The Importance of Being Wanton by Christi Caldwell

Chapter 19

THE LONDONER

DESPERATION!

Desperation has begun to set in for Miss Gately and the other members of the Mismatch Club. It has been reported by a reliable source that the young lady has even made demands for the Earl of Scarsdale to shutter his more successful and well-attended venture.

M. FAIRPOINT

They met again.

And yet as Charles had entered his chambers and set to work disrobing, she’d interrupted him . . . because the last thing she wanted, needed, or intended to let happen was a repeat of their last exchange in these very rooms . . .

With him naked, and her breathless.

Nay, there was to be no breathlessness. Or butterflies. Or any weakness.

“Emma,” Charles murmured.

He didn’t stand but remained seated there, and she was grateful for it, as his six feet two inches and broadly muscular frame invariably shrank any space.

Except with him seated upon the bed, it only raised all manner of intimate thoughts about again feeling his mouth upon her, but this time with that feather bedding under her.

All the moisture left her mouth, leaving her parched like a woman stranded in a desert, attempting to find herself.

And mayhap she was.

From the moment she’d taken part in that mock wedding ceremony as a child, Emma had been left searching for herself.

“This is a surprise . . . but a welcome one.” He smiled slowly, displaying his perfect, pearl-white teeth, a rogue’s smile, cocksure and arrogant with a bold confidence that could come only from knowing the effect he had upon women.

Women such as the one with whom he’d had a child.

Or the ones who’d rushed to join his society, while abandoning hers.

That brought her back to the reason she’d sought him out.

“Oh, it shouldn’t be, Charles,” she said, climbing to her feet and marching over so that she had him cornered on the bed with an advantage over him . . . so that he had to crane his head back to meet her gaze. “If you knew what was wise for you, you’d know that there was nothing welcome about my being here.” Emma stuck a finger into his chest, making her first misstep of the night, as the material of his shirt served as little layer between her and his rippled pectoral muscles. She swiftly drew back her arm, letting it fall safely to her side.

It was too late.

The damage had been done.

Charles’s rogue’s grin deepened, and lowering himself onto his elbows, he stared boldly up at her.

“This is generally where you inquire about the reason I’ve snuck into your household,” Emma said, proud of the steady strength to her voice.

“I am impressed at your having done so.”

Of course he would be. Though in truth, she was as well. After all, it had been no small feat, gaining entry and sneaking to his rooms while avoiding detection. It had required her waiting at the kitchens until the last of the staff had vacated before finding her way inside.

With the languid grace of a sleek tiger, Charles pushed himself up. “But, Emma-love,” he murmured, slipping a hand about her waist. And parting his legs, he drew her to stand between them. Emma’s heart somersaulted. “How have you not realized that anytime we meet is a welcome pleasure?” He wrapped that last word in deep, husky tones, layering it with silk that could never be misconstrued for anything but the seductive whispering that it was.

Emma cursed the weakness within that brought her lashes drifting down. “Y-you are loose with your words.”

“Only with you,” he vowed.

It was an absolute lie. A rogue with his reputation could melt the heart of the iciest dowager. She should say as much. She wanted to. But . . . his tongue teased the lobe of her ear, and her breath caught. Her pulse quickened. He flicked that slice of flesh against her, a scorching brand that surely marked her.

Stop.

And yet, no matter how much she commanded herself to step away and out of his arms, and focus her thoughts, once more she was reduced to heightened sensation and feeling that her body craved. That it hungered for.

Emma drifted closer.

Or perhaps Charles’s other hand, which had found its way about her waist, had guided her closer?

Then he drifted his mouth down her neck, lightly kissing that flesh.

Her body heated several degrees as he licked a path along the top portions of her breasts that had been lifted and put on display by the gown she’d donned.

“Y-you still do not intend to ask me why I’ve c-come?”

“Should I?” he asked huskily in between each worshipping kiss he placed upon her breast. “I was just happy to find you here.”

“O-oh, yes.” Then she couldn’t fight it. Not any longer. A little moan spilled from her lips.

“‘Oh, yes,’ you like that, love?” He paused, blowing lightly upon her skin. “Or ‘Oh, yes,’ I should ask?”

