Once they reached the valley floor, the sky opened and rain fell in slanting torrents. Sebastian didn't slow and didn't turn back toward the main house. Instead they galloped through the heath in the opposite direction. Arabella squinted against the onslaught, but managed to keep Sebastian's flying coattails in sight. When he turned down a trail cutting through the dense woods, she reined her mare to follow.
Her riding habit was plastered to her form and her hat was a lost cause, but the joy of the chase was infectious. She urged her mare as close as she dared to his horse's hooves. She caught a glimpse of a thatched roofline embedded in the canopy of green ahead. When the cottage came into view it seemed a bit shabby, but when lightning flashed and her mare shied and tossed her head, the shelter was a welcome sight.
Sebastian stopped ahead of her, dismounted and lifted her from the sidesaddle. “Get inside,” he ordered, “and I'll see to the horses.”
She lifted her soggy skirt and dashed for the door while Sebastian led their mounts to a small shed.
Arabella expected to be assaulted by dust and mold, but the inside of the cottage was surprisingly clean. Especially since no one answered when she called out to announce her presence. A fire had been banked in the stone fireplace to ward off mustiness and drive the chilly damp from the air. She stirred it with a poker and it flared to life, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
A brace of hunting rifles hung above the mantle. Based on the bearskin on the floor and the general masculinity of the heavy furniture, she surmised this was Sebastian's hunting lodge.
When he entered the structure behind her, his expression left no doubt of his quarry now.
He crossed the slate floor in long strides and swept her into his arms. He kissed her. Hard. Giving no quarter.
She responded in kind, devouring him when he lent her brief control in the kiss. His mouth burned across her jaw and down her neck. His hands worked at the gold frogs at the front of her bodice, exposing her stays and the top of her lacy chemisette. He tugged down one side to cup her bare breast. She moaned when he kneaded her flesh and then tormented her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. When he bent to suckle her, a trill of need sang through her whole body and her knees nearly buckled.
Arabella had always thought she'd never feel more alive than when she offered up her voice to the god of music. The delights of the flesh were all well and good, but even they had paled in comparison to the rewards of her art.
Not this time.
Who would have thought this complicated, rigid man would be the one to set her singing, blood and bone, body and soul?
She yanked off his cravat and worked furiously to remove his sodden jacket and shirt. Bella tasted the bare skin of his shoulder, smooth and wet, and she couldn't get enough of him. His chest was lightly furred with dark hair that whorled around his brown n**ples. She raked her teeth over one and was rewarded with a low male growl.
He cradled the back of her head with his palm and took her mouth, while she fumbled at the trouser buttons at his hips. Her bare breast pressed up against him, skin on glorious skin.
She stopped thinking in complete thoughts and could only register disjointed impressions.
Slick. Hard. Wanting.
Sebastian pulled out the hatpin and discarded her sad little bonnet. Then he made short work of removing her pelisse and skirt. It was a convoluted process because as sections of her skin were exposed, he caressed and kissed and nipped each needy bit of her. It was as if he were consuming her one delectable bite at a time. She couldn't wish him to stop, however few pieces of her might be left when it was over.
Please God, she couldn't even let herself think of an end.
She plunged her hands into his trousers to hold his shaft. Long, thick, like a column of granite encased in smooth male skin. The very thought of taking him in made her weak and strong at once.
After he relieved her of her stays and chemise, he reached around her, his muscular arms beneath her bum, and lifted her off the floor. He carried her toward a waiting couch, toying with her nipple with his lips and tongue while he moved toward their goal.
He laid her on the overstuffed leather and looked down at her. His hair was wild. His eyes even wilder, glinting with the same lunatic light one saw in a stallion when the mares were in season. His trousers were slung low on his hips, ready to succumb to gravity, his splendid maleness on aching display.
“This has nothing to do with anything else,” he said, his voice harsh, ragged with need. He yanked off his boots and let his trousers and small clothes pool at his ankles. “Not the damned envelope or anything I might do about it on your behalf.”
“Or your damned contract,” she countered.
He nodded curtly. “I realize I can't purchase you, Bella,” he said. “You give yourself to me freely or not at all.”
She extended her arms to him, but he caught up her wrists and held her fast.
“That means this isn't about what I'll do for your daughter either. I will help you in any case,” he said darkly. “I don't want you to let me take you because you're grateful.” He spat the word out as if it left a bitter taste in his mouth.
She ached to hold him, to engulf him. She'd go mad if he didn't do something soon. “I'm feeling many things right now, Sebastian. Grateful is not one of them.”
He lowered himself and the insanity of lust began.
“No matter how delightful a woman’s company may be in the boudoir, if she complicates a gentleman’s life outside it, she ought to be dismissed and summarily shunned as if she were a case of the pox.”
~ A Gentleman’s Guide to Keeping a Mistress
Chapter 9
This is lunacy, Sebastian thought. Stark, raving madness.
