One Naughty Night2 (11 page)

But his hatred of the Huntingtons had seemed even hotter after that. Lily would rather talk to Dominic about the Huntingtons than Brendan, if she had to talk about them at all. She couldn’t even imagine what Brendan would want her to do as their spy.

She strolled slowly to the other side of the room, making sure everything was going smoothly and all their patrons seemed happy. The steady flow of champagne always seemed to lessen the sting of losing, and she made a note to order more from the vintner.

“Mrs. Nichols,” a footman said at her shoulder. “A gentleman wishes to see you in your office.”

“My office?” she said sharply. No one was to go in there without her; everyone knew that.

The footman flushed and shuffled his feet. “I am sorry, Mrs. Nichols, but he was quite insistent. You did say we should never upset the patrons.”

Lily sighed and shook her head. These arrogant aristocrats, pushing their way in everywhere! God save her from them and their demands.

And from one “arrogant aristocrat” in particular, she added as she thought of Aidan’s blue eyes and his smile.

“Very well, I will see to them. But from now on, fetch me
before
they are shown to my office.” She hurried from the salon and up the stairs, intent on ejecting whoever it was from her room. And if they protested, so much the better; somehow she was itching for a fight tonight.

She pushed open the office door and strode across the threshold, only to freeze. It was not just some drunken patron who waited for her. It was Aidan.

He stood next to the bookshelf behind her desk, lazily studying the titles there with his hands on his lean hips. He turned to smile at her, his teeth flashing white in the dimness of the room. There was only one lamp lit on the desk, and he stood just beyond its light. Yet she knew without a doubt it was him. No one else was that tall, that elegantly powerful, like some jungle cat just waiting to coil its strong muscles and pounce. He seemed to fill up her whole room, possess it, just by standing there.

“Good evening, Lily,” he said.

Lily closed the door behind her and leaned back on it. “What are you doing in here?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Then you should have come to the salon. I’ve been there all evening.”

“I wanted to see you alone,” he said bluntly. “And I came to return these.”

He laid something on the desk, and she saw it was her riding gloves, lost in the confusion at the park. His fingers
slid over the leather, and she braced her hands harder on the door.

“You could have just sent them to me,” she said.

Aidan shook his head, and in a sudden flash of movement, he was across the room and pressed against her.

Lily gasped at the sensation of his hard body sliding over hers, and she tried to whirl away. But he held her in place, his prisoner, with his palms to the door above her head, his knee between her thighs. He didn’t even touch her, not skin to skin, but his heat wrapped all around her and held her faster than any chains.

“Fuck it all, Lily,” he growled, and she startled at the sound of the crudeness in his brandy-smooth voice. “Do you know how crazy you make me?”

“Aidan…” She couldn’t stop shaking. She pressed her palms to his chest, trying to push him away, to escape. Somehow instead she found herself twisting her fingers into the slippery coolness of his satin waistcoat and tugging him closer. The lace of her gloves rasped over the smoothness, and she could feel the ripple of his muscles underneath. The pounding of his heart echoed her own.

He lowered his face into the curve of her shoulder, and she felt his open mouth on her neck. His warm breath on her skin, the scrape of his teeth. She made
him
crazy? She felt ready to be sent to Bedlam just from his touch.

He bit down lightly, and she cried out. Her hands convulsed on his waistcoat, twisting it tighter.

“Why can’t I stay away from you?” he whispered as his open mouth slid over her ear, pressing a kiss to the pulse pounding at her temple. One of his hands slid into her hair, his fingers combing through the strands to scatter her pins and combs until it tumbled over her shoulders.

His caress tightened, and he pulled her hair back, the tug of it just on the dark border between pain and pleasure, until her throat was bared to him.

“Why do you hide from me?” he said, his voice filled with torment. He closed his teeth on the vulnerable hollow of her throat, and Lily arched her body into his.

She wasn’t hiding from him now. It was as if his rough touch, the rawness of his need, ripped open something inside of her, and all the fear and uncertainty of the last few days, the desire she had tried so hard to suppress, broke free and flew out into the world.

