Читать книгу Nicholas - Elizabeth Amber - Страница 9

Wine! It disgusted her!

Jane kicked the empty bottle she’d tripped over just inside her aunt’s gate.

Normally she wasn’t so clumsy. But after leaving Villa d’Este, she’d been rattled by the bizarre notion that she was being pursued. A few more steps and she’d be on the stairs leading inside Aunt Izabel’s town house.

She picked up the wine bottle for closer examination and rubbed her thumb over the raised insignia molded into its side—“SV.”

When she’d lived in London, she’d discovered many such bottles in various hiding places. This one was her father’s, no doubt, as all the others had been. So much for her aunt’s prophesy that the move from London to Tivoli would cure his intemperance.

She wrinkled her nose at the vinegary smell of the bottle’s dregs.

What did he find so necessary in this fermented brew that he’d thrown his life away on it after their mother had died? And how ironic, when the contents of bottles such as this one had been the very cause of her death! For the coachman who’d driven her the night her carriage had overturned had been intoxicated.

The clouds overhead parted, and the bottle caught the moonlight, momentarily shooting amber starbursts. Anger bubbled up. Under her fingers, the glass heated and rattled. Cracks formed over its surface as though it were arid soil too long denied rain.

She tossed it away. Arcing in midair, the bottle shattered in a soft explosion, sprinkling the path with golden jewels.

Gratified, she stepped over the shards and scurried up the stairs. Her bundle was a comfortable weight against her thigh, heavy with coins and the trappings of her secret occupation.

The coin purse hidden in her armoire grew fatter by the week. One day soon, she would take her sister and leave this place. The money would buy them food and lodging somewhere in the countryside. It would buy anonymity. Security.

Upon reaching the town-house door without discovery or mishap, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her step light, she lifted the latch and let herself in.

From the window above, Jane’s aunt Izabel took careful note of her homecoming.

“Jane has returned from her nocturnal wanderings,” Izabel observed. “In an effort to escape the tightening nuptial noose, she goes on her jaunts more frequently.”

“She’d best keep herself chaste for Signore Nesta,” muttered the figure that shadowed her. “Think you she visits another man?”

Izabel’s laughter trilled. “Jane? Hardly.”

A stealthy masculine hand slid over her shoulder and dusted her collarbone. Hesitantly, as though unsure of its welcome, it delved under the neckline of her nightgown to capture a breast.

Izabel registered the intrusion with a distant corner of her mind and decided to allow it.

At her lack of resistance, the palming of her flesh grew bolder. Familiar fingers found and twisted the small silver ring that pierced her nipple, drawing a sigh from her.

“Come to bed, my love,” the man coaxed.

Izabel let the window curtain swish back into place. Her eyelids drooped, and she leaned against the warmth behind her.

Turning her, he lifted her breasts from their lacy confinement and latched onto the nipple nearest his mouth. The slurp and pull of his lusty nursing caused a pleasant tugging sensation in her womb.

The folds of her gown brushed the backs of her legs, gathering in his fists. Cool air touched her naked bottom as his hands gained the access they sought. Gripping her twin swells, he kneaded.

Fondly, Izabel gazed at the head rooting at her nipple. She stroked his wavy dark hair, so like her own.

He was useful, this stepbrother of hers.

And he was always so agreeably impatient to have her. Outside her bedchamber, rules of propriety had to be observed. There, he could treat her only in a fraternal manner. And on many nights, she deemed it wise to refuse him the use of her body even in private chambers. Denial only served to whet his appetite.

Should she let him have her tonight? It wasn’t wise to make him too certain he could take such liberties at will.

However, she had reason to be grateful to him. Six months ago, he’d brought his daughters to live in her home. The value of her younger niece remained uncertain. At the moment, it was Jane who was of primary interest.

Soon her eldest niece would be made to wed. Signore Nesta had already proven his ability to sire sons. He would no doubt whelp more on Jane with satisfactory haste. And through Jane’s children, dreams long in the making would be realized.

“Let me fuck you, Izzy. Please,” her companion begged.

A sense of feminine supremacy sent a charge of lust sizzling through Izabel’s veins. She delighted in his pent-up frustration.

Tugging his hair, she pressed his lips to rub across hers. The taste of the wine she’d provided was tart and cool on his tongue. Pulling away, she whispered to him in the darkness.

