The Lady Tamed by Boyd, Heather (urban books to read TXT) 📗

in the daylight. Not with Thwaite and Wilks lurking about. “The maid would do a better job.”

“Of undressing me?”

“Yes.”

She popped a button undone at the front of her gown. “Of rinsing my skin clean and drying me?”

Jeremy gulped. Fanny was pushing his limits on purpose. “Yes, of course, the maid will be needed for that.”

Fanny sidled closer, her face upturned to his. There was a streak of mud on her jaw, and more water droplets splattered on her now heaving chest from her dripping hair. By God! Even bedraggled she was stunning.

Jeremy trembled as she lay her hands upon his chest again.

“Fanny,” he warned.

“There’s no need to fight this.”

“I must. One of us should give a damn about your reputation.”

Fanny cupped his cheek. “You did me a great service retrieving my property from Wilks.”

He pulled away immediately. “You’ll not thank me like this.”

Her gaze followed him. “Don’t you find me attractive?”

He scowled at her. “You know I do.”

Her attention dropped to his lips. “Please won’t you kiss me, Jeremy? Please.”

It was the second please that frayed his restraint. “Lady Rivers should never beg for attention.”

“Then give me the kiss I’ve been waiting for.”

Jeremy fought with his desires. He had wanted Lady Rivers since the moment they’d met. But that was in London, where casual flirtations were part and parcel with his profession. This was quite something else happening between them. They were playing with fire. She wanted to explore all the possibilities of their agreement. If he failed to please her, would she deny him her aid for everything else in the future? He wished with all his heart that he had never signed that damned agreement. “I should have no right to touch a woman like you.”

She put her hands on her hips. “I’m only a woman.”

“Lady Rivers, that does not even begin to describe you. This conversation is over.” He turned his back on her, intending to go find a maid to help her change.

“Should I let Lord Wilks into my bed if he wants that, as well as paying his blackmail?”

Jeremy spun around to face her. “I have no right to deny you any pleasure.”

“And yet when I tell you what I want, you refuse to even consider the notion.”

“For God’s sake. Do you not understand?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Then explain it. Use small words that my feeble female brain can accept.”

He advanced on her, one finger raised. “Don’t you ever talk about yourself like that again.”

She shrugged, and the black rag she wore slipped to reveal dark undergarments. “Every other man since Rivers died has. They see the money and have to have me. They don’t even try to know me first.”

Jeremy took a pace toward her. “Fools.”

“If you leave me, that’s my only other choice. Fortune hunters and fools.”

Jeremy growled. “That isn’t a choice.”

“But this is,” she promised. “You are the man I crave above all others. You are the man I want to share my bed with.”

Jeremy broke then, capturing Fanny by the head and jerked her into his arms. “Who needs a damn bed.”

He crushed his lips to hers and stole the kiss he’d been dreaming of.

Fanny was soft and giving and so, so sweet. Her arms stole around him, and Jeremy shivered at the contact. They were both still damp from the rain and there was probably a puddle forming beneath them that would be hard to explain later. Still he kissed her and wanted her and knew he wouldn’t stop.

When she started pulling at his cravat, Jeremy wasted no time in stripping Fanny of her wet gown. Then he wrapped her in a blanket he stole from the bed and went on kissing her. When he started to struggle out of his own damp clothes, Fanny helped speed the process of his undressing.

“Oh, dear God,” Fanny whispered when she stepped back as his breaches dropped to his knees after being undone. “What delights have I missed by putting proper clothes on you. Jeremy, you take my breath away.”

Jeremy had to smile at that. Unlike the titled lords staying as the Duke of Stapleton’s guests for the wedding, those who circled Fanny like vultures after her fortune, there was no comparison when it came to physicality. He was hard-muscled and sleek, a product of barely making ends meet all his life.

Fanny ran her hands all over his chest, teasing him without meaning to as the blanket fell from her shoulders and left her almost naked again. She flicked her fingers over his nipples, and then her lips were upon his skin. She licked him the way he’d wanted to lick her.

Reverently. Slowly. Seductively.

He grasped her by the hair and pulled her face up to his. “Fanny.”

“Don’t you like it?’

“You know I do.”

He backed her toward the fire even as she shivered from the cold and undid the laces on her corset with some difficulty. He wanted to see her. All of her, before things went any further.

But once naked, Fanny huddled close and rubbed herself against him like a cat. Her breasts, works of art in his opinion, tortured as they dragged over his skin. He bent and took the nipple of one into his mouth. Fanny moaned and clutched his head to her breast. He rained kisses over her breasts and between.

“You make me feel weak, Jem,” she whispered.

He couldn’t have her falling into a swoon, so he put a hand across her buttocks and lowered her to her side on the thick Persian rug beneath them, keeping her close to the fire.

Fanny’s arms encircled him again, and she found her way to his lips to kiss him. They lay before the fire, plastered together, tongues tangling and hands searching. Her body soft against his harder one as their kisses grew wilder, more passionate.

Jeremy pushed her damp hair from her face and stared into her eyes for a moment. “Are you sure you want me?”

“Never more so.” To prove her words true, she slung her leg over his hip, wriggling close enough