Proof by Seduction (Carhart 1)

Farewell. Gareth froze. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, but there was no other possibility. Not between a fraudulent fortune-teller who didn’t want to become a mistress and the Marquess of Blakely. For tonight, Lord Blakely would be set to one side. Tonight was just for Gareth and Jenny…and farewell.

Jenny took his hand in the moonlight. She led him in the dark, into the back room, her steps sure. Just this evening, he’d taken tea at the tiny table he felt brush by his legs. Just this evening, he’d seen that bed, and had thought of her lying naked upon it.

That contact—the feel of her warm fingers closing around his, the illusion of the whorls of her fingerprints burning into his hand and branding him—was all the greeting his body needed to leap up in recognition. You. It was not so much a word that her touch sparked, but a resonance. Like a glass

goblet shivering under a soprano’s song, his soul thrilled at her touch. Yes. You.

In Gareth’s time with this woman, he’d developed quite a vocabulary for her. Fraud. Charlatan. Madame Esmerelda. Liar.

The quiet night swallowed all those words before he could voice them. They didn’t resonate inside him.

Confidante. Friend. Lover. He didn’t speak these, either, but they settled into his flesh nonetheless. A mere touch on her cheek could not suffice. He pulled her into his arms, felt her breasts press and flatten against his chest. Her breath warmed his jaw. Those unspoken syllables surrounded them both.

After all these weeks, he had expected this kiss—the one that preceded intimacy—to shake him with lust. It would burn high and hot, like kindling. After that bright flare had burnt itself out, there would be nothing left but ash.

Ash, and victory.

But from the first moment his lips touched hers, he realized how wrong he had been. Her soft lips did not feel like the temporary slaking of lust, nor did they taste like a stopgap cure for the loneliness that lodged deep in his breast. Her mouth met his, sweet and trusting, even after all these weeks, after everything they’d said to each other. Her hands touched his elbows, slid up his shoulders. Her body molded against his, settling around him as close and welcome as hot bathwater.

Their mouths melded into one. He lost himself in her taste, in the sweet scent of the breath sighing from her. The kiss was apology for deception and every harsh word. It was acceptance and understanding. It said what words could not. You. You. I want you.

In the silent darkness, he let his body spell the truth. He wanted her. He wanted the courage of the woman who had told Ned about her deception. He wanted the intelligence that had thrown him off balance for the last few weeks.

“Jenny,” he murmured against her lips. Her name. An incantation, a prayer.

The kiss changed from recognition to need and hope. He hoped she might remember Gareth rather than Lord Blakely. Just as she’d divested herself of Madame Esmerelda, and had, with her kiss, become only Jenny. It was that hope that drove him to run his hands down the inviting curves of her body. He hungered for human connection. For contact, skin against skin. Soul against soul. And with Jenny, his most private name on her lips.

Skin, flesh and soul—all three conspired, and Gareth drank in the swell of hips covered only by the thin material of her chemise. His palms molded the curves of her body, masked only by that inconsequential layer of warm muslin. The swell of her breast, the hard nub of her nipple. Up over her shoulders. He leaned his head and inhaled the scent of her neck.

She sighed against him and ran her hands through his hair.

His scalp tingled and fire raced through his veins.

The last twenty-four years of Gareth’s life formed one long, lonely chain of days—strong, cold, iron links forged by the title his grandfather had held. An unbroken line of responsibility handed from father to son. It was not Lord Blakely, bound by the shackles of his title, who would join this woman.

It was Gareth. And Jenny’s lips found his. Her mouth opened to him. Not his title. Not his money. But a man.

Her hands, cool in the dark of the night, fumbled against his neck and untied his cravat. He restrained himself, letting her slide the cloth off his neck. It swished to the ground. It took all his willpower not to rip his own clothing off in unseemly haste. Instead, he traced a pattern against her flesh—hip to breast, pausing to outline the circle of her nipple. Then back down to hip.

“Jenny,” he whispered into her ear.

She shivered. She didn’t give him his name back. Instead, her hands slid down his chest, unbuttoning his jacket and then attacking his waistcoat. Gareth shrugged out of them and pulled his shirt over his head. Cool night air pebbled his skin.

Her hands pressed against his bare chest. Each finger splayed across his torso, imprinting him with her warmth. Her scent. Desire rocked through him, and he could wait no longer.

He picked her up, his muscles straining, and walked to her bed. There he laid her. The light was poor—a few strains of starlight, filtered through uneven panes of yellowing glass and who knew how much airborne haze. He could see the lines of her limbs illuminated beneath him, but the details—the precise color of her skin, the swell of her hips—were obscured by shadow.

He found the soft skin of her bare knees just the same. He slid his hands up the curves of her thighs. The warmth of her limbs turned to heat as he neared the juncture between her legs. He caught the material of her chemise around his arms as his fingers skimmed higher. Breasts, soft hills topped by hard nubs, met his hands. The material gathered up around her collarbone as she adjusted her arms. And then it was over her head and she was bare, completely bare.

