Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
BENNET HALL, SURREY - OCTOBER 24, 1816
LEE
Christ, this woman was lovely, heartachingly so. Her full lower lip was trapped between her teeth. Whiskey eyes focused on the place where normally dexterous fingers fumbled with the buttons on my breeches.
My heart was set to fly right out of my chest.
With one notable exception, my cock hadn’t known the touch of another in years. And it more than remembered Charlotte’s too brief touch a few weeks ago.
I’d thought recent weeks had been a beautiful torture, bringing my breathtaking wife to climax after climax, sleeping with her cocooned in my arms. But this—watching her slowly work each silver button through the hole with the sort of concentration she typically only dedicated to a star chart was something else entirely. It was surely the most exquisite suffering known to heaven or hell.
The need to assure her that this was unnecessary warred with the desire to pull her hands away and rip the fabric off entirely, but before I could make a decision, she freed the last one.
She was nervous, that was clear in the way she bit her lip, in the way her eyes flicked up to mine—questioning—before returning to where her fingers hovered over the loosened falls. I knew my wife well enough to recognize the determined set of her shoulders.
Carefully, she set her hands on my hips and dragged my trousers down to tangle around my thighs. My breathing was ragged and unsure, like an attack, but also not. There were no worries here. I was entirely present in this moment.
My cock was still mostly covered by my shirt, though it tented the fabric absurdly.
“Off,” she demanded, nodding toward my remaining layers. Dutifully, I stripped the simple, yellow waistcoat and tossed it aside. The cravat took a moment since my wife’s industrious little hands had knotted it quite severely. But I managed. The shirt quickly followed, leaving me bare before her.
Far from the familiar panic, I had no hesitation in displaying my form for her. Charlotte had seen the worst of my scars, and she’d never so much as blinked. And she didn’t now—no, now her perfect pink tongue darted between her lips in a way that had me groaning as her amber-honey eyes skimmed up and down my naked body.
Then, her pretty little hand wrapped confidently around the base of my cock and I died.
Death hadn’t actually befallen me, but the air abandoned the room, and I required great heaving gasps to continue living.
My eyes had slammed shut involuntarily, and I forced them open, unwilling to waste another single second of the sight. And thank Christ I did because Charlotte, my Charlotte, never did what I expected. Instead of that hand sliding up my shaft in a less obligatory version of what she had begun that night weeks ago, her eyes caught mine as her lips parted and she leaned forward.
“Fuck—” escaped me without permission as sweet, flawless lips kissed the tip of my cock.
I’d never—no one had ever—I didn’t even— fuck!
It wasn’t until my chest began to work again that I realized it had stopped. Then it broke again when her luscious little mouth opened and she took me inside.
I hadn’t expected—hadn’t thought—I’d assumed I was agreeing to her delicate fingers topped with harp-induced calluses running along my length. That would have been more than enough. But this?—
Dimly, I was aware that ragged half breath, half groans were coming from my throat but I wasn’t capable of giving full consideration to anything beyond the goddess before me with the exquisite, heavenly mouth.
Then, in yet another attempt to end my life, Charlotte’s clever tongue traced the vein running along the underside of my cock. I was forced to close my eyes against the sight lest it end prematurely. My fingers tangled in the silken curls twisted elegantly at the back of her head.
Charlotte coughed and pulled back, releasing me. I had to blink my dizzy gaze back into focus to meet her suddenly sad eyes. My heart stopped again and I froze.
“Don’t grab my hair?” she whispered, her voice soft and small.
Wha… Oh.
I fought back tears at the understanding. “No, sweetheart. I’m sorry. Never again.” It was a strange juxtaposition, icy sorrow for what she’d endured, warm pride at her bravery, burning rage at those who came before. “Do you wish to stop?”
She shook her head, her gaze returning to my flagging member. Without warning, she swallowed me down and I choked on nothing.
My fingers, desperate to ground myself to the world—to her—clenched and unclenched as she brought my arousal soaring back.
“Hand,” I gasped. Her brow furrowed before she moved the hand cupping the base of my cock lower to cup my bollocks. Pleasure tightened in the base of my spine, sharp and imminent. Desperately, I shook my head. I reached down, carefully with trembling fingers, and tugged the fingers of the hand resting on my thigh. “Yes?”
