Scoundrel in My Dreams Read online

  Then his wide thumb began to circle her clitoris, round and round, gently but relentlessly. It was too much for her. His strength, his big hard body pressed against her, his mouth owning hers, his hand penetrating her, claiming her, conquering her. It was too much heat, too much sensation, too much Jack. She uncontrollably pressed her thighs together until he had to force his foot between hers and press his knee forward to part hers wider.

  Pinned. Helpless. There was nothing she could do.

  The relief was enormous.

  When her orgasm struck her, she shattered like an icy pond hit by a boulder. Her knees buckled as she screamed her release into his hot, demanding mouth. He pressed her hard against the wall with his muscled body, keeping her upright as her body convulsed from the powerful shocks of pleasure ripping through her. His fingers continued their invasion, not letting up, dragging her pleasure on and on and on until she collapsed limply in his grasp, whimpering into his mouth, shimmering aftershocks causing rhythmic tremors to run through her.

  Jack released her hands and let her arms fall as he took her weight onto his chest. He wouldn’t think about what he had just done. He couldn’t think about it.

  I am not that man.

  Withdrawing his other hand from beneath her skirts, he slipped his fingertips into his mouth for a taste of her.

  Then he knew it was true. He knew the taste of this woman like he knew the sight of his own face in the mirror. Her voice had matured, her body ripened, but the simple salty-sweet nectar of her body would always mean one thing to him.

  That night.

  He’d made love to Laurel Clarke that night. It was she who came to his room to soothe away his nightmares. It was she who gave herself so unselfishly that night.

  It was her blue eyes that wept when he was thrown from the house—

  After proposing to her sister.

  It was Laurel.

  Laurel, covering his face with tender kisses to ease him from his death-wracked nightmare? Laurel, stroking small, cool hands all over his naked skin, coaxing the tension and horror from his body?

  Laurel, soft and giving, passionate and wild, writhing beneath him? Crying out his name as he lost himself in sweet, hot, exquisite life?

  He could only stare at her. “Laurel?”

  For all the melodrama that had ensued after, Jack had never been able to bring himself to regret that night. That moment, that shimmering affirmation, that coming together of souls, was the only reason he had not thrown himself from the rooftop of Brown’s years ago.

  He’d never told anyone about it, not even Aidan or Colin. That one evening, when they’d found him up on the roof, whiskey bottle in his hand, contemplating the convenient distance to the cobbles, they thought they convinced him to live for his duty as heir, for his responsibility to his uncle’s dependents, to carry on the family legacy of good stewardship.

  All excellent reasons to live. Not, however, as good as the tiny flicker of hope that single night of warmth and tenderness had given him.

  If someone could touch him so, if someone could embrace him and trust him and give to him so very freely . . .

  Well, then, there might just be something inside the man that he was that was worth saving after all.

  Oh, God, what have I done?

  Again?

  He released her and she stumbled away from him.

  “You . . .” His voice was naught but a hoarse whisper. “You and I—”

  Laurel lifted her chin. “I should have known you would forget me.”

  “Never.” Jack looked into her betrayed blue eyes. “I simply didn’t remember you . . . quite right.”

  She blinked. “Whom did you remember in my stead?” Then, as he stayed silent before her sarcasm, her eyes widened. “Amy? You thought I was Amy?”

  “Bramble, I’m sorry—” He reached for her. Laurel moved a safe distance away, then turned to face him, her face flushed, her eyes wide, obviously realizing how terribly, awfully they’d got things wrong.

  “Laurel, you gave Melody away—”

  “No!” Her eyes went ten shades of stormy. “I did not abandon her. She was stolen from me. They told me she died!”

  “They?”

  “My mother and father. The midwife. I swore that I heard her cry, but they told me she was stillborn, that I was mad with grief and the pain of childbirth. I believed . . . I should have known I could never believe them. I should have known I could never believe my sister. Everyone lies.” She looked down at her gown and stroked both hands down her skirts. “All these years of mourning and she lived here all that time.”

