Читать книгу Regency Affairs Part 1: Books 1-6 Of 12 - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 62

‘Double or nothing, then?’ Mercedes laughed up at the young heir to an earldom. He was so very rich, but he was going to be a few pounds lighter when he left. She ran a light hand down his chest. The poor boy blushed, obviously revelling in being treated like the man he thought he was by a very beautiful woman who’d seemed to have stepped straight from his fantasies. Mercedes moved closer to him and flashed him a come-hither smile. ‘Be warned, good sir, I can make that shot all night long.’

‘It’s true, she can. Your money is safer in your pocket.’

The all-too-familiar voice made her freeze. Good Lord, Greer was here! Mercedes turned from the young earl and faced him, her stomach plunging to her toes when she saw Ogilvy too. Had Ogilvy just happened to bring a friend? Or was something more malicious afoot? Had Ogilvy sold her out after all? He’d be very sorry when Helen heard about it. There was nothing for it but to brazen it out and hope for the latter while believing the former. Greer’s comment left her very little room to pretend he didn’t know it was her.

Mercedes smiled sweetly and sailed around the table. ‘Mr Ogilvy, have you brought a friend?’ She linked her arm through Ogilvy’s and stared up at Greer, giving him an assessing once-over.

‘This is Lord Captain Barrington of the Eleventh Devonshire.’

‘Enchantée.’ Mercedes unlinked her arm from Ogilvy’s and performed a delicate curtsy, the gesture and the French compliments of Mrs Bouchard’s Academy for Girls.

Greer took her hand and raised it, pressing his lips to her knuckles, conjuring up memories of the last time he’d done that. ‘Mon plaisir, Madam Mason.’ He made her name sound deliciously sophisticated, drawing out the Mason to Ma-sown. ‘Est-ce que vous jouez?’ She retrieved her hand and shot him a narrowed-eye look. He knew very well her French was limited to about ten useful phrases and that—whatever it was he’d said—wasn’t one of them. She hadn’t exactly excelled at French. She regretted telling him that during one of their long mornings in the carriage.

‘I believe Bonaparte lost the war, Captain. We speak English at Mrs Booth’s.’ That brought a round of laughter from her court.

Greer wasn’t daunted. He selected a cue and began to chalk up. ‘Mr Ogilvy tells me you play a good game.’ He glanced around the room, smiling broadly. ‘Good enough to beat most of the gentlemen present on more than one occasion. He has compelled me to come and defend men everywhere.’ He gave the chalk on his cue tip an efficient blow, looking entirely likeable.

‘Hear, hear,’ came a few cries from the back of the room.

The dratted man was going to steal her crowd if she wasn’t careful. Usually she admired Greer’s ease, how people wanted to cheer for him. She wasn’t admiring that trait at the moment. Beneath his aura of bonhomie, he was primed, a veritable powder keg and the fuse was lit. He was going to ignite this room and she’d get caught in the explosion.

He didn’t wait for an answer. Greer gathered up the balls and stepped back. ‘Your table, Mrs Mason. You may break.’

‘Your heart or your balls, Captain?’ came a voice from the crowd. Mercedes smiled at the crass comment, privately reassured. She hadn’t lost the room yet. And she wouldn’t. She’d beat Greer and give these boys a show they wouldn’t soon forget. After tonight there would be no coming back. Susannah Mason would go out in glory.

Mercedes met Greer’s gaze down the length of the table, eyes wide with secret laughter, her mouth a perfect, discreetly rouged ‘O.’ A gentleman or two sighed when she chalked up and raised the cue to her lips in her trademark gesture and blew, knowing Greer would get the unspoken message: game on.

She bent low over the table, wriggling her shoulders to advantage; she sashayed up and down the table with a sway of her hips; she flashed coy smiles and sipped provocatively from champagne flutes until most men in the room were worked to a frenzy. All but one. Greer remained most disappointingly unaffected. Unaffected or not, it didn’t mean he won. He lost the first game and the third, and was on the verge of losing the fifth if she potted her next shot. He seemed unbothered by the circumstance. He matched her mad flirtation with his dry humour. The room was enchanted by the pair of them goading each other to greater heights.

Every eye in the establishment was fixed on them. Money changed hands. Mrs Booth came to stand beside her, watching her sink a shot with the cue behind her back to general applause.

