Temptation & Twilight

“Then put me in a carriage to Loch Lomond and gift me with an entire clan!”

She giggled, and his brow arched as he slipped his arms into the sleeves of the shirt Sutherland held out.

“Oooh.” She sighed dramatically. “If only I hadn’t met Larabie first, I might now be Lady Alynwick, and what is it the Scots call the laird’s wife?”

What the devil made her think she would be the one, after a long—very long—list of lovers? He would never marry. Never. And certainly, he would never think to marry someone like her. He was jaded, but he wasn’t cruel. The women he cavorted with were no more interested in a lasting liaison than he was. Which made them infinitely good choices. It was a mutual, if unspoken agreement: all parties were in it for themselves. Women for pleasure and the notoriety and novelty of sharing his bed, and him for a relationship born of convenience, and to assuage his animal’s needs—of which he seemed to have more than his share. Another sin, no doubt.

“Oh, come now, my love, you give the impression that you are emotionally unavailable. But I know the truth,” she pressed.

“Do you? So you’ve realized that I am not ‘unavailable,’ but vacant. Completely, emotionally empty—which means, of course, that I am ‘available’ to no one.”

“How your disdain for the world and everyone in it arouses me.”

“We make a good pair, do we not? Everything we touch turns black.”

Her gaze raked over him from head to foot and he felt as though he were being devoured, his statement of how he saw them completely missing its mark. “Oh, you might act that way now, Sinclair, but I assure you, when I want something enough, I get it. And I want you … very much. Available, unavailable, vacant—it matters not. I want to possess you.”

He heard Sutherland’s grunt, which meant he was either smothering his amusement or enjoying himself at his master’s expense. Either way, Iain glared at his valet while buttoning his own shirt.

“You’ve already had me, luv,” he murmured silkily. “Be content with that.”

“Contentment eludes me. I peaked three times tonight, and already I want more. I have learned that I’m rather insatiable when it comes to your skill in the boudoir. You truly are a master of lovemaking.”

No, not lovemaking, but fucking. He hadn’t made love in years.

“Oh, I’ve already done myself in, haven’t I? I married Larabie when I should have waited another month till I met you. Perhaps you’ll remedy that tonight when you’re duelling my husband over my honour.”

Iain winked at her while Sutherland wrapped the pale green and sky-blue plaid of his Sinclair kilt around his lean waist. The lady nearly swooned at the sight, which made her forget all that nonsense about possessing him. No woman possessed him—ever.

“And Highland dress to fight for me, my lord? You make my head spin.”

His was spinning as well, and not in a pleasurable way. Reaching for the Scotch, he drained it in one long swallow, emptying the tumbler. He motioned for Sutherland to refill it, which the faithful retainer did while Iain saw to his kilt.

If he was going to die tonight, he wanted to meet his maker in the clothes that best suited him—Highland dress. It was a bit elaborate for an old-fashioned English duel, but it fit him. He was an outlandish character, forever scandalizing the English peers with his brutish Scottish ways. He’d never fit into this world of delicate manners and anaemic pleasures. It was not his way. He was not delicate, not polite and his sexual desires were anything but staid. When he fucked, he didn’t want to remember to be gentle and soft. He wanted to lose himself in the woman, be taken to a place where no god or devil dwelt—no demons, no memories, just unspeakable pleasure. During that rapture, he wanted to say the words in his own way, to lose all control and let the cultured English accent that his father had literally beat into him fall away, leaving his Highland brogue to whisper in the woman’s ear. He couldn’t hide his more amorous emotions behind his English accent. That accent was cool and mocking, designed to disguise what he was feeling, giving him that devil-may-care aura. When he talked thus, he sounded like his late father, a pompous prat with little concern for anyone, which strangely enough enthralled the ladies.

Hell, Iain could barely remember a time he felt that much at ease to let himself go. In the bedroom he was always calculating, every move a choreographed dance. He didn’t lose himself, and most definitely had never been transported to his imaginary plane of pleasure on the wave of a fierce climax.

“Shall I wait here for your return, my love,” she asked, “or will you come ravish and debauch me in Larabie’s bed?”

