Bound with Passion Read online

  Trevor moaned unintelligibly to prove the point.

  Seeing this huge, capable man willfully—happily—reduced to this moaning, desperate pile of desire made something flip in Georgie’s belly. She stood up quickly and set her empty whiskey glass on the side table. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  “You’re welcome to stay,” James called playfully after her, but she knew he didn’t really mean it.

  “Three’s a crowd,” she responded over one shoulder, her voice echoing his levity. James laughed darkly, and she heard Trevor moan again.

  Georgie pulled the door to the drawing room shut behind her, and leaned against it with a heavy sigh. She shut her eyes and let her heart race unfettered. She was such a liar.

  In fact, it hadn’t been a crowd at all. For the first time in Georgie’s life, she had actually wanted to be an intimate part of something—and not merely physically intimate. Georgie had wanted to feel what James and Trevor were feeling, to give of herself the way they gave of themselves to one another.

  And it terrified her.

  She stood in the dim hallway and tried to catch her breath. She’d been in any number of unwelcome scrapes over the course of the past five years—contending with runaway camels, fending off angry sheikhs, and being held at knifepoint . . . Well, that last wasn’t entirely unwelcome, come to think of it. She smiled ironically and took another deep breath, forcing herself to calm. If she could handle marauding gangs of Bedouins, she could certainly handle a bit of intimacy between the two men in the other room.

  Right as she had the thought, Trevor let out a cry of sensual pleasure, and even though it was slightly muffled by the two-hundred-year-old oak door behind her, Georgie leapt away from the sound as if she’d been burnt. She strode across the black-and-white marble floor of the grand front hall, stepping only on the white squares, as she’d always done on her frequent childhood visits to this majestic country house. Hands clasped behind her at the base of her spine, bounding toward the large front doors, she jumped when the housekeeper, Mrs. Daley, called out, “Lady Georgiana, is that you?”

  “Oh, do stop with the formalities, Daley.” Georgie let out a sigh and plopped down on the bench near the front door that had been there for decades to accommodate unwelcome visitors.

  “Well, I can’t be calling you Georgie-girl if you’re to be the lady of Mayfield House, now can I, miss?” Mrs. Daley stared with narrowed eyes at Georgie. “It’s still hard for me to look at you with all your beautiful blonde hair disappeared into the desert wind. But it will grow back and you’ll be as pretty as ever. Though you’d make quite a dashing lad, I must say.”

  Georgie smiled up at dear, dear Mrs. Daley. The woman had been sneaking sweetmeats and biscuits to Trevor and Georgie since the two of them were in apron strings. “Oh, Daley. I think I’m in need of a bit of cake. Have you got any?”

  Mrs. Daley nodded and extended her hand in a welcoming gesture. “Come on.” Georgie stood up, towering over the servant who resembled Napoleon in both stature and authority.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ve got just the thing for a frazzled day.” Mrs. Daley nudged Georgie back down the hall, steering her to the kitchen with chatter and bustle. “A nice cup of tea and something sweet to tide you over until supper. And you’ll be needing the carriage to take you back to Camburton, of course. And you’re going to put on a pretty dress for dinner at your mother’s house and not vex her. All right? All right.”

  Even though Georgie might be on the verge of becoming the lady of the house, there was only room for one at the top, and Mrs. Daley was already firmly ensconced on her domestic throne. Georgie had no desire to unseat her. Instead, she gave herself over to the comfort and familiarity of the well-run manor.

  The pace and rhythm of a large country estate—here at Mayfield at least—was a soothing current, like the rolling surf along the Barbary Coast, repetitive and reassuring. She heard the kitchen maids discussing something while they cleaned pots; the scent of the promised cake wafted down the servants’ hall; two footmen polished silver in a side room as Daley and Georgie passed.

  Georgie wondered why she was able to feel a hint of admiration for this estate and its goings on, but the house in which she’d been raised, little more than a mile away—even though it was run in a very similar fashion—made her feel like a prisoner in the hulks.

