Page 51 of Lady Frederica and the Scot Who Would Not
The question plagued Gabe throughout the week. He strove to avoid Frederica during the day by leaving the house before she woke and tending to business at the club until evening. At night, he took to the streets with the men he’d tasked with keeping an ear open for news of Hawk, and when those efforts proved fruitless, he accompanied first Kilgore, then Carrington, then Greybourne to talk to their contacts. But there was no word of Hawk—not even a sighting. Ice set in Gabe’s veins, and it kept him up at night when he finally dragged himself home, exhausted.
After a week of little to no sleep, Gabe made a critical error: he failed to wake up before Frederica.
Opening his eyes to bright sunlight in his bedchamber, he frowned and blinked. Why was the sun out? He hadn’t seen daylight in the morning in seven days. He sat up, stretched, then looked around the room and froze. Across from his bed, in the chair by the window, with sunlight filtering in on her shining hair, sat his wife.
Frederica smirked at him and stood. His half-asleep body roused in an instant, going hard all over. “Where did you get those breeches?” he asked, unable to tear his gaze away from how the material molded her luscious hips. Each step she took beckoned him to strip those breeches off and bury himself in her, as he’d longed to do all week. Avoiding her had been torture for his body, as well as his mind.
She didn’t speak as she moved toward him, but when she was standing right beside him, she bent down, scooped up the breeches he’d tiredly discarded by his bed the night before, and dropped them on his chest. “Blythe loaned them to me. You promised to teach me to defend myself, and yet, I have only had one lesson. Hawk could have tried to get at me again, and I would be defenseless. Unless he tried to choke me face-to-face, that is, so I could use the one move you taught me.” She plunked her hands on her hips. “Don’t you care that I’m vulnerable?”
“Of course I care,” he replied, finding it hard to concentrate with her so near. His unquenched desire for her was threatening to drown him.
“Then you will not mind making time for me this morning to teach me more maneuvers.”
Good God. He couldn’t be around her this morning—touching her, smelling her. There’d be no way to resist his need for her, and he did not yet have an answer to the question of if he could accept the risks that would come if he let her further into his life. “I can’t this morning, I—”
“You,” she said, her eyes narrowing and her perfectly kissable lips turning down into a frown, “are not a man of your word.”
Bloody hell. She had him. And she knew it. “Fine,” he said, to which she grinned, swooped forward, and kissed him. He’d have stopped her if there’d been time, but once her lips were on his, the tether he had on his self-control snapped.
He didn’t know if she had parted her mouth or if he had demanded entry, but suddenly, their tongues were swirling and he was drinking in her taste. Damn it, if Frederica didn’t taste like temptation incarnate. How the hell was he supposed to resist that? The one thing he’d known from the night he’d met her was that he wanted her, and that bloody wanting had only grown stronger with every moment in her presence.
He thought to gently push her back and tell her he’d meet her in the garden to practice, but when she made a desperate sound in her throat as his mouth slanted hungrily over hers, any thought of resisting her disappeared. Her hands came to his shoulders, and she dug her nails into his flesh, tugging him closer.
He didn’t just deepen the kiss in response. That would have been too sane. Instead, he encircled her waist and broke the kiss long enough to haul her onto the bed. He settled her over his thighs, and the material of her breeches that covered her entry met his hardness, sending a primal need to possess her spiraling through him.
She wore a white men’s shirt open at the collar. “This shirt is bloody brilliant,” he growled as he kissed a path down her neck and tugged the collar open and over one breast, which he found shockingly bare. A pink nipple and her creamy flesh greeted his eyes. “You meant to seduce me,” he said, his gaze capturing hers.
Fine lines crinkled around her eyes as she smiled. “Yes, well, I… Are you vexed?”
“I want you too damned much to be vexed, Frederica,” he said right before he took her rosy nipple in his mouth and suckled. Her moan was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard in his life. He sucked and nipped and swirled his tongue around her bud as she squirmed and grasped him with her hands, pulling him closer.
His lust battered him, demanding he unleash it, but he strained against himself, trying to go slower, not to scare her or be too rough. But when she suddenly pulled away, rolled off him, and yanked her trousers off to reveal her complete nakedness, the beast within him fiercely took over. He yanked back his coverlet and enjoyed the widening of her eyes and her gasp.
“Do you always sleep without anything on?” she asked.
“I do,” he said, rolling off the bed and coming to stand in front of her. Her breasts brushed against his chest, and he tried to hold on to the small amount of control he had left. “Freddy.”
Her lips parted and then formed a beautiful smile. Christ. Where had that slip come from?
He cleared his throat. “Frederica, my control is hanging by a thread. The things I want to do to you…” He wanted to rut like a street-born beast. No pretty manners required. No lineage. Just two people desperate for each other. But he didn’t want to scare her. For all her talk of living in Covent Garden, she was still Mayfair born and bred.
“I want you to take me,” she said, her throaty voice making his cock twitch. “Take me without fear. Without control. I’ll meet your need.”
She didn’t know what she was saying, but he was too far gone to fight his need for her. “You might be offended by what I want to do. You might be—”
“No.” She pressed her lips to his, and he tasted just how much she wanted him when she slipped her tongue inside his mouth. She pulled back and raked her nails down his chest, making him groan. “I won’t be offended or scared. Take me.” A wicked grin twisted her lips. “But you must call me Freddy as you do it.”
She drove a devil’s bargain, but in that moment, he would have sold his soul to have her. “You’ve got yourself a bargain, Freddy,” he said, setting his hands on her shoulders and turning her gently toward the bed so that her back and her perfect, plump arse were facing him. “Put your hands on the bed and lean over.”
“Lean over?”
“Yes,Freddy,” he said, but it came out like a growl. “This won’t be polite, but I can promise you, it will be pleasurable.”
She set her hands on the bed and leaned forward, and all he could do was stare openmouthed for a moment. “Freddy,” he said, splaying his palms over either side of her low back and allowing his fingers to curl around her hips. Gooseflesh rose on her skin, and her back arched ever so slightly.
“Mm-hmm,” she said, turning to look over her shoulder at him. Her eyes danced with mischief, and a rosy flush touched her cheeks.
“Christ, Freddy, you are the damned prettiest lass I’ve ever met. And the boldest. By God, you are.”
