His mouth came down hard on hers.
It was quick, fierce, and devastating, an erotic rampage, demanding what she’d never intended to withhold.
She tasted anger and power, but more than that was the sin of it, the diabolical knowing of it, the way he made love words inside her mouth with his tongue.
He released her before she was ready. Unbalanced, she caught a fistful of his shirt. “Good God, Ainswood.” A few seared syllables; that was all she could get out.
“Vere,” he growled. “You said my name when we said our vows. Say it, Lydia.”
“Vere.” She reached up, cupped his face to tilt it toward hers. “Do it again.”
“You’re not throwing me away,” he said. With a flick of his fingers he unfastened the topmost button of her bodice. With the quick assurance of a concert pianist performing arpeggios, he undid the rest.
She brought her hands down, let them hang uselessly at her sides. “You’ve got it all wrong,” she said.
“I’ll make it right.” He unfastened hooks and tapes with the same ruthless efficiency.
In a moment, her black frock was a heap on the floor. He kicked it aside.
He started on the petticoat.
“I never said I don’t want you,” she tried.
“You don’t want me enough.” He paused, though, his fingers brushing over lace and silk ribbons. His grim expression softened a degree. “Pretty.”
“A gift from Lady Dain.”
He bent his head and drew his tongue over the intricate, gossamer-light edging of the petticoat’s bodice.
She sucked in her breath, dug tense fingers into his hair, to stop him. “What are you doing?” She heard the uncertainty and anxiety in her voice and hated it, but couldn’t help it. He was a rake. He’d committed acts of depravity she, completely inexperienced, could scarcely begin to imagine.
He turned his head and nipped the skin of her forearm.
She let go.
“You put on lovely new underthings, just for me,” he said. “It’s sweet.”
They were lovely. And ghastly expensive, no doubt. But it would have been churlish to refuse Lady Dain’s gifts, even though she had gone overboard and given Lydia enough lewd underwear to dress a dozen harlots. “Does that mean you’re not cross anymore?” she asked warily.
He lifted his gaze to hers. She saw twin slits of green, dark and glinting. “Was I cross? I’ve completely forgotten.” He smiled then, that dreadful, brain-bone-muscle-melting smile. It was lethal, the lazy curve of his dissolute mouth, and he most certainly knew it. No wonder he despised women. He’d only to turn that smile upon them to topple them like ninepins.
She toppled, too, inwardly, while outwardly she reached for him, brought his face to hers, and trailed her lips over that wicked curve.
He simply let her do it. He didn’t move, didn’t respond. His hands remained at her waist, where they’d come to rest a moment before.
She drew her tongue over his mouth, in the same teasing way he’d done to the lace of her bodice.
The grip on her waist tightened.
She nipped at his lower lip, as he had done to her arm.
He nipped back, then, and parted for her.
It was long and deep and dark this time, a kiss that was like falling off a precipice.
And while she fell, so did her petticoat, so smoothly and easily that she was scarcely aware it was happening. His big hands ran over her like water while tapes and buttons gave way and hooks lost their mates.
Her petticoat cascaded to a whispering heap at her feet. He knelt and gently pushed it away. He put her hand on his shoulder and took off her shoes and set them neatly aside.
He held up his hands and she took them, and came down to kneel on the carpet in front of him.
“That’s the prettiest corset I’ve ever seen,” he whispered. “Too pretty to take off in a mad rush. Turn around, Lydia.”
It was pretty, embroidered with pink twining vines and tiny leaves. From behind, he drew his fingers over the edge of the corset, where the lacy chemise veiled her breasts. He spread his hands over the front of the garment while he kissed the back of her neck and her shoulders.
She was weak with longing already. All she could do was stroke his wonderfully wicked hands and swim in sensation.
He drew the corset away. She heard his sharp inhalation.
“Oh, Lydia, this is…evil.” His voice was a rough whisper. He stroked over the back of the chemise.
It was made of silk as thin as a butterfly’s wing, in the palest blush of pink.
“Turn around,” he said.
She turned, resisting the temptation to cover herself. He’d seen her naked before, hadn’t he?
“It doesn’t conceal much, does it?” she said, fighting down a nervous giggle.
“I forgive you,” he said thickly. His green gaze dwelt lingeringly upon her breasts.
“For what?”
“Everything.”
He pulled her into his arms and bore her down with him to the carpet.
He forgave her with deep, wild kisses that hurtled her over the precipice and dragged her up again. He forgave her with his hands, with caresses rough and tender by turns.
She had no control. The slow undressing had awakened in her something deeper and darker than what, before, she’d called lust, infatuation.
He was big and strong and beautiful and diabolically knowing, and everything he was, every pore and cell of him, she wanted for herself alone.
The drive to possess and conquer was in her Ballister blood, and it was a hot blood, wild and greedy.
She had no patience to be further undressed, and pushed his hands from her drawer strings. She pushed him onto his back and dragg
ed off his shirt. He let out a low, short laugh that turned into a groan when she unbuttoned his trousers. She was not so smooth as he had been, but she was quicker. She peeled them off and tossed them aside, and sat back on her haunches.
He was a magnificent man, long and leanly muscled. The broad chest tapered to a tautly slim waist and hips. She drew her hand over the dark, silky hair feathering his chest, and down where it arrowed to his pelvis, lighter and tinged with red. “I hadn’t the presence of mind last night to look,” she said huskily as her fingers stole down to that forbidden place.
“Look, touch,” he said with a choked laugh.
She grasped his rod, swollen and hot. It pulsed in her hand. He made a low, aching sound.
“You said I could touch,” she told him.
“Yes, I like torture.”
She bent and touched her tongue to it.
“Jesus.” He pulled her hand away, pulled her on top of him. He found the opening of her drawers, slid his fingers in, and cupped her.
The climax took her unawares. She was quivering under the strokes of his fingers when it speared through her, one sharp shock of joy that set off rippling aftershocks.
Another came, and another…and then he pushed in, and she lifted instinctively, and came down to take him inside, deep.
“Yes.” A ragged cry of triumph she couldn’t keep back.
He pulled her down to him. She took his mouth, and stroked with her tongue, shamelessly mimicking his quickening thrusts.
He rolled her onto her back and, breaking her greedy kiss, wrenched her hands from his neck and held them down on the carpet. He held her so, and she watched him, watching her, while the last stormy strokes spasmed through her body. Her eyes closed and she saw firebursts behind them. And one long, shuddering moment later, she heard a choked sound that was her name as he sank down, spent, on top of her.
At half past ten the following morning, Her Grace met in Vere’s study with Mrs. Clay.
At half past eleven, pandemonium erupted.
What seemed like thousands of maids and footmen spilled out of baize doors, all armed with cloths, dusters, mops, brooms, pails, and some fearful implements Vere could not identify.