  Her mother had never been overly disciplined or draconic with them. Georgie and Archie had been afforded what many would consider an idyllic childhood. When their father had died at sea, Vanessa must have decided that one tragic childhood event was more than enough to build a seven-year-old’s character. Most of their time had been spent in Derbyshire or London, but they had also traveled occasionally with their great-uncle, the diplomat, social reformer, and scholar Fitzwilliam Montagu, to Spain and Italy. They had hardly been restrained at all.

  But that just added to Georgie’s sense of her own inability to value life for what it was now. She had been raised in a world of exquisite privilege—and she thought she had appreciated it to the fullest—but her mother still made her feel she was, and always would be, lacking proper gratitude.

  “You mustn’t think so hard, Lady Georgiana. We don’t want those lines of worry forming between your beautiful eyes, now do we?” Mrs. Daley set a plate of cake in front of her, along with a cup of black tea. Georgie always preferred eating in a kitchen—whether it was here in windy Derbyshire or in a grand city house in Cairo. Georgie felt closer to the earth, closer to what mattered, when she ate food near the hearth on which it had been prepared. There was honor in kitchens.

  There was honor in the running of this grand house, an honor Trevor was eager to preserve. And that was a small something Georgie could do for him by agreeing to be his wife, even if it was in name only.

  Once his father’s wishes were fulfilled, however, Georgie would leave Trevor to James and be on her way back to North Africa. She was already desperately missing the smells and the sounds, not to mention the wild freedom she had secretly carved out.

  Until then, she would stay close to the kitchens, close to the ground.

  “You mustn’t frighten Georgie like that again.” Trevor kissed James one last time, letting his lips linger against his lover’s mouth, tasting himself and feeling a renewed sense of pleasure riding straight to his cock.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Still breathing heavily, Trevor felt far more like the rutty gamekeeper of Mayfield than the future viscount of anything. “God, you are fantastic.”

  James smiled as if he’d just been complimented for a lofty academic achievement. “Why, thank you kindly, your lordship.”

  “Don’t even start.” Trevor shoved James away with a friendly push and stood up from the pale blue sofa to fasten the placket of his buckskins.

  Trevor, James, and Georgie had been talking casually and James had given him a look—one of those looks—and when Georgie had said it was fine with her if they were affectionate in front of her, James had leapt at the chance. Trevor had taken for granted how utterly attached he and James had become over the past few years. In the usual course of a day, when they were alone in the house or on the estate, the casual touches while they worked, the occasional buss, the brief, passionate embrace before one or the other went off to work or ride—not being able to do those little bits throughout the day had thrown them both into a sort of fever.

  And it had become rather, well, heated within a matter of seconds. Georgie had dashed from the room like a deer getting its first scent of a hunter.

  When Trevor finished with his buttons, he stared down at James Rushford, sprawling in all his masculine glory. Legs spread wide and careless, cock spent and resting against one strong, lean thigh. “Aren’t you a picture?”

  James raised a brow. “I am quite content, if you must know.”

  Trevor leaned down and kissed him on the lips one last time before turning toward the dwindling fire. “So am I.” He approached the large mar
ble hearth, enjoying the familiar languid feel of satisfaction that always pulsed through his strong muscles after he and James took each other like that. He needed that feeling, more than he had realized. He needed James Rushford’s hands on him every day of his life in order to feel whole and settled in his own skin.

  “Do you think Georgie’s really thought this through?” Trevor poked at the fire until a few flames licked, then turned to the pile of logs at his right and tossed one on. The idea of summoning a footman to put a log on the fire had always struck Trevor as preposterous.

  “She’s a practical person, no question about it.” James started to sit up and attend to his own clothing. “It sounds as if you’d barely mentioned the circumstances of your father’s demands before she leapt at the chance to help you resolve this insane wish of his.”