She couldn’t think anymore, couldn’t remember; she could only feel. Feel what Aidan was doing to her, how he made all her senses flare into a burning life she didn’t even know existed. The fear was still there, but she pushed it away.

Aidan’s mouth took hers, and as his tongue plunged inside, she could taste the darkness of him, the lust, the primitive need that drove away everything else. She felt the hidden shadows of his soul that called out to hers.

They both hid from the world in their own ways. But now, for this one fleeting moment, they were free together.

Not breaking their hungry kiss, Aidan pulled her heavy silk skirts up to her waist, the soft fabric and stiff net of her petticoats foaming around them. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on to him tightly.

“Why do women wear so damned many clothes?” he muttered against her lips.

Lily gasped when his fingers suddenly closed on the soft muslin of her drawers and ripped them apart at the seam.

He pinched the soft curve at the top of her thigh, and the sensation of pain/pleasure shot through her core. She
arched her hips into him, her bare sex rubbing at his erection behind his trousers. It slid over the sensitive little bundle of nerves inside her, making her clench, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

Still holding her against him with one hand, Aidan slid the other between her legs as he kissed her shoulder, the curve of her breast. Her nipple puckered and pebbled, aching as it pressed to her corset.

“Aidan,” she cried as he slid one long finger into her damp folds. He pressed deeper with a delicious burning friction, exploring her, stretching her, until he could press in another finger. His thumb brushed over that spot, and she almost sobbed with pleasure.

“So tight,” he whispered. He moved slowly in and out of her, the same rhythm as his tongue against hers, brushing against her most sensitive spot again and again until she moaned.

She threaded her fingers through his hair and moved with his touch. The pleasure built inside of her, flickering from his fingers inside of her until it spread over her whole body. The floor seemed to tilt, the walls moving.

Startled, Lily tore her mouth from his and eased her head back. It wasn’t the room that was moving; it was her. Aidan had swung her around, both his hands under her legs as he spun her toward the chaise by the wall. He lowered her onto the cushions as his teeth closed over her soft earlobe, tugging at her cameo drop earring.

“You have too many clothes,” she said, and let her head fall back for his mouth. She shoved his coat off his shoulders and tugged at the folds of his cravat until it unwound from his neck. She wanted to see him, touch him. Feel his body against hers as it had been in her dream.

Aidan unfastened his waistcoat and shirt, never taking his mouth from her skin. He groaned against her shoulder when she slid her fingers between the loose linen folds and caressed his bare chest.

His skin was smooth and hot, damp with sweat, satin stretched taut over iron muscles. He felt so
good
, so perfect under her hands. Her fingertips traced over his ribs, down a long, thin scar that marred his perfect skin, over his ridged abdomen. He was no soft, idle nobleman.

She swept her hand along the band of his trousers, over the hard angle of his hip until she could cup his erection beneath the fabric. She wrapped her fingers around him and swept them down to its base. He seemed to grow even harder under her touch, and his hips thrust against her.

“Minx,” he growled.

Lily laughed, but her laughter faded when he knelt between her legs and reached for her hands. Before she could tell what he meant to do, he pressed them to the wall and wound his cravat around her wrists in a tight loop. He pulled on the silk, and she was bound, her body arched up into his.

“Aidan, no,” she whispered. She felt all her control slipping away, falling into his hands, and fear and desire tangled up in her.

He slid one finger under the silk bonds as if to test their tightness. “Does it hurt, Lily?”

She shook her head. It didn’t hurt, not physically. But being vulnerable to his desires, his domination—it awakened something in her she wasn’t sure she wanted.

A slow, feral smile spread over his lips, and he leaned down to kiss her again. As he held his hand over her bound wrists, his tongue swept into her mouth, tangling
with hers, scraping over her teeth, making every part of her his.

Under his kiss, the fear faded, leaving only a hot haze of lust. His mouth trailed away from hers, over her cheek, her arched throat, the curve of her shoulder. The flat of his tongue circled her breast, dipped between her cleavage. As he tugged down her bodice to take her nipple deep into his mouth, suckling it hard, he pulled her skirts up higher and pressed his palm to her mound.

