For Desire Alone Read online

  Vivien arched a brow as she followed his line of sight to the entryway.

  “Ah, I see you have found Mariah,” she said, her tone neutral and softer so the others around, who had gone back to their own conversations, wouldn’t hear. “Not that I would have expected any less. You two are good friends, are you not?”

  John flinched. Friends with Mariah? He supposed that was technically true. He had always been friendly with her. Thanks to his longstanding friendship with her late protector, the Earl of Heathcote, he had no other choice.

  But that was all for show. On the inside, he felt no friendliness when it came to her. Lust, yes. Desire so keen that it pained him. And it never faded, not even when he poured it into other women.

  “Yes,” he choked as he watched Mariah draw a quick breath before she walked fully into the room, smiling for the ladies and gentlemen around her. “I have always called her a friend. But…what is she doing here?”

  Vivien looked at him in surprise. “Were you not aware of her circumstance? You always seem to know everything of importance in our circles. Even if you didn’t, you and Owen were thick as thieves, weren’t you? I would think you would at least know his business better than others.”

  John bit his tongue to keep his first reaction from coming to the forefront. “I—yes, I admit I had heard something of what happened to Mariah after Owen’s death.”

  That was…partially true, but since Vivien and Mariah were close friends, he wasn’t about to say more.

  Vivien shrugged. “Then you must guess her reasons for being here. Mariah has no choice but to ally herself with a new protector.”

  For a moment, John lost all contact with anything in the room but Mariah. He saw no one else, he heard no one else, including Vivien as she continued to talk. All he could do was stare at his best friend’s former lover. A woman he had lusted after for three long years, even as he pretended to feel nothing but vague friendship toward her.

  Mariah moved forward and smiled as some man gave her a drink. A titled man, no less. John could not remember his name, but he hated him at present. Her companion leaned in too close and whispered something to her. She laughed and reached up to touch the other man’s arm lightly.

  “Fuck,” John muttered beneath his breath.

  “John!” Vivien laughed, dragging him back to reality. “Such violent language, I am quite shocked.”

  “I doubt anyone could shock you, Vivien,” he said, but his words tasted sour.

  She stared at him. “Dear God, you’ve never left a party of mine or anyone else’s on the arm of the same woman twice. Everyone knows you are a shameless libertine. Why in the world would you care what Mariah does?”

  John shifted. Vivien was too wise and far too close to Mariah for him to explain the intricacies of his reaction to her friend. A reaction he could scarce explain to himself.

  Instead, he shrugged.

  “I don’t care,” he lied and downed the remainder of his drink in one swig. He set it on the tray of the closest footman and smiled at Vivien. “She can do as she wishes. And now I should go make my rounds. As you say, I never leave with the same woman twice and it is time for me to find tonight’s lover. Good evening, Vivien.”

  She wrinkled her brow as he turned, but he heard her say softly, “Good evening, John.”

  He clenched his fists into his sides as he stomped, rather than walked through the ballroom. An anger boiled inside of him that made no sense and only rewarded him with great discomfort. He hardly wanted to consider it at all.

  Except he couldn’t help but do so. His gaze kept flitting back to Mariah. Now she had not one man to hold court over, but five. And each one was just as scandalous as John himself was known to be. They were men who would love to take her to their beds and revel in her body for a year or two. Men who had probably noticed her when she was on the arm of Owen. Admired her for her…charms. For what her lover had told them of her skills. And there she smiled and chatted flirtatiously with them all.

  And that was just about enough for John.

  He spun on his heel and marched toward her. As he neared her, Mariah finally tore her gaze away from her drooling companions and smiled at him. The expression lit her up like a candle from within and something inside of John stuttered.

  But he shook off the reaction and instead reached for Mariah’s arm.

  “I need to speak to you,” he barked without preamble and despite the fact that her companions stared at him in as much surprise as she did herself.

  Her smile fell at his sharp tone and unexpected touch, and she lightly tugged back against him. “John—?” she began.

  But he had already begun to drag her away toward the exit of the ballroom and into a hallway of parlors that were often used as passionate escapes for Vivien’s guests.

  He had a very different intention for whatever parlor he chose.

  He slammed the first door he came to open, only to find one of the ladies in attendance down on her knees pleasuring a gentleman. The two looked up in annoyance, but then the lady continued her work with as much flourish as if no one were in the room at all.

  John grumbled an apology and closed the door again. What they had seen only inflamed him further, for it made him picture Mariah in a similar position, giving some faceless new man pleasure with equal abandon. Some man who would take her and claim her as John had always pretended he did not wish to do.

  He jerked open the next door and found the room empty. He pulled Mariah inside and slammed it behind them as she yanked her arm free and glared at him. But now that they were alone, he had a strange desire not to rail at her…but to do something far more pleasurable. Something resembling what had been happening in the room next door.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Mariah asked as she rubbed her arm.

  John blinked, his erotic fantasies fading to the background as he stared at her. “You cannot be serious. What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Mariah paced away from John to stand at the fire, hoping to regain some control over her racing heart and ragged breathing. She hadn’t even known he was in attendance tonight, though she should have guessed. John Rycroft was well-known for his love of women and passion. Where better to find both than at one of Vivien’s fetes?

