Chapter Ten

Honora reveled in the feminine power of reducing a man to helpless need. Never had one shattered before her like this one.

Pierce groaned. He gasped. He clutched her head and murmured an odd mix of blessings and profanities while she tongued him. He seemed about to burst out of his own skin.

Finally, I’m convinced he’s a virgin.

In addition to the joy of instructing an unbedded man, it added immeasurably to her pleasure that Pierce was an incredibly quick learner. He might have been the proverbial bull in a china shop in her hothouse, but he’d demonstrated no clumsiness with her. He seemed to anticipate her every need. She wouldn’t have believed it his first time except for the shock on his face when she’d whorled her tongue over him.

She ached to do this for him. To give to him without expecting anything in return. His bliss was enough.

Of course, if she were honest with herself, she’d have to admit that sucking him made her insides pound as well.

She sensed the tension building in him and didn’t want their interlude to end too soon, so she sat up and straddled him where he lay on the rectangle of Aubusson carpet on the landing. Then she pulled her chemise over her head. Her pantalets were no impediment to their joining, so she moved quickly to guide him into her.

He cried out as he slid in. So did she. It was an incredibly tight fit, but she did her best to engulf him. Once he was fully seated, she slumped down to lie on his chest, to give them both a moment to settle, to prepare for what was to come. His heart hammered under her ear. She willed it to slow, for his breathing to return to some semblance of normal. She didn’t want him to spend too soon.

As if she’d spoken her wishes, he began to take measured breaths. Then he sat up, bringing her upright with him, still joined, still throbbing inside her, still burning up with heated passion, but struggling to control it.

“If we stay here, one or both of us is going to get a rug burn,” he said with maddening practicality.

Then, with seeming effortlessness, he rose to his feet, careful to support her bum so his cock remained firmly inside her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and hooked her ankles at the small of his back. He was every bit as strong as he looked.

“Which one is your bedchamber?” he asked as if he were asking for directions to the nearest market.

“One more flight up. End of the hall. I’d rather face the garden than the street.”

“You’ll only be facing me for a while,” he said with a grin.

It was so unusual for him to smile, the whiteness of his teeth caught her by surprise. “You should do that more often.”

“If one smiles without something to smile about, one is generally considered a bit nipped in the noggin.” He shrugged as he climbed the remaining stairs with her still clinging to him. “Of course, in my case, it would only confirm the general consensus.”

“I don’t think you’re really mad.”

He smiled again, this time wryly.

“Well, I don’t.” She swatted his shoulder as he homed in on her chamber door. He jiggled the latch a few times. It was sticky sometimes, but he managed to open it and push through. “I just think you’ve had some unfortunate experiences.”

He barked a laugh. “That’s putting it mildly.”

She palmed his face. She wanted him to see she meant it. “You have a beautiful soul.”

“Given the brevity of our association, that’s not something you can know.”

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not something I know. It’s something I feel.”

He walked her over to the canopy bed that occupied the central portion of the room and sat on the edge. She pushed against his shoulders so that he plopped back onto the soft feather mattress and counterpane. She smiled down at him and whispered, “And now, here’s something I want you to feel.”

Amazingly enough, once they settled into the bed and stopped talking, they started communicating in earnest. It was as if her flesh spoke to his, and he answered immediately. The merest wish would slip into her mind, and he was quick to fulfill it.

She rode him with abandon, sliding up and down the length of his thick cock, luxuriating in her own arousal. If she angled her pelvis just so, she got the loveliest bit of friction right where she needed it. A bit more of this and she’d come with him inside her, fisting around him. She hadn’t done that since Lewis—no, she wouldn’t think on her dead husband. She would think on the live man beneath her.

Then he rolled her over and began pounding away and she couldn’t think at all.

Oh, he was just what she needed. Rough, then tender. He slipped out of her, and she cried out, bereft, until he substituted his talented fingers for his thick cock and played a virtuoso performance on her most sensitive spot.

She unraveled under him, her release pounding her insides. When she stopped convulsing, she pulled him to her, took him in, and led him to his own shattering climax. He arched his back and emptied himself into her in hot spurts. Then he collapsed onto her, taking care to support himself with his elbows lest his full weight bear down on her.

