Chapter 4
Four
She went out the servants’ entrance, the door locking behind her, and crept through the rear garden and out the gate and into the back lane. Then she walked down the lane and around to the front of the house on the square and waited.
She had put on her favorite dress, a delicate white silk gown with very puffed bishop’s sleeves and a scooped neckline that showed off the top of her breasts to great advantage. With this dress, there would be no question. Tonight, he would kiss her again as he had before.
A carriage rattled down the street with a coat of arms on the door.
She wasn’t surprised. She had known he must be a lord of some kind with his dominating demeanor, his immediate possession of her hand, her lips, her mouth.
And then Giles, her Giles, flung open the door and helped her into the carriage and onto the seat across from him.
The carriage rolled away.
“You look cold, little one,” Giles said.
“I am.” Arabella shivered. The dress she had chosen to tempt Giles to kiss her was very pretty, but it was a summer dress, the silk was thin, and the sleeves were only to her elbow.
“I go away tomorrow, Arabella.”
Her heart sank deep into the pit of her stomach.
“Oh, no,” she said and tried to control the tremble in her voice. “Must you leave London so soon? I had hoped . . . we might picnic again. I would bring a hamper with sandwiches.”
“My duties call me home. It cannot be avoided,” he said and sighed.
Arabella looked into Giles’ dark eyes. She saw so much emotion there—passion, sadness, tenderness. He reached across the carriage and put his hand on her leg and kneaded her thigh through her delicate gown.
She could feel her own breath grow ragged and her heart race.
“Arabella,” he whispered. Suddenly, he was on the seat next to her.
His large, powerful arms pulled her to him, and his head was bent to hers, and his mouth was on hers.
He ravished her mouth with his, tearing at her lips with his teeth.
As he filled her mouth with his tongue, she felt her nipples stiffen, and she pressed her breasts against his hard chest.
As if he knew what she wanted, he caressed and then clutched at one of her breasts. He kept his other hand on the back of her head, her hair gathered in his fist as he pushed her head forward into every one of his savage kisses.
He groaned into her mouth, and that sound lit a fire in her belly.
His hand on her breast pulled at her dress, and she could hear a rip and feel him pushing her stays down and tearing at her chemise.
Then his hand was engulfing her bare breast, and he was pinching her nipple, and the most exquisite agony of pleasure was running through her body.
He took his mouth from hers to lower his head to her now-naked breast, and he suckled at it.
His hand on her hair pulled her up so she was on her knees on the carriage seat.
His mouth stayed on her nipple, but the hand that had been on her breast came down to cup her mound, the place between her legs that had grown damp when he had first kissed her. The place that ached for him.
Her whole body was aroused, and all she wanted was for him to continue to touch her, to kiss her, to lay her whole body bare.
Now she was the one groaning.
He took his hand from behind her head and grabbed her fingers and put them on the bulge at his groin. His large hand over her small one, moving her palm up and down as the bulge grew and lengthened. When he took his own hand away, she continued to rub the bulge, the phallus.
He raised his head from her breast, panting. “You are a temptress. Yes. A beautiful, bewitching temptress. Your body. This sweet rosebud of a breast . . .” He lowered his head again and worried her nipple with his lips, his tongue, his teeth, and rubbed at the top of her mound with his thumb.
“Giles,” she moaned. “Giles.”
He raised his face and put his mouth inches from hers but did not kiss her. His lips were hanging open, his breathing heavy. He was sweating.
“I need—” he said.
“Yes, Giles.” She pushed her mound into his hand and against his thumb, her own hand around his member, rubbing him through his breeches. “Yes.”
“I need you to lie down.”
“Yes,” she said, and he got off the carriage seat, and she lay down, her breast exposed, the bodice of her pretty white dress torn. And he was raising up the skirts of her dress and her petticoat and spreading her legs and his hand was in her cleft.
“Ohhhh,” he said. “Arabella, you minx. You are wet for me. So very sweetly wet.”
As he rubbed her cleft, his fingers went over that most sensitive place, her bud, the secret spot that spread fire throughout her body. In that moment, she knew she would do anything for him. For her Giles. He of the strong, muscled arms, the square jaw, the haunted eyes.
He took his hand from her cleft and unbuttoned the fall of his breeches, leaning over her, supporting himself with one hand next to her head on the carriage seat, as he stroked himself with the other.
She looked at his member in his hand. She had only seen marble ones in the museum, never one of flesh. It seemed quite large. Like he was. But Mary had said it would go inside her.
