Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Archie wasn’t sure he’d eaten so much food in a single sitting in all his life—one steady course after another—antipasti, followed by primi pasti, followed by secondi, followed by formaggi, followed by dolci—with Mrs. Hart saying when she’d noticed his gustatory gusto flagging, “L’appetito vien mangiando. ”
The appetite comes while you are eating.
He only just didn’t rub his stomach as he sat across from Valentina, the carriage rattling down country lanes just outside London. A man must maintain his mystique.
For her part, she’d been gazing out the window these last ten minutes, watching the countryside roll by, thinking. He didn’t mind her thinking, but only if she shared those thoughts with him.
Her eyes shifted and met his. She’d caught him squarely in the act of staring. He didn’t mind. She must have an inkling of her effect on him by now, what with his ravishment of her last night.
“My family likes you,” she said.
“I rather like them, too,” he said. And it was the truth.
A big, boisterous family, Valentina’s father and brothers had readily welcomed him into their midst as he’d helped with whatever task they found for him.
Her mother was a tougher prospect. But he might have won her over by clearing every plate she set in front of him.
“You only say that because of Mama’s food.”
“Her tiramisu is nothing short of a revelation.”
“I have a question for you.” Valentina was watching him very closely, a trait he now knew she got from her mother. “What were you speaking about with Papa?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“At Epsom.”
“The racecourse where you’ve arranged to meet Lord Nestor?”
Archie nodded. “I wanted to give your father and anyone else who’d been swindled by Nestor the chance to be there when justice is meted out.”
Her demeanor softened. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”
Archie shrugged, dismissive.
“Not many people know that about you, do they?”
He wasn’t sure he liked the direction this conversation was taking. “People generally see what they want to see in a person.”
“And you play upon those assumptions to your advantage.”
He definitely didn’t like this direction. “And what advantage is that?”
“To remain hidden.”
Oh, this woman… She saw too much.
Too much?
No.
He wanted to be seen by her.
He also wanted…
Her.
His best wicked smile curled about his mouth, and he reached down into the footwell between them and scooped up her right foot.
She gasped and tried to reclaim the appendage. He held tight.
“What are you doing?” she exclaimed.
“Your feet must ache from all the walking you did earlier.”
“I caught a ride on the donkey cart two streets over from Casa Windermere.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” he commiserated. He began untying her boot laces.
“Archie.” She tried to keep the scold on her face, but ultimately gave up the struggle and laughed.
He slid the boot off her foot and began rubbing her sole. He sensed her tension melting by slow increments. How long before she was a puddle in the footwell?
He reached for her other foot, which she offered with nary a struggle. When he interrupted his ministrations to untie the laces of her other boot, she gave a small cry of protest.
“Has no one ever rubbed your feet?”
She shook her head.
His fingers got to work, and her eyes drifted shut. He liked providing her bliss. In fact… “Do you know what would make this foot rub even better?”
“Hmm,” was her reply.
“If we removed your stockings.”
Her eyes fluttered open. “Is that so?”
“Skin on skin makes all the difference,” he said, low and velvet.
He hadn’t started this as a seduction, but it was very quickly turning into one.
And Valentina didn’t appear resistant to the idea.
“I’m content to defer to your expertise, my lord.”
Her other boot fell to the floor.
A foot in each hand, he dug thumbs and fingers into muscle, pulling moans and groans and soulful sighs from her as he moved up ankles and calves. That hint of a wicked smile curling about her mouth… It was new. She might have learned it from him.
He felt no small amount of gratification that he was the man to pull that smile from her. A possessive feeling surged through him.
Her wicked smile belonged to him.
What a novel feeling—this need to possess…to claim.
For all his aristocratic titles and well-bred manners, was he not so very far removed from warlord ancestors who claimed and possessed as their right?
A thought for another time perhaps.
For now, here was Valentina, in his hands, looking very much like she wanted nothing more than to be claimed and possessed.
His hands moved up to her thighs, smooth and firm beneath his fingers. He slid forward and off his bench entirely, coming to his knees. From beneath her eyelashes, she watched him kneeling before her. He her supplicant; she his goddess.
Her skirts bunched to her upper thighs, a band of skin showing above her gray stockings. A stretch of skin that was temptation itself.
