Lynne Connolly: Counterfeit Countess

But it is none of my concern. Either would make an excellent countess.”

“Not while I’m married to you.” He rolled further in to lean over her, his cock lying on her hip, informing her, as if she needed it, of his renewed arousal.

She blinked but showed no other sign. “We’re not married.”

He framed her face with his hands, bent his head lower, watched her lips part, ready for his kiss. He wondered if she knew she was doing it, or if it was a natural action, and craved the latter. “We could be,” he murmured, before finally giving way to temptation.

He’d give her that much, the temptation of the worm on the hook.

She sighed into his mouth and he surrendered, for the time being at least. Gave himself over to pleasing her, and by doing so, pleasuring himself. He’d taken women in desperation, with the certainty this would be the last time he would do this because the next day he’d stare death in the face. Again. Taken them with mutual pleasure in mind. Never before had he desired anyone this badly. He needed her, more than here, in bed, but elsewhere too. If he could not persuade her, then his task would be all but insurmountable.

When she arched into his hold, teasing his cock with her feminine slickness, her soft skin, her sighs, he forgot any other consideration.

His shaft didn’t need guidance this time. It knew its way. All he had to do was rise up enough to let it slip between her legs. When she widened her thighs and opened for him, he drove in, deep and sure, all the way home.

A sense of rightness washed over him, together with an insatiable need to thrust hard into her, force her to call out, accept him as her—he would have said ‘master,’ but he didn’t want that.

Only his recalcitrant member seemed to force him to want it. He could use the feeling, and he did.

When he pushed straight in, she moaned, but it seemed practiced, by rote, her actions what she expected him to want.

Difficult to describe, but he knew he’d seen those reactions in other women. At the time he’d known they were trying to please him, mostly because he was paying them.

Not now. He watched her when he changed his angle, so he thrust sharper, then lifted an inch or two so he grazed the lower part of her channel.

There. Victory roared through him when she gave a sharp gasp and reached out as if to clutch him. “Open your eyes,” he whispered to her. “Let me see you.”

She did so, blinking into his face. He saw shock, mingled with heat. Oh, yes . Her expressive gaze showed him her reactions. Her unguarded behaviour with him flattered him more than any words.

She trusted him, and he suspected she gave her trust to few people.

Urged on, he moved again, touched the same sweet, soft place and watched her pupils widen, her bright eyes darken, sparkling with shared intimacy.

“Let me help you there, Faith.”

He continued with his slow, steady thrusts, taking care to touch the spot that gave her most pleasure. Another time he’d work on her clitoris, but they were still learning and in his experience one step at a time worked best. Get that right and move on to the next.

Concentrating on her helped him to delay his own culmination until he could ensure hers. As she blindly reached out, her hands touched his shoulders, clasped tightly and held on. Her cries became whimpers, shreds of sound in rhythm with his thrusts, keeping the beat until he changed, paused and then began again.

One, strangled cry, her eyes closed and she turned her head, pressing her cheek against the pillow, crying his name as she came.

The rush of heat and the way her body clenched around him were enough to set him off. Barely able to think, he gave a helpless choke as his seed spilled into her. Crushing his body close to hers, he felt every throb, every spurt.

He dropped his head to the empty space on the pillow and breathed hard, inhaling the heady aroma of their coupling. He revelled in the feel of a woman’s soft form under his. It had never, ever felt this way. Every woman was different, he knew that, but this woman was completely unique.

Breathing heavily, his mind flashed back to the moment of sheer terror when he woke in the medical tent and realised he didn’t know who he was. Nothing. His memory loss had been total for a day or two before fragments seeped back over the next week. But one instant remained; the horror of being nobody in a mass of people he didn’t know.

Now he welcomed the temporary blankness as respite from what he had to face, in the certainty he’d remember. He felt helpless in her arms as if he’d given her everything he was.

It didn’t last. It never did. He rolled away, flung back the bedclothes and found the cloth to clean her, barely noticing the chill in the air once he’d left the safe haven of her bed.

She watched, her eyes half closed while he performed his task before joining her again. She curled into him as if she belonged there. He kissed her, slow and affectionately.

“You said we could be married?” A note of fear entered her voice.

He sighed. He’d wanted to have this conversation later. It seemed it had to be now. He had to make her understand, or at least to stay for a while. “You were planning to leave. What did you think would happen after you’d gone?”

She shifted, but didn’t urge him to let her alone, for which he was glad. She felt good in his arms, right. “You’d denounce me as a fraud and laugh about me with your friends. It’s my fault, so it’s only fair I take the blame.”

“What friends?” he demanded savagely. “What do you think I am? I’m an earl by omission, my dear. I might have had august relatives, but I wasn’t part of their world. Ever.” He waited for the customary bitterness but it never came. Instead, he told her the facts. “I refused to live on expectation of the inheritance. After my parents died, I chose another path in life.” He propped himself on one elbow, gazing down at her face. “I never courted society or cared about it particularly. I’m an outsider. People will say it’s only what they expected. They’ll call me upstart, and then say I’m a fool for trusting a woman I knew nothing about. Until I belong to the elite in society, I need you.” The brutal truth. A poor relative turned earl. Except he wasn’t so poverty-stricken these days. Not that he had any intention of letting anyone know. At least, not yet.

“Society?” Her lips turned in a sneer. “You want that? Balls and court and parties in the country?”

He couldn’t blame her for thinking of society in such a superficial way—her life had never contained that kind of business before. And it was business. “The Earldom of Graywood is a wealthy and widespread one. There are investments, property, financial speculations. The Graywoods own mineral concerns, ships and a small street in London that makes a staggering amount in rent every year. All these concerns employ people and generate revenue, and I’m the hub, the figurehead. I have to be beyond reproach. More than that, I have to prove myself capable. Do you understand now?”

She stared at him, blue eyes wide and he watched, saw the comprehension creep in. “If you’re damaged, if society rejects you, it will mean the end of your investments?”

Relief flooded him when he realised she’d understood. “Exactly.

I don’t want to let those people down. The ones who work for me, and depend on me, not the ones who can take care of themselves.”

His personal bugbear, the one thing he refused to do in life. “I need the respectability of a wife. A scandal like the one you’re proposing to set up, hard on the heels of my inheriting the title, could ruin me, whether I was to blame or not.”

“Am I allowed to say no?” He relaxed, knowing she wouldn’t do that now. But she might not want to take part in his efforts. The thought of letting her go made him falter in his rapid assessment, but if she wanted it, he would do that. Just not let her run away.