Tied as she was, Lily could do nothing but submit to his touch, to feel every sensation, every touch and kiss. He seemed to be all around her, all she knew.

Her nipple slid from his mouth, and she opened her eyes to see him kneel back at the edge of the chaise. He pressed his hands to the inside of her thighs, just above the ribbon garters of her stockings, and gently urged her farther apart with her knees drawn up. She couldn’t see him past the froth of her skirts, but she could definitely
feel
him. He laid her flat on the chaise, the linen of his shirt abrading her soft skin, and then she felt the tip of his tongue trace her damp seam, one long, wet sweep as he tasted her.

“Aidan!” Lily twisted in her bonds but she couldn’t get free. She had seen this done so many times; she had seen everything growing up in the brothel. But no one had ever done it to her. It was shocking in its intimacy, somehow more intimate than any kind of intercourse. Shocking, and so, so pleasurable.

She tried to jerk away from him but his hands tightened on her thighs, holding her open to him. “Do I have to tie your ankles as well?” he said, and blew a soft, hot breath against her. Then she felt his tongue on her again, driving through her folds, deep into her.

He groaned with pleasure, and Lily squeezed her eyes closed. There in the darkness, she felt every lick, every scrape of his teeth, driving her higher, higher. When he slid his finger into her, tracing his nail over that one spot, she cried out and leaped into that swirling abyss of climax. He caught her between his teeth, tugging at her, and she fell even harder.

She sobbed as his mouth trailed away from her, and he kissed the quivering skin of her thigh. She could feel the taut tension of his body against her, the desperation of his touch as he hooked his fingers behind the curve of her knee.

“Lily, Lily,” he said hoarsely. “God, the way you taste… I have to fuck you now.”

“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes.”

His hand tightened on her leg, and he flipped her over onto her stomach with her skirts caught around her. She pressed her bound hands to the curved back of the chaise and closed her eyes as he raised her up on her knees. She heard the harsh rasp of his breath, the pounding, erratic rhythm of her heart, the scrape of wool fabric as he pushed down his trousers and lowered his body over hers.

His arms were braced on either side of her, his chest pressed to the arch of her back, and she felt his hair brush over her skin as he kissed the nape of her neck. Then he pressed the tip of his penis against her, rocking back and forth as he found his angle and slid inside her.

She was so wet with need that he plunged all the way to the hilt, balls-deep in her, and she cried out at the fullness, the slight burning. It had been so, so long, and never like this. Her head dropped down between her arms, pressed to the chaise as she felt him with her. Part of her.

He went very still, and his lips swept over her shoulder. “All right, Lily?” he said hoarsely, and she nodded.

Better than all right, it felt too good. Too right. That fear hovered near her again, spreading its dark wings.

But there was no time for it to catch her. Aidan drew back and thrust into her again, driving away everything but the feeling of their joining. She arched back into him, meeting him thrust for thrust until they found their rhythm together. He moved faster, harder, and she felt his sweat on her back, heard the sound of skin meeting skin, and it drove her need higher.

“Lily!” he shouted amid a torrent of dark curses. His palm landed hard on her bare buttock, and the bite of it sent her soaring into another climax.

“Again,” she gasped, and cried out when his open hand landed hard on her skin.

He suddenly pulled out of her, and she felt him press his hand over himself as he came. She felt the heat of it as some of the liquid landed on her naked thigh, and it made her shudder.

She collapsed to the chaise, her cheek pressed to the cool leather. She struggled to breathe again, trying to pull herself back down to earth. She felt as if she floated somewhere outside herself, weightless, numb. Free.

Aidan fell to the chaise beside her, his chest moving hard with the force of his breath. He gently kissed her shoulder and reached around her to untie her hands. She moaned at the sting of the blood rushing back to her fingertips.

He smoothed his palm over the tangled fall of her hair, a slow caress over her neck and shoulders and back before he wrapped the long strands around his wrist. They lay
there like that for long minutes, close in the silence, the dreamy aftermath of pleasure.