The proprietress applauded, too, but when Mercedes stepped from the table, she pressed a wad of pound notes into Mercedes’s hand and whispered fiercely, ‘End it with your next shot. I don’t care if you win or lose, just do it quickly. Your little duel with the Captain isn’t doing business any good. The girls haven’t been upstairs with a customer for an hour.’

Greer made his next shot, which would prolong the game. If he’d missed, she’d have had a clear path to victory in one shot. But now they were even and a ball of his blocked her play. Mercedes had no choice but to scratch. She recited the old gambler’s mantra in her head: sometimes we win by losing. The wad of notes in her hand proved it. But pride made it deuced hard to swallow that reality. She didn’t want to lose here or now or to Greer, who had somehow ferreted out her little gambit and had come to ruin her fun.

But she did it, hitting her cue ball too hard and letting it follow its target into the pocket. The crowd groaned. She groaned, too, but pasted on a smile as if it were a trifling thing and called for champagne all around. This got the girls circulating again, moving in and out of the press with trays of bubbling champagne, turning the gentlemen’s attentions elsewhere.

Mrs Booth appeared at her side once more, ushering her and Greer into the hall. She was eager to be rid of them. ‘Why don’t the two of you settle up privately? Susannah, you can use Lisette’s room at the top of the stairs.’ Lisette had left yesterday for a more private arrangement with a well-to-do gentleman.

Mercedes understood it wasn’t a request: it was a command. But she didn’t relish facing Greer behind a closed door, especially if he had the upper hand. She made her choice in an instant. She was not going to let him take the offensive and berate her. No doubt he would view this latest behaviour as being entirely beyond the pale. A lady playing billiards in a brothel was almost inconceivable to one of his lofty birth. What he needed to understand was that she was as angry with him as he was with her. He could have jeopardised everything. The moment the door shut behind them, she faced him, hands on hips, and fired her salvo. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

‘Isn’t that supposed to be my line?’ Greer crossed his arms. Her verbal offensive had caught him by surprise. He’d anticipated having the first words in this conversation. And the last. But he should have known she wouldn’t play by the rules.

‘Let’s be clear, Mercedes, you are the one in trouble here, not me.’

‘Me? I’m not the one poking his nose into someone else’s business. You could have ruined everything tonight!’ She flung an arm in a careless gesture that nearly knocked a pitcher off a delicate table. Greer reached out and righted the teetering vessel, taking a moment to get a grip on his vacillating emotions. He should be furious over her taking him to task in the middle of a French whore’s boudoir, yet all he wanted to do was kiss her or spank her. At the moment, it was hard to decide which. Both held some appeal.

‘Me? I’m not the one playing billiards in a brothel, dressed in disguise—’ Greer ticked off her sins on his fingers ‘—and using a false name while emptying the pockets of your friends’ husbands.’ Lockhart would be furious if he knew she’d been stealing money he saw as rightfully his to win or if being beaten by a woman had scared the men away from the Brighton tournament altogether.

‘It serves them right. They shouldn’t be here to start with. They should be home with their wives. If they were, none of this would have happened.’ Mercedes reached up her arms in a motion that brought her breasts into tight relief against the bodice of her gown and began to remove the wig. Definitely spanking, Greer thought.

Greer laughed. ‘Only you would be able to turn your transgression into a moral judgement on your fellow mankind. You make it sound like you’ve been serving up matrimonial justice instead of simply fleecing them.’

She shook out her hair, a sensual gesture that put kissing back in the lead, but her lips tightened. Her eyes narrowed to blue slits. ‘My transgression? I made money the only way I knew how.’

‘By flirting with them? I saw what you were doing to that poor lad in there. He didn’t know up from down with your hand on his chest. You knew very well you’d have him at a disadvantage,’ Greer accused. He knew he played the hypocrite here. He’d been as riveted as the next red-blooded male. She’d been intoxicating to watch. She’d commanded every man’s full attention, giving them their fantasies in the flesh. There wasn’t an Englishman in the room who wouldn’t go home and dream about her tonight.

Greer’s groin tightened at the memory of her leaning over the table, the naughty fire in her eyes indicating she knew precisely what he was thinking as she let the cue slide through the bridge of her fingers in erotic reference to other sticks that slid and sheathed themselves in other warmer, wetter portals.

Mercedes circled him, her coy half-smile flitting on her lips, one hand trailing idly over the shepherds and Staffordshire dogs littering the surfaces of the room. Apparently Lisette had packed in a hurry. Must have been a good offer, Greer thought wryly. Mercedes drew a long finger down the back of a pointer, causing him to repress a most male shudder. He could feel that finger on him, caressing, teasing, drawing its manicured nail ever so lightly down something much more worthy than a china dog. At least he thought he had suppressed it. Her next words confirmed he might not have been so successful.