  “And to think,” she said as she turned toward him, hoping she was hiding her strong reaction to him. “I was actually happy to see you when you came across the room.”

  Her words made the flashing emotion in his dark brown eyes fade and he shifted. “You were?”

  She nodded. “Oh yes. Foolish as it now sounds, a friendly face was so welcome to me in this odd and untenable situation. Clearly I was mistaken to see you as an oasis to confusion and humiliation when you would grab me…accost me…drag me off like some kind of barbarian staking his claim.”

  The last sentence gave her a sudden image of John taking her out in an open field, spread out over fur rugs, but she shook it away.

  John shifted and his face was taut with tension. “God damn it, Mariah, this is madness and I shall not be distracted from that fact. What the hell are you doing here?”

  She hesitated. She had been uncertain of his emotions when he grabbed her, but now she could see…he was angry. Over the years she had known John, she had seen many moods from him. Yes, he was often pensive, distracted when he thought no one was observing him.

  But she had never seen him angry.

  She drew back. “I—” she began, unable to put any strength in her tone in the face of his unexpected wrath.

  He shook his head. “I have been told you are seeking a new protector. Tell me that rumor isn’t true.”

  Mariah flinched and her first reaction was to run from that fact, from this thing she did not wish to do. But she couldn’t do that, no matter how much she desired that escape. There was one powerful reason why she couldn’t bury herself in mourning and cloister herself away from leering eyes.

  She drew a deep breath an
d calmed herself. “Why wouldn’t that be true?” she asked when she found her voice again.

  John’s eyes widened. “Because Heathcote has only been dead a few weeks!”

  Once again, Mariah couldn’t help but turn her face away from those harsh words and the pain they caused. She pursed her lips and forced herself to think about the facts of her situation rather than the fact of Owen’s loss.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Indeed, some might call me cold to search for a new relationship while Owen is hardly in the grave. But it isn’t as straightforward as you seem to think. There are circumstances at play here that you don’t fully understand.”

  For a moment John’s face, which was normally so difficult to read, revealed a flash of dismay. A moment of guilt. But no surprise. No question as to what she could be talking about.

  And in that moment, Mariah stared in pure horror as the truth became clear.

  “Or perhaps you understand them after all,” she whispered. He shifted and his guilty expression intensified.

  “I don’t know what you could mean, Mariah,” he said, but his voice revealed the lie in those words.

  She blinked and stepped toward him, almost against her will. “Y-You knew?”

  He stepped back an equal distance. “You are being foolish. Knew what?” he asked, but the rough rasp that continued in his voice, the way he turned his gaze from her told her more than his questioning denial.

  “You knew,” she repeated without clarifying.

  Her entire body began to shake as she stared at John. Here was a man who had been best friends with her lover for as long as they had been old enough to walk. John had been through thick and thin with Owen. She knew they had shared secrets and even women before Owen took her as a lover.

  They had been as close as two men could be.

  But Mariah had also thought John counted her as a friend. That he cared for her on some level that was separate from his feelings for Owen. She had never believed he would allow her to be harmed if he could prevent that from happening. But that belief was apparently as untrue as Owen’s promises. Both men had played her for a fool. And John was the only one she could confront.

  “I really don’t know what you’re going on about, Mariah,” John said in a harsh whisper. “Truly.”

  “Bollocks,” she snapped as she charged on him, much as he had charged on her in the ballroom. “You knew that Owen was leaving me destitute, didn’t you?”

  “Mariah—” he began, and yet still he could not look at her.

  “Didn’t you?” she repeated, far louder. “Please do not treat me like an idiot now. Don’t lie to me.”

  He hesitated, which was answer enough. Then he nodded. “Yes. Yes, I knew.”

  Mariah didn’t think, she only reacted. “You bastard.”

  Then she swung her hand for a slap.

  Chapter Three

  John saw Mariah’s palm rounding toward his face in slow-motioned disbelief. He had never pictured her to be inspired to violence. Especially by him!

  He reacted just as he would have in an underground fight. He reached up and caught Mariah’s hand midair, then spun her around, trapping her in the crossing of her own arms. He pulled her back against his chest so that she could no longer use her body as a weapon.

  She struggled against him, her backside gyrating over his crotch as she attempted to pull away. Her motions mimicked far more pleasurable acts. Ones best performed naked. He could hardly stifle a groan of pleasure.

  Her body was still a weapon. Just not that kind she had attempted to make it a moment before.

  “Let me go,” she squealed as she continued to squirm and wriggle in his arms. “You son of a bitch, release me at once!”

  He could hear her tears in her voice and the sound cut him as deeply as a knife to the heart. His desire to fuck vanished, replaced by another troubling need to help her. He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to block out that strange instinct to comfort, but it was stronger than he was, at least in this moment.

  He spun her around so he could look at her as they spoke. Also so that her finely curved backside would stop tormenting his rapidly hardening cock.

