Abruptly he blinked and reached up to rub the bridge of his nose. “Damned things,” he murmured. “I can’t tell a button from a beetle without them, but they are tiresome, all the same.”
“Oh. No doubt,” she returned. “You—”
“I have to feel my way,” he interrupted. Sliding a finger around the ribbon that belted her waist, Westfall tugged her up against him. Before she could announce that she preferred to avoid kissing, he bent his head, capturing her mouth. Heat speared through her. That was not a kiss of sentiment; as his tongue tangled with hers, hot and insistent and very capable, what she felt from him was pure, forceful lust.
Good God.
He slid his hands down to her hips, pulling her up against his lean body. The hard bulge pressing against her abdomen made her catch her breath. When he lowered his head, shifting his attention from her mouth to flick his tongue across the sensitive nipple of her exposed breast, she gasped.
Clearly he was no fumbling virgin. That realization should have had her scrambling to compose another strategy to get him talking to her. In a moment. First, she pulled the hem of his shirt from his trousers. When he lifted his arms, she tugged the white superfine over his head and then dropped it to the floor. She couldn’t seduce him when he had on more clothes than she did, after all.
Even fully dressed he’d looked lean and fit, and she saw nothing—nothing—to dispute that assessment. Emily ran her palms from his shoulder across his chest, and down to his waist. Hard muscles flexed beneath his skin, sending her own body humming.
Mm.
As bookish as he appeared, he clearly used his body as well as his mind. She drew another quick breath. What she needed to do was gather her thoughts back in and decide how best to get the questions she had, answered. She needed to back away, to—
“Turn around,” he ordered, his voice low and rough.
Before she could consider objecting to being dictated to, Emily found herself facing away from Lord Westfall. With swift fingers he untied the ribbon that gathered her deep green gown beneath her breasts, and then pulled the soft silk down her shoulders and over her arms and past her hips.
Her gown puddled to the floor. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that she was supposed to be seducing him, and that he should have been the one having difficulty thinking coherently. It was only because of the kiss, because she wasn’t accustomed to kissing. That had to be the reason she shivered as his hands wove into her hair, sending pins and clips clicking to the wooden floor. Her long red-brown hair, carefully ironed straight, fell past her shoulders nearly to her waist.
Westfall spun her to face him again, back her into the door, and nearly lift her off the floor with the force of his kiss. His hands teased at her nipples, pinching and tugging until she moaned.
Oh, this was too much.
Too unexpected. Too heated.
She grabbed his waistband, unbuttoning his trousers frantically, shivering again when he licked her ear and his wandering fingers slipped down her stomach, past her curls, and touched her between her thighs. The tent at his crotch made unfastening him difficult, and when he closed his mouth over one breast, she jerked and nearly tore the last button off.
Finally she shoved his trousers down to his thighs.
Steady, Emily,
she practically screamed at herself, trying for calm and logic and reason even with his fingers dipping inside her. “Very nice,” she managed, running a shaking finger along the hard, jutting length of him.
“Likewise,” he murmured, turning them so he could push her backward onto her bed. Or was it Lily’s bed? Blast it, she didn’t care.
With his boots still on and his trousers around his thighs, he followed her down, kissing her again until she could barely breathe. When he sank lower along her body, licking first one breast and then the other, Emily tangled her fingers into his dark, disheveled hair and made a whimpering sound that came unbidden from her chest. More. She wanted more.
Shifting down further, Westfall gripped her knees, lifting and parting them before he moved forward and licked where his fingers had danced. Emily jumped, sensation and heat and lightning shooting down her spine and up again. Writhing, digging her fingers into his hair, she wondered how a man who looked like a scholar could have more than ten fingers and one tongue, and where he’d learned to use them so well.
Finally he straightened again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he moved up the length of her again. His eyes had that predatory look to them again, but this time it made her damp. Fumbling, Emily reached into her night table and produced a goat intestine with a black ribbon tied at one end and open at the other. “If you please,” she managed, still shaking.
