The Importance of Being Wanton by Christi Caldwell

Chapter 11

THE LONDONER

HURT FEELINGS?

With the Earl of Scarsdale succeeding as mightily as he is with the operation of his new club, his former betrothed, Miss Gately, is certainly seething with the jealousy only a woman is capable of.

M. FAIRPOINT

You would have to do far better than that?

Where had those words come from?

And which had they been? A challenge or plea?

With her body pressed against his nearly naked one, everything for Emma, in this moment, had become jumbled, twisted in her mind.

Her reason for being here clouded by that simple husky promise he’d made: I could, you know.

For actually, she hadn’t known it. She hadn’t known he’d have cared either way about wanting to . . . or trying.

He angled his lips lower, placing them near her neck, his breath a teasing, ticklish warmth that sent her belly dancing and her senses spinning. “Is that a request, Emma-love?”

Her body trembled and her eyes slid shut.

Stop!

He’s merely playing at seduction.Just as he’d played at wounded betrothed after she’d called it off.

Emma scrambled away from him, her ankle wobbling slightly under its heel as she hastily put a much-needed step between her and Charles, and whatever effect he was having on her. “You robbed from me, Charles Hayden, and I’m here to order you to cease, this instant, or be prepared for the consequences.”

His brow furrowed.

Was it the fact that he’d failed in his seduction? Or the charges she’d leveled? Either way, she felt a rush of triumph at having turned the tables on him.

Calling forth the script in her mind, Emma continued on the offensive. “You have made a scandal and embarrassment of me for the last time, Charles. I won’t allow it.” Not this time. Not when she’d put up with society’s scorn since she’d made her Come Out and the world had delighted in reminding her that she was the unwanted future bride of the sought-after, charming Lord Scarsdale.

He shook his head slowly. “I am afraid I do not follow, Emma?” He spoke haltingly, his words ending on the uptilt of a question.

Emma cut him off. “Oh, come, Charles,” she scoffed.

“Wait . . . you are . . . offended because of my club?”

Oh, if that wasn’t a false surprise better suited to the ultimate actor on the London stage.

“You think I would be happy that you created a rival league?” she shot back.

“Well, I confess I didn’t think you’d necessarily be unhappy.” He flashed one of those lazy smiles, surely meant to disarm. “But neither did I believe it would merit this reaction. I did consider the possibility you might even be . . .” Charles held out both his palms, balancing them back and forth like the scales of justice, perfectly framing his heavily muscled chest, his flat, defined, contoured belly. Emma’s stomach fluttered as she found herself briefly transfixed by the sight of him.

“Indifferent?” She managed to supply him with that hated word. The irony of it was not lost on her, as she was fighting to keep her thoughts ordered over the mere sight of him.

He brightened, and let his arms fall. “Yes, precisely. That was the very word I had in mind.”

Yes, precisely.Because she, Emma Gately, was nothing if not indifferent . . . about everything. It was how the world had come to see her, because, well, that was how she’d allowed herself to be viewed. She’d affected an air of indifference to conceal the hurt that came from having a betrothed who was just that—indifferent to her. Steeling her spine, she took a step toward him, cursing the shoes she’d selected that slowed her pace. “Well, I’m not, Charles,” she snapped. “I’m neither happy nor indifferent . . .”

He cleared his throat, his briefly relieved expression fading. “Which suggests ‘angry,’ then.”

Emma brought her hands together in a slow, deliberate, and sarcastic clap. “Precisely, Lord Scarsdale.” In fairness, he’d not known she’d be upset. Now that he did, he would end this foolish enterprise.

“Yes, well, I am sorry for that, but I’ve no intention of ceasing my operations, if that is what you are asking,” he said bluntly, effectively killing that delusion she’d allowed herself.

Emma strangled on her response. “You . . . you . . .”

Charles stared back patiently.

“Demanding!” she shouted. “I’m not asking. I’m demanding you cease.”

Then he yawned.

She flared her eyes. “Did you just . . . did you just . . . ?”

“Yawwwn?” he offered, a second one of those tired expressions stretching out his syllables as he completely turned the tables on her this time. “Indeed.”

