The Scandal of It All

  She knew, in theory, that Mary Rebecca enjoyed her lovers. But seeing this display firsthand was a jolt. She felt awakened to the notion that women could voluntarily and willingly be sexual creatures—that they could revel in the deed every bit as much as men. It was strangely inspiring. Her skin felt feverish and too small for her frame, as though it were pulled tight across her bones. She fidgeted and adjusted her weight, painfully conscious of the strong male body beside her.

  “Some people like to watch,” he added in way of an explanation, the deep drawl of his voice serving to produce a throb low in her belly.

  Realizing her mouth was sagging open, she closed it with a snap. Of course he would know about such things. He wasn’t some novice to Sodom like her, awkward and requiring rescue on her first encounter.

  It was both disappointing and embarrassing that she could not better cope with her present environment. It compelled her to flee, but there was still the matter of avoiding her stepson.

  Marcus.

  Her gaze flew from the fornicating couple on the bed. She peered over Lord Strickland’s shoulder and there he was, strolling into the room without the slightest hesitation, hands clasped behind him. The earl ducking in here with her had not deterred him. He had still followed.

  “Look away from him,” Strickland breathed beside her ear. “Unless you want him to recognize you.”

  She nodded once but could do little more than cast her eyes away for a scant heartbeat before looking back again.

  “Strickland!” Marcus called.

  “Shhh.” The ladies on the settee glared at her stepson.

  He shot them a cheeky grin.

  She sank deeper into the couch, hoping to use the earl for a shield as Marcus made his way over toward them.

  She leaned sideways into Strickland to whisper, “He’s coming.”

  He turned his body, pressing closer, backing her deeper still into the sofa so that she was not so very noticeable. His gaze locked on hers as his arms came up around her, very neatly entrapping them. “Say nothing.”

  She flattened her lips even though she doubted she could speak further. It felt as though a boulder had settled itself on her chest, robbing her of air. Any possibility of speech vanished with his body against hers.

  She’d been physically close to him before. Even danced with him on occasion. But this was undeniably different. It felt as though they were caught within a bubble. Just the two of them. And he was everywhere. Impossible as that seemed. His chest and arms caging her in, hovering over her. His body radiated warmth. She inhaled. Dios ayúdame. He smelled so good.

  She knew this closeness was a necessity. He was attempting to hide her from her stepson. She was ever grateful. Truly. Even if she felt she might come apart at any moment.

  “Trying to keep what you’ve found to yourself, are you?” The familiar sound of her stepson’s voice, even slightly slurred from drink, stabbed panic through her. She glimpsed his face as he came to a stop behind Strickland, looming above them.

  Swallowing back a whimper, she dropped her head on the earl’s shoulder, burying her face and wishing that this entire moment were not happening.

  She rolled her face slightly against the slope of his shoulder, appreciating his presence all the more with her stepson a few feet away. And appreciating other things, too. Unlike so many gentlemen of the ton, he wore an unpadded jacket and she was permitted to feel the full solidness of his shoulder beneath her forehead. His body was well constructed and the fleeting thought crossed her mind: What did he look like beneath his clothing?

  It was abhorrent for her to think of him in such a fashion, but the thought flashed through her mind nonetheless. It must be this house. The things she had seen and heard within this room. Still heard. The smell of sex ripe on the air.

  It should have disgusted her. It should. Instead her body pulsed and ached hotly. Almost as though she were beset with fever.

  The earl’s breath fanned her temple and she felt his lips there, moving as he spoke in response to Marcus. “That was the plan in coming here, was it not? To achieve our own pleasures.” His low voice brushed her skin, and yet it was loud enough for her stepson to hear.

  Even so, in that moment it felt as though he were speaking directly to her.

  Her lips parted on a raspy sigh against the fine fabric of his jacket. A shiver skated down her skin, traveling to her breasts. The peaks tightened, desperate for satisfaction.

  “Indeed,” Marcus replied, his disembodied voice so very similar to her late husband’s that an acrid taste grew on her tongue.

