Chapter 16
Blaze had come to know that spark in Lady Viveca’s eye.
And didn’t he just know how to incite it into flame?
He shouldn’t.
He knew that, too.
“Do you know, Mr. Jagger,” she began.
Blaze tensed.
Things tended to set off when she started calling him Mr. Jagger.
“What’s that?”
“Do you know what all the ladies love about Lord Byron?”
“Haven’t the faintest,” he said with what should have come across as his usual arrogant swagger. She didn’t have to know it was failing him. “Though I reckon it has something to do with that Lord in front of his name.”
“I suppose it adds to the appeal,” she allowed. Then added, “For some.”
She tipped her head and pursed her pretty pink mouth.
A bolt of desire lashed straight through him.
He wasn’t going to get through this carriage ride with his virtue intact, was he?
“If we’re to talk the superficialities, then you should know he’s handsome, too.”
Blaze snorted.
“Oh, also arrogant,” she continued. “And scandalous, too.”
“Sounds like a rogue after me own heart.”
“Indeed.” She smiled like the cat who’d got the cream. “But if those qualities were all that comprised the totality of Byron, then he would be naught more than a wastrel lord, and we wouldn’t know his name. But Lord Byron has something more that all the ladies love.”
“And what’s that?”
“A way with words,” she said. “A handsome, arrogant, scandalous man with a way with words. What lady could resist?”
As he met Viveca’s bold, blue-eyed gaze across the footwell, Blaze understood something—he was being seduced.
Nothing subtle about it.
But then a seduction conducted by this woman wouldn’t be.
She was too honest—too direct in her goals.
He could—should—stop this seduction, here and now.
Or…an alternative scenario presented itself for consideration.
He could let himself be seduced.
Well, he was only a man, wasn’t he?
And she was a siren—and sirens got what they wanted.
What hope had he?
“I reckon you have a few favorite words of this Lord Byron’s?”
“Oh, indeed, I do.”
“Go on, let me hear them then.”
She opened the book and began flipping through, but immediately closed it. “It’s too dark to read.”
“Ah, that’s a shame.”
He patted the empty patch of bench beside him.
Uncertainty flickered behind her eyes.
She wanted to seduce him, but the working mechanics of a seduction eluded her.
Well, wasn’t he a considerate fellow for helping her along?
As she moved across the footwell, his body tensed with the specific tension that preceded what came next.
His swollen cock did, too.
This lady was no seductress, but crikes, how seductive she was.
“You can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I reckon you’ve got some of this Byron’s words in your head, all memorized, like.”
She blinked, her pique fading. “Actually, I do.”
“Then let me have some of them words.”
And he knew by the little smile that curled about her pretty pink mouth that the seduction was back on.
She cleared her throat. “She walks in beauty, like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.”
Blaze whistled. “I can see why the ladies like that.”
Viveca’s cheeks were flushed, eyes bright.
“Here,” he said, reaching out and pulling the tie of her cloak. “You look hot.” The garment slid off her creamy shoulders. “Can’t say I hear much scandal in those words, though.”
She met his gaze. “There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off.”
Blaze cocked his head. “Byron?” He had to ask, because it very well could’ve been Viveca.
“Aye,” she said, allowing him to take her arm and slide the satin opera glove off. What a beauty she was, bathed in the moonlight that streamed through the carriage window.
He reached for her other glove and sensed the shallowness of her breath, the rapid pulse at her neck.
He leaned in, catching her scent of sweet vanilla just before he pressed his mouth to that place where her pulse throbbed—that evidence of how very alive she was and how alive he was and how alive they were together.
The sparks that flew off them would be visible from the moon above, wouldn’t it?
He’d never felt as alive as he had since this sweet bit entered his life.
But she was more than a bit, wasn’t she?
She was everything.
She angled so her mouth met his ear. “Thou could’st not feel my burning cheek. Thy gushing tears had quenched its flame. And as thy tongue essay’d to speak, in sighs alone it breathed my name.”
In sighs alone it breathed my name…
That was right provocative.
He grabbed her waist and lifted her onto his lap, so she now straddled him.
Her thumb tucked beneath his chin, steadying him for the press of her mouth…
The kiss was long and slow…fierce and urgent, too.
He needed to be kissing this mouth that spoke all those words.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt so lustful in his life.
Her weight on top of him, grounding him… making him fly.
She moved her hips, and his desire spiked higher. He’d never felt like this with a woman. Like he would die on the spot if he didn’t fill her sweet little cunny with his hard, throbbing cock—now.
Yet he couldn’t just unbutton the falls of his trousers and start tupping her silly.
Well, he could.
He had permission, her eyes told him.
Her tongue dragging along his bottom lip and tangling with his, told him, too.
As did the way her hips kept moving.
But she was only just not a virgin, and he needed words from her. “Come on, pet,” he muttered into her ear in a pleading voice he didn’t recognize. “Beg me for it. Beg me to stroke you.”
She shifted so her mouth was against his throat, her breath hot against his skin. Then came the soft slide of her tongue as she trailed it up his neck, leaving a wake of goosebumps. Again, she pressed her mouth to his ear. “Meow.”
That did it.
All Blaze’s instincts unleashed at once.
He pulled the shade down the window before flipping them around, so she was perched on the edge of the bench, and he was on his knees and between her legs, pushing her skirts up, revealing frilly silk stockings and garters, exposing creamy thighs.
He pulled her mouth to his and slid his fingers along her cunny—so soft and so delectable. “Ah, now, look how wet you are for me.”
He pushed a finger inside, and she gasped, trembly legs hooking around his waist, her hips finding a rhythm, her head thrown back. With his other hand, he flicked open the falls of his trousers, his heavy cock springing free.