Iain smiled at that and watched her in the mirror as he belted his kilt with the little leather strap and buckle. “A wicked creature you are. Have you no shame, Georgiana, mussing up the earl’s sheets with another man’s body?”

Her smile was scheming as she sat up and came to her knees, unashamed of her nudity and the fact that there was another present in the room with them to witness it.

“Very little, I’m afraid. You’ve stripped me of any decency I might have had.”

“Indeed?” he asked before taking another drink.

Her eyes were glittering. “You’ve stripped me of many things with your immoral ways, my lord. I fear being bad with you is really rather addicting.”

“Rather like Scotch,” Sutherland grumbled as he knelt to fasten Iain’s clan pin to the kilt.

“Watch it,” he growled, “or I’ll slam my knee into your nose.”

Sutherland, immune to his moods and taciturn disposition, merely ignored the threat and squelched a grin.

“Well, my dear?” Iain inquired as he slipped his dirk into his woollen sock. “Do I pass muster?”

“Indeed you do. I see that the story one hears about a true Highlander is correct—you do wear nothing between the plaid and your flesh.”

Halfway to being good and sotted, Iain turned away from the mirror and faced his paramour. Lifting the kilt, he showed her what she wanted to see. Grasping himself, he let the lady admire it.

“That part of you is magnificently made, Sinclair, even in this state.”

Quirking his lips, he stroked himself once, giving the lady what she wanted, so that later, she would give him what he wanted—which differed vastly from what she desired. He was bedding her only to get information about a secret club she frequented—the House of Orpheus. Orpheus was an enemy of the Brethren Guardians, and had to be destroyed. Iain was playing the part of a Casanova to gain what he and the other two guardians—the Earl of Black and the Duke of Sussex—needed.

Casanova, he mused mockingly as he let his kilt fall back into place. No, he did not feel like the legendary Italian lover, but rather like a male whore—as filthy and corrupt as an East End flash boy.

When he had concocted this plan, his friend the duke had told him that nothing good would happen out of it, but he had laughed, mocking him for the prig that Sussex was. Iain believed his soul was already gone, believed himself impervious to any more pain. But the truth was, he was not. He was drowning in sin, and any time now, he believed he’d wake up one morning only to look in the mirror and find all the sins he had committed marring his face. It would be a horrific sight, but a true reflection of what resided in his soul.

“Have you time for another round? Sex always invigorates men.”

“You think me full of sap, then?” he teased, when he did not feel the least bit light and cajoling. “You are a biter, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

Sutherland did laugh then, smothering the outburst quickly.

Her eyes narrowed. “I hope that isn’t derogatory, my lord. I would hate to have to instruct my dear husband to shoot you dead.”

As if Larabie, that fat, pompous bastard, could even try. “My dear, a biter is a term used to describe the most lascivious and wanton of wenches, which I am quite certain you will agree you are.”

“Oh.” She eyed him with a glittering glance that told him she was pretending not to know the true meaning of the word. How he loathed the game of playing innocent when she was so far from it. “Tell me, how does ‘biter’ play into the description of a wanton?”

She wanted to be shocked, and he was in the right frame of mind to appease her. “A biter, sweet Georgiana, means that said wanton is so eager for sexual congress that she will offer herself, bottom up, to her lover. A man calls her thus when he knows she’s aching for a little slap and bite on her arse, hence the term.”

“Cunny, too?”

His lips curled in distaste, but he hoped she would see it for something far more appealing. “By all means, if you wish to have your cunny bitten, I shall be happy to oblige.”

Thankfully, Sutherland had departed before the conversation turned to this. Even he had some personal level of decency, and this crossed the boundary.

“How I adore it when you speak filth, Lord Alynwick.”

He gave her a mocking bow. “I aim to please you, my lady.”

“You do. Surely you know that.”

He did. Who would ever see to his own pleasure was another matter entirely.

Now alone together, Georgiana smoothed her hand down her body, her thighs spreading in invitation as her pale hand slid between them. She was as insatiable as he was. Any man looking for a mistress would find her ravishing—would likely even empty the family coffers for her. But Iain was not looking for a mistress, and her avarice made him feel empty and cold.