Ethan: Lord of Scandals

Seventeen

“I liked sleeping with you,” Alice announced when Ethan let himself into her room. The hour was late, approaching midnight, and she’d already donned her summer nightgown and wrapper, though the evening was decidedly more autumnal.

“I liked sleeping with you too.” Ethan smiled to see her already out of her clothes. She no doubt thought she’d foiled his desire to see her naked as she undressed, silly woman. “And I’m sure I’ll like it even more tonight.”

He drew her to her feet from where she sat at her writing desk and wrapped his arms around her. She was all warmth, soft curves, and fresh lemony fragrance, and Ethan felt arousal stirring just to be holding her. There was more to his reaction, too—a kind of mental sigh, to have achieved the sanctuary of her embrace.

“It isn’t too late to change your mind, Alice,” he whispered near her ear. “I won’t think less of you if you send me packing.”

“At least you can think,” Alice said, kissing his jaw. “I’ve been useless all day, watching the hands of the clock crawl forward, wondering when the sun decided it would choose today to refuse to set.”

“The days grow shorter. You are impatient.” And may she always regard their joinings as eagerly.

She subsided more snugly against him. “Impatient, also a bit anxious.”

As was he, truth be told. Heathgate had picked a miserable day to come to call.

“I do not like to see you anxious,” Ethan said, kissing her forehead. “Shall we get under the covers?” Before she noticed that despite his anxieties, Ethan’s body was anticipating lovemaking.

“I won’t have a breathing spell,” she said. “Not with you.”

“I’m glad.” Neither would he, not with her. Ethan stepped back enough to undo the sash of her night robe. She surprised him by whipping her nightgown off over her head and scrambling under the covers.

“You’d like to watch me.” And how pleased he was that she did. Alice perched up against the headboard, fingers laced around her knees. Ethan did not consider himself a vain man, but the heat in Alice’s gaze would make any fellow willing to strut before her.

He made no attempt to turn his disrobing into flirtation—he was too interested in joining her in the bed. When he was naked and his clothing folded on the clothespress, he climbed into bed and stretched out beside her. “What shall we talk about?”

“Talk? We’re naked in bed and again, you want to talk?”

“I do.” Ethan drew his finger down her nose. “As a younger man, I failed to appreciate the pleasures of visiting with a lover in bed. I was all business, so to speak. I don’t want to be all business with you, Alexandra.”

“Not business then.” Alice made as if to nip his finger. “I’ll tell you Joshua has made some real strides in his reading.”

“I was slow to read.” Ethan leaned in and kissed her eyes, one then the other. “Nick was much faster and had to help me.”

As soon as he said his brother’s name, Ethan expected a bolt of regret… that never came.

“You read all the time. Do you ever read to the boys?”

“I read to Joshua, once. He was quite small and ill, and his mother had just died. He was barely speaking himself, but the sound of my voice soothed him.”

“Children know when someone cares.” Alice laced her arm under his neck. “And they know when someone doesn’t.”

“Jeremiah had some interesting questions along that line on our ride today.” Ethan shifted to his back, so Alice lay tucked along his side. He was astonished to realize that talking this way, about the boys, about anything, was not just a ploy to relax Alice’s anxieties.

This talking, cuddled up on her big bed, was a comfort to him as well.

“Jeremiah wanted to know if I missed his mother and claimed he himself did not, because she yelled a great deal and threatened to send him off to boarding school as soon as may be. I add it to the list of things I must try to forgive her for.”

“Was boarding school on Jeremiah’s mind today as well?” Alice scooted, bringing her near leg up over Ethan’s hips.

“It was.” Ethan drew his finger down her nose again, and right on down her midline under the covers to her mons. “He was concerned I would send him and Joshua away when Joshua turned six.”

“You didn’t mock him, did you?”

“I hugged him,” Ethan said, curling down to bury his face against Alice’s neck. “I told him I would be miserable if he wanted to tear off into the world so soon, and Alexandra, I meant every word.”

“Oh, well done, Ethan.” Alice hugged him to her. “Well done, indeed.”

