Chapter Twenty-One
Malcolm Brown had come in Scarlett Perkins’s hand.
The pleasure had been white-hot and overwhelming.
It had been even better than the closet—which he had previously not thought possible—because he could see her while he touched her.
Her skin flushed beautifully when she came, that rich cream of her neck and cheeks staining pink.
Her tentative, unpracticed hand on his cock was too much for him.
He had been unable to stop it.
In the seconds after, he was sure he had embarrassed himself.
But he couldn’t regret it. “I-I am sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Malcolm,” she said, smiling up at him. “Don’t apologize. It gratifies me more than I can say.”
He swallowed, hard, at those kind words.
Quickly, he did up the placket on his trousers, avoiding her eyes.
Then he realized she was still lying there, holding a handful of his spill. “Do you have a handkerchief?”
His seed was pooling out of her hand onto the coverlet. And she couldn’t be thrilled to have his seed in her hand, even if she didn’t mind that he had spent.
The only person who had ever had to deal with the result of his spend was him. It was not something that he ever thought he would subject a woman to.
“Yes, atop the dresser.”
He moved and found a small stack of neatly folded cotton handkerchiefs.
When he turned back, however, he found her studying her hand.
“I am sorry,” he repeated. He couldn’t help it.
“It’s wonderful,” she said with a crooked little smile.
“Here, please,” he said, handing her the handkerchief, feeling tremendously embarrassed and also still burning with pleasure. She cleaned her hand then, but she seemed almost reluctant to do so.
He stood above the bed now, uncertain of what he should do with himself. He didn’t know what to do after such a moment, never having shared one like it before.
“Come back,” she said, depositing the soiled handkerchief on the bedside table.
He wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, but he couldn’t resist being closer to her. Not after that.
He obeyed her command, sliding his body next to hers. She was so precious, he observed, her body plump and yet also compact. She made the best contrast to him, with his height and breadth. He couldn’t imagine wanting to lie with any woman who looked or felt different from her.
“Thank you,” she said, looking up at him. “I know you must think me terribly wanton.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Truly?”
“I am merely surprised. That you would want to—to do such a thing. With me.”
She gave a little laugh. “Why?”
“I do not think of myself as the type of man that women want to do such things with. I know I am not—my manners are not engaging. Especially to a woman such as yourself. Who is used to the men of London.”
“I find you more charming than the men of London.”
“I’m sure you didn’t when you first met me.”
She smiled. “No, not perhaps then. But now it is different.” She paused. “I know how you feel, though. I do not see myself as the type of woman that men desire.”
He scoffed at that. “False modesty does not suit you, Miss Perkins.”
She raised her brows and laughed. “There is nothing false about it! Do you think that plump spinsters of eight-and-twenty are popular in Mayfair?”
He frowned, trying to work out what she meant. “But you’re beautiful,” he finally said, unable to untangle this riddle.
She laughed. “No, I am not.”
“I have already told you what I think on that score.”
“That is very unusual. I think you’re possibly the only man who has ever thought that of me.”
“That cannot be. You said you were engaged. Before.”
He had been unable to ignore that piece of information that she had let drop. It had filled him with an intense, horrible jealousy. He hated the idea that some man had come close to possessing her fully.
“That was a long time ago. And it wasn’t that type of match. He was a clerk for my father. I think he saw the engagement to me as smart business. I was suitable enough—as a wife and a future. But he did not love me for my own self.”
“It is good you broke with him, then.”
“I didn’t,” she said with a little, bitter laugh.
She was frowning now, so different than she had been only moments before, when it seemed that he had made her happy.
He realized that he would do anything to fix it.
He wanted to know the why. He wanted to know how this man had hurt her, and then he wanted to hunt him down and rip him limb from limb.
“He was a fool and a blackguard.”
She shook her head. “Perhaps a blackguard. I would have married him. But my father…” She swallowed, hard. “He was ruined. He lost everything. He was a wealthy man, but he made a few bad investments, and he was destroyed. He died not long after. His health was wrecked by his misfortune.”
“I am sorry,” he murmured. He’d had no idea that her father had met such an end.
“It was years ago now. Many years. Under the circumstances, my fiancé did not keep the engagement. I couldn’t blame him. What had been a match most appealing for its worldly advantage became anything but. And I wasn’t prize enough on my own, certainly.”
“Then I was correct in my assessment of him.”
Malcolm could not imagine such lunacy. A man had had the opportunity to make this rare and beautiful woman his own—and he had wriggled out of it as if it were an obligation he was happy to shirk.
“I don’t think the world saw it that way. Although they pitied him—and me.”
“Do you regret him?”
He felt unaccountably jealous at the thought. He hated that Scarlett might pine for another.
But she laughed. “No. I can hardly remember him.”
That gratified him. Good.
“I should probably wait outside the chamber,” he said, forcing his thoughts to return to the present moment. “The maid could return. With the doctor.”
“We have time, I think,” she objected. “Don’t go yet.”
Truthfully, he didn’t want to go.
And he had a question for her. “I should go. But I do want to ask you—about one matter.”
“Yes?” She looked up at him, her cheeks still flushed, her eyes open and trusting, and he suddenly wondered how he would ever survive her.
How would he ever let her leave this place and him forever? How would he bear it?
No, he told himself, he couldn’t think of that now.
“You said you wanted me to ruin you,” he began.
“Yes, I did. I do. Still.”
His heart and his cock lurched in tandem. It was too much, he thought frantically, to have to resist.
He had never before in his life had sympathy for his father.
And he wouldn’t exactly call the feeling in his breast now sympathy for the wastrel who had been his sire.