Ask . . . what? What was he saying? What had she been saying? “I . . .” She was too confused. Clouded by the same haze of desire she’d vowed to never fall prey to. Not again. Her eyes drifted open.

His gaze worked a path over her face. “Have you suffered some kind of harm?” he asked.

“No.”

“Has someone hurt you in any way?”

“Yes.” That grounded her, and she managed to step away.

He’d already taken to his feet. “Who?” If a single word could be a threat, then the icy syllable he clipped out now achieved that goal.

Emma didn’t want it to matter that he should care either way . . . And yet it did. She squared her shoulders. “You.”

He blinked. “Me?”

“You,” she repeated. In fact, over the years he’d made something of a habit where she’d been concerned. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from leveling that bitter charge at him.

“Me . . . ?” Charles shook his head.

Returning to the spot she’d staked out earlier, Emma fetched the same paper she’d committed to memory, which had also kept her company while he’d been off doing whatever it was he’d done with the women at his clubs. She hurled her copy of The Londoner at him, hitting Charles square in the chest.

He caught it to him. “What is this?” he asked, already reading.

“That is actually the question I have for you, Charles. What is this?”

“I am afraid I do not follow,” he said slowly, lowering the newspaper to his side.

“Your society is still functioning.” And worse, thriving.

“We are a club.”

Emma’s eyebrows went flying up. My God, was he making a jest about any of this?

“At no point did I agree to disband.”

Emma searched her mind, replaying every last word of the discussion they’d had in this very room, and rocked back on her heels. He’d not said it. And yet . . . she instantly found herself. “Your meaning was clear.”

“Apparently it wasn’t,” he said dryly. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, offended and calling me out for some imagined slight.”

“This is no imagined slight, Charles!” she cried, her voice climbing, and she briefly closed her eyes, fighting to get control of her rapidly spiraling resentment and outrage. “This is a very real affront,” she said, this time calm and quiet in that delivery.

“Because I cannot have a club of my own.”

The fact that his wasn’t even a question only added to the rage threatening to simmer over once more. “It is a society,” Emma gritted out.

He smiled. “Well, there you are. They are different, after all.”

At that poorly timed jest, she narrowed her eyes. Why, he thought he could simply charm away their conflict. He must have seen something, however, for his grin faded.

Charles took a step toward her. “Emma, I am sorry if you misunderstood, but I didn’t promise to disband my club.” She backed away from him, lest he attempted to weave more of his sorcerer’s magic over her.

“You only started this to goad me, Charles.”

Something flashed in his eyes. “It may have begun as one thing, Emma.” And he continued forward once more, refusing to allow her the physical barrier of space. Well, she’d be damned if she retreated any more. Emma dug in her heels and locked her feet to the floor. Charles stopped with only a pace between them; he roved his eyes over her face, and then his fingers came up in a distracted caress of her chin. “But my reasons for establishing my club? They have since changed.”

Frustration pulled an exasperated sound from her lips. He expected her to believe that his motives were honorable. “I want you to stop.”

Charles immediately let his hand drop.

“I mean poaching my members, plagiarizing my meetings, Charles,” she clarified.

His knuckles came up once more. “So I can touch you?”

A pained laugh escaped her, only to die a moment later as he tenderly cupped her cheek; all the while, the tips of his fingers resumed the caress he’d previously abandoned.

And something shifted in that moment.

Passion flared to life, hovering in the air around them, the fans of it deepening by the slightest touch, one that somehow still managed to conjure all the wanton moments that had been born in this very room, and at the hand of this man who now stroked her cheek.

And Emma turned into his touch, angling in a way so that she leaned into him, wordlessly, silently, and secretly wanting more of him.

Why does it need to be a secret?Why was it wrong for a woman to find pleasure when and where she wanted, while men were afforded the luxury of assuaging their needs without any explanation needed? Free to feel.

I want to feel . . .

“You should go,” he said hoarsely.

“Why?” she asked curiously.

“Because this time”—his already low baritone dipped, emerging a shade deeper with a passion she recognized—“this time, I want to make love to you in every sense of the word.”

“So you’ll send me away . . . ?”

“It is the right thing to do.” And there was a faint entreating quality to that admission.