They were quiet for a long moment, Ethan letting himself bask in her approval and affection and in the rare knowledge she loved his children the same way he did.

“I think your sons are happier now than they were at the beginning of the summer.” She stroked the back of his head as she spoke, and Ethan wanted to hold so still that she never stopped, so much did he like the way she touched him.

“They are,” Ethan said, picking up the reins of the conversation. “As am I.”

“Oh, let’s make it unanimous.” She sounded so pleased with herself. “Though I wasn’t exactly unhappy previously.”

“I’m pleased.” Ethan brushed his mouth across hers. “Pleased you’re happy with us. Joshua asked me if I thought you’d ever canter.”

“Ah, do that again. Please.”

He willingly obliged, in part because his efforts to ease her closer to lovemaking with words and simple bodily proximity were having their effect on him. He kissed her with the slow, relaxed savoring of a man who knows he has all night, hours and hours, just to move to the next step.

When he began to explore her mouth with his tongue, Ethan felt Alice shift on the mattress, her limbs relaxing, her spine lengthening.

“Kiss me back, love,” Ethan coaxed, his tongue teasing past her lips. “Come out and play with me.”

He paused, his mouth a hairsbreadth away from hers, waiting for Alice to arch up and brushed her lips against his. She repeated the caress twice more, until Ethan pressed her mouth open beneath his. She twined her arms around his neck with a slow, languorous sigh, and Ethan felt his heartbeat kick up a notch.

The barest hint of a misgiving skittered through his vitals, but not for the usual reasons. He wasn’t experiencing the old uncertainties or ambiguities; he had no doubt he and Alice belonged in that bed together. He was neither unsure of himself sexually nor fearful of inexplicably losing his desire for her. He experienced an instant’s hesitation only because he wanted this night to be better than right for her. He wanted it to be perfect.

And then Alice pulled her body closer to his and found his lips with her own. She welcomed him into the kiss and then welcomed him further, her legs spreading as Ethan shifted his body over hers.

The doubts Ethan battled—not just that night, but many nights in the past twenty years—vanished. He knew what to do, knew how to express his caring for this woman with his mouth and his hands, and body. This was Alice, whom he cared for greatly, and with her, for this one night at least, all would be well.

He closed his eyes, let himself feel the wonder of her naked body beneath his, and gave himself up to the loving.

When Ethan began to kiss her in earnest, a bolt of anxiety went through Alice’s body and her mind. She lost track of the kiss and began to fret, even as Ethan’s tongue glided sinuously over hers: What if she couldn’t breathe? What if this night left Ethan with a disgust of her? What if she couldn’t enjoy what he was trying to share with her? She hadn’t cared with Mr. Durbeyfield, being only a little bit curious and a lot bored. With Ethan, God help her, she cared a great deal. Cared too much, and hence, the worrying gathered momentum.

But then he shifted, bringing his body carefully over hers in an embrace that caged Alice between Ethan and the bed. For all of her adult life, she’d hated being confined, hated any sort of entrapment. To be anchored under him this way should have made her frantic to escape.

A different panic gripped her, though. She wasn’t frantic to escape. She was frantic to get closer to him. She did not like being confined—maybe nobody did. But she saw it was also true, true in a blindingly new and stark way, that for all her adult life, she’d been profoundly lonely. And what Ethan offered her was not confinement, but rather, intimacy. He offered her the closeness that had nothing to do with confinement and binding, but instead sought to free her.

With Ethan’s body sheltering hers, his naked strength surrounding her, she felt that paradoxical sense of being utterly in accord with another and yet utterly unfettered, and she wanted intensely—desperately—to bring that feeling closer. She spread her legs, letting him settle against her, and wrapped her arms around him.

“Easy,” Ethan murmured, grazing her jaw with his nose. “There’s no rush, love. None at all.”

Alice felt the impressive length of his erection against her belly. “I want you closer.”

“Soon,” he assured her, pained humor in that one word. “Wrap your legs around me.”

