Ethan: Lord of Scandals

This was not what Ethan had planned when he’d brought Alice here, though it was what his body had planned the moment he’d laid eyes on her. Ethan closed his hand over Alice’s and taught her the easy, loose stroke that pleased and aroused in equal measures.

“But not faster or tighter, or I’ll spend.” He was going to spend, but he’d rather not lose control until he had the privacy of his rooms. Alice was a lady, not some doxy, and while not a virgin, she apparently lacked experience.

“This feels good to you?” she asked, shifting her grip slightly.

“Divine, but slow down, Alexandra. It can be too good.”

A considering silence, while Ethan’s arousal strained at the leash of his self-discipline.

“There is no such thing as too good. Let me pleasure you, Ethan. I want to.”

“Shouldn’t,” he muttered, letting his head fall back and his hips move in counterpoint to Alice’s strokes. “Kiss… Please, kiss—” He opened his eyes, searching for her. Thank all the gods of the night, she knelt up beside him and gave him her mouth. More roughly than he intended, he palmed the back of her neck and opened his mouth beneath hers, devouring her as his free hand cupped her breast.

She returned his kiss fiercely, growling at him as she knelt above.

That growl sang like an angel chorus through Ethan’s body.

A man gave up hope sometimes, because it was the only way to preserve his sanity. Ethan Grey had long since given up hope that desire might ever again be driven by not just his body, but also his heart.

When he kissed Alice, when he gloried to feel her hands upon him, he kissed hope itself. She was not simply a woman to him; she was Alice. She was all manner of pleasures and possibilities long since forsworn, and her touch said he could be that for her too.

“Holy…” His hand fell away, fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief. “Perishing… Almighty… Alexandra…” His hips shoved hard against Alice’s grip, and his fingers closed over hers, forcing her to hold him snugly. His last coherent thought was that he should have tried harder to make this moment last.

“Oh, God… love.” His hips went still, but he kept his hand wrapped around hers, while his forehead fell to Alice’s shoulder. “Forgive me.”

“Hush.” He felt her lips against his hair. “Just hush.” She used her free hand to locate his handkerchief. Male passion was not a tidy business, and it took her handkerchief as well as his to deal with the aftermath.

“Was that comfortable, to be held so tightly at the end?”

Ethan gave her a weak smile. “Pray God you hold me that tightly often and soon.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Do you forgive me?”

Her expression shuttered as she folded up the handkerchiefs. She wasn’t overly fastidious—one more thing to treasure about her. “Forgive you? I do not comprehend the transgression.”

“I was selfish and vulgar and grossly… ungentlemanly,” Ethan began. “I did not plan this, Alice.” His hand traced her jaw. “I want it to be perfect for you. I want to be perfect for you.” That was a troubling realization, for he was doomed in every attempt at the goal.

“Perfect would be boring. This wasn’t boring.” She slipped her hand over his cock where it lay meek and receding against his groin. “I coupled with Mr. Durbeyfield once,” she said, her voice detached. “It did not stir me. He hiked my skirts and pushed around a bit while breathing leeks on my person. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was awkward, and hardly worth marrying for.”

He should be incapable of responding, given how she’d sated him, and given this peculiar turn of conversation. He was a brute, a boor… a man sharing the summer moonlight with his lady. “If you keep that up, you’ll be stirring me.”

“I would like to stir you.” Alice gripped him more firmly. “For it stirs me to see you so… overwrought.”

Spare me from determined women, Lord, but not quite yet. “I should have more control next time,” Ethan said, “and you should have less.”

“Less?” Alice cocked her head. “Control over what?”

“Slow down, sweetheart,” Ethan said, bringing her closer for a kiss. “At least let me pet you a little.”

“Pet me?” She drew back. “I’m not a cat.”

“No, but I want you to purr like one. Put away your toy for now, and let me have some time with mine.” Even in the shadowed moonlight, Alice’s features were fraught with misgiving.

Ethan spelled it out for her. “You wanted to give me pleasure. Will you allow me the same?” Fairness apparently won him what coaxing might not have, because Alice nodded once then drew in a breath, as if he’d called upon her to recite.

“What must I do?”

Trust me. “You must be honest with me. I want to learn what touches you like more, which you like less. I want to learn how to please you, and how to not offend you.”

How to pleasure her. He wanted to learn that more than he’d wanted to learn anything, ever.

“Offend me?” Alice regarded him curiously.

“Leeks,” Ethan said. “Leeks can offend.”

“I see.” She shifted and rested her back along the wall of the gazebo. Ethan sat beside her, his genitals half- exposed in his rumpled clothing. He started to tuck himself up, when Alice’s hand on his stayed him.

“I didn’t really look at you before. Mr. Durbeyfield wasn’t so obliging.”

“I can be very obliging.” If it killed him, he could be as obliging as she needed him to be. Slowly, Alice drew him from his clothing again. “If you tell me Mr. Durbeyfield taught you how to bring a man off, I’ll kill him. I won’t call him out, I’ll flat murder him.”

And this was not hyperbole.

“You taught me to do that, to bring a man off.” Alice stroked over him with curious, delicate touches. He was rapidly growing hard again, despite his every attempt to think of… the smell of wet chickens, tomato aspic, the feasibility of growing peaches commercially.

“Where are you in your cycle, Alice?”

He should not have asked that. Should not. Next he’d be asking her if she knew what a sheath was.

“I would need to consult a calendar. Did you like it when I brought you off?” She used the vulgar term as if trying to decide how it translated into Latin.

“Did I like it?” Ethan looped an arm around her shoulders and stilled her hand by virtue of closing his fingers around hers. “No. I did not like it. If I live to be a hundred… Stop squirming, woman. I did not like it. I have no words for the degree to which I will humble myself for the honor of repeating that intimacy with you. No one has seen fit to bestow it on me, and really, Alice…”

“Are you lecturing me?”

Ethan gave up on a sigh. “I am goddamned babbling. You have reduced me to babbling. You’ve pleasured my brains out. Kiss me.”

She did. By God, she did, and not with the sleepy contented passion of a woman whose desire had been sated.

“You astound me, Alexandra.” Ethan pushed her head to his shoulder and withdrew a small silver flask from his waistcoat pocket. “My pocket pistol is loaded with peach brandy, so sip carefully, and spare a nip for a poor undone fellow, if you please.”

She took a cautious sip. “I like it.”

“The brandy, of course.” Ethan took a heftier swallow and passed it back to her. “One more, for you anyway.”

Her gaze went to the part of him most pleased with life at the moment. “I like touching you, but you seem upset.”

Precious, perceptive woman.

Ethan took the flask from her, capped it, and returned it to his pocket. “I am simply stunned you would be so generous, so bold, so unbelievably… ah, love.” He gathered her to him, burying his face against her hair as inspiration struck. “Thank you. It isn’t enough, but I mean it. Thank you.” And to himself he added a vow that she’d know equal pleasure from him, and soon. He would have said as much, but his throat had developed a tickle, and his eyes were stinging from the brandy.

When those annoyances had receded, he managed to ask, “More brandy?”