  Jack shook his head. This at least he was not guilty of. “Only a few months. She was left here at the club. We don’t know by whom.”

  Laurel’s eyes widened. “Where has she been?”

  “We don’t know.”

  She pressed her hands over her heart. “What if it wasn’t a kind place?” Her words came fast in her distress. “What if she was frightened, or struck, or worse? Did they feed her well? Did they keep her warm?”

  Jack could only shake his head.

  Laurel turned away from him, her arms wrapped tight about herself. “I mourned my daughter! I shall never mourn my parents. Never! How could they do this to their own grandchild?”

  Jack watched her. Laurel’s concern was truly for Melody’s happiness. If he could reason with her now . . .

  “So you will not take her away?”

  She swung about, her face white. “I will take her so far away, Jack. I never want to see you or my sister or a single stretch of English countryside again for the rest of my life!”

  “But—”

  She stepped forward. “You ruined me and you didn’t even know my name! You lock me in here and then you—” She waved a furious hand in the direction of their moment against the wall. “You are no sort of father! You are no sort of man!”

  Her words struck deep. Jack could only stand before her, mute. She was quite right. He had no defense for his actions. At any rate, the wall around him was too high to climb with ordinary words. He felt as if she was too far away to hear him anyway. Or perhaps he was the one who was in the distance.

  So he did the only thing he could think of. Even as he did it, he knew that it was the wrong thing to do.

  Taking out the key, he looked at her. “I cannot allow you to flee into the world unprotected. I cannot allow you to take Melody away from her home.” With that, he stepped backward out the door, drew it shut, and locked it. The small click of the locking tumblers did nothing to drown out her gasp of protest.

  He locked her in the room, yet it was beginning to be clear to him that he was the one in the cage.

  Lord Aldrich shuffled down the hallway of the top floor, making his way back to his rooms at the end for a nice little evening of peace and quiet. He adored his new bride. No doubt about it. Aidan’s mother, the former Countess of Blankenship, had been the love of Lord Aldrich’s life since he was young enough to think in terms of things like “the love of his life.”

  Nevertheless, his darling bride’s bloody-minded stubbornness—er, charming strength of spirit—did tend to exhaust a man.

  A sound behind Lord Aldrich made him pause in his headlong, if shuffling, race toward his longed-for evening of port and silence. He turned to peer through his thick spectacles toward the far end of the hallway.

  Someone was exiting from the attic stair. One of the younger lads, by the black hair and straight back. Blankenship? No, it was Redgrave. The Marquis of Strickland now, since that letter had arrived earlier today.

  Lord Aldrich was old enough and sensitive enough not to congratulate young Strickland on his advancement upon the death of his uncle. Still, a few words of sympathy might be in order. Such a strange duck, this Captain Jack, as wee Melody called him.

  Turning, Lord Aldrich began to shuffle back down the long hall, his slippers making only the slightest wiff-wiff noise on the thick carpet runner.

  Strickland paused to
dust bits of stuff from his sleeves and shoulders. Then, without noticing Aldrich, Strickland took the stairs down to the next level at a businesslike pace.

  Aldrich paused at the attic access door. Pushing on the latch, he opened the door and peered in.

  The light from behind him fell onto nothing but the bottom steps of the stairs leading upward. Aldrich listened carefully, for his hearing wasn’t nearly as bad as people supposed it to be—as he preferred people to suppose it to be. It did cut down on tedious social conversation.

  No, not a sound. Just an old attic, dusty and stuffed with things nobody wanted.

  As he turned to head back to his room and his port, something gritted beneath the sole of his slipper. Bending slowly and laboriously, he had time to ponder the vagaries of his age on the way down. At last, he was able to brush his trembling fingertips across the carpet.

  Sharp little shards pricked his fingers. He brought them close to his eyes and peered closely at them.

  Broken crockery. Lord John, Marquis of Strickland, had just been brushing bits of broken crockery off his suit.

