Oh dear. She hadn’t thought of how she looked. Her chapped lips were no doubt stained red from wine, and she’d been crying about Elinor, so her skin would be blotchy.
She fervently hoped he wouldn’t think she’d been crying over him.
“You look like you could use a friend,” he said softly.
Something inside her pinged like a mallet on an overtightened spring at his tender tone of voice. Tenderness was not a currency accepted here, especially from someone who had made a speech about his unwelcome feelings this morning.
She should not have told him that she liked him. She’d only said that because he’d ended their affair. He’d tricked her into being more earnest than she ought.
Females were chided for their vulnerable hearts but in her experience the human male was equally susceptible to mistaking desire with that stickier kind of ardor: love.
They were not the same thing. Indulging the body led to release. Indulging the emotions led to its opposite: entanglement. A condition that could not be prevented with a sheepskin condom.
There was a name for a man who fell in love with you: a bloody nuisance.
She set her wineglass down and stood up, to match his height.
“Yes, well you see, my friend is locked away in an asylum, and my other friends are ignoring my letters, so actually, I would quite like something more reliable on the spirits. Like a fuck. If that is, indeed, why you’ve come.”
His mouth pursed. He leaned back against the wall, looking at her as though he was a naturalist trying to classify a rare kind of spider. “I suppose I did, to put it crudely. But if you would like to talk about whatever’s troubling you—”
She raised a hand to stop him. She would not allow him to treat this like something it was not. “Adam, I am a woman rich in friends. I adore my friends. But I never, ever sleep with them. So please choose which it is you wish to be to me. A friend? Or a lover?”
He continued to hold her gaze, no change in the expression on his face. “I fail to see what harm there is in being both. I would like to be both.”
She smiled tightly and rose to her feet. “And I would not. So make the choice.”
He walked toward her until they were nearly touching. And then he stepped closer, into her space. She stepped back toward the fire and he followed her, maintaining the distance between them until her back was pressed into the mantelpiece and there was nowhere else for her to go.
He was large, and he could overpower her, and his cock was hard.
Her anger melted into lust. This was the man who had grabbed her in the belvedere. This was the one she’d wanted all along.
“Seraphina,” he said flatly.
She looked up at the grim set of his face, acutely aware of his larger presence looming over her. “Yes?”
“I won’t insist on being friends if you don’t wish to. But if we’re going to be lovers, don’t speak to me that way.”
She widened her eyes. “Like what?”
“Like I will take more than you are offering.”
She smiled tightly. “Very good, Mr. Anderson. You’re learning.”
“Actually,” he said, sliding his body against hers, “I suspect there is very little about what we’re about to do that I don’t already know.”
This show of arrogance pleased her.
“Mmm,” she breathed. “So stern tonight. What am I going to do with such a demanding man?”
He reached out and gripped the mantelpiece behind her, his forearms bracing around her shoulders. “I would suggest you begin by taking me to bed.”
His erection pressed into her belly. She nearly lost her breath.
“Take me to your bed,” he repeated, in a way she felt directly in her cunt.
She took him by the hand and led him to the stairs.
As soon as they were in the dimness of the stairwell, away from any windows or passing servants, he grabbed her from behind and pressed himself into her. He lifted the hair at her neck and kissed her roughly at her nape, using his teeth, until she gasped in pleasure. She arched to give him better access to her skin, wanting him to feast on her, to leave her marked.
“Go,” he said into her ear. “Quickly. I wilna take you on the staircase.”
She liked that raspy, unschooled brogue. It was the sound of a man who was losing his grip on control.
As soon as the door was open to her room, he nudged her toward the bed, not stopping to light the lamps or remove his coat. He pressed her roughly back against the counterpane until her back was flat with the mattress. He sank to his knees and lifted up her skirts.
“This is what I’ve been imagining since I left here.” His fingers locked around her thighs and spread them wider. She felt his breath on her cunt.
She closed her eyes as his whiskers grazed against the outer down.
Animalistic.
Delightful.
He teased her there, nuzzling her folds apart, his fingers gripping her thighs. His grasp wasn’t painful, but he applied just enough pressure to remind her that she was in his control. She whimpered and opened her legs wider, urging him to give her more.
He pulled her closer to his face and flickered his tongue across her clitoris.
She gasped.
Most men, in her not inconsiderable experience, had to be instructed to find that particular place.
“You are quite schooled at this,” she gasped out.
Something about him was different tonight. Like he’d been hoarding a part of his personality away and had decided to unleash it. Deliciously. On her cunt.
He looked up at her, his mouth twisted in amusement and the unmistakable sheen of pride. “I think you will find I did not come here for an education.”
She wanted to laugh at the wicked gleam in his eye but instead she extended her hand and pressed his head back down to her quim. “Now, now. Let’s save the boasts for—”
She gasped again as he used his mouth and tongue and the slight stubble of his whiskers to reduce her to a puddle of desires. She urged him against herself, moaning out inarticulate cries of lust, until she broke into a violent shudder, shouting out some pleasure-twisted version of his name.
As she lay spent and panting, unable to so much as move, he stood, shoved off his overcoat, and perched beside her.
“Worthy of a boast?”
“I am willing to admit I might have underestimated your talents,” she said breathlessly.
He smiled and traced his finger over her nose. “Yes. You did.”
“Do you have others you’d like to demonstrate?” she asked.
He chuckled as he idly scooped her breasts out of the top of her neckline and turned his attention to her nipples. She closed her eyes and let herself be the object of his explorations, first his fingers, then his lips.
She stretched out beneath his ministrations. “Are you open to suggestions?” she asked, opening one eye.
“Whatever the lady wishes,” he murmured.
“Rub my tits with your cock.”
She wondered if this would shock him, but he just raised a brow, leaned away from her to rid himself of his remaining clothing, and straddled her.
He was quite the sight without his shirt. She had never been with a man so finely sculpted or so large. His prick was dark and wanting at the tip.
“Oh, you are delectable. Come here.” She took him by his buttocks and urged him to drag the head of his cock between her breasts. He sucked in as she took his length in her hands and began to play with him, rubbing the glistening evidence of his desire in the shallow between her ribs.