“—will write to you again when I am due to return. Regards, Grace.”
Grace obediently wrote down the words Alaric dictated to her as he leaned against the side of the desk, his arms folded in front of his chest. A letter to George which was much as Alaric had told her it would be, informing the other man of her decision to return to Devon for a week, possibly longer.
She straightened and replaced the pen in its holder once she had finished writing. Alaric immediately picked up the sheet of paper to check its contents.
His gaze was narrowed when he raised it to look at her. “Why have you signed it simply G rather than Grace?”
She steadily met that suspicious gaze. “Because it is the way we have previously agreed that I should sign any necessary communication between the two of us, so no one would have reason to question a missive from a woman who is not George’s wife.”
Alaric’s top lip curled. “You mean so that his wife would not have reason to question it.”
Her cheeks warmed. “Yes.”
He studied those flushed cheeks. “Have you had reason to write to Redding before today?”
She nodded. “Firstly, to let him know I had arrived in London, and then again when I had a sore throat several months later and thought it best to avoid the possibility of George visiting me and later suffering with it too. What are you doing?” She frowned as Alaric carefully placed the letter down on the desktop before the fingers of one hand were lifted to curl about one of Grace’s wrists.
His gaze was now fixed on the base of her throat. “Answer the question again.”
“What?”
His nostrils flared. “Have you had reason to write to Redding before today?”
She frowned her irritation. “I have just told you I have.”
“And did you sign that communication as merely G, as the two of you have previously agreed?”
She swallowed before answering. “I did, yes.”
“You just lied to me, twice,” Alaric announced flatly. “There was no previous letter and you will now sign your full name of Grace,” he instructed mildly.
“But—”
“Arguments regarding my decision as to whether or not you are lying or telling the truth will only add to those consequences I have already mentioned,” he warned as he released her wrist.
“Without telling me what those consequences will be,” she snapped.
Alaric looked unperturbed. “Write your name in full.”
Grace bit back her frustration as she signed her name to the letter.
Alaric immediately picked it up and folded it before applying a wax seal to the loose fold at the back. “Now add Redding’s name and address on the front.” He waited for her to do so. “I will take this to the kitchen so that Stanley can ride back to London and deliver it to the earl.” He crossed the room and opened the door before stepping out into the hallway.
Grace contemplated whether or not his brief absence would be enough time for her to make good her escape.
Before she could decide Alaric came back into the study and locked the door behind him before pocketing the key.
Apparently, Grace was not to be allowed to escape just yet.
Which was not to say she would not continue to search for a way in which she might slip away and then find her own transport back to London.
“Up.”
She gave Alaric a startled glance at the terse instruction.
“Stand up, Grace,” he repeated evenly.
She eyed him warily as she rose to her feet, that need for wariness confirmed when Alaric sat in the chair so that she stood between his parted legs. He pulled her down so that she now sat on one of his muscular thighs. He placed one of his arms about her waist to hold her in place, the other hand once again curled about one of her wrists.
“How many lovers did you have before Redding?” he prompted before Grace had caught her breath enough to object to his highhanded manner.
Grace drew in a harsh gasp at being asked such a personal question. It was too much on top of the intimacy of being forced to feel the heat of Alaric’s thigh pressing against her bottom and his arm like a steel band about her waist.
“You will answer the question, Grace.” Alaric’s tone was completely uncompromising.
“And if I choose not to do so?”
He shrugged. “Then I will add one more to the two consequences you have already accrued.”
Grace glared. “This line of questioning does not appear to be in the least fair when I have no interest in knowing who your previous lovers were!” Which, whether she wished it or not, after the intimacies the two of them had shared last night, she believed she and Alaric now were.
Nor was her answer completely truthful.
Alaric was so much older than her, and no doubt he had been sexually active for at least fifteen of those years. Which would make the list of his previous lovers very long indeed.
Grace really didn’t want to know how long.
Because she cared for him herself?
Because she was falling in love with him?
Much as Grace wished she could claim otherwise, she could think of no other explanation as to why she had so willingly responded to Alaric’s lovemaking the previous night.
But under no circumstances did she intend for him to ever know of her feelings for him when she knew herself to be nothing more than another conquest to him. One, moreover, Alaric believed he had succeeded in taking from another man.
“I do not believe it fair that Redding had you first,” Alaric said, confirming his continued displeasure over that relationship. “Which is also why I now wish to know how many other lovers you had before him.”
Grace looked down to where Alaric’s fingers were clamped so tightly about her wrist, his knuckles and the skin about her arm were white. A brief glance at his face showed her his eyes were glittering darkly, with deep and angry grooves in his cheeks and beside his thinned lips.
All outward signs that if Grace did not answer him honestly, those consequences he alluded to could become very dire indeed.
She drew in a deep breath as she lifted her chin. “None.”
Alaric’s tension was tangible. “None?”
“No.”
“Redding took your virginity?”
Grace paused, knowing how revealing her next answer might be. “No,” she finally answered.
“No?” Melborne repeated softly. “Are you saying you are still a virgin?”
Grace’s mouth had gone dry. “Yes.”
“But— How can that be?” He appeared to be too shocked to hide it.
She gave a choked sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh at the bewilderment of his expression. “The usual way, I believe, in that no man’s cock has ever been inside my vagina.” Her cheeks warmed.
Alaric’s lips thinned. “How about your arse?”
“Not there either,” she snapped.
Alaric leaned back so that he might see her face more clearly. “But that— What do you and Redding do on those evenings he visits you?”
“We sit and talk.”
“About what?”
She shrugged. “Everything. Nothing.”