  In Lord Aldrich’s long life’s experience, broken crockery usually meant a woman. A very angry woman.

  How entirely intriguing.

  Grunting, Aldrich aimed his shuffling pace toward his port. He’d almost forgotten how exciting things were at Brown’s.

  In her attic prison, Laurel tossed restlessly on the nest of linens she’d piled in one corner of the room. Her sleep had come late and scantily. Now having finally fallen asleep, she cried out in a dream that wasn’t a dream at all but a memory.

  From the moment he rolled Laurel beneath him, she was Jack’s. His to hold, his to kiss . . . his to do anything he pleased with. She’d loved him for so long. Now, at last, her devotion was to be rewarded.

  And what a reward! She’d never felt like this before. His hot mouth on hers, the taste of him as she took his tongue inside her, sucked upon it, slid hers against it, following his every hint, following so closely she quite forgot they were two separate beings at all. His thoughts were hers. His wants were hers.

  As his mouth moved from her lips down her jaw, down her neck, she felt the harsh brush of his stubble on her skin. The difference excited her. He was so large and powerful, so broad and muscled and masculine, so different from her own soft skin and fragile form. Wrapping her hands over his naked shoulders, she measured the breadth of her man. She felt small and weak beneath him, yet powerful in her vulnerability. She was the one he desired. She was the one he kissed.

  It was her nightdress he pulled down, setting her breasts free for his mouth to devour. She gasped as he sucked her virgin nipples into his mouth, one after the other. They grew hard and pointed for him, the way that they did when she climbed from the warm bath into the chill of her bedchamber. The wicked thrill that shot through her made her pant his name again and again.

  He sucked harder, tugging at her, letting the edges of his teeth slide against her tender hardened nipples until she whimpered aloud with pleasure-pain and shoved her fingers into his hair to hold his head close.

  Another part of her was aware that her demure nightdress had become nothing but a wad of muslin about her hips. Her breasts were bared to his mouth, and her belly and thighs were naked to his roaming hands.

  She felt his hand between her knees, large and callused and hot. Oh, sweet heaven, his touch was like fire! Her skin burned as she parted her tender untouched thighs for his exploration, opening to him in total trust. He stroked them, sliding his hands firmly over her flesh, over and under, thighs, hips, buttocks, ever nearer to her damp and aching core. She writhed, trying to bring her wet center closer to his touch, until he threw his heavy leg across her thighs, pinning her still.

  Only then did he begin to toy with dark curls there. Large hot hands, delicately teasing. Feather touches, soft and tantalizing, until she begged breathlessly for more. She wanted so much. She wanted things she had no name for. She wanted it all, and she wanted it from Jack, only Jack.

  Always Jack.

  Even as he continued to suck and roll her nipples in his mouth, he at last let his fingertips slide up her slit, which had grown exceedingly wet and slippery with waiting for him. The invasion of his rough, gentle fingers made her yelp out loud with pleasure.

  His other hand, gentle but implacable, came to cover her mouth and keep her silent. Gratefully she cried out into his muffling palm. She had no sense of self-preservation. She wished to sigh and moan and cry out her pleasure as his fingers teased up and down her slit, dipping into her virgin hole, slipping up the smooth valley to her clitoris, where it stood swollen and rigid, thrusting out between her lips as if begging for his attention.

  She lay pinned and gagged, helpless to move, as he devoured her breasts and rubbed small, skillful circles around her clitoris. How wicked that it excited her so! The pleasure, the helplessness, the heat and weight of him, his hot mouth, and his hard, persuasive fingers proved too much for her untried senses.

  This man was and yet was not her Jack. The darkness that filled him came out in his kiss, in the urgent roughness of his touch. His need and his bottomless wildness made him dangerous.

  This untamed side of him excited her further. She writhed and bucked and cried out beneath his hand as she was swept away by her first ever orgasm. The pleasure rocketed through her, radiating from her wet, hungry core, convulsing her with ecstasy. She screamed into his covering palm, a wild, senseless thing quivering helplessly in his controlling hands.

