Chapter 26
“Go away,” Anna blurted out, her arms wrapping around herself as if she were naked and not concealed by her shift and stays.
The sudden urge to laugh tickled Jeremy’s throat, for those weren’t quite the words a husband wished to hear on his wedding night. Yet, it was perfectly her… and perfectly understandable.
“I thought ye might need someone to help who’s good with their hands,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb, admiring her before she actually kicked him out.
The golden haze of the sunset, shining through the window behind her, taunted him with the silhouette of her curves beneath that thin shift. A figure he longed to explore more diligently, and thrills he was eager to introduce her to.
“Ye can’t be too careful with knots and fastenings,” he added, with a nod in the direction of her stays.
“Stop that at once,” she muttered, a rather grumpy bride. “Stop flirting with me. Stop standing there. Stop following me to rooms where you are not welcome.”
He smiled regardless. “Where would ye have me stand instead? Closer? Should I wait for ye to welcome me in?”
“I do not care where you stand, as long as it is nowhere near here,” she retorted, her chin raised in defiance. “Yes, we are married now. Yes, I realize it is our wedding night, but, as you said yourself, this is naught but a marriage of convenience. We shall do our public duty, and that is all.”
“Ye are the one who called it a marriage of convenience,” he replied, with a step forward into the bedchamber. “As for duty—ye moaning me name has nothing to do with duty. I certainly wouldn’t expect to hear it in public, either, unless ye were so inclined.”
Her cheeks pinkened and her eyes widened as she hugged herself tighter, a sharp breath moving her chest. He couldn’t tell if what he’d said was about to earn him a slap or an invitation, but he approached assuming it would be one or the other. And he would accept whichever she chose to give.
“Enough,” she rasped. “You cannot… say such things to me.”
“Are ye not me wife?”
Her throat bobbed, her hand rubbing slow circles against her chest as if to slow her breathing. “That has nothing to do with it. I am your wife in name only, as you wanted.” She hesitated. “No expectations, remember? And if you cannot love me, I cannot be your wife in more than appearance.”
His heart twinged as he continued toward her, moving slowly as though he were trying to calm a spooked horse.
He wasn’t convinced that he could help but love her or that his heart wasn’t already wholly hers, but the trick was never admitting it, not even to himself.
If he did, it would drive him mad, thinking of all the ways he could lose her.
All the ways she could lose him and be destroyed by it.
She didn’t back away as he stopped in front of her, her hazel eyes half-scrunched in confusion. Her arms were still wrapped around herself, though the embrace seemed to be relaxing.
“I missed ye,” he said, as he brought his hand to her cheek, gently brushing the rosy apple with his thumb.
Her breath hitched. “Do not say that.”
“I can’t lie to ye.” He leaned in. “I missed ye this week.”
She scoffed and turned her face away, though she didn’t smack his hand away. “You missed me because you had to contend with a manor full of ingrates by yourself. I realize the reason you had to invite them to stay longer, but I cannot wait until they are gone so that things can return to normal.”
He slowly nodded his head, while knowing that nothing would ever be the same again.
There could be no ‘normal,’ now that she was his.
If she were truly determined to keep him from her chambers and her side, he would take leave of his senses, as agitated as a pacing dog.
If she allowed him in, allowed him to be a husband in the bedchamber at least, the fear of the future would consume him.
There was no winning, but at least one would grant Anna something she deserved: an education in ecstasy.
“Is that not what you said?” she challenged, her eyes flaring with the hurt he couldn’t bear to see. “That we should return to the way things were? I can keep to my side of the manor, you can keep to yours, and we never have to cross paths.”
His other hand came up to cradle her face, holding her there as anguish bristled through him.
“I missed ye,” he repeated thickly, as he closed that terrible distance between them and softly grazed his lips against hers. A tender kiss that he hadn’t known he would ever feel again.
Relief flooded over him as her lips pressed back to his, as tentative as the first time, as if nothing had ever happened between them.
“I can’t give ye everything ye want, lass, but I can give ye this,” he murmured, as his hand traced a line down her neck and over her chest, skimming around the swell of her breast and the curve of her waist, sliding slowly around her.