Archie’s mouth went dry.
And he knew exactly how to wet it.
Though she looked more than willing, he needed a yes from her. “Can I do something else for you?” he asked.
“You can do anything to me,” she said. A light blush turned her cheeks dusky rose, but her eyes burned bright with assent. Perhaps she’d shocked herself, but she wanted what he offered.
And it was the latter that was winning out.
“Be careful what you wish for,” he said.
“With you?” Again, her full lips curved into that new, wicked smile of hers. “Always.”
His hands inched forward, savoring the feel of her creamy thighs. He ducked beneath her skirts and heard a gasp.
“Archie!”
He chuckled.
“What are you—”
His tongue found her quim and slowly dragged along its slit. She inhaled a sharp gasp and wasn’t able to finish her sentence. He breathed deeply of lemon and rose and woman and coitus. A long, languorous moan poured from her, and her knees parted wider. She’d given over completely to him.
One hand found his shoulder and gripped it tight.
He imagined her other arm thrown above her head arced back in abandon as his tongue found the sensitive nub of her sex and two fingers entered her silken center.
Wet…so wet. His cock couldn’t get any harder as his fingers slid in and out of her, and his tongue flicked against her.
“I want to see you,” she said.
The hand not gripping his shoulder grabbed her skirts, pulling and bunching them up. His head emerged, and up the length of her body his gaze met hers, lust-glazed and hungry for more of the pleasure he was delivering to her.
Archie found himself in the grip of an unexpected feeling. He wasn’t simply a tool to be used for her pleasure. She wanted that, of course, but she sought more. She sought connection.
With him.
Of a sort different from the union of their two bodies. This connection probed deeper, to a place he only explored with his music, never with another person. But with Valentina…
It felt right.
This was intimacy.
His gaze fixed onto hers, and he concentrated the tip of his tongue upon that explosive little nub where all sensation sparked.
“Oh, yes,” escaped from her parted mouth, and her eyes glazed over as she drew into the interior place where climax hovered just out of reach, taunting her, teasing her, with its promise of pleasure.
And it was down to him to deliver that pleasure.
His fingers pressed deeper inside her wet warmth as his tongue concentrated against her sensitive nub.
She moaned. She sighed. She cried out in little gasps of want and frustration and utter need.
She angled her hips and squirmed against him, demanding more.
She knew what she wanted, but he knew how to give it to her.
Of a sudden, her back arched and her eyes squeezed shut and she tensed beneath him. One…two…three more flicks of his tongue, and she broke, her climax pulsing against him, around his fingers.
He wanted to be inside her, feel her sweet warmth tight around him. But this had been for her. Slowly, he pulled away and sat back on his haunches as he tugged her skirts so they fell primly to her ankles. But not before bussing each of her creamy thighs with a parting kiss.
He resumed his seat on the opposite bench. It could almost be believed that nothing had just occurred. Except the flush rising from her décolletage and pinking her cheeks would fool no one. The woman looked ravished and sated.
Ravished?
Not quite, his cock protested.
She canted her head in question. “Why are you all the way over there?”
“That was for you,” he said.
She bit her bottom lip, and her gaze fell to his lap, where his cock was making quite a spectacle of itself beneath buff superfine. “Oh, you have more to offer me than that, Lord Archer.”
She shifted forward and slinked—there was no other word for the way she moved—across the footwell separating them, all the while bunching up her skirts with one hand and placing the other onto his shoulder.
One knee, then the other, moved onto the bench to either side of him, so she straddled his thighs and came to hover above him, her dark, luminous gaze holding his.
How beautiful and sensuous she was.
His, returned that voice that demanded to claim and possess.
He cupped the back of her head and brought her mouth toward his. “Hoyden,” he muttered against her lips just before his tongue probed and claimed her.
Nimble fingers reached between them, and she had the fall of his trousers open with a few flicks. He chuckled. “Quick learner.”
As feminine fingertips feathered up and down his length, sensation flew through him.
Her hand, warm and firm, wrapped around him and stroked.
A groan poured from the depths of his chest—of his very soul.
“Turnabout is only fair play,” she muttered.
He felt her smile against his mouth. “But I need you inside me.”