“I should fuck you right here, right now.” He dragged his lips lower, down her throat to where her pulse pounded just above her cravat. “That is what you want, is it not?”
His unexpected crudity shocked her. Not because she had never heard such vulgar language before. She was a Sutton who had been born and raised in the rookeries. She had heard and seen all. But because from him, it was unprecedented. And far from being a loss of control, there was something about his words and his actions that seemed alarmingly deliberate in a bold new way.
Accompanying the shock permeating her lust-addled mind was another question. What would it be like to take this man as her lover?
He sucked on her neck, then gently bit the tender cord there. “Answer me.”
Did she want him to bed her? Her body most certainly did. Her pride, however, would allow no such admission.
“You are astoundingly sure of yourself,” she managed, irritated with herself at the breathlessness in her voice.
So much for seeming unaffected.
“Your body tells me everything I need to know.” His right hand moved from the door to slip beneath her coat and caress her waist first, then her hip. “If I reach into your trousers right now, I am willing to wager I would find your cunny dripping for me.”
No one had ever spoken to her thus, and the effect was potent. She almost begged him to do it and put the both of them out of their misery. But then she remembered that this was Aidan’s brother and he thought incredibly poorly of her, and that if she were to allow him such liberties, he would likely only crow about it later.
His fingers trailed a tantalizing path over her trousers, gliding nearer to where she ached. Up her inner thigh. She should tell him to stop. Shove him away instead of holding him close. She did not feel at all threatened by the viscount, and nor did she believe he would press his suit if she were to deny him. And the truth of it was, she did not truly want him to cease his seduction.
She wanted him to continue.
He skimmed his fingers along the seam at the juncture of her thighs with tantalizing slowness. Nothing more than the lightest of pressure, a butterfly’s wings.
Not enough.
She jerked into his touch, riding his thigh. He stilled, his head lifting with agonizing torpor. There was surprise in his countenance. Perhaps she had shocked him with her response. Heavens, she had stunned herself. His gaze met hers, searching, seeking.
Part of her wanted to look away, sever the connection, and yet she could not. In the flickering candlelight, the icy-blue of his eyes took on a deeper hue, akin to the sky after midnight.
“Shall I touch you, then?” he asked, his voice thick with desire.
He wanted her.
That was understood, for she had felt his body’s reaction to hers before when he had been so intimately pressed against her. But she had supposed his previous reaction had been natural, caused by the fact that she was a woman and he had kissed her. This, however, what was suddenly unfolding between them, bore the distinct hallmark of something altogether different. Indeed, he did not just want her. He was wooing her.
He was taking his time. Seducing her with bold words and knowing caresses. Teasing her. Bringing her to the edge so that she was forced to either admit she wanted him too or retreat in thwarted desire. Was it his conceit that made him so bold?
His thumb brushed over the fall of her trousers, unerringly strumming directly above the place where the seat of her pleasure dwelled. He grazed her bud. How she longed to know his bare flesh on hers, rather than through the barrier of layers of fabric.
Still not sufficient.
These teasing, taunting passes of his thumb were intentional, she knew. He watched her silently, his stare growing hooded.
“Yes,” she said at last, the word a reluctant hiss.
She had not come to The Duke’s Bastard seeking Viscount Lindsey. Indeed, she had been doing her utmost to forget about his very existence and to carry on as if she had never met him. His insults had faded to the back of her mind. She had been singularly devoting herself, instead, to finding her friend so that she might box his ears and then direct him to inform his family he had been deceiving them when he had announced their betrothal.
But all her intentions and motivations, even her pride, fell away when the viscount’s long, elegant fingers—fingers she had admired on previous occasions most unwillingly—found the fastening on the fall of her trousers. A few swift movements, his eyes searing into hers all the while, and the flap dropped.
A wisp of cool air invaded, teasing her. Holding her gaze, he replaced the air with his fingers. He stroked her tentatively, tenderly, tracing her seam to the pulsating bud hidden within her folds. His forefinger moved with expert attention, sending pleasure radiating from her core.
Her body had a life and mind of its own, hips bucking, heart pounding, her hold on his neck tightening.
“Just as I thought,” he said, his low voice sending an answering spark of awareness to join the others he had already started. “You are wet. So wet.”
She was. How shameful, and yet, she could not summon the urge to care in this moment of defiant, soul-destroying desire. His fingers were gliding over her, aided by the natural dew her body had produced. The sign she wanted him despite his arrogance and his highhanded behavior.
“Do you want to be fucked here and now, against this door?” he asked, finding an especially sensitive place and tormenting her with a combination of swirling pressure that had her nearly dizzied with need.
She ought to tell him no. To deny him. To deny them both. This was the very sort of dalliance her brothers continually warned her against. It was the reason they had all disapproved of her friendship with Aidan. They had been convinced he wanted to bed her rather than befriend her, and that he would leave her with a bastard and without a backward glance.
From the time she had been old enough to understand the differences between men and women, her siblings had warned her that wealthy nobs like their patrons would never marry a lowly Sutton girl. They had taught her that powerful men were quick to take advantage of powerless women and use them for their pleasures before discarding them for the next victim who believed she may somehow secure a protector or perhaps even a husband.
But she would not.
Just as Lord Lordly would never marry Pen. She doubted he would even lower himself enough to ask her to be his mistress. But that was fine. She was not setting her cap for either role.
“Say something, damn you,” he growled.
It was his loss of polish and wintry condescension that sent Pen spiraling over the cliffs of Thou Shalt Not. She tumbled arsy-varsy to the jagged rocks below.
“Yes,” she said, forgetting all the reasons why she must never agree to anything with this man.
Forgetting everything but his body burning into hers, his knowing touch, the fires of need he had stoked so expertly.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Anyone within?” asked a masculine voice from the other side.
Pen’s heart froze.
The viscount stilled. “Yes,” he called out, his voice carrying the stinging remonstration of a cat-o’-nine-tails. “Very much so.”
“Beg pardon,” grumbled the other voice.
Footsteps sounded in the hall, moving away.
Lord Lindsey withdrew from her with such haste, Pen nearly fell to the floor.
“Christ.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “What the hell was I thinking?”
Pen did not bother to say she knew the answer to his query. For it was quite plain he had not been thinking. Nor had she.
Her fingers, still gloved, flew to the fall of her trousers, attempting to rectify the damage he had done. But curse it, buttons were nearly impossible to secure in their moorings in such a state.
What a dreadful, terrible coil.
He raked a hand through his hair, watching her struggle, before stepping toward her again.
“Allow me.” He brushed her fingers aside and nimbly fastened the fall.
She supposed he ought to be well-practiced at the art of fastening a gentleman’s rigging. He was one, after all.
Pen tamped down the rising tide of embarrassment threatening to crash over her head. It would not do to allow this man to see her weakness. Knowing him, he would only find some means of using it to his advantage.
“Thank you,” she said briskly, moving away from the door on the shaky legs of a newborn foal.