Chapter Eleven #3
“Possess?” She pondered. “Well, that doesn’t sound very pleasant.” Rather invasive, in fact. Although, according to Eliza, invasion was the point. “I don’t think I should like to be possessed.” On the other hand, he had sounded intriguingly needy.
She remembered the feeling she’d had when he’d been kissing her and stubbornly avoiding her lips. Tell me you want me. Tell me you cannot resist me.
“Candy,” she murmured.
“Pardon?”
“Something you want but you shouldn’t have,” she explained. But if they were to be wed, “shouldn’t” no longer applied! “What if we can have all we want?”
He cocked his head. “I’m not following you.”
“Let’s do something bad, Auggie.” She brushed her fingers back through his hair. Oh, was this why Adrian’s hair was always mussed! “Give in. Possess me now.”
“Delilah,” he whispered, softening the accusation with a low laugh. “We’ve danced around the subject, but I haven’t yet explicitly asked you to marry me, and you haven’t agreed.”
“I think we’re far past those details.” The night’s heaviness, the seriousness of their discussions, the weight of the internal decision she’d just made…they’d all become too much. She wanted to be light again, if just for a moment. She wanted to be light…and tingling. “Be bad with me.”
“I’m not going to deflower my future wife in Harbury’s library.”
She laughed, low and throaty. “I don’t see why not.”
“Don’t you?” He adjusted them both, so his arm was wrapped even tighter around her shoulder. “After we wed”—a shudder passed through his body—“I am going to join my body to yours in the most gloriously indescribable way possible. Repeatedly.”
Gloriously indescribable.
Huh. And the harsh way he’d wrung out the words—the wonder, the need, the repeatedly—was not at all displeasing.
“There’s another word for what you just described, I think…” she teased.
“Marital congress?”
“That’s hardly titillating,” she scoffed.
He lifted a brow, looking delightfully, mockingly stern. “What do you know about titillation?”
“Very little…yet. Come now.” She pretended she was about to shake him by his lapels. “You’ve explained forbidden words to me before.” She pouted in an exaggerated fashion.
“Don’t tempt me.” He shook his head. “I won’t tell you.”
“I can’t believe you’d disappoint me so.”
Oh, she had known from the start he wasn’t going to satisfy either of them tonight. But before she went back to bed, she wanted him to be sure of her own desire.
For his own good, of course.
She brightened. “How about you tell me after we’ve wed, and before the glorious joining?”
“Pfft.” The sound he made was half-disbelieving snort and half-surprised delight.
“Please?”
“Very well, beloved.”
A thrill surged through her as he used his new endearment for her. Beloved felt nice. Secure.
“I will teach you a naughty word or two,” he continued, “after we are wed. And only if you promise never to use them with anyone but me.”
“Madman!” She pushed him lightly, although it wasn’t as if he could move very much. “Why would I want to use words like that with anyone except my husband?”
His gaze softened. “I still haven’t asked you, you know.”
He looked so boyish, so hopeful. He made her heart pang with such resonance, if she went back to being serious, she thought she might cry.
She couldn’t cry. That part of her heart was still too tender. And she was about to hand over her life. At present, giving her hand was all the leap she could make.
“Extraordinary!” She widened her eyes. “And with me on your lap! And in only a shift and wrapper! My good Lord Neville, you should be ashamed of yourself!”
“Oh, I am,” he assured her. “Entirely ashamed. And very, very, very…”
She adjusted herself again, making sure her thigh rubbed along what she judged to be his manhood. His responsive groan made her smile. Perhaps her Auggie wasn’t so very proper after all.
“Honestly, Augustus! You’re so easily distracted. Now”—she touched a finger to her chin—“what was it you were going to ask?
Without any warning, he stood up, easily lifting them both from the chair. He smirked down at her shocked expression. “You’ll find my distinctive shoulders quite useful.”
“So I can see.” She blushed. “Are you going to carry me about the room, now?”
“No, I’m going to set you down.”
“Oh,” she said disappointedly.
He deposited her back into the chair where they’d been sitting. Then, he lowered himself down on one knee by her side in the same position she’d been when he’d first awoken.
