, for experience rendered the mutual slaking of passion that much more efficient. He had never had cause to wonder.

But although he had once suspected Pen of being a conniving jade, plying her wiles to secure a title and a fortune, he knew he had been wrong about her in more ways than one. He kissed the curve of her breast, charmed by a mole he had failed to notice in the shadows previously. It was shaped like a heart. He flicked his tongue over it, tasting her salt and sweetness.

What a wonder she was.

How had he lived his life thus far without her? How would he live it after?

More unwanted thoughts, chased as he dragged his lips over her collarbone, then up the smooth skin of her throat to her ear. Her fingers glided up and down his back, trailing fire in their wake. He wanted to say something poignant, to praise her, to give voice to the sensations burning through him.

But words were lost.

All he could do was find his way to her lips and claim them with his own. His efforts to prolong the moment crumbled when she reached between them to stroke him. He jerked into her touch, losing more of himself by the moment. Soon, there would be nothing left. He was simply hers.

He leveraged himself onto his left forearm and wrapped his fingers around hers with his free hand, tightening her hold and encouraging her to stroke. God, yes. Her hand on him was the devil's work. But sinning had never felt so right, so good, so perfect.

They kissed again, breaths mingling, bodies moving sinuously as one as she brought him dangerously close to the edge of release. On a moan, he tenderly removed her hand, reaching down to toy with her clitoris. Her legs opened wider, and she pumped into his touch, seeking more. He obliged, swirling over the bud until she was coming apart, writhing and reaching her second release.

Only then did he slick her dew over her entrance and his cock both.

Gripping himself, nearly mindless with the need to possess her, he pressed his cock to her soaked cunny. He almost spent then and there, so fierce was the rush of sensation. But this was not enough. He needed more. Had to be inside her.

He thrust, and then he was surrounded by her tight, pulsing heat.

Heaven on earth.

That was what this was, what she was. He had to hold himself still for a moment, to control the roaring need to take her and allow her body to adjust to his. He kissed her throat, the place that drove him to distraction on her—that quivering little hollow at the base where her pulse was racing furiously. He rubbed her pearl with his thumb until she tightened on him, pulling him deeper, her hips tipping upward in a seeking motion. The needy sound in her throat was all he had to hear.

He thrust again, stretching her, filling her. She was all tight, wet heat, constricting on him. He understood without a doubt that he would never know another moment as exquisite as this one, nor another woman. She was meant for him. Made for him. As impossible and wrong as it was, the truth was evident in the way their bodies joined, becoming one. Another thrust, and he was completely inside her, seated deep.

He raised his head and kissed her slowly, lingeringly, and they began to move together, finding their rhythm. His restraint only lasted for a handful of pumps. The combination of her full breasts straining against his chest, her tongue in his mouth, and her cunny clenching on his cock already had him on the brink of orgasm.

He should withdraw. He was going to withdraw. He had every intention of being honorable, of making certain he would not leave Pen with ramifications of this wild night of passion.

But then, her cunny contracted around him, and the sensation was so exquisite, his mind went empty. He forgot everything. His name, his intentions to do right by her, the need to hold tight to the reins of his control. The warmth of her wrapped around his cock, the pulsing of her body, the wetness of her own release, proved far too much.

He came. Emptied himself into her as waves of bliss pounded up his spine and exploded in his skull. The jet of his seed into her body felt right. It was the first time he had ever spent inside a woman, but he did not fool himself that it was the novelty of the sensation that triggered the intensity of his reaction.

Rather, it was the woman beneath him.

Pen.

Garrick held her tight, face pressed to her throat, breathing in her delectable scent, and thrust into her again and again, even when there was nothing left and she had wrung every last drop of mettle from him. Still, he found himself reluctant to withdraw. She felt too good, too perfect.

Gradually, as the lust fled, replaced by the knowledge of what he had done, he realized his error. He had spent inside Pen. Ever since his first, he had been circumspect. Careful to use a sheath and to withdraw for good measure.

Yet he had lost control with her.

Of course he had. Had he believed he would have been able to cling to his restraint in this more than any other matter where she was concerned? What a fool he was. A fool who never should have given in to temptation and come looking for her tonight. A fool who should have made good on his promise to his mother that he would soon be selecting a bride.

