Chapter Sixteen
Her fingers slid down his throat, toyed with his stock, and slid under the edges of his frockcoat. “I like what your tailor does for you.”
He allowed her to slither off his cravat. “Improves my looks, does he?”
“No,” she said with an impish smirk.
“No?” He looked, as he ever did, for the startling new remark she’d make. Her ingenuity tickled him, but he had not planned to speak on his wedding night of his tailor.
She spread wide the neck of his shirt, then buried her nose against his chest to nuzzle him. Humming, she sent vibrations of longing through his heart, and he held himself back from carrying her off upstairs.
“The man understands what you are.” She kissed his breastbone. “Strong. Muscular.” She squeezed his biceps. “A man who needs a deft cut to his coats and his shirts. Else you would look”—she tilted her head in thought—“lumpy.”
He snorted. “Lumpy.”
“Mm-hmm.” She worked at the buttons on his waistcoat. “Not a good look.”
“Not for any man,” he observed. He felt her naked skin, her natural heat and her eagerness for him. His body hard with need, he tried to focus on the point of her argument, but could not say what the hell it was.
“Many merit it.” She pushed at his waistcoat and caught it between two fingers, then dropped it ceremoniously to a nearby chair. She fired each nerve in his body. If she persisted with this, he would burst his trousers before she ever got near the button or the placket.
Tugging at his shirt, she pulled it out of his trousers and over his head.
His torso bare, his skin itched for her touch. “You are driving me mad.”
She giggled. The chit. “Merveilleux.”
Her hands dropped to his waist—and she licked one of his nipples.
He gasped.
She preened. Her eyes danced. “We should take off your boots.”
Damn. Boots.
“And socks.” She skimmed her lips on his and covered his very erect and very clothed penis with her warm hand. “Everything.”
He was going to eat every inch of her.
A knock came at the far door.
She froze. “The maid.”
He walked around her, shielding her from exposure should the girl open the door. “Yes, thank you,” he called to the girl. “What is it?”
“Sir? The footman Gaylord comes later to take away the dinner. He returns tomorrow morning at nine with breakfast.” Rafe’s servants up on the hill in the main house were to serve them, bringing down their meals and anything else they required.
Inès put her arms around his waist and pressed her naked breasts to his back.
He sucked in air through his teeth and found some voice to tell the maid, “Good to know. Thank you.”
“If you need me…?” the girl suggested.
Inès scored her teeth over the round of his shoulder, then bit him.
“Minx!” He growled at her, but to the maid he said, “If I need you, I will come up to the main house.”
“Very good, sir. Have a good night, sir.”
Hoping he might have a spectacular one, he clamped his hands on his wife’s and stilled while he listened to the girl’s footsteps clickety-clacking on the tile floor.
Then the front door closed with a thud.
“Now,” he said as he whirled on his wife and for the first time caught glimpses of the perfect expanse of her chest. Her collarbones were sweetly hollowed.
Her cleavage was divinely deep. Her breasts—he stored the vision in his brain for all his decades to come—were heavy teardrops.
Her nipples were pale pink, pointed, and he’d felt them, so he grinned.
They were hard as nails. Her waist was small, her hips curvy, her thatch of blonde hair thick.
The rest of her, he was blind to. Mad as he was with desire, he saved the rest of her to admire later when the time came to blend her very essence with his own.
He moved against her and ran his fingers through her glorious golden hair that curled down around her throat and over her shoulders. “Come upstairs.”
“To bed?” She looked as hopeful as a child expecting toffee.
He kissed her quickly. “Let us begin in comfort.”
“No, no. Here. Please.”
“But my darling, there is only that short settee.” He tipped his head toward the item that might fit two round bums.
“I like this room. This fire. And over there is a warm knit coverlet.”
He began to object but she tugged him down, going to her knees on the heavy Axminster in front of the fireplace.
There she laughed and pushed him to his rump, then bent to pull at his boots.
He tried hard, he really did, not to watch her at work.
She, sitting on her naked legs, her thighs bare below her taut stomach.
Her slim hips luring him. Her breasts jiggling.
Her tongue out and licking her lips like a connoisseur of all finer things.
Her eyes dancing, anticipating treats as she got up on her knees again and went for his flies.
“Let me,” he begged her, his hands on hers.
His placket was open in a moment. His cock appreciated the room, and when she marveled at the size of it beneath his small clothes, her eyes widened and her lips pursed.
“Ooh,” she crooned, and sat back on her heels. “About that. I really don’t know if—”
“We will fit. Perfectly. I promise.” He wasn’t even at full mast yet, and he had to reassure her that he was confident he could love her very well. He had not touched any secret part of her, and he had to in order to prepare her for their union.
He brought her close to him, between his legs. She rose and her breasts were right at his mouth and he had to taste her.
He licked one perfect rosebud, up and begging for his mouth. Her nipple was large and soft as eiderdown. He groaned with the pleasure of her silken skin, then he lifted her to sink his tongue into her navel and urge her higher.
She smelled of hot woman and fragrant folds. “Let me taste you,” he rumbled, and she, good woman that she was, arched higher—and he put his mouth to her succulent center. His tongue took her wet desire and licked her until she gasped.
Enough. He’d have more of that for the rest of his life. For now, he’d give her sweetness.
His back against the settee, he braced himself and nestled her securely to him as he laved one large nipple and rolled the other between two fingers.
She shut her eyes and groaned.
He gave her more.
Bare before him, she opened her lips in a beseeching smile.
