Lynne Connolly - Counterfeit Countess

“Not at all.”

So polite, she wanted to stand up and scream and swear, just to break this fraught gentility. “I truly appreciate your help.”

“The family cannot disappear.” For an instant, a brief brush of time, Faith saw Lady Graywood’s eyes turn bleak, her mouth lose its firm line. Then she was back, the dowager she recognised. But that moment gave Faith an insight, one she hadn’t had before.

Lady Graywood had lived in an age of rigid self-control, when people were expected to keep their social calm above everything. At this level of society they were avidly watched, reported on, drawn in vile caricatures. She’d grown up with that knowledge, had learned from childhood up to hold that mask of indifference up to society.

Now she did it everywhere, even with her family.

Faith couldn’t hope to emulate her, nor did she wish to, but that brief insight had taught her that a real woman existed under the severe exterior. She might never know what the dowager honestly felt, but she understood that the older woman felt something. It made a difference. She couldn’t imagine what kind of life that would be but if she stayed, that might become her fate.

After the meal she said she was tired, that she wanted to rest, more to give the dowager an opportunity to retire than anything else.

Upstairs, Turvey was still busy in Faith’s room, so John offered her the use of his bed. With a knowing smile. Why she assumed he’d leave her to rest she wasn’t sure. Instead, he followed her into the room, closed the door gently behind him and took her into his arms before he delivered the kind of kiss he hadn’t given her for days. He slanted his mouth across hers, held her face in his hands to keep her in the position to receive him and tenderly delved deep. His hands slid down her throat, caressing the sensitive skin and then around her waist to draw her close. She rested her head on his shoulder and kissed him back, tasting that flavour of coffee and John. She’d never forget it if she lived to a hundred.

He broke away to smile at her then kissed her again, slowly and thoroughly, pushing his tongue into her mouth and licking, then thrusting, imitating the act of love. Her body came alive, tingled where he touched her, the sensations spreading through her whole body.

Finishing with a few short, sweet kisses, as if he couldn’t bear to leave, he pressed his forehead against hers. “I had meant to leave you alone until you invited me back into your bed. I can’t. You are so sweet, so unbearably sensual. I need you all the time. How can this be?”

Breathlessly, not just from the kisses, she gazed up into his dark eyes. “It is, that’s all. I need you too. I’m not supposed to say that, am I?”

“Why not? Why shouldn’t you desire me the same way I desire you? What’s wrong with a wedded couple seeking each other’s company, especially after a gap of nearly two years?”

Her heart plummeted. “Because it’s not true, is it? We’re not married, not in truth.”

“It could be. It is. I did think of you when I had no right to, when you belonged to another man. Just because I couldn’t call you mine, that doesn’t mean that in the dead of night, at my heart, I didn’t think of you. Want you.” He gave a rueful smile. “I did. That part is as true as God.”

Mildly shocked, she tried to protest. “You shouldn’t blaspheme.”

“How did I do that? I need you, Faith. Why shouldn’t I say what I was feeling when I had no rights over you? I knew a brave, forthright woman who hasn’t changed at heart, merely grown more beautiful.”

She couldn’t believe that. She’d never appeared more than ordinary. Even when Turvey had dressed her, she’d gained a little polish, not suddenly emerged as a swan. It had never worried her before. She liked ducklings.

But the expression in his eyes—that said she was beautiful. So did his kiss, when he ravaged her like a man starved. As sensual as he’d been a moment before, now he took her as if he could do nothing else. He spread his hands over her, smoothed them down her body, over the curve of her hip and around to her backside, using his hold to cinch her close.

His erection pushed into her as if no layers of cloth lay between them. Hot, insistent, along with its owner. He broke the kiss to murmur, “I want you,” into her mouth, the words heating her tongue, her throat. Then he kissed her again, pressed her against the door. Just as she was lifting her legs to wind them around his waist, get as close to him as she could, he stopped. He fumbled for her hand and led her to the bed.