‘Jealous, were you?’

It was an obvious gambit and she knew very well what she was doing with her dog-tracing act just as she’d known the effect she’d had all night. He really should spank her. She was in desperate need of a lesson. She was trying to provoke him.

‘Jealous? Of middle-aged men and boys without beards? Hardly.’ For a moment he entertained the notion that he should resist. Then he thought better of it. No. She would expect resistance. She was planning to lay siege to him. Not tonight. If there was any mastering to be done, it would be by him.

Greer picked up her trail, tracking her around the room. He wanted her to know he was coming, wanted her to anticipate the moment he would catch her. He reached for her arm and spun her around to face him, drawing her to him. ‘You should play with a real man, Mercedes.’

Her breath hitched, her pupils dilated with excitement. ‘I suppose you think that’s you?’

‘Damn straight it’s me,’ Greer growled right before he bore her back to the wall.

Mercedes stifled a gasp. She barely had time to wrap her arms about his neck before she found herself pressed deliciously against the pink-and-cream-striped wall, Greer’s lips hard at her mouth, his hips grinding against hers in provocative invitation, his desire in rampant evidence where their bodies met. Her breath came uneven and excited as she let the thrill of excitement course through her. He wasn’t the only one burning with need. He’d stoked fires of his own tonight.

Her hands made short work of his waistcoat and turned their attentions to the tails of his shirt, pulling them loose from his trousers in frantic jerks valued more for speed than efficiency. She wanted him naked—fast. He seemed to share her thoughts. In all her concentration on his clothes, her own gown had found its way to the floor in an ignoble heap. She hitched a leg about his hip, her petticoat falling back to reveal a long expanse of leg. Greer’s hand took the invitation, sliding up its length to cup her bottom beneath the fabric.

The act put her in intense proximity with the most male parts of him. She could feel the intimate swell of him at the juncture of her thighs. She nipped at his ear none too gently to convey her growing urgency. ‘Magnificent’ might not do it justice. ‘Greer, these trousers have to go. Now.’ She didn’t wait for an answer. She pulled them down herself, swallowing hard when her hand met with the coveted length of his flesh, hot and rigid in her palm.

Greer wouldn’t tolerate any play when she made to explore. ‘Later,’ came the gruff response. But he was right. They were both too far gone to enjoy any foreplay. What they wanted would be explosive and fast and it would happen against this wall.

He lifted her other leg and she wrapped them both about him, finding purchase between his strength and the unyielding wall. He took her then, in a fierce thrust that went straight to her core and wrenched a wicked scream from her throat. This was decadence and pleasure at its finest. She dug her hands into the thick depths of his hair and tightened her grip, holding him deep inside her as she moved her hips to his rhythm. She gloried in the intimate friction of his body inside hers. He shifted slightly, adjusting his position and thrust.

A gasp slipped her lips. She’d not been ready for the unexpected sensation it invoked. Her mind registered only one thought: more. And yet more of such an exquisite glimpse of pleasure would surely drive her mad. But Mercedes was no coward; she’d risk it. ‘Again!’ she managed, her voice nothing more than a wispy tremble before that singular glimpse transformed into a wave of sensations that threatened to overwhelm her.

She rode that wave, bucking hard against Greer, vaguely aware that he was there with her too in this frenzied roil of rough desires. His hands were hard where they dug into her buttocks, his body heated with exertion as its very life pulsed against her, his voice hoarse with inarticulate need as they crested one final time and the wave broke, spilling them into a sweat-slicked oblivion of sated need.

Mercedes was boneless, useless in the dénouement that followed. It was Greer who brought them to the pink haven of the bed, seeing her settled before he gave in to his own, no doubt considerable, exhaustion. Mercedes felt the bed take his weight as he lay down beside her on the satin sheets. She snuggled into him, her head fitted to the curve of his shoulder, feeling the welcome strength of his arm gather her to him.

Within moments his breathing took on the soft pattern of one asleep. For a while she thought she’d sleep too. She was tired enough. But her mind would not comply. It was still too riotous, sorting through the images of what had transpired. Most of it she understood in an objective sense. Weeks on the road suppressing desires had come to a head, goaded in no small part by the circumstances of the evening and the reality that they’d been attracted to one another from the start. She’d seen it coming, and no doubt Greer had too for all his talk of honour. It had just been a matter of when. She could explain the ‘when’ and the ‘why’. She couldn’t explain the ‘what’ or the ‘how’.