She’d never had a more considerate lover. Not even Lewis.

Nora stroked his back, running her fingertips over his spine. Too late, she remembered the French letter in her vanity. It had been so long since she’d needed to concern herself with avoiding conception, she’d forgotten all about it. Pierce probably would have objected to wearing the lamb-gut condom in any case.

“I’ll wear anything you want, if only you’ll let me stay close to you,” he murmured into his neck.

She hadn’t said anything about the condom. She was sure of it. And this wasn’t the first time he seemed to know exactly what she was thinking.

“If I ask you a question, will you promise to answer it?” she said.

He raised himself to look down at her, his eyes still glassy with the I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-anything haze that follows a good hard swive. “If you ask me to flap my arms and fly to France right now, I’ll climb up to your roof and make an attempt.”

She laughed, but then stopped abruptly when she saw the seriousness on his face. “I believe you would.”

He started to rise from the bed.

“No, come back here, you.” She caught his arm and pulled. “Just answer my question, and I’ll be satisfied.”

He settled back down, his lower body resting between her splayed legs.

“Why did your family believe you mad?”

He sighed, rolled off her, and lay beside her, staring up at the fleur-de-lis stitched into her canopy. At first, she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he began speaking about a boy who climbed an oak tree and a catastrophic fall and finally waking to hear voices all around him whether anyone’s lips moved or not.

“You mean to say that you can hear my thoughts?” she said incredulously.

His face was a mask of misery. “I can hear everyone’s thoughts.”

She sat up and tucked the linens under her armpits. She was naked save for her pantalets and stockings, but she hadn’t felt really exposed until that very moment. It couldn’t be true.

“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Now you see why my uncle had me condemned and committed. It is absurd,” he admitted. “It’s also unfortunately true.”

“Really? What am I thinking now?” She cast about for something she was certain he couldn’t simply guess. Ah! Fides Pulvis. He’ll never come up with—

“Fides Pulvis,” he said wearily. “It means ‘Trust Powder.’”

She scrambled from the bed and pulled on her wrapper which was draped over her vanity chair. “You can’t know about that. No one knows about—”

“No one but you and Lord Albemarle. And now officially—me.”

But this was terrible. What else might he glean from her mind? Benedick’s confidences—all of them—were no longer safe. A large part of her value to her protector was her discretion. His secrets were legion and against her will, several of them flitted across her consciousness.

“If you’re worried that I’ll tell someone that Lord Albemarle likes men, you needn’t be. I’m glad he’s of that disposition,” Pierce said. “It means you’re not really his mistress, and that makes me happier than I’ve ever been about anything.”

But he didn’t look happy. He was frowning in her direction with intense concentration. Even so, she’d never seen anything quite as compelling as the naked viscount in her bed. His arms were massive, his chest well-muscled, and beneath those sheets—she jerked her gaze away from him. She didn’t need him to be a party to those sorts of thoughts.

Not now.

“But this isn’t right,” Nora said as she paced with nervousness. “You can’t simply invade people’s minds like this.”

“That’s not how it works. I don’t try to do it. It’s more as if your mind invades mine. If I want to keep the thoughts of others out, I have to slog away with a will to hold up a mental shield. They shoot about like darts, thoughts do, ricocheting here and there.” He dragged a hand over his crown as if his fingers might gather up the stray thoughts and yank them out. “As you can imagine, I’m not very good in a crowd.”

“I don’t want you to hear my thoughts,” she said with vehemence. “Why did you even tell me you could?”

He shrugged. “You asked why my family thought me mad. I told you.”

“You might have lied. People do, you know.” Hadn’t he ever heard that ignorance was bliss? She’d never be able to relax around the man again. “Uncomfortable truths are best left unspoken.”

“The truth is all I have.”

“But you can turn it off, can’t you?”

“Yes, with effort.” He grimaced. “There. My mental shield is up. Now I have no certain knowledge of what’s swirling about in that pretty head of yours, but I can guess.” He climbed out of bed and crossed the room to her. “You think I’m a monster.”

“No, I don’t.” Then because she could be truthful, too, she added, “Maybe a little.”

