His hands went everywhere. Her face. The line of her throat. They came down over her shoulders, over her breasts, her sides, sliding to her hips, clutching the fabric of her nightgown in his fists.
He dragged his mouth down her throat and she saw flashing spots. The room spun as his hot lips worked over her, and she closed her eyes. Her muscles dissolved. Her head fell back and she went as limp as a rag doll as he feasted on her. She smiled, floating in a heady state of pleasure.
She had to taste him, too.
She lifted her head and brought her face back to his neck, breathing in the delicious smell of him. She nuzzled his throat, kissing him with her open mouth, licking him, savoring his warm, slightly salty skin with a satisfied growl.
His breath snagged just above her ear, ruffling her hair. She felt him swallow, his throat working against her exploring tongue.
She pressed her body against his until she could feel every part of him: all the familiar lines and slopes and hollows. All of his hardness that she had been dreaming about since the last time she felt him. The last time they had been together. Her stomach tightened, and the low deep ache between her thighs throbbed.
She had done this before. With him. Once should be enough—at the time she had said it would be enough to last her forever—but it was not. Dimly, she wondered how many times it would take to get this man out of her mind . . . out of her blood.
Need gripped her. She reached her hand between them, seeking and finding the hard bulge of him pushing into her hip, and squeezed him.
“I remember this,” she rasped against his throat.
“It remembers you, too,” he growled as one of his hands burrowed between the many folds of her nightgown to cup her woman’s mound with his big hand. He flexed his hand, squeezing her sex. She cried out, arching under him. “My cock aches for this sweet quim.”
She shuddered at his naughty speech, thrilling at it, reveling in it . . . wanting more of such shameless talk. More of his hands on her combined with such talk.
She lifted her head to gaze into his eyes, her hand holding his face, cupping his cheek, her thumb stroking, grazing that soft pelt of his beard, longing to feel it against her skin, rubbing over her breasts, chafing the insides of her thighs.
With a desperate little cry, she dove for his lips and renewed their kiss. He met her directly, plunging into the kiss with equal fervor. Their tongues tangled. Teeth clanged. The fiercer the better. She didn’t care.
A screech shattered the cloud of desire enfolding her. “Mercy! What are you—”
Mercy wrenched away, tearing her lips free with a gasp, her gaze flying to her sister standing in the doorway.
“Grace!” Mercy climbed off Silas’s lap gracelessly, nearly tripping and landing on her face, but catching herself in time. Once on her feet, she staggered a few steps clear of Silas.
He rose and stood beside her, reaching out a hand to help steady her. She slapped the hand away. Heat scored her face. The last thing she wanted was to appear in need of his support right now. However fruitless the effort might be—she had just been caught kissing and groping their houseguest, after all—she did not wish to appear in alliance with him.
She held out a hand toward her sister in supplication and released a nervous little laugh. “Grace, it is not what it—”
“Is this where you tell me I did not just see what I saw!” She waved wildly at both of them. “Please do not insult me with that lie.”
Mercy sent a guilty glance Silas’s way. She need not see her own face to know she looked guilty. Because she felt guilty. She was guilty.
Where she had not felt shame before, she did now. Now reality was encroaching all around her, and for whatever reason, Silas did not look guilty at all.
He looked . . . unruffled and relaxed. The nerve!
“I don’t know how you can explain this.” Grace gestured wildly to the both of them. “You are such a fraud! How dare you try to stop me from being with Amos when you’re down here getting . . . shagged by Bede’s friend!”
She flinched. “Grace! Your language—”
“Don’t ‘Grace’ me or reprimand my language! Shagging is the proper description for what I walked in on. Shag! Shag! Shagging!” She stomped her foot several times for emphasis.
Mercy winced. Her sister was right, of course. It was an apt word even if hearing it out loud made the situation all the more sordid. And what could Mercy say? That she and Silas were not lovers? That was not precisely the truth. They had been together before, and she and Silas had been heatedly engaging when Grace walked in on them.
“Now,” she began, “Grace, I am older than you.” Apparently, she would try to explain it, however. Try and fail.
Grace let loose a hard bark of laughter. “Oh, that is rich. So your reputation and virtue are somehow expendable and less valuable than mine? Is that what you tell yourself?”
Yes. Perhaps so. She winced at the obvious fault in that logic. She knew that was wrong, but, of course, she applied different rules to her sister.
Grace looked her up and down in scathing perusal. “You disgust me.”
“Now there,” Silas cut in, stepping forward, clearly ready to defend Mercy. Or even worse . . . intervene and admonish her sister. Grace swung a scowl on him, ready to eviscerate him if he so much as dared to get involved in this. It was not his place. Mercy put a subduing hand on his arm and shook her head in silent message.
“Oh, that is sweet. He is your great defender, is he?” Grace snorted. “Well, I am so glad you have found someone, Mercy, buried out here in the country. How brilliant for you! I am so glad you can be happy.”
“No, Grace. It is not like . . .”
Her sister did not stick around to hear the rest of her words. She whirled on her heels and marched from the kitchen. Mercy stared after her even when she was gone. Even when there was no sight of her. Even when her steps were distant creaks on the stairs.
She crossed her arms, hugging herself. “I suppose we weren’t very discreet.” She looked at Silas.
“No,” he agreed. “We weren’t.”
His hand landed on her shoulder, feather light. She sidled away, ducking out from under his touch, putting proper distance between them. She did not deserve his comfort in this. At any rate, comfort from him always led to other things. She did not deserve those things either.
Without looking at him, she inched back, ready to escape the kitchen. Her sister interrupting them had been a good thing.
Well, it had not been good to be discovered and earn her sister’s eternal wrath, but stopping Mercy before she did something really foolish with Silas (again) had been a good thing.
“I’m going to bed.” She permitted herself to look at him then. “Before anything more calamitous happens tonight.”
His expression was mild as he stared at her across the distance of the room. Inscrutable. “Good night, Mercy.”
“I’ll see you in the morning.” Turning, she took to the stairs, wondering fleetingly, longingly, what would have happened if her sister had not interrupted them.
Would she even be heading to her bedchamber alone?
Chapter Nineteen
The following morning it was as though nothing untoward had occurred at all. Mercy and Silas faced each other with total equanimity, taking their breakfast with Gladys and Elsie in the warm and cozy kitchen where so much wicked behavior had transpired the night before.