Chapter Twenty #2
Despite everything, he laughed. “As it happens, this day has brought its fair share of random insights. Love, it wasn’t you that he found lacking, but me.”
She continued to frown at him, disbelief clear in her magnificent eyes.
“The truth is, he warned me off you. I can’t speak to the specifics, as I had only the merest glimpse of a conversation between him and me, rather like looking into a fogged mirror, but I gathered…
” He broke off. Swallowed. Looking into her guileless face, he simply couldn’t bring himself to tell her his suspicions about his misadventures with Lady Catherine.
“I believe I was—that he saw me as—a bit of a rakehell.”
He watched her expression alter as she digested his words. First, disbelief, then dismay, then, oddly, acceptance. “I see.”
A moment ago, she’d told him she needed to work, all but dismissing him. Only, now that he had her in his arms, he wasn’t inclined to let her go. And neither was a certain part of his anatomy.
The effect this woman had on him. The carnal craving she inspired. No, it was more than that. She appealed to him on every level. He wanted her time, her attention, her good opinion, her body, her mouth, her quim.
Keeping one arm locked around her waist, he drew his free hand to her nape to toy with the silky, chestnut tendrils that had thwarted her attempts to tame them.
“You…er…say you asked your mother for details about the earl?” For some reason, he felt more comfortable referring to him by his title, versus my father.
She nodded, her gaze drifting to his mouth, where it remained, which caused him to smile.
As he watched, her mouth curved in an answering smile. She was so utterly delightful.
“You’re staring,” he murmured. So was he, but that was beside the point.
Her eyes lifted to his in a blink.
Grazing his knuckles over her cheek seemed the most natural thing in the world to do. Her skin was so wonderfully soft. “I don’t mind, love. You wouldn’t, by any chance, want me to kiss you? It’s customary, I believe, after a couple argues, to—”
“Yes, please.” She practically bounced on her toes.
He didn’t bother to staunch his wicked chuckle at her eager response. But his humor faded quickly, as a near-reverent need to taste those luscious petals took hold of him.
Breath stuttering in his lungs, he lowered his head, slanting his mouth over hers, suckling the upper, then the lower of her lips between his.
He nibbled, softly, softly, not enough to abrade the plump flesh—but certainly enough to turn the blood in his veins to liquid fire.
Good Lord. He wanted her like he hadn’t had a woman in decades.
“Can I…shall we…” His words, plaintive, his thoughts, jumbled, tangled in his head in a mass of boundless yearning.
Georgina, as if perfectly attuned to his every whim, seemed to understand. “The sofa?” she suggested, her parted lips brushing his.
He scooped her into his arms. In three long strides he reached the sofa they’d vacated moments ago, lowering onto it to sprawl on his back, one leg bent, the other hanging over the side, Georgina cradled in his arms.
“Come here, wife,” he ordered, his voice gravelly.
She shimmied up his body, propping herself on her elbows to bring their faces level. Then she cupped his cheeks between damp palms. “Teddy?”
“Yes?” He slipped his hands between them, finding and untying the ribbon of her bodice.
“I hope you’ll forgive me. I never meant anything I said or did to hurt you.” Her eyes lowered. “Or to make things difficult for you.”
Hands shaking, he worked her gown down to reveal the glorious swell of her creamy breasts. Damned stays. He drew his face to her cleavage, feathering kisses over the upper mounds, dipping his tongue into the cleft.
“Did you hear me, my love?”
My love. The endearment sent a thrill of tenderness through him.
Never taking his mouth off her, he glanced up. Shaking off the fog of lust engulfing him, he met her eyes. Though heavy lidded with desire, intense sincerity and utter remorse shone in their silvery depths.
Well-deserved remorse, he told himself. And yet…
“Tell me again, why you did what you did, really,” he heard himself say, aware, by prodding her for another declaration, he was making a cake of himself. “Why you came for me. Why you waited for me. Why you married me.”
Her expression softened, and an indulgent smile curved her mouth. “I love you, Teddy Arlington. I’ve always loved you. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Immensely satisfied, but with no intention of answering her, he returned his attention to the magnificent swells spilling over her undergarment. He ran his teeth along the lacy edge while his hand wrestled with her fine muslin skirts and petticoat, seeking a way beneath them.
“What I want is you out of all of these clothes. But, I’ll settle for this,” he finally murmured, as he encountered, and squeezed, one enticingly rounded cheek. Swallowing a groan, he traced the curve down and around, not stopping ’til his fingertips grazed the silken petals at her apex.
“Oh,” she cried, hips arching upward in reflex and she pressed her face into his neck. Tiny tremors vibrating through her, she parted her thighs in silent invitation, and his cock, already rigid with desire, went painfully hard.
“You like this sweetheart, when I touch you like this?” With gentle fingers, he nudged her plump folds, already slick with her feminine nectar, then hissed in a breath when, in lieu of replying, she loosed a tiny mew of need.
“Georgina,” he began, his voice hoarse, “kiss me while I pleasure you. I want to feast on your sweet mouth.”
She pressed her pelvis over his manhood, bringing her into perfect position for him to slip one finger into her hot, tight channel.
The moment their lips met, a violent shudder rolled through her—and his erection threatened to erupt.
He would laugh if he wasn’t at risk of unmanning himself. He would swear, swear, nothing like this had ever happened to him before her. “Can you…” he pleaded between kisses, “possibly…”
With her usual intuition, and never once breaking their kiss, she reached between them, her swift and nimble fingers finding and unfastening the buttons of his fall.
Made for me, he thought, with a surge of possessive satisfaction. His wife had been made for him, and him alone.
As she completed her task of unbuttoning and pulling back the fold of his pantaloons, as she tugged at his shirttails and wormed her elegant, silky fingers past the material to slide over his low belly, as their tongues danced into and out of each other’s mouths, he explored her, reveling in her heat, her heady responses, in bringing her ever closer to release.
“Wait,” he gritted out when he felt her fingertips brush his staff, then rolled with her on the cramped sofa, wedging her body between him the cushions. “Now hook your leg over my hip.”
She did.
He drew his head back to study her as his fingers played over her secrets, as her breath hitched and her body jerked.
“Now, my sweet. Let yourself go for me.” He pressed a tender kiss to her lips. “You have no idea how much you make me want you, how good you feel, how all your little noises and shivers drive me wild with need to sink myself into your heat.”
Before he’d finished speaking, the dam of her release broke. God, the sight of her, eyes glazed, lips parted, body shivering with pleasure…
“Beautiful,” he breathed, grasping his aching cock, and drove it into her.
Pleasure exploded through him. He kissed her. He couldn’t not kiss her as he moved in her, impaling himself again and again in her tight, slick channel.
“Teddy, darling,” she choked, weaving her fingers into his hair, scoring his scalp with her nails.
He couldn’t speak. He was beyond words, beyond reason, lost in the cacophony of need and desire storming through him—for this woman.
“I love you,” she whispered against his lips. “I love you so much. So much.”
Then she threw her head back as her second climax took her—and pushed him over the edge into a vortex of ecstasy.