Mistress - Amanda Quick [17]
“Marcus? I mean, my lord?” She touched her lower lip with the tip of her small tongue. “I do not wish to cause trouble for you, sir.” She sounded breathless again. Her eyes were deep and enticing whirlpools in a bottomless sea.
“I stand ready to put myself at your disposal, Mrs. Bright.”
“That is very kind of you, sir. May I ask why you are willing to be so helpful if you do not entirely believe my explanations about the blackmailer?”
“As it happens, I am in need of a mistress.”
He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her as he had been aching to kiss her since he had first seen her in the Fenwicks’ ballroom.
THREE
SHOCK LANCED THROUGH IPHIGINIA WITH THE FORCE OF lightning shooting through a cloud.
She could not have been more startled if the marble centurion had suddenly sprung to life and taken her into his arms.
She was so astonished by the feel of Marcus’s mouth on her own that she went absolutely rigid for a few disbelieving seconds.
Marcus was kissing her. His strong, powerful hands rested on the naked skin of her shoulders, sending small shivers of excitement down her spine.
This notorious man whom she had come to know so intimately and whom she admired so much, this man who had stridden through her dreams every night for nearly a month, was making love to her right here in her own library.
Marcus had occupied her every waking moment since she had returned to London. She had spent her days studying him so that she could turn herself into a believable illusion of a woman to whom he might conceivably make love.
She had garnered rumors, tales, and a few real facts from every available source. She had read everything that he had written that she was able to find. She had spent hours contemplating the smallest details that she had learned about him in an effort to comprehend him and make him seem more real.
In the process she had created a very private fantasy for herself, one she had not shared with anyone, not even Amelia or Aunt Zoe.
Late at night, after a long, tension-filled evening of playing her role, she had lain awake imagining how it would feel to actually be Marcus’s mistress, to be the woman he took to his bed, to be the woman he loved.
The woman he loved.
A long time ago she had quietly concluded that she was not the sort of female who could experience great passion or inspire it in a man. She had come to terms with that knowledge, accepted it. She had told herself that she was too levelheaded, too practical, too intellectual to fall in love.
Nevertheless, in spite of her own self-knowledge, she had woven a web of fantasies around Marcus.
It had all seemed harmless enough because the man was safely dead.
But tonight he had walked out of her dreams straight into her life. And he was far more fascinating in the flesh than he had ever been in her dreams.
“You are most unusual, Iphiginia. Not at all what I expected.” Marcus’s voice was dark and shadowed with heavy sensuality. “Yet you are exactly what I seem to want tonight.”
She could not answer, not only because he captured her mouth again, but because she was quivering from head to toe. His arms tightened around her as he nibbled gently at first, then persuasively, and then more insistently. His hands tightened on her shoulders.
She gasped, parting her lips. He responded by invading her mouth with his tongue.
The momentary stiffness created by her initial surprise evaporated, leaving Iphiginia feeling incredibly warm and pliant. Heat pooled in her lower body. It was an extraordinary sensation.
She gave a muffled moan which seemed to please Marcus. His fingers flexed on her skin. Another wave of delicious shivers went through her.
She lifted her hands and gripped the dangling ends of his long, white cravat. “This is really most astounding, my lord.”
“Yes, it is, is it not?” He kissed her jaw and the tip of her nose. “And I promise you that you are no more astonished than I.”
“My lord.”
“My name is Marcus.”
“Oh,