Chapter Twenty-One #2
His affronted expression made her laugh; why did she like his anger so much?
Because you are touched in the head.
“How could I do otherwise when you ask so nicely, Gerrit?” she retorted.
He gave a startled snort, but his glower returned. “How could you think I would father three bastards on a woman who relies on me for her livelihood?”
“Are you saying—”
“I am saying that Anna Wilson is not my lover and those are not my children.”
“Truly?” she asked—or squeaked, rather.
“Damnation, woman! I don’t have any children.”
She blinked at his raised voice and exasperated tone. Dulverton showing emotion was… fascinating.
He pulled her forward and finished with the buttons before pushing down her bodice while Katie wordlessly extricated her arms, until the top of her gown was bunched around her waist. He moved his hands to the back of her stays and added, “Nor would I victimize a woman who is dependent on me for the roof over her head.”
Katie saw genuine revulsion in his gaze and suddenly recalled just how disgusted he’d been when she lied about bedding her aunt’s footman.
“I am sorry for maligning you, but I was—” She broke off.
“You were what?” he prodded, his hands going still, his gray eyes dark and bruised as they looked up at her. “What were you, Kathryn?” he demanded with his usual arrogance, cupping her jaw in his warm palm while his eyes flickered over her face.
Show him you care.
“I was jealous thinking of you with another woman,” she whispered.
His expression of shock was almost comical “You were—”
Katie leaned down and pressed her mouth against his. She might be willing to admit her jealousy, but she hardly wanted to discuss it.
He resisted a fraction of a second before responding, his kisses gentle, almost…sweet. When he finally pulled away, he didn’t go far, his lips drifting to her throat, forcing her head up as he kissed and nibbled the sensitive skin beneath her chin.
When his hands returned to her laces, Katie blindly reached for his coat and unfastened the buttons by touch, making equally speedy work of his waistcoat, until the only thing between her palms and the taut musculature of his chest was the whisper-soft muslin of his shirt.
His body was deliciously hard and hot, but she wanted to feel his flesh not fabric, no matter how fine. Her fingers found their way to his cravat and tugged on one end to loosen it before pulling it off with a soft hiss.
Before she could overthink her daring, she laid her palm over hot, satiny skin.
Dulverton—Gerrit, she mentally corrected—gave a low rumble of approval and pressed his chest against her hand.
The rare show of emotion emboldened her, and Katie grabbed handfuls of muslin and yanked.
Her husband’s head whipped up at the loud riiiiip.
“I—I wanted to touch you,” she explained as she met his darkened gaze.
“Raise your arms,” he said in a husky voice.
She did so and he lifted her stays over her head and then dropped the garment behind the settee. Katie gave a soft, snorting laugh at his uncharacteristically cavalier gesture.
She stopped laughing when he slid his hands under the straps of her chemise and pushed it off her shoulders and down her arms, baring her.
His breathing roughened as he cupped one of her breasts in each hand. “My God, you are beautiful.”
Katie should have been embarrassed to be naked from the waist up, straddling his thighs, but she preened beneath his carnal stare. He stroked his thumb over her nipples. She gasped and arched her back, her body begging for more.
Her hands had been lying limply on his chest since he’d pushed down her chemise, but Katie moved them now and lightly thumbed his nipples the way he was touching hers, teasing the little disks into taut nubs.
His eyelids fluttered and his jaw flexed.
“Does that feel good?” she asked breathlessly.
“Yes, it does. Too good. You will make me spend in my breeches.”
She laughed, joyful that they were, once again, doing the only thing they seemed to do well together.
“You like the thought of making me shame myself, do you?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
He growled and lifted his hips off the settee, raising them both in the process.
He held her steady with one hand and tore open his fall with the other.
When his erection sprang free, he wrapped his hand around his thick shaft and stroked himself as he lowered them both to the settee. “Up higher,” he ordered.
Katie rose up onto her knees and he pushed his hand under the bunched fabric of her gown and cupped her sex, sliding his middle finger inside her while his other hand continued to stroke.
She moaned at the sudden invasion, tipping forward and gripping his shoulders to keep from sliding off his lap into a boneless heap.
“So tight for me,” he murmured, working her in slow, rhythmic thrusts. “Yes, like that,” he said a moment later, making her realize she was moving her hips, meeting his thrusts.
Her eyelids fluttered shut and she gave herself up to the erotic stretch of his fingers and almost too-sensitive rasp of his thumb as he teased her bud. Need ran rampant through her body, knotting her muscles tighter and tighter, until Katie cried out.
His hand stilled as her climax gripped her, her inner muscles spasming around his fingers with each wave of pleasure, over and over, until she was sapped of strength and slumped limply toward him.
His hand gripped her waist while his mouth pressed against her temple and his free hand pressed his thick crown against her entrance. “I need to be inside you.”
Katie nodded weakly and hissed as he slowly pushed inside her, the carnal stretch intensifying the echoes of her orgasm.
She clung to his bare chest with a contented sigh as he held her still and full. There was a tiny nipple right in front of her nose, so she closed her lips around it without thinking.
Gerrit shuddered. “God, yes. Suck me, Kathryn.”
His crude command sliced through the haze of pleasure like a razor, and she sucked, nipped, and nibbled one rough pebble and then the other while his muscular torso tensed beneath her. Who would have believed his rock-hard body was so sensitive?
“Are you trying to kill me?” he groaned, making her smile against the damp, sensitive skin.
He slid his arms around her and held her upright as his hips rolled and bucked, lifting them both off the settee, the fierce power of his thrusts making the erotic act all the more arousing.
