C
HAPTER
25
I
shouldn’t let him do this to me.
Her mouth opened and closed a couple times, but she couldn’t form a coherent word. Emma let her head drop back. It was too heavy to hold upright when all her attention was focused on the heated space between her legs.
She recognized the way her insides coiled. Griffin was sending her to that blissful place again, that inside-out, can’t-give-a-tinker’s-damn-about-anything place that existed in secret inside her own head and heart.
She wondered if she could find her way there without him.
No,
she decided. She might experience a measure of bliss, but it wouldn’t be the same when she tumbled back to the real world if Griffin wasn’t there to catch her.
How she loved his kisses. His mouth was a world unto itself, all wet and hard and smooth. His shoulders were solid, his arms comforting. And she remembered well the long male length he sported between his legs.
Her insides ached with emptiness. His talented fingers both eased and provoked her. She knew he was going to make it better, but before he did, her need would become much worse.
He kissed her breasts through the layers of her gown and she wished there was nothing separating her skin from his blessed mouth. Her nipples ached, straining against her undergarments for his touch. As tightly drawn as she was, just a suckle or two on a bare nipple would surely set her off like a Roman candle.
His fingers teased her sensitive flesh, drawing circles of torment around the intimate little spot that was the source of so much delight and anguish.
How could something feel so good and so frustrating at the same time?
Then just as her insides wound so snugly Emma didn’t think she had another revolution in her, Griffin dropped to his knees before her. He shoved her gown up so he could look at her.
She resisted the urge to pull her knees together. Modesty over her body seemed ridiculous after she’d bared her secret life to him. Still, she held her breath as he scrutinized that intimate part of her.
“You’re beautiful, Emma,” he said. “In every way.”
He thumbed her little spot and her body tensed for release. Then he leaned toward her so close she felt the heat of his exhalation on the damp curls between her legs.
No, he couldn’t possibly mean to . . . He wouldn’t . . . Oh, mercy! He would.
She’d thought his fingers were talented, but they were nothing compared to the raw delight of his mouth on her. Wet and soft, but with his tongue giving her spot the same lover’s service his thumb had.
She crested quickly and unraveled under his intimate kiss. Her thighs shook, her insides bucked, and she dug her nails into the aged walnut so hard, she was sure she was leaving tiny curved marks in the wood under the lip of the desk.
She tried not to make any noise, but her release flowed out of her in a strangled sob.
If she expected Griffin to give her time to recover, she was mistaken. He stood and undid the buttons over his hips to drop the front of his trousers, then entered her in one quick thrust before her last inner contraction stopped pulsing.
Emma urged him in with murmured endearments, wrapping her legs around his waist and hooking her ankles together at the small of his back. She needed him so. The glory of her climax was one thing. Connecting with this man was quite another. Nothing assuaged the yawning emptiness inside like having him fill her with himself.
He drove into her with no gentleness at all. She kissed his throat in gratitude and he answered her with a feral male growl. She nipped him on the neck and he quickened his pace. Her heart bounded up to the distant ceiling. She couldn’t bear tenderness from him now. Not after what she and Monty had meant to do to him and his family.
This bone-jarring swive was what she deserved.
What her body demanded.
His, too, if his desperate lunges into her were any measure. His scrotum slapped against her with such force, she wondered if he was hurting himself.
Griffin cupped her cheeks and made her meet his gaze as he plunged in and out. No pain showed on his features, only a hungry, intent determination to create another connection with her, something beyond the physical.
He wants to see me,
she realized.
To know me. Oh God, given what I am, how can he bear that?
But Griffin didn’t look away. He watched her as she came again in joyous spasms and didn’t turn his eyes aside when his own body stiffened and arched before spilling into her.
He wants me to see him. To know him.
She wondered what secrets an earl might have and if he’d be ready to share his truths with her as she’d shared with him. Whatever they might be, she’d accept them. She’d even admitted she thought she was giving herself to his brother, for pity’s sake, and it hadn’t seemed to make a difference.
Spent, Emma let herself settle back onto the desk and Griffin laid his head between her breasts.
“I can feel your heart,” she whispered. It hammered solidly through the layers of clothing that separated them and pounded through the length of him still inside her. She drew a ragged breath.
“And I can hear yours,” he said.
Emma ran her fingers through his hair, reveling in the way their bodies were still connected and wondering how long they’d manage to keep it so. She began to notice her surroundings once again as her body settled—the hard, smooth walnut beneath her, the musky sweet smell of arousal and fulfillment wafting around them.
