Chapter Twenty-One
The carriage stopped, and Stefan wrenched the door open without waiting for the footman, jumped down, and reached his hand in to help me out.
I nearly moaned as I laid mine in his and felt the warmth of his skin, gripping with feverish strength, and his eyes glittered as he pulled me down and into his arms.
Stefan practically carried me up the steps and into the house, calling out to the servants to leave us undisturbed on pain of being thrown out of the house.
“They’re going to know what we’re—Stefan, they’ll know!” I hissed, as he wrapped me tighter against his side and hustled me up the stairs.
“So they’ll know how much I want you, so what,” he replied, and I nearly broke my neck trying to crank my head to stare at him. How much he wanted me? Didn’t he mean how much I needed him? “We’re married. You’re a dawn mage. Let them talk.”
I didn’t have the breath to answer as he rounded the landing and brought us out onto the second floor, flinging my bedroom door open and dragging me through, kicking it shut and somehow retaining the presence of mind to turn the key in the lock.
He released me at last by my bedside, and I tumbled down, landing half-sprawled across the bed.
“I’m not calling Aldrich to help you undress unless you absolutely insist,” he said, and raked me up and down with his gaze as if he could see through every stitch of my clothing.
He looked up again, meeting my eyes, his stormy.
“If you want me to do what we have been doing, and bend you over and only pull your breeches down, I will. If you insist. Or I can undress you myself,” and his voice dipped to a low register that throbbed through the frantic beat of my heart and down between my legs.
“I can’t unlace the corset myself,” I offered, because it was that or start to beg—except that it sounded like a plea anyway, and he let out a shuddering breath.
“Up, then, so I can reach.” He pulled me off the bed and turned me, and I let him, and if this had been the only docility expected of me from the beginning of this marriage, if Stefan had been honest with me and asked, I’d never have disobeyed him.
Who would want to disobey when bending to his will meant letting him slide my jacket off my shoulders, strong hands wrapping around my waist for a moment and squeezing after he’d tossed it away, drawing out a helpless whimper at the pressure of his grip.
Or when he began to pull at the laces, freeing me from the constriction of silk and boning, letting me breathe again—or maybe I could finally breathe again because Stefan was touching me, wanting me.
Stefan, not the model husband I’d demanded and that he’d so unflinchingly provided—even though I could feel in the slight tremor in his hands as he slid them under the corset that maybe, just maybe, it hadn’t been any easier for him than it had been for me.
He pushed the corset down over my arms and threw it carelessly after my jacket, and I had half an instant to spare a wince on poor Aldrich’s behalf before Stefan muttered something I couldn’t quite hear…
but the meaning was clear enough when he wrapped me in his arms and pressed his parted lips to the curve of my neck, tongue flicking hot below my ear.
His cock stabbed into my lower back, hard and demanding, long and thick even through our clothes, and I knew precisely how it was going to feel driving into me.
Perfect, it would be perfect, and I moaned as Stefan cursed and bit at my throat and caught hold of my shirt in both fists, ripping it into tatters and baring my chest.
Those big hands cupped my pecs, squeezing them into round handfuls, thumbs circling my nipples. I bucked, cried out, reached down and grasped my cock through my breeches, so close to spending in them, shaking apart in Stefan’s arms…
He let me go and spun me again, flinging me onto the bed on my back with the ruin of my shirt still hanging around me.
“Not until I can enjoy it too,” he growled, and tore at my breeches’ buttons, two of them flying and clicking to the floor off somewhere they’d never be found, yanking the breeches down to my knees.
Stefan dropped to his knees an instant later, shoved my bent legs up onto the bed so that I lay on my side with my ass jutting off the mattress obscenely, and buried his face between my cheeks.
I scrabbled at the blankets to keep myself from sliding off the edge of the bed, my spine arching as every muscle went rigid, Stefan kissing and licking and sucking my hole as if he meant to devour me, hot wet tongue lashing at my insides, teeth nipping the inner curves of my ass.
Gods, I’d dreamed of this—waking dreams, with my burning face buried in the pillow, one hand wrapped around my cock, the other reaching back to try to give myself one thousandth of the pleasure of Stefan’s wicked mouth.
He’d told me I couldn’t finish until he could enjoy it too, but did this count?
