Читать книгу The Complete Regency Season Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 53

Chapter Twelve

Darian did not believe he had ever seen anything as beautiful as Mariah looked at this moment; her loosened hair was a golden halo about her flushed face, her eyes soft and languid, her cheeks creamy smooth, her lips slightly swollen from their earlier kisses, her breasts still bared to the heat of his gaze. Perfectly rounded and pert breasts, tipped with ruby berries still puckered and reddened from his ministrations.

And beneath all that visual beauty was the smell of her pleasure and that tantalising and erotic perfume that Darian associated only with her.

The hardness of his shaft shifted, surged, as he continued to breathe in that perfume and gaze down at those perfect and desirable globes, as a painful reminder that his own arousal still needed to be dealt with. And sooner rather than later.

‘You are very sure our eavesdropper has left?’ Mariah murmured as she obviously felt that impatient movement of his arousal against her thigh. She sat up beside him to gaze down at that telling bulge in his pantaloons, her breasts still fully exposed to Darian’s heated gaze, resulting in another fierce pulsing of his aching arousal.

Darian had been fully aware of Mariah’s initial resistance to give in to the pleasure he offered, when she believed they had a listening audience. ‘Very sure,’ he confirmed gruffly.

‘Then I believe it is now my turn to pleasure you.’ Her fingers moved to unfasten the buttons of his pantaloons, the bared fullness of her breasts jiggling tantalisingly at the movement. ‘I would not wish for anyone but me to see or hear your own pleasure, either...’ she added softly.

‘Mariah?’ Darian placed one of his hands over both of hers as he looked up at her searchingly, wondering if she really meant what he thought she did.

He had bedded his first woman at the age of sixteen and there had been too many more women since then for him to remember all their faces, let alone their names. Several ladies of the demi-monde had also chosen to take him into their mouth and give him pleasure that way. Could Mariah really be suggesting she might do the same?

Just the idea of having Mariah placing those delectable and pouting lips about his shaft, of having her suck him into her mouth and all the way to the back of her throat, excited Darian to such a pitch he could barely contain it.

Mariah could see that she had momentarily surprised Darian with her intentions. Because, despite the licentiousness she had witnessed during this, and other weekend parties, most of the ladies of the ton were believed to be too delicate, too prim and proper, to be exposed to such acts as she had witnessed earlier today between those statues in Aphrodite’s Temple?

Mariah’s newly found pleasure and sexual liberation, her curiosity, was now such that she must know all. Whether or not she would be any good at this was another matter, but she fully intended to make up with enthusiasm what she lacked in experience.

Mariah looked down searchingly into Darian’s face, noting the glitter to those dark green eyes as he looked back at her, the flush to his cheeks.

And knowing that her own eyes were probably just as fevered, her cheeks as flushed. In anticipation of freeing, of seeing, that enormous bulge inside Darian’s pantaloons...

She had never seen that part of a man in the flesh, so to speak.

She had not seen Darian naked as yet, but even so a glance down at that telling bulge in his pantaloons told her he was so much bigger than Martin had been.

‘Do not think of it, Mariah,’ Darian rasped abruptly, his hand gentle on her cheek as he turned her averted face back towards him. ‘The past has no place here between the two of us, Mariah,’ he assured softly.

Mariah continued to look at him blankly for several long seconds, held captive by those memories, those awful, painful, disturbing memories.

‘You shall be in charge here and now between the two of us, Mariah,’ Darian assured her huskily. ‘Or not. It is your choice to make. I assure you no one shall make you do anything you do not wish to do,’ he promised gruffly as his hands dropped down to his sides. ‘I am yours to do with exactly as you wish, Mariah. Or not,’ he repeated gruffly.

‘But—you have not found your own pleasure yet.’ She frowned. ‘Once aroused, I believed men to need that release more than a woman?’

Darian had to once again fight down his murderous feelings towards Martin Beecham. Because Mariah required his gentleness now, rather than a show of the anger he felt towards her dead husband. For having inflicted, over so many years of his indifference, such an uncertainty of her own sexuality, her desirability. A cruelty indeed to such a beautiful and courageous lady as he now knew Mariah to be.

Darian sat up slightly to run the soft pad of his thumb over the fullness of her bottom lip to take any sting from his next words. ‘You do not have to do anything else, Mariah. I can return to my bedchamber and deal with my arousal myself,’ he assured gently.

Her eyes widened. ‘You are talking of— You would—’

‘Yes.’ He smiled at her reassuringly.

‘You have done that before?’

‘Many times. All young boys do it,’ he dismissed without embarrassment as her eyes widened. ‘Indeed, I believe it becomes their favourite pastime during adolescence.’

‘But it has been many years since you were that age.’

