Addicted

“You attempt to flatter me,” she said as she stole a look at Mary Grantworth. She was watching them with unabashed venom.

“No, Anais. I would never speak false words to you. You know that.”

Of course she did. They were friends, after all. Friends. How the word began to feel like a noose around her neck. She did not want to be friends with Lindsay. She wanted more. She wanted the same things she dreamed about. The same feelings coursing through her body as when she pleasured herself, while dreaming it was him touching her.

She felt her face warm and glanced away. If Lindsay knew what thoughts she had of him. How erotic. How unchaste and unmaidenly those thoughts were, he would run as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

While he might not speak falsely to her, he certainly could not mean anything by his words. They were meant to be kind, to help a friend. She mustn’t read more into them, or into the scene they had shared in the salon. She must not think it anything of import, how he had pressed closer to her, how his mouth had lingered over her hand and he had seemed to inhale her essence deep within his chest.

No! She was being fanciful. Allowing her bedtime wishes to become real. Lindsay did not desire her the way she desired him.

“My lord, shall you be attending the agricultural fair next week in Blackpool?” Mary Grantworth asked, drawing Lindsay’s attention away from Anais’s face.

“I had not considered it, Lady Mary.”

“No? You should. My uncle has entered his Belgian Warm-bloods to be judged. I know he plans to sell a few of his stallions. As you are known around town as the most accomplished horseman, as well as a connoisseur of flesh—”

“Flesh?” Lindsay asked with a raised brow.

Mary colored prettily, but it was far from innocent. “A connoisseur of horseflesh, Lord Raeburn. I thought perhaps you would be interested in the sale of those stallions, since you are interested in starting a breeding program here in Bewdley. At least, I assumed that was what you meant when you spoke of breeding during our walk last week.”

Mary shot Anais a look of triumph from across the table as she waited for Lindsay’s reply. With a stern nod that bordered on impolite, Lindsay shifted his focus to his plate and the piece of prime rib that sat on it. He gave no answer to Mary’s inquiry and Anais saw a look of pure menace cloud Mary’s beautiful expression.

Anais’s appetite abandoned her at once. She couldn’t possibly stomach anything, not when her insides had turned to lead. Anais struggled for composure, for inner calm against the tumultuous thoughts running with abandon through her mind. Just when she thought she’d go mad with her thoughts, she felt the softest of caresses against the top of her hand as it rested on her lap beneath the table. It was followed by another, then another. The tingling rose up her arm, covering her skin in gooseflesh. The caress reached higher, until it wrapped around her wrist.

Lindsay.

She looked up at him, saw the way his gaze had darkened; saw the way he looked down at her. Then he took her hand in his, entwining his fingers with hers, and placed their hands on his thigh. With his free hand he traced her knuckles and the veins beneath her skin in such a tender way she began to tremble.

It was singularly the most erotic thing ever done to her. To be holding hands and touching beneath the supper table while two dozen guests sat around them was the most scandalously wicked thing.

“I want to kiss your lips,” he murmured for her alone as his gaze slipped to her mouth. “I want to have you all to myself—alone,” he clarified. “Do you want that, Anais? To be alone with me?”

He’d taken his hand off hers and rested it on her leg where his fingers traveled lightly over her thigh. She could barely think, couldn’t breathe as his hand slid inexorably closer to the apex of her thighs.

“Be with me, Anais?” He rose from his chair, carefully removing his hand so no one would see. He dragged his palm across the taffeta of her gown, the motion slow and teasing. He made a show of bending down, a pretense of reaching for his napkin, but instead he took that moment to whisper in her ear.

“Come to me.”

He straightened, made his excuses and left the table. Anais finally let out her breath. Come to me… The words tumbled through her mind for the next half hour.

2

Blue eyes flashed at him from behind the veil of her curling golden hair. Her lips parted, taunting him with innocence. Lindsay’s gaze slipped to those red, plump lips, telling him of the sinful delights that could be found in her mouth. Sweet innocence mixed with forbidden sensuality.

She was a lady born and bred. His childhood friend, although a child no more. She was a woman, with a woman’s mind, a woman’s body. But had she the appetite of a woman? Did she hunger for him? Would she allow him to appease the ache—the same damn ache that had gnawed at his insides for years?

The way they had touched, their hands hidden beneath the table, had told him that she might just welcome an advance from him. He had felt her tremble as he made the caress more intimate. There was no mistaking his intent. No more denying what he wanted.

“You’re falling behind, Lindsay,” Anais called as she looked over her shoulder and through the long curls that waved and flapped in the cold evening air. “You should have ridden the chestnut bay. Now I’m going to beat you to the stables and you are going to lose our wager,” she said with a laugh. Urging her mare forward, she bent low over the saddle, her full, lush bottom perched in the air as she brazenly rode astride.

Desire curled in Lindsay’s belly as his gaze strayed to the roundness of her bottom. He should have stayed in London, should have kept himself buried in Tran’s opium den, numbing himself to these wanton appetites. In truth, he could no more keep his distance from Anais Darnby than a moth could keep from flying into a flame.

A familiar ache settled in his gut and he gripped the reins in his gloved hands, urging his mount forward as he closed the distance between him and Anais.