  Without looking at Marcus talking, she could almost imagine it was the late duke. The thought should have been a cold, quelling dose on her unwelcome ardor, but just then Strickland’s hand came up to the back of her head. Long fingers speared through her half-tumbled hair, roughly shaking the mass fully loose so that it fell all around her. She knew he did it only to offer her further concealment, but it felt erotic and possessive and her stomach muscles quivered as his hard fingers buried in the strands and massaged the back of her skull.

  Not even her husband had bothered to touch her hair. When it came to carnal relations, he’d always been quick about the task. Minimal touching and mostly below the waist. She knew it had been her fault because he told her so. Countless times he said she wasn’t adventurous enough. Not inspiring enough. Not exciting. You bring to mind a corpse, Graciela. It was difficult to get into the spirit of the act after such a remark.

  She closed her eyes as the pads of Strickland’s fingers worked into her scalp, stroking, pressing until her muscles relaxed.

  The solid weight of a body dropped down on the other side of her, jostling the sofa cushions. Not just any body either. Marcus. She needn’t look at him to know. The sickly twist of her stomach told her. She stiffened. For a moment she had lost herself to sensation, to Strickland’s delicious smell and form.

  Her fingers dug into Strickland’s arms as though she needed support.

  No, no, no. Please. This is not happening. Don’t let it happen.

  The couple on the bed grew frenzied in their movements, their sounds intensifying.

  Suddenly she felt dizzy. She was stuck. Physically stuck between Strickland and Marcus.

  She shifted her face higher, burrowing her nose farther into the earl’s neck. Her lips were still parted and she could taste the salt of his heated skin. She trembled, her lips grazing him. The skin at his neck was so warm and inviting. Even as alarmed as she felt . . . the strangest desire to taste him with her tongue surged within her.

  Fingers brushed the bare skin of her right shoulder. Just a brush but she flinched. It wasn’t Strickland’s hands. Both his hands were already on her. No, this was Marcus. Bile rose in the back of her throat. Her stepson was touching her. She was going to be sick.

  “Please,” she mouthed against him even though she knew he couldn’t possibly have heard her.

  Marcus’s fingers slid intimately, exploratory, down the curve of her shoulder.

  A shudder racked her. She had to stop him. She knew he would be as revolted as she was if he knew he was touching his stepmother in such a manner.

  She lifted her head, on the verge of revealing herself. At this point what choice did she have?

  She could not let this continue. Next he would be touching more than just her shoulder.

  Strickland’s voice vibrated against her. “Sorry, Autenberry. This one is mine alone.”

  Then, before she realized what he was doing, he was lifting her, settling her on his lap, her gown billowing around them so that she straddled his hips. Her hands landed on his shoulders for balance.

  From this position, her face was higher than his. Her hair cascaded around her bowed head, curtaining her features from Marcus sitting beside them.

  She caught a flash of Strickland’s luminescent eyes, the blue reaching deep inside her. As she gazed down at him, everything else faded. The sounds of the trysting couple dulled.

  B
lood rushed to her ears as his hands slid beneath the veil of her hair to hold her face, his broad palms rasping the tender skin of her cheeks, thumbs sliding back and forth.

  He stared at her for the briefest moment. Just a fleeting clash of gazes and then he pulled her down to his face. She froze at the shocking sensation of his lips. There was the barest, infinitesimal moment when she considered pushing him away.

  Then that thought died.

  It had been so long since she kissed a man.

  She felt like a green girl, her lips quivering and barely moving against him. Almost as though this were the first kiss she ever had. And in so many ways, it was. It was nothing like the chaste kisses she shared with the baker’s son before she married—or the kisses she shared later with her husband. Autenberry was never very keen on kissing.

  And then there was the way she was sitting atop him. Her thighs splayed wide, hugging his hips, skirts bunched around her knees. Beyond personal. Beyond intimate. The heat of his body seeped into hers. She felt strangely empowered even though she knew with one snap of his fingers he could overpower her.