  She toppled as if from some high cliff, falling into bliss as small, wicked shocks of pleasure continued to bombard her from within.

  At that moment, he thrust a thick finger into her, hard. His thumb pressed to her swollen clitoris, rubbing more firmly than before. His large, callused finger slid into and out of her, fast and relentless.

  She was swept mid-fall right back into the climb of ecstasy. This time she was one step behind, powerless before his urgency, flailing beneath his restraint, as he ripped yet another orgasm from her, much to her surprise.

  It tore from her throat in an animal howl, muffled by his heavy hand over her mouth. Just as she peaked, a second finger joined the first, thick and urgent in her tight hole. The stretching ache was scarcely of note beneath the pleasure. If anything, it drove her senses higher, losing her thoughts in the madness of her ecstasy.

  He pulled his mouth from her breasts and put it to her ear.

  “Come!” he demanded harshly.

  She came again, a third time, at his command. At that moment she was naught but an empty shell, a vessel filled with aching, throbbing pleasure and need for him. Her wordless cries shrilled as she was lost, swirling in a hurricane of rapture.

  As she grabbed double handfuls of bed linens in her fists and arched her body, helpless in the throes, he rolled between her thighs.

  Still lost in her panting, pounding heartbeat state, she was barely aware as she felt his thick erection press to her wet, swollen core. He replaced his hand with his mouth, kissing her deeply as he held her head in his two large hands.

  She wrapped her arms about him and kissed him back.

  Six

  Up and down St. James Street, in White’s and Boodle’s and all the other gentlemen’s clubs, the staff sedately served breakfast to those few men who stayed the night in their luxuriously appointed chambers. In richly paneled rooms, still hushed and peaceful, gentlemen snapped open their news sheets and placidly perused yesterday’s events, both political and social.

  In a certain formerly exclusive gentlemen’s club, just a few doors down St. James from those hushed and peaceful halls, came the pitter-patter of tiny feet.

  “Can’t catch me!”

  Then came the clomp-clomp of growing masculine feet.

  “Got you!”

  And then, sadly, came the great pounding of giant feet. “Oy! Wait for me, you two!”

  Wilberforce, head of staff at Brown’s Club for Distinguished Gentlemen, winced slight
ly at the great thudding above his head as he passed beneath the grand staircase into the entrance hall.

  “Eeeee!”

  Wilberforce leaped to one side with admirable agility, considering his ponderous dignity, just in time to avoid the two young bodies shooting down the banister at dangerous speed.

  The broad curve at the base of the stairs put an end to that nonsense. Wilberforce gazed down at the tumbled bodies newly arrived on the floor and, after assuring himself that there were two gangly legs and two chubby legs, two scrawny arms and two pudgy arms, and two unbroken skulls, let his gaze turn sourly up to the top of the steps. His youngest and largest underfootman, a gigantic lad of nineteen named Bailiwick, stood there gazing wistfully down the banister at the childish tangle below.

  “C’mon, Billy-wick!” caroled little Melody from where she sprawled on Evan’s belly. “You try it!”

  Bailiwick bit his lip and glanced warily over his shoulder. Then, even as he reached slowly for the banister, he spotted Wilberforce glaring up at him.

  “Do not.” Wilberforce never raised his voice, yet somehow the clipped syllables rang through the domed hall like bullets. “Even. Think. Upon it.”

  Bailiwick snatched his hand behind his back, eyes wide.

  “Wibbly-force!” Melody grinned up at Wilberforce. “That was fun. I fell on Evan.”

  “Well done, Lady Melody. Master Evan is much softer than the marble of the floor and much less likely to turn one into broken bits.” Wilberforce was no more able to be cross with Melody than any other member of Brown’s staff. Even if he assembled his most daunting lack of expression, the one that made giant Bailiwick tremble, it only made Melody giggle. This, of course, only made Wilberforce melt into a gooey puddle.