Page 1 of The Cutthroat Countess

“My God, I’ve missed you, Jo,” Elliot muttered beneath his breath, somehow managing not to move his lips at all. His handsome face flexed into a cool, aristocratic smile. “Ah, good to see you again, Mrs. Townshend, Mr. Townshend,” he said when Jo’s cousins bore down on him like a pair of frigates with all guns blazing.

“Josephine did not mention you would be among the guests tonight,” Edi said, regarding Elliot as if he were something stuck to her shoe.

Jo hated how dismissive the older couple was to Elliot, but she could hardly chastise them.

The Duke of Staunton drifted up beside them. And he could and did chastise in his own cold way. “Wingate and I were both at Eton, and we roomed together at Oxford. I count him as one of my dearest friends.” Sin stared coldly down his perfect, aquiline nose at the Townshends in a way that would melt iron.

Jo’s cousins were not immune to Sin’s aristocratic hauteur, and both assumed less adversarial expressions.

“Is that so?” Richard asked. “I’m a Harrovian, myself.” He winked at Jo. “Never had your father’s brains, so I didn’t go to university.”

Jo smiled, the others chuckled, the conversation moved on. People spoke of other people they knew, a play was discussed, somebody else mentioned a recent junket to Richmond.

Inside her head, Jo was screaming.

Marianne appeared beside them and edged close to her and Elliot. “Jo hasn’t seen the portrait gallery, Elliot,” she lied, since she’d shown it to Jo herself. “We’ve still time before dinner. Why don’t you show her?”

Jo gave her friend a look of gratitude, and Elliot held out his arm. “May I?”

Her cousins watched like raptors eying an escaping meal as Elliot and Jo left the cavernous drawing room.

“To the right,” Elliot murmured, leading her in that direction. “You look positively edible in that gown, Jo.”

“You’ve developed a taste for muslin, have you?” she asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

Elliot laughed, and the warm, intoxicating sound heated her veins like Mungo’s beloved Scottish whiskey. “These have been ten of the longest days of my life, Jo.”

She snorted bitterly—an unfeminine sound which Edi was attempting to break her of. “Has it only been ten? I was sure it was at least a hundred. You, at least, have been at liberty.”

He leaned close and whispered. “I’m not free since you captured my heart.”

Jo laughed. “Perhaps you should take up writing poetry? You could pick up where Mungo left off.”

“Cruel, cold woman,” he teased, nodding at a footman who leapt forward to open one of a double set of doors.

The door had barely shut when Elliot spun her around and lowered his hot mouth over hers, pushing her up against the wall.

A picture frame dug into her shoulder, but Jo didn’t care. They kissed as though they could consume each other, savoring taste, touch, and smell.

Jo dug her fingers into the hard muscles of his shoulders so fiercely they ached, and still she could not get close enough.

It was Elliot who finally pulled away, the long corridor echoing with the sounds of their raspy breathing. He rolled his hips, thrusting his erection against her belly. “See what you’ve done to me?”

Pride and desire mingled inside her.

He snorted. “Proud of yourself?”

Jo didn’t deny it.

He adjusted himself with a pained wince. “Do we have to go another ten days before we can see each other?”

She shook her head, running one hand through his curls—which seemed to have grown even longer in barely a week and a half—and stroking her other hand over the hot bulge in his black satin breeches.

“Jo,” he hissed, his hips thrusting against her hand, grinding his hard cock against her palm. “You’re going to make me embarrass myself.”

“Then let me take it out,” she urged, her fingers going to the catches.

He made a sound that was half gasp, half laugh. “No,” he said, taking her wrists in his hands and holding her trapped. “Somebody could come strolling through that door at any moment. Now, behave yourself. Isn’t that what you’ve been learning? How to behave like a lady?”