  Her fingers flexed against his upper chest, unsure where to go, what to do. Apparently her hands had a will of their own, though. They didn’t want to shove him away.

  His lips were softer than she expected. Warmth and pressure and pure sweetness slanting over her mouth.

  Her fingers slid upward, coasting over his shoulders.

  In response, his fingers clenched tighter in her hair. He pulled back slightly, his lips moving with the soft words only she could hear: “Kiss me. Make it look real.”

  Make it look real.

  Because this wasn’t real. Not for him.

  He didn’t actually want to do this with her. That was both freeing and oddly disappointing. She shoved the disappointment aside and focused on the freeing part. If she needed to put on a convincing show, then so be it. She had come here tonight to live, to experience all she had been missing so that her life, present and future, wasn’t a total stretch of dullness.

  An exhale passed from her mouth and fluttered against his. She tightened her grip on his shoulders and pressed her mouth to his, finally kissing him back.

  He responded, his hold on her head turning her at an angle that allowed him to deepen the kiss even more. He took over, kissing her with lips and tongue and faintly scraping teeth, and it was all she could do to keep up, to breathe through her nose and not faint from the riotous sensations bombarding her.

  She released his shoulders and wrapped her arms around him, hanging on as she spiraled down into the abyss of whatever was happening.

  They were moving slightly. Or rather, she was. She was faintly conscious of rocking against him. She was lost, reveling in his tongue in her mouth, his fingers diving into her hair. She didn’t open her eyes. She was lost to everything but him.

  She gave the barest gasp when he dropped a hand to her hip, dragging her so that the core of her aligned perfectly over the bulge of his manhood.

  His mouth burned hot and aggressive, punishing on her lips. She’d never been kissed so hard. So thoroughly. She felt him everywhere and this was just a kiss. Dios mío. What would the rest of it . . . all of it . . . be like with him?

  You’ll never know, because this was just pretend.

  It was hard to remember that, however, when he pushed his hips up against her. It was hard to recall this was all a sham as she moaned and pressed down on that prodding hardness.

  His kiss deepened and she continued to rock and grind until she wanted to tear their clothes away. She wanted no barrier. Nothing between them. Relief to the ache he had stoked. An invisible coil squeezed in her belly. Wild little sounds escaped her, swallowed up by him. It was torture. Exquisite torture.

  A chuckle scratched the air beside her. “If you’re not up for sharing, then you best get a private room because damn if I’m not half-sprung watching the two of you.”

  English might not be her first language, but she had no difficulty understanding Marcus’s meaning, even as incredible as it sounded coming from the stepson she had known for more than half his life. Almost half her life. He’d only ever been a gentleman in her company. Perhaps she didn’t know him at all. Just as she hadn’t really known his father. Not until it was too late and the marriage vows had been uttered.

  She fully returned to her surroundings, pulling back with a gasp, still astride Lord Strickland. Her wide eyes found his equally wide eyes as her fingers flew to her tingling lips.

  The spell was broken.

  Chapter 5

  Colin told himself there was nothing more to the kiss than subterfuge. In order for Autenberry to think he was seriously attached to this woman and unwilling to share her. Kissing her was protecting her. Shielding her.

  Actually, it was to protect both the duchess and Autenberry. He knew his friend would not be happy to discover her here. Just as he knew she had no wish to be unveiled before her stepson. It was for them. To avoid a potentially unpleasant situation. Not for him.

  Nothing about this kiss was genuine or affected him in the least.

  Unfortunately, he’d never been a very good liar and he was lying on all counts. He was affected. His raging erection could attest to that.

  Certainly, he’d entertained his fair share of inappropriate thoughts about the Duchess of Autenberry over the years. He was a red-blooded male and she was exactly to his taste. Sultry dark eyes and hair. An unabashedly curvy body. And when she spoke, he felt her voice like a purr on his skin.