Darian shrugged. ‘A man’s member tends to wake up before him each morning. And without a wife to ease that arousal, it often becomes necessary for a man to take himself in hand.’

‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘And which would you prefer now, to feel your own hand or mine?’

Darian drew his breath in sharply at the candour of her question. ‘Neither. I would prefer to have your mouth on me, Mariah,’ he explained as she looked at him questioningly.

Delicate colour bloomed in her cheeks. ‘As would I.’

Darian groaned low in his throat as he watched Mariah moisten her lips, as if in anticipation of the act. ‘May I watch? It would enhance my own pleasure to do so, Mariah,’ he explained as she gave him another of those curious glances.

Curious and slightly shy glances, which to Darian’s mind did not sit well with the reputation of her being the scandalous and adulterous Countess of Carlisle.

The gossip of Mariah’s adultery Darian could now understand, when her husband had been such an out-and-out and indifferent bastard to the needs of his own wife. That curiosity and shyness needed explaining—

All thoughts fled Darian’s mind as Mariah moved up on her knees beside him so that she might place several pillows behind his head, her bared breasts jutting forward pertly as she moved, allowing her nipples to dangle, so swollen and tempting, just inches away from his rapidly moistening mouth.

‘Give me just a taste of you first, Mariah!’ he groaned achingly.

Mariah tilted her head as she looked down at Darian, easily noting that his fevered gaze was now transfixed on her bared breasts. She leant forward slightly in order to allow one of her nipples to touch his moist and parted lips, gasping slightly as he instantly suckled that fullness into his mouth, eyes closing, lashes resting darkly against his flushed cheeks, as his hand cupped beneath that breast as he drew hungrily on the nipple.

And allowing Mariah to learn another sexual revelation...

That a man could be just as vulnerable during lovemaking as a woman.

Perhaps more so, she realised, as she turned her head so that she might guide one of her hands to untie the ribbon on Darian’s drawers, before turning back the folds of those drawers and finally exposing that impressive bulge.

Darian’s shaft was incredibly long and thick as it jutted up from its nest of dark curls.

Mariah licked her lips. What would he taste like? Salty or sweet? And would—

‘Darian!’ She gave a sudden gasp as she felt a now familiar burn of pleasure growing, swelling, between her own thighs, Darian’s mouth almost painful on her nipple as he suckled deeply, hungrily, teeth biting as his other hand alternately stroked and then squeezed its twin. ‘Darian, I believe I am going to—’

‘Come for me, Mariah!’ he urged fiercely, both hands cupping her breasts now, squeezing and pinching her nipples as he gazed up into her flushed face.

‘I—’ She cried out her pleasure as another climax suddenly ripped through her body, the longest and strongest yet, as her empty sheath contracted and pulsed hungrily, again and again, the swollen nubbin above throbbing. ‘I had no idea I could— That it could happen so—so spontaneously.’ She rested her head weakly on Darian’s shoulder.

It had never happened for Darian with any other woman before now. But as he now knew only too well, Mariah was indeed a woman unlike any other. And the fact that he had been able to give her such pleasure, just by touching her breasts, gave him more satisfaction than he could describe.

Not that he had time to dwell too long on those feelings of wonderment as Mariah now moved sinuously down the length of his body, her bared breasts briefly resting either side of his fiercely jutting erection before she moved to lie between his parted thighs and take him in hand.

‘You are so wondrously big,’ she murmured admiringly as she stroked the length of him. ‘Your skin so velvety soft,’ she added huskily before wrapping the fingers of both hands about the thickness of his engorged and throbbing length. ‘And so wet.’ The soft pad of her thumbs stroked over the tip of his shaft.

Darian felt his groin tighten as her fingers continued to caress him sensually. ‘Mariah!’ he groaned harshly, tensing, as he watched her little pink tongue flick out to taste the tip.

‘Would you like me to stop?’ Her glance up at him, from beneath her long lashes, was wickedly teasing.

‘No!’ Darian protested, groaning as he saw her smile widen, his head falling back on the pillows as he watched her continue to lick him, her tongue a sensuous rasp across his highly sensitised skin, her long golden hair cascading forward to drape sensuously across his thighs.

‘You taste delicious,’ she murmured appreciatively, her breath hot against his dampness.

‘As do you,’ he assured gruffly.

‘Really? Let me see!’ She moved quickly up the bed to lick her own juices from his parted lips. ‘Mmm.’ She nodded, her smile sensuous as she moved back down the bed to kneel between his thighs, before once again taking him in hand and holding him up as she parted her lips and took him into her mouth, her lips tight just beneath the tip and stretched tautly about his thickness.

