Chapter Six
Lord Stefan’s lips were firm, warm, and parted enough that my tongue slipped between, letting me taste another man for the first time in my life.
Liquor. He tasted mostly of liquor, with the faintest hint of…
oh, gods, please let it not be yet another person, whichever companion he’d been with at his brothel.
But whatever that elusive and possibly horrifying flavor was, it hit my body like an intoxicant far more powerful than the spirits he’d been drinking.
Every muscle and nerve and vein came alive, aware, from my tingling face all the way down to my curling toes.
My leg across his lap. His broad shoulders under my arms, and the brush of his hair against the hands I’d clasped behind his neck.
The solid strength of him, like an oak tree a vine could climb up and around and be kept safe from any storm…
Lord Stefan’s hands came to my waist again, gripping me tightly enough to bruise. He probably meant to throw me off again, but he’d pulled me closer first, his thigh slotting between my legs.
The curse left me unable to get an erection, but the pressure on my cock and balls and behind them, between my legs, still made my head spin all over again.
I gasped into his mouth, my tongue brushed his, fresh sparks shot down my spine, I might’ve let out the faintest moan, and with a click, a rush of cool evening air flowed into the carriage.
Lord Stefan wrenched his mouth away from mine. Both of our heads turned at once. The footman stood framed in the open carriage door, mouth open and eyes round.
“Forgive me,” he stammered. “My lord. Lords. Please forgive my intrusion, I didn’t—”
“There’s nothing to intrude upon, Jan,” Lord Stefan said, and I nearly broke my neck whipping my head back to gawk at him.
His voice had returned, like magic, to that drawling, nonchalant tone I’d first heard at our wedding, the one he’d used to insult me and his father and even holy Ennolu without so much as blinking.
He’d been flushed and furious and grappling with me mere moments before, and he’d become as smooth and unruffled and urbane as an illustration of a gentleman in a fashion quarterly.
“We’re both fully clothed, as you can see. ”
Jan met my eyes for the briefest of moments, and his expression of Gods, he must be joking nearly broke me.
A swelling bubble of hysterical laughter rose up in my throat, and with it came the words, “Please shut the door, and tell my new mother and father we’ll be right in.
We need a few moments to collect ourselves. ”
It came out breathy and high-pitched, possibly the way a well-fucked whore caught behaving indecently in a carriage might sound. I wouldn’t know, although I’d bet every copper coin in my husband’s coffers that he did.
Jan didn’t give his master the opportunity to contradict me, slamming the carriage door so quickly he barely got his nose out of the way. His quick footsteps retreated instantly after.
Silence fell in the carriage.
An ominous, pregnant silence.
Lord Stefan’s hands still gripped my waist, only now he wasn’t trying to toss me back across the carriage and out of his lap; he was holding me there with intent, and I had no idea what that might be.
I became conscious of the harshness of my breath in the quiet, and of his.
Of the heat and nearness and sheer size of him, the humidity of the closed carriage.
Of the span of his hands around my waist. I felt fragile in his grasp, and my breath came faster still.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his, so dark and so focused, as if he saw nothing in the world but me.
And so cold, as if he saw nothing he didn’t despise.
“Very good, Remigius,” he said after a moment, low and with controlled rage, and it made my blood run even icier, how swiftly and easily he discarded the insouciant fop that had been amused by giving his footman a show.
“My father’s annoyance at being made to wait for us probably won’t outweigh his satisfaction in your ability to distract me.
I’m not sure you look quite distracted enough yourself, though. ”
He cocked his head and considered me, with a serpentine calculation uncomfortably close to his father’s.
Just as we were uncomfortably close. I squirmed, loosening my arms from around his neck.
My lord husband pulled me even closer, and I gasped as his thigh pushed harder between my legs.
No other man had ever touched me there. I’d hardly touched myself, since a little bit of pleasure might result, but mostly only futility and frustration.
Parts of me I hadn’t even known were sensitive, my inner thighs and the crease of my ass, tingled with the pressure.
Lord Stefan’s lips curved in a sour smile.
“Flushed, yes, and a bit disheveled, but not nearly enough to carry out your plan to its fullest,” he went on.