To her surprise, that made him chuckle. “That makes two of us.”

Then he reached for her and drew her into his arms. She went willingly, though she knew she shouldn’t. He felt so good, so warm and big and comforting.

But he really wasn’t a comfortable sort of man. She’d never know if he was plucking thoughts from her willy-nilly. It wasn’t right.

It wasn’t safe.

“Wait a moment. You said something a moment ago.” She pulled back and searched his face. “Something about you knowing officially about the Fides Pulvis. What did you mean by that?”

“This is not the first time you’ve thought about it in my presence. I saw it in your mind briefly that first night at Lord Albemarle’s party. The same night I saw an image of your Emilia.” He stroked her cheek and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “She’s a beautiful child. But then she would be with you as her—”

“Hold now.” She wiggled out of his arms. “You let me believe the Duke of Camden’s sources of information led to you knowing about my daughter.”

“No, I merely implied it. You came to that conclusion on your own.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What about your devotion to truth?”

“What I said about His Grace’s resources was true. It just wasn’t relevant to the subject at the time,” he said with such an earnest expression she was tempted to believe him, but she held herself back. The man had just admitted to deception, after all. “I’m sorry if you feel deceived. That was not my intention.”

It was exactly his intention. “Why did you come here today? Really?”

“You invited me to see your orchids.”

He seemed genuinely surprised by her growing outrage. An innocent unjustly accused. Well, Satan could masquerade as an angel of light, too.

“No, you said you came for me, Pierce,” she corrected. “But that’s not right either, is it? What did you really hope to accomplish?”

“But I did come for you, Honora.”

“Stop calling me that.” He was trying to change her back into someone she no longer was. Her cheeks heated and not with embarrassment. She was angrier than she’d been since her father had slammed the door on her for the final time. “My name is Nora.”

“Not to me,” he murmured, then raised his voice. “All right, if you must know, the Duke of Camden is concerned about the psychic properties inherent in that Trust Powder. He wants to know Lord Albemarle’s intentions for it. How does he plan to use it?”

She forced herself to think of anything other than Benedick’s plans to influence the Prince Regent to a policy that would lead to a return to war with France. “So you came here with the express purpose of spying on my mind.”

“No, I—”

“The truth, Pierce. It’s all you have,” she parroted. “Remember?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I came to spy.”

He came to invade her. To violate her. She felt like retching, but she swallowed back the rising bile. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing how his betrayal affected her. “Leave now.”

“But that’s not all I came to do.”

“I know. You also came to lose your virginity. Very well. Mission accomplished all around.” She trembled with rage. The man had used her on several levels. If he didn’t leave soon, she’d fly at him, nails bared. “Now get out.”

He bowed correctly to her, as correctly as a naked man could bow, and strode to the door. He closed it behind him softly. She waited with an ear to the oak for his retreating footfalls, for some indication that he was retrieving his discarded wardrobe from the stairs and landings and by the back door, but she heard nothing.

He was still standing on the other side of the door.

“Go away, Westfall,” she said.

“Not until I tell you.”

Silence stretched between them for the space of ten heartbeats.

“What?” she asked in exasperation, trying to keep her mind blank, determined not to think anything she didn’t want him to know.

“I never expected this to happen.”

“Then let’s just say you experienced extreme good luck and leave it at that,” she said crossly.

“You’re right about one thing. I did hope to learn how Lord Albemarle will use the Pulvis Fides, because if he intends to harm the royal family, I’ll try to stop him somehow.”

“You are mad, Westfall, if you believe I won’t tell him that.”

“I won’t blame you if you do,” he said. “But there’s something else at work here. Something I don’t understand. The truth is, I think I love you, Honora.”

He walked away then, but she didn’t move until she heard the heavy front door close with a thud. Then she slid to the floor with her knees tucked to her chin and her back to the oak.

Westfall didn’t love her. The man was half mad and she just happened to have been the first woman he’d ever lain with. If he’d lost his virginity to a doxy in Whitechapel, he’d have told her the same thing.

He thinks he loves me. How ridiculous.

Her chest constricted. She needed someone to love her. Wanted it with a fierceness that threatened to suck all the air from her lungs.

But she didn’t deserve it.