“Kiss me,” Willa whispered.
Alaric’s expression was somewhere between awe and yearning. “I don’t dare,” he said, his voice guttural. He eased her nightdress back up, wrapping her in a fierce embrace, his mouth ravaging hers in a possessive, dominating kiss that made Willa’s mind tumble over and over itself, shattering into fragments of heat and light and desire.
“You are so beautiful,” he said, his voice harsh in the quiet room as he eased away. She tried to see herself through his eyes, hair tumbling over her shoulders like a wanton, her skin gleaming in the candlelight. “You’re demure during the day, but you are not demure in truth, are you?”
“I’m afraid not,” she admitted. She ran a finger down the white line of his scar. “I believe I inherited a bawdy sense of humor from my father. I remember him roaring with laughter while my mother beat him around the head with her fan.”
There was a question in his eyes, but he didn’t voice it. He didn’t need to; everything in her responded to his desire.
Without a word, she moved her shoulders just enough that the neckline of her unbuttoned nightgown slid down again. At the expression in his eyes, she allowed it to slide further, until the delicate cambric gathered in folds at her elbows and her waist.
Silence hung in the room for a long second. He looked at her breasts before meeting her eyes again. “You are certain?”
She took a breath, trembling with the pleasure of the pure carnality of his gaze before she said steadily, “Yes. Alaric, yes.” He reached toward her with a stifled groan, his palms clasping her breasts. Her groan followed his as his callused fingers rubbed her nipples and set her blood on fire.
Willa shook like a willow in a breeze as he slid one hand around the curve of her breast and lowered his mouth there, there, to skin that had never been touched by anyone other than Willa herself.
His lips were like a brand, hot and sensual, turning her inside out, making her mind slip away into some other place. Some other woman curled her fingers into Alaric’s thick hair. Stared at the buttonholes of his waistcoat as he kissed her breast, her mind wordless for the first time in her life.
Delicious tremors ran up her legs and kept going through her, over and over, growing in strength as he suckled. Her hands stopped caressing his hair; they curled tight, keeping his head in place so that he would keep doing that mad, wild thing that made her want to surrender to him.
Her body, herself. Everything.
He felt it. She knew it, and he knew it. He raised his head and met her eyes. She couldn’t find words. Perhaps there were no words for this intoxicating, glorious pleasure.
Alaric’s gaze was heated, fierce … sane. “Is this a betrothal between us, a real betrothal?”
The look in his eyes lit an erotic fire in Willa’s blood. Surely this was the definition of madness: when a woman throws away all propriety and all the rules that made her life what it was.
All the rules that defined her as a lady, as chaste, as sensible.
The word “betrothal” knocked about in her head as she tried to connect it to desire and possession, to the way Alaric looked at her, as if he could eat her up.
If she nodded, he would never give her up. She would be Lady Alaric Wilde to the end of her days, never just “Willa” again. She would be Evie. He would pull her into his sphere, with all the blazing attention and fame that entailed.
Alaric felt the change in Willa before she spoke. It wasn’t as overt as a flinch, but her body changed: she withdrew without moving, cooled without notice.
She was afraid, though she would be angry if he were to say so.
Perhaps she was rightly afraid. He didn’t know how to get rid of the admirers created by Wilde in Love. Willa wouldn’t want to live in a house that was slowly losing its bricks and couldn’t keep flowers in its beds.
He let his hand slip from her breast because Willa, his Willa, deserved better than to be seduced. He wanted her to choose him free and clear.
Slipping her nightdress back over her shoulders, he kissed her with complete concentration, willing her to understand that a house missing a few bricks wouldn’t matter if they were under the roof together. “I would have new white rosebushes planted every year,” he whispered later.
“What?” Her voice was a gulp of air. She was trembling in his arms, a slim column of passion and flame.
“I will keep a bricklayer on the grounds,” he promised. His hand rounded her arse and he pulled her against his aroused cock, consumed with hunger. “I will close down the play, and I will never write another book.” Vows fell from his mouth, surprising him. And yet they felt right.
He had never written his books for the audience who bought lockets and thought of him as a romantic hero; after all, he had not even known they existed. His true readers enjoyed accounts of faraway countries and exotic customs. They were curious about the world, not about him.
“What did you say about a bricklayer?” Willa asked, her voice drowsy and drugged, her fingers trailing over his back.
It would not be seducing her to remove his waistcoat. Or his shirt. It would be … chivalrous. She was asking him without words. He stood back and wrenched off his waistcoat, tore off his shirt.
Even that took too long. He made his arms into a prison and kissed her, carnal, scorching kisses that did everything his body wanted to do: they explored her, caressed her, spoke to her.
Loved her.
He pushed the thought away.
“This is very improper,” Willa gasped, sometime later.
“I love impropriety with you,” he whispered.
She was still running her fingers over the muscles in his back. He was larger than most Englishmen, his shoulders widened from exertion. Climbing mountains, hacking his way through impenetrable jungles, sailing through a hurricane. Vigorous activity had changed his body.
“And Evie, you enjoy impropriety,” he added.
Her hands moved to his chest, her eyelashes dark against her cheeks.