Wordlessly he fixed it over his manhood, tying the other ribbon to hold it in place, then placed his hands on either side of her shoulders. Emily took a shallow breath as his impressive cock brushed the inside of her thighs. Westfall settled over her, lowering his head to nip at her shoulder as he canted his hips forward and slid deeply inside her.
With another helpless moan, Emily dug her fingers into his shoulders and arched her back. She loved that sensation, the heated fullness of an aroused male, his weight across her hips, the warm push of his breath in her ear. She drew tighter and tighter as he plunged into her, the rhythmic creaking of her bed and their labored breathing, the slap of flesh against flesh, adding to her arousal.
Finally she burst, burying her cry in his hard shoulder. Westfall slowed his pace, then sat up, his knees bent, and pulled her legs around his hips as he continued his assault. She looked up at him, at his heated expression with his gaze focused on where they met, and she came hard and suddenly all over again. His hands closed on her breasts as he rocked into her deeply. With a low groan he emptied himself, shuddering.
Almost immediately he pulled out of her and rolled onto his back next to her. For a long moment Emily listened to the sound of his panting and felt the hard, fast pounding of her heart. That had been … shattering. She blinked. There was— She needed to— There was something— She needed to discover.
Think.
She needed to think.
“I nearly went to White’s for luncheon today,” he said, his eyes closed and his breathing still heavy.
Questions. She had questions. Managing a chuckle, she stroked her hand across his chest, running her fingers through the light dusting of hair there before she began a series of hopefully languid circles around his nipples in a slow figure eight. “That would have been a tragedy,” she breathed, attempting not to note the responding tingle down her spine as she felt his muscles flex and relax again. Oh, she hoped his mind was as muddled as hers was. “You wanted to show your brother the Tantalus, I presume?”
“Once he discovered I’d inherited my cousin’s membership, he nearly began weeping.”
Now she remembered. The former Earl of Westfall had drowned up in the Lake District a year or so ago. He’d been a young, attractive fellow, as well, though not quite as exceptional a physical specimen as his cousin. “Your kindness toward your brother worked out well for me,” she returned, trying to keep her voice soft and silky. A relaxed man, and a well-complimented one, was so very easy to chat with, she’d discovered. And this one had earned every accolade. “And you’re looking for someone. Do I know her? I could help you.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, really. Someone lost a necklace, and asked me to look for it. I like to look for things.”
His eyes remained closed, his face relaxed. Was that all it had been? Someone with a lost trinket? Well, she’d perhaps done more than necessary to discover that, and more than she’d intended, certainly, but the inquiring had been delightful. “Do you often look for other people’s things, then?” she asked, trying to regain control of the conversation. “That’s an interesting hobby, my lord. Much more so than chasing foxes or shooting at birds—unless you do those things, as well, in which case I shall call you adventurous.”
One green eye opened, then the other.
Damnation.
Had she stumbled and pushed too hard? Then he blinked fuzzily and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Where did I put my spectacles?” he asked, sitting up.
“On the chest of drawers. I’ll get them.” Relieved to have a moment, she swung her feet over the side of the bed and stood, in the same motion pulling a cloth from the folded clothes on her bed stand and handing it to him.
While he cleaned himself, she padded over to the chest and retrieved his spectacles. He hadn’t answered her last question, but he didn’t seem to have realized that he was being interrogated, either. If she trod carefully, then, she still had a chance to learn whether there was anything to discover. If she could stop thinking about how much she wanted to have him again.
Nathaniel watched the lovely, swaying backside of Emily Portsman as she went across the room to fetch his spectacles. The chit asked interesting questions, though he remained undecided whether they were pillow talk or if she was attempting to discover what he was after. Experience made him suspicious, but it had also taught him that suspicion was not the same thing as proof.
She faced him again, so he blinked and smiled. “Thank you, Miss Portsman.”
“You should likely call me Emily,” she said easily, handing the damned things over.
He dropped the cloth onto the floor and slung the spectacles over his ears. “That’s right, we haven’t actually been introduced, have we? Westfall.” Even after two years the word still sounded foreign on his tongue. “Or Nathaniel. Or Stokes. Whichever of the three you prefer.”
“So many names,” she mused, swinging her hair over one shoulder as she sat beside him on the bed again. “Westfall, I think.”
