Chapter 14 #2
“I am sorry. But you were frightening me,” she said emphatically.
“Lady Alison uses the same fragrance as I. Or, at least, she favors a fragrance I received once as a gift from my brother. A single bottle that is now almost exhausted. If you do not believe me, I do not care. That is the truth! How dare you become so enraged with jealousy when you have gone to such lengths to tell me that I mean nothing to you! Who is the liar, Keaton?”
“The perfume. Oh, God,” Keaton muttered.
Then there was a clatter. A piece of furniture being overturned.
Then a crash of something larger hitting the floor and the tinkle of broken glass.
Georgia’s innate compassion drove her to Keaton’s side, realizing that he had tripped and fallen.
Her foot crunched on a sizable chunk of glass.
Keaton shifted, and more crunching announced further glass being ground.
“Careful!” Georgia said urgently, “You must have dislodged something sizable of glass—there is broken glass everywhere!”
“I owe my uncle a collection of glass sculptures,” he murmured defeatedly. “They stood on a table before the chaise in here. And I can feel the chaise just in front of me. So, that was the table, and… damnation! I am bleeding.”
Georgia gasped in fright. “You could sever an artery and not know it in this darkness!”
She blindly put out her hands, coming into contact with Keaton’s head, his thick mane soft beneath her questing fingers. They ran to his temple and then his cheeks.
“Where are you bleeding?”
“My wrist, I’m afraid,” he muttered.
Georgia carefully ran her hands down his arms, feeling the tense muscle of his biceps flexing at her touch. Then to the wetness on the inside of his right forearm. Her heart chilled at the presence of blood there and what felt like a lot of it.
“We must summon aid…”
“No! We have been the unwanted center of attention too much. I will not have my own foolishness undermine all your hard work this evening.”
“You… you believe me, then?” Georgia asked, pressing her hands against his wrist.
“Your hands will be bloody,” he protested.
“Let them. Get up.”
He obeyed. “There is a lamp to our right and flint and tinder in the drawer beneath it,” Keaton said.
Soon, Georgia had a lamp lit. She gasped. A shard of glass jutted from Keaton’s forearm, and blood was leaking from around it. She looked into his face.
Is it my imagination, or does he look pale? Is this what a severed artery would look like?
“If it were mortal, the blood would be against the far wall with the force of the spray. It is merely deep,” Keaton reassured when she remained silent for too long, as he touched his fingers to the wound.
“But there is a lot of blood…”
“No more than I deserve.”
“Keep talking like that, and I will slap you again harder.”
Keaton smiled bleakly.
“Do you value this coat?” Georgia asked.
“I do not even know what color it is,” Keaton replied with almost arid humor.
“Black, like all of your other clothes. Take it off.”
She plucked the glass free, and Keaton shuffled out of the coat. Georgia wadded it into a makeshift dressing, holding it against the wound.
“Hopefully, this will help. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“Not that I can feel, but then I did not feel that one,” he shrugged.
“Sit,” Georgia coaxed, pushing him back into a chair.
She traced her hands over his other arm, fingers probing the muscle, testing for any wetness or sharpness.
Then across the broad width of his chest, over the curve of his pectoral muscles, and down the ridges of his ribs to his waist. His eyes stared into hers.
She stared back, suddenly gripped by the absolute certainty that he could see.
His eyes… were beautiful. Grey and deep and expressive. She felt she could stare at them for hours. She realized that her hands had stilled on his hips.
“Am I wounded elsewhere?” he asked with a whisper.
A mere man should not be so attractive. What is it about this one that pulls at me so! What is it that makes me so desperate to make amends for our argument? He is not my lover, nor do I want him to be...
The lie of that thought was loud in her mind. Her body screamed against it.
“I have not checked everywhere,” Georgia whispered.
She slowly caressed his thighs, feeling his body shift at her teasing fingers. She no longer pressed or probed but instead savored the feel of the hard muscle. Knees, then calves and shins. No glass and no bleeding. She ran the backs of her hands up the inside of his thighs.
“No, you are not injured anywhere else,” she finally said, softly.
“You have not checked everywhere,” Keaton replied with a positively wicked smile.
Georgia froze, her hands resting at the top of his inner thighs.
“I… do not think I should check everywhere. Given what your demands were as the terms of our marriage.”