Emma studied the sharply beautiful planes of his face, each chiseled contour tight and tense. The corners of his perfectly formed lips white from the manner in which he clenched his mouth.

Now he would show principles. Now, when she didn’t want him to. But then Charles had always proven contrary, wanting her only after she had left him.

Charles made to draw away once more, but this time, Emma quickly caught his hand and kept it there, pressed against her cheek, and then, curving her palm over the top of his hand, she guided it lower. She directed him lower, leading his touch to where she wanted it, pressing it against the bodice of her low-cut gown, the vast expanse of exposed flesh bare against his naked fingers.

He groaned. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Emma. You’re playing with fire.”

Yes, she was. And for the first time, she wanted to be burnt by it. She wanted to be consumed in a conflagration of passion, coaxed by his touch. “What if I said I wanted you to do . . . more of those things to me? All of them.”

Charles’s gaze locked with hers, and she braced for his continued moral resistance. But then he took her mouth under his, in this, her first kiss.

Passion exploded to life, sparkling like the Kent earth right after a lightning strike, and Emma found herself as immobilized as if one of those bolts had streaked down from the heavens and caught her where she stood.

She came alive all at once. Smote by desire, and reborn in passion. Gripping his shirtfront, she leveraged herself closer, coming up on tiptoe to better meet his mouth, and she kissed him in return.

He growled, a low, raw, primal sound born of desire that thrummed against her lips, and she reveled in this newfound power that came of being a woman.

Emma turned her head a fraction so she could better avail herself of his mouth.

Removing the combs from her hair, Charles let those strands free so that they cascaded like a waterfall about them. All the while, he licked at the seam of her lips, tasting that flesh with the tip of his tongue, and a wet, hot heat settled between her legs.

Hungry for more of him, for all of him, Emma parted her lips and let him inside, and in he swept, all silk and warmth, with a tantalizing allure which contained a promise of the more she desperately craved. She lashed her tongue against his, set free by the eddy of desire he’d awakened within her.

Charles swirled his tongue about hers in a teasing manner that turned the kiss into a passionate game where she sought, and he withheld, part of himself.

Gripping him hard by the nape, she held him in place, ultimately taking what she needed, making all of his mouth hers.

He groaned, the sound of his desire reverberating in their kiss, and that light thrumming sent a deeper throbbing to her core.

“Charles,” she panted.

And at last, it was as though he surrendered himself completely to Emma.

His hands were on her everywhere, making quick work of her cloak, shoving it free of her body; then, cupping her at the waist, he steered the both of them until he perched himself on the edge of the mattress and pulled her between his legs once more.

With a deftness that should have infuriated for the skill it evidenced, Charles had the buttons of her gown free and her dress down as it fell in a shimmery, shuddery heap of noisy satin.

Emma stepped out of it, kicking it aside. There would be time for reality later. Now, she just wanted this.

All of this.

Charles closed his mouth around the tip of her right breast, and she gasped.

Her fingers came up reflexively as she clenched and unclenched the dark-blond strands, holding him close as he worshipped her, laving that tip, suckling the bud until her hips moved wildly, undulating.

He drew away so abruptly she cried out from the loss.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered, diverting his masterful attentions elsewhere, pressing a path of hot, wet kisses along her neck.

“Mmm.”Incapable of the speech needed to encourage his attentions there, she dropped her head back to let her body show him what she needed.

She’d gone through her life believing the lie society had told her—that she wasn’t beautiful. Her features were too sharp. Her teeth more than slightly crooked. Her hips and breasts not lush . . . but when he spoke so and laid worship to her body as he did, she had her eyes opened at last to the lie as she was awakened instead to the truth of her femininity and beauty.

Her breath caught on a gasp as he filled his hands with her buttocks.

Emma reflexively tightened her limbs; the drag of the fabric of his trousers against the coarse hair of her womanhood pulled another moan from her, and she rubbed herself against him.

Charles squeezed her buttocks, molding that flesh in his hands, and that illicit touch, paired with wicked words, forbidden ones he whispered against her ear, encouraged each rise and fall of her hips.

Pressure built between her thighs, sharp and keen, and with each thrust of her body against his in a bid to assuage the ache there, the more desperate this yearning to find the same fulfillment he’d brought her to became. Her speech dissolved to wordless little grunts as she ground herself against him, the enormous length of his shaft rigid as steel, and she hungered to feel that flesh at last.