Tell him you like it, a voice whispered.
Katie did not require much convincing. After all, it stood to reason that if she enjoyed the sensual—occasionally crude—things he said, maybe he would, too.
“So big and strong and… hard,” she whispered in his ear, and then sank her teeth into his lobe.
His body jolted. “You drive me mad, Kathryn. But you already know that, don’t you?” He made a sound deep in his throat and lifted her high before pulling her down, filling her so deeply the line between pleasure and pain was obliterated.
And still he was not inside her deeply enough. “More,” Katie ordered. “Harder.”
Her words ignited something inside him, and his body flexed and rippled as he worked her with a savagery that thrilled her. “Is this what you want?” he demanded, his voice raw and harsh.
“Yes… yes…yes!” she chanted, the words growing more ragged as she sped toward the edge of bliss.
His hips drummed harder and faster and wilder until he hilted himself. “Kathryn!” he shouted, shuddering as he found his release.
Katie collapsed against him, their slick torsos skin to skin, her body on fire as she tucked her face between his shoulder and neck.
She must have briefly dozed, only coming back to consciousness when he shifted beneath her.
“Kathryn?”
“Please, Gerrit,” she begged. “Not—not yet. Hold me.” Love me—or at least pretend for a little while.
He was rigid for a moment before the tension drained out of him and he sank back down, his powerful biceps tightening around her, hugging her to his body as he pressed his lips against her temple.
Almost as if he had heard her.
***
“Love me—or at least pretend for a little while.”
The shocking words were scarcely a whisper, but her mouth was right beneath Gerrit’s ear and so there was no mistaking them. His body responded reflexively, his arms tightening around her slender body as she burrowed into his chest, her hot, damp breath warming the sensitive skin of his neck.
He swallowed down the flutter of panic that surged from his belly to his throat and kissed the top of her head before he knew what he had done.
Love her?
She had agreed with him that day in Chatham’s library. It was a marriage of convenience first, last, and always.
Wasn’t it?
Thinking about it hurt his head.
But Gerrit could happily sit here all night feeling her smooth, taut thighs straddling him, her soft breasts pressed against his chest, and her hot, wet pussy squeezing his cock, which had not completely softened.
Love her?
Thinking of Kathryn and love in the same sentence instantly made him recall his last conversation with Amelia, when she had harangued him until he’d snapped at her, something he had never done before.
But then Amelia had never nagged him before, either.
And yet now, every time he paid a call on her, desperate for the calming influence she’d exerted on him all these years, the only subject she was interested in discussing was his wife.
Or, more specifically, how Gerrit needed to go about mending the breach between himself and Kathryn so they would have a real marriage.
That had been Amelia’s word: real. As if Gerrit was not really caught in parson’s mousetrap with no chance of escape. Well, not unless his wife eloped with another man as his last one had done.
His arms tightened reflexively around the slender body pressed against him at the thought, as if he could keep Kathryn from running away with physical restraint alone. She mumbled something against his throat, snuggling closer, her soft, pliant form somehow heavier in sleep.
The sheer vulnerability of the situation—the trust she showed by sleeping in his arms—made his throat constricted with something, but he didn’t know what. What was wrong with him? Why the hell was he so bloody emotional?
It had to be a result of not just Amelia’s nagging, but his mother’s as well. He could not recall ever being subjected to so much nagging in such a short time.
Thinking about his mother jerked him back from his maudlin musing. Gerrit’s eyes narrowed at her utter gall in offering him unsolicited advice, especially about his marriage. He buried his nose in Kathryn’s disheveled curls, the lavender scent pleasing rather than overpowering.
Gerrit reveled in her botanical, feminine smell.
Or at least he tried to revel. But a tendril of unease that he’d been suppressing for a while began to grow stronger.
Although he couldn’t see the clothing he’d cavalierly tossed behind the settee when he’d been in the grip of passion, he could feel it.
He gritted his teeth against the growing pressure, trying to ignore it.
He could stop the unease by standing up, laying Kathryn on the settee, and tidying up the messy garments. But if he did so, he risked waking her. And Gerrit was not ready to let her go—to let this go.
Chaos, disorder… the insatiable demon inside him whispered and hissed.
I don’t care.
But the unease did not diminish in the least. Gerrit needed something stronger to fight off the building pressure, so he buried his nose in Kathryn’s curls and inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with her scent. Again and again, he breathed in the intoxicating smell of his wife.
My wife. Mine.
The first touch on his neck was so faint he thought he’d imagined it. But then it happened again, soft lips pressing against his sensitive skin. Kathryn was kissing his throat.
Gerrit’s eyes fluttered shut at the butterfly touches, the racket behind the settee muted, as if somebody had thrown a bucket of chilly water over a noisy crowd.
She kissed him again and again, and then she buried her nose in his neck and whispered, “I’m happy now.”
Later that night—after Gerrit had held his wife a delicious half-hour longer before finally capitulating and folding the bloody clothing—he carried Kathryn’s sleeping form up to her bed, tucked her in, and retired to his own room.
His mind was more disordered than usual but—interestingly—the lack of mental order didn’t make him miserable.
Instead, the thoughts bombarding him were pleasurable ones and most of them centered on Kathryn.
His thoughts kept returning to his wife’s last words to him earlier: I’m happy now.
Even in her half-conscious state he’d heard the wonder in her voice and understood that happiness was not a normal state for his wife. It wasn’t for Gerrit, either.
The last thought he had that night, as he surrendered to sleep was that—astonishingly—he was happy, too.