Chapter 11 #2
Sybil smoothed her dressing gown and straightened her shoulders, feeling a bit like a general preparing to go into battle. “Come.”
The door opened, and there he was.
The enigmatic man she had wed. He closed the portal behind him and crossed the Axminster with the self-assured, purposeful strides of a duke who knew all too well his place in not just the household, but the world. He held so much power. In their marriage, in society. Over her heart.
“Did I disrupt your reading?” he asked when he reached her, his gaze falling to the volume she had abandoned on the table by her chair.
“You are my husband. You are always welcome, at any hour.”
A small smile ghosted over his lips. “A dutiful response if I’ve ever heard one.”
“An honest one,” she countered, wondering what he expected of her.
His jaw was rigid, his gaze cool but inscrutable.
He was the one who had demanded that she bear him a child if she wanted her freedom.
And yet, he was so often displeased, as if she were responsible for this arrangement of theirs.
Did marriage to her make him that unhappy?
Perhaps he missed being able to indulge in his rakish ways.
That thought rather stung.
“Tell me something, Sybil.” His pale eyes lifted from the book, searching her countenance. “Why did you marry me?”
The question startled her. She wasn’t certain how to answer it. Didn’t know if she wanted to answer it.
“I could ask the same of you,” she said instead.
He reached for her, the touch simple, just the graze of his finger along her jawline, and yet she felt it to her core. “You already know the answer. I require an heir. As you can see by my mother’s eagerness to plan a ball, patience is not one of her virtues.”
“Obligation, then,” she said, trying to stifle the foolish rise of hurt and disappointment within her.
Failing.
Her husband still had the power to wound her deeply. To make her bleed. She wished mightily that he did not. Alas, her heart and her mind were not one on the matter.
“Is that not the reason for most marriages?” he asked, caressing her throat above the high collar of her dressing gown.
She tamped down a shiver of desire at his touch. How she wished she could summon up more of a resistance. The effect he had on her was stronger than ever, now that she had known him intimately, his flesh on hers, his body within hers, the pleasure he had shown her.
“I suppose it is,” she allowed, holding still as he explored her. “Along with love.”
“Love.” His voice was cold as he almost spat the word as if it were an epithet, withdrawing his hand at once. “Ah, but love does not provide one with a house or the funds to upkeep it, does it?”
She frowned, wondering at the sudden shift in his demeanor, for he seemed almost angry. “You speak as if the very notion repels you.”
“Love is a futile emotion.”
“Perhaps it is for a man like you.” She began working at the buttons on her dressing gown herself, having had quite enough of their conversation.
It was only serving to heighten the sadness that had held her in its relentless grip since his icy disinterest at dinner.
“A man like me,” he repeated, his tone silken. “What does that mean, pray tell?”
She removed the final button from its mooring and took off the robe, draping it over her vacated chair. “A heartless rake who seeks nothing more than his own pleasure.”
He chuckled, the sound bitter and without mirth. “You are one to judge, madam.”
“Yes, I am, having been abandoned by the man I married.”
“I didn’t abandon you. I left you at my estate.”
“The day of our wedding.”
His lip curled. “Spare me your theatrics. Don’t pretend as if you missed me.”
But she had missed him. Or rather, she had missed the man she’d believed him to be. The charming duke who had escorted her back to Eastlake Hall. The man who had courted her with ready smiles and a sharp wit.
She still missed that man.
Perhaps he had been nothing more than a chimera. Something she had wanted him to be.
Instead of responding, she moved away from him, toward the bed.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” She spun about, startled to discover him looming over her, having apparently followed on her heels. “I’m preparing myself for my evening’s duties.”
She reached for the fastening on her night rail, plucking at the stubborn small buttons that seemed even more difficult in her agitated state.
“Not like this, damn you,” he bit out, taking her hands in his and keeping her from finishing her effort.
She hated the awareness that swept over her at his touch, his proximity. At the scent of him, amber and pine, so thoroughly intoxicating. She hated how cruelly beautiful he was. How cold.
“Then how?” she demanded, tipping her chin up with defiance and holding his gaze.
His fingers tightened over hers, and in the next moment, he pulled her into him, her softness colliding with his hard strength. “Like this.”
And then his lips were on hers.
Everett hadn’t intended to kiss her.
He had meant to return to his own bedchamber and leave her for the night. The emotions swirling through him were too dangerous. The whisky he’d imbibed hadn’t been sufficient to diminish them. He hadn’t even partaken of a second glass. What was the point?
He couldn’t resist Sybil, no matter how hard he tried.
And now, her lips were beneath his, sweeter than syllabub and infinitely more delicious. He didn’t even need to coax her to open. Their mouths and tongues melded in a potent combination of anger and desire.
He didn’t want to need her like this. All he was meant to feel for her was duty. Lust at the most. And yet, she shook him in a way no woman before her had. She confounded him.
It didn’t matter.
Their fingers tangled, the air between them growing hot and heady.
Together, they tore at buttons. His. Hers.
He shrugged out of his dressing gown and whipped her nightgown over her head.
