Chapter Nine

Pierce ached to take her right there on the cool stone floor of the hothouse, but he held himself back. It was bad enough to be labeled mad. If he was also discovered to be a rutting beast, they’d lock him up and never let him run free again, no matter how much the duke vouched for him. He had to go about this the right way.

But what was the right way?

“You said you’d never kissed a woman before that night at the opera,” Honora said.

He nodded as he moved closer to her.

“Then am I correct in assuming you have also never…been with a woman?”

“I haven’t.” Not for lack of interest. Pierce might be put off by what was swirling around in women’s heads, but he was very much curious about their delectable forms. From the time he’d been about fourteen and his body first had begun to rouse and spill into his bedclothes by night in hopeless erotic dreams, he’d surreptitiously watched the women in his sphere. From the buxom chambermaid Lily, who had been known to have extremely light heels, to the vicar’s daughter whom he only dared look upon while everyone else’s head was bowed and eyes closed, he became a voyeur of the mysterious female. Both extremes of women found their ways into his wet dreams.

But in the waking world, he didn’t dare approach either of them because of the disturbing racket of their thoughts. Until the Duke of Camden had shown him how to erect a barrier against another’s mind, he thought he’d forever have to rely solely on his own right hand for his body’s release.

Now that he had a measure of control over how fast and how much information vaulted toward him from another’s head, he found he actually wanted to know what was going on in Honora’s mind. He lowered his shield a bit more.

Amazingly enough, his inexperience seemed to excite her.

“Would you like me to show you what to do?” she asked.

“I think I can figure that out for myself,” he said as he continued to close the distance between them at an unhurried pace. She’d never know what that deliberation cost him. “If you don’t mind going slow.”

Her breathing hitched. “Slow is good.”

He opened himself more to her thoughts.

Oh, God! He’s beautiful.

That was so surprising it almost stopped him in his tracks.

What is he waiting for?

He didn’t want to rush. He wanted to savor. Each moment would be etched on his psyche forever. This was the first time he was going to bed a woman, and he wanted everything to be perfect for him and for her. Lovemaking was a journey. The last thing he wanted to do was miss something wonderful along the way because he was in too much of a hurry to reach the final destination.

“We ought to go to my chamber,” she said abruptly and started toward the door. He caught her wrist, stopping her.

“We will,” he assured her. Then he lifted her palm to his lips and kissed it. He drew little circles around the spot with his fingertip and traced each of her fingers. “You have lovely hands.”

I have lovely other things, too. Don’t you want to see them?

“I ache to see all of you,” he said as if she’d spoken aloud. It was a hard habit to break, responding to half a conversation he wasn’t supposed to have heard. He needed to be careful. She already believed him a bit mad. The last thing he wanted was for her to think him a freak, as well. He raised her hand to his mouth and suckled the tender skin of her inner wrist. “I want to taste all of you. I don’t want to miss anything.”

Her lips fell slack at that.

Touch me. Handle me. Know me.

So he did. While he kissed her, his hands went roaming. They slid down her back to cup her bum and snug her next to him. Oh, the feel of her soft abdomen against his hardened cock. He feared he might spend on the spot, so he distracted himself by listening to her thoughts.

I ache so. Please God, let him know what to do.

Her breasts were a revelation. He palmed them, kneading her soft flesh through the layers of her clothing. It helped that she wished he would. He even found her nipples, hard little buttons, under all that muslin and linen and thrummed them with his thumbs. Then he gave them a pinch, just the way she hoped.

She groaned into his mouth. He didn’t think he could get any harder, but even his balls tightened at that sound.

Oh, God, it’s been so long.

That surprised him. He already knew from exploring her mind a bit that she and Benedick weren’t lovers in the traditional sense. She had no sexual thoughts about him at all. No memories, either good or bad, of his lovemaking.

But for a woman with an unabashedly sensual reputation like Nora to be celibate was unthinkable.

He searched her memories again and found a few fleeting recollections of past patrons. But the recollections were indistinct, shrouded in mist, as if she didn’t want to retain them and hoped they too would dissolve, like a mist, in the morning sun. Her memories of her husband were a little more vibrant, but Pierce didn’t want to violate those.

It would be like spitting on an altar.

She tipped her head back.

Kiss my neck. Nibble along the tops of my breasts.

He did so with great enthusiasm. She made such helpless little noises of need, he was inspired to undo the first few horn buttons that drew a line between her breasts. Then he peeled back the fabric so that more of her lustrous skin was exposed.

How does he do that? Know what I need before I need it? The man is like magic.

For the first time in his life, he was grateful for his gift.

But his mind was so filled with her body, he had no room to spy out her thoughts. He decided to play fair and he pulled up his shield. Instead, he concentrated on the way she breathed, the way she smelled, the way she moved when he touched and sucked and kissed.

They slow-walked down the hothouse aisle like a pair of drunkards clinging to each other so they’d stay upright. Pierce was unwilling to break off their embrace. He lifted her so he could more easily suckle her nipples through the thin fabric of her chemise. Once her underthings were wet, he could see them through the linen, all berry-colored and taut, winking up at him, begging him for more.

As he continued to move toward the door, he knocked several containers of seedlings off the benches and upset one of the orange trees in its pot. The oranges rolling on the pavers sent fresh bursts of their glorious fragrance into the space.