  “Mariah, stop,” he ordered in as firm a tone as he could manage. “Stop.”

  She squirmed a little more, but slowly the movements ceased and she simply stared up at him, eyes wide and filled with tears that she blinked to keep from shedding.

  “How could you not tell me?” she whispered. “You were supposed to be my friend.”

  He jolted. “Is that what you think?” he asked, flattening his palm against her back and molding her against him even closer.

  She stared up at him, eyes wide in the firelight, breath short. Everything between them shifted in that moment. She recognized that he wanted her. Better yet, he saw no resistance to that in her trembling body or wide-eyed stare. In fact, he saw a faint flicker of her own desire mirrored in there. Unexpected and glorious.

  He couldn’t help it. He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her.

  John had dreamed of kissing Mariah for as long as he’d known her. Her mouth was made for the act, with its full lips and pert tilt. That and…other activities they had already witnessed in the next room a moment ago. The thought had him groaning against her lips, and to his surprise, she took advantage of his parted mouth. She drove her tongue between his lips and tasted him.

  But whatever control she exerted in that moment was lost as he immediately went wild. He dragged his hand into her hair, tilting her head for greater access and lifted her ass with the other, grinding her against his erection so she would know what he wanted. What he was.

  She yanked away to stare at him, panting with the same desire and confusion that was painted all over her face.

  “We were many things while Owen was alive,” he murmured. “But I was never your friend, Mariah. You can feel that now, can’t you?”

  He accentuated the statement by circling his hips against hers. She let out a strangled moan as his hard cock moved against her soft thighs.

  There was no going back. John wasn’t certain when he’d realized that, but it was so true now. He was going to do what he’d dreamed of doing for years. He was going to fuck her. And since it was an act unlikely to be repeated, he was going to do it for as long and as hard and as memorably as possible.

  He backed her up until they reached the settee and pushed her back so that she sprawled across the cushions. She stared up at him, still wide-eyed.

  “Tell me no,” he ordered her as he stripped his jacket from his shoulders and tossed it aside. He went to work on his cravat. “Tell me to stop. That we’re friends, Mariah. Tell me that.”

  She did no such thing. Instead, she remained silent as she watched him unbutton the first few buttons of his crisp linen shirt and then tug it over his head to reveal his bare chest and stomach.

  Mariah sat up straighter to stare as anger was replaced with a far more complicated set of feelings. First, there was the attraction to the concept of relief. Since Owen’s death, her life had been a cacophony of pain and tension. The idea of releasing some of it, here, tonight, with a lover was wildly attractive.

  And then there was the second emotion—desire she had been stifling and crushing and denying for as long as she had known John. Oh yes, she could admit she had imagined what he looked like naked. In fact, she had even done so once or twice even while she lay in Owen’s arms, though she banished those traitorous thoughts instantly each time.

  Now the reality was far more desirable than any vague fantasy.

  John was leanly muscled, with strong shoulders and an equally powerful chest that was peppered with a thin line of hair which dissipated into his trousers. Trousers that now strained with the hard, heavy erection she had felt probing her when they kissed. Even now her mouth watered at the thought of it.

  He stared at her. “Speechless?”

  She looked up. He was challenging her. But she was no simpering miss. She arched a brow.


  “No, I can simply think of better things to do with my mouth,” she purred.

  She reached out to unfasten his trousers and within a few seconds, they were around his ankles and his erection was free to curl against his belly.

  Despite her chosen life, Mariah had little experience with cocks. She had seen Owen’s, of course. She’d had a lover before him, for a brief few months, who had been far less impressive. And then she caught a glimpse every once in a while of a man at one of these kinds of parties, like the one in the chamber next door, who had probably already spent all over his lover’s ample breasts and was now back inside the party like nothing had happened.

  But she had to stare at John’s cock to truly enjoy it. He was thick and long, the length dark with arousal and hard as steel. She couldn’t help it, not when presented with such a treat. She reached out to grasp him and pulled him closer as she shifted to her knees on the settee.

  Her mouth came around him and she shivered with the intimacy of taking him into her body. He tasted salty sweet and filled her mouth with satin steel that felt like heaven.

  As did his reaction. She had always seen John as a rather reserved person. Yes, he was quick to joke or laugh, but he rarely gave anyone a glimpse into his real character. He held himself away from others, using his effusiveness as a cloak, rather than an open door.

  But his reaction in that moment was real. He dipped his head back over his shoulders and let out a long, low moan of pleasure that she would wager was far more emotional than he would have liked it to be. He began to thrust into her mouth, driving himself deeper and deeper into her throat. She gripped the base of his shaft harder and sucked, swirling her tongue, tasting every inch and reveling in the power she now wielded over him.

  Power he seemed loathe to give up, no matter how good it felt. He growled out a curse and popped himself away from her mouth. She stared for a moment at the glistening result of her handiwork, but had little time to take satisfaction in herself because he reached behind her legs and pulled her from her knees so that she dropped onto her backside on the couch. He dragged her forward on the settee and shoved her dress up and around her waist to reveal her naked body beneath.