Chapter 8
Letitia leaned back in the dining room chair, enjoying a late breakfast while Anthony feasted between her thighs.
He’d ordered the meal to be served en famille, locked the door, and taken to his knees once her plate was full. Her trembling hand brought a precious piece of pineapple to her mouth just as he sucked on her nub.
For the past few days, he’d been ravenous for her body, eager to please her on every surface of the house. She’d stayed wet and swollen, not bothering to pull on more than a dressing gown because she knew he’d have her nude and panting multiple times per day.
She’d asked him why he was greedy for her, and he’d responded in a way she’d missed so much.
“Why do I spread and suck you at all hours of the day? I suppose it’s because I can,” he’d said while kissing up her sensitive thighs. Sensitive because he’d run his stubble over them like a man looking to mark his territory.
And her whole body was his territory; there was no doubt. When he appeared in the doorway, her cunny grew soft and wet for its master, aching deep inside for that cock she’d missed so much.
Gone were all thoughts of laudanum. In their place? Sticky sweet surrender on her lover’s tongue.
Letitia pulled off her dressing gown and lowered the straps on her chemise. She needed more, but still couldn’t take anything within her clasp, according to Dr. Riddle’s orders.
The first touch on her nipple sent her thighs squeezing against Anthony’s ears. She heard and felt his chuckle against her wet skin, her hand coming to the top of the chair to help press her cunny to that clever mouth of his.
“Make me suck it,” he growled in a way that made every nerve glow like electric streetlights. “Can’t wait to get inside you.”
At the thought of being fucked by Anthony again, Letitia cried out and began the slide into unimaginable pleasure. She moved her hand from her breast to the back of Anthony’s head so she could guide his tongue.
The sight of her lover’s face betwixt her thighs, enthusiastic as he’d been all those years ago, sent her spiraling. She grasped his hair, lifted her hips, and shot into the heavens with bliss.
***
It was when Letitia retrieved the pristine diletto from Anthony’s wardrobe that she saw something she shouldn’t have. Those items had probably been beside each other for ages, but the first time, she’d been in such a flutter that she’d likely missed it.
She came back to the bed, and her face must have given away the state of her mind.
“Whatever is the matter?” he asked, pulling her into his lap.
“You’d tell me if you were courting a girl, wouldn’t you?” she asked.
“Courting…a girl?”
“Yes, you know. Squiring a girl about with a mind to marriage. Dancing with her at balls and the like.”
Anthony squeezed her waist. “Is that what you’d like me to do?”
Her stomach dropped. Did she want him to take a girl out with a mind to marriage? Was he mad?
“I can see on your face that you’re getting the wrong idea,” he said sternly, turning her chin towards him when she tried to look away. “Is courting what you want me to do with you, Letty?”
Again, he’d cast her adrift. What did he mean? A man didn’t need to court his own mistress. That was rather the point of the whole thing.
“Did you see it?” he asked softly.
“See what?” she asked, feeling her nose grow somewhat itchy. He would not make her ask about that thing, would he?
“The thing next to the diletto.”
“Ahh, that,” she said. “Well, yes. Otherwise, I’d not have thought to ask about whether you’re courting a girl.”
Anthony settled onto the pillows, looking suddenly satisfied. He held out his arms to her. “Come to me, Letty.”
“I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you, not descend into debauchery again!” she exclaimed.
He popped up and brushed her fringe aside before planting a kiss on her forehead. “You’d let some other girl marry me? After all of this?”
“Let some other girl…? Listen to me, Anthony Paschal-Lamb, there will be no other girls! I asked in case you needed to be disabused of the notion! I won’t have it! I simply won’t!” She was confused and furious. How could he mention, even teasingly, other women while in bed with her?
“Oh, Letty, you sound like a viscountess when you say such things,” he said, his smile broad and teasing. “I suppose you’ll just have to marry me.”
This impossible man! He made jokes about the dearest, most forbidden wish of her heart? She’d make him regret it!
But first she’d cry her eyes out in his dressing room.
***
It was after she’d cried for what seemed like hours that Letitia realized Anthony hadn’t yelled or pounded at the door as one might expect a man to do when denied the thing he supposedly wanted most. She worried he’d woken up to the fact that she was a ruined woman and not worth his time.
Was he even now ordering her things packed?