Then he moved a hand between their bodies, and slipped his fingers into her drenched center.

Emma cursed, bucking her hips harder, and Charles laughed quietly, that low rumble which shook his chest reverberating with male triumph.

And she didn’t care. Because her pleasure was as much her triumph as it was his. Nay, it was more. She wanted this moment, and took it boldly and unapologetically. The real weakness would be for her to deny herself all this. Any of it.

Emma bit her lip sharply enough that she tasted the metallic tinge of blood, and with his fingers still stroking through her sodden channel, she mimicked his earlier movement, reaching between them and gripping his length through his trousers.

Charles hissed sharply between his teeth, his already impossibly hard length surging even harder and higher under her touch.

And she knew the very same triumph he had moments ago, and celebrated this new discovery of her power over him.

“Do you like that?” Emma teased him with those same words he notoriously loved to ask of her, and with his eyes squeezed shut and his neck muscles struggling through the motions of swallowing, she took her torment further. Sliding free the front placard of his trousers, Emma bared him . . . to her eyes. And her touch.

His hips shot up. “Hell,” he groaned.

“Is that a no?” she asked huskily, already knowing the answer, but playing the same game he’d insisted she play.

“Nooooo.”Charles angled his neck about, searching for her mouth with his.

Emma, however, continued to deny him, withholding what he wanted. “You have to be more clear, Lord Scarsdale,” she breathed against the corner of his mouth, and the moment she removed her hands from his shaft, he cried out.

“Yes,” he hissed, his eyes flying open, those dark irises burning her with the heat there. “I love your hand on me. I want it.”

And her breath caught at the rawness of that unrestrained avowal.

In one fluid movement, he reversed them, flipping her over, so that she lay under him and the mattress was at Emma’s back. Sliding down her body, he rested with his head between her legs and put his mouth on her, devouring her.

He alternately nipped at the swollen flesh of her lips and tongued her channel.

Emma melted under him; she moaned her approval, letting her legs splay, and tangling her fingers in his hair, she anchored him in place. Thrusting her hips up, and pushing herself against that wicked kiss.

And then, in a devious turnabout, he abruptly stopped.

Her entire soul screamed at the loss of him. “Charrles.” Emma wept his name, blending it with a plea for him to continue.

“Lay your hands beside you, love,” he ordered, a command that sent a new hungering through her, and she complied. Doing as he bade. Then he picked up where he’d left off. He laved that oversensitized bud. He stroked her with his tongue.

All the while, she did precisely as he’d bidden. Emma forced her arms to remain at her sides; her fingers curled into the sheets, and she gripped the satin fabric tightly to keep from touching him. The pressure mounted, that merging of pleasure and pain, two conflicting feelings that—when making love to Charles—only made sense.

She closed her eyes, and her head lolled back and forth of its own volition.

This made sense between them. This, when nothing else seemed to. When they were at odds in so many ways.

Refusing to let that encroach upon the splendor of this, her first time making love, Emma shoved herself up onto her elbows. It was too much. “Charles?” she pleaded, and he immediately ceased tasting of her.

He quickly shucked off his shirt and shoved down his trousers until he stood naked before her.

Emma worked a hungry gaze over him, taking a moment to worship every defined, contoured muscle of his chest lightly covered with tight, golden coils. The equally firm, muscled wall of his belly. And then she dipped her appreciation lower, to the length of his shaft that sprang proud and hard from a nest of golden curls, the smooth plum tip of him gleaming.

Her breath caught. “I want you,” she breathed, owning her need of him. For him . . . and what only he could give her.

His eyes darkened, and she held up her arms for him.

Leaning over, he yanked open his nightstand drawer and removed a small sheath. Their gazes locked as he slid the French letter over his length, and then he covered her body with his.

Emma wrapped her arms about him and let her legs spread.

He buried his head in her chest, suckling fiercely at the peak of her right breast, and there was a hedonistic pull to the wet sounds of his mouth upon her. All the while, he ground the heel of his palm to her center, the tight thatch of her curls soaked from her desire.

Why were women taught this was wrong?