He whispered his request again before she opened her eyes, brushed the hair back from his forehead, and shifted the angle of her hips to accommodate him.

“Like this?” She kissed his shoulder then scraped him with her teeth. He tasted clean and warm and faintly of the lavender sachets Mrs. Buxton hung in all the wardrobes.

“Like that.” Ethan dipped his head to kiss her mouth. “Now guide me to you.”

Alice left off using her tongue to taste his flesh. “Guide you?”

“Take me in your hand,” he said, holding her gaze steadily, “and guide me home.”

Ethan remained poised above her, his gaze locked with hers. There was both challenge and reassurance in his gaze. He would not subject her to the kind of fumbling she’d known before with another man. He was not going to allow her to passively tolerate intimacy either, but most of all, he was not going to allow her to be disappointed. Not in him, not in herself, not in what they shared.

Alice saw all that before she closed her eyes.

He nuzzled her throat. “Take my cock in your hand and show me where you want me. I’ll wait all night, if you want me to, but that means you wait too.”

Logic, and at such a time. Alice tucked her face against his shoulder and brushed her fingers over the soft skin crowning his member.

He could wait all night, she was sure of that—and equally sure she could not.

Ethan felt a tentative brush of Alice’s fingers over the head of his cock. He thought of accounts payable and boiled cabbage and the recipe for Miller’s horse liniment, and even tried the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, but Alice closed her grip around him and brought him snug against her damp sex.

He had to kiss her.

“God above.” He exhaled unsteadily, resting his forehead against hers but unable to resist her mouth for long. He sealed his lips over hers in a hot, open-mouthed, needy plea for some kind of immediate joining. Her tongue met his, and it was all he could do not to roar into her body, tongue, cock, fingers, anything.

“Ethan, please…” Alice tried to move against him, to take him into her body on her own initiative, but Ethan feinted with his hips.

“Behave,” he said. “We savor this.” He emphasized his words with the barest hint of forward movement of his hips, and Alice abruptly ceased her attempts to rush their joining.

“Better,” he murmured, then, “relax, my love. We’re not going to hurry this.”

She could not relax. Beneath him, Ethan felt the tension in Alice’s body, felt the tight, shallow breaths she expelled against his neck. He wanted to believe she was simply aroused past bearing, but she was so tight around the tip of his cock, he had to suspect she was simply anxious.

“Breathe, love, and recall your promise.”

She opened eyes that had been tightly shut, and peered at him in the dim light as he brushed his fingertips over her forehead. “My promise?”

“You’ll tell me if you don’t like something or if it’s uncomfortable. If you ask it, I will stop.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” Alice replied, sounding more resolute than aroused.

“And I don’t want to be stopped, but you promised.”

He held himself against her, applying a firm, steady pressure but making no move to advance more deeply into her body. She wanted him, of that he was confident, but she lacked the experience to know her body needed time.

“It isn’t supposed to be this difficult,” Alice muttered.

Ethan pressed more firmly into her.

“Tell me how it’s supposed to be,” he said, laying his cheek against hers.

“Easy,” Alice replied, sounding a little bewildered, “and sweet and pleasant.”

Merciful God. He was about to explode, and she expected a tea party. “This is pleasant,” Ethan said, kissing her lingeringly.

“I feel… discontent.”

“Discontent is good,” Ethan murmured before slipping a hand down and closing it over her breast.

“That is good.”

“Not just good. Lovely, beautiful, dear…” He caressed and stroked and gently kneaded, all the while holding his cock against her, but just shy of real penetration. When Ethan closed his fingers around her nipple, Alice groaned, and using her ankles for leverage, heaved her hips against him.

He allowed it and slipped that first hot, glorious, wet inch inside her body.

“Shame on you, Alexandra. I’ll kiss you silly for that.”

She turned her head to hasten her fate, and Ethan obliged by covering her mouth with his again. She came out not to play, but to tease, entice, coax, and madden with her mouth and tongue and sexy little sighs. “Ethan, I need you.”