A hard pull brought her flush against him, a gasp slipping from her lips, caught with a fervent kiss that he knew was going to throw him deeper into turmoil. But at that moment, as she kissed him back with that same, urgent hunger, he found he didn’t care.
Anna knew she should push Jeremy away and demand he leave her bedchamber, but the impulse faded with every touch of his mouth on hers and every quickening beat of her heart.
Should I not permit myself some joy on this unhappy day? she reasoned, as memories of his skillful touch stoked the embers of her desire for him. Didn’t she deserve a better wedding night than her first, to replace that awful occasion in her mind?
She ran her hands up the broad muscle of his chest, sliding her fingers beneath his velvet collar.
Rising up on tiptoe, she tugged on his collar to bring him closer, kissing him with fervent abandon.
She didn’t want to think of what a mistake this was.
She just—as Beatrice had encouraged—wanted to enjoy the festivities, even if it was only for a short while.
He walked her backward until her shoulders bumped the windowpane, his hands curving beneath the swell of her backside. As he hoisted her up into his arms, she was ready for it, her legs locking tight around his hips to balance herself.
All the while, his kiss never faltered, deep and urgent, his tongue flicking against hers: not too much, not too little, as if he already knew what she liked.
“Oh…” she gasped as he pressed her up against the glass, and she felt the swell of his desire between her thighs. A promise of a wedding night to remember.
I should not go so far, she told herself. I should not give myself tonight, in case he does not want me in the morning.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t relish the hardness of him, and the knowledge that she was the one who had roused him. She might not have lain with a man before, with no experience of it, but she remembered well enough what her lady’s maid had told her before Robert summoned her to his chambers.
Anna had been terrified then, dreading the prospect, and confused by the visceral logistics. She wasn’t afraid now. There was, perhaps, a nervous anticipation, but that only served to bolster her desire to learn everything about pleasure from the man who had revealed its existence to her.
The pressure as he rocked his hips forward again made it clear that he wanted her to feel him… and she clung to him as that hard flesh rubbed against her swollen bud. A brush that sent a shower of sparks into her abdomen, where it lit the taper of her passions.
“Tell me what ye want,” Jeremy whispered in her ear, like he knew she was on a precipice of need.
“To… cry out your… name,” she panted as his mouth traced the column of her throat, his hand smoothing over the rise of her breast, while his other hand reached for the knot of her stays.
“I think I can manage that,” he purred, pulling aside the collar of her shift and the edge of her stays to expose her pert, pink nipple.
She swallowed thickly. “But… I cannot give myself to you.” Her hips bucked, her neck arching back as his mouth closed over her nipple and his tongue flicked against that sensitive peak. “Not… tonight. Not if… You cannot offer me more than… Oh, God… Oh…”
He sucked gently, and all coherent speech abandoned her.
It seemed like some kind of wizardry, his mouth conjuring up a crackling thread inside her that each slow suck pulled tight.
Her nerves vibrated with the power of it, sending a wave of feeling through her core, to the pulsing heat between her thighs.
Her body, fully connected, unified by his touch.
Deftly, he unfastened the knot of her stays and tugged the laces free before tossing the undergarment over his shoulder. But when his hand reached for the hem of her shift, she realized the injustice of the situation.
Kissing him passionately on the mouth, she fumbled with the buttons of his tailcoat and pushed the garment off his shoulders. He forcefully wrenched the stubborn sleeves away from his arms and tossed the tailcoat onto the writing desk chair.
His waistcoat followed, but as she grasped his shirt and began to lift it over his head, she slowed.
Bit by bit, she enjoyed the reveal of his exquisite physique: the toned stomach, the impressive muscle of his chest, the movement of muscle, sinew, and tendon that she had no names for, and his big, powerful arms.
More scars… She reached for the faint marks on his skin, small burns that were healed but would always be there as a reminder.
With a smile, she touched the deep line that ran down the center of his ridged abdomen, all the way to just above the waistline of his trousers. Perhaps, it went further still.
“I wondered how far down it went,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.