She panted.

Why, when there was no greater bliss . . . no greater magnificence than this? All this.

Suddenly, he stopped, and she cried out . . . silently? Aloud? It was all confused as to what was real.

“Is this what you want, Emma?” he asked gruffly. “Are you certain?”

Emma touched her fingers to his lips, silencing the remainder of that noble question. She moved her eyes, hazy from the passion he’d awakened, over the strained muscles of his face.

His brow gleamed with perspiration, and she lifted trembling fingers up to brush those droplets away. What must that question have cost him? That restraint?

Emma finally let her gaze rest, meeting his stare directly. “I have never been more certain of anything,” she said with a strength that brought Charles’s lashes sweeping down like a glorious golden blanket.

With a groan, Charles shifted, lowering himself between her legs, and he moved his hand, replacing it with his hard length. Her pulse escalated, and panting, she reflexively lifted her hips, urging him to continue.

And then he gave her what she begged for, sliding himself slowly within her; her body was tight, but her channel so wet it slicked the way for his entry.

Emma wrapped her arms around him, running her fingers up and down his back, and undulating beneath him, she urged him onward.

Charles’s eyes locked with hers, and the searing depth of emotion there robbed her of what little breath she had left in her lungs. “There is no one like you, Emma.” He thrust home, and she knew there was supposed to be pain; everything she’d ever learned and been prepared for said the moment would be marred by discomfort. And yet there was none of it. Closing her eyes, she panted fast and hard at the exquisite sensation of his enormous length buried inside her.

Charles placed a butterfly-soft kiss just above her brow, and her eyes fluttered open. “Did I hurt you?” Worry roughened his voice.

Emma arched her head back and twined her hands about his nape. “Only when you stopped,” she breathed.

His eyes darkened, and he claimed her mouth.

He moved slowly, withdrawing and then pressing deep, repeating that tantalizing motion, as he rocked within her.

Emma followed his lead, matching each downward thrust by lifting up into him.

Their movements took on a frenzy, more frantic and desperate as they strained against one another. Her sweat mingled with his. Their breaths grew shallow and raspy as they moved in perfect time.

The ache between her legs became so acute she was tunneled to that desperate sensation, and more, to the need to assuage it.

“Charlessss.”She hissed his name, digging her nails into his back, leaving crescent marks upon his flesh as she climbed higher and higher, closer to that glorious cliff she’d dived from days before.

“That’s it,” he encouraged harshly. He sank his fingers into her thighs, using her limbs to leverage himself forward, deepening his strokes.

Emma stiffened. Throwing her head back, she screamed. She screamed his name, endlessly, over and over as she knew a pleasure unlike any other she’d ever known before. This bliss made all the fuller by having him inside her. He pumped harder and faster, his thrusts growing almost jerky from the force of them, drawing out Emma’s climax.

Then he froze. With a low, animalistic groan, he buried his face against her neck and joined her.

She felt his length shuddering and throbbing as he thrust over and over again.

They collapsed at the same time, against one another, clinging to each other, with him buried to the hilt deep inside.

Charles abruptly reversed them, so she lay sprawled atop his chest.

Until their breathing resumed a normal, even cadence and the fog of desire lifted, and Emma made a slow descent back to Earth and the same reality awaiting her when she did—the same reality which had driven her here this night. Only she’d proven once again not strong in the ways that she wanted to be, for she was reluctant to let go of the magic and return to what they were, what they’d always been—a woman and man, always at odds with one another.

Now, they were two lovers at odds.

She lay there with her cheek pressed against his chest, absorbing the sound of his heartbeat, rhythmic and strong, pounding underneath her ear.

“Are you happy?” he murmured, smoothing a palm along the small of her back, just over the curve of her buttocks, rubbing in a delicious, soothing circle.

Emma propped her chin atop his chest. “Very much so.”

They shared a smile, which eased back reality’s inevitable arrival.

“We’ll marry,” he said quietly.

And with that, the cold rush of the present she’d been avoiding found its way into this stolen interlude. Emma swung her legs over the side of the bed. “What is that? An offer? A statement?” And a sharp ache needled her chest at what his words were.

Or rather, what they were not.

He frowned. “Of course we’ll marry, Emma.”