“Would this be the first time you’ve seen a naked man?” he asked.
Her long, curling eyelashes fluttered. In this light, her eyes were darker than the bluebells they usually brought to mind. Perhaps it wasn’t a consequence of candlelight; perhaps it was desire.
“Yes,” she said. “I am sorry for myself that my first naked chest is such a defective one.”
He laughed.
Her fingers gently traced a white scar that cut across his waist. “What caused this?”
“A whip,” he said, shrugging. “I took a lash from an irate sailor before I managed to disarm him.”
Willa had found another. “And this?”
The scar was so old that it had whitened and lay flat. He couldn’t remember its origin, because his mind was engulfed by a wave of sharp desire.
“May I give you pleasure?” he whispered, drawing up her chin and pressing a kiss on her lips.
“You do give me pleasure.” Now her eyes were lighter again, like a stormy sky in summer.
“I want to take you,” he said, the words guttural.
She froze like a deer caught in the sudden light of a lantern.
“Not that way.” He wanted her so much that his body longed to claim her in the most primitive of ways, to own her, to take her. “That is, I do want you that way, but I won’t. Not until you agree to marry me.”
The word “love” knocked through his mind again, but he dismissed it. She hadn’t understood what he’d meant by the bricklayers and the rosebushes. She had no idea that he would give all that up for her. Easily, for her.
He swept her into his arms and she gave a startled squeak. But when he laid her on the bed, she didn’t protest.
Willa appeared delicate, but appearances were deceiving. She looked proper; she was not. She looked as if a strong gust might knock her over; he suspected she would live into her nineties if not longer.
His hands slid up her legs. Like her arms, her legs were slender, and the skin, always hid
den from the sun, was tender.
She made a muffled sound and her thighs quivered under his touch. Swallowing a grin, he kissed her left knee.
Another on the right, to be fair.
A little farther up. She squeaked a phrase that didn’t seem to be a protest so he kept going.
He reached the part of her inner thigh that began a shy curve inward.
Chapter Twenty-seven
A year or so earlier, Lavinia and Willa had bent their heads over a page in a book depicting a man lying between a woman’s legs. The man’s mouth was there, and one hand was on himself.
They had looked at each other and turned the page in unspoken agreement: either that was pleasant, or it wasn’t.
It seemed Willa was about to find out.
Alaric looked up at her and the expression in his eyes made her legs fall open in a truly improper fashion. She did so instinctively—because he looked as if he were on fire to kiss her there.
Feeling welled up inside her … she laughed. No, she giggled. She never giggled.
But there it was. She giggled.
“You surprise me, Evie,” Alaric drawled, his voice husky and suggestive. His thumbs were rubbing provocative little circles on her skin, leaving trails of flames and pure want.
Willa lost all inclination to giggle, and a startled gasp came from her lips instead. When a broad finger touched her, she melted backward, her head falling to the pillow, her lower back arching without conscious volition.
Gasp followed gasp as his tongue followed his fingers: one callused and strong, the other sleek and smooth. Both beguiling, both entrancing.
Hunger, this hunger, was like a fever, Willa discovered. It raged through her brain and took away conscious thought. It spread through her body as if her blood had been replaced by burning brandy.
It was a pleasure she could never have imagined. Touching herself was a pale thing compared to this assault on her senses and her body. She couldn’t find words, but he did.
Hoarse, aching words spilled from Alaric’s mouth. She felt unmoored, flung into a deep sea by the racking waves of desire sprung from his words and his mouth on her. She reached down and he laced one of his hands with hers.
Their fingers clung together and that fulcrum became her steady point in a world in which desire drove her higher and higher—
Until she broke, the feeling overflowing her body. Her fingers locked on his and a scream broke from her lips. He stayed with her, his tongue making the pleasure last, flowing from wave to wave, until she finally slumped, boneless.
He made a satisfied sound, and gave her a last caress. Willa pulled her fingers away from his and pushed hair back from her damp forehead, gasping for air. She was still panting when he crawled up beside her, his erection straining his breeches. “Alaric,” she whispered.
He grinned at her, the triumphant grin of a bad man who knows his way around a woman’s body. “You have a rosy splotch on each of your cheeks,” he said cheerfully. The back of his hand felt cool against her heated skin.
Willa didn’t know what to say. All the modesty and shyness she hadn’t felt earlier came flooding in, making her skin tight with embarrassment. With a wiggle she restored her nightgown to something resembling decorum.
“The splotches are joining together and you’re turning rosy pink all over.” That twinkle in his eye should be outlawed in polite society.
She coughed. It was an expressive cough, the sort one makes when a gentleman has overstayed his welcome: a morning call gone on too long; an unwelcome request for another dance; a second marriage proposal after the first was refused.
Predictably, Alaric paid no attention. Instead he rolled onto his side and watched with interest as she wriggled her nightdress all the way down to her toes.
He didn’t seem to be taking the hint, so she finally met his eyes again. He quirked up one side of his mouth in a smile that made her feel unnervingly happy.
“That was quite lovely,” she said candidly. “But I think you should leave now.”