His eyes appeared as dark as she’d ever seen them, his lips damp, his mouth fuller than usual and slightly open. Glancing down her, he turned her around and gave a slight exhalation of relief when he found the fastenings to her gown. Her bodice sagged forward as he undid them. She didn’t try to keep it up but let it fall when it loosened enough for her to do so. She unfastened the buttons holding the sleeves tight to her wrists so she could slip it off. She heard the low curse when he couldn’t immediately unfasten the bow on her stays and she chuckled. “New maid, new knot,” she murmured.

“Tell her to use the old one. It was easier.”

He didn’t sound pleased, but she knew she hadn’t cause his displeasure. Impatience made him clumsy. He got the stays off then attacked her petticoats, which he managed with more proficiency.

That delighted her, since she was growing impatient too. She kicked the petticoats aside and bent to attend to her boots and stockings, pointing her bottom at him in a deliberately provocative gesture.

In response, he stepped forward, pressed his body against hers and then put his hand on her back, pressing her down, preventing her from straightening. “Stay there,” he said. “I want you like this.”

Cool air struck the backs of her legs when he raised her shift, and she knew he’d exposed her to his stare. She felt his attention like a living thing, avidly hot.

A moment when she pulled the bows loose from her boots, but she didn’t have time to take them off before he returned. This time his bare groin rubbed against her, the hair softly pressing against her naked skin. “Oh, John,” she murmured. “Oh that feels so good.”

“Open your legs.”

He’d have to bend his knees to reach her, since he was taller than she. But if she touched the floor and pressed against it, she could angle her backside so it tilted up. When she did as he bade her he could see her, how wet she was, and she couldn’t rub her thighs together for some small measure of relief.

Instead she felt his hand on her hip, holding her steady and his cock against her opening. “You look ready, sweetheart. I’m coming in. So lovely, as if you wanted me before I touched you.”

He deserved the truth. “I did. I wanted you when I should have been thinking of other things.” In church, however hard she tried to turn her mind to spiritual matters, she couldn’t stop her awareness of the man next to her in the pew. Now she had him. All to herself.

He proved it by working his plump cockhead inside her, moving slowly but with a surety of purpose that dictated the inevitable.

The slight tension at her entrance gave way as her body accepted his. He drove deep inside her, his steady penetration not stopping until his pubic hair grazed her. She shivered. “You’ve filled me up.”

“I have. And, my lady, I intend to fuck you until you scream.”

John was a man of his word, she knew that. In this position he felt impossibly deep, inside her deeper than anyone had gone before, the sensation more intense, verging on pain. Faith grit her teeth and endured, until he withdrew and plunged back, his balls colliding with her, touching the soft, wet flesh between her legs.

She huffed, grunted when he powered inside her once more, and then gripped both her hips, dragging her back against him as he thrust, granting her no mercy. “Take it all,” he said. “You hear me?”

“Yes, yes, I hear you. Yes!” The last when he grazed a particularly sensitive spot, and she found herself unable to bear it. She wouldn’t beg him to stop, refused to allow it. This was new country, and what she recognised as pain didn’t actually hurt, it introduced her to a new level of lovemaking—fucking. He’d called it that, and he was right. He was taking her, teaching her body to accept his in any way he saw fit, fucking her senseless.

Her body responded, as if it was soaring out of her control. Faith loved it, adored the feeling of helplessness, of being taken. Used.

God knew she’d been used before, but not this way. Not with a care for her, how she felt, what she wanted. For he changed his angle of entry when she moaned his name after a particularly hard and fast plunge, kept at that place to stimulate her.

Their bodies connected with a sharp slap, the only sound, other than their breathing and their murmured words she could discern.

If traffic moved outside, she remained unaware of it. If maids went about their duties and the other occupants of the house spoke and called to each other, she didn’t hear it. If the whole of the street outside had exploded in a ball of fire, she wouldn’t have noticed.

Nobody but this man mattered, the man driving inside her, relentlessly urging her higher until she screamed his name. Her body froze for an instant and then blossomed into its own flames, consuming her. Then, when he made a noise low in his throat nearly animal in nature, him too. He jerked, gripped her with a hold that might show bruises later. Marks she’d wear with pride because of the glory of this moment.