With a soft moan, she shuddered and arched herself against him. Her fingers twined in his hair and tugged his head down to bring his mouth tighter against her in a silent plea for pleasure. He groaned at her eager reaction and took her breast deep into his mouth, blissfully yielding to her desires.
He had no right to have his mouth on her like this, but she’d tempted him too devilishly for too long. Now that he’d captured her, he wouldn’t miss this chance to revel in the taste of her as she gave herself over so willingly to the nips of his teeth against her soft flesh, to each lick of his tongue and suck of his lips until the cotton surrounding her nipple was thoroughly soaked. And transparent enough to reveal her dark nipple completely to his greedy eyes as he drank in the sight of her.
“Is that how you think of me?” She shuddered in a gasping shiver when he blew a stream of cool air across the wet fabric and the hot nipple beneath. “As wicked?”
He stroked his hands down her body, and each caress had her writhing on his lap. Sweet Lucifer. She was so wonderfully responsive, positively bewitching…“You’re a genuine she-devil,” he admitted honestly. This she-devil certainly took a pleasing shape, and if she kept wiggling her bottom against him, she’d learn what shapes an aroused man could take, as well. “A seductress who leaves men panting in her wake.”
“I don’t…do that,” she protested, her own shallow breaths undercutting the primness of her answer.
She tore her mouth away to catch her breath, but that only gave him access to her slender throat. When he tongued her racing pulse, growing conceitedly proud to know that he made it pound so furiously, a soft moan rose from her and fell achingly through him. God help him, he wanted to lick her everywhere, just to hear in her mewlings the pleasure he brought her.
“Oh yes, you do,” he assured her as she pressed herself tighter against his chest, so tight he was afraid she might be able to feel the way she made his heart pound for her. “You have men making fools of themselves over you everywhere you go.”
He’d seen the effect she had on men, how she left them all lathered and bothered with nothing more than a smile. The same effect she had on him. But he was helpless to resist, craving her more than any other woman in his life, and he couldn’t stop kissing her. Like chocolate spiced with pepper, each forbidden taste filled him with a burning sweetness that left him greedy for more.
“The thoughts you put into their heads,” he rasped hoarsely as he placed a trail of kisses between her breasts. “The way you make them itch to touch you, how they long to be alone with you—you drive them mad trying to get to you.”
The dandies who had ogled her on Bond Street, the old men who had leered at her at all the soirees they’d attended, even the damnable footmen who had tried to catch a glimpse down her dress when they leaned over to serve her dinner…they all wanted her, but none stood a chance. A woman like her would chew them up and spit them out as if they were nothing at all.
“I thought that was what you wanted,” she said huskily, then bit her bottom lip to fight back a throaty gasp of pleasure when he returned to worshipping at her breast.
“Hell no,” he growled against her fullness at the thought of one of those fop dandies kissing her like this.
“But wasn’t that your diabolical plan?” she taunted, her voice thick with arousal but light with something else…Happiness? Enjoyment? Whatever it was, he liked it. And longed to hear more of it. “Marry me off to the first gentleman who offers?”
“That is not my plan.” He once more seized her mouth in a fierce kiss. One set on silencing her teasing. And on purging away the flash of guilt that he’d once considered doing exactly that.
But not now. Marry her off to one of those self-proclaimed Corinthians who saw her as nothing more than an object to possess? Or chain her to some milk-and-honey dandy like Whitby who would never provide her with the challenge and purpose she craved? Never. Those men cared nothing for the loving woman he now knew lurked within. She deserved better, she deserved—
“Someone like you, then?”
He jerked back from her, his hand stilling where it had drifted beneath her skirt to her thigh. His eyes narrowed as he searched her face and tried to slow the furious beating of his startled heart. Where on earth had that question come from?
With a soft laugh at the stunned expression on his face, she placed a kiss to the tip of his nose. “A rakehell and scapegrace?”
But the knot in his belly only tightened, instead of easing with the relief he should have felt to realize that she was merely bamming him. Not allowing himself to think about what that meant, he nuzzled his face into her hair so she couldn’t see how much her innocent question had unsettled him. “Not someone like me,” he corrected ruefully. “My job is to keep men like me away from you.”
“No.” Sadness touched her voice. Immediately he missed the lightness and delight he’d heard there only moments before. “Your job is to marry me off, no matter who offers.”
Never. He’d never ask her to marry a man she didn’t love. But based on the interest she garnered wherever she went, that wouldn’t be a problem. “By the end of the ball, you’ll have your pick of the best gentlemen in England. You’ll meet someone you want to marry, who will spend the rest of his life making you happy.”
But knowing Mariah would be happy didn’t ease the leaden thud of this heart when he thought about her being in the arms of one of those men.
He cupped her face in his hands and danced his lips across her cheeks and mouth, to kiss away the unhappiness on her face and bring back the wonderful passion he’d tasted in her just moments ago. “Already, fine gentlemen are flocking around you,” he murmured, as much to convince himself as her of the inevitability of her season. “Begging for time alone with you, falling all over themselves for the favor of one of your smiles.”
He flicked the tip of his tongue against the corner of her mouth and drank up the sweetness there, fighting back a groan at how delicious she was. At how much desire he felt growing inside her. So much that she trembled with it.
“You set them on fire, Mariah,” he whispered.
“And you?” She licked her lips—a purely nervous motion, yet the erotic sight of it ripped straight through him. “Do I set you on fire, too, Robert?”
God, yes. A bonfire raged inside him. He’d thought she was trouble when she’d been nothing more than a hellcat. Now that he’d glimpsed this other side of her, one that was loving and vulnerable, happy and relaxed, she was downright dangerous.
But he’d be damned if he’d admit it. “Playing with fire gets a man burned,” he dodged, lowering his head to nibble at her throat.
She stiffened in his arms. “Oh?”
“And I have no intention of getting burned.”
But he had every intention of feeling the heat. His hand stroked boldly over her leg, and he desperately wished her skirts weren’t between them. At the very least that she’d thought to hitch them higher to make it easier for him to explore beneath—
A rush of cold water splashed over his head.
“What the hell?” Robert scrambled to his feet as the dirty mop water ran down his body and puddled around his boots on the floor.
Wiping the water off his face, his clothes drenched, he glared down at Mariah as she held the empty bucket in her hands.
“Then it’s a good thing I also know how to put fires out!” she snapped, then tossed the bucket aside and straightened her stays and blouse with shaking fingers. Instead of the triumphant gleam he expected to see on her flushed face, what he saw was anger and…hurt?
His mind reeled. She’d doused him with the bucket, for heaven’s sake! And she had the nerve to feel hurt?
Confusion mixed with sharp rejection. He clenched his teeth. “For God’s sake, why did you—”