Bare to his hands and his mouth. This time, instead of circling the peak of her nipple with his thumb, he caught it in his mouth, tasting the sweet pleasure of her skin. He swirled his tongue around the tightening bud. She arced off the bed, belly pressing against his abdomen. Her thighs lay a scant inch from his member.

“Oh, God,” she moaned.

He’d have preferred Oh, Gareth.

He set about drawing out that precious word.

Her hands fluttered against his bare shoulders. Her touch was as tentative as a butterfly, unsure if it should stay. Gareth tasted the light salt of her breast again, and her fingernails drove into the blades of his shoulders. She pulled him down to her. Now he sucked; he teased the end of her hard nipple with his tongue, and then with his teeth. Her hands ran slowly down his ribs, trailing fire as they did so. They found the fall of his trousers. She fumbled in the dark. He felt the fabric loosen. A few kicks, and the inconvenient material fell down his legs.

Her hands slipped against his skin. Gareth’s heart beat wildly in anticipation. Her fingers slid around his erect member. Heat and pleasure filled him and he shut his eyes. A rising sea of lust besieged him with sensation. The warm clasp of her hand. The slide of her palm down his shaft. Here in the dark, her body pressed against his. Eager. Waiting.

Thank God for ruined women.

He was ruined, too. Ruined, and waiting for her to remove that last layer of pretense between them. To lift that cloak of anonymity and speak his name.

But she did not. And so instead of spreading Jenny’s legs, he kissed his way down her body. He trailed his tongue in her navel, and she shuddered against him. He kissed her pubic bone.

And by God, though she moaned, still his name didn’t cross her lips. He could feel her uncertain query by the tense quiver in her thighs. Her hands clutched the coverlet, bunching it into wrinkles underneath her grip. He answered the question her body asked with action. He pushed her legs apart and kissed her hot, sweet cleft. He dipped his tongue between her legs, tasting the salty sweetness of woman. She was wet and ready, but he wanted more from her than mere readiness.

His hand crept between her legs; he slid a finger into her passage. It was tight and hot, slippery and welcoming. Her muscles clamped around him, and he added a second finger, listening to her gasp. Learning the ways of her body. He found the spot right there—the one that made her moan and arch against him when he curled his finger up in a come-hither. He leaned forward and tweaked her nipple with his spare hand, and her passage contracted around his hand, harder. Heat mounted. He bent his head and ran his tongue against the sensitive spot between her legs.

Her body stiffened. Her passage clamped down on the fingers inside her. “Oh.” The word was wrung out of her. “Oh.” Again, and louder. Then—“Gareth.”

His name swept through him, a sensation as primitively powerful as the strongest release. Wave after wave pulsed through them. He tasted her pleasure, felt it throb around his fingers. “Gareth,” she screamed again, and his name on her lips seemed more intimate than the physical connection he shared with her.

She gasped so hard she could have been sobbing. Gareth was hard and erect. He levered himself over her. The erect tips of her nipples brushed his c

hest. She struggled up onto her elbows and kissed him. His tongue found hers. He wanted her desperately.

You.

The full length of his erection pressed against her belly. She spread her legs, angling her hips up toward his. As soon as her slick softness touched his member, he was lost.

He was lost, but he was coming home.

Her hips shifted, and the crown of his cock pushed against her body’s opening. And then she rose to meet him—he pushed against her—and he was sinking inch by inch into her soft, waiting flesh. She was tight, so tight, around him. Hot satisfaction gripped him. She fit. Not just her slick female passage, but her body, her hips, her breasts. His hands were of a size to cradle her head. She molded against him as if he’d been made for her. She engulfed him. He filled her.

“Gareth,” she said again.

“Jenny. Oh, God. Jenny.”

The names came simultaneously. Gareth could restrain himself no longer. He took from her. He gave to her. It was an age-old dance, one more powerful and more riveting than logic. She was hot friction clasping him; sparking electricity tracing his veins.

She was his.

Her fingernails cut into his back. She pulled his mouth down to hers in the dark. She kissed him, and he tasted his name on her lips again. As he plunged into her, his mind filled with a coruscating fire. Heat rose around him. Beneath him, she stiffened. Her womb clamped around him in the beginning of a second release. And Gareth let himself go, let everything he had held back flood from him.

He pulled her against him in those final moments, shielding her from the chaotic storm that raged through his body. It passed, leaving him wrung out and sated, his limbs intertwined with hers.

He gulped for air and sanity. It was slow in coming.

What would she say now? Even though it was his body covering hers, his chest pressing her soft curves into the mattress, it seemed that Gareth was the one who was trapped. His lungs burned with exertion. Or emotion. No matter which, he could not find his breath again. It was buried somewhere inside her, deeper even than his still-throbbing cock, clasped in her womb.