Stephanie Laurens - Beyond Seduction

“If only the rest were going as well.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The ship I’m waiting for. It hasn’t come in.”

His fingers continued to play, palpating her firm flesh; although his touch had grown harder, edged with suppressed anger, it was his tone, flat, cold, that set her nerves skittering.

“I expected it two or three nights ago, but it hasn’t been sighted.”

His accents had grown more clipped, quite different to the drawl he usually affected.

He had a temper. She’d only seen glimpses, fleeting at most, yet she knew it was there, formidable and frightening. He was ruthless, entirely devoid of softer feelings, and sometimes his intensity, his obsession with his plans, with having them succeed, made her more than uneasy.

She swallowed, kept her gaze on the darkness beyond the window. “Perhaps I could ask around, see if anyone has heard anything?”

He was silent, considering, then replied, “Not yet. But I want what that ship is carrying of mine.”

His thirty pieces of silver. His payment-his ultimate reward, also his ultimate triumph. His ultimate revenge.

He wanted it, thirsted for it, could almost taste it. So close, but it wasn’t his-in his hands, his to gloat over-yet.

“I want that cargo.” He glanced down at her perfect profile, flexed his fingers more powerfully. “But I don’t want to risk any undue attention. Not yet.”

The fact that although he’d won the war-his private war waged against a powerful enemy who knew him not, and not for want of trying-that although he’d triumphed, he still had to skulk, plot and scheme to lay his hands on what was rightfully his because, despite all, he was still too fearful to face that enemy, and knew he never could, irked him to his soul.

Face setting, he gripped hard, heard her breath catch, strangle. “Do you understand?”

She nodded. Her “Yes” was breathless.

He held her there, poised between pleasure and pain, let the moment stretch. He could all but hear her pulse thundering, could easily sense her spiraling arousal.

Then he smiled into the dark, eased his grip, and patted her abused flesh. “Meet me here tomorrow night, and then…we’ll see.”

The following afternoon, Gervase strode into the front hall of Treleaver Park. He nodded to Milsom, who appeared to greet him. “Miss Gascoigne?”

“In the office, my lord. Shall I announce you?”

“No need. I know the way.” With a nod, he headed down the corridor toward the estate office. As he walked, he polished the elements of his plan.

He knew better than to expect Madeline to invite him to further seduce her, especially not after that interlude in the arbor. With any conventional lady, their transparent compatibility would have resulted in encouragement, but Madeline would react by strengthening her defenses, rather than lowering her drawbridge.

Yet she was weakening, and now he had her measure. Her curiosity was a tangible force, powerful enough to override her reticence; once engaged, it became a potent weapon, all the more effective because it worked from within.

Her independence-her very unconventionality-was the other ace in his hand. Once she was compelled by her curiosity to experience something new, her independence ensured that considerations of “what was proper” or “how things were done” held little power to deflect her.

Her curiosity and her independence combined had led to that encounter in the arbor; now was the time to press her further, to storm the breach in her defenses.

The office door stood open; he paused in the doorway, lips curving as he took in the sight of her, seated behind the desk, head bent, open ledgers spread before her. Sunlight slanted through the windows behind her, lighting the corona of her hair, as always escaping its restraints to form a gilded fretwork about her face.

He was naturally soft-footed; she hadn’t heard his approach. What he could see of her expression said she was absorbed in her accounts. Swiftly rejigging his plan, he stepped into the room and shut the door.

She looked up, blinked, then rose. Behind his back, he turned the key; the click of the bolt fell into the silence.

He smiled, and started toward her.

Eyes widening, she put down her pen. “Ah…Gervase. Is there something…”

She turned to face him as he rounded the desk, eyes widening even more when he didn’t slow. With his knee, he nudged her chair aside, and finally halted, effectively trapping her between him and the desk.

“What…?” She swayed back, then straightened, stiffened, the instinct to lean away from him countered by her will.

He met her eyes, endeavored to keep his expression mild. “You told me that if I had any further questions, you’d happily answer them.” He’d let his gaze slide to her lips. Leaning closer, he brushed them with his. Not a kiss-a tantalizing touch.

Enough to distract her, but when he drew back an inch, she shook off the effect. Frowned. “About the festival-questions about the festival.”

“Oh.” He infused the word with boyish disappointment. “I’d hoped…” Again he touched his lips to hers, for longer this time, until he sensed her instinctive response; one hand rising, fingers lightly cradling her cheek, one side of her jaw, he held her-barely-and sent his lips cruising, tracing her jaw, feathering up over her cheekbone, over her ear, dipping down until he breathed in the scent of her, and closing his eyes breathed softly out, lips hovering above the sensitive hollow below her ear.

His other hand had risen to lightly grip her waist; he felt her reaction, the swift indrawn breath, the quiver of fascinated expectation.

Of curiosity awakening, stretching.

Inwardly smiling, he murmured, “I’d hoped…”-he drew back just enough to meet her eyes-“to learn the answer to a question that’s been plaguing me since last we parted.”

Her eyes, peridot-bright, searched his; her lips, lush and ripe, were parted-she moistened them before whispering, “What…?”

Feeling his hands move between them, Madeline glanced down. Her lungs seized, her head spun as she watched his quick fingers unfasten the tiny buttons closing the bodice of her day gown.

They stood in her office with the afternoon sun streaming over them and he was baring her breasts, and intended God knew what. She should stop him-could stop him.