But for the life of him, he couldn’t stop. Her silken limbs, her softness, the sweet mound of her belly and the tender triangle of pale red-gold curls at the apex of her thighs—every bit of her called to him like a siren on the rocks.
And, unlike Ulysses, he hadn’t had the forethought to order Cobb to strap him to the mast.
He reveled in the sight of every secret part of her. He tugged on her n**ples, suckling hard and biting down enough to make her cry out. He rubbed his face between her legs, drunk on her scent. Her small noises of need tightened his ballocks and primed his c*ck to throbbing hardness with each little sigh and every hitched breath.
Her hands roamed over him, teasing and prodding. When she bit his shoulder, he sank into her. Some of his past mistresses had complained of his generous size. He slid into Arabella’s velvet tightness slowly in the hope that she could bear to engulf all of him.
She hooked her heels at the small of his back and urged him deeper. He rammed himself home, sheathed to the balls.
Her eyes flared, but she whispered his name and rocked against him.
The whole world went suddenly hot and liquid. Sebastian forgot himself in pure animal joy. At one point, he was vaguely aware that they’d slid off the couch and were coupling on the thick bearskin before the crackling fire, but he couldn’t be bothered to care that the 8th Duke of Winterhaven shouldn’t writhe on the floor like a mindless beast.
They rolled in a tangle of arms and legs and Bella ended up astraddle him. He usually preferred to be on top, but when she arched her spine, offering her br**sts to him, he couldn’t refuse. He claimed them both, rolling her taut n**ples between his thumbs and forefingers.
Bella groaned and tilted her pelvis against him, her wetness slicking his belly, as she set an urgent rhythm in their joining. They strained against each other, driving each other to aching fury. He slid a hand down and thumbed her most sensitive spot, luxuriating in her responsive warmth.
“Oh,” escaped her lips and she stopped moving to let his fingers whip her into a shuddering frenzy.
His balls clenched when she started panting. She sang an incoherent song of lust in short gasps and soft cries and deep moans. She cupped his face with both hands and stared into his eyes, daring him to look away. Then her body stiffened and her insides rioted in deep spasms around his cock.
A gentleman would withdraw, but Sebastian was past feeling human, let alone like a man who followed any code of “oughtness.” He arched his h*ps and his release pounded into her.
All that was right in his world was wrapped up in this woman, this joining, this bond that made them one flesh.
He could no more sever their connection than he could order his heart to stop beating.
* * * * *
The man beneath her bared his teeth in a feral grimace. As she’d hoped, Sebastian Blake had finally lost control of himself. He was wild and fierce and magnificent all at once. Bella reveled in his bone-jarring release almost as much as her own. She squeezed all her inner muscles and reached around herself to fondle his tight balls, willing his joy to last as long as possible.
When the last pulse died, she collapsed onto his chest, content to gasp for breath and listen to his heart thunder beneath her ear. There was still much she didn’t understand about Sebastian, how he’d come to be so self-contained when there was a raging fire inside him clamoring to burst out, but her body knew him now.
And his knew her.
It was a start.
“Well, Your Grace, that was...” She licked his nipple and blew a steady stream of air across it while she searched for the right superlative. “...monumental.”
“Your Grace? You dispensed with that formality during our first meal together and this is no time to resurrect it.” His belly jiggled in a deep chuckle. “Is ‘monumental’ a reference to my size?”
She gave his chest a playful swat and met his gaze. “No, though you are most impressive. I was thinking more in terms of why people erect monuments—to stake a claim of remembrance.” She kissed his neck. “If I live to be a hundred, Sebastian, I will not forget you.”
He stroked her hair from root to the long tips, his fingertips running along her spine and staying long enough to trace a small circle just above the cleft of her bum. His chest rose with a deep inhalation. “And I’ll remember you, Bella.”
“Good.” She rose up a bit and met his gaze. “And in case your next mistress asks, my eyes are brown.”
“My next mistress? Dare I hope that means you’ve consented to become my current mistress?”
She forced a laugh. Why had she started the conversation down that road? The thought of him having a ‘next mistress’ bothered her more than she wanted him to know.
“You may hope, but you’d be wrong,” she said, twirling the ends of her hair around one of his n**ples. “I’m your lover, Sebastian, as I promised I’d be. But since you made it clear this isn’t about anything beyond this moment, I still won’t sign that contract.”
She leaned down to kiss him. What started as a playful brush of lips quickly became a passionate challenge. He rolled her over and pinned her beneath him.
“The contract benefits you as well, you know,” he said when their lips finally parted. “Why do you insist on thwarting me?”
“Because someone needs to.”
Evidently, he was the sort of man who responded to a challenge. He’d started to soften inside her, but now his maleness roared back to life. She rocked her h*ps beneath him, welcoming a second round of loving.