Scandalous Miss Brightwells [Book 1-4]

The demure set of her lips and her regal curtsy was a powerful contrast to their heated encounter a few evenings ago. Blood pounded behind his eyes and rushed to his extremities, and he would have put the sofa between them to hide his fierce arousal had she not immediately glided forward and—oh, joy—placed her dainty, gloved hand upon his shoulder and raised her perfect heart-shaped face to his.

It was all the answer he needed. In paying a call unchaperoned upon a bachelor, she was making it clear that she accepted his proposition.

He had been right to have gone about matters as he had, and now vindication swept away the guilt that had weighed him down since she’d regally departed from his carriage twenty-four hours previously. Yes, she had no doubt hoped he would take her for his wife but the only reason she could be here under such circumstances was if she were guilty of what George Bramley had accused her.

Expectation made him lightheaded. He would have snatched her to him right there and greedily devoured her, except for the proud, vulnerable way she bore herself. What a tragedy he could not make her his wife. She was magnificent, both inside and out, and he wasn’t only referring to the regal bearing she projected to the world for he’d sensed her vulnerability beneath the cloak of confidence that was such a large part of her allure. Losing himself inside her had been like losing himself in Heaven.

With a sigh, she brushed her hand across her forehead. “How hot it is in here,” she murmured, turning away from him to glance around the room.

She wore a dove grey bonnet adorned with white flowers and a matching pelisse-robe trimmed with white fur that obviously covered her walking dress.

“The hooks are so difficult,” she said with another sigh, raising her chin and stepping up to him. “Won’t you help me?”

It was only after undoing the third fastening that he realised her daring little ploy. Dear Lord, she wore nothing beneath the fine, woollen garment. No petticoat, no chemise, no stays. He swallowed. No undergarments of any kind. Only neat, half kid boots in green with matching garters to hold up her white silk stockings.

He was on his knees by the time he’d worked loose the final button.

“My God, you are perfection,” he managed through constricted airways as he gazed up at her, trembling with the knowledge of all she was offering him.

She smiled as she rested her small, ungloved hand on his head. Groaning softly, he wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his cheek against her smooth, gently rounded belly, sniffing appreciatively. “Musk and ambergris,” he murmured.

She giggled and bent down to kiss the top of his head as she shrugged off her pelisse. “Yours for the taking, my Lord,” she whispered, giving a provocative wriggle, then arching slightly.

It was all the invitation he needed.

Mesmerised, he gazed up at her from where he still knelt. She was astonishing. The most exquisite confection of womanhood he’d ever encountered in his wanton-woman-filled years as a rake. He couldn’t have torn himself from her had the walls of his town house been crashing down about their ears.

He rose up on his knees, and she placed her hands upon his shoulders, throwing back her head and gasping as he took one perfect, pink peak into his mouth.

Her reaction thrilled him. She shuddered. He could feel her trembling to her very core. He was her prince of pleasure, her puppet master, pulling the strings of her passion. He’d never felt so powerful—so privileged—in all his life.

And it would be no one-off encounter. She’d pledged herself to him as surely as if in marriage. Yet she’d taken all the risks. How he adored her for it. How he intended to honour her sacrifice.

Starting with the truth.

“I think I love you, Miss Brightwell,” he murmured, burying his face between her full, soft breasts. They were his. She was offering him her all.

She gasped as he began to suckle the other nipple and it nearly drove him to the brink. He could feel her temperature rise, the warmth and moistness of her skin acting on him like a red rag to a rutting bull. Her trembling and the constricted way she managed to reply, “I think I love you, too, Lord Fenton,” could not be feigned. She had come back for him because he, of all the men she’d ever enjoyed, was her chosen, consummate lover.

It was time for to return to the other delectable mound of lily-white flesh. Taking the delicate rosebud peak in his mouth, he toyed with it, delighting in her moans and sighs while his fingers tangled in the soft, damp curls at the juncture of her legs. He couldn’t wait to pay a more intimate visit there. He was nearly bursting with the need to do so.

But the time was not yet right. He needed to show her what a generous lover he could be.

When her breath came in short, staccato bursts and he glanced up to see that her eyes were glazed, he paused just long enough to divest himself of his own clothes. Then he was back on his knees wearing only his linen shirt and, he suspected, a grin like the village idiot. This creature had stepped from another sphere into his life, as if a fairy godmother had waved her magic wand and granted him the elixir of love.

He kissed his way up the smooth white silk of her stocking, sucking at the damp, heated flesh above the garter, revelling in her moans—more intense now—and the way her hands fisted in his hair. Her cries of rapture when his tongue found the swollen nub at her centre, slick with desire, nearly undid him.

“More,” she whimpered when he released her before sweeping her into his arms and depositing her upon the hearthrug. The impatient grinding of her hips, the thwarted desire that flared in her eyes, were enough to convince him this was no feigned performance.

Still, he was careful not to move too fast. If she was comparing him with past lovers he didn’t want to come up wanting.

“What can I do for you, my darling Fanny?” he muttered, pausing in the midst of rolling one rosy red nipple around his tongue. “Just name your desire.”

She said nothing for a moment and he watched, mesmerised, as she tore her eyes from his face to rove over his flanks. The flare in their sapphire depths when they reached his manhood suggested she liked what she saw and his tremor of anticipation echoed hers.

Grasping her by her elbows, he raised her so that they were kneeling, facing each other, raw longing surely in each look during this brief hiatus in proceedings.

For a second, she looked uncertain, as if this was new territory. What a consummate actress she was. What a consummate lover! Then, experimentally, she weighed his long, rigid shaft in her hand, gently moulding his balls. He held his breath as she ran her finger round the tip. Lord, it felt good, this prelude to what promised to be the most exquisite pleasure of his life. Lowering her head, she flicked her tongue over the tip of him. He gasped and gripped her shoulders, pushing her back, gasping, “No, I won’t last a minute and right now, Miss Fanny Brightwell, I want to brand you as mine, to claim you, body and soul.”