One Wicked Sin

Ethan rolled over to shed his coat, casting it carelessly across the room. He pulled off his neck cloth and threw aside his shirt, barely repressed impatience in each gesture. Lottie watched. She had seen more than her fair share of naked men and had mostly found the male form a disappointment, oddly shaped, flabby, or even downright ugly. Men generally looked so much better with their clothes on. Her grandmother had told her so before she wed at seventeen and Lottie had never had cause to doubt her.

Not Ethan Ryder, though. His body was firm and lithe, whipcord strong, his shoulders wide and his chest hard and muscled. Lottie thought his thighs would probably be equally heavily muscled from so many hours in the saddle and she felt a little light-headed to think about it. Her mouth was dry and her blood felt drugged, heavy with lust.

“And the rest,” she prompted, as he paused. The glitter in his eyes as he looked down at her was bright and hard, desire distilled. Her heart thumped.

It took him only a moment to discard the rest of his clothes, and then he stood before her entirely naked and magnificent with it, strong, powerful and, as Lottie could not help but note, with an enormous erection as impressive as the rest of him. Her throat felt as dry as sand now. She waited for him to return to her, to straddle her, to take her.

He did not. He stood looking down at her, his gaze as powerful as a physical touch. Lottie shifted restlessly beneath it. Then he was beside her again, touching her with gentle, reverent strokes; the line of her shoulder, the curve of her hip, the hollow of her elbow and the softness of her stomach. He kissed the underside of her breast. Lottie shivered. She reached for him, thinking that she really must show some of the initiative that would be expected of an experienced mistress, but he returned her hands firmly to her sides.

“No,” he whispered. “Lie still. We do this my way.”

He returned to his ministrations, firm and yet tender, his touch leaving a trail of fire in its wake. He nibbled the soft skin of her neck and her shivers intensified as his breath caressed her skin. His mouth moved lower, discovering the soft hollow of her collarbone again, licking and tasting her skin. She found herself arching up to meet him, wanting him to take her breasts in his mouth, aching for his touch. Frustratingly, infuriatingly, he left them alone. Instead she felt his tongue explore the curve of her belly and flick teasingly into her navel. The cool air breathed across her damp skin and she shuddered, need coiling within her like a tight knot.

“Please …”

She had not meant to beg, had not realized that she would want to do so. She felt the sweep of his smile against her stomach.

“Ah.” There was a wealth of satisfaction in his voice.

He raised himself up to take one of her tight nipples into his mouth. She almost screamed; her mind spun away with pleasure. He was pulling it, tugging it with his teeth, the tiny bite mingling with the ecstasy that threatened to melt her very bones. She could not stop the trembling. The muscles jumped and quivered in her belly, and she reached again for him, blindly, but again he pressed her back down into the bed, his lips and hands tracing caresses across her skin from her stomach to her breasts until she moaned. She had never felt so vital, her body alive, all thought banished, a creature of sensation alone.

“You are driving me to madness….” The words were torn from her and she heard him laugh before his lips returned to her breast to torment her anew.

Lottie writhed, desperate to feel him inside her now, but again he evaded her grasp and resumed the slow, tantalizing mastery of her body, pressing his open mouth to her skin, his touch as hot as a brand. This time when his trail of tiny kisses reached her throat again he raised himself above her and his lips returned to her mouth, demanding, insatiable, all control lost. He plundered, but whatever he asked she gave more. There were no memories to haunt her here, no experience to draw on because she had never felt this way before, never felt this pitch of pleasure that was mingled somehow with exquisite tenderness.

“Please,” she cried again, and this time she did not recognize her own voice. “Now …”

This time he slid a hand down to part her legs and she felt the cool air against the damp heat of her cleft. Her body plunged into another spasm of helpless hunger. He was poised above her, the touch of his fingers soft against the softer skin of her inner thighs and sliding toward the burning core of her. When he stroked her there she cried out, thinking she would come at once, all restraint lost. His fingers paused in the slow circles they were tracing.