But she made no move to.

Unable to take her eyes off his fingers, off the swell of her breasts he was so rapidly exposing, she swallowed. “What was your question?”

“I need to know, I’m burning to know…” Her bodice open, her breasts laid bare, he cupped one swelling mound. Ran his thumb gently, tantalizingly, over the peak. Watched it harden.

Her gaze rose to his face; she couldn’t breathe. His features had never looked harder, more rigid. More clearly etched with passion reined.

“What these taste like.”

The intent words penetrated her mind only slowly; when they finally impinged, she blinked, went to look down, but he looked up at that moment and kissed her.

Not as he had in the past, so that her wits evaporated and her ability to think dissolved, but lightly, soothingly, enticingly.

Entreatingly, in patent supplication.

So that even while his lips supped at hers, she could feel his hand at her breast, could fully appreciate each evocative caress, feel each touch sink to her bones.

“Will you let me learn the answer?”

His words drifted over her lips, through her brain. There wasn’t any answer she could make-other than to let him take what he wished. To, when his lips feathered over her jaw and his head dipped, close her eyes and let it happen. His lips traced down the column of her throat, and she shivered. He paused as if to note it-all the answer, all the permission he needed. Then his head lowered.

Eyes tightly closed, she gasped; with one hand at her waist, he bent her back. Then his lips pressed hotly to the upper swell of her breast and she shuddered. Lost all touch with the world as with lips, tongue and teeth, with the hot wetness of his mouth, he tasted and learned.

And taught her. The sensations he evoked, that he sent whirling through her, that speared her, that wracked her, were more, far more intense than she’d imagined they might be. With his mouth on her breasts, he waltzed her into a new landscape of heat, hovering passion, and a deeper, sharper, more powerful yearning.

Not good, she knew, but oh so addictive. Her senses unfurled; parched, denied for so long, they gloried and wallowed in the bounty of delight he pressed on her.

He gripped, lifted her, then she was on the desk, lying back amid her ledgers and accounts, her knees and thighs spread with his hips between. And he was leaning over her; one of her hands had risen to his head, holding him to her as he devoured.

As he unhurriedly pursued the answer to his question, and flooded her mind with pleasure.

Pleasure that swelled, grew, built, until she was squirming, arching lightly as the heat rose, as passion took hold, and that nameless yearning grew ever more insistent.

He paused; she felt his breath, as ragged and shallow as hers, wash over her swollen flesh, over her sensitized skin. Then his hand closed over her breast, his touch harder, more driven; his head rose and he found her lips-and whirled her into a more heated kiss.

This she knew, this she recognized; she opened her senses and embraced the moment-gathered to her all the sensations he offered-and felt her world quake.

He growled something through the increasingly ravenous kiss, then his hand left her breast, but to her relief not her body, moving lower, possessively claiming midriff and waist, hip and belly and upper thigh. He gripped briefly, then released the taut muscle and moved his hand to the juncture of her thighs.

He touched her through the thin material of her gown, sliding the silk of her chemise against her most sensitive flesh. She shuddered, held him more tightly to the kiss, tempted and challenged with her tongue-sensually reeled when he responded with a devastating invasion that left her trapped, caught, driven to some indefinable peak.

Then she realized it was his fingers, cleverly, expertly caressing between her thighs that were making her feel so. Making her feel as if her world-the one he’d swept her into-was about to end.

To erupt, to shatter.

Then it did.

Gervase knew the instant her climax overcame her, so powerful, so dramatic that his head reeled. Drawing back from their kiss, he watched her-watched passion tighten her features, peak, then fracture, to be erased by a sweeping wave of satiation.

He continued to drink in the sight of her, of the lovely lines of her face as they eased-inwardly victorious at being the first to evoke that particular expression.

Inwardly affirmed that he would also be the only.

He hadn’t intended this interlude-this latest step in his campaign-to progress quite so far, yet he was in no way sorry that it had. Her curiosity, her willingness, were the defining aspects; he’d had to adjust his pace to suit.

Which, thank Heaven, meant he was closer to success-and therefore to relief-than he’d been an hour ago.

Her lashes fluttered, then rose. For a long moment, she simply stared, dazed, into his eyes. He hid a self-satisfied smile, but couldn’t stop his gaze from lowering, lingering first on her lips-swollen from their passionate kisses-then lowering still further over the expanse of creamy, now pinked skin to her bare breasts, full and bearing the telltale marks of his possession.

It took effort not to allow what he felt at the sight to show in his face. With a sigh he let her hear, he moved back, straightened; taking her hands, he drew her up, until she slid from the desk to her feet.

They both looked at the desk, at the ledgers and papers now scattered in disarray across its surface.

Raising one hand, cupping her nape, his thumb beneath her jaw, he drew her face to his. Met her eyes for a finite moment, then bent and kissed her-long, slow, deeply but with passion well banked, restrained.

Lifting his head, he released her, then brushed his thumb over her glistening lower lip. “We’ll meet again tomorrow evening. For now, I’d better leave you to your business.”

She stared at him, but he only smiled, then turned and crossed to the door. He felt the distracted confusion in her gaze as, transparently struck dumb, she watched him leave.

As he closed the door, his smile took on a grim edge.

Riding when aroused wasn’t his idea of pleasure, but with any luck at all, the end of his campaign was nigh.