But he did feel something now, perhaps a bit akin to understanding.
Was this how his father had been tempted?
Had women kindled in his chest this feeling?
But no, he concluded. His father had ruined many women, and he had only ever felt this way for one. For her.
“I don’t understand,” he continued. “When you marry—”
“Oh, I’ll never marry,” she said. “That’s exactly why it doesn’t matter.”
“Why wouldn’t you marry?”
“Who am I going to marry, Malcolm? In London, I am on the shelf. I am already a spinster, merely a chaperone to my sister. I am too old and plain to attract a man for personal reasons—”
“Stop,” he objected. “I will not have you say such falsehoods aloud.”
She smiled up at him. “You are kind. But I say nothing less than the truth.”
“It is not the truth.”
“Well, even if I am not old and plain, then at least, in London, I am not sought after.”
He supposed, having never been to London, he could not contradict such a statement.
“It isn’t meant to be,” she continued. “The time for that has passed. But I am still young enough to have feeling. I don’t want to go my whole life without knowing what it is like to lie with a man. And I feel for you more desire than I have ever felt for another.”
His chest swelled, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. “Christ, Scarlett,” he said when he finally could speak.
How was he supposed to withstand such an offer? He had always been so principled when it came to women. He would not be like his father. He would not let common lust rule his life.
But what he felt for Scarlett was not common lust.
He knew that.
“So I don’t see the harm.” Her voice was at a near whisper. “Who am I hurting? Why is it wrong … if I am never to marry?”
“You might change your mind. You may decide you would like to marry.”
She shook her head.
When he imagined her in the future, he saw her as a blooming matron.
A beautiful and bountiful woman with a husband and a numerous family.
The type of wife and mother whose very existence sweetened the days of her husband and children.
She was meant to be worshipped and loved and served by a man whose life had found its purpose in her.
She was meant to be the wife of the type of man that he could never be—a man who knew how to please such a woman as herself all his days.
“Will you kiss me again?”
He found himself, somehow, stunned by the question. “I shouldn’t stay. I should wait in the hall, at least.”
She placed her hands on his shoulders, and he shivered.
“Don’t say no,” she said, “when you want to say yes.”
“Goddamn it, Scarlett.”
He kissed her. How could he refuse? He did want to say yes. He held her close and felt himself grow hard against her once more, beast that he was. He tried turning away from her so that she would not feel his desire, but she wouldn’t let him.
She wriggled against him, making him moan at the delicious friction.
“We should stop.”
“Why?” Her skin was heated once more, flushed and wild. Her lips were red from his kisses.
“I-I can’t withstand—”
“I don’t want you to withstand, Malcolm. Surely you see that.”
He did, actually, and that was the problem. She was giving him no quarter, no mercy, and he didn’t have the ability to resist.
They were intertwined now, in a position that was highly indecent. His trousered cock was right at her bare core.
“Please,” she begged, and he knew what she was begging for.
But they didn’t have time for that, even if he was agreeing to ruin her, which he wasn’t sure that he was. He wanted to, of course. God, he wanted to. But it seemed too hasty of a decision to make now.
Nevertheless, her hand was at his placket, and he wasn’t resisting. Moments later, his cock had sprung free.
“Yes,” she breathed.
His cock was at her entrance. Was he really going to deflower her here and now? It seemed impossible, insane.
The head of his cock made contact with her core. He hissed. She was wet, so wet, and even that little brush was an entrance to a forbidden heaven.
“Please,” she begged. “I need-I need you.”
Unable to resist any longer, he tried to sink into her but encountered resistance. She was a virgin, of course, and his member was not small.
“It won’t-I can’t—”
“No,” she protested.
He looked at her face and saw tears in her eyes. “Shh, my darling. I will try.”
He positioned his cock at her entrance once more.
He found himself entranced, however, by her core.
He had heard men speak of women with beautiful cunts.
And right now, he thought Scarlett Perkins must be one of those women.
The sweet swell of her pink flesh, the way she looked so blushing and wet for him.
Christ, he could come just from looking at her here.
He took the head of his cock and ran it over her wet core, slipping from her entrance to where he suspected the center of her pleasure was located. When he reached that place, she let out a gasp.
“Please,” she repeated.
He returned his cock to her entrance once more and tried to ease into her. But she was still too tight. The sensation, however, on the head of his cock was magnificent. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to enter her fully.
“Darling, I don’t think—We need more time.”
Not to mention, he was already on the precipice himself. He knew that to avoid getting her with child, he would need to withdraw. And he had no confidence that he would be able to at present.
She let out an actual sob of frustration. “Please. Try.”
To appease her, he did once more, but the resistance he met with had his head spinning, his cock crying out for relief, and her wincing beneath him.
“I am hurting you. I won’t have that.”
Tears were on her cheeks now. “What is wrong? Is it me?”
“No, darling,” he said, hating to see her weep. “It isn’t you. We just need more time. To allow you to open for me.”
“Don’t go,” she said. “I’m so close.”
He saw now that the trouble was. She wanted him inside her—but he wouldn’t fit. Not now. And she wanted release.
“Me too,” he admitted.
Then, on instinct, he took his cock and dragged it once more over that sensitive place at the top of her core. She cried out raggedly. He did it again and again and again, seeing stars himself.
“Yes, yes,” she whimpered. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He repeated the motion until he could stand the pleasure no longer.
When she broke apart, she cried out, her eyes closed, her face flushing to that gorgeous crimson.
Then he had no choice but to follow. He spilled on her stomach, narrowly avoiding coming all over her pretty little pussy.
He had never come so hard in his life.