“Wait,” he whispered. His breath skittered across her skin racking her with shivers. She heard his voice laced with humor and wickedness. “Not yet.”

“I cannot help it!” Another shudder shook her body. Desire, irresistible, unendurable, raked her. She could feel herself poised on the edge, suspended in restless, intolerable need, before one smooth stroke of his hand sent her flying into the abyss, the pleasure exploding through her body, her mind light and free. Gone was the shame and the confusion of the past weeks and months, the misery that had stolen her certainties and wrecked her confidence. She felt vivid and alive and for one terrible moment so grateful to him that she thought she loved him.

The blinding light faded a little from her mind, the brilliance dying. Gasping, she lay back on the bed, her body slick with sweat. She became aware of Ethan still kneeling between her parted thighs, still hard and erect and not one whit sexually satisfied. Truly, she thought faintly, she was a terrible mistress, grasping after her own pleasure so greedily with no thought for his.

“I’m sorry—” she croaked, and saw a frown crease between his brows.

“For what?”

“You told me to wait….” Her body still thrummed with pleasure like the last echo of music.

His expression lightened. “I am flattered you could not.”

He tilted her hips up slightly and slid inside her, forcing a gasp from her because she was so tight around him. A new assault of sensation cascaded through her.

“Oh!”

He held himself quite still as her body instinctively adapted to his, cradling him, enclosing him in its heat. Then he rocked inside her, a tiny movement, a deeper penetration, creating a tumult of feeling. Her body tensed about his, clenching him tightly, and she heard the breath hiss between his teeth. Looking up into his eyes she saw the strength there and the power and knew he would not be provoked into hurrying this. Her body melted further into blissful sensation.

He took her slowly, so slowly, easing out, sliding back so deeply that she felt not only ravished but that she had abandoned everything to him, her heart and her soul, with each stroke. It was so exquisitely tender that it stole her breath. Lottie closed her eyes and gave herself up to the sensation of his loving, drawing him to her, eagerly seeking all that he could give and demanding more.

The rhythm changed, became more urgent. Lottie drew him in deeper still as each thrust drove them both toward an inexorable climax. At last he abandoned all control and plunged into her, crying out, entangling his fingers with hers and gripping tightly as the final thrust toppled him over the edge, sweeping her with him. This time it was darker and more intense than before. She was taken beyond the boundaries of all experience. In some profound way she could not understand, she knew he had claimed her.

Lottie allowed her body to lie quiescent and her mind to float as light as a feather in the darkness. She did not want to test her feelings. It seemed too dangerous, for fear that she, Lottie Palliser, once the most sophisticated of society matrons, might have offered up her heart as easily as her admittedly nonexistent virtue.

Yet eventually thought and feeling did return and she could not keep it out. She felt superbly replete, ravished in the best and most satisfying of ways. The other less physical, more emotional outcomes of their lovemaking she tried unsuccessfully to ignore. She felt vulnerable in a different way now. There was a hollow beneath her heart when she looked at Ethan lying in abandoned pleasure beside her. She wanted to hold him and rediscover the tender closeness they had achieved. She wanted to see love in his eyes.

She tried to make light of the thought, telling herself that she was confusing love with gratitude. Ethan had reminded her of how spectacular physical love could be and for that she was immensely indebted to him. That was all there was too it; she felt no deeper feelings for him, could not allow herself to do so. Nevertheless she felt cold, her stomach dropping in despair, for no matter how she had pretended to view love as a sport and recreation in the past, she had never quite been able to disassociate it from emotion. God knew she had tried. She had taken a score of lovers and claimed it was simply for amusement yet each time she knew she had been searching for something deeper and more elusive, and each time she had emerged with her heart scarred a little more.

Ethan rolled over, opened his eyes and smiled at her and her heart did another little dizzy skip and her despair deepened. No, please no. She could not be such a fool as to fall in love with him when she barely knew him, and what she did know with clear hard certainty was that he cared nothing for her and would only use her and then discard her.

“Thank you,” she said very politely, hiding behind barriers, protecting herself. “That was very nice.”