He should never have offered this evening ride. Should never have tempted himself by touching her beneath the table. Bloody hell, he should have known not to ask her to accompany him—alone. He knew better. He had been unable to take his eyes off her during dinner. Had watched her eat, studied the erotic play of her tongue on her lips, the fork. He had hungered and lusted through the entire damned meal. He’d been humiliatingly erect watching her, his blood heating with the desire to make Anais more than just a friend. Damn it, he should have known that a bruising ride through the woods would not assuage the dangerous desire he had flooding his veins.

Again, she glanced over her shoulder, her eyes widening when she saw how he was coming up hard on her heels, preparing to overtake her mare. She smiled in challenge and his blood heated more.

He couldn’t think when she looked at him like that, like a seductress with pouting, skillful lips. She was his friend—his best friend. He treasured their easy friendship—the rarity of it. What he was contemplating, what he desired, might very well ruin any feelings she held for him.

But he needed—had—to have at least one taste of the pleasure she could give him. One taste. One simple, forbiddentaste…

He should have been thinking about the ring he’d left in his den. Thinking about how he should be proposing marriage before taking their relationship further. Anais was a lady, after all, not a demirep. He was a gentleman who knew how to treat a lady. Except, at this moment, all he could think about was how much he needed Anais sexually.

The stable was now in sight and Anais’s mare galloped full speed toward the open doors. His heart was pounding a furious pace. It always did when he was riding. But there was something else there. An irregularity; a skipped beat when he thought of turning his relationship with Anais from innocent friendship to an intimate session of shared delight. Pink, flushed skin. Swollenlips, parted in pleasure. Her fingers digging into his shoulders as theirbodies heated and glistened with desire… Yes, that was what he wanted, the shared delight of flesh.

He wanted her as a companion. A wife. A lover. He didn’t think he could stand the agony of enduring another day, another month, another year of dreaming and longing. How damned torturous it was to have her near him and not be able to touch her. Had she any idea what he wanted to do to her as they sat by the pond and twirled the blades of grass between their fingers? Did she know how much control it took for him to resist lying atop her as she stretched out onto the grass and gazed up at the sky?

The bay snorted heavily as they tore into the stables. He heard the hard snorting breaths of Anais’s mare and he urged the bay to the stall. Before him, Anais was dismounting, the toe of her half boot caught in the stirrup. A flash of a stocking-clad ankle met his eyes and his cock hardened again. The hunger he had kept tightly reined in over supper broke free of his restraint.

Within seconds he had his hands around her waist, lifting her free of the stirrups. She gasped, a womanly, husky pant, and he didn’t think. Didn’t care that she might not want him like he wanted her. This was the moment he had been waiting for. The moment of truth. The destiny that had been ordained for him.

“I can go no longer, Anais.” His breathing was deep, his words husky as he brought her up against the stable wall. “It’s agony watching you from afar. It’s bloody torture thinking of you in the night when I am alone and wanting the feel of you against me. For so long I have needed and wanted you.”

Her eyes widened. Shock? Passion? He didn’t know, but the uncertainty ate at his belly. “I can’t look at you anymore with only friendship in my mind. I want your body beneath me. I want you flushed and hot in my arms. I want to be inside you.”

He didn’t wait for her answer. Didn’t want to hear it if she told him his feelings and desires were one-sided. He only wanted to feel her wind-chafed lips beneath his. One kiss. He would stop at a kiss if she said so. But to deny himself that, to resist the temptation, was a torment he could not withstand. If she allowed him any liberties, he would confess his love. He would sweep her away and marry her. He would make love to her in all the ways he knew how.

“Do you know what I want you to give me?” he asked, lowering his mouth to hers.

“Yes,” she whispered breathlessly.

“Will you give me what I want?” He pulled his gloves from his hands, dropping them to the stable floor. Unbuttoning her cloak, he let it fall from her shoulders, before he smoothed his palms down her arms and the delicate silk of her gown.

“If you say no, Anais, I will not press you.” Their gazes met, and he saw the war waged in her eyes. Waiting for her answer was a lesson in agony.

Another frigid blast of north wind howled angrily from the snowcapped hills. The shutters on the window flanking the wall behind Anais creaked against the bricks as the wind gusted yet again, sending icy air through the cracks of the old, weathered casement window, the sound distracting her from her thoughts.

She should have been shivering with cold after being out in the elements for so long, but she did not feel the sting of the bitter winter air, only a ravaging heat that enveloped her in a fevered warmth.

“Anais, I shall go mad if I deny myself any longer,” Lindsay’s deep voice whispered in her ear. “Please,” he pleaded, sliding both her dress and chemise down her arms, baring the white stay beneath her shift. “Say yes,” he implored as his long fingers sought the ties of her corset. “Or tell me to cease these attentions before I cannot stop.”

What was she to say? She knew what she should say, but the word would not come forth. No had never felt so impossibly hard to say as it did now. She did not want to speak the word, for she knew that Lindsay would honor her refusal. Refusing him was something she didn’t want to do. She wanted this, despite the fact it was against everything she had been taught. She wanted his lovemaking, regardless of the fact she could find herself ruined in the eyes of society.

“Anais?”

“Don’t stop,” she said on a gasp. “Oh, Lindsay, please don’t stop.”