Then he lifted her in his arms, carrying her the last few steps to the bed.
She was a warm, well-curved weight, and he never wanted to let her go.
He lowered her to the mattress, not even bothering with the ceremony of drawing back the bedclothes. He was ravenous for her, as if he could chase the man she loved from her heart with his lips and tongue. As if he could supplant the memories she had with only him.
Jealousy scored him as he caressed her sweet, soft body, molding her breast with a hand. That bastard may have her heart, but he would never have her like this. Naked and flushed with passion, she was his, damn it. And he set to work showing her—showing them both.
He broke the kiss to drag his mouth down her throat, lingering at the place where her pulse fluttered fast, then lower.
To the curve of her breast. Her nipples were the pretty blush of a summer rose, eager for his mouth as he suckled first one, then the other.
She arched and gasped, her fingers threading through his hair.
He wanted more.
To claim her so thoroughly that she would never forget who her husband was. If this was all he could have of her, he would take it.
Everett moved between her legs, parting them.
He allowed himself a moment to admire this part of her that was his alone, pink and pretty and soaked for him.
Her clitoris peeked from her swollen, slick folds, demanding his attention.
He licked her seam, savoring the decadent musk of her.
She was so bloody delicious. And he was ravenous for her.
With determined care, he devoured her, using his tongue until she stiffened and cried out beneath him.
And even then, he was greedy. He ground his raging cockstand into the mattress as he sucked and sank two fingers into her tight heat.
She clamped on him instantly, body twisting as if to bring him deeper and to simultaneously escape the dizzying pleasure.
He knew the feeling. Pain and bliss at once.
Still, he carried on, not satisfied.
He lifted his head long enough to remind her. “You’re mine.”
Sybil undulated beneath him, impatient, the scent of her desire perfuming the air, heady and sweet.
She was a study in innocence and the dissolute, her creamy curves painted with the rosy flush of a woman who had already reached her pinnacle, lips dark and parted, stung by his kisses, her nipples hard points beckoning to him.
Beautiful.
That was what she was. Bloody beautiful.
“Everett,” she protested, hips moving. “Please.”
She was close again, and he knew it. He wanted to prolong her torment. To hear her beg.
So he blew a stream of hot air over her clitoris, then brushed it lightly with his lips alone.
She gasped. “More.”
“My demanding girl.” He flicked his tongue over her. One slow lick was all he would give. “Tell me who you belong to.”
This was his, not anyone else’s. He alone could bring the perfect, elegant Sybil to her knees. He alone could make her come again and again until she forgot the lover she had left behind entirely, and no one existed but the two of them in this room.
“I’m yours,” she murmured from the head of the bed.
Need roared through him, so furious and strong that he had to set his teeth on edge to ward it off. His cock ached to be inside her.
“You’re damned right you are,” he growled, giving her what she wanted then, his tongue, his mouth.
Not his. Never his. Mine.
The words were in his mind, echoing without end, the refrain of a song that wouldn’t cease.
Here was how he could claim victory over that damned footman.
Everett sucked hard on her tender nub, gratified when she tightened on his fingers yet again as she bucked beneath him, caught in the throes of another release.
He would have tried for a third if he thought he could withstand it.
As it was, he was near to coming on the bedclothes like a green, untried youth who had just seen his first quim.
He jerked his mouth from her with great reluctance, savoring the richness of her on his tongue, the perfume of her on his face as he positioned himself and notched his cock to her entrance.
For a moment, he allowed himself the pleasure of looking at them thus, his ruddy shaft nestled against her glistening folds.
Then he pushed forward, watching her yield to him, inch by inch of him disappearing into her.
She was so wet and so hot, circling his aching prick as if her body had been made for his alone. Another thrust and he was fully seated, deep within her velvety depths. Only then did he tear his gaze away, looking down at her instead as he slowly lowered the rest of himself over her.
Her lips were parted, her hair an unruly tangle across the pillow. Her gray eyes were on him, wild and smoky, her long lashes half lowered. She looked even more beautiful this way, impaled on him, naked beneath him.
With a victorious snarl, he lowered his head, taking a nipple into his mouth and drawing on it as he began to move inside her.
Her hands found his shoulders, her fingers digging in as she held him to her.
She needn’t have worried he would leave.
He bloody well never wanted to withdraw from her.
He wanted to stay this way, buried inside her, her cunny milking his cock as she drained him of every drop. And then he wanted to stay longer.
Fuck.
This was her fault.
She had ruined him for every other woman.
And she loved another.
That misery in his mind, he thrust harder. He took her other nipple in his mouth, alternating between suckling and nipping her with his teeth. His hips pumped faster. Took him deeper.
Finally, when he was barely hanging on to his frayed control, he moved to her mouth, kissing her, feeding her his tongue as he reached between them and strummed over her clitoris. He felt the moment she splintered apart, her body seizing, her cunny clamping on him and nearly forcing him out.
He was having none of it. He gripped her hips and thrust once, twice, and a final time before he spilled into her, throwing his head back as bliss overcame him, her name on his lips.