Chapter 8
I t turned out Arabella kept her promises and in spades.
After they’d eaten the night before, a reasonable spread despite the very obvious disapproval on his butler’s face when he delivered it, she had pleasured him for hours.
Until they were both weak with it. Until they couldn’t stay awake from exhaustion and satisfaction.
And now she lay in his arms, still asleep despite it being late in the morning, and he felt…calm. That was the word for it, he thought. Calm . Like things were well for him somehow in a world that hadn’t been balanced in years.
She shifted a little at his side and her hand, which had been resting against his stomach, slid up to his chest. His body reacted, despite the acrobatics of the night before. The wanting for this woman didn’t seem to fade.
“How long have you been awake?” she murmured, turning her mouth against his shoulder and kissed it lightly.
He shivered in response and started to stroke along her spine lightly. “I don’t know. Not long. A few minutes.”
She inched closer and now her hand came down across his hip and her forearm brushed the half-hard cock that was already asking for more.
She lifted her head and smiled a little, that wicked flash of brilliance he was starting to crave. “Seems like something else has been awake a bit longer.”
“ Something else seems to be awake at all times with you.” She leaned up to kiss him and he drew her over his body. “I think you might be a siren.”
“No,” she laughed as she began to gently stoke him. “They’re half-bird and I can’t sing, you truly don’t want me to try. I think you mean a succubus.”
He lifted his head, trying to focus when she was making his body tremble with pleasure already. “I definitely do not mean a succubus. Those are demons and they suck the life force from a man.”
“I did that at least once last night,” she said as she slid over him and settled herself over his cock.
He gripped her hips and started to rock her, easy and gentle in their sleepy states.
She threw her head back, her breath short and he couldn’t stop staring.
This woman was gorgeous in all her forms, completely captivating.
By design, he supposed, but also by nature.
She would have been just as alluring as someone’s country wife.
Though he was very happy in this moment that she hadn’t chosen that path and was instead riding him, faster now, until she gasped out pleasure in the quiet and her pulsing sex milked his own release just to the edge.
He rolled her over, thrusting harder as he took her mouth and then spent between them with a long, shaky moan. Her arms had been pinned when he moved them and she wedged them free and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“What do you think about getting dressed and coming back to my home? I have the most amazing bath there, big enough for two. We can take a soak and have food prepared by people who don’t sneer while they do it and then do all this again for the rest of the day.”
He smiled at the idea. She was talking about the most lovely, wicked fantasy and that certainly sounded better than trudging over to his brother’s home and getting scolded for missing supper. He could put that off another day, couldn’t he?
He opened his mouth to answer when there was a knock on the chamber door. Not the outer one, but from the antechamber. He pursed his lips and twisted to look at it.
“Ugh, what it is?” he called out.
It was Poole’s voice that responded, as always, thick with censure even through the barrier. “You have a guest, sir.”
“Christ,” Silas muttered, and kissed her once, then got up. “I must have summoned him.”
“Who?” Arabella asked, sitting up a little, but making no attempt to cover herself as he threw on a robe and started for the door.
He hesitated. “The marquess. That must be who has come because I missed our supper. Climbed out of his sick bed, even.” A flash of guilt rushed through him at that thought, but he shook it off. “I’m opening the door if you wish to cover up.”
She responded by throwing the sheet over herself, though she didn’t move from her sprawled position. If the servant looked, and Silas had a good reason to believe he would do that, he was going to see her and know exactly what they’d been doing all night.
Not that everyone in the house hadn’t already guessed that .
Silas opened the door. “A guest?” he repeated. “And who is that?”
“Lord Reginald,” Poole said.
Silas froze. “My middle brother?”
Poole inclined his head. “I did tell him I wasn’t certain you were in residence and he told me to tell you to sober up, climb off your whores and come down, I’m not leaving .” There was a twitch of pleasure to his lips as he spoke. “His words, of course, not mine.”
“Tell him I’ll be down in half an hour. I need to dress and ready myself.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And offer him breakfast,” Silas added as the butler turned away.