“You are a hard-hearted woman,” he offered, eyes dancing with laughter.
“Why so?”
“You accepted my best ministrations with nary a thank-you.”
Color flooded up her neck again. “I apologize. I wasn’t … I’m not cognizant of the proper comportment after ministrations of this nature.”
He laughed so loudly at that, she felt obliged to clap a hand over his mouth. When that didn’t work, she poked him in the side, and threatened to put a pillow over his face to smother the noise.
“Hush, you utter beast,” she said, giggling despite herself.
“When a lady has been plundered and despoiled …” Alaric began. Caught sight of her face and gave another shout of laughter.
“Someone will hear you!” Willa squealed.
“If they heard anything, they heard you,” he said, pushing himself up against the headboard, his eyes gleaming.
“Hush,” Willa commanded. She was beginning to feel like herself again. Her heart had settled into a normal rhythm, and the pulsing heat between her legs had subsided. “I have been neither plundered nor despoiled,” she said firmly.
Looking at the bare chest of the man lying in her bed made that throbbing sensation return, so she kept her eyes above his chin. “I am thankful for your … for you, Alaric. But you should return to your bedchamber.”
He reached out and cupped his hand along the curve of her jaw, bent forward and pressed a kiss there. “Am I to take it that my skill has not changed your mind as regards making our sham betrothal into a true one?”
Willa’s heart skipped a beat. Alaric was so … just so much himself. Beautiful in an untamed way, his rumpled hair, worn too long for fashion, if the truth be known. Most gentlemen were shaved these days. She and Lavinia had wondered what it would be like to kiss a man with a scalp as bare as a baby’s bottom.
If she accepted Alaric’s hand, she’d never kiss a bald man.
Or she might, if she refused him again. The arguments for and against tangled in her mind like a thorny hedge.
“If only you were an ordinary man,” she said, hopelessly. “Even if you had nothing!”
“My ministrations must have truly pleased if you would accept me without a ha’penny to my name.”
She reached over and gave his chest a little slap. It was warm and broad, and her fingers clung there. “Don’t be silly. I mean you, Alaric. You. It’s just Lord Wilde …” Her voice trailed away into helplessness.
“So you have said.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed. Her fingers slipped from his chest. His expression wasn’t cold in the least. Or angry, or anything unpleasant.
It was just … not there.
He was giving her his “Lord Wilde” face, Willa thought with incredulity.
She came to her feet as well. “Don’t you dare bow to me.”
“I beg your pardon?” His face, too startled for politeness, appeared through the neck of his shirt.
“You are Lord Wilde-ing me,” she said, folding her arms over her breasts. Then she thought better of it and snatched up her dressing gown and put it on.
He looked bewildered, the way men do when they are being particularly idiotic. That was an unfair thought, but she couldn’t make herself unthink it.
“You have a way of being Lord Wilde,” she explained, tying her sash tightly around her waist, as if adding another layer would take away from the fact that her knees were still trembling. “It’s all very well if you wish to behave that way with your legions of admirers, but not with me.”
A smile softened his mouth. “You are not an admirer?”
“I am not,” she said stubbornly.
His smile grew as he buttoned up his waistcoat. “Willa Everett, you are unlike anyone I have ever met.”
“As you have already pointed out,” she said. “And I will repeat that your circle of acquaintances must have been regrettably small, for all that you boast of having friends in many parts o
f the world.”
“They are not friends,” he said. “Merely acquaintances.”
“Because they all met Lord Wilde,” she said, nodding. “And not Lord Alaric.”
A smile lit his eyes. “If you ban Lord Wilde, you will have a remarkably impolite spouse.”
“I have not agreed to have you as a spouse,” she reminded him.
“Yes, you have.” His smile was wide, and warm, and sent a bolt of pleasure straight down her body. “You haven’t quite accepted it yet, Evie, but you are mine. There’s no rush, though. Take your time.”
That was pure Alaric. That sinful, teasing look, the one that promised to come to her room night after night, roly-polies in hand, no doubt. It made her blood simmer with lust, weakened her knees again.
“Go,” she commanded, ignoring her conviction that he would knock on her door on the morrow.
“As you wish,” he said, amiably enough. He came over and kissed her with the brisk efficiency that she’d seen from husbands leaving their wives for the day.
“Lord Wilde is not who you want in a husband,” Alaric said, with a grin. “He doesn’t exist. I am precisely who you want, Evie. But I know it will take you some time to accept it, and I will wait for you.”
He turned and was out of the room, the door closed quietly behind him, before Willa could open her mouth to reply.
Which was just as well.
She was afraid she would have agreed with him. Or disagreed, if only to say that she wouldn’t need much time at all.
That she wanted Alaric Wilde now, here, forever.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The following day
Willa was captive to a lecture about partridge shooting all the way through luncheon. Neither Alaric nor Parth appeared at the meal. Lavinia wasn’t due back from Manchester for another two days, and Diana was hiding in her room. Even Lady Knowe claimed to have a toothache.
By the end of two hours, Willa had learned everything there was to know about the magical hour before sunset, when partridges supposedly wandered about, waiting to be shot.