Ethan: Lord of Scandals

“It isn’t so simple to choose. Your kisses are exciting and wicked and wonderful, but the way you use your hands on me…”

“Yes?” That one finger on her knee was a case in point, bespelling her with a tactile pleasure she would never have guessed a knee might feel.

“You know where to touch, Ethan.” She sighed mightily, for this recitation wasn’t in any governess manual. “And no matter where you touch, it brings me pleasure.”

* * *

Alice’s words lodged in his soul, because Ethan knew—he knew without asking, without questioning, she didn’t mean simply his erotic touch. She liked it when he tapped her nose with his finger in the middle of some argument, when their hands brushed over the teapot at breakfast, when he pulled rank on his sons and assisted her to a seat.

To her, he was not dirty, shameful, second-rate, or anything less than deserving of her caring and respect. He could not have joined her in this bed had she thought him in any way unworthy.

And yet, direct questions were getting him nowhere on his stated agenda of the evening.

“Do you like it when I rub your back?”

“I adore it. If you want to make me purr like a cat, you put those big hands of yours on my back, Ethan Grey.”

“Easy enough,” Ethan said, rolling her to her side. He glanced at his hands, pleased for once at their size. He spent the next few minutes honestly rubbing her back, and she spent those minutes sighing and wiggling and sighing some more. When she’d had her fun, he let his hand trail down lower, over her buttocks.

Which earned him more sighing.

So he shifted around, to explore her breasts, and while she went still at first, she was soon arching into his hand, covering his knuckles with her palms.

“You like this?” He gently tugged at a nipple while ruthlessly ignoring his own arousal.

“Oh, that is naughty. Don’t stop.”

“Naughty” and “don’t stop” were a compelling combination. Ethan eased her over to her back then replaced his fingers with his mouth.

“Ethan.” It was a groan, a plea for mercy and a plea for more. Alice’s hands winnowed through his hair to hold him to her, and her back arched in offering. Ethan felt her body slipping free of its restraints, even as his own was clamoring to join with her.

Slowly, so slowly it nigh killed him, he let one hand drift down her sternum, over her ribs and belly, to the curls shielding her sex.

“Spread your legs for me, Alexandra.” Ethan spoke in a near whisper, savoring every syllable of her true name and every inch of her silky skin. “Let me touch you.” She complied, restlessly lifting one knee to turn her hips toward him.

“Patience,” Ethan chided, fastening his mouth over her other nipple.

“Ethan.” Her voice was a little raspy and more than a little urgent. “This isn’t comfortable.”

He raised his head to consider her expression. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No!” She sounded sure of that. “But you can’t expect me to enjoy being so… overwrought.”

“I can.” Overwrought was a mere beginning. He left his hand where it was, his fingers drifting over her mons. “Give me a little more time.”

“Kiss me.” She glared at him, clarifying that this was an order, not a request.

“Of course.”

He treated her to a voracious kiss, not like anything he’d given her before. He consumed her, challenged her, teased and demanded and had her mouth clinging to his, even as her hands tried to map every inch of him. She found his nipples, sending a bolt of arousal straight south through his body. She found his buttocks and made him groan with the pleasure of being pulled close where she wanted him close. She kissed him back, to make demands of her own, only to fall utterly still when Ethan caressed her sex with two reverent fingers.

“Oh, holy saints, Ethan…”

He whispered his fingers across damp, intimate flesh.

“What are you doing?” Alice asked, circling his wrist with her fingers.

“Pleasing you, I hope.” He leaned in to kiss her, a soft, voluptuous distraction from the lust raging through him, then shifted to take a nipple in his mouth.

“Ethan, I can’t…” Her chest was rising and falling, but she said nothing more, just panted her desperation.

“Move, love. Move against my hand the way I’ve moved to your touch. Move the way your body wants to. Move toward the pleasure.”

She undulated against his hand, taking long moments to find synchrony with his rhythm, and then she still didn’t seem to know how to go on. Ethan realized she’d never trod this path before and was ignorant of the destination—another reason to shoot the leek-loving Mr. Droopyfield on sight.

Ethan slowed his hand, letting her catch her breath, then abruptly shifted to a fast, light stroke.

“Let it happen.” Ethan’s voice was urgent as he felt the sensations welling in her body. “Let yourself go. Come for me.”

She arched into his hand, hard, repeatedly. She called his name, she dug her fingernails into his wrist, and she didn’t stop until her breath was a harsh rasp and her body was a warm, replete bundle of naked womanhood against his side.

“That’s my lady.” Ethan’s arms came around her, and she clung with surprising strength. His hands stroked slowly over her back, her arms, her shoulders, until Alice’s breathing slowed.

“What was that?” She sounded bewildered, and a touch disgruntled, no doubt out of sorts to think some parcel of knowledge had been kept from her ken.

“I hope it was pleasure.” For him, it had been nothing but pleasure, far eclipsing the lust still throbbing in his body.

“Is that what you feel?” Alice tucked her nose against his throat. “When you…”

“When you bring me off?” Ethan finished for her. He could feel her blushing against his neck. “Probably, or something very like it.” Except he could do it only once, while she could repeat the pleasure endlessly. He wouldn’t inflict that knowledge on her just yet, not when she seemed almost upset by her experience.

“I feel empty,” Alice said on a shuddery sigh. “It was pleasurable, Ethan, profoundly, but now…”

His hold tightened around her protectively. “Now?”

“I feel lonely and worried,” she said. “Like I could have trouble breathing if I let myself. That can’t be normal.” He wrapped his arms around her and cuddled her snugly to his body, offering her comfort, reassurance, and a different kind of pleasure in the secure warmth of his embrace.

“Better?” he asked a few minutes later.

“Better.” She nodded, burrowing against his chest. “So is this what Nick shared with half the demimonde?”

He let her change the subject but felt a spike of exasperation that Nick—dear, bedamned Nick—should join them in the bed.

“Not quite. Physically, perhaps something similar, but emotionally, Nick would not have joined with someone capable of admitting the loneliness.”

So there, Nicholas.

“He’d want a woman to lie?”

“I think the point of the kind of dalliances Nick sought was for everybody to lie, to pretend such matters could be undertaken only superficially.”

“God above.” Alice paused in an exploration of his collarbone with her tongue. “What a lot of poppycock. I’ve never done anything so intimate and lovely and overwhelming in my life. I could not abide the thought of sharing such a thing with a near stranger.”

And that is a large part of why I love you.

“I thought I could. I was wrong.” That he could say so to her was another part.

He held her to him, treasuring the feel of her naked body in his arms, until Alice levered up and speared him with a look.