The least personal of the three. Everything meant something, and so did her choice of moniker for him. “Westfall it is, then,” he returned, forcing his gaze to remain on her face, though this body was more interested in having her again. Now. And repeatedly. “In which case I believe I’ll address you as Portsman,” he continued. “You were asking me about my hobbies, yes? What are yours? What does a Tantalus girl do when she’s not tantalizing Tantalus guests?”
She grinned. “Very good, my lord.”
Ah, it had been rather pitiful, actually, but he’d pushed his bumbling disguise to the limit already with the way he’d mauled her lovely, naked, smooth body. Nate swallowed. “Thank you.”
She nodded. “Since you asked, I like to read.”
In a bawdy house her answer would have been surprising, but the Tantalus girls were all said to be well educated as well as lovely. But according to his interviews, Rachel Newbury was a reader, as well. “Ah,” he said aloud. “Shakespeare? Johnson? Richardson? Smollett?” She didn’t resemble the description Ebberling had given for Miss Newbury all that closely either in appearance or with her enthusiasm in bed, but he wasn’t about to call her innocent yet, either. And considering that the governess was reputed to be high in the instep, she would read at least one of the authors he’d mentioned. Probably.
With a chuckle, Emily shook her head. “Radcliffe and Lewis, more like. At the moment I’m reading
The Scottish Cousin.
” She pulled the book from the bedstand and handed it to him.
“You are?” he returned dubiously, flipping through the pages.
“Oh, yes. You see, it’s very romantic,” she continued with a grin. “The cousin, Bartholomew Pinkerton, attempts to seize control of Lord MacKenzie’s estate, and MacKenzie must marry a duke’s daughter to end a family curse and thwart the evil Bartholomew’s plans. His grandfather’s ghost is determined that only a true Scotsman live on the grounds of MacKenzie Mew.”
“But isn’t the cousin Scottish, as per the title?”
“Well, it’s very complicated, but evidently he’s actually the illegitimate son of a Spanish troubadour.” She took the book back and set it aside. “I haven’t actually finished it yet, but there’s been something about a mermaid, as well. And smugglers.”
“You know that’s drivel, don’t you?” he countered. Logic and torrid, sentiment-filled romance certainly had very little to do with each other, and logic served him much better.
“So is Anderfel’s treatise on the poor,” she returned. “At least
The Scottish Cousin
is amusing, and doesn’t make me wish to hit someone.”
He pounced on that. “You’ve read Anderfel’s treatise?” Nathaniel pushed his spectacles up.
“Haven’t you? It was serialized in the
Times
.” Emily stretched, the bounce of her round breasts making his cock sit up and take notice all over again.
Other than discovering that Emily Portsman wasn’t quite what he’d expected of any Tantalus girl, this particular interrogation was netting him nothing. Well, a very diverting afternoon, certainly, but nothing of use to his investigation. Even so, he was loath to pull his trousers back on and leave. At home he would have Laurie complaining about being sent away from the Tantalus, and he would have to review all the notes he’d taken about Rachel Newbury in order to attempt a different strategy for hunting her down—all of it much less arousing than having Portsman again.
The idea that his quarry might have been—might still be—at The Tantalus Club was an intriguing one, and it remained a possibility. Short of directly asking his bed partner if she knew a Rachel Newbury, however, he needed to retreat and reconsider his plan of attack. The last thing he wanted to do was warn Miss Newbury before he’d identified her, because then she would likely flee—or decide that removing him from the equation would be the best solution to her difficulties. Aside from that, it would remove an excuse for a second visit to Portsman’s bedchamber.
At that moment she stood again. “Well, that was much more pleasant than the way I’d intended to spend the afternoon,” she commented, smiling at him, her gaze lowering to his waist, as she bent down enticingly to retrieve her gown.
Evidently the interlude was over. Since he’d practically assaulted her, he supposed it was only fair that she dictate the end of the encounter. He could use some damned space to think for a moment, anyway. Nate climbed to his feet and yanked up his trousers. “And how had you intended to spend the afternoon?” he asked. This was supposed to be an interrogation, after all.