  Poking the fire again, Trevor said, “That’s what I’m worried about. She’s so cavalier about everything. Even if I’ve no intention of bedding her—not that her virtue is an issue in any case, given her revelation about her, er, busy nights in the Levant—I think she has failed to weigh the full consequences of our actions. She will never be able to marry for love. Do you think she’s trivializing that part of the arrangement?”

  James remained quiet while he considered his reply. When the silence persisted, Trevor set the fire poker in the stand and turned to face him. “Well, what do you think?”

  “Maybe she is marrying for love. Perhaps you need to ask yourself the same question.” James had always been blunt; it was one of the things that had initially attracted Trevor to him at Cambridge. James was fearless with words. Trevor had always been fearless with his body—taking up any fight, answering any taunt with his fists, making love with fervor—but he had never had the audacity to simply speak his mind the way James Rushford did.

  Trevor narrowed his eyes and thought about how best to answer. Was he falling in love with her?

  He and James had been entirely devoted to each other these past five years, but both of them had enjoyed being with women before they met. And it would be dishonest for Trevor to say he wasn’t at least intrigued by the idea of having Georgie in their bed. Initially, he’d thought of it as a possible romp, but over the past week of having her in his house, he was far more intrigued by her, not merely her body. His heart always raced when she entered a room—all bluster and chatter about the horses or disdain for some nodcock in the morning paper. In his mind at least—especially in his fervid imagination—she was no longer just a friend. Looking back over his life, he was beginning to wonder if she had ever been just a friend.

  She was also very different from the girl he’d grown up with, the girl he’d always thought of as a friend. Her experience abroad had given her a gravity, some kind of solid bedrock he wanted to mine. And yet her heart—the fierce, joyful nature that was so distinctly her—was still there, if shuttered. So much like James, now that Trevor thought of it. Hard to break through, but so temptingly worth the effort. He also sensed an answering desire in her, as much as she tried to bury it beneath all her layers of independence and bravado.

  “I would like to bed you both,” Trevor confessed. “Together.” When he saw the smile of slow, delectable pleasure spread across James’s face, Trevor realized it probably wasn’t the first time the idea had crossed James’s mind either. He began to walk back toward the sofa with a predatory stride. “Would you like that too, James?”

  James nodded slowly. “I think I might like to . . .” He hesitated. “How did she phrase it? Use her like a lad . . . or better yet, watch you use her like a lad.”

  Trevor was standing directly in front of James by then. “Tell me . . .” His voice had gone rough at the prospect of hearing James reveal what he had in mind.

  “It’s hard to say,” James said blandly—as if he were contemplating which color velvet he wanted to use for his latest hat design—while his hand reached out and palmed the front of Trevor’s buckskins. James pressed against Trevor’s hardening cock as he spoke. “I think she’d like it rough and fast, maybe pinned to the bed—” Trevor’s cock twitched in response. “I know you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Maybe you could even hold her in place for me, let her take you in her mouth, while you watch me down the length of her back as I pound into her firm, tight arse.”

  Trevor moaned and pushed his hips against James’s hand. “That might work,” he said, his voice raspy.

  “But I’m a perverse bastard, ain’t I?”

  “Yes,” Trevor gasped, never underestimating the extent of James’s sexual imagination. “You have something else in mind, I know it. What would you do instead?”

  “I think—no, I know—I would make it soft and slow. She might need to be restrained much more to endure that kind of torture. Do you see how impatient she is? She is always in a rush and likely sees lovemaking as nothing more than an athletic exercise. A sprint of some sort.”

  “Ah—” Trevor was devolving into a mist of sensuality again; words were becoming vague and meaningless as James’s hand smoothed and rubbed against him. “And you, you would s-slow her d-down, is that it?”

  “Oh yes.” James stretched the two words out until they floated around the room like some sort of heady smoke. He pulled Trevor to the sofa and then slid down to kneel on the floor between his legs.