In response, Charlotte slotted our fingers together. Then she doubled her efforts to suck my soul out of my cock with the kind of determination that would have been terrifying in any other context.
Pleasure, as I understood it, was a simple matter. Or it had been. Now, I knew differently. That had been a pale imitation of pleasure. This was entirely new, a layered, complex cosmos of sight, sound, sensation, and sentiment.
There was something so heartbreakingly beautiful in the knowledge that this was Charlotte. My breathtaking, vulnerable, courageous, damaged, fierce Charlotte was doing this for me. Tears welled in my eyes again even as I fought to blink them away, unwilling to miss even a second.
I loved this woman. I was so in love with this woman that it ached to breathe. She had been hurt, so many different times, in so many different ways.
Slowly, giving her time to stop me, I brushed a finger along her cheek before cupping it. Love and pleasure—a potent drug. If I hadn’t been addicted before, I surely was now.
The only stupid thought swirling in my addled head was the desperate desire to propose to her. Marry me! Marry me. My heart sang—as though this incredible woman wasn’t already my wife.
But I was greedy and selfish, and I wanted more. I wanted it all—everything she had agreed to give and everything she hadn’t. The next months were mine, but I wanted all the ones to come. I wanted every laugh, every tear, every smile, and every eye roll. I wanted the babe in her belly and any others that came along. I wanted her in my house and in my life, so steeped there that it was as if she’d never been anywhere else. I wanted—needed—her to be mine.
Verbal communication had long since escaped me. Our laced hands were the only method left to me. I squeezed in desperate warning as pleasure tightened into a sharp knot. Desperately, I forced out an unintelligible, “Cha— mgh ,” of warning.
Shockingly, she understood whatever that was and pulled back, her hand continuing to work my length. There was nothing perfunctory about her movements—at least nothing I could see. Her eyes were darkened, her lips swollen and gorgeous, her cheeks flushed, and her delectable bosom swelled with every breath.
One quick turn of the wrist was all it took before I spilled, my free hand moving without permission to keep from making a mess of her.
My breath was harsh and ragged, but no matter how my chest heaved, my lungs were never satiated. Weak-kneed, I fell to the settee beside her with a pathetic flop, half on, half off.
Charlotte bent down, my brain too wrecked to make sense of it. When she returned with the handkerchief from my pocket and reached for my hand, I understood. Task disposed of, she curled up along my side with a delicate kiss to my heaving chest—right over my scar.
I wrapped my arm around her shoulder, pulling her in closer.
“Was that all right?” I asked, sounding pathetic even to my own ears.
The edges of her smile brushed along my chest. “I do believe that is my question.”
“ You already know the answer.”
She buried her head in my chest in an adorably shy manner—a word I’d never associated with her before.
“Charlotte… Tell me how you feel.”
Eventually, her head popped back up and she dropped a kiss to my lips. The first was just a gentle press. The second… There was intent behind that kiss, lips slotting together, her tongue dripping along the seam of my lips.
It took me until the moment her thighs rubbed together before comprehension dawned. Oh… Oh, yes.
I allowed my lips the pleasure of tracing along her jaw and down her neck before moving to the delicious bounty of her breasts, offered up by the neckline of her gown. Reluctantly, I pulled away, sliding down her graceful form.
“Lee?” she asked in a tone that was not at all what I was aiming for. “I don’t—not that.”
“What?” My heart stopped. There was something nervous in her expression.
“I can’t…” Charlotte flopped back to stare at the ceiling. “I cannot see you—I want to—I do not like that I cannot see you. Over my belly—I mean.”
At once, my heartbeat kicked back in. My smile felt crooked. I pressed a lingering kiss to the side of her clothed breast. “That is easily remedied.”
“It is?”
I dragged one hand along her thigh, pulling her dress up, before raising it in front of her, fingers dancing, offering their pleasure. At the same time, I nudged my bare thigh between hers, up, up, up until it met her sweet, soaked center, providing a second option. She arched prettily in response with a charming little moan. The angle was a bit awkward with her belly, but I wasn’t at all willing to complain.
“Do you have a preference?”
“Both,” she whispered. “Is both an option?”
“Anything I have to give is an option.” I inched the fabric out of my way before my lips descended back on hers. And the afternoon’s words gave way to moans, whimpers, and sighs.