“But then we have already established my idiocy, have we not?”
Georgia laughed, turning her hands over so that her palms lay atop his thighs, fingers spread.
His arousal was… evident. Hers could not be so easily seen, but it was certainly felt.
She bit her lip, letting her eyes wander his body, even to his concealed but straining manhood, knowing that she could stare unabashed and not be seen.
Yet he must know that I am looking. He must be aware...
That thought was thrilling enough to make her stomach turn somersaults.
“Quite,” she breathed.
Head spinning with reckless, wanton thoughts, she leaned forward to bestow a kiss to the place where Keaton was most vulnerable. He groaned, whispering her name. It was all the reward she could ask for, making her delirious with her own desires.
Be careful! Remember what has been said! I must remember my goals and not become distracted. But… I am married. It is not wicked, though the time and place are perhaps inappropriate…
Georgia moved her lips against the bulge in Keaton’s breeches, feeling him respond to her lips and hungry mouth.
His hand rested on her head, fingers twining in her hair.
Instinct drove her now. Rational thought fled.
All she knew was that she was giving him pleasure.
That set a fire within her, a fire that demanded passion and desire as fuel.
Boldly, she worked the buttons of his breeches, one by one, her fingers trembling with anticipation. Keaton’s hands found her face, rough palms brushing reverently along her cheekbones, his thumbs grazing the corner of her lips.
“You undo me,” he growled, voice thick and low.
“You make it far too easy…”
Her mouth moved lower, and her hand slipped inside.
When she found him—hard, impossibly hot—she gasped.
He groaned. The sound was ragged, guttural.
Finally, he surged free, thick, hot, and already hard for her.
As she wrapped her hand around his arousal, skin to burning skin, they both stopped breathing.
He was silk over steel in her palm, impossibly hard yet smooth, and larger than she'd imagined during those sparse but restless nights alone in her bed.
She stroked him experimentally, learning the weight and heat of him, fascinated by the way his breath hitched when she tightened her grip just below the crown.
“Georgia…” Her name was barely recognizable on his lips, guttural and desperate.
Power surged through her. She, who had been told she was too forthright, too burdensome to manage, had reduced this commanding man to trembling.
She sank to her knees and pressed her mouth to his hip bone, then lower, following the trail of dark hair while her hand continued its exploration.
His fingers tangled in her carefully pinned hair, and she heard several pins scatter across the floor.
“Enough.”
The word came out strangled. Strong hands hauled her upright, and before she could protest the interruption, his mouth crashed into hers. The kiss was nothing like their wedding kiss—this was possession, raw need that made her forget they stood alone in a dark chamber where anyone might enter.
His hands moved to her skirts with purpose, gathering handful after handful of muslin and petticoats.
Cool air kissed her calves, then her knees.
When his palms found the bare skin above her stockings, she made a sound she'd never heard herself make before—something between a gasp and a moan that should have mortified her.
Instead, it emboldened her. She spread her legs without being asked, letting him discover exactly how affected she was. His fingers found her slick and ready, and the growl he made against her throat sent another rush of wetness to meet his touch.
“All this for me?” His fingers slid through her folds with devastating slowness. “You are soaking through your stockings…”
She couldn't form words, could only clutch at his shoulders as he explored her with knowing fingers. Then suddenly he was on his knees before her, pushing her skirts higher.
“Hold them up. I want you to watch.”
The command sent heat lancing through her. She gathered her skirts with shaking hands, looking down at the picture they made—her pale thighs spread wide, his dark head between them. The first touch of his tongue made her cry out, loud enough that she bit her lip to stifle the sound.
He pulled back for just a breath. “Don't. I want to hear every sound you make.”
Then his mouth was on her again, and coherent thought fled. His tongue was wicked, clever, finding places that made stars explode behind her eyelids. When he sucked gently on that small bundle of nerves while pressing two fingers deep inside her, her knees buckled.
He caught her easily, one arm banded around her hips while he continued his sweet torment.
She was saying things—broken, shocking things about what she needed, what she wanted him to do—but she couldn't stop!
Her release built like a storm, gathering force until she was shaking, her thighs clamping around his head.
Before the volcano could erupt, though, before the pleasure could render her muscles liquid, Keaton stopped. His head lifted.
“Someone is coming!”