Chapter Three #2
When he reached the nest of feminine curls between her thighs, he kneeled on the cold ground with its thin blanket of snow, parted that flesh slick with her arousal, and then put his mouth on the swelling nubbin that was the center of her pleasure.
“Please, don’t…” Though she attempted to push him away, a surprised squeal came from her when he suckled that swelling bud.
He couldn’t help but bedevil it with his tongue.
Damn, but she tasted sweet, and he remembered how much he enjoyed seeing her come undone in this way.
Years later, and he couldn’t have enough.
As he kept her thighs splayed, he continued to work her over, suckling, teasing, tormenting, reacquainting himself with his wife’s body.
Her fingers in his hair as she both held him closer where she wanted him but alternately tried to pull him away.
When she fell over the edge into bliss, the soft cry that left her throat would forever haunt him, for he’d taken what she hadn’t wished to grant him.
Further proof he wasn’t a good man. What did it fucking matter now?
He wasn’t a member of Club Damnation for nothing.
His heart pounded while he came back up her body to kiss her lips again.
This time, her gloved fingers scrabbled for purchase on his clothing, but he didn’t know if that was to give permission or to shove him away.
“Cecil, please. No more. This isn’t right.”
“You are my wife, damn it.” Dear God, the press of her half-naked body against his hurtled him close to the point of no return, so he put his arms more tightly around her, encouraged one of her legs upward until it was hooked around his waist and her heel dug into the small of his back.
“Despite everything, I am still in control of this relationship.” Perhaps he should start acting like it.
He could hardly think through the haze of passion in his head.
“You haven’t been that, not for a long time, and I don’t want this coupling.
Not here, where anyone can see.” With her back pressed to the brick garden wall, anyone who happened to glance out a window that faced into the area would be able to see them.
Not well, but what they were doing wouldn’t be a secret.
Yet the words she didn’t say indicated that she would welcome a coupling elsewhere. Perhaps it didn’t matter. “You know how I feed off the thrill of knowing others can watch what we’re doing.” It had always been that way with him.
Emma shook her head. Fear battled with raw need in her eyes as she peered at him with her hands on his shoulders and her kiss-swollen lips slightly parted. “How could I forget? But this isn’t right and you know it.”
He wrenched at the panel of his front falls. Seconds later, his engorged length sprang free. “You never used to mind. In fact, you told me once it aroused you.”
“Yes, but now is different. We haven’t seen each other, haven’t talked, and you do not have an ownership in my—”
“Enough.” Done with words and impossible conversations that went nowhere, Cecil fit the tip of his member to her opening, and with a powerful flex of his hips, he penetrated her body and didn’t stop until he was fully seated so deep into her heat that he didn’t want to find his way out.
Despite her protests, there was too much authenticity in her moan of pleasure. “Damn, but I have missed fucking you.”
A tear slipped to her cheek. “If that is the only thing you value from me, why didn’t you bed other women while you were gone?”
What? That wasn’t what he meant. “I didn’t…
” As much as he wanted to enjoy a slow coupling, he was too far gone in her, far too battered from memories and demons fighting for space in his head to have that much control, but he withdrew from her body merely to enjoy the slide back into her passage. “That’s not…
Hell, why couldn’t he find the correct words?
“Cecil, please… Leave off. I don’t want you… Not like this.”
“I don’t guess either of us has a choice in this moment.” Holding her hips, he stroked into her on a forceful plunge.
“Damn you, Thorton.” Yet she looped her arms about his shoulders and kissed the side of his neck like she used to, and that was the beginning of the end.
“Of course I’m damned. A man doesn’t look as I do without being known in dark places as the devil’s henchman.
” As if he were possessed, he thrust over and over in a mad attempt to join them together.
With powerful strokes that he hoped would make a lasting impression on her, leave her with a decent memory, he kept Emma pinned to the wall.
Would this be the last time he had with her before she demanded he petition for a divorce?
The thought left him cold as he worked, went as deep as he could, and still he continued, for he wasn’t nearly done.
She clung to him, and when he dared to put a hand between their bodies to play with her swollen nubbin, she lost her control.
Her head went backward against the bricks, and with her eyes closed and her fingers digging into his shoulders, a half-muffled scream left her throat.
While she remained lost in release, crying with abandon, no doubt for a multitude of reasons, Cecil continued to claim her, ever deeper in an attempt to apologize, to ask her forgiveness, to say goodbye.
She bucked against him, tried to meet his thrusts, and all too soon, he was tossed into his own release.
As it roared around him, caught him up in its vortex, he said her name and the hoarse sound was a testament to how much of himself he’d given her.
How much more he didn’t have to spare.
Unable to stop himself, he kissed her, pushed once more into her body, but as the contractions in her core practically begged him to come with her, he couldn’t do it.