  Of course, he hadn’t allowed himself to think of her in such an unseemly way in years.

  He’d been a boy when he first clapped eyes on her and she had filled his overactive imagination with fodder for many nights during his adolescence—a fact that he had felt sure would land him in the fiery grip of hell. She was his best friend’s stepmother. A married lady and far out of the realm of possibility. The older he’d grown, the more adept he’d been at turning those feelings off.

  And yet now, a lifetime later, here she was straddling his lap. No longer married.

  Fair-haired females with milk skin and cornflower blue eyes might be deemed the diamonds of the ton and all the rage, but he preferred a different breed of lady. One not precisely in abundance in London Society. The Duchess of Autenberry fit his tastes perfectly.

  He’d always kept his attraction to Lady Autenberry in check, of course. Naturally, he would never dream of acting on any of his impulses. He had his honor, and dallying with his best friend’s stepmother would definitely be in grave breach of that.

  And yet the moment his lips touched hers tonight, it was no longer possible to keep things between them circumspect. He doubted that would ever be possible again. Any thought to honoring his gentleman’s code flew out of his head. He’d been unable to think about the wrongness of his actions when she felt, when she tasted, so right. Her lips were the perfect degree of softness and they quivered against his so sweetly. The self-control he had mastered all those years ago suddenly didn’t feel so . . . necessary.

  He’d tasted her and now he could never go back. Things could never go back. He wanted her.

  “Never took you for an exhibitionist, Strickland, and I’ve known you for years,” Autenberry chimed, reminding him of why they had stopped kissing to begin with. She had heard his voice. Forget the fact that Autenberry was the reason they had even kissed in the first place. He was the reason they stopped. A fact that made Colin want to commit violence.

  Colin tore his gaze from the woman on his lap to his friend. Autenberry cocked a dark eyebrow at him.

  “I’m not,” he replied, not lying.

  Autenberry motioned with his hand around them. “And yet you chose this room.”

  Colin glanced around, his gaze taking in the man and woman on the bed, very zealously doing the act he ached to do with the woman atop his lap. His body didn’t care who she was. It only longed to sink inside her.

  He turned his gaze back to his friend
only to find Autenberry staring at Ela again. Her face was, fortunately, still obscured by her dark nimbus of hair, but Autenberry was stretching out a hand as though to sweep it back from her shoulder.

  He locked his hands on her waist and lifted her off him, putting her out of reach as he stood, blocking her with his body and also keeping her turned away from Autenberry’s prying eyes.

  “If you’ll excuse us.”

  Autenberry’s eyes glittered knowingly and then surveyed the room. “I suppose I’ll find my own diversions, then.”

  “You do that.” Colin didn’t wait around to chat any more. With one hand on her arm, he felt her shaking. He needed to get her out of here. This entire situation was fraught with problems he couldn’t even begin to wrap his head around.

  Guiding her by the arm, he led her from the room. She followed eagerly. Together they stepped out in the hall. The door shut softly after them, muffling the sounds within.

  She lifted her face to look up at him. He’d never seen her like this. Hair loose all around her. Lips puffy and bruised from kissing. From him. From his mouth.

  Her wide, dark eyes looked a little glazed as they stared up at him. As though she didn’t know how to work through what had just happened.

  He had a fairly good idea on how to work through it and it involved finding the nearest bed. A task that wouldn’t be too difficult in this house.

  Frustration stabbed at him because he knew that couldn’t happen. One look at her, already peering around him as though searching for the nearest escape, and he knew that wasn’t a possibility. For a few fleeting moments she might have responded to his kiss, but she wasn’t up for a continuation.

  He clamped his hand around her wrist and pulled her along. “Come.”

  She hurried to keep up with him.

  He tried to quell his frustration and remember who she was. She was a lady he’d always given proper deference, as one might any other friend’s mother.

  Now when he looked at her, she would always be someone other than that. Someone he’d kissed. Someone whom he knew to frequent Sodom—and that was a jarring thought.