Wicked Nights With a Lover (The Penwich School for Virtuous Girls #3)(12)

“I wish to spend the winter in Spain. Three months, to be exact. I don’t require a house, nothing permanent in nature. Three months. You. Me.” She looked him starkly in the face. “I want adventure. I want passion. And after that …” her voice faded.

Courtland’s face chose that moment to flash in her mind. Blast the man. Who was he to invade her thoughts? She supposed it was his virility, his very maleness. When she thought of passion, his unwelcome image rose in her head.

Lord Sommers’s eyes warmed as he looked at her. “How can I refuse such a request?”

She released a shaky breath, not realizing until then how nervous she had been. “You agree with my requests then, my lord?”

He cocked his head, studying her. “I’m long overdue a holiday, and with Christmas upon us, well, I dread this time of year … all the blasted relations swarming the place. I would much rather escape to sunny Spain. With you, my dear. The notion strikes me as providential, in fact.”

She winced at the description, deciding it either oddly apt or blasphemous.

Lord Sommers moved then, lowering himself down beside her, rearranging his bright blue jacket around him with a fastidiousness to rival any lady. She tried not to flinch when he lifted her hand from her lap and held it in his cold fingers. “How soon shall we do this?”

“I’m ready now. We can leave at once.” Then she remembered she still needed to visit her sisters. She didn’t care that she had vowed to do everything in opposition of Madame Foster’s predictions. She could not not meet them. They were her sisters, the family she had always longed for. One brief meeting would not hurt.

He answered her before she could retract her statement. “I cannot leave until the following week, I’m afraid. I’ll need some days to set my affairs in order and make arrangements for us.” He grinned then, all at once boyish. “Sunny Spain! What a brilliant idea.” His attention fixed on her, his gaze lowering to her lips. “And I cannot think of a better companion. We shall have a grand time of it. You’ll have your passion. That and more, I daresay.”

She smiled. More was what she was counting on. More was precisely what a dying woman craved, needed.

As he leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers, she tried to convince herself that she felt alive, electrified at the touch of his lips—a bit like how she’d felt when that scoundrel from the rookery put his hands to her. A lie, unfortunately.

She felt nothing.

Still, she returned his kiss, determined to feel something. A fraction of the fire that sparked between her and Courtland.

Nothing.

When he ended the kiss and pulled away, she sighed. He apparently mistook the sound for rapture of his mediocre kissing.

“There will be more of that later, love,” he promised.

She nodded and forced a smile. “I’m counting on it.” Counting that next time it would be magic.

That night she dreamed. An uncommon occurrence.

Usually, she slept hard, a dead sleep, with no memory of dreams the following morning. They faded like wisps of smoke. It had been that way since Penwich. Weak and hungry, she’d always fallen into sleep like a rock dropped into deep water. Always waking in the exact position that she touched down, curled on her side, her night rail not even so much as tangled around one calf.

But this night was different. This time, she was alert to her dream. Her senses hummed as she lived it, feeling, tasting as a participant.

She was still in her room. At the boardinghouse. In her same bed, which might lead her to think she wasn’t caught in the throes of a dream, but in all actuality awake. And yet she knew she dreamed. For no other reason would she have been sitting naked at the edge of her bed. Sitting, not lying down.

And she wasn’t alone.

Strange, that. The only soul ever to occupy the room with her had been the proprietress, Mrs. Dobbs. Stranger yet, she held herself boldly, proud and comfortable in her skin, in her nudity. Poised at the edge of the bed, sitting still and ready, she pressed her hands against her thighs. And watched.

With her stare fixed straight ahead, she watched the large, shadowed shape by the window. The curtains fluttered behind him, moonlight streaming in pale ribbons, the streaks of light illuminating his dark trouser-clad legs.

Fear didn’t exist at all. Even as she told herself to get up, to move, to rise. To demand that he leave her room. She couldn’t voice the words. She couldn’t budge. She couldn’t even care enough to lift a hand and shield her nudity.

It was as though she gave herself permission to do anything, to do everything. In this dream that didn’t feel like a dream, anything was possible.

He stepped forward with easy, decided steps. He wasn’t even dressed properly. She saw that. No jacket. No vest. The lightness of his lawn-colored shirt matched the moon’s glow. The fabric opened down the middle, leaving a deep vee of shadow. His trousers were dark, lost against the night, as obscured as his shadowed face.

He stopped before her. And yet she didn’t move. Not even when his hands fell to her shoulders, drifting inward to her collarbone, stroking the delicate lines. Her breath escaped in a small gasp.

His broad palms fell to her shoulders again. With a single push, he forced her back down.

Cool air wafted over her breasts. Her nipples hardened, chilled and achy as she descended to the mattress.

He came over her so completely, like an enveloping blanket. His mouth closed over one nipple, drawing it deep as his hand gripped her other breast. She moaned, arched, dug her hand into silken hair. Even as her breasts tingled and throbbed, she looked down, stared at the dark golden head feasting on her breast. Her belly tightened, twisting with heaviness.