Darian groaned, hips bucking, the second he was engulfed by the heat of Mariah’s mouth, totally unable to stop himself from thrusting up rhythmically into that wet heat. His hands clenched into the bedclothes at his sides as he fought to hold off, to prolong the moment of his release.

An almost impossible task as he watched Mariah’s head bob up and then down. Up and then down. Each time taking him deeper and then deeper still, her tongue swirling, dipping, as she rose up, before plunging him deeper on the downward stroke. Little by tortuous little, until he finally hit the back of her throat and she began to suck in earnest.

Finally, when Darian thought he might go insane from the pleasure, she released him on the next upward stroke, eyes dark as she looked up at him at the same time as she moved one of her hands lower, caressing him tenderly. ‘Come for me now, Darian,’ she invited as her gaze held his at the same time as she parted her lips and slowly took him to the back of her throat.

Darian felt the tingling at the base of his spine, the painful tightening through his groin, and knew his climax was imminent. ‘You must release me now, Mariah—’

Her own second and throaty ‘Now!’ vibrated down the length of him, sending Darian spiralling over the edge, totally unable to stop from coming as he became lost in the fiercest, most prolonged orgasm he had ever experienced in his life.

Mariah continued to suck on him greedily, cheeks hollowed, and she refused to release him until she had swallowed down all of Darian’s salty-sweet release. Even then she could not resist licking the last few drops from the tip before sitting back on her heels to look up at him.

His dark hair was dishevelled, the dark curls lying damply tousled on his brow. Eyes glittered the colour of emeralds between sleepy half-closed lids, his cheeks were flushed, his lips parted. His body was completely relaxed and exposed to her as his erection lay half-hard still against the tautness of his stomach.

He was beautiful.

Completely satiated, wickedly decadent and utterly beautiful.

And she had done this. She, Mariah Elizabeth Beecham, Countess of Carlisle, had given Darian Hunter, the severe and oh-so-proper Duke of Wolfingham, that look of satiation.

A thrill of satisfaction rose up beneath Mariah’s breasts, filling her chest to bursting, in the knowledge that she had succeeded in giving Darian the same pleasure he had given her.

‘Come up here and lie beside me, Mariah, and let us both catch our breath,’ he invited gruffly now as he opened his arms to her.

Mariah moved up the bed gladly before lying down at his side, her head resting on one broad shoulder, one of her arms draped across the muscled hardness of his stomach as he stroked the long tendrils of her hair. She had never felt so relaxed, never known such peace as this existed, as she glowed in the aftermath of their lovemaking.

This, this closeness, was what it should be like between a man and a woman. What she had been denied for so many years.

What she had denied herself for so many years, too afraid to risk this vulnerability with any man. A vulnerability that Mariah now knew applied to both the man and the woman; a man could not be any more vulnerable than when he allowed a woman to take that precious part of himself into her mouth and pleasure him. As she had been just as vulnerable when she’d allowed Darian to pleasure her in the same way.

Such intimacies required complete trust, from both the man and the woman.

As Mariah had learnt to trust Darian.

Not just with her body, but with the secrets of her past, as well as her work for the Crown. She had not told him all of her secrets, of course. Had not, for instance, confided that Martin had been a traitor to his country. Or revealed that that awful time with Martin had been her only physical experience with any man before today. But she had trusted Darian with so much more than that.

Had told him what had happened to her the night of Christina’s conception.

Trusted him with the knowledge Aubrey Maystone had imparted, of the work she had carried out secretly for the Crown these past seven years.

Mariah believed she could trust Darian never to reveal those secrets to another living soul.

As she now trusted him with her life.

With her love?

Mariah tensed, barely breathing, as she considered what her feelings were for the man beside her. For Darian Hunter, the severe and sober Duke of Wolfingham.

She did trust him, yes. She also admired him. Truly believed he was a man she could trust with her life.

But with her love?

No!

Mariah dared not allow herself to fall in love with any man. It was too much of a vulnerability. Too much power—

‘Mariah?’ Darian could feel her sudden tension as she lay so still beside him. ‘What are you thinking about?’ he prompted gently.

She made no answer for several long seconds before replying huskily, ‘Do you think the person listening to us behind the wall might have been the assassin?’

‘In all probability, yes,’ he bit out grimly. ‘Damn it, I shall have to send a note to Winterton Manor informing Aubrey Maystone of these most recent events.’

They both knew that the reason he had not already done so was because they had been too engrossed in each other, in the desire between them.

‘I shall do so as soon as I have regained the strength to get out of bed and go down to the stables in search of my groom,’ Darian added.

‘Is it possible, as we were followed up the stairs, that perhaps we have not been as clever in our deception of being lovers as we had hoped to be?’