Emma gasped. My God, he’d gone and stolen her affected boredom as well. “You are unconscionable, Charles,” she hissed. Had there ever been a thought that he truly wished to resume their betrothal, this was the decided death knell. Because no gentleman would dare go about stealing her ideas and her affected mannerisms.

“Because I yawned?” He flashed a pearl-white smile that shone even brighter in the dark, and wrought the havoc it always had upon her heart. “Given you yourself did so just moments ago, Emma, and given the late-night hour, I thought you would be completely understanding if I were to do something as rude as— Oomph,” he grunted as Emma stuck a finger in his chest.

She bit the inside of her cheek to conceal the pain inflicted upon the digit by that solid wall of muscle. “Listen here, and listen good, Charles. I’ve put up with a great deal where you are concerned over the years, but I absolutely draw the damned line at you stealing my idea.”

“Do you want to know the truth, Emma?”

She dropped her hands upon her hips. “Always.”

“Your idea is not original. You’re no different from a café or salon, a place where people go to come together, and if you encourage free thought as you say and suggest, then it’s fairly hypocritical to go about ordering similar clubs to close.”

That blunt, inflectionless charge pulled a gasp from her as she staggered back.

And then promptly tripped over her slippers and came down hard on her buttocks. Of course.

This damned night. It hadn’t gone at all as she’d planned. But then it never had where Charles was concerned, and the reminder of it only filled her with the sudden, unexpected urge to cry.

The floorboards groaned as he joined her . . . as he joined Emma in her humiliation and shame.

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice thick to her own ears, still unable to get to her feet . . . or look at him.

As effortlessly as before, he swept her into his arms and carried her over to the leather folds of his desk chair. With an infinite gentleness, he lowered her into the seat, the leather groaning with the addition of her weight.

Dropping her head along the back of his seat, she stared overhead at the ceiling and let her shame be complete. “It is these blasted slippers.” Before he could speak, Emma shot out a foot, revealing the satin scrap upon it. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” Except, she did. She’d known that the women he kept company with were the scandalous, sophisticated sorts who wore the most daring garments.

Charles, however, proved polite enough to not challenge Emma on her lie.

“Ah, but surely you know there is a good deal to be said for a comfortable slipper,” he murmured. Sinking to his right knee, Charles reached for her skirts.

Emma sat completely motionless as he inched the fabric of her red satin gown up.

Up.

Up.

Up.

Higher still, until the heavy fabric pooled about her knees and the cool night air kissed her bare limbs. Her translucent silk stockings, purely ornamental, did nothing to ease the cold. Nay, they added a heightened sense of awareness to the air around her. And his touch. That, too.

Unlike before, when Charles had been flippant and teasing, a change had overtaken him.

The energy in the room grew heavier and keener as he raised her foot, cradling it in his right palm, and with his left, he drew the end of her laces, pulling at that silk thread with a deliberateness that sent her pulse clamoring. Never taking his eyes from hers, he loosened the other side of her lace, and then drew off her heeled slipper.

“There,” he murmured. “That is better, is it not?”

So much better. A little moan spilled from her lips at the exquisiteness that came with that freedom . . . and the tenderness of his touch. So very much better. But not even for the reasons he suggested, comfort seeming an irrelevancy compared with the heat pooling low in her belly. Somehow, Emma made herself nod, the gesture feeling shaky and uneven.

She needn’t have bothered; he’d already returned his focus to her feet.

The next slipper followed suit until her feet, but for her silk stockings, were bare, and he looked down at her exposed legs.

She bit the inside of her cheek, never wanting this moment to end. Wanting him to continue holding her . . . And he curled his left palm into the high arch of her foot, then slowly massaged that aching flesh.

There was a purposefulness to his caress, one that sought to rub away the hurt, and yet . . . Emma swallowed hard. For there was more to whatever this was. Her body came alive, her senses tingling to life, and from nothing more than his touch. Then he pressed his thumb into that tender spot.

Her breath caught noisily.

He glanced up, and his gaze fixed on her face, his eyes darkening. “You like that.”

It wasn’t a question, but a statement from a man who knew the subtleties of a woman’s body.

It was, however, the first he’d ever made an attempt to know hers.

Oh, God.

Emma nodded once more. “I do.” She dampened her mouth. “Are you . . . attempting to seduce me?” It was . . . too preposterous to believe. To believe this man who’d avoided her for years should desire her . . .