Did he want to be inside me, feeling my body clench and release?
I’d wait, he wanted me to wait, but my cock dripped onto the bedding and my throat had gone dry from the cries tearing out of it, and I thrashed and bit down on the edge of the sheet to try to stifle another scream—and Stefan moved an inch and sucked my balls into his mouth where they were trapped between my thighs, pushing two fingers into my hole.
I let out that scream after all as I spent, jerking and twitching and sobbing into the damp bedding.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t do more than gasp for breath, as the soft sounds of the bedside drawer opening and the clink of a glass bottle told me Stefan had found the oil.
He climbed onto the bed, pushing me more toward the center of it and lying on his side behind me.
Somehow he’d gotten his own breeches undone, and the slippery head of his cock nudged between my cheeks, pressing into my rim, stretching me with the sweetest little stinging ache.
“Open up for me, Remi,” he murmured in my ear—and then bit down on my earlobe, making me clench convulsively around the head of his cock instead.
“I’m trying,” I gasped, but with my legs together, I couldn’t do more than squirm helplessly as he tunneled deeper, so tight around him that I felt the friction of every fractional inch of his cock. “I’m trying, but—”
“Shhh.” Stefan kissed my neck again, gathering me closer, sliding his hand to my chest again, stroking and teasing. “Never mind.” He swiveled his hips, gaining another inch and making me moan. “I can open you up very thoroughly on my own, hmm?”
Before I could say a word, Stefan tilted his body, changed his angle, and thrust all the way in, and I clawed my fingers into the bed, mouth open in a silent cry, all the air driven out of me.
He fucked me like that, steadily, stirring my insides more than thrusting in and out since he held me too close to pull back, heating and pleasuring every bit of my flesh that he touched, inside and out, until I writhed in his arms, overstimulated to the point of implosion.
When he clutched me even tighter, buried himself to the hilt, and cursed and kissed his climax into the curve of my throat, I let go of that unbearable tension, my whole body going limp as dizzy, tingling delight rolled in waves through every limb.
Better than any wine or any of the sacred incenses used in temples to carry the mind away to heights of religious ecstasy.
Stefan’s thumb lazily circling my nipple made me shudder with it, my toes curling, my body still so perfectly full, my magic humming in harmony.
My heartbeat slowed, my eyelids drooping. Oh, I could stay here forever, with Stefan’s warmth surrounding me. It soothed me down to my bones, even though in the heat of the day, with the sun beating down on the side of the house, we’d get unpleasantly sticky within minutes.
Except for the places we were pleasantly sticky. Maybe if Stefan stayed long enough, he’d get hard again without even pulling out of me. I wiggled gently, savoring the thickness of him holding me open.
“Remi,” Stefan said softly, and nuzzled my neck, breath as warm as his body, his tone even warmer. “Remi, I—oh, you have to be fucking joking!”
The knock at the door hadn’t been hesitant at all, the sharp rap of someone who knew Stefan wouldn’t carry out his threat of dismissal under whatever circumstances had arisen. Gods, what now?
“Yes?” Stefan made it sound more like a no, and with emphasis. “This had better be important!”
“It is, my lord. Beg pardon. You have an urgent message. From, ah, my friend I introduced you to the other night.” The deep voice belonged to Fritz, the bodyguard Stefan often sent out with me dressed as a footman when he couldn’t escort me himself.
I’d never yet encountered any reason to need him, but maybe his very presence had ensured that.
“Give me a moment, please!” Stefan called out, and then said for my ears only, “Remi, forgive me. His friend asked for my help. With a business venture. It’s very important to him.”
I rolled my eyes, though it’d be wasted, since Stefan couldn’t see my face.
I’d long suspected that Fritz had been given my protection as an additional task on top of his real duties, whatever those were, rather than as a primary job.
And anyway, Stefan had come and gone late at night quite a bit lately, usually wearing plain clothing and returning neither drunk nor apparently well-fucked…
not that I’d found all of the places in the house one could lurk and observe his comings and goings, or anything.
Lord Benedict sent him messengers all the time, too. Did they think I was stupid?
“If one of your seedy informants has news for you, of course you need to go,” I said. “Lord Benedict’s reports take precedence over—this.”