Pen.
Garrick held her tight, face pressed to her throat, breathing in her delectable scent, and thrust into her again and again, even when there was nothing left and she had wrung every last drop of mettle from him. Still, he found himself reluctant to withdraw. She felt too good, too perfect.
Gradually, as the lust fled, replaced by the knowledge of what he had done, he realized his error. He had spent inside Pen. Ever since his first, he had been circumspect. Careful to use a sheath and to withdraw for good measure.
Yet he had lost control with her.
Of course he had. Had he believed he would have been able to cling to his restraint in this more than any other matter where she was concerned? What a fool he was. A fool who never should have given in to temptation and come looking for her tonight. A fool who should have made good on his promise to his mother that he would soon be selecting a bride.
Lady Hester.
Her name, like the thought of her, made him go cold. Killed any lingering vestiges of ardor. Ration and reality intruded, sucking the sated languor from him and replacing it with unwanted tension.
Recriminations descended even as Pen held him in the circle of her arms, her heart beating furiously against his chest.
He had no right to do what he had done.
He most definitely should not have kissed her, and he absolutely never should have bedded her. What must she think of him? Hell, he disgusted himself.
He had lost himself with a woman before, and he had vowed he would never do so again. His path in life had been chosen long ago, before Pen had ever entered it.
Duty.That was his path.
Why did that lone word feel so suddenly harsh and cold?
“This was a mistake,” he blurted, disengaging from Pen. “Please forgive me.”
* * *
This was a mistake.
Pen rolled away from Viscount Lindsey and rose from the bed, frantic to find her discarded chemise as his words echoed in her mind. She had been reveling in the aftermath of their passion. There had been something perfect about the fit of his cock inside her body, his seed filling her, his chest pressed to hers, his kiss, the wonderful weight of his body pressing hers to the bed. But now, all those feelings had been banished.
How quelling, that sentence.
“Yes, it was a mistake,” she agreed coolly, willing away the tears that threatened to fall. She would not allow Lord Lordly to see her weakness for him, to spy her at her most vulnerable. Likely, it would only serve to heighten his already egregious arrogance. “A terrible one.”
She found the chemise and threw it over her head, needing to shield herself from him in every way. Allowing him to see her naked for another moment more felt akin to a new sort of betrayal.
“Pen.” His voice was concerned, his hand on her lower back intimate.
It was the touch of someone who cared, when he plainly did not. She spun about to face him. “Kindly dress yourself, milord. You’ll find the door where you left it when you first trespassed within. Don’t let it hit you in the arse on your way out.”
“You are angry with me,” he said, bending to snap his trousers over his calves and hips.
Lord, where was a vase when one needed to hurl it at a scurrilous viscount’s head?
She was so furious, she could not hide the trembling in her voice or her hands as she donned her discarded petticoat and attempted to fasten it.
“His lordship deserves a prize for his astute powers of observation,” she snapped, unable to keep the bitterness from her tone or her heart. Only he would dare to pleasure her to the edge of reason, only to claim it had all been a mistake and revert to drawing room etiquette. “How politely you speak, as if we are perfect strangers meeting at an assembly room rather than a man and woman who were just fucking.”
He flinched at her use of the vulgar word, but the sight of his disapproval provided no delight. She had come of age in the halls and gaming rooms of this gaming hell and in the darkened alleys of the rookeries. She knew words—and likely deeds as well—that would make his lordly toes curl in his Hessians.
“What happened between us now was not…” He paused, then shook his head. “It was more than that.”
Yes, she most certainly had believed it had been.
Until he had opened his beautiful mouth and dashed her heart to bits for the second time.
She pinned a cold smile to her lips. “Let us not pretend, my lord. We have been dancing about this desire burning between us ever since you appeared here at The Sinner’s Palace, calling me everything but a lady. We wanted each other, and now we have had each other. Our curiosity has been sated. I thank you for the evening’s diversion, but you really ought to go now.”
He pulled his shirt over his head, robbing her of the view of his well-muscled chest and flat abdomen. It was just as well. Her stupid body could not seem to tell that he was crushing her heart into dust. But what had she expected would come of allowing him into her bed? A declaration of love?
Had she believed, even for a moment, that the august Viscount Lindsey would deem her worthy of himself when he had not even believed her good enough for his youngest brother? Hardly.
He reached for her, but she danced away, leaving him to retrieve his wrinkled cravat from the floor with an air of reluctance. “Curse it, Pen, let me explain.”
“I think you have done quite enough talking,” she snapped, her voice going shrill in her attempts at maintaining her composure, which grew more difficult by the second.
She was filled with self-loathing. How had she allowed herself to be so weak? He was everything her brothers had warned her against, every reason why they told her the quality was never to be trusted. Why she was meant to stay far, far away from all lords. And yet she had fallen neatly into his trap. Yet another conquest for him. An East End fortune hunter he instantly regretted making love to the moment he had drained his ballocks.
“Perhaps you have no wish to hear it, but I am going to tell you anyway,” he countered, commanding her gaze.
He had donned his gleaming boots and was only lacking his coat, which still lay on her floor. The wickedest part of her briefly imagined tossing it into the grate and watching it catch flame from the fireplace’s flickering embers. It would serve him right to leave without all his rum rigging.