“And if I was?” he asked quietly. “Would you allow it?”

Would she allow it? Would she be able to resist? Emma closed her eyes as a battle waged within her, that over which her body longed for, and that which her stubborn pride insisted she deny at any cost. In the end, she proved weak. Or mayhap it was that she was strong in knowing what she wanted. Emma held his gaze squarely. “I allow it.”

Not: she would.

She did.

And in this moment, she tossed her seduction over to this man and this moment with him she’d secretly hungered for.

Charles went still. From the way he gripped her dress, his white-knuckled fingers clutching her hem, to the tension of his broad shoulders and the fire in his eyes, Emma knew one thing with an absolute certainty: he was a man not so very much in control. Not so very much, at all.

Or mayhap Emma just projected the turbulent sea of disorganized thoughts and sensations onto him.

Something changed in that moment, in his touch, and in the very air around them. For ever so slowly, Charles unfurled his fingers and glided them along her kneecap, and down ever so slowly, tracing the line of her calf, all the way to her ankle and her previously sore, pinched toes.

Had they truly hurt? Everything was so confused in this moment. Every fiber of her had been reduced, tunneled, to simply sensation and feeling.

Charles reached the end of that distracted caress, then pausing ever so briefly at the arch of her foot, he resumed an upward stroke, following that same path his fingers had just taken.

Emma’s breath grew shallow, and her skin radiated, tingled under that simplest of touches.

Only there wasn’t anything simple about it. Not truly.

She should leave. She needed to. There was a carriage full of friends awaiting her, and ruin also lying in wait.

God help her. She couldn’t bring herself to care. Not enough. Not as she should.

Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to focus only on that wildly illicit touch. Then, his eyes holding hers once more, he reached for her stockings, and proceeded to lower one.

Oh, dear.

His gaze heated, the glint there a knowing one, belonging to a man well aware of the effects he now had upon her, and she couldn’t bring herself to care. Pride was an overestimated commodity in this instant.

Using the palms of his hands, he rolled that silk article lower, baring all her leg, and with a surprising care, he set aside her stocking. He set to work on the second, showing it the same tender care and attention.

This was a peculiar alteration of her body’s sensation, and the ability of her nerve endings to process them, where the cold was now a balm, a sough upon her heated flesh.

Of their own volition, born of an understanding as old as Eve and Adam’s joint fall from grace, she let her legs splay, opening for him, and then he lowered his head between her legs.

Emma hissed. Surprise, shock . . . and a shameful bliss sent her hips shooting up.

Charles looked up at her. “Trust me, Emma.”

Trust me.

They were the last words this man was deserving of.

And yet in this moment, she was hopeless to do anything but follow where he led.

Still, he waited. Allowing the decision to be hers. Not taking more than she was willing to give. Not taking anything unless she granted it. And that power proved the headiest aphrodisiac, as she nodded and surrendered to her own wants.

Charles filled his hands with her buttocks, urging her closer to his face, and then he put his mouth to her.

In this, her first kiss of any sort.

This manner of kiss she’d never known.

Hot and wet there, between her legs, Emma should probably feel a sense of shame or embarrassment. That was surely what any decent lady would feel.

And yet . . .

Her eyes slid shut, and she moaned, the sound wanton and wicked and wonderful to her ears, as he with his lips worked a sorcerer-like magic upon her. Never had she been more grateful to have surrendered her worries about propriety and properness. He flicked his tongue over the sensitive bud, teasing her, suckling at that flesh, until Emma’s hips moved of their own volition, lifting into him.

His large hands sculpted her buttocks, squeezing that flesh as he brought her closer to his ministrations.

Charles dragged his tongue over her, tasting her sodden channel.

“Mmm,”she keened, her speech having dissolved, as she was capable of nothing more than animalistic, primitive sounds to encourage him to not stop. Never stop. She’d not survive, and yet as he plunged his tongue in and out of her channel, feasting on the folds, she cried out, not entirely certain she could survive if he continued taking her to whatever place she now journeyed.

A place where pleasure morphed with pain, and then blended into some glorious torment that cast out all reason and left her centered on only one place, that sharp, throbbing ache between her thighs.