Lady Hester.

Her name, like the thought of her, made him go cold. Killed any lingering vestiges of ardor. Ration and reality intruded, sucking the sated languor from him and replacing it with unwanted tension.

Recriminations descended even as Pen held him in the circle of her arms, her heart beating furiously against his chest.

He had no right to do what he had done.

He most definitely should not have kissed her, and he absolutely never should have bedded her. What must she think of him? Hell, he disgusted himself.

He had lost himself with a woman before, and he had vowed he would never do so again. His path in life had been chosen long ago, before Pen had ever entered it.

Duty. That was his path.

Why did that lone word feel so suddenly harsh and cold?

"This was a mistake," he blurted, disengaging from Pen. "Please forgive me."

This was a mistake.

Pen rolled away from Viscount Lindsey and rose from the bed, frantic to find her discarded chemise as his words echoed in her mind. She had been reveling in the aftermath of their passion. There had been something perfect about the fit of his cock inside her body, his seed filling her, his chest pressed to hers, his kiss, the wonderful weight of his body pressing hers to the bed. But now, all those feelings had been banished.

How quelling, that sentence.

"Yes, it was a mistake," she agreed coolly, willing away the tears that threatened to fall. She would not allow Lord Lordly to see her weakness for him, to spy her at her most vulnerable. Likely, it would only serve to heighten his already egregious arrogance. "A terrible one."

She found the chemise and threw it over her head, needing to shield herself from him in every way. Allowing him to see her naked for another moment more felt akin to a new sort of betrayal.

"Pen." His voice was concerned, his hand on her lower back intimate.

It was the touch of someone who cared, when he plainly did not. She spun about to face him. "Kindly dress yourself, milord. You'll find the door where you left it when you first trespassed within. Don't let it hit you in the arse on your way out."

"You are angry with me," he said, bending to snap his trousers over his calves and hips.

Lord, where was a vase when one needed to hurl it at a scurrilous viscount's head?

She was so furious, she could not hide the trembling in her voice or her hands as she donned her discarded petticoat and attempted to fasten it.

"His lordship deserves a prize for his astute powers of observation," she snapped, unable to keep the bitterness from her tone or her heart. Only he would dare to pleasure her to the edge of reason, only to claim it had all been a mistake and revert to drawing room etiquette. "How politely you speak, as if we are perfect strangers meeting at an assembly room rather than a man and woman who were just fucking."

He flinched at her use of the vulgar word, but the sight of his disapproval provided no delight. She had come of age in the halls and gaming rooms of this gaming hell and in the darkened alleys of the rookeries. She knew words—and likely deeds as well—that would make his lordly toes curl in his Hessians.

"What happened between us now was not…" He paused, then shook his head. "It was more than that."

Yes, she most certainly had believed it had been.

Until he had opened his beautiful mouth and dashed her heart to bits for the second time.

She pinned a cold smile to her lips. "Let us not pretend, my lord. We have been dancing about this desire burning between us ever since you appeared here at The Sinner's Palace, calling me everything but a lady. We wanted each other, and now we have had each other. Our curiosity has been sated. I thank you for the evening's diversion, but you really ought to go now."

He pulled his shirt over his head, robbing her of the view of his well-muscled chest and flat abdomen. It was just as well. Her stupid body could not seem to tell that he was crushing her heart into dust. But what had she expected would come of allowing him into her bed? A declaration of love?

Had she believed, even for a moment, that the august Viscount Lindsey would deem her worthy of himself when he had not even believed her good enough for his youngest brother? Hardly.

He reached for her, but she danced away, leaving him to retrieve his wrinkled cravat from the floor with an air of reluctance. "Curse it, Pen, let me explain."

"I think you have done quite enough talking," she snapped, her voice going shrill in her attempts at maintaining her composure, which grew more difficult by the second.

She was filled with self-loathing. How had she allowed herself to be so weak? He was everything her brothers had warned her against, every reason why they told her the quality was never to be trusted. Why she was meant to stay far, far away from all lords. And yet she had fallen neatly into his trap. Yet another conquest for him. An East End fortune hunter he instantly regretted making love to the moment he had drained his ballocks.