He ran his palm along her ribs to her quivering tummy over her sharp hipbones, then down to her nether region. There, beneath her lush blonde hair, he parted her heavy lips with his fingers and slid inside.
Oh, God. He closed his eyes, but opened them quickly so as not to lose a moment of this woman who was his to take and care for in all ways.
He slid his fingers deep inside her and heard how liquid she was with want.
She was ready for him. But he knew he had to show her more before he gave her the ultimate.
So he found her hard, hot little mound and circled it with his forefinger.
She bucked, but he crushed her to him and did not relent.
She panted, her fingers raking his bare back.
“You are my wife, my all,” he said as he continued to explore all she would soon give him.
She arched, offering him more, and he knew he had her at a good starting point. He could not, would not, let her go now.
He flicked her clitoris with the tip of his finger and she arched into him. Close, so close. He wanted her to have more, all that he could offer.
He covered her intimate folds with his whole hand and pressed into her, circling, massaging, taking, giving all he was, all he’d ever known about awakening a female’s desire and lavishing it upon her.
At once she ground her teeth. Her nails scored his arms and back. She caught his lips in a breathless kiss and cried out as she shook with a release that told him she was replete, his match.
She buried her face in his chest as the last of her tremors shook her. She lay lax in his arms.
“Do not go away,” he told her, combing the hair from her eyes and smiling into her funny, unfocused gaze.
Reluctantly, she dropped her arms from him as he got to his feet, sat on a chair, and rid himself of his remaining clothes.
Glad for the fire, he caught her ankles and pulled her closer to it. Then he stood and, as his gaze met hers, he saw her eyes widen at the sight of his full manhood.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or comment on the obvious.
Instead, he sank to his knees, stalked her on all fours, and loomed over her.
She spread beneath him, open and willing.
His lips on hers, his fingers in her golden hair, he moved between her thighs and set himself against the entrance to her body.
She was slick and eager. He was ready, almost blind and faint with need. He could slide right in, he was sure of it, but he held himself in reserve. A small measure at a time, he dropped inside her, then retreated.
“Tell me,” he urged her. “Tell me how you feel.”
She shifted her hips up beneath him. “Wonderful. Do that more, will you?”
“I can,” he said on a smile, and took more of her as his own.
“And again?”
“Like this?”
“Oui,” she whispered, and arched against him.
Possessing every bit of her was but a move away.
“Inès,” he ground out as he tried to claim all of her. But he was stopped.
In his heated brain, he knew only to pause. Think. Why would he have to…?
She was a virgin?
“Mon amour,” he said, befuddled.
She cupped his cheeks. “Do not stop.”
“Inès.” What could he say? Ask her now? No. He had not before; he would not now. “You are my fondest desire.”
“I marvel at how that could possibly be.” She clung to him. “Have me, have me, will you please, and make this union real?”
He was careful, honorable. This was his bride and he meant to make this moment all it should be for a woman who had never had another like it.
He pressed his face into the hollow of her throat and slid inside her.
He lost his sense of time and place. His urge to have her fought with his madness to give her heaven.
He was measured. She was his—and as he felt her climb again to take her release, he followed, a flight to a blue-velvet sky.
She was his, marked as his own.
#
He awakened as the sun dipped below the horizon.
The rays streamed through the white lace curtains in a thousand prisms of golden blues. His wife, his prize, his darling, lay exhausted, arms out…and snoring.
He bit his lip, trying not to chuckle. After pulling on his trousers, he grabbed his banyan and tied the sash about his waist. Then he hastened down the servants’ stairs to the kitchen.
There, he threw logs into the huge fireplace, pulled over the cast-iron pot on its brace.
Two buckets of water stood by the washtub, and he hooked one on the fireplace hook and poured the other into the stew pot.
He leaned back against the wooden worktable, crossed his arms, and marveled that his wife was his and had never been any other man’s. The gossips were wrong. Malicious, perhaps even envious, they had been. His own expectation had been wrong.
He raked his hair. The mere thought of her and how she had welcomed him sent flashes of delight through his lust-filled brain.
He had not worried about the gossip. He had wanted her, no matter her past with other men.
He had learned to love her for her honor among her friends, for her joy in each day and her need of him.
Any affairs had never been his concern. As a man who had enjoyed countless women, who was he to question another person on similar actions?
The truth was that she had not loved another man so well that she had given herself away.
“Only to me,” he whispered to himself. Then, on a smile, he repeated, “Only to me.”
The water bubbled in the bucket. He carefully put the lid on it and carried it up to their bedroom.
She was just sitting up in bed, the sheets puddling around her hips.
She was naked and faced him with the smiling welcome of a wife.
The room, bathed in blue shadows, cast her in a sensuous silhouette.
Yet she dazzled him. Her dark eyes dreamy, she lured him with a toss of her long hair and a lover’s pampered pout. “You were gone too long. I missed you.”
“I wanted to get warm water for you to bathe.”
She noted the bucket in his hand. “You think of everything.”
“I am afraid not.”
“Why?” She was bemused. “In what have you failed, dear sir?”
He went to her, threading his fingers through her hair. “I wanted to bring you supper and have that ready as well as the water before you awoke.”
“Come here,” she beseeched him, and drew him down over her to kiss him and press him to her. Her skin was creamy and supple. His own was set aflame as she murmured, “You are all I want.”
He caught her up against him. “I want you with a ferocity I cannot assuage.”
“Never do that. I would die if you never wanted me again.”