Ethan laughed. “I am glad to have been of service.” He raised a brow. “No more running away?”

Lottie shook her head. She knew it was far too late for that. “No more running away,” she whispered.

Ethan pressed a kiss on the damp skin of her belly, and Lottie shivered, reaching for the covers to shield her as though they could help protect her heart as well as cover her nakedness.

“I’m hungry,” she said as her stomach rumbled. She was glad to be distracted by another very basic physical demand.

Ethan sat up and reached for his clothes. “They do an excellent dinner here,” he said, “if you like plain roast beef.”

“That sounds delicious,” Lottie said. Her stomach rumbled again loudly. She appeared to be going downhill rapidly in the mistress stakes. A professional courtesan would surely waft fragrantly away at the end of a sexual encounter, her mystique and sophistication still intact even if nothing else was, rather than demand to be fed, having worked up an immense appetite. It was then that she realized she had not eaten for days. She had been too nervous and unhappy in Mrs. Tong’s brothel to be able to face food, the sight or even the smell of it. Now she felt ravenous.

“They mix a fair rum punch here, as well,” Ethan said, shrugging himself into his jacket but abandoning his cravat in a crumpled heap on the chair.

“I should have had one of those before we started,” Lottie said.

“We didn’t need it,” Ethan said. He dropped another kiss lightly on her lips and went out, and Lottie lay in sated abandonment, the sheet draped across her stomach, watching the dance of light and shadow out in the street.

Ethan had been right, she thought. He had been the one she needed and he had been skillful and gentle and considerate, and she was enormously grateful to him for restoring her confidence and reminding her how glorious making love could be. She was so grateful to him, in fact, that she wanted to do it again at once—or as soon as she had eaten and given her food a little time to settle since she did not wish for indigestion.

Yet there was more to this than the simply physical. If—when—she made love with Ethan again, she knew she would tumble all the more deeply into those disturbing and inappropriate feelings she was starting to have for him. It was her nature. In the past she had pretended not to care about her affaires when in reality she had been consistently hopeless at treating them with the superficiality they warranted. It was why she always got hurt and always ended up rushing to the next lover. She was not sure what she was looking for, only that she never found it.

She certainly would not find it here with Ethan.

This was a man who had bought her for his pleasure and she knew she should not forget that. He had been bored, wanting a mistress to pass the time. She was the woman chosen. And though he had shown her patience and gentleness, there was no more to it than that, and she would be mistaken to read something into their relationship that was not, and never would be there.

She rolled over, drawing the sheet about her to ward off the sudden chill of the room. She felt acutely vulnerable, needing to rediscover the old Lottie with her sharp edges and sheen of protective sophistication. She would become the perfect courtesan now, cool and detached. She could do that. It was her future.

When Ethan came back it was with a tray loaded with food to satisfy even the lustiest appetite, and after they had eaten he read the newspaper and Lottie wrapped herself in a sheet and sat in the window seat watching the passersby on George Street on their way to the balls and the theaters. She felt oddly distant and detached from that world of the Ton, the world she had lost. In an effort to ward off her piercing loneliness she turned to Ethan again, this time setting out quite blatantly to seduce him, and they made love with a fierce intensity. But although it was deliciously pleasurable, in the aftermath Lottie felt even more lost than before.

CHAPTER FIVE

ETHAN WOKE FIRST. He lay listening to the sounds of London stirring, the street vendors setting up, the rumble of the milkmaids’ carts, voices, the clop of hooves, the sweep of the brushes of the crossing boys. He had always liked London. He liked its anonymity and its bustle, its entertainments and its pleasures. Paris was a beautiful city, grand and self-important, but London had always held a special place in his heart, which was odd since he did not much care for England and the English.

He shifted slightly, careful not to wake Lottie, who was curled up beside him in a soft, trusting bundle. He watched her for a little while and found it surprisingly pleasant. She slept easily, lightly, with a little smile on her lips as though in sleep she could set aside the unhappy memories that shadowed her waking moments.