He applied a hint of pressure to her nipple and let her have more of his cock when she arched tightly against his hand. This required such concentration of him, he decided it qualified as a form of prayer.

“More,” Alice whispered. “More, now.”

From somewhere, he found the self-restraint to deny her, distracting her with his tongue in her ear, his teeth on her earlobe, then his lips closed around her nipple as she growled low against his temple.

Alice’s fingers tunneled through his hair to hold him to her, then tightened in desperate pleasure as he suckled.

“Damn you,” Alice rasped. “Ethan, I am begging… Ah, God, yes…”

He pushed steadily forward, until he was inside.

Then he paused, knowing they had a distance yet to travel.

Alice raised her head, regarding him with a world of bewilderment. “Why did you stop?”

“I’m not stopping.” Ethan laid his cheek against her temple. “I’m marshaling my reserves.”

“Your reserves?” Alice flopped back against the pillows. “Reserves of what?”

“Passion,” he said softly, easing his cock forward one blessed, beautiful, profoundly pleasurable inch, then easing back the same distance.

“Don’t stop.” Alice closed her eyes at this, the beginning of their real joining. “Don’t you dare stop, Ethan Grey. Not ever.” She let out a mighty not-as-discontented sigh, and some of the tension went out of her as Ethan slowly worked himself more deeply into her body.

“I like this. Ethan, I do like this.”

“With you, I love it,” he replied, his voice equally soft and just a little strained as he struggled to keep his rhythm easy and relaxed, and struggled not to speak words he wasn’t entitled to burden her with.

He would not tell her he loved her, not with words, but he tried to communicate it with his body. He joined them by slow, tantalizing increments, until he was gliding easily into her depths and she was arching up to meet him. Her breathing deepened, and her body became more fluid in its undulations. Beside her head, her fingers opened and closed convulsively on the pillow until Ethan stroked his thumbs over her palms.

“Ethan, I can’t…” She lost the words as he added the first hint of power to his thrusts.

“You can.” He stroked her palms again. “We can.” He laced his fingers with hers, and that gesture provoked a soft moan as Alice buried her face against his throat. Her fingers tightened on his, and she tried to hurry him with her hips and arch up against him.

He untangled one hand and wrapped an arm under her shoulders to hold her tightly to him. With Alice anchored snugly in his embrace, he let her have the deep, solid thrusts she’d been begging for, and in moments, she was shaking and clinging and coming apart in his arms.

He resisted the urge to drive her higher, to glory in her satisfaction as he might when they had more experience with each other. When he felt her body easing, he let himself go just enough to outdistance his own control.

He’d intended to permit himself a gentlemanly measure of satisfaction, but Alice’s passion came roaring back to life, another orgasm heaving her up against him in hard panting demands for more. His arousal crested higher and higher, beyond his control, then beyond his comprehension, until they were a mindless union of striving bodies and entwined souls inundated with unbearably intense pleasure.

“Holy Everlasting God.” Ethan wasn’t aware he’d spoken aloud until Alice responded with a panted “Amen.”

His hand cradled the back of her head while they breathed in rapid counterpoint with each other.

“Don’t move,” Alice said. “I feel like it could happen all over again.”

“You tempt me.” Ethan’s voice was raspy and desperate, for he’d love to see her undone yet again.

“Don’t… you… dare,” Alice warned, closing her inner muscles around his softening length.

Oh, Lord, and she was this clever, this passionate while damned near a virgin. “Point taken. For now.”

Gradually their breathing slowed, and Ethan was able not just to hold her to him, but to stroke his hand over her face, her hair, and shoulders.

“I have to hold you, Alexandra, but you are not to move just yet.”

“As if I could.”

Her smugness was a lovely, lovely thing, well worth the loss of a man’s wits, his dignity, and every shred of his self-control. When Ethan shifted and the remains of his erection slipped from her body, she whimpered, and her fingers curled into fists on the pillow.

“I’ll be back.” Ethan kissed her nose and extricated himself from her embrace, tossing the sheets back off them both as he left the bed.

