Addicted

He smiled and wrapped his fingers around her neck, bringing her closer to him. “Will you let me have my wicked way with you, my houri? Will you find a way to come to me that night and make love with me?”

What could she say? This was simply a dream come true. “Yes.”

Lindsay lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her in a soft, lulling, almost drugging kiss. His hand moved to her breast and he caught it in his palm before running his hand along the side of her body in a slow, sweeping manner—a loving manner.

“Can you feel how hard I am growing against your warm belly? Just the thought of you makes me this way, Anais. I want you again, to spend inside you once more so that you can feel me inside you for the rest of the night. I want you every night for the rest of my life.”

How many years had she waited for such a declaration? “Are you asking me to marry you?” she asked incredulously. She had almost given up any hope that Lindsay might return her affections. Yet here they were, naked in each other’s arms, talking of forever.

“We will marry. But as to the asking, I have plans. When I propose I want it to be special. Be assured you’re mine. You will be my wife. Trust me in this, Anais.”

A crash echoed outside the stable window. Anais smothered a squeal as she reached for the blanket, covering her nakedness.

“Just some barn cats that have gotten into the old tin milk cans, that is all,” he murmured. “Don’t worry, sweeting. Now then, put your pretty legs around me and ride me like you do your mare.” He brushed his hands down her backside and sought her sex between her folds. “I’ve watched you riding, wishing those lovely thighs were wrapped around me and not Lady.”

Anais rose to her knees and peered out the window, fearing she saw the shadow of someone running from the stable. “Perhaps we should be getting back.”

“How can I convince you to stay with me?” he asked, coming up behind her and holding her tight in his arms. “What could change your mind?” He pressed small kisses along her spine, sending gooseflesh down every nerve as he cupped her breasts from behind. “What if I were to beg you? Or coerce you with pretty words? What if I just took you?” he suggested darkly. “Now that is an interesting thought, me just taking you—”

“Where the hell are they?”

Anais straightened as if she had been lashed with a whip. It was the booming voice of the Marquis of Weatherby—Lindsay’s father. “I’ll whip that son of mine if he hasn’t kept that cock of his in his trousers.”

“Get dressed,” Lindsay commanded, helping her down from the bale and turning her so that he could tie her corset strings. “Hurry,” he whispered, helping her into her chemise. “Now then, hide in the hay.”

“Lindsay—”

“Do it,” he commanded, as he tossed her gown to her.

“Boy!” his father called from outside, his voice loud and sounding very drunk.

Anais shot Lindsay a nervous look before hurriedly stepping into the heavy taffeta gown.

The marquis was a drunken sot. As useless as the day was long, and nothing but a whoring drunkard, her father always said. The man was capable of anything while in his cups. She feared for Lindsay and what his father might do.

The stable door was flung open. Frigid February air gust in, followed by swirling wind and snow that caused the horses to whinny nervously. Anais peered through the slats of the barn board walls, seeing that the marquis loomed large in the doorway with his hands fisted at his sides. His head turned in her direction and she whimpered before dropping down beside two bales of hay.

“Where are ye?” the marquis growled, prowling into the stable before slamming the door firmly shut. He tripped over a footstool in his drunkenness and with a violent kick, he sent the stool flying down the length of the stable.

“Ah,” Weatherby snarled when he fixed his gaze on Lindsay. “There ye are. Fixin’ your shirt, I see. This isn’t the time to be diddling with the staff, my boy. If you wanted a go with one of the maids, you should have waited till our company departed.”

Lindsay shrugged into his shirt then reached for his boots, ignoring his father.

“You weren’t prickin’ that Darnby chit, were you?” Anais saw Lindsay’s broad shoulders go rigid, but he said nothing as he reached for his second boot. “Lord knows that girl—Anais—” Weatherby snorted “—needs a good, sound tupping. Far too above herself, that one. Forever looking down her nose at me like I was nothing but a common slug. But your mother, you know. The idea of you defiling the sweet and innocent Darnby chit—plain, nothing little thing that she is—would send her to bed for a week. I can’t have that. I’ve a party of gents coming at the end of the week. I’ve got a large packet riding on this and I can’t have your mother skulking about, confined to her bed. I want her gone to London, with you. So, if you’ve been amusing yourself tonight with Darnby’s girl, it’s high time you put your cock back in your trousers and made yer way back to the house.”

Lindsay finally turned his attention to his father, his face showing barely restrained contempt. “Lady Anais returned to the house immediately after our ride.”

Lord Weatherby snorted. “Didn’t want to raise her skirts for the likes of you, eh? No doubt she thinks of you the same way she thinks of your sire. Fat lot she knows, the frigid little shrew. Don’t know why she’s so high in the instep. Her mother was nothing before she married Lord Darnby. Came from nothing, she did. Only had her looks, and I can tell you—” Weatherby leered “—her mama did not come to her marriage bed a virgin.”

“Father!” Lindsay snapped, glancing in her direction for a brief second before returning his gaze to his insolent father. But Lindsay knew as well as she that her mama was far from a saint. In fact, her mother was nothing but a hypocrite, preaching one thing and doing the exact opposite. Anais harbored no grand illusions about her mother. She had long ago come to terms with her mother’s behavior.

