Chapter Five
Later that night
Nicholas grinned as Amelia came into their shared room, for it was time to dress for dinner. “I dismissed both my valet and your maid this evening.” A couple of candles flickered in the room, lending it an intimate feeling.
She frowned. “Why?”
“I shall assist you in dressing… as well as undressing, as it were.” As he spoke, he closed the distance between them and reached around her to undo the buttons at the back of her day dress.
“So much cheek to you,” his wife said as her hands slipped up his chest. Here blue eyes darkened to sapphire. As of yet, he’d only donned his evening breeches and a fine lawn shirt. “What do you have in mind?”
“Just this.” In a thrice, he stripped her down to her shift, stockings, and garters.
“I am going to tease and torment you and once you go flying, I’m going to couple with you.
” Seeing her clad only in her unmentionables set fire to his blood.
He led her over to the edge of the bed and then urged her to perch there. “Do you have objections?”
“No, but we are due at dinner in under an hour.”
“Then we will be late. When have I ever cared for society or its dictates?”
When she tried to gain her feet, he put a hand on her shoulder and kept her on the bed. “Are you that desperate for me?” Her tone suggested she was thrilled with the idea.
“Yes. Are you surprised?”
“A bit. We just did this last night.”
“When has that ever stopped us from indulging in scandal wherever or whenever we please?”
“Ah, I have missed you like this.” Emotions flitted through her eyes, but it was too dark to identify them.
“That is good to hear.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry I haven’t been available to you like this much since Gideon was born. Life is busy and sometimes confusing.”
“I know. Both of us should have tried harder to make time as a couple.” He was rapidly losing his grip on reality, for his wife hadn’t lost the power to bring him to his knees. “So tonight, I’m making a new promise to you.”
“Oh? How so?”
“No matter how much we both have before us, we need to allocate a couple of hours each day or night that are sacred, just for us.” He brushed his lips over hers. “After all, we are still married.”
Her eyes rounded, and from the faint golden candlelight emotions shadowed her face. “Meaning?”
“I am very much still the devil you married.”
“With a bit of softening at your edges, though.”
“Mmm.” Nicholas framed her head with his hands, kissed her deeply and with as much passion and emotion as he could manage. He wanted her, to claim her body because she was his wife, and he’d missed the closeness they used to share.
“Oh, Nicholas…”
The kisses were frantic, powerful, almost desperate, but she kissed him back, and his world tilted.
As he reacquainted himself with the pillowy softness of her lips, he slid his fingertips along her skin, and the warmth of her was delicious.
As soon as the bodice of the garment gaped, it took next to no time to tug that portion down.
When the fabric of her shift kept her breasts shrouded from his gaze, he growled and delved deeper, yanking, pulling, wrenching, until those full charms were bared to him.
“Dear God, you are as beautiful as you were the first day I bedded you.”
“You were always good with flattery and pretty words.” She put a hand to his chest. “Do we have time for this, truly?” Then she pushed to her feet and into his arms.
“Of course we do, and don’t you wish to draw closer to each other?”
“Yes, but—”
He interrupted her with yet another kiss. Over and over, he took from her, chased her tongue with his and all the while, he brushed the pads of his thumbs over her hardened, pebbled nipples. When she moaned, he rolled those buds from root to tip.
“Still so potent…”
Urgency and pleasure coursed through his body to harden his shaft to the point of painfulness, but he ignored it in favor of concentrating on her. “Dear God, Amelia, I’ve missed you like this. You might be the mother of my child, but you are my wife first, always will be.”
“Now who is the romantic one?”
“Ha. Let me show you how much I want you.” Nicholas kissed his way down her body, between the perfect globes of her breasts, and all the while he encouraged her to sit on the edge of the bed.
Then he continued to explore with kisses, down her torso, past the soft swell of her belly then her mons, encouraging the hem of her shift upward as he went.
The beribboned garters holding up silken stockings had his mind jogging to memories of the other times they’d enjoyed each other’s bodies, when they hadn’t a care in the world.
When he reached the blonde curls between her thighs, he kneeled on the floor, parted that flesh slick with her arousal, and then, after urging her legs wide, he put his mouth on the swelling nubbin that was the center of her pleasure.
“Oh, dear…” A surprised squeal came from her when he suckled that swelling bud.
He couldn’t help but bedevil it with his tongue.
Damn, but she tasted sweet, and he remembered how much he enjoyed seeing her come undone in this way, but it had been a good while.
As he kept her thighs splayed, he continued to work her over, suckling, teasing, tormenting, reacquainting himself with his wife’s body.
Her fingers in his hair as she both held him closer where she wanted him, but alternately tried to pull him away, enhanced his own need.
When she fell over the edge into bliss, the soft cry that left her throat went straight to his heart, for they were all too good together.
“Tit for tat, hmm? Payback for what you gave me last night?” His heart pounded while he came back up her body to kiss her lips again. This time, her fingers scrabbled for purchase at his shirt, but he didn’t know if that was to give permission or to shove him away.
“You would mention that.” Yet she grinned and heat was in her eyes. “Give me more; I haven’t been nearly satisfied enough.”
Dear God, the press of her half-naked body against his hurtled him close to the point of no return, so he put his arms more tightly around her.