“Millicent Wainwright,” he said as he threaded their fingers together. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
The earnestness in his expression chased away all her teasing.
“Honor, you say?” Well, almost all her teasing.
She smiled a crooked smile and glanced down at their joined hands. His knuckles were so big, almost rough looking. Next to them, her fingers looked slender and pale. But both were gripping one another as if they needed to hold on for dear life.
Maybe they did.
She looked up into his eyes, overcome with sudden emotion. “I know this is no time to joke,” she said, equally earnest. “I’m a little…overwhelmed.”
“I know,” he replied softly.
She leaned forward. “Yes, I will be your wife. And the honor will be entirely mine.”
He exhaled like he hadn’t taken a breath in days. She felt a little breathless herself. Especially when his lips touched hers. As when they’d kissed before, she felt the mouth-to-mouth contact all over her body.
He teased her lips apart, probing deeper. The intimate invasion made her gasp with shock. He untangled their hands so he could use his fingers to tip up her face. She threaded her arms beneath his and held him close, never wanting the contact to end.
“The things I want to do to you,” he whispered against her ear.
Huh. Eliza had been right.
Men did have all sorts of unexpressed desires inside of them. She got the feeling there was much more to Ambrose Augustus Merriweather than she had expected.
“What things?” she teased, hoping to again provoke the raw, hungry scratch in his throat.
“Perhaps you should know—”
His heated expression made her pulse jump.
“—in case what I want changes your answer.”
She remembered the fiery perusal he’d given her as she sat in the chair across the room. Had that only been this morning?
“I think,” she said with a little too much breath, “you should tell me now.”
He kissed her again, trailing his lips across her cheek to her ear. With nose, teeth and lips, he nuzzled there, filling her with urgent desire. With each moment that passed, her need increased. Soon, she was shivering with anticipation.
“Tell me what you want to do.” She closed her eyes, savoring the feel of him against her neck.
“I want to undress you, piece by piece.” His hands spanned her ribs, as if in demonstration of where he might begin, if she were dressed.
Her breast felt weighted. She lifted her lids. “Like a lady’s maid?”
“Not like a lady’s maid.” He caressed her hip, watching her carefully. “At least not of the proper sort.”
Were there such things as improper ladies’ maids? And if there were, what did her Auggie know about them?
“I wonder,” he murmured, “what thought brought on that eye-narrowed expression?”
“No thought,” she replied lightly, feeling embarrassed and vulnerable about how much she wanted to mark him as hers. She gripped his shoulder to prevent herself from grabbing a fistful of his hair and making him swear he’d never so much as look at another woman again.
Ladies’ maids. She frowned. “You don’t want to brush my hair, do you?”
He scowled. “No.” He glanced away. One brow went up. Then, the other. “At least, I never considered…”
His palm accidently grazed her nipple as he moved his hand. The resulting sensations made her want to whimper.
He ran his hand down over her braid. “Perhaps.”
How odd.
She had much to learn about male desire. Neville’s was potent—though thoroughly restrained. She rather thought she’d like to resume the kissing…not to mentions his provocative hints as to his needs and intentions.
She patted his chest. “Back to what you want to do, please,”
“Oh?” he queried, slightly wolfish. “Do you need more examples?”
“Examples would be nice,” she answered primly.
“Let’s see… Right now, I’d like to pull this string here.” He indicated the one just above her chest. “And here.” He fingered the one at her waist. “Then peel off your wrapper, revealing the gifts beneath.”
“My shift?”
“No, that would have to go, too.”
“Neville,” she gasped. “You want to see me as I was born?”
“Every inch,” he said hoarsely.
“Naughty, indeed.” She only managed a whisper.
“I warned you,” he replied. “Dare I hope you want something similar from me?”
She wasn’t sure she was quite ready to see the hard part she’d felt against her thigh. Uncovering his shoulders might be nice, though. For she did want more of his hunger, a hunger she could now see matched, perhaps even exceeded, her own.
Tell me you want me. Tell me you cannot resist me.
She reached for the forbidden sweets. “I want you to teach me how to drive you as wild as you drive me.”