She’d been eight years old when she first saw her mother flirting with her father’s friend during a picnic. That night, as she snuck out of the house toward the lake to watch the fireflies with Lindsay, she had seen her mother, dressed in a white wrapper, running across the lawn to the orangery. Her father’s friend was there, waiting. Her mother had fallen into his arms before the door had even closed behind them. The last thing Anais heard was her mother pleading with her lover. “Take me away from all this hell,” she’d begged. “Erase the touch of my husband, a man I despise. Treat me like a woman, for my husband never has.”

Even at eight, Anais had known what her mother was. A social climber. A fraud. An adultress. That incident, Anais had admitted, was unlikely the first for her mother. It was certainly not the last.

Years later, when Anais had been in her early teens, she had discovered her mother in the attic with a young, handsome footman who had just been taken on. Anais hadn’t run away like the other times she had seen her mother betraying her father. She’d confronted her.

That was when her mother had told her the truth she’d long suspected. That marriage to her father had brought her riches and social status. That was the only reason she’d married him. His money brought her happiness and lovers. His physical affection made her ill. So, too, did looking at the children she had to produce in order to keep her husband appeased. She hated her children for what they had done to her body. She loathed the time she was forced to spend with them, even though it was minimal. And she despised Anais the most, she had told her, because she out of her two sisters most resembled her father, both in looks and personality.

Morality, her mother scoffed, was not a trait worth a pence. It gave you only misery, and the feeling of a noose closing ever tighter around your neck.

Anais had left the attic room, which at one time had been her nursery, a thought that disgusted her. Seeing her mother engaging in such debauchery in a room where she and her sisters had slept as children sickened her and made her realize just what sort of a heartless tart her mother was.

She had not confided the news to her father because it would destroy him. She had not told her oldest sister, Abigail, because in truth, Abby was more like their mother than any of them. Ann, the youngest, had still been a child. So she’d turned to the only person who she trusted. The only soul she had ever confided in. And like always, he’d been there waiting for her at the stables, her horse had already been saddled and both Lindsay and her mare had watched patiently for her arrival.

Anais had fallen into his arms sobbing, just like her mother had fallen into the arms of her lover all those years ago. Lindsay kept her safe. Had held her close to him and allowed her to dampen his shirt with her tears. He’d been eighteen then. More man than boy. He could have left her; she was, after all, still considered a child, even at sixteen. But he hadn’t, and she’d clung to him like the ivy on the walls of her home as he stroked her back with his palm that she recalled felt so strong and warm along her spine.

Confiding in Lindsay had taken the pain away, but the realization that her mother’s cold and ruthless blood swam in her own veins was something that always terrified her. She still had not made peace with the knowledge.

She did not want to become her mother. She would not become her mother, she vowed as she listened to Lord Weatherby spew his venom. Venom she knew was the truth.

“What exactly is it you don’t want to hear, boy?” his father taunted, drawing her gaze away from the muscle that flicked in Lindsay’s jaw. “What is it that makes you so irate? The fact that I can’t stand that little bitch you call a friend, or the fact I pricked her mother?”

“Stop it,” Lindsay demanded.

His father chuckled and slapped Lindsay’s shoulder. “Don’t act all honorable, son. You’re not, you know. I know all about you and your habits. So, tell me, how does it feel to be a chip off the old block—nine and twenty and friggin’ all the household help?”

“Thirty,” Lindsay snapped before reaching for his evening coat.

“What’s that?”

“I turned thirty last month. But you cannot be expected to remember that. After all, you’ve spent the last years in a drunken haze in London with your mistresses and your cronies.”

“Well, thirty, then,” his father said unrepentantly. “How does it feel to be a man, to take some comely little maid in here and give it to her hard against a wall?”

“I have been a man, with a man’s responsibilities for many years, Father,” Lindsay growled as he shrugged into his jacket. “While you have been whoring and drinking the years away, I have grown up. I have become something you are not—a gentleman.”

His father leaned forward and winked, unaffected by Lindsay’s rebuke. “Was it that buxom little Sally? I had her the other day. Lively little thing, and skilled, too. Beautiful wide mouth. Oh, come now.” His father grinned wickedly when he saw Lindsay’s scowl. “You were doing what comes natural. At least what comes natural to you and me,” his father teased, elbowing him in the ribs, then staggering to the left. “What man doesn’t enjoy a woman’s mouth around him from time to time? Best damn release you can find, my boy, a willing mouth eager to please. A mouth—” his father sneered “—you won’t have to marry or have harping at you for the rest of yer days.”

“You disgust me,” Lindsay said with a snarl.

“I’m happy, boy,” his father declared, heedless of Lindsay’s censure. “I’m right happy with the reports I’ve been getting from Town. Seems it’s true, apples really don’t fall far from the tree.”

Anais watched the color drain from Lindsay’s face. He was now a ghastly, ashen color. She had never seen Lindsay looking so discomposed. Was it because his father had talked of his previous conquests, and she was present to hear it? Was Lindsay concerned for her feelings, especially after what they had shared?

She knew, that at Lindsay’s age, he had knowledge of other women. She wasn’t naive to believe that he had saved himself for her. Besides, she’d known his skill by the first touch of his hands on her body. And while she felt jealous and hurt, she believed that what they had shared was more than what he had with other women.

She had to believe that, because to believe anything else would be too painful to bear.