“I have to have you, Arabella. Don’t be frightened.”
“Yes . . . I mean, I’m not.”
And she wasn’t frightened. This was her Giles. Who thrilled her. Who caressed her. Who kissed her. He wouldn’t hurt her. She wanted him. She wanted what was next.
He leaned farther down and kissed her, and she felt him take his member and rub it up and down in her wet cleft, spreading her folds, brushing her bud, and then sliding down towards her entrance.
A sharp pain. A quick inhale of her breath and a cry out, but his mouth was quickly on hers, his tongue pushing into her mouth even as his member pushed into her.
“Oh, Arabella,” he groaned. He pulled back from the kiss and looked down at his phallus going into her. “You’re so beautiful.”
He was pumping in and out of her and she hurt and there was pain and all she wanted was to be close to him as he filled her and hurt her, but he held his body above hers, looking down at his member thrusting in and out of her, faster and faster.
He straightened up and was on his knees, and he was out of her, stroking himself, his body jerking as he grunted, and she felt spurts of warm wetness on her thighs.
Then she got what she wanted. He collapsed onto her, and she could wrap her arms around him and hold him and feel him close. Her Giles. She kissed his shoulder, still covered by his velvet coat, and turned her head to kiss his ear.
“Kiss me, Giles,” she whispered, and he turned his head towards her and kissed her. Sweet kisses. Short kisses. His lips were relaxed now, devoid of the hunger and the fierceness with which he had kissed her before. His eyes were closed.
“Look at me, Giles,” she said, and he opened his eyes, and the melancholy in his dark eyes was gone. She was so happy. She had done that for him.
Despite the pain she felt down below, she also still felt a throbbing ache, an unmet need there. So she moved now, rocking her hips, trying to rub herself against him.
He smiled. “It’s too late for that, love. I have spent.”
She would have told him she herself had not spent, she still needed something from him, except he had called her love.
Love.
Her heart was full, and it mattered not a whit that her lower body still ached for his touch.
He had called her love.
The carriage stopped moving. He pushed himself off her and was back on his knees and buttoning his fall.
“There’s some blood, but not much,” he said.
She sat up. The right half of her bodice hung down. She saw some stickiness on her thighs and circles of blood on the back side of her white dress, just under her cleft.
She looked at him.
“There’s almost always blood the first time. There won’t be the next time for you,” he said. “And I spilled my seed outside of you, so you don’t have to worry. We are back at your house now. You should go inside.”
Now? Leave him, leave the carriage?
“But how will I get into the house?” she asked.
He finished buttoning his fall and moved over to sit in the seat facing her. He ran one of his large hands through his hair.
“How do you usually sneak back into the house?”
For the first time, she felt exposed and pulled her skirts down over her legs and her chemise and her stays back up and put her breasts back into the cups of the stays.
“I don’t,” she said and tried to arrange the torn fabric of her bodice so it covered her.
“Don’t worry,” he said in his deep, comforting voice, and she looked up at him.
“I won’t.” She smiled. She didn’t want him to worry. She didn’t want to add to his unnamed burdens.
He was digging in the pocket of his waistcoat and pulled out a sovereign. He put it in her hand.
“Give that to your butler and tell him to keep his mouth shut. He’ll let you in and find a way to get you upstairs.”
“But . . . but Chelsom would see me. Like this.”
“You look beautiful,” he said.
She could feel herself blush but still blundered on. “I have known Chelsom all my life. He’s known me since I was a baby. He’s not going to not tell my mother.”
He smiled. “You’d be surprised how much silence a sovereign can buy.”
Her unquenched excitement, the late hour, his not understanding her dilemma—suddenly her eyes were brimming with tears.
“Now, Arabella, Arabella,” he said and leaned forward. “You’re a woman. You’re not a little girl. There’s no need for tears.”
The coachman outside shouted “My lord!” in warning, and the carriage door was flung open, and now there was a very great need for tears.
A Fury had opened the carriage door. Her mother, the Duchess of Middlewich.
Lips white. Shaking. Her mother said not a word but lifted her skirts and heaved herself into the carriage and reached and grabbed Arabella’s arm and dragged her out of the carriage and onto the pavement, all in one continuous motion.
And as Arabella fell from the carriage, the horses started moving, and by the time Arabella had her feet under her, the carriage was halfway down the street and she could see Giles’ arm reach out and pull the flapping carriage door shut.