Those thoughts should never have entered her mind, not after their tender reunion, but the past few years had made her wary as a dog with a cruel master. She wished to trust this man she loved so much — had always loved — but she’d only recently emerged from hell.
When she cracked open the door to the dressing room, there was Anthony, sitting on the floor quietly.
He reached up a hand to her.
She regarded those familiar fingers she’d longed for, the signet ring that once graced the hand of his perfidious father, and the thick wrists she loved to catch sight of at meals.
Given the chance, she’d gnaw on those bones until he was as much a part of her as her own blood.
But she didn’t need to, did she? He already occupied a position below her ribs, where the arteries that fed her heart attempted to twist free.
Letitia took his hand within her own and allowed him to pull her into his lap.
“I’ve been very sparing with my words on a particular subject, haven’t I?” he asked, his face pressed to her ear as if he wished to consume her, too.
“It’s not my place to wonder why you have the prettiest ring I’ve ever seen beside your most private possessions,” she said.
“You think it pretty?”
“It’s spectacular.” The ring was a glorious mash of metal and stones, with a stunning diamond at the center. It was the ring a man would give a wife he wished to make thrilled indeed. What a lucky woman she’d be, Anthony’s wife.
“Do you think my intended will say yes when I ask her to marry me, then? If she thinks it spectacular?”
Oh, he was impossible! Her heart kept leaping at what seemed to be signs he might…regard her as more than a mistress, but she didn’t wish to rush ahead of something he didn’t mean. Her stomach was flopping about like a fish caught on a line, struggling to free itself.
“It’s difficult to say…”
“Is it?” he asked, meeting her eyes.
“I suppose you’d need to make your intentions and feelings clear to the lady. A spectacular ring isn’t enough these days. She’ll need reassurance about the contents of your heart and mind.”
“Will she?” he asked as he kissed her neck.
“Yes! You’ve a way with words. Surely you’ll know what to say.”
“Will I though? When my heart is so full that I can barely assemble sentences? When I struggle to express my regard for fear she might bolt at how deep my feelings run? Have mercy on the love of a man who has only just let his hopes out of a dungeon in which they’ve moldered for far too long.”
Letitia slumped against him, the tears that had begun in the closet coming freely now.
“I love you, Letty. Never stopped. I was sick with thwarted love when we were apart, and now that we’re together again, I’m sick with fulfilled love.
I know which one I prefer. If you need time, need to cry in my dressing room, I’ll let you.
But I’m going to be right on the other side of that door, waiting for you to come back to me. ”
Her fingers were about his neck, and she wept as he held her. It was more than she could have hoped, the antidote to years of despair.
“The ring you saw is yours. I bought it years ago. In fact, I fear that the purchase may have lured my father to town. He denied me the use of my mother’s ring, and I went to the jeweler the same day to buy my own.
” Anthony nuzzled in her hair, as if he too had missed her scent, and continued.
“I’m glad he did. I picked that for you.
No other woman will wear that ring, only the one dearest to my heart. And I will buy no other ring.”
He placed his hands on either side of her face so he could look into her eyes. His were brimming with conviction, taking on a strange light.
“You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? If you deny me, I’ll never marry. There will never be another if you refuse me.”
Letitia studied his tormented eyes. He needed to get to the point and free them both from this uncertainty!
“How can you speak of me denying you when you’ve asked no question?”
“No question…” he trailed off, then smiled. “Letitia Delemere, heart of my heart.”
She smiled back, encouraging now.
“Will you consent to marry me? To be my viscountess? Be with me always?”
Anthony removed something from his waistcoat, and she saw once again that spectacular ring. The ring his bride would wear. If his words were true, the ring only she could wear.
“Yes, but—”
He didn’t let the doubts and worries spill from her lips before he placed kisses upon them and pulled her even closer.
“Good, because I’ve arranged a special license and will not let even God halt our plans this time. I have you at last, and only death would pry you from me.”
Letitia regarded this man, holding her on the fine carpet floor of his apartments as he slipped that glorious ring on her finger.
“I can’t help but feel we must rush to the altar, having come so close before only to be thwarted.”
Anthony smiled, glad she was thinking the same thing as him. Letitia truly was his match, his only love. “I’m glad you feel that way because I’ve made some plans…”