“Because of what we’ve done here?”

Color rose in his cheeks. “Yes,” he said tightly. “And because . . .” Her ears pricked up as she waited for him to say more. “It is the right thing for us to do. And I want to marry you.”

There it was. Only as tacked on as she’d always been to him and his life. An afterthought.

The mattress groaned, indicating he’d moved. From the corner of her eye, she caught him removing the sheath from his shaft and tossing it aside as he hastily cleaned himself.

“You needn’t marry me, and I needn’t marry you,” she said calmly, as she might deliver a lecture to the Mismatch Society. “I am a grown woman, and you are a grown man, and we are both entirely capable of . . . of . . .”

“Making love?” he supplied.

Her cheeks went warm. “Yes . . . that.” Somehow, despite everything she’d done with this man, a blush was still possible. “Making love,” she made herself say. “And there needn’t be anything more.”

“You’d deny how very compatible we are, love?” He folded an arm around her waist and drew her close so that Emma’s back rested against his chest. Charles kissed the place just behind the shell of her ear, his breath fanning her skin. Her eyes grew heavy from the desire his touch always roused, and she resisted melting against him and pleading for him to make love to her—again.

“Not in the ways that matter, Charles,” she said tiredly, and with a strength she didn’t know she possessed, she stepped out of his arms. Except that wasn’t true . . . She’d since discovered his affection for his son, and their shared love of political philosophy . . . and now they shared joint ventures. Her society. His club. Avoiding his eyes, she rescued her garments littering his floor.

Charles stopped her, resting a hand lightly upon her arm. “There is nothing I can say to convince you of this.”

There were any manner of things he might say . . . if he felt them. “I do not want your words summoned because I require convincing.” Emma sifted through the tangle of garments, searching for her dress—and then froze.

With numb fingers, she bypassed her dress for the white lawn shirt.

That was, white in all but one particular spot.

The crimson rouge of a woman’s lips upon his shirt, the red stark and vivid as sin upon white—a shade of innocence at odds with a man whose name and every deed and act were synonymous with sin. And it proved more sobering than when her sister had flipped their boat and knocked Emma into the crisp Kent waters.

The thick scent of jasmine that clung to his shirt. The rumpled quality of his garments when he’d entered his rooms.

Tears clogged her throat and blinded her eyes, and she cursed herself for that weakness. “Ah, how easily you scoundrels move from the bed of one woman to another.” She hated that her voice emerged as a whisper.

Confusion lent Charles’s brow several wrinkles, and then he followed her stare. His eyes bulged. He hastily yanked the garment from her fingers and stuffed it behind his back, as if that might somehow undo what she’d seen. “It is not what it looks like.” Shockingly, he had the good grace to blush.

Emma began frantically drawing on her undergarments. “Or smells like?” Because the scent of whomever had been in his arms lingered on those articles, too.

“I wasn’t with a woman. I was . . . but not . . . as you’re thinking. I was at one of my clubs.”

She forced a laugh, a cynical, sharp bark of humorless mirth. “I take it White’s and Brooke’s are still not permitting women members?”

His flush deepened, and he dragged a hand through his hair. “Not that manner of club.”

Emma paused mid-dressing. “Ah,” she said, feigning a dawned understanding. “A wicked club.”

He winced. “Yes, but I was just visiting Landon for drinks. She pressed herself against me. She offered herself. I didn’t want her. I didn’t want—”

“What you want and who you want isn’t really my concern,” she lied, hating the thickened quality of her voice, praying he didn’t look closely and see it for the hurt it was. Hating herself more for caring how he spent his nights. Hating herself for having believed him.

“Emma,” he called frantically, dragging on his garments. “Please, just let me explain.”

And knowing he intended to convince her once more, and fearing she’d believe those lies, Emma bolted.

She raced through his townhouse, not breaking stride until she reached the waiting hackney. Out of breath from the pace she’d set, she banged on the ceiling. The carriage lurched forward, and Emma peeled back the curtain a fraction and peeked out at Charles, running bare-chested after the departing conveyance.

She swiftly let the velvet fall.

She’d made so many mistakes where Charles was concerned, and she’d do well to put her energies and efforts where they belonged—on the Mismatch Society.