“You are so wet for me,” he praised, his voice hoarse as he dragged a trail of kisses to the inside of her thigh.

She whimpered, lifting her hips and seeking his efforts where she wanted him most. Where she needed him most.

He proved as elusive in lovemaking as he had in marriage, withholding that which she wanted and torturing her instead with a slower, teasing caress of his lips, kisses that he swept in a path lower, his hot mouth, wet from her essence, leaving a trail all the way to her knee. And then he came back up.

“Please. Please. Please,” she panted, thrusting her hips furiously in a bid to have him there.

“Like this?” He slid his hands under her buttocks and lifted her closer to his face, then paused with his mouth a hairbreadth away from her burning center.

She arched her hips, seeking him, but he edged away, continuing to deny her.

“Tell me,” he whispered, his husky baritone teasing and taunting. “Tell me what you want, Emma-love.”

Emma-love.

Her eyes slid closed once more. It was that endearment. Had she ever really despised it? How, when in this moment, there were no more perfect words melded than those two, together?

“Say it,” he urged, this time more harshly, all hint of lightness gone, replaced with a layer of darkness born of passion and suppressed want.

Using her elbows, she pushed herself upright so he had to angle his head up to meet hers. “I want your mouth on me,” she said in clear, even tones that were at odds with the rapid rise and fall of her breathing.

His eyes darkened, and then with a growl, he took her.

He took her as she’d been hungering for him to, with a searing intensity and almost violence that liquefied her from the inside out.

Emma slumped in her chair, and tangling her fingers in his hair, she gripped those glorious, luxuriant golden strands. And she gave herself over freely to feeling everything he’d unleashed within her.

She rocked her hips against his mouth, and then he slid his tongue within her slit.

“Charles.” Emma hissed his name, her thighs tightening reflexively about his neck, even as she simultaneously ground herself against him in a bid to ride to the peak of whatever pinnacle he drew her higher and higher toward.

He responded by suckling her nub all the harder, and then he slid a finger inside her.

Emma cried out.

“You like that, don’t you, love?” His breath rasped against the damp curls between her legs.

“Mmm,”she whimpered.

“I want to hear you say it. I want to hear the words.” And then he teased her by sliding another finger inside. He stroked her, tormenting her in a new, forbidden way.

Emma’s back collapsed as she went limp once more in her seat. He wanted her to speak those words, surrendering to him, but god help her, she couldn’t form a thought coherent enough to string together a single sentence.

And then, he stopped.

Emma cried out at the loss, her hips surging up to call him back.

“Mm. Mm,”he teased, and then those hands massaging her buttocks ceased even that delicious temptation, and her body wept for the loss of him. “I want to hear the words from you, love.” Charles straightened, and she shot out her arms to bring him back, but he was only dragging a trail of kisses higher, to different parts of her body that had previously been neglected, punctuating each word he spoke with a kiss. “Every. Single. Word.”

Emma gasped as he reached the bodice of her gown, the air caught in her lungs, trapped with a breathless anticipation.

Ever so slowly, he lowered her neckline, until her breasts were bared to his gaze and the night air.

“Lovely,” he murmured, and with a reverence that brought her lashes sweeping down, he palmed that flesh, filling each of his large hands with her breasts.

She whimpered.

Charles glanced up. “Do you like that?” he asked as conversationally as if he were inquiring about her preference for tea.

Emma managed a shaky nod before she recalled what he wanted. What he expected to hear. What he demanded to hear.

“V-very much so.” The husky quality of her response was foreign to her own ears.

His brown eyes darkened, passion deepening in those fathomless irises, and holding her gaze, he proceeded to run the pads of his thumbs over her nipples. A delicate circling that sent her hips rising and falling again.

Charles leaned forward, and before she knew what he intended, he closed his mouth over the tip of her right breast.

She cried out as he suckled and teased and worshipped that sensitive flesh. And then he switched his ministrations to the previously neglected peak, laving it with a like attention. Charles swirled his tongue around her nipple, playing with the tip as if it were his for the taking. And in this moment, it was. All of her, any part of her he wished, was his, if he would just assuage the ache pulsing between her legs.

Emma rested a hand on his head, and Charles paused; again, he looked up at her through thick, hooded lashes.