The storm outside had subsided to a gentle shower. Rain-washed air lifted the drapes to sough into the library. On the ceiling above them, Cupid and Psyche indulged in their chaste kiss.
Emmaline had been so moved by the fresco when she’d first seen it. Love in its first blush was the finest thing she could aspire to. Now it seemed pale by comparison with the force of the passion unleashed on the sturdy desk.
Was the bond between her and Griffin love? She didn’t know. But shared pleasure certainly bound them together.
Why did such pleasure have to start with pain?
she wondered absently. Her thoughts darted about like a school of minnows, too quick for her to snatch one up for any length of time. Then suddenly one leaped into her net and refused to budge.
“No more pain now,” she whispered. Emma struggled to sit up, which was difficult since Griffin still rested his head on her.
He straightened and kissed her forehead as he smoothed her skirts down and fastened his trousers. “I’m glad I didn’t hurt you this time. I was rougher than I intended.”
“Never mind about that,” she said, kissing him back, then pulling away before she allowed herself to be distracted again by his mouth. “You said, ‘No more pain now’ before.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I was three sheets to the wind when I tumbled into Ted’s bed.”
“No. I mean, you said it then, of course. But you also said it in the hansom on the way to Lord Whitmore’s when you had that . . . episode,” she said. “I thought at the time you meant you’d been in pain and weren’t any longer. But now, I wonder if it was something else.” She laid a hand on his cheek, the prickly late afternoon stubble of his beard rough on her palm. “Is there some truth you owe me?”
Griffin inhaled deeply and lifted her down from the desk. He’d known someday he’d probably have to share the secret of his “gift” with someone beyond the confines of his immediate family. He never dreamed he’d unburden himself to a professional trickster.
It was the kind of secret that made blackmailers’ mouths water, especially the bit about the way he occasionally used his abilities to win at gaming tables.
He decided to skip that part as he led her to the settee and settled beside her before the cold fireplace. Trust was earned and while she obviously trusted him, he still wasn’t sure he could return the favor.
So he started with his father’s death and his unwitting part in bringing his own vision to pass. To his great relief, she listened without interruption and seemed to believe every word.
“After that, I tried not to interfere with what I saw coming,” he said. There had been a few times he couldn’t bear not to try, but each failure cemented his belief that whatever he did would be twisted to serve Fate. “Inaction seemed the best course.”
“But not one that sat well with you, I’ll wager,” Emmaline said, pressing her hand on his.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and stared at the empty hearth. “No.”
“What sort of vision did you see in the hansom?”
“I saw you come to my bed.”
“Oh,” she said, withdrawing her hand and folding it with the other on her lap. “So that’s why you traded rooms with Theodore. You didn’t want me to—”
“Now just a moment. I was trying to spare my brother. Can you honestly think I didn’t want you?”
“No, Griffin, but I also think you weren’t trying to avoid your vision that hard. I don’t believe the future is as fixed as you make it seem. Even though I came to you as you’d
Seen,
you still had a choice. If you’d spoken sooner—”
“You’d have left me?”
She sighed. “Not for worlds.”
He leaned to kiss her, but Emmaline sat up straighter and turned her head away. She was responding with the time-honored response of polite society to freaks—a slight shunning.
“I’m glad you confided in me,” she said, “but the fact remains that our choices have put us in an untenable position.”
“Don’t you mean Fate?”
“I rather think we chose this, Griffin. Whatever led to our joining last night, I didn’t give myself to you by accident this afternoon. I chose you.”
She laid her palm lightly on his forearm and he decided he’d been wrong. Perhaps she didn’t see him as a freak.
“If we’re merely playing out some preordained script, what does any of it mean?”
Her question was phrased as a philosophical argument, similar to the ones old Mr. Abercrombie used to raise. But beneath her query, Griffin thought he heard “What do I mean to you?”
He had no ready answer for her.
Yes, she was light to his dark soul, but she was also heartache for his brother. And even if Griffin could somehow find a way around that, there was still the matter of his “gift.”
He’d always avoided entanglements of the heart. And he studiously avoided touching the personal possessions of members of his family. It was easier to go through life wrapped in an inviolate empty space rather than risk another
Sending
that showed him the death of someone he loved.
He wouldn’t be able to maintain that distance if he fell in love with Emma.
“Damned if I know what any of it means,” he said gruffly and rose, shoving his hands into his pockets. He’d already received
Sendings
from her drawing pencil and her fan. It was dumb luck her lacy underthings hadn’t set off the lights in his head. He needed to be more careful around her.
And he needed to change the subject.
“If the Tetisheri statue is a fake, it’s worthless. So why did someone try to steal it?”