For a moment, she blinked at him in befuddlement, trying to comprehend the meaning.
“My name,” he added, his voice somehow…softer, having lost some of the crisp aristocratic starch he ordinarily wielded like a weapon. “You may use it, if you like.”
He was giving her permission to use his given name. Her heart thudded hard.
“Garrick,” she repeated, liking it far too much on her tongue. She swallowed, trying to chase the inconvenient emotions persisting. Desire was all she would allow herself to feel for him. “You may call me Pen.”
“Pen.”
Her name in his baritone made a wicked thrum of need pulse to life at her core. For a heartbeat, all she could manage was to stare at the arrogant lord who had believed the worst of her when he had first appeared at The Sinner’s Palace. Who perhaps still did.
And yet, he was on his knees before her.
She wanted to see what was hidden beneath his aristocratic layers. Needed to. She reached for his coat, and he aided her in shucking the garment, along with his waistcoat. His cravat came next, and they worked together to pull his shirt over his head.
Shadows and light flickered over him as he moved, lovingly illuminating and then hiding the contours of his broad chest. What a marvel his clothing had been hiding. He took her breath. She was reaching for him again without conscious thought, her palms coasting over his warm skin, following muscle and sinew to the waistband of his trousers.
He made a new sound, laden with such raw need, she would have fallen to her knees herself were she not already seated before him. Whatever Viscount Lindsey thought of her, despite the disparity in their stations, he wanted her. His words had told her one tale, and the rest of him was telling another. For the first time, he was not invulnerable.
When her right hand paused over his wildly beating heart, she had no doubt of it.
“Pen,” he repeated, his voice a delicious rasp to her senses. But when those sculpted lips would have said more, she pressed her fingers to them, staying his words.
His mouth stretched into a smile beneath her touch, and he tipped his head back, kissing her fingers before sucking one into his mouth. The silken, wet heat and the suction sent a peculiar rush of need through her, the gesture intimate and erotic all at once.
Holding her gaze in the dim light, he released the digit he had been torturing to kiss a path up her inner wrist. He caressed her thighs in slow, knowing strokes, thumbs pressing lightly into the delicate flesh. He stopped at her elbow, his head lifting, the new angle allowing the flickering candelabra from the nearby hall to catch on his sharp cheekbones and haughty brows.
She was melting. Falling. Desiring.
Being foolish as she had been before, it was true.
But she was older now. Wiser, she liked to believe. And besides, when a woman’s heart had already been broken, there were only pieces remaining. Nothing left to shatter any more, since it had been ground to dust beneath Daniel’s boot heel.
The thought of the man she had so recklessly believed herself in love with was enough to propel Pen into action. She hooked her legs around Lord Lindsey’s waist and pulled him onto the generous sofa with her. He went willingly, easily, falling atop her whilst taking care to keep his weight from crushing her into the tufted silk cushions and abundance of pillows adorning the piece of furniture.
His scent encircled her, and so did his heat, his strength. The evidence of how badly he desired her was pressed thick and hard against her where she ached the most. As if to prove just how much they wanted each other, he swiveled his hips, bringing the lower halves of their bodies into delicious, grinding connection.
“I did not bring you here for this,” he said.
Even if he had, she was beyond the point of caring. The two of them had been dancing about each other from the moment their paths had first clashed. In some ways, it was inevitable that they found themselves thus.
“But you want it now,” she finished for him, her hips chasing his as he rocked against her.
She knew what the act of making love entailed. Although any one of her brothers would have torn Daniel Peabody limb from bloody limb if they had discovered what had happened when Pen had been sixteen, that long-ago time when she had believed herself in love with him had made certain she possessed a rudimentary understanding. But although years had passed and time had faded her memory, she knew she had never felt this wildly wanton. The feelings and sensations she had known before were a tepid comparison.
“I want it,” the viscount—Garrick—said, bringing her mind from the murky depths of a past best left in the dark. “I want you.”
Another slow roll of his hips.
And she was wet and aching.
“Then have me,” she invited, shamelessly pressing her breasts into his chest as she arched her back. Her nipples were hard and eager to be touched. Her entire body was aflame.
This was his fault. He alone had caused this madness, and now he had to put an end to it for the both of them. There could be no other outcome to this night save one.
“Have you,” he repeated in a dangerous voice.
One that was sinful and husky and promised delirious passion.
“Yes.” The need was rising up from a new place within her, and with it came a sense of power she had never known. She was no stranger to men looking upon her with rampant desire. Each night she had donned a wig and sung for the patrons of The Sinner’s Palace, she had watched the fancy nobs as they looked on, longing for the illusion she had presented them.
But Lord Lindsey was different. He did not desire the blonde wig or the saucy singer, not the role she had played. No, indeed. He wanted plain Pen Sutton, the fiery-haired daughter of a drunkard, who had lived in the East End all her life. Who sometimes dropped an h and spoke flash despite the efforts her eldest brother had gone to so that she would speak like a lady. Garrick desired her not because of what and who she was, ready to take advantage of her, but rather in spite of it. And somehow, that made a difference to Pen.
That made all the difference.
He stilled, dipping his head to rest his forehead against hers, his breath fanning across her mouth in the most delicious prelude to a kiss she had ever experienced. “This is a mistake.”
She froze, thwarted desire sending a waterfall of disappointment to douse the flames of her desire. But before she could say a word, his mouth was on hers. He was kissing her again. Deeply, hotly, deliciously. Kissing her as if his next breath depended upon the precise manner in which he moved his lips against hers.
His hand slipped between them, working meticulously on the fall of her trousers. Buttons slid from moorings. Fabric parted. His tongue was in her mouth. And then, the miracle of his touch, stroking there, where she wanted him most. Where her flesh was throbbing and longing for his touch.
He lifted his head, breaking the kiss, his breathing harsh. “Christ. You are dripping.”
As if to punctuate his words, he worked his fingers over her folds in slow, steady thrusts. The wet sounds seemed to echo in the hushed silence of the house. There was nothing between them but the steady rise and fall of their breaths and the sound of him teasing her.
When he parted her folds and he found the sensitive bud hidden within, her hips bucked and she cried out.
He toyed with her, circling her nub and then delving deeper, finding her cunny. He probed her with his middle finger, and then he lowered his head to suck her nipple as he thrust into her with that lone digit. The invasion was new, unexpected.
Good.
Sogood.
Better than good. What was better than good? The best. Lord in heaven and all the angels, yes. He was the best.
She arched into his touch, bringing him deeper.