“That makes absolutely no sense.”
“Were any of the answers I gave you lies?” Her gaze was unwavering as it met his.
To Alaric’s surprise, he realized the pulse in Grace’s wrist was as steady as the one in her throat. Both indications she was telling him the truth.
Except Alaric really had no idea how any red-blooded man in his prime could ever— “Is Redding impotent?” It seemed the only explanation left to explain the other man’s odd behavior. But even that would not explain why he had set a beautiful woman up in her own house, knowing he was incapable of fucking her.
“I find that doubtful considering he has three children,” Grace answered calmly. “The youngest child is less than a year old, I believe.”
Alaric shook his head. “Then explain to me how Redding spends two evenings a week in your company without fucking you?”
Grace drew in a ragged breath, her gaze no longer meeting his. “I cannot do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would require me to break a promise.”
“To Redding?”
“Yes.”
Alaric was becoming more and more frustrated with this conversation. That frustration quickly turned to anger the longer he failed to think of any circumstances under which Grace and Redding might have reason to meet at her home for two hours twice a week that did not involve a sexual relationship. He couldn’t think of a single one.
“I wish for you to answer the question, Grace,” he bit out, his jaw tightly clenched.
“And I have said I cannot.”
“Because of a promise you made to Redding.”
“Yes.”
“Stand.”
“You are hurting me, Alaric.” She used her other hand to try to pry off the tight grip his fingers now had of her wrist.
He released her abruptly, wincing when he saw how her delicate skin was already starting to turn red. “You will stand, Grace.”
She looked at him searchingly, drawing in a soft gasp in response to whatever emotion she saw in Alaric’s narrowed gaze. “George and I are not lovers,” she insisted.
“Then what the hell are you?”
“Friends. We are friends,” she implored when Alaric grasped the tops of her arms and pulled her to her feet.
He kept her a prisoner between his thighs as he leaned forward to sweep everything from the top of his desk.
“The ink will stain the carpet,” she cried as the small bottle containing the dark liquid tipped over and began to do exactly that.
“Let it,” he growled as he reached around her to unfasten the buttons at the back of Grace’s gown before lifting her and placing her on her back on top of the now-empty surface of his desk.
“What are you doing?” she squeaked when he threw up her skirts.
Alaric made no reply but untied the ribbon at the top of her drawers before easily lifting her bottom so he could slide the garment down her thighs before removing it completely.
He stepped between her parted thighs and breathed in the aphrodisiac of her juices as he gazed hotly at her bare pussy.
Grace might verbally protest, but the dark curls covering her mound were already damp with her arousal, the swollen lips there slick with the same juices and flushed a deep pink.
Alaric gently parted those lips to reveal the engorged nub hidden between those delicate folds.
The temptation was too much, and he bent low enough to allow him to spend several minutes licking up the juices from those soft lips and sucking that sensitive clit. He didn’t relent until Grace was squirming, mewling with pleasure and on the verge of a climax.
He straightened enough to see her cheeks were flushed and there was a feverish glitter in her eyes. Nor had she moved her hands from where they lay curled into fists beside her.
Alaric’s anger faded as quickly as it had arisen, leaving only a desire to please her. “Say yes, Grace,” he encouraged.
She gave a dazed shake of her head. “To what…?”
“To me. To whatever I wish to do, however I wish to touch you, so that I might give you the most pleasure,” he encouraged throatily.
Grace knew she should say no.
That she must say no.
Instead, she heard the word yes leave her lips.
Not just yes, but yes, please.
It seemed her permission was all the encouragement Alaric needed to unleash a fury of passion that was even more devastating than their lovemaking the previous night.
Within seconds, Grace had reached a climax that ripped through her whole body in wave after wave of pleasure.
“One,” Alaric murmured.
Grace heard him, but had no time to think what he meant by it as she once again became lost in the pleasure of Alaric’s lips and tongue as he licked and devoured her aroused flesh.
She cried out at the power of her second release when Alaric first bit and then sucked hard on her swollen nubbin.
“Two.”
“I do not— Alaric!” she groaned, and then screamed when a third climax quickly followed the second.
“Three,” he murmured his satisfaction.
Grace suddenly suspected what he was doing. That this assault on her senses was the consequence for her having previously lied to him and then refusing to answer any more of his questions.
“Answer me, Grace. Tell me why Redding has set you up as his mistress but has not taken your body.”
She shook her head. “I do not believe that is what he has done.”
“To all intents and purposes, he has.”
“I cannot say why—”
“You will,” Alaric vowed as he pulled down the top of her unfastened gown to free her breasts.
He immediately sucked one of her engorged nipples into the heat of his mouth, his tongue a rough rasp against that responsive flesh, one of his hands moving unerringly between her thighs to rub and stroke until pleasure once more held her tightly in its grip.
“Alaric, please stop!” she begged as she tried to dislodge the pleasure of both his mouth and hand. “I cannot. Not again,” she sobbed as she felt yet another climax ripping her apart.
“Tell me,” Alaric demanded fiercely. “I will not stop until you do.”
Grace became lost in a fever of unrelenting pleasure as Alaric caressed and squeezed and bit her as he gave her climax after climax after climax. He no longer bothered to count them.
That onslaught continued until that fever of pleasure became so painful, Grace knew she could not withstand another one.
“Alaric, please! Please, you must stop!” She was sobbing in earnest now.
He raised his head, his eyes glittering darkly, his swollen lips slick with her juices. “Then answer me,” he demanded again. “Answer me, damn you.”
Hot tears streamed down her cheeks as she cried out, “George is my brother!”