Chapter Eleven
Where a rake stops running.
Time passed with deliberate cruelty.
Ever couldn’t very well rush dinner along by announcing his plans to the assembled guests, not when they were Isabella’s older brothers by marriage as well as his business partners.
Thus the evening unfolded in a typical manner.
Conversation about the state of the country, two bottles of a very respectable Burgundy consumed—he limited himself to one glass so it wouldn’t interfere with later activities—then a meal of buttery roasted chicken and all the trimmings from a cook he’d been amazed to find in the village.
This was followed by billiards on an ancient French slate-bed table older than any man playing.
When Isabella took the cue and made two impossibly skilled shots, her knowing gaze cutting to him, the countdown began.
A tour of the so-called dungeon came next. Weston was American and a fool for history, and the cellar dated, impressively even to Ever’s weary mind, to the eleventh century.
All the while, Ever did what he’d done for the past twelve years for the Crown.
He plotted.
Except it wasn’t malicious this time. He was already halfway to being mad about Isabella. Hell, possibly all the way. And he’d seen a glimmer in her brown-one-moment, amber-the-next eyes that told him she might be mad about him, too.
He was too old, granted. Too jaded, absolutely. Impoverished, certainly.
But he could fall hard if he shelved his fear and let himself.
And he would be the best, most adoring husband in England. He wanted children, though they hadn’t discussed it. His temper ran even most days. He was loyal to a fault. He listened. If she needed protection, his skill with a knife and pistol was lethal.
Meaning Ever would give her what she wanted—an affair—while knowing he was conspiring to make her fall in love with him. He couldn’t wed otherwise; he simply could not. Pleasure, however, had its uses. Intimacy softened edges. Desire blurred judgment.
Fucking Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook silly was, in its way, a strategy.
She likely planned to do the same to him.
And, bloody hell, he wanted her to.
It was not merely her body, though that was no small thing, but the quickness of her mind, the spark in her eyes, the way she met him without flinching.
Yearning settled low, a pull threaded through every careful thought.
He wanted her laughing beneath him, dazed beside him, trusting him until the rest followed as naturally as breath.
He wanted a new life with her in it.
Which was how he found himself pacing his bedchamber after midnight, wondering if his dream was about to arrive.
The knock was light, barely there—easy to miss if he hadn’t been waiting for it.
Isabella entered before he reached the other side of the chamber.
She was a vision in a pale blue sleeping gown edged with lace, silk clinging softly, her hair unbound and her tawny eyes steady on him.
It strained belief that she had crossed the halls at this hour dressed in almost nothing, though this wing of the house stood deserted.
Closing the door, she leaned against it. “Ever,” she whispered.
He halted in the middle of the room, unsure of his next step. “Isa.”
It was a strange sensation when the seducer became the seduced.
She glanced about, taking inventory, gathering what she could about him.
He followed her gaze, curious despite himself.
Books piled atop his nightstand, a shirt tossed across an armchair, a marble-topped vanity marked by the quiet evidence of masculine habit.
The things he sought to hide were in a metal box beneath a plank in the floor.
Other items lay buried in a secure drawer of his escritoire.
Parts of a life he was trying to leave behind.
Parts he grew more willing to share with every instant spent in her presence.
Smiling wickedly, she shoved off the door and closed in on him. No hint of nerves showed, only a calm resolve that tightened his breath. For someone so young, she possessed remarkable steadiness.
“You brought wine,” she said when she stood before him, nodding to the bottle and glasses on the table.
He twisted a length of her golden hair around his finger as she stood before him. It wrapped like spun silk, ensnaring him. “And food. In the event…” He let the words trail away as he dragged his fingertip down the sleek line of her throat. “I might not let you go until dawn.”
She tilted her head, her jaw grazing his hand. “I might stay for days.”
They were aligned in that moment, perhaps the last in which neither would hold the upper hand. As the night air flowed through the open window and the hiss and pop of the hearthfire settled around them, they stood and stared, unmoving.
Her eyes were wide, her breasts unbound, covered by nothing but a slip of silk that did little to disguise their shape, her hair tumbling loose around her. Her shoulders were delicate, her arms slender, her hips rounded, a study in contrasts that stirred him.
Her gaze flicked over him. “Is that as far as you got on your own?”
“I was waiting for you to do the rest,” he whispered.
He’d removed his coat, boots, and cravat, unbuttoned his shirt.
His feet were bare. He wanted her to see at a glance, the moment she stepped inside, that if she stayed this would be unlike anything that had occurred before—and that if she wished to turn away, now was the time.
Ever would not be her host, or even her pretend fiancé.
Here, he would be her lover.