Darian did not believe for a moment any of this conversation had been the reason behind Mariah’s sudden tension a few minutes ago; she had paused too long, considered her words for too long, before answering him. Nor was he insensitive to the fact that she seemed to be distancing herself from him once again, despite still being held in his arms, her half-naked body draped alongside his own, her hand resting warmly—trustingly?—on his chest.

At the same time he was aware of how tenuous still was the closeness between the two of them, despite the depths of the intimacies they had just shared. That unless he wished to call Mariah a liar and risk alienating her even further, he had no choice but to accept this as her explanation for her sudden quiet.

For now...

‘From the speed with which they left, once the two of us began to make love, I believe they can have no further doubt regarding the latter— Mariah?’ he questioned again sharply as he felt her increase in tension. He turned on his side to look at her searchingly, easily noting the pallor of her cheeks, the shadows in those beautiful turquoise eyes, before she lowered her long, dark silky lashes and hid those shadows from his view. ‘Do you regret what just happened between the two of us?’

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue—tasting him there, as Darian could still taste her on his own lips? The colour that suddenly warmed her cheeks, as she became aware of her movements, would seem to imply that she did.

‘I accept it was necessary,’ she answered him evenly now. ‘If we were to successfully keep up this pretence that we are lovers.’

‘It is no longer a pretence, Mariah!’ Darian felt stung into snapping his frustration with her coolness. With the fact that they both knew there had been no need for the continuation of that pretence, once he had assured Mariah their eavesdropper had departed.

She swallowed, those long lashes still hiding the expression in her eyes. ‘We have shared...certain intimacies. That does not make us lovers.’

‘Then what does?’ Darian scowled down at her darkly. ‘I will admit that this was far from the ideal place, or situation, for the two of us to have become lovers,’ he continued impatiently, very aware that he had previously decided he could not allow such a thing to happen at Eton Park. But he could no more have resisted, denied himself the pleasure of making love to and with Mariah just now, than King Canute had been able to turn back the tide! ‘But that does not change the fact that it is now exactly what the two of us are,’ he added huskily.

Mariah drew in a ragged breath even as she gave a definitive shake of her head. ‘I believe we have allowed the licentiousness and erotica at this place to colour our judgement. That once we return to town we shall both see how...ridiculous such a relationship would be between us.’

‘Ridiculous?’ Darian knew the frown had deepened on his brow.

‘Of course.’ She gave a dismissive laugh as she finally looked up at him, those eyes reflecting her derision. ‘We have absolutely nothing in common outside of this current situation. No common interests, or friends. Indeed, in London you are every inch the austere and sober Duke of Wolfingham as I am the scandalous Countess of Carlisle.’

Having come to know Mariah better, Darian was now extremely sceptical about the latter.

‘And this?’ He reached out to grasp the tops of her arms. ‘What was it that just happened between the two of us?’

‘A very enjoyable but unrepeatable interlude,’ she dismissed drily. ‘As I have said, I believe we have both allowed our forced alliance, along with the licentiousness of our surroundings, and the people here, to arouse and cloud our better judgement. Left to our own devices in town, the two of us would never have so much as spared each other an approving glance.’

Darian could not deny that his opinion of Mariah, before meeting her, had been far from favourable. Nor had that opinion changed once he had met and spoken to her, despite the unwanted and begrudging desire he had felt for her.

But sometime during these past few weeks his opinion of Mariah had changed. Dramatically. He now knew her to be a woman of great courage and fortitude. A woman who risked her own life and reputation, on a daily basis, in order to work secretly for the Crown. For that alone Darian might have admired and respected her.

But there was so much more to Mariah than that.

Darian now knew that she had also fought her own personal demons of the past and not just survived them, but had become a gracious lady of great dignity and personal independence.

Much like a soldier after a success in battle.

Truly, Darian believed Mariah to have as much courage, to be as heroic, as he or any of his four closest friends had been in their fight against tyranny, openly and secretly.

None of which changed the fact that Mariah was now rejecting, out of hand, the very idea of the two of them continuing any sort of relationship once they had returned to town.

A rejection, the challenge of her expression, as she met his gaze so fearlessly, he would do well to heed.

Darian had never been one to back down from any sort of fight. Least of all one that mattered to him as much as this one did. As much as continuing to see Mariah, to be with Mariah, now did.

But she was absolutely correct in one regard. This was not the time, or the place, for them to have this conversation. There was too much else at stake: a would-be assassin in this house they still had to identify and bring to justice.

As such, Darian would agree to delay the conversation between himself and Mariah.

For now.

Once they had left Eton Park and returned to town, he had every intention of pursuing a satisfactory conclusion to this conversation.

Of pursuing Mariah.