“How can I deny you anything?” Standing between her legs, encouraged her legs upward and pulled her forward until her hips balanced on the edge of the bed.
“How much do you love me, Amelia?” He could hardly think through the haze of passion in his head.
“So much. Surely you know this.” The truth lay reflected in her eyes.
“Yes, but a man needs to hear it every once in a while, especially when life takes us away from each other.” Did that make him seem too vulnerable?
Amelia peered at him with her hands on his forearms and her kiss-swollen lips slightly parted. “I know, and I’m sorry. I’ll do better to include you, to make time for us.”
“As will I.” He wrenched at the panel of his front falls. Seconds later, his engorged length sprang free. “I’ve never stopped loving you. And I’m so damned proud of you and how you care for our son.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “So sweet.”
Urgency darted down his spine. Done with words, Nicholas fit the tip of his member to her opening, and with a powerful flex of his hips, he penetrated her body and didn’t stop until he was fully seated so deep into her heat that he didn’t want to find his way out.
When she moaned, he flashed a grin. “I have missed you in this way.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. “Is that the only way?”
“No, of course not.” As much as he wanted to enjoy a slow coupling, he was too far gone in her, far too lost in the memories of them as a couple before their son had come along.
The control over his urges was sorely tested, but he withdrew from her body merely to enjoy the slide back into her passage.
She gave into a full body shiver. “I know what you meant.”
“It’s the damned truth. Never think that I don’t care.” Holding her hips, he stroked into her on a forceful plunge.
“Oh, that feels so good.” His wife looped her arms about his shoulders and kissed the side of his neck like she used to, and that was when his control snapped.
As if he were possessed, he thrust over and over in a mad attempt to join them together, to recommit to her.
Would she feel his earnestness? With powerful strokes that he hoped would make a lasting impression on her, he concentrated on giving her the maximum pleasure that he could.
When he went deeper still, she clung to him, and when he dared to put a hand between their bodies to play with her swollen nubbin, she lost her control.
“Nicholas!”
Her body sagged backward onto the bed, and with her eyes closed and her fingers digging into his forearms, a half-muffled scream left her throat.
While she remained lost in release, crying with abandon, Nicholas continued to claim her, to ask without words if she was happy with their life.
She bucked against him, tried to meet his thrusts, and all too soon, he was tossed into his own release.
As it roared around him, caught him up in its vortex, he said her name and the hoarse sound was a testament to how much of himself he’d given her.
“Amelia!”
Unable to stop himself, he kissed her, pushed once more into her body. The contractions in her core begged him to come with her, and he was powerless to resist that siren’s call. With a groan, Nicholas ground against her as his shaft pulsed.
“So damned good. As always,” he whispered as he lingered, still joined with her and pressed close.
“You never disappoint in these endeavors, Wycliffe.” Amelia collapsed fully onto the bed with an arm flung over her head. A flush of pleasure faintly colored her chest.
He glanced at her as exhaustion rushed through him. “Satisfied, are you?”
“You know I am. Don’t be such an arse.”
A snicker left his throat. “You’re no longer a companion, Amelia, so don’t pretend shocked modesty. You know you adore each time we come together carnally.”
“I do.” Slowly, she sat up while he stepped backward. Then she set her shift to rights, and afterward, she patted his cheek. With mischief twinkling in her eyes, she held his gaze. “What is more, I wouldn’t mind adding to our little family.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “If you haven’t already on this trip, put another babe in my belly, Nicholas.”
As shock and elation moved through his chest, he stuffed his flagging shaft into his evening breeches and then did up the buttons. The hard points of her nipples through the thin fabric of her shift would have him aroused again far too soon. “Truly? You want more children?”
“I do.” When she stood, that twinkle in her eyes became a wicked glint. “Perhaps a daughter? Your very own little princess.”
Already, they had a son, and he’d thought himself the most fortunate of men.
With a daughter, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
“Another child of either sex would please me quite splendidly.” Because he couldn’t keep his hands off her, Nicholas tugged her into his arms, kissed her into breathlessness again.
Pulling away, he said, “That means we’ll need ample time in bed to ensure a pregnancy happens. ”
“Of course.” She gave him a grin that had renewed awareness shivering over his skin.
“As if that is such a bad thing?” One of her hands trailed down his chest, past his abdomen, to linger at his length, which twitched when she traced her fingertips over it through the fabric of his breeches. “And we needn’t have a bed, you know.”
“No, we do not.” Damn, how much did he adore her? “Shall we meet clandestinely in the gardens or the moors later tonight, then, if the weather remains fair?”
“Mmm.” After kissing his lips, she moved out of his reach.
“That largely depends on how well you behave during dinner, doesn’t it?
Also, you promised to talk with Mr. Chapman about his little…
problem.” With a wink, she went to the armoire and pulled out the gown of rose-colored silk he’d requested she bring on the holiday.
“And if you do these things, I might be inclined to do very wicked things with you indeed.”
He forced moisture into his suddenly dry throat.
“You have my word.” And his attention. Never had he been so glad to have a wife more than he was in that moment.
Then, because he could, he dragged her back into his arms, and with the gown crushed between them, he kissed her, regardless of whether it meant they were late to dinner.
The house party could wait.