The ‘what’ that had passed between them had no comparison in her previous experience. She’d known such satisfaction was possible for the man, although perhaps not on such a grand scale as Greer’s. But the same for a woman? She’d not known, not imagined there was anything more beyond the short-lived gratification of simply being physically close to another human being.

She laughed softly to herself, recalling Greer’s words so long ago: ‘Mine was better, much better.’ She might have to concede that it hadn’t been mere male braggadocio speaking that day in the carriage.

The other unknown was the ‘how’. How did one go forwards with any normality after such an encounter? She would forever look at him over the dinner table or down the length of a billiards table and see not just Captain Greer Barrington of the fine manners but her lover, a man who had brought her unparalleled pleasure. The issue of pleasure raised another question altogether—how would she be satisfied with just the once? Pleasure like that should be tasted over and over.

She knew without being told it would become an addiction, one she’d have to find a way to live without when this tour was done and Greer Barrington went his own way. She was not fool enough to think such pleasure could be repeated with any man. Empirically, she knew it could not, which made what had happened all that more unique for its rarity.

Mercedes sighed, trailing a finger down his breastbone.

It was no wonder he’d said it couldn’t be a game. She agreed whole-heartedly now, when it was too late and she was fully engaged. If the damage was already done, she might as well enjoy sweeping up. Mercedes moved her hand lower.

He awoke to her gentle cupping. She smiled up at him, pleased that his phallus stirred so easily to her touch even after a hearty bout of love-making. She’d feared he’d be spent. She should have known better. There was nothing weak about Greer Barrington. Mercedes reached behind his phallus and squeezed his balls, feeling them tighten. ‘You’re ready, Captain.’ She looked at him from beneath coy eyelashes. ‘Unless you need a bit more encouragement?’

Greer rolled to his side. ‘I think that depends on what you have in mind.’

‘A little equality.’ Mercedes slid from the bed with a grin and stood before him, her arms crossed over her breasts in a provocatively modest display, her hands resting on the shoulders of her chemise. She slipped her thumbs under the thin fabric and pulled the garment ever so slowly over her head, letting it tease her nipples as it passed over her chest.

‘Naked equality. I like it,’ Greer managed hoarsely after the chemise had been discarded.

‘Seductive equality,’ Mercedes corrected, pulling the drawstring of her petticoat in a quick, decisive tug that rendered the item loose. She stepped out of it, aware of his eyes roaming her nude body with hot appreciation.

She came to bed and straddled him, letting him look his fill. ‘I mean to have you this time, Captain.’ It was a wicked, selfish experiment she had in mind. Could the pleasure be repeated? Or had it existed because he’d been in charge? Did he control the pleasure or could she snare it for herself?

He raised his hands and filled them with her breasts, kneading in slow, delicious motions that stirred her fires. She could feel her control slipping away already. The effect he had on her was intoxicating, quite literally like drinking too much champagne, the world turning to a lovely place with blurred edges.

‘You are more beautiful than I dreamed,’ Greer murmured, raising himself up to kiss her, one hand leaving a breast to take up residence at the nape of her neck beneath her loose hair. The ingenuousness of his words was nearly her undoing. She’d been called beautiful before, but never with such sincerity.

‘And you, sir, are a paragon of manhood.’ She let the laughter dance in her eyes, as she raised herself up over his hips and then lowered, taking him inside as he’d taken her. ‘It seems we are well suited.’ A seductive smile played across of her lips.

‘It seems we are.’ Greer’s eyes were dark with passion, his body tense beneath her as she began to ride. Slowly, up and down, she tightened her inner muscles as she slid the length of him, feeling him strain against her. Then she began to rock, back and forth, and the magic ignited.

Greer surged into her, arching in his need, his body and mind wild at the sight of her atop him, her hands cupping her own breasts. She revelled in the thrill of Greer Barrington unleashed, unbound by his gentleman’s code of conduct in these unguarded moments, but the madness was taking her too. The harder she rode him, the more intense his response until they were on that wave once more, cresting and crashing and the amazing thing was happening again, sweeping her away, her wicked experiment in shambles. Now she knew and that knowledge cast a shadow over the future. To achieve this pleasure, she needed him.