She reached between them and wrapped slender fingers around him, her eyes half-lidded with lust. “At least once an hour since that night,” she began.
She didn’t need to say which night. “I’m filled with such a wretched ache to have this inside me again.
At night, in bed, it becomes too much, and I have to touch myself and imagine you. ”
“You can’t go around saying things like that to a fellow.”
“Why not when it’s true?”
“You might just get what you wish for.”
“You promise?”
The crown of his cock was positioned and ready. Driven by instinct and need and utter, devastating ache, he pushed inside her. Crikes. This woman felt good.
He wanted to take it slow, but she wasn’t having it. Brimming with impatience, she moaned and groaned and whimpered. This woman wanted her release—and she wanted it now.
Blaze, however, didn’t want it now.
He wanted to savor this—her.
It had to do with that realization.
Viveca wasn’t a mere sweet bit.
She was everything.
“Now now, my love,” he said into her ear, “I’ll get you there, but let me do it my way. You can trust that I’ll make your kitty purr for me.”
She opened eyes that had gone mad with desire, that shone with rebellion. She didn’t want to give over—but she did.
“Good girl,” he said as he penetrated her long and deep and the moment shifted.
No longer was this a frenzied tup.
This wasn’t about taking what one wanted from another body.
This was about sharing.
He felt something in her relent further as she took to his movement, them entering a deliberate rhythm with each other even as the carriage kept rolling on. In this darkness, all they needed was the feel of each other.
Everything he’d experienced before of a sexual nature had been mere romping. Nothing that ever went deeper than the surface of bodies.
But with Viveca…
Well, a tup in a carriage definitely fit into the category of a romp. But nothing was ever just one thing with Viveca, and this was no different.
With her, now, the feel of her supple flesh…the feel of her sweet cunny… He understood what inspired that Byron fellow to write the words he did. A few words of his own were tickling around Blaze’s brain.
Words best kept to oneself in the general sense.
Words that could be specifically spoken but only in the rare case—and only after one had given those words some considerable thought.
Not words to be bandied about when in the heated throes of lust.
“Oh, Blaze,” she cried.
He hardly recognized her voice, so throaty it had gone.
It nearly made him spend on the spot.
He was giving her much of him, but not all. With every stroke holding a little back, giving her almost everything she needed—but not quite.
Making her want more.
Making her ache for it.
Making her mad for it.
“Please, Blaze.”
Making her beg for it.
Deeper, he thrust. But this driving need and ache… He wasn’t immune to it, either, for he felt the urge himself to beg. For what, he wasn’t sure. Wasn’t she already giving him everything he could ask for?
No.
There was a part of herself she hadn’t given him.
A part one couldn’t ask or beg for.
It had to be freely given.
He understood that.
But, increasingly, how he wanted it.
The urgency of her need increased, and the urgency of his sped right along with it, so in tune to one another they were.
Her head arched back, exposing her throat, and his mouth trailed up that delicate skin as he penetrated her, pulling gasps from her, exposing her to so much sensation that her body would no longer be able to contain it.
Of a sudden, she tensed, and he knew release was teasing her now, just out of reach.
He licked his thumb and moved it between their bodies, finding the sensitive nub of her sex and giving it a nice slick rub as he took her mouth in a thorough kiss and plunged his cock deeper.
Now was the time to be relentless.
She gasped and held, then broke in release, her cunny pulsing around his length, fluttering against his thumb. She screamed into his mouth as he kept moving inside her, his rhythm slowed enough to allow her to recover, yet unflagging, even as his own release beckoned.
Oh, how he wanted to seat himself deeper inside her and never come up for air.
But in the last moment before release, he lifted her off him and took his shaft in hand, her mouth on his as he spent on her stomach, shouting his climax into her neck.
He collapsed against her, and she rested back, his head nestled between her breasts.
He could stay here forever, in this state of bliss. But the carriage rolled on, and he had to see where they were. He flicked the shade an inch back. They were in London. No time for blissful states. Reality was on their doorstep.
He returned his attention to the thoroughly sated lady on his carriage bench.
Oh, but she was as delectable a creation as ever walked the earth.
And somehow, she was in his carriage, allowing him to have his way with her.
Or, more likely, having her way with him.
Sharing.
There was an equality between them.
He liked that.
A little smile curled about her mouth.
He found his mouth returning it.
“You must do this all the time.”
His smile fell. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re so good at it.”
“Well, I don’t.”
Her eyes opened and regarded him as if from a distance. “You don’t? When you so clearly could?”
“I don’t.”
And that was all he was going to say about that.
Her brow crinkled. “Have I said something wrong?”
He glanced out the window again. “You’ll want to put yourself together now. We’re a few streets from yours.” He buttoned the falls of his trousers.
She nodded and discreetly wiped herself with a discarded opera glove before straightening her bodice, tucking a loose tendril behind her ear, and sliding her foot into a satin slipper that had come off.
He wanted her again.
He could take her now, at this moment.
He wouldn’t.
The carriage slowed to a stop, and he lifted the shade. “Your abode, my lady.”
It wasn’t as playful as he’d intended—and she made no move toward the door.
“Our next lesson is tomorrow evening,” she said. “I’ll see you at Tichborne Street at ten o’clock.”
She opened the door and hopped to the cobbles without another word or backward glance.
And without giving him room for a word, either.
He watched her unlock her front door and shut it behind her. Then he stuck his head out the window to call up to Stanley. “The Archangel.”
There should be no more lessons, he knew that.
He’d called her my love.
And it wasn’t about the lust of the moment.
Naw.
He saw what had happened here.
He’d gone and fallen in love with Lady Viveca Calthorp.
Which couldn’t end well, now could it?