  “I’d want to go very, very slow . . . ” James unbuttoned Trevor’s fall (again) and pulled his straining hard cock into his mouth. No urgency. No force. Just long, slow, languorous licks. Delicate, easy, sucking pulls. Light kisses. It was entirely maddening. And entirely delicious. “Slow . . . like this,” he said when he released him.

  James kissed the tip of Trevor’s cock, trailing his tongue lightly over it. He licked at it, the flat of his tongue barely moving as he teased Trevor slowly. Trevor couldn’t help picturing Georgie’s mouth, imagining Georgie’s moans, as James worked on him—and the effect was stunning.

  With one hand, James reached between Trevor’s legs, up, and behind—still at that delectably glacial pace—until he fitted the side of his hand into the crack of Trevor’s arse. “She would be forced into patience, wouldn’t she?” Trevor moaned as James began stroking, lightly at first, then deeper, until he was pressing the entire side of his palm gently and firmly into Trevor’s crease. The look James gave him—filled with awe and trust and desire—promised everything. They could have this, damn it; the three of them could have a beautiful life together.

  “And then I would just make her . . . love it.” And with that, James dipped his head fully and pulled Trevor’s cock into his mouth, sucking hard and relentlessly, but still slow . . . slow . . . slow. He pulled his mouth away for a second while his hand kept working. “Because you know it now, don’t you? It’s not just her body you want to claim, is it, Trevor?” Trevor gasped when James squeezed his bollocks. “You are falling in love with her, aren’t you? You want the three of us to be together in truth?”

  Without waiting for a reply, James opened his mouth and resumed his slow, patient torture of Trevor’s cock, until Trevor cried out his release. He may have said yes or he may have just screamed out something unintelligible—but that was the truth of it. He was indeed falling in love with Georgie.

  James Rushford might have been born in the wrong century. As he moaned through Trevor’s release—deriving as much pleasure as Trevor did from the act, his own seed spilling in the same desperate pulse as Trevor’s—James had visions in his mind of being a dedicated Roman slave, with Trevor as his patrician lord and master. Then, some days, it was the other way round, with James wielding all the power, binding Trevor to their enormous bed and grabbing his dark hair from behind and thrusting into him like Trevor was nothing more than a stable boy, there to be fucked, used, and discarded.

  Or perhaps the two men would have been better suited to a life in India in the fourth century, exploring a shared world of fleshly delights amid the freedom and curiosity of that society so focused on voluptuous pleasure. Men. Women. Tenderness. Se
duction. Lovers.

  Regardless of time or place, Trevor and James were meant to be together in any century, under any social circumstances. The bond between them went far beyond any role or socially prescribed behavior. Whether they had been born men or women, had met when they were old or young, they both believed they would have found each other. They were simply a part of one another’s being.

  But Georgie’s presence was causing something more complex to surge between them, something that felt like it could enrich what they already had—something profound that they would need to act on with unusual haste if they were ever to get her to at least consider the possibility of a true marriage.

  “You are relentless.” Trevor breathed heavily as he fell back against the sofa. “Honestly. If anyone could get into the hidden heart of Lady Georgiana Cambury, it would be you.”

  James smiled softly. “I would certainly like to try, but I think we need to be a bit . . . careful about it.”

  Trevor was coming back to himself, his eyes turning more alert. “Careful how?”

  “I think we need to seduce her without her really knowing.”

  Trevor laughed out loud, tilting his chin up so the strong muscles on his neck flexed and vibrated. “And how do you propose to do that?” he asked. “Seduction seems the type of thing Georgie might cotton to.”

  “I’m working on it.” James tapped the side of his head and pulled himself up to sitting. “First off, no calf eyes or declarations on your part. And button up your trousers unless you want me to go for round three.” Lightly licking his lips in memory, James looked away from Trevor’s cock and stood up. “I’m as randy as a goat from not having you as much as usual this week.”

  Laughing quietly, Trevor did as he was told, then stood up and followed James to his worktable.

  “What are you working on?” asked Trevor, resting his hand on James’s shoulder while they both looked down at the sketches and fabric samples on the table.