The Royal Rakes: Waking Up With A Rake Part 15

She didn't protest when he joined her there, settling with most of the weight of his upper body propped on his elbows while he kissed her to oblivion.

It was a little like heaven to feel the sheltering warmth of him. The thin muslin of her nightrail almost didn't exist. It was open to her waist so his chest covered hers, skin on skin. She'd never imagined a sensation so delicious.

His heart pounded against her breastbone. His breath filled her lungs. His scent, his taste, he crowded her whole world. If anyone had told her there was nothing else but this man, this moment, she'd have believed them.

Her thighs parted and his hips settled between them. That needy drumbeat between her legs was becoming habitual whenever he was near. Now it crescendoed into an entire percussion section. A low boom deep inside her, with pleasure sparking across her skin every place their bodies touched, her s.h.i.+n to his thigh, her thigh to his hips.

During the kissing and caressing, her nightrail hem somehow became entangled around her waist. She could feel him-all of him-rocking in a slow knock, now against her bare belly, now in the crease of her thigh. She gasped when the tip of him pressed against her opening. She turned her head to break off their kiss.

"Trust me, Olivia," he whispered. "Will you?"

She shouldn't. The man had a reputation. He freely admitted it. But she made the mistake of looking into his eyes.

She saw wanting there. Along with the desire to give. And there in the glinting depths of his dark eyes, wasn't that...hope?

He needed her to trust him. It was as Babette had said. All souls wanted to be accepted. Trusted. Loved. Even though he didn't voice it, his eyes said, "Please."

And she said yes.

That lump in his chest swelled and made it hard to breathe for a moment. Then Rhys kissed her once more, softly this time, holding back the surge of pa.s.sion that threatened to break in him. Surely her lips would be bruised if he didn't bridle himself.

Then he moved his body off her and lay beside her.

Best to remove temptation for now.

It had been all he could do not to slip into her when the tip of his c.o.c.k brushed her opening. One quick thrust and his job at Barrowdell would be irrevocably done.

Instead, he kissed his way down her neck, while his hand moved over her belly and into her soft folds. If he was going to take from her, the least he could do was give.

And he intended to give until she begged him to shred her maidenhead. If she implored him to ruin her, perhaps his conscience would stop flailing him over it.

She was so wet. Each silky layer of her was swollen and slick. The sweet perfume of her arousal went to his head. He nuzzled her breast while his fingers played a lover's game on her mound.

She writhed under him as he teased around her most sensitive spot without giving her relief. She made the most alluring little noises of distress. He so wanted to give her ease, but he needed her to plead for it. He had no other recourse but to draw out her journey into bliss to unbearable lengths.

When he moved his hand away, she nearly sobbed.

"Hush, love," he murmured. "'Twill be all right. You'll see."

Then he kissed his way down her body, lingering at her belly b.u.t.ton, before nuzzling the curls between her legs. When he slipped his tongue between her folds, she gave a shuddering breath and arched herself into his mouth.

Rhys cupped her heart-shaped b.u.m and feasted on her.

Love. He called me "love." Olivia's heart pounded while she fisted the linens. Surely no man would do to a woman what Rhys was doing to her unless he loved her.

Joy rippled through her, radiating outward from the center of the universe between her thighs. The ache was sharp-edged now, the line between pain and pleasure blurred. A tear squeezed from her closed eyes and trickled into her ear, but she couldn't have borne for him to stop. If he did, she'd scream loud enough to wake the entire household.

She wouldn't have left the bed if it had been on fire.

Then she felt herself caught in a downward spiral. She arched her back but couldn't stop herself from unraveling completely. Could this be right? Surely she wasn't supposed to come undone like this.

Her insides convulsed. Then bliss spread over her whole body and threatened to shoot out her fingers and toes.

Oh, yes. This is definitely right.

She was halfway to heaven. How long she hung suspended between this world and the next, she couldn't say. When she finally came to herself and her heart stopped galloping in her chest, she felt Rhys's head pillowed on her flat belly, his warm breath streaming over her skin.

She reached down and ruffled her fingers through his lovely thick hair. She wasn't capable of more than that slight movement. Anything else might stop the warmth and light coursing through her body, and more than anything, she wanted that blessed sensation to continue.

But Rhys was capable of more. He moved up to cover her with his body again and kissed her, softly at first and then with more insistence.

