Chapter Twenty-Three
Gerrit did not truly believe that his proud, hellcat of a wife would allow him to bend her over a cabinet and fuck her in a public inn parlor, but—by God—her hands moved with all haste to pull up her walking costume, a pretty, frilly thing the color of emeralds that turned her eyes an even brighter shade of green.
He knew he was behaving like a savage brute but could not bring himself to step away.
If he were a decent man, he would release her and tell her to stop.
She wasn’t a common whore; she was his duchess.
But his hunger for her had turned him into an unprincipled beast and he could not make himself say the words.
Besides which, something told him his prickly, haughty wife would be angry and ashamed if he called an end to this game right after she had capitulated.
The thought gave him pause, and Gerrit was more than a little impressed that her possible reaction had occurred to him. When did he ever notice somebody else’s feelings or give a damn what they thought?
And why did he suddenly care now?
Hell! A man could go mad thinking about such things.
He was already at least half-mad with jealousy even though he knew damned well that Ampthill was always cup-shot and out of control.
He also knew his wife had done nothing to attract the man’s attention, but that didn’t make him feel any more reasonable.
No. It just made his urge to claim her all the fiercer.
Why the hell did he want her so damned badly? Who would have guessed that his Achilles heel was an argumentative red-headed shrew?
With the body of a goddess and the brain of a military commander, if her skill on the chessboard was anything to go by.
Gerrit had to bite his lip to keep from moaning like a fatuous fool when the hem of her skirt reached her knees, exposing the pretty green and blue garters that held up her stockings.
Stockings which had lines up the back and—he leaned forward and squinted—butterflies embroidered around the top edge, as if they were holding the garters.
It was bloody adorable.
Adorable? Damnation! He’d turned into a blithering idiot.
Gerrit could not bring himself to care, his thoughts firmly riveted to her delectable thighs. Did she wear garments this sensual every day? Perhaps he should have her remain clothed when he came to her at night so that he could undress her.
Has it slipped your mind what she wants from you in the bedchamber?
Gerrit gritted his teeth as reality crashed down on him, crushing the pleasurable fantasy he’d just constructed. No, it bloody well hadn’t slipped his mind, although he constantly tried to forget it. He was working on a way to address that issue and he would do so, in his own damned time.
Right now was not that time.
The hem of her gown drifted farther up, over the bare flesh of her slender thighs, pulling her chemise up along with it and exposing her bottom.
Gerrit groaned. “Just like a peach.” The terribly trite words came out in a choked voice that sounded like it had been dragged behind a carriage for twenty miles.
When he reached out to stroke her generous arse, he half feared she was a gorgeous mirage that would disappear before he could touch her.
But the warm, smooth globe that trembled beneath his hand was satisfyingly real, as was her muted half-whimper, half-grunt, a sensual sound that he adored eliciting from his proud, haughty duchess.
Adorable? Adored?
He did not want to ponder just how bewitched he was becoming. Not now.
“Lift it higher,” he ordered gruffly.
She hesitated a moment, as if she wanted to deny him. But his little sensualist wanted a good fucking just as badly as Gerrit wanted to give her one. And so she raised the gown and petticoats all the way up to the base of her spine.
Gerrit nudged the heel of her emerald-green ankle boot. “Spread your legs.”
Her back stiffened at his abrupt command, and she parted her thighs a miserly few inches.
He shoved a foot between hers, his black leather top boot grotesquely large next to her dainty little ankle boots.
“Wider,” he growled, sliding his hand from her bare buttock up over the bunched skirt to her slender shoulders.
“And lean forward.” He pressed down. “Yes, like that,” he praised when she immediately bowed over the cabinet.
He fumbled with his buckskins with one hand, freeing his prick while sliding the fingers of his other hand between her spread thighs. “Good God,” he muttered when he encountered her slippery pussy. “You’re soaking wet.”
She made a muffled sound in the back of her throat and began to push up.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, his fingers stilling in her slit, the pad of his middle digit just shy of her clitoris. “This is the third and last time I will ask, Kathryn.”
She turned her head and glared at him from the corner of one eye, anger—as well as something else, lust, perhaps?—radiating off her like heat from a bonfire.
“Well?” he demanded, giving her slick bud a tauntingly light caress.
She snarled like a feral cat. “Just get on with it, you—you lout!”
A startled snort slipped out of him, and she twisted around more to get a better look at him. “Are you laughing at me?”
Gerrit bit back his smirk and dredged up the most loutish words he could think of. “Hush, woman!”
Kathryn opened her mouth, no doubt to deliver a proper raking, but Gerrit distracted her by thrusting a finger inside her. She made a most unladylike sound and squeezed him like a vise.
“God, you’re tight,” he groaned, earning another squeeze. Gerrit stroked her slowly, reveling in the hot satiny feel of her before easing in a second digit.
She lifted her hips and spread her thighs to take his fingers deeper, all but begging to be mounted.
Gerrit was so lust-maddened that it took all his self-control not to dispense with readying her and simply bury himself inside her and pump her full of seed to wipe the stench of Ampthill off her, even though he knew the smell was only in his head.
Instead of mounting her like a selfish beast, he worked her carefully and rigorously, until her desire coated his hand. When he could bear it no longer, he leaned low and covered her back with his chest. “Are you ready to take me?”
She pushed her bottom against him, which he decided was a good enough answer, even though the temptation to make her beg for it was strong.