Alice watched him, fastened her gaze on his glistening cock, and watched while he washed off. He wrung out a clean flannel for her in the wash water, reminding himself next time—please, merciful heavens, let there be a next time—to keep some heating closer to the hearth.

“Spread your legs, love.” He sat at Alice’s hip and gazed down on the flushed, rosy front of her. “You are so lovely. I could just look at you and bring myself off.”

“Is that what you did inside me?” She was watching him, her gaze soft and luminous in the candlelight. “Bring yourself off?”

“No.” Ethan took her hand, put the cool cloth in it, and then pressed her hand to her sex. “You brought me off, spectacularly, I might add.” Alice looked bashfully pleased with that, as he’d meant her to be—too pleased to be self-conscious about her ablutions.

As he watched her with the same shameless fascination she’d shown him, Ethan realized he loved her and he adored her.

“I enjoy this, Ethan. With you…” Her voice trailed away as if even words were too much effort. She slapped the cloth back into his hand.

“I will look forward to inflicting this pleasure on us both in future.” Ethan eyed her sex, wishing he could light a hundred candles, the better to admire her by. “You are not sore, then?” He rose and rinsed the cloth again, hanging it over the edge of the washbasin before returning to the bed.

“You didn’t answer me,” Ethan said as he rejoined Alice beneath the sheets. “Talk to me, Alexandra. I’ll fret that I was too demanding, too rough, too precipitous, too…”

She stopped him with a finger over his lips.

“Hush.” She pushed him to his back and straddled him. “You are too desirable, too skilled, too generous, too careful, too worried, entirely too handsome, too dear, and inside me…” She cuddled down onto his chest.

“Inside you?” Ethan’s hands came up to stroke her back, to learn yet more of the wonder of her.

“Too perfect,” Alice finished, her tone smug and wistful at once. “I had no idea, Ethan Grey. No earthly idea, and I account myself a woman with an excellent education and a good imagination.”

“You have a wonderful imagination, though I’ve only ever heard you turn it to wolves, witches, and sea monsters.”

“Interesting point, and you are none of those, but, Ethan?”

“I’m listening,” he said, though it was difficult to hear her over all that singing in his soul.

“I was worried,” Alice said, her voice getting softer. She nuzzled at his shoulder for a moment before raising her face to meet his gaze.

“Tell me these worries, that I might disabuse you of them.”

And he meant that. He wanted her passion; he wanted her worries, her everything.

“I was worried.” Alice ducked her face against his sternum. “Worried I would have a breathing spell, that I would not be skilled enough to please you, that it would all be awkward and embarrassing and regrettable.”

“And?” Ethan’s caresses were purposely slow and soothing, but he’d known some of the same worries, and too often—with others—they’d been justified.

“And…” She hunched down more tightly to his chest. “I never want to leave this bed, I never want to put my clothes on, and I never want to let you out of my sight.”

His hands slowed further, for her honesty and forthright speech reached into his shadowed soul like beams of summer sunlight, but God Almighty, how to respond?

Alice cocked her head to peer at him. “I suppose I should not have said that. You will forgive me my emotional excesses. I am all at sea.”

“Your sentiments are reciprocated.” He wanted to say more but dared not. Not yet, and maybe not ever. That she felt the least bit possessive of him was… precious.

She lifted her face to his again, though this time she was smiling at him.

“You aren’t just being gallant, are you? I am not accounted a sentimental woman, you know. I understand the intended nature of our dealings, Ethan.”

“Hush.” He gently pushed her back down into his embrace lest she lecture him on the intended nature of her dealings with him, and break his heart all unknowing. “You need not retreat from honest feelings, Alexandra. In fact, you must continue to set the better example for me in this regard.”

“Me? Set an example for you?”

“You are brave to be so honest. I admire your courage.”

“I am not brave. I am weak, wicked, and likely very foolish for disclosing my feelings to you.”

“No.” Ethan drew his fingers over her features. “You honor me, and you show me a kind of trust of which I hope to be worthy. I have not…” He gathered his courage and leapt headlong into an abyss of trust, because on this point he needed to be very clear.