“Wait, please wait.” She wiggled out of his arms with her spine pressed against the door. “I have a very nosy neighbor on the eastern side. We have to walk through the garden as if nothing is amiss.”

“Nothing is amiss,” he said as he continued to torment her nipples. “I just want to swive you like no one has ever swived anyone before.”

Her smile was bright enough to illuminate all of Vauxhall’s Dark Walks. Even on a moonless night.

But her fingers trembled as she did up her buttons again.

He peeked once more into her mind.

She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t afraid. She was trembling with need. She wanted him quite desperately.

He was doing surprisingly well for his first time. Barring the destruction in her hothouse, of course.

She smoothed down her hair and then straightened his jacket on his shoulders.

“Race you to the door?” he said with hope.

“No. We must walk. Sedately. As if we have no pressing need to—”

“Swive each other senseless,” he interrupted.

There was that smile again. He could live for weeks on just one of them, and he’d been given two in one glorious afternoon.

“May I at least offer you my arm?” He suited his actions to his words.

“Oh, my dear viscount,” she said as she slipped a hand through the crook of his elbow, “I’m depending on you to offer me far more than that.”

“I shall do my best not to disappoint.” They strolled into the sunshine as if their insides weren’t pounding.

“If you continue as you’ve begun, I’ll never believe this is your first time.”

“This is your first time as well.”

She cocked her head.

“Your first time with a madman.”

She attempted to lighten the moment with a little laugh. “I do not think you mad.”

“Yes, you do,” he said without rancor, “and what’s more, you like the idea.”

She started to protest, but they’d reached her back door and he held it open for her most properly. Then, once it closed behind them, he pressed her up against the wall and reached under her hem, sliding it up her thighs.

“You think because I’m mad, I’m dangerous. And I am,” he admitted. “But I will not harm you. Not for worlds.”

Her skin was silky smooth and hot, almost feverish. Where her pantalets ended, an apparently open crotch began in the garment. Pierce silently blessed the modiste who had come up with that idea.

Touch me.

So he did.

She was wet and welcoming, and holding her was like holding a piece of her soul, all trembling and naked. When his fingers moved, she grasped the lapels of his jacket as if she were drowning, and he was all that would keep her afloat.

There were no more words, no more thoughts forming in her mind for him. Nothing he could make sense of, in any case. Instead, a burst of sensations shivered through him.

Harder. Ah, just there. That’s it.

The sensations gathered themselves into a fist and punched his heart. His knees nearly buckled.

Whether they were her sensations or his, he wasn’t sure.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

The pleasure between them built to an almost unbearable tension.

They started a dipping, turning waltz to music only they could hear. When they kissed, it was her hands that began roaming now. First, his cravat unraveled and fluttered to the floor. Somewhere between the salon and the foot of the stairs, his jacket came off. Then his waistcoat. By the first landing, she was tugging his shirt over his head and raking her nails across his bared chest.

Pierce undid her buttons, not stopping with only a few this time. He popped off a couple in his haste. He’d promised himself he’d go slow, but those urgent little sounds she made as he kissed her went straight to his groin. No one would call them words. Even when he opened his mind to her, nothing he recognized as a fully formed thought materialized. It was far more primal, more basic than thought. But he didn’t need to understand those noises to know what she wanted.

Somehow, he found himself laying her down on the stairs and, wonder of wonders, she went willingly. He kissed her in unexpected places—the crease of her elbow, the juncture of her shoulder and neck, the hollow of her temple—to distract her from the oddness of unevenness beneath them.

He began to peel away her layers. The gown was easy. Once he undid enough buttons, it slid off her shoulders and down her body as they inched up the stairs. His clumsy fingers snarled the laces in her stays so badly, he had to resort to his boot knife to cut them.

Her eyes widened at the sight of the blade.

“I meant what I said. I’ll never harm you, Honora,” he promised. “However, your laces are in imminent danger.”

She laughed. Lord, the woman had a laugh that would tempt angels. It was low and liquid and full of pleasure. It was a hot bath a man could sink into and, even if he drowned, he wouldn’t care a whit.

After he sliced the laces, she joyfully shed her stays and they were left on the stairs alongside his boots, which she had to help him out of. A trail of discarded clothing traced their progress from the rear of the house and up the flights of stairs.

His trousers came off next and then she practically tore off his smalls.

“Pierce, you’re huge,” Honora said when she came up for air after one of their kisses. She gasped, like a pearl diver who’d been submerged too long. She grasped him and ran her fingers over his full length. Pleasure lanced through him, sharp as a blade.

“I take it that’s a good thing,” he said, knowing full well she was delighted with him from the joyful little thoughts that came tripping into his mind from hers.

Then she did the most surprising thing in the world. She didn’t even think before she did it. If she had, he’d have had warning and could have braced himself for the shock. She moved down his body, rolled him over on the second floor landing, and took his cock between her sweet lips.

He’d heard of such things, of course. Stanstead had been a wealth of sensual information before he’d married Miss Cassandra Darkin. After that, the earl kept his sexual knowledge to himself, which was all right with Pierce, who had never expected to be able to use any of it, in any case. But the idea of a woman taking that part of him into her mouth, into that soft, warm place where her tongue could lash him, that notion had stuck with him. Pierce had never thought such unasked-for bliss would ever happen to him.

He’d nearly died many times in Bedlam. He had never felt closer to death than he did right now.

And welcomed the manner of his demise with much gratitude.