There was nothing but his hands and his mouth and his possession of her body. But even as he laved and teased her with his lips and tongue, he closed the curtain of the bed around them, cocooning them in the dark, before he began to divest himself of his clothing, shrugging his way out of his coat, freeing the remaining buttons of his long waistcoat, and flinging away his cravat without ever taking his mouth from her.
When he was down to his shirtsleeves, he came back to her with a look of such heat and intent, it stole the breath from her lungs. With his hand at her shoulder, he urged her back upon the bed, but he did not come over her to kiss and caress.
Instead, he raised her legs to either side of him, and began to unlace the ribbons of her slippers.
Penelope instinctively squeezed her knees together. “Beech?”
“Yes, Penelope?” he answered as he flipped up her skirts and ran his hand up her legs, over her stockings to the edge of her garters.
Penelope’s heart—as well as other equally unruly organs—began to pound. “Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”
“I don’t know.” He smiled and frowned all at the same time in that achingly contradictory way of his. “What do you think I’m doing?”
She was no green girl, but even she wasn’t sure. “Beech, you can’t—”
He slid to his knees in front of her. “Oh, I can. I will. Gladly and effortlessly.”
Effortlessly? Surely—
Beech settled his hand upon her knee and gently nudged her leg wider. Penelope knew she ought to be shocked at the openness of her pose and the sheer carnality of his intentions, but she felt heat spread under her skin, and her head went deliriously dizzy with anticipation. She was aching for his touch.
He lowered his head to feather kisses along the inside of her thighs, and she felt herself come slowly but surely undone, inch by tantalizing inch.
Oh, God, yes, he could—Penelope nearly shrieked at the first warm, wet lick of his tongue across her sensitive flesh. “Beech!” she whispered through the hand she had cast across her mouth to keep from saying anything more.
But he did not need her encouragement. “Yes,” he agreed, and she could feel his voice vibrate through her as his kisses grew more assured and intimate still.
When his hand joined his mouth, Penelope gasped and laughed all at the same time. She had never felt so vulnerable and so absolutely adored all at the same time. She closed her eyes and gave in to the sexual languor—she was afloat, buoyed along on a current of soft, infinitely pleasant sensation that stretched endlessly into the darkness. Their flight in the night, the cozy confines of the room, the bitter cold of the night—all was forgotten. Time ceased to exert its authority upon her. She belonged to no one but herself.
And Beech. Sure, clever, heroic Beech.
Seducing her with solace. Lulling her with love.
And then with a precise touch, he kissed her there.
Want blossomed within her like a weed, wild and tenacious, and she tangled her hands into his hair, pushing and pulling, encouraging him to press his lips—God, his beautiful clever lips—against that most sensitive place.
She felt herself grow so giddy under his unrelentingly gentle attention, that she let go of him, and dug her fingers into the linens covering the bed, grasping for purchase to keep from being carried off by the rising sensual tide. She was floating on the crest, her weightless body riding the rhythm of the waves until, with one elegant touch she tumbled over the top, and everything was light and heat and bliss within.
And she could only gasp his name, and let herself go down, pulled into the sweet wash of warmth.
After some time—she had no idea when—she came back to herself enough to discover Beech lying beside her with such a look of amused confusion—smiling and scowling all at once—that she couldn’t imagine what he was thinking.
As for herself, she could barely think at all, and frankly, didn’t want to. “Good Lord, Beech. You really are a bloody hero.”
CHAPTER 11
“PEASE PORRIDGE SWEET.” Marcus kissed her temple and let his gaze wander over the sublime lines of her beauty—her wide, plush lips, her gloriously arching brows—gathering his scattered thoughts to plot his careful course. “I wonder if I may ask pertinent question—just how ruined are you?”
Penelope blinked against the dim glow of the firelight and immediately started putting her clothing to rights. “Ruined is ruined.”
“I’m going to have to disagree, Pease Porridge.” He reached for her, stilling her hands by tucking her up against his chest. “Fact is, you are missing some telling attributes of a ruined woman.”
Her lovely heart-shaped face flamed with fresh color. “Am I? Shows what you know about ruination.”
“Yes, it does,” he affirmed gently. “Forgive my crude curiosity, but just how much did my brother importune you?”
She drew in a long breath. “Trust you to ask the dire direct questions, Beech.”
“My dear Pease Porridge, I don’t ask to censure. Far from it.”
She gave him no ready answer, but he was a man who had learned the virtues of quiet patience. He let the reassuring weight of the silence settle upon her for a long moment before he mused, “You see, I begin to think the term—ruined—is applied far too loosely to any young lady who might step her toe out of line and displease others who think to control her fate.”
“Beech, don’t make me out to be a saint. I am no innocent miss.”
“No, how could you be?” he agreed philosophically. “Anyone our age who could live in this world and remain a complete innocent would be either remarkably stupid, or remarkably callous. You strike me as neither of those things.”
“Beech.” Her voice was nothing but a whispered plea—for quiet or continuation, he could not tell.
So, he stayed his course. “I am a man of experience and observation, Pease Porridge—a man of facts. And I should very much like to be apprised of the true facts of the situation, which only you possess.” He drew his fingers across her temples, as if he could see the truth writ large there. “Now, I collect you’ve kissed before, as you are—if I may compliment you—an extraordinarily enthusiastic kisser. But that may be my own enjoyment clouding my judgment of experience.”
“You were rather enthusiastic yourself,” she countered.
“I am delighted you think so.” He began to brush his fingers absently along the sweet sweep of her jaw—an intimate, soothing gesture. “And we shall return to that pleasing activity just as soon as you satisfy my curiosity. And my sense of justice.”
“Justice?” Her tone edged back toward bleak. “In the court of social judgment, justice is hard to come by. Rumor is evidence, verdicts are swift, and appeals are nonexistent.”
“Too damn true.” He hated that she was clearly bearing the cost of his late brother’s sins. “The world is an astonishingly dangerous and deceptive place, isn’t it, Pease Porridge? Full of traps and pitfalls for the unwary. You seem properly wary, and yet…” He shook his head, because he could not quite puzzle it out. “I must ask, Penelope, if you know how my brother died?”
“He was shot to death in Grosvenor Square,” she answered carefully.
“And do you know,” he pressed, “by whom?”
“Yes.” She let out a long sigh before she said, gently, “He was shot by his married lover, poor Viscountess Guilford, for the unforgivable sin of infecting her with the pox.”
“Devil take his soul.” Marcus heaved out his own sigh. “I feared as much, though I assumed he was shot by somebody’s husband. Although I had not seen Caius in ten years, I did know he was a libertine.” Still, Marcus had some sympathy for his unapologetic ruiner of a brother—bleeding to death in Grosvenor Square was a messy, merciless way to die. “Poor bastard.”
“Yes,” Penelope agreed.