“I want your mouth on me as it was before. I want to feel your tongue there, Charles.”

His breath hitched, and then with another one of those animalistic growls, he fell to his knees and kissed her where she’d urged him.

Closing her eyes, she released a contented little sigh before the pleasure of what he did became too much, and keening cries and moans spilled from her lips and echoed off the high ceilings of his chambers.

Charles suckled at the folds of her flesh. He stroked his tongue within her. Again and again. Those expert glides brought her higher and higher, to that pinnacle she’d been seeking to climb from the moment he’d first begun worshipping that place between her legs.

Emma stiffened; she used her palms to leverage herself in her seat, to get higher to that elusive goal, and closer to Charles and whatever magic he wove. Charles continued a steady pace within her. The pressure built.

Emma stiffened as her body exploded, as she fell from that cliff. And she screamed, capable of just one word: his name.

“Charles!”

Over and over again she screamed it, as she bucked her hips against his mouth, thrusting herself into him, wanting the moment to go on forever and ever. Never wanting to not feel the magic that was making love with this man.

He continued to worship her, not letting up on pleasuring her, coaxing every last drop until she collapsed into the folds of his seat, replete in her surrender.

Her heart racing, Emma lay sprawled there, certain her pulse would never find its way back to any semblance of a normal pace.

Charles fell back on his haunches, and reaching for his nearby shirt, he wiped away the remnants of her pleasure that still glistened upon his mouth.

The sight of it . . . the sight of him, however, cleaning himself, proved starkly sobering.

And with that, the heady magic that had held her ensnared lifted.

Oh, God.Emma briefly closed her eyes. Years ago, between his indifference and the child he’d had with another woman, her heart had been shattered. All she’d had left after her broken betrothal had been . . . her pride. And in so taking this moment for herself, giving herself up to passion in his arms . . . it threatened to weaken her in ways she couldn’t afford.

What have I done?

“I trust you’re feeling very s-smug.” Her voice quavered as she spoke. “That this was some sort of t-test.”

Finding another clean portion of his lawn shirt, he brought it between her legs and gently, tenderly cleaned her. “Hardly smug,” he said gruffly. “And never a test.” His eyes locked with hers. “Never that, and never in this w-way.”

Her lips slipped apart, that slight tremble of his last spoken word there hinting at a man as shaken as she’d been by their exchange. And . . . that unsteadiness bonded them in a way that sent her flying to her feet, nearly toppling him in the process.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Sadly, yes.” This time there was the hint of his rogue’s drawl that somehow restored her semblance of thoughts, and reminded her that he was still the same roguish Charles he’d always been.

Emma hurried off to fetch her cloak.

He intercepted her efforts, collecting the garment first. He snapped it once, and brought it about her shoulders. “I should see you h—”

“I’m not alone,” she hurried to assure him. “My sister and Olivia wait below.” Outside in a miserable hackney, while Emma had been learning the wonder her body was capable of. Heat bloomed on her cheeks.

She clasped the latch at her throat and headed for the door. She made to raise her hood.

“Emma?” he called.

She paused, staring questioningly at him.

Charles strolled over to join her at the door. He reached up, and her heart hammered as he set to work righting her chignon, brushing the loose strands back behind her ears. “I am sorry if I offended you earlier . . . in what I said,” he murmured, lowering his hands, and she silently mourned the loss of those intimate ministrations he’d performed. “That was not my intention.”

And not for the first time that night, Charles stole her breath. He’d . . . apologized.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

For so much.

She might resent his past treatment of her, but he’d shown her passion that she’d not believed to ever know, and had done so without judgment. And as much as she might regret losing any part of herself, his had also been a gift. One that left her at sea, attempting to sort through a balance between the pleasure she’d wanted and the pride she sought to protect. Because she could not have both. At least not with Charles Hayden, the Earl of Scarsdale.

“Emma?” he called, cutting into her panicky musings. Charles grabbed each of her forgotten slippers in his hands and held them up. “And your slippers?”

“Ah, there is a good deal to be said for a comfortable slipper. And there’s even more to be said poorly about an uncomfortable heel. They shall only slow me down.”

He grinned . . . and despite all the terror reality had brought, Emma found herself smiling in return.

And with that, barefoot, Emma left.