The ache she'd thought was completely stilled flared to new life. And with it came a terrible hollowness, a longing to be filled.

"Rhys," she whispered as she pressed her pelvis against him. "I'm so empty."

He raised up on his elbows and looked down at her, his expression unreadable in the dimness of the room. "There's only one way for me to fix that."

She knew without him saying what that way was.

Her choices were plain. When her father and the Duke of Clarence arrived, the marriage deal would be brokered and she'd enter the rarified world of the royals. Even though her cage would be gilded, it would still be confining and she'd be doomed to a loveless match.

She might wear a diadem someday, but she'd never know what it was to give herself to a man in total acceptance and trust. She couldn't quite bring herself to add the "love" that Babette included in the list, though she didn't know what else to call the dizzying sparks of emotion crackling through her.

Her only chance to experience the joy of surrender to someone she cared for was if she gave herself to the man in her bed right now.

If she did, she didn't think it would undermine her match with the duke. Rhys wouldn't ruin that for her by telling anyone what pa.s.sed between them. Even if Clarence was unhappy with her after the wedding, their marriage would never be anything more than a church-sanctioned business arrangement in any case. He would never return her, along with the forty thousand pounds a year that came to him as long as she was his wife.

Rhys kissed her again, a warm, wet kiss tinged with the desperation of longing. A line from a Shakespeare play she'd read last month flitted through her mind.

If thou remember'st not the slightest folly that ever love did make thee run into, thou hast not loved.

This was certainly folly. By circular reasoning, did that also make this love?

"Olivia," Rhys said, his voice ragged. "I want you so."

His need intensified her own. The ache would not be denied. She closed her eyes and bade being a cautious virgin adieu. "Then take me."

His plan had worked. She'd told him to ruin her. One thrust was all it would take. He'd kept his vow. He hadn't lied to her. He truly did want her with every drop of blood coursing through his body.

Then why did he hesitate?

Because you also told her to trust you, his conscience accused. He hadn't heard from it for years, but since he met Olivia Symon, its rasping voice was becoming all too familiar to his mind.

He'd deal with the p.r.i.c.ks of his scruples later. Right now, he had a completely beddable woman under him and she'd begged him to take her.

How could he do anything else?

He kissed her again as he moved into position. The tip of him entered her warm wetness. She was all that was good and bright in his world. He couldn't wait for her to envelop him in her snug embrace.

'Twill be all right, you said.

d.a.m.n it, he had said that. How could shredding her maidenhead make it all right for her?

She moaned and squirmed under him, ready to take him in entirely.

He'd be gentle. He'd never bedded a virgin, but he thought the pain he was bound to cause her would be negligible if he was careful. The destruction of the symbol of her purity would be over in a blink.

What of the lasting pain of being publicly ruined?

To appease Mr. Alc.o.c.k, nothing they did in secret could remain so. Olivia's lack of chast.i.ty would have to be shouted from the rooftops in order to scotch the deal with the Duke of Clarence.

It didn't matter. He had to go through with it. Otherwise Alc.o.c.k would drag him into the well of the House of Lords and accuse him loudly of war crimes that had only been connected to him in whispers until now. His father wouldn't be able to bear it.

Rhys started to slide into her by the slowest of degrees when the unthinkable happened.

His c.o.c.k began to soften.

Concentrate, he ordered himself.

He pushed forward but it was no use. He was flaccid as an eel on the riverbank. It was like bringing a rope to a sword fight. For the first time in his life, Rhys Warrington could not properly bed a woman who was ready and willing for him to swive her silly.

He rolled off her and clambered out of bed as if the hounds of h.e.l.l were after him. He couldn't bear for her to realize he was physically incapable of making love to her.

Even though he wanted to with all his heart.

Chapter 19.

"Rhys, what's wrong?"

He didn't answer. Instead he strode across the room and retrieved his discarded trousers. Keeping his back to her, he stepped into them and tugged them up.

Olivia climbed out of bed, letting the hem of her nightrail billow to the floor. Her shaking fingers fumbling with the b.u.t.tons, she did up the front of her s.h.i.+ft as she followed after him. She might not have much sensual experience, but even she knew something had gone horribly wrong.

"What just happened?" she asked in bewilderment. One moment he was making the sweetest love to her and the next he was flying across the room trying to put as much distance as possible between them.