She laughed softly, mirroring his move, trailing her finger down his chest until she reached his trousers. Hooking it into the nankeen waistband, she tugged him closer. “I want to do to you what you did to me. I want to taste you.”
An image of her on her knees before him stormed his senses. “Sprite, I—”
Struggling to marshal his thoughts, he cupped her jaw and tilted her lips to his.
They were open, welcoming, her tongue grazing his first, telling him, go there, go deeper.
He lacked the will to deny her, or the words to explain that the intimacies she imagined were not the sort a man walked away from.
Not when his heart rested in her hands.
But Isabella was fearless, courageous where he faltered. She walked him back into the bedpost and fought for control. It wasn’t seamless, their joining—bumped teeth, mouths crooked in their urgency to connect—until it was.
It hit him then, a rush of longing so sharp his knees nearly buckled.
With restraint slipping, he fisted his fingers in those golden strands, set his other hand at her waist, and guided her into an exchange that would take them both down.
He was hard, ready, straining against his trouser close.
When he touched her through the silk of her gown, she was warm, slick, open to him.
Her hoarse moan echoed about the room, thrilling him.
“Cry out, no one can hear you,” he whispered, bending to grasp the hem of her sleeping gown, stripping it away before either of them could think better of it.
It landed on the floor as her amber eyes rose to his.
Later, he’d let her have her wish. Have her wrap her lips around his cock and suck him dry if she chose to. He would tell her exactly what he liked.
But for now…he wanted this.
Capturing her lips, he lifted her into his arms and laid her back upon the mattress.
When she would have closed her legs, he caught her knee and held her there, his gaze lingering in open admiration.
She was a marvel—a sensual marriage of delicacy and lush curves.
Nipples dark pink and tightly budded, golden curls nestled between her thighs.
He recognized the vulnerability of her position: candlelight gilding her skin, every inch of her offered to his sight.
“You are my dream, Isabella. My God, you are.”
Her lips parted, though only a ragged sigh escaped as he stepped back and let his shirt slide from his shoulders. His trousers and drawers followed, though he slowed when his cock sprang free. He trapped it against his thigh…but there was no hiding his arousal.
“Oh,” she breathed, “oh, no.”
Ever laughed, a sound he’d never made during sex before, not once. It felt freeing. One knee pressed to the mattress, he climbed over Isabella before he could utter something nonsensical like, it will fit. Naturally, it would. He would make sure she was prepared, willing, begging—or die trying.
But wasn’t showing better than telling?
The first touch, as he settled between her thighs, stripped logic from his mind.
Any plan, his instinct to use his usual tactics, dissolved as her hands curved around his hips, anchoring him.
Her scent, a trace of vanilla and lavender, lit his senses.
Beneath it lingered the teasing aroma of her awakening.
The dance escalated, sex against sex, grinding, seeking.
Her leg circled his, her body lifting to meet him, fingers tangling in his hair, nails scraping his scalp.
He loved her urgency, her absorption. Bracing his forearm against the mattress, he slid his other hand between her thighs, parted her, and began to stroke.
The rhythm took hold within seconds, sparks flashing behind his lids.
Her gasping sighs, the blinding heat of her, the torrent of images driving through him, dragged him perilously close to release.
When he leaned to take her nipple between his lips, his teeth, she cried out as he’d requested, a rich reverberation about the chamber.
His mahogany bed, as dated as the rest of the place, rocked beneath them with barely a murmur.
Earlier, he’d gone down on his hands and knees to shore up the frame.
Nothing good had happened to him in this house since his mother’s passing—certainly nothing like this—and he’d wanted it to be perfect.
Or at least wonderful.
His mind buzzed, his spine tightening with the promise of release as he thumbed the swollen bud at her center and slid a second finger deep inside her.
Her nipple pressed against his lower lip, his cheek cradled by the curve of her breast. What could be more glorious?
She had to crest—and soon—or he would disgrace himself and spill before she had properly touched him.
Thankfully, she shattered.
“Ever,” she whispered against the tender hollow between his shoulder and ear. Her hips rose to meet his thrusts, matching the ragged rhythm of their breath. She reached for him, fingertips gliding over the crown.
Not now, he thought, not yet.
“Later, I’m going to come with you, inside you, so accept this now,” he said, lips pressed to the warm curve of her ear. “Dammit, sprite, I’ll follow, I promise.”
As she crested, shaking and moaning, her body clenching around his working fingers, heat pulsing beneath his circling thumb, Ever rose enough to watch her come undone—back arched, skin slick, flaxen hair in wild disarray.
Love struck him, swift and blinding, followed by a possessiveness so fierce it stunned him.
She was his. He would find a way.
He accepted those certainties with her image seared into him for all eternity.