“You may fuck me in good time. But for now, allow me to—” She let the words hang in the air between them. He caught her meaning, and his eyes lit with anticipation.

Her smooth lady’s hands slid down his body, shaping his ribs and then his thighs until she knelt in a pool of silk and lace before him. His shaft twitched and pulsed, tenting his robe just below its sash. A small circle of pre-cum dampened the satin.

Her lips twisted. While a woman’s desire was easily concealed, a man’s was always so pathetically obvious. The power in this act was hers. His desire for her allowed her to control him.

Gently she parted the fabric.

His ruddy crown bobbed forward, its slitted eye leering at her. His shaft wasn’t especially large, though it had felt so the first time it had come inside her. She’d been so young then, her body untried.

Since that day, she’d delighted in trying many things with him. And with others. It was her nature to revel in pleasures of the flesh. Unlike his former milquetoast English wife.

The odor of male musk strengthened as she widened the opening at the front of his robe. Leaning forward, she ran plump, dry lips along his length. Burying her nose in the thicket of hair at his root, she inhaled the slight sourness, a comfortable and familiar smell peculiar to him. She pulled back to swirl her tongue around the under ridge of his crown and then flicked his seeping slit, enjoying his groan, enjoying the salty taste of cum and unwashed flesh.

He rested fingertips on her shoulders and braced his legs. As though from a distance, she watched her hands weigh and fondle his testicles and then grasp his length and guide it forward. Her salivary glands squirted, preparing the cavern of her mouth for the task ahead.

At the first wet stroke, the muscles of his thighs tensed and jerked. The firm O of her lips undulated his crest and then slid to his root. He moaned as her fists, mouth, and tongue worked in unison, coaxing him in the strong, milking way he liked best.

Though her mind roamed elsewhere as she drove him toward his release, she was truly eager to please him. In the end, it was she who’d benefit from his desire.

For this act upon his flesh, he would do anything she asked of him.

For this and other private pleasures she bestowed, he would betray his own children, turn a blind eye to her plans for them.

For this, he had allowed her to kill his wife.

She had never understood why he’d married that dry English vacca in the first place. The marriage had caused him to abandon her—his dearest stepsister—in Tivoli so he could share a home with his erstwhile wife in London.

When he’d no longer been readily available to fuck her, Izabel had been furious. She had married herself to an elder in her church, who’d been so agreeable as to keel over and leave her a wealthy widow within the year. Nevertheless, for all the nights she’d been forced to spend beneath the old rutting buzzard, she blamed her stepbrother and his marriage. Even now, his betrayal stung.

A firm squeeze to his testicles caused him to buck, stuffing his cock deep. A pinch to the tender skin of his inner thigh reminded him the pace was hers to set. He yelped at the light punishment and clenched his buttocks, trying to remain compliant.

His letters to her during his marriage had often complained of his wife’s deficiencies in the bedchamber, of his disappointment that his efforts with her had sired only two children, and both of them girls. Izabel had read the details of their coital incompatibilities with relish and invigorated hope. She had carefully plotted her rival’s downfall.

When he and his family had occasionally visited, she had made sure the former Lady Cova noticed the unusual closeness she and her stepbrother shared. On that last fateful visit he and his wife had made to Italy, she had flaunted the incestuous relationship until Lady Cova had been goaded into openly acknowledging her awareness of it. And her disgust for it. So naive.

In so doing, Lady Cova had shown herself to be a threat. Their enemy. If she were to expose their secret to the world, few would understand. By then, her stepbrother had grown tired of his wife’s cold English bed. He had quickly seen the wisdom of dissolving the marriage in the only way open to them.

His wife’s death.

Arranging it had proven surprisingly simple. Just three bottles of rotgut wine for the coachman and a shallow cut to a carriage axle that ensured it would break along its trip. The rest of her plan had been equally easy.

Following Lady Cova’s demise, the bereft family had come to Italy, and Izabel had opened her home to them. It pleased her to know society at large thought well of her willingness to care for her nieces and to see to a betrothal for Jane. Appearances were so important.

Amusing how things had worked out in the end. Her stepbrother’s marriage to his English milksop, which had once so pained her, now worked to her advantage. The match had produced Jane.

Jane, of unearthly parentage, who was of a good age for marriage.

At last.

Her stepbrother’s length swelled and grew more determined within her mouth as she competently sucked him off. Only when his cream finally spurted and dribbled down her throat did she rise and lead him to her bed.