“I have not belonged to anyone, Alexandra. When I was a boy, I thought I belonged to Bellefonte or to Nick or at least to Belle Maison. I was wrong. I thought I’d belong to my wife, but again, I was wrong. I haven’t even truly belonged to my own children, at least until recently. If you do not want to let me out of your sight, it suggests I might belong a little to you, and I would be honored to think it so.”

“You are mine,” Alice said in fierce, certain tones. “In this bed, Ethan Grey, for the hours you share it with me, you are mine.”

Ethan closed his arms around her. “And you are mine.” And not, he silently added, just when we are together here. “Go to sleep, my love, and worry not. If you never allowed me another moment in your arms, I would still be forever in your debt.”

“And I in yours.”

In the darkest hour, before even the kitchen or the milkmaids rose, Ethan wakened and silently lectured himself to leave Alice in peace. The warmth of the bed was perfect though, and the feel of her in his arms…

His sigh of bliss—or perhaps his growing erection—wakened the lady around whom he’d wrapped himself.

“Go back to sleep, my dear.” He brushed a kiss to her cheek. “You need your rest, and as to that, I will not come to you tonight, either, that you might have your sleep.”

And that her inexperienced body might adjust to intimate relations.

Alice trapped his hand against her breast. “I do not think I will rest nearly as well without you as I do with you. Why is that?”

Ethan flexed his hips a little, enough to snug himself into the curve of her buttocks. “Because we fit.”

“We do,” Alice said, wiggling back a little against him. “You are a comfortable bedfellow, Mr. Grey, despite your penchant for hogging pillows.”

Mr. Grey. He thanked a generous deity that he had lived long enough to hear her call him Mr. Grey naked in bed.

“You kick,” Ethan said, pleased to no end she liked to cuddle with him.

“Never on purpose. If you don’t come to me, I will miss you.”

“If I don’t come to you, you can be sure I am missing you as well. Now, leave off showing me your favorite toys, and try to get a little more sleep.”

Alice reached around and closed her fingers around his cock. “My favorite toy is lacking some starch.”

“Temporarily.” Ethan held still while she caressed him, and he felt—God help him—lust roaring forth at her touch. He sat up and still didn’t move beyond her grasp.

“Alexandra?”

She met his gaze, still holding his cock in a gentle grip.

The courage came more easily this time. “I leave you now, but part of me stays here with you, too. I would not go were it simply a matter of our pleasure—I hope you believe that.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.” In the shadows of a setting moon, Ethan saw a grin spread across her face. “I would not allow it.” She tugged his cock once for good measure then dropped her hand. “How will I face you at breakfast?”

He folded down over her and covered her chest with his own. “With a smile, at least. You must not feel ashamed. This has been a night of more beauty than…” He kissed her rather than attempt poetry.

“I’m not ashamed. I am overwhelmed and moved and pleased and grateful.”

“Grateful?” Ethan levered up and considered the notion. “I should tell you that the gratitude is all mine, but who am I to tell you what to feel? I am grateful too, and nobody is going to talk me out of it. Now, sleep and dream of me.”

He kissed her forehead, not daring to do more, drew the sheets up around her, and silently dressed in the dark. By the time he padded barefoot to her door, she was asleep, breathing easily, and he hoped, dreaming of him.

He moved silently down the hallway, turning the corner to move through the darkened house toward his own rooms, one floor down. He paused, though, and listened to a door opening in the nursery wing just behind him. The creak of the door was followed by a soft tap.

“Miss Alice?”

Jeremiah’s voice, tentative and worried.

“Miss Alice?” Another tap, more definite, but Ethan was not about to let a child’s nightmare or wet sheets disturb Alice’s slumbers.

“Jeremiah?” Ethan hoped his impression of a papa coming to check on his children was credible. “Is something amiss?”

“Papa!” A wealth of relief flooded the boy’s face. He was down the hall and wrapped around Ethan’s legs in an instant. “Joshua doesn’t feel well. He’s hot, and he says he hurts all over.”