“Luckily for you, I’m willing to be generous enough to assist you more than is strictly necessary for legal consummation.
Only this once, you understand, because my preference for a snake stands. ”
Generous enough to assist—oh, gods. But before I could do anything more than open my mouth to protest, Lord Stefan wrapped one of his arms all the way around my waist, slid the other hand up to catch a fistful of my hair, and yanked my head back.
His hard, brutal kiss captured my cry of surprise.
Lord Stefan’s tongue swept inside my mouth with far more force and purpose than I’d had when I tentatively tasted him, tangling with mine and thrusting into me, the way I imagined a man might drive his cock into another’s body.
The hand in my hair massaged and tugged, tangling my curls and holding me at an angle where I couldn’t even struggle.
If I’d even tried.
My eyes closed of their own accord, and the world vanished, narrowed down to my body wrapped in his powerful embrace and the hot, slick penetration of his tongue and the bruising force of his lips on mine.
I wanted—I didn’t know what I wanted, straining against him, spreading my legs as much as the constricting cassock would allow to try to press his muscular thigh more firmly between them, letting my own fingers shyly caress his silky hair—
For the second time in ten minutes, I was flung across the carriage to fetch up against the wall, only this time with my mouth swollen and throbbing and my cassock rucked up almost to my hips.
I blinked at him in dismay, the return of the real world—the cool leather seat sticking to my legs, the demoralizing sight of him straightening his own clothing and frowning without any sign that he’d felt anything whatsoever as he kissed me, the sudden awareness of my burning cheeks and sweaty torso—coming as a complete shock.
My breath came in thick pants, and I stared at him, too overwhelmed to move yet, as he fluffed the lace at his breast and cuffs and flicked lint from his sleeves.
He looked up at me at last. “That ought to do for your purposes,” he said, for all the world as if commenting on the weather. “You look very thoroughly debauched. Except for that disgusting garment, of course. Not sure how you intend to explain that away. But I do look forward to finding out.”
Without further ado, and certainly without offering me his assistance, he unlatched the door and stepped out, turning away too quickly to see my open-mouthed indignation.
He’d been the one to leave me without any other, better garments, damn him!
On purpose! For lack of any other options, I climbed awkwardly after him, tugging my cassock down ungracefully as I did.
The carriage had stopped in front of a grand mansion, all inlaid with dark blue stone in a complex geometric pattern, the windows ablaze with light. Four servants, including Lord Stefan’s footman, stood by the open double doors at the top of the broad marble steps.
I’d been born in a house much like this one. Our villa on the hill on the other side of the palace had been three stories high, with a half-acre courtyard planted with lemons and roses and tall cypress trees, where I’d played all the year round.
A shake of my head cleared the fresh onslaught of memories, but it left me as bewildered and off-balance as before. I scurried up the steps after Lord Stefan, reaching the door right as he did. The servants bowed us through together.
What seemed like a thousand candles in the hall’s chandelier and an array of mirrored lamps all around the sides of the room left me blinded and blinking.
Two people emerged from the glare of the ostentatious lighting: the Lord Chancellor, in a black silk suit with silver lace trim that would’ve fed a whole family for a year, and a lady whose gray-kissed golden hair and lovely dark eyes marked her as my husband’s mother, Lady Estella.
Her diamond parure and brooch would’ve fed every villager on my abbey’s island for the rest of their lives.
We all stopped in the middle of the hall. Lord Stefan bowed graciously to his parents with a flourish of his coattails. “Mother,” he said, “please allow me to present my consort, Lord Remigius. Remigius, my mother, Lady Estella. Father, you of course know dear Remigius already.”
Lady Estella personified courtly elegance and breeding. Watching her attempt, and largely fail, to conceal her shock and dismay would’ve been fascinating, if I hadn’t been the object of it.
“Rem…igius,” she said, and swallowed, her eyes widening as they flickered up and down my cassocked, rumpled person. “I have so looked forward to meeting you. Stefan’s return home has been long awaited, and as the cause of it, you are most welcome.”
She stepped forward, offering me her hand, and I took it in mine, bending over it without touching it to my lips. “I thank you, madam,” I murmured. “I am honored.”