At the last second, just before he found release, he withdrew from her honeyed heat.
With a groan, he took his length in hand, and when he came, he pumped his slick length so that ejaculation splattered against the garden wall.
“Fuck.” The last thing he wanted was to have his wife fall pregnant. It would be yet another responsibility, another person he would inevitably disappoint.
“Why? You never did that before.” Emma wobbled as her leg slipped from his hip and she stood on her own two feet.
He glanced at her. “Must have been good, hmm?”
“God, you’re a bounder, a true blackheart.” In some agitation, she pulled up her bodice, and set her clothing to rights as best she could, but she didn’t ask that he do up the buttons. Did her fury prevent her? Would she truly march back into that ballroom in that state of undress?
“I was once a good man, but I’m beginning to suspect I am no longer that, which is one of the reasons I left.” With nothing else to say, Cecil stuffed his flagging shaft into his evening breeches and then did up the buttons.
For the space of a few heartbeats, she glared at him in that frost and snow-laced garden with her breath coming in angry, icy puffs.
Then a large shiver racked her shoulders, and she crossed her arms beneath her breasts; the cold couldn’t hide the hard points of her nipples through the fabric.
“I was a fool to wish for a reconciliation. And why would I with a man who thought it appropriate to more or less rape his wife at someone else’s ball? ”
“Consent was in your eyes.”
“You should have waited for the words; I didn’t give permission.”
He shrugged, for he couldn’t deny anything she said. “What’s done is done.” And what was more, with that quick fuck, his mind had cleared. For the first time in a long while, he was able to think with clarity.
“Stay away from me, Thornton. If you wish to speak with me, do it through your solicitor. I’m done having hope for you.” As she pushed past him and headed for the house, he had a continuation of the thought that had taken root last night.
Quickly, he retrieved the errant cane. “I’m not nearly done with you, though.
” As hot panic filled his chest, he wrapped a hand around her upper arm.
She might have given up on him—on them—and she had every right to do so, but he’d not been given the chance to try.
Yes, it had been him who’d broken their marriage vows by running away, but now that she was back in his life, he knew exactly why he should fight to keep her. “Come with me.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, not after you broke my heart two years ago and my trust just now.” She wrenched her arm from his grasp.
“Damn it, woman, I wasn’t asking.” Since he’d already acted the ogre, doing it one more time shouldn’t matter.
Much.
With a growl, Cecil once more bundled her into his arms and then hefted her onto a shoulder despite her very vocal protests.
He ignored her as he carried her around the house, and the added weight made his limp more pronounced.
Might as well play the part of Quasimodo.
For better or for worse, they were wed, and since they were well and truly mired deep in the worst of it, they may as well keep going until they saw the light.
If any.
At the curb, instead of paying a youth to summon his closed carriage, which would take too long, Cecil strode to the mews, which was a few streets away.
All the while, Emma beat her fists against his back and kicked her feet, but he refused to set her down or let her go.
When he located his vehicle, he wrenched open a door and then tossed her onto one of the well-squabbed benches.
“Stay here, for if you run, I’ll merely come after you. If nothing else, you should realize that about me by now.” Then he slammed the door. Seconds later, he’d wrangled the driver into service.
“Going home, Your Grace?” The man wiped his mouth with a sleeve. Clearly, he’d been enjoying his dinner with the other servants.
“No,” he replied as he opened the other door but leaned heavily on his cane. “Take me to Thornton Hall. In West Berkshire. It suddenly behooves me that the duchess and I need some private time away from Town.”
Inside the carriage, Emma uttered a curse that should have embarrassed him, but since he’d been the one to teach it to her, he merely grunted.
The driver frowned. The dim illumination cast eerie shadows over his face as well as the space.
“That will take nearly five hours. It’s already eleven in the evening and you really should take the travelling coach instead.
The roads will be a touch treacherous with the rutting and the snow…
” His words trailed off as Cecil glared.
“And?” His tone brooked no arguments. In this, he wouldn’t be opposed. It was the only way to fix what was wrong between him and Emma. If he could. If not, well, he didn’t want to contemplate that right now.
“Of course, Your Grace.” The driver nodded even as he paled beneath his slouch-style cap. “We’ll get underway shortly with this vehicle. I’ll do my best.”
Aren’t we all just trying to do that, though?
With a nod, Cecil swung himself into the carriage.
On the opposite side from Emma, he slammed the door shut and sat back, letting the cane fall against the side of the bench.
Though he feared losing his wife because he was truly a monster, another smaller part of him wanted a return to the union they’d enjoyed in the beginning.
Before he’d gotten in his own way and started listening to the demons in his head.
God, I hope she won’t end up hating me after this.