"Perhaps you have no wish to hear it, but I am going to tell you anyway," he countered, commanding her gaze.

He had donned his gleaming boots and was only lacking his coat, which still lay on her floor. The wickedest part of her briefly imagined tossing it into the grate and watching it catch flame from the fireplace's flickering embers. It would serve him right to leave without all his rum rigging.

"I'm not accustomed to this much prattle from men after we make the beast with two backs," she lied, knowing it was childish and yet wanting to hurt him just the same. Needing to lash him with her words as he had done to her. "I am growing weary of the noise."

His nostrils flared at her insult. "Do not think to fool me. You were a virgin when I took you."

"Rather conceited of you to think yourself the first," she taunted. "You didn't really believe I'd give myself so easily if I hadn't already done it many times before, did you?"

In truth, she and Daniel had kissed and otherwise touched. But he had never claimed her body as Garrick had. No other man had done, for she had never wanted it with them. When she had loved Daniel, she had been far too young, and he had chosen Gertrude Cholmley over her when she had refused him further liberties.

But she would sooner throw herself from the window to the putrid streets below than admit as much to the man who had just made love to her and then called it a mistake.

"It matters not if you did," Garrick told her, moving toward Pen once again. "You could have taken a hundred lovers before me, and what I did still would have been wrong."

"Wrong," she repeated, the word joining all the others before as yet another barb to pierce her heart. "So you have said. A mistake. Wrong. I understand, my lord. You regret lying with someone such as myself, whom you perceive as so far beneath you that the notion your brother would have wished to make me his wife meant I was some sort of fortune-seeking whore."

He flinched as if she had slapped him. "You mistake me, Pen. What happened between us is wrong because I am meant to be marrying someone else."

I am meant to be marrying someone else.

Marrying someone else.

Someone else.

Another woman. Someone who was not her. But then, once again, why should she be surprised? He was the heir to the Duke of Dryden. Of course he would have found the loveliest diamond of the first water to become his future duchess. Likely the daughter of a duke herself.

His words echoed in Pen's mind, taunting her, this round far more jagged, sharp, and likely to make her bleed than the first. She swallowed against a rush of bile. How lovely to know he considered bedding her a mistake because he was going to be taking another woman as his wife. He may as well have cut her beating heart from her breast and tossed it into the fire.

"I never should have touched you for that reason," he added. "It was not just dishonorable of me, but it went against every tenet I hold dear as a gentleman."

"Ah, your honor," she repeated, feeling as brittle as her voice sounded. "And your gentlemanly tenets. Those should not be betrayed, should they?"

And neither , she longed to say, should I .

But she held her tongue and kept her head high, refusing to show him how devastated she was on the inside.

"Pen," he tried, reaching for her again.

Half an hour ago, she would have taken that hand, threaded her fingers through his, and followed him anywhere. But half an hour ago, she had believed the best of him, and he had swiftly proven her wrong.

So very wrong.

She shook her head, refusing him. "Go now, Lord Lindsey. Go before you make this worse."

Her heart had splintered into so many shards that she could not even summon the desire to mock him. First, he had been Lord Lordly to her, then Garrick, and now? Now, he was merely Lord Lindsey. Just as he always should have been.

He studied her, those bright-blue aristocrat's eyes plumbing the depths of hers. She stood still for the examination, willing her countenance to remain lifeless. To refuse to show him even a hint of the hurt and pain he had dealt her. Nothing of the love she felt for him, burning like a hot coal still. He did not deserve it.

He did not deserve her .

But while he had not been the first man who was unworthy of her heart, he would most definitely be the last. And whatever it was he saw in her eyes apparently persuaded him that the time for conversation between them was done.

He gave a jerky nod. "If that is what you wish."

She inclined her head, hoping she looked regal instead of downtrodden. Hoping he would think of her every moment he spent in the company of his future wife and that he forever regretted his decision.

"It is what I wish," she told him. "Farewell, my lord."

He bowed, and then, he left her room, taking her heart with him.