Chapter Twenty-Eight
Marcus and Dud were in charge of Dustin while Christopher answered the prince’s summons.
Reluctantly, Marcus had come simply because Christopher had no one else to turn to because most of his knights were too drunk or missing to attend his wife.
Marcus was still smarting from her rebuff earlier and he wanted to return to his bed.
He hadn’t even fully dressed, only taking the time for breeches, a shirt and heavy boots.
Dustin had been asleep several hours and, a little after midnight, Dud complained of a sour stomach and left the antechamber to seek relief. Marcus played with the monkey for a while before ending up pacing listlessly in front of the windows.
She was angry with him, he knew it. He felt that if he could talk to her, reason with her, then mayhap she would see things clearly.
He had spent the week of her infirmary convincing himself that loving Dustin de Lohr was a waste of energy, and vowed to move forward and put her from his mind.
It was growing easier bit by bit, day by day, and he knew he would eventually be successful in chasing the woman from his mind.
Already he could look at her without feeling the strange, fluttering sensation in his chest.
But he needed to speak with her to settle the air between them.
With Christopher gone, he was alone with her and he wasn’t sure when he would have another opportunity to talk to her, just the two of them.
His courage rose and fell until finally, he bolstered the nerve to open the bedchamber door.
He hoped she wouldn’t be angry at him for waking her, but he felt strongly that he needed to do this.
She was curled up at the edge of the bed, and he could see that she was sleeping nude. Familiar feelings raced through his veins, but he stopped them angrily and moved forward toward the bed.
Bedclothes were bunched all around her, covering her most intimate parts but leaving little to the imagination.
Marcus took a deep breath, trying to keep his mind on what he had come for.
The room around them was pitch dark, the only faint light coming from the dying fire that hardly radiated beyond the hearth.
Everything else was blackness as he knelt beside the bed.
He tried to speak her name but he choked. Trying again, he leaned close to her. “Dustin?”
She twitched a bit and he tried once more. “Dustin, wake up,” he whispered.
She sighed deeply and stretched, and his mouth went agape as the bedclothes fell away from her magnificent breasts. Marcus almost staggered back. Jesus, I shouldn’t be here! But he forced himself to stay. He had to talk to her, he admitted to himself, to ease his own conscience.
“Dustin?” he whispered smiling. “ ’Tis me, Mar…..”
Her arm suddenly snaked up and grabbed him around the neck, unbalancing him in his crouch so that he toppled over on her.
“You are back,” she murmured sleepily, latching onto his earlobe. “I missed you.”
Marcus’ mind went into failure. Before he realized it, his arms were going about her, responding to her.
He knew he should yank away from her, at least tell her who it was she was kissing, but he could not force the words from his mouth.
Guilt exploded within him but at the same time, desire and lust such as he had never known flooded him like a wildfire and he ceased to think, like a rational, moral being.
All he could think of was her, in his arms, as he had always wanted.
In his blind lust, he was rough with her. The fact that it was so dark in the room worked in his favor because she could not see who it was and he had yet to utter a word. His mouth was all over her, tasting, licking, sucking and she panted heavily in response to his less than gentle ministrations.
His clothes were coming off, she was helping him. When his broad, bare chest met with her peaked nipples, he groaned so low in his throat that he rattled his own teeth. Dustin laughed softly, pulling him against her.
He could not seem to touch her fast enough, every inch of her skin covered with his hands or his mouth.
His lips suckled her nipples until they were raw, but she loved every moment of the sweet torture and Marcus’ mind was a black void, neither feeling nor hearing anything but Dustin beneath his hands.
He forged a trail down her flat belly to her most intimate center, trying to be gentle with her but not being able to control his want or his shaking.
When his mouth came to bear on the pink folds hidden behind the soft blond curls, Dustin nearly came off the bed with pure passion.
Her fingers delved into his hair, pulling at it insistently as she encouraged him onward.
His tongue was wild and wicked, driving her mad with sweet torture as he savagely orchestrated her taut little bud.
His hands, his huge hands, never left her breasts.
His tongue probed her passage, tasting her with all of the hunger he had felt for her.
He was beyond rationality, he knew exactly what he was doing and who he was doing it to, but he suddenly didn’t care anymore.
Had Christopher walked through the door at that moment, Marcus would have fought him to the death.
Some things in this life were worth dying for, and she was one of them.
When he could stand it no longer, he shoved himself between her legs and drew her knees up, positioning his great shaft against her orifice. Dustin had him by the hair.
“Chris,” she whispered. “We shouldn’t do this. The midwife said….”
He cut her off by thrusting headlong into her, driving himself in the full long length and Dustin let escape a moan of utter rapture.
Marcus was unstoppable; he drove in to her again and again, feeling her tightness like nothing else he had ever known, knowing indeed this would be the greatest mistake of his life but knowing in the same breath that he would die a contented man.
He would live on this moment the rest of his life.
When he erupted, it was through clenched teeth in the greatest explosion of pleasure.
He pulled Dustin to him fiercely, holding her with the most reverent of touches.
He held her for the longest time, caressing her, kissing her beautiful hair, until he felt her relax and he knew she had fallen asleep.
He was already beyond the limits of safety, for Dustin’s sake. She thought he was Christopher and would be entirely innocent of her husband’s wrath, but wrath she would receive. The hardest thing Marcus ever had to do in his young life was let her go.
He dressed quietly, watching Dustin sleep peacefully, wondering if she would ever realize what had happened this night.
He hoped that one day she would, and he furthermore hoped she wouldn’t hate him for his weakness.
But he had done more than taste her, he had feasted and for that, he would go to his grave satisfied.
He would never be rid of her now and it would slowly kill him to see her living her life with Christopher.
There was only one way to be clear of her beautiful, face forever, as much, as the thought pained him.
Yet for his sanity, he knew he must. But his moment in time with her would linger on him forever.
With a long glance, Marcus Burton quit the room.