"What do you think happened?" He sat in one of the wing chairs and struggled to pull on his boots. "I saved you from a very stupid mistake. Honestly Olivia, if you hope to be a queen one day, you really ought to use better judgment."

She flinched as though he'd slapped her. He hadn't meant any of it. The whole thing was some elaborate test, which she'd obviously failed. "But I thought-"

"That this was something other than a lesson from a libertine?" He pulled on his s.h.i.+rt and fastened it up at a blistering pace. "Where the devil did that b.u.t.ton you tore off get to?"

She stared at him in disbelief. Her world was imploding and he was looking for a benighted b.u.t.ton.

"Ah!" He found the lost b.u.t.ton near the hearth and pocketed it. As he retied his cravat, he cast her a cynical look. "Close your mouth, Olivia. It makes you look like a cod. Surely you're not that surprised."

She couldn't have been more so if he'd told her he planned to sprout wings and fly out her window. Everything had felt so real.

"Haven't you any idea how close you were to ruin? You really are a silly little twit, aren't you? I confess I thought you brighter than that."

The way her stomach roiled, she feared she might be sick. But that would only mean further mortification before a man who'd seen her soul-naked, who'd used her for his own twisted purposes and now laughed at her. She couldn't bear more. She swallowed back the rising bile and straightened to her full height.

"Get out of my room."

"I would do so with pleasure, Miss Symon," he said as he retrieved his cufflinks from her vanity and reattached them at his wrists. "Nevertheless we have a small matter with which to contend. May I remind you there is still someone trying to do you harm?"

"More harm than you, you mean."

"Yes, more harm than me," he said testily, shrugging into his waistcoat and jacket.

"Since you think I'm a silly little twit, I have to wonder why should you care?"

"My dear girl, I am here at the behest of the Duke of Clarence. It would do my reputation with the royals no credit if something were to happen to you on my watch."

Nothing. What they shared in her bed meant nothing to him. She glared at him, taking refuge behind rage to avoid nausea brought on by total embarra.s.sment. "With a reputation like yours, what's another stain more or less?"

He clasped a mocking hand to his chest as though she'd sent a dart into it. "There's a sting. Good. I was afraid you might turn into a weepy little puddle. But however you might feel about me at present, remember there is someone out there who seeks to do you ill. Until we discover who that person is, you're stuck with me in your bedchamber by night."

"Not for long. I intend to ask my mother to rescind her invitation for you to join the house party." She crossed her arms as if she might hold herself together with them. Her chest ached abominably, and this time the throbbing wasn't the least pleasant. She'd heard the word "heartache" but always thought it melodramatic in the extreme. She never dreamed it referred to pain that was all too real. "This is the last night you'll spend under Barrowdell's roof if I have anything to say about it."

"Fortunately, when it comes to your mother's social decisions, you have very little to say."

Drat the man. He was right. There was nothing she could tell her mother, short of the truth, that would make her banish Lord Rhys Warrington. Even then, she wondered whose side her mother would be on. She whirled around and stomped back to the bed, trailing her dignity behind her like tattered wings.

"Stay away from me, Rhys Warrington."

"As you wish, milady," he said with false amiability as he settled into one of the wing chairs and propped his long legs up on the other.

She climbed into bed and pulled the covers to her chin. She bit back the sob that threatened to tear from her throat. She would not let the man hear her crying in the dark.

But that didn't stop the tears from coursing silently down her cheeks. Her heart hurt, pounding erratically. She'd nearly been dashed to pieces in that ravine, but she hadn't felt as close to death then as she did now, lying in the dark with her chest threatening to break open.

She replayed the interlude with Rhys in her mind, the intimate things he'd done with her, to her, the way she'd given herself over to him. How could he run so hot and then so cold? What had she done wrong?

Then she realized she hadn't done anything. He was the one who failed to do something. Now that she thought about it, she realized in the final moments of their loving his glorious thing had suddenly become inexplicably much less glorious.

There'd been a stallion like that at Barrowdell once. Mr. Thatcher tried every trick he could to interest the horse in a mare that was in season, but for some unknown reason, the stallion wouldn't mount. In the end, he was gelded and sold, and as far as Olivia knew, was still pulling a hackney cab around the cobbled streets of London.