At the outer door, Poole stopped. “I would do so, sir, but it is nearly noon. I will offer other refreshment, though.”
With that, he was gone and Silas turned back into the bedroom. He shook his head, trying to absorb this. He glanced at Arabella, still wrapped in his bed. “I’m sorry about what he said. The whore comment.”
“It’s strictly true.” She shrugged. “I’ve been called worse, I assure you. This is your second brother, yes?”
“Yes,” he said. “Charles and I got along so much as we could. Reggie…well, he’s something different. He hated me as a child and I’m certain he hates me now.”
“Why?”
He indicated to himself with one hand without responding.
She surprised him by getting out of bed and crossing to the window, throwing open the curtain so that the room filled with light. “Because you’re so much younger and more handsome than he is?” she asked lightly.
He snorted, though his brother being here gave him no pleasure. “I’m certain that doesn’t help.”
“It sounds as though you’re being given no choice but to join him.”
“Yes.” He sighed. “If he says he won’t leave, he won’t. He’s singular that way. And now I must call my valet and get ready like some dandy fop and take my medicine.”
She tilted her head. “I can’t help with the second, but I’d be happy to help you ready yourself so you could forgo the valet.”
He arched a brow. “You?”
She arched hers right back at him. “If you don’t think that a courtesan knows how to put a gentleman back together, you haven’t been with the right lovers.”
Put a gentleman back together. He knew she meant that as a throwaway sentence, something playful and teasing in the midst of this upset. But it hit him harder than that. A woman like this…no, not like this. This woman. She could put him back together. What a concept.
“Silas?” she said, concern coming over her face.
He shook off the wild thought and motioned to the dressing room door. “If you want to dress me up like some doll and make me acceptable to my brother, I won’t stop you. Though I admit, I think I’ll be distracted by you being naked while you do it.
She laughed and grabbed for her clothing that was still scattered around the floor. “I’ll dress while I look at your wardrobe and find your armor for the encounter. I won’t be but a moment.”
She slipped off then and he sank down on the settee with a sigh. He hadn’t meant for things to become complicated when he came back to London, when he started this affair with Arabella. But both of those things were becoming quickly and increasingly just that.
And he had no idea what that would mean in the end.
* * *
S ilas Windham really did cut a fine figure when he was dressed and groomed. His broad shoulders filled out his finely made jacket perfectly, the greens in his waistcoat brought out the beauty of his eyes and when he was freshly shaven and hair in place, she couldn’t help but shiver.
He looked like a gentleman, as refined as any duke Arabella had ever taken to her bed.
He could have fit into their world, she could see.
Only people like that never let someone like him, no matter if his father had brought him into his home.
Silas’s bastard blood, his courtesan mother…
that would never allow him to be anything but an outsider.
Just like her. It made her wonder why the last marquess had done such a thing. It was not a kindness.
She squeezed his hand. “You are ready, Mr. Windham. And you look very handsome, indeed, so that ought to frustrate that brother of yours all the more.”
“What fun,” he said, but the tone was flatter than the teasing words implied. He shook his head as he looked at himself in the mirror. “If you ever retire from the game, you should take on the role of a valet. In half an hour you shaved, dressed and fixed me up.”
“Yes, but one minute more and you’ll be late to meet with him. So you ought to go.”
He hesitated a moment and then turned on his heel to face her. “Come with me.”
She stepped back. “You wish me to come downstairs and join your meeting with your brother? He knows who I am, you know. He’s seen me at Cyprian balls and at the Donville Masquerade and even at the opera.”
Silas’s expression twisted. “You two have never…”
“Oh, God no!” she said with a shudder. “I draw a hard line at going between siblings.”
“But you didn’t know you’d have me and he has power.”
She shifted slightly. “Well, I never wanted to close the door on you just in case you reappeared in London. Now why do you want me to join you?”
He shrugged, like it was meaningless. “It would tweak him, wouldn’t it?”