Gerrit withdrew his fingers and rubbed the head of his cock through her drenched sex, stroking her with his crown until she was writhing beneath him.
“Gerrit, please.”
“Please what?”
“I need you ins—”
He entered her in one long slide, not stopping until he was hilted.
She squirmed when he kept her fully impaled, and Gerrit snaked a hand beneath her hips and lightly stroked a finger where they were joined.
He kept her tightly pinned as he caressed her slick flesh, touching her everywhere but where she needed it most.
She bucked beneath him, or tried to, but she couldn’t move an inch between the weight of his body and the wooden cabinet.
“Please,” she whispered so softly he could barely hear it, her body clenched with need.
“I enjoy hearing you beg, Kathryn,” he said, leaning lower to kiss the back of her slender neck while his slick finger worked the sensitive bundle of nerves. “Is this what you need?”
“Yes,” she sighed, her hips moving in counterpoint to his increasingly hard thrusts.
Gerrit felt the telltale tightening of her sheath right before she exploded.
As much as he wanted to make it last and last, he could not entirely forget he was balls deep in his wife in a public inn and so he found his own release a scant moment later.
He gave in to sensation and briefly lost track of time, reveling in his orgasm.
When he finally found enough strength to lift his head, he saw he’d fucked the cabinet halfway across the small room. He was also still pressed against his wife, likely crushing her.
Gerrit straightened up before reluctantly withdrawing from her body, tucking himself away as he admired the sight of her reddened, spread buttocks and the slickness coating her thighs.
It was a view he could have enjoyed for hours.
Instead, he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and gently cleaned between her thighs.
She jolted at his touch but did not stop him.
Once he was done, he folded the cloth neatly and tucked it into his pocket. “Let go of your skirts,” he said when he saw her hands were still bunched into fists.
He gave the material a few twitches to pull it down over her truly magnificent arse and then helped her upright before turning away to give her some privacy, the frenzy of the last few moments falling away and making him realize that he had just fucked his wife in a posting house parlor as if she were a doxy.
And he could not bring himself to regret it, although he was flabbergasted about the reason for his loss of control.
He’d let that fool Ampthill’s idiot behavior turn him into a jealous, ravening beast.
There was a timid tap on the door.
“Hold a moment,” he ordered loudly, turning back to make sure Kathryn was decent. “Ready?”
She nodded, her cheeks still passion-flushed but her expression cool and collected.
“Come in,” he called out.
The innkeeper hovered on the threshold and glanced at the table. “Was the food not to your liking, Your Grace?”
“It was fine. Have my carriage brought round.”
The man dropped a low bow before backing out of the room as if Gerrit was a member of the royal family.
Gerrit turned back to his wife, who was looking at him with an unreadable expression. “What?” he demanded.
“Did you need to be so rude to him?”
Gerrit scowled. “You mistake directness for rudeness. What should I have said to the man? I apologize for not eating your meal because I was far more interested in tupping my wife?”
Streaks of color slashed across her delicate cheekbones, and she opened her mouth.
There was another damned knock on the door before he could hear what she had to say. “What is it now?” he asked loudly enough to be heard through the slab of wood.
The door opened slowly, and Stone peered inside the room. Her gaze slid to the almost untouched food and then back to Gerrit. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace. I did not mean to interrupt, but Mr. Stevens said you were finished and—”
“Wait outside until I summon you,” Gerrit barked.
“We are leaving,” Kathryn said as if Gerrit had not spoken, and then brushed past him on her way to the door.
Gerrit watched in silence as they hurried from the room and left him standing by himself, still wondering what her answer to his question would have been.
***
Katie glared into the darkness and squeezed the bedcovers, as if she were squeezing Dulverton’s neck. She had not expected her husband to behave differently during dinner. Nor had she expected him to ravish her in the library. No matter how much she might have enjoyed it.
But after their torrid coupling at the Red Lion that afternoon she had expected him to come to her bedchamber and behave normally. Well, not normally, but the way he’d been before she had stupidly told him she wanted only a marriage of convenience from him.
Katie snorted and shook her head. Dulverton must be the thickest man in Britain because he had, yet again, snuffed the candles when he’d strode into her room, lifted her nightgown, climbed on top of her, and done his business in a scant five minutes before bidding her goodnight.
For the first time since the night when she’d told him she did not want his passion, Katie pondered the possibility that Dulverton was not merely being stubborn or thoughtless, but that her request might have hurt his feelings.
It was impossible to believe he had any feelings—not to mention tender ones—beneath his granite facade, but what else could explain his behavior?
It was increasingly clear that if they were ever to go back to the way things were before then Katie would have to instigate things.
And apologize.
“Blast and damnation,” she hissed through clenched teeth, her hands actually hurting from abusing the poor blanket. Just thinking about dredging up the subject and apologizing was painful. Surely there was some other way?
Challenge him, both Betje and Mrs. St. Clare had said, or something to that effect.
Hit him over the head with a club would probably be more useful.
Snarling, she punched the unoffending pillow and then flopped onto her back, still glaring.
She didn’t mind challenging him—she actually enjoyed locking horns with him, not to mention how much she loved the way they had resolved their last two disagreements.
But as much as she enjoyed the passion they shared, she needed more. She wanted more. They needed more or she would be living alone in Spenwood for the rest of her life.
How could she ever get through to him?
Just… how?