19. How to Make a Man Less Grumpy
HOW TO MAKE A MAN LESS GRUMPY
Guin woke up hungry and trapped. A heavy arm chained her to the bed around the waist and an even heavier leg rested across hers.
She froze for a moment, waiting for the regret, the fear, the need to run.
But it never came.
He was safe.
She grinned and stretched her arms over her head, wiggled her toes, feeling alive and full of life, and… happy?
She laughed. She hadn’t felt this lovely since before the fire.
Bran muttered something and dragged her closer, settled her bottom against his hard shaft and buried his face in her neck. She let him. Because he’d lied, and she would never love a liar, and— She twisted to look up at his scruffy, half-golden face, and she kissed his chin.
“What was that for?” His voice was sleep heavy and rough and skated across her skin like a cat’s tongue.
She shivered. “Because I hate you.”
He lifted his head, looked at her with narrowed eyes. “Why the hell do you sound so merry about it?”
“Because you, dreadful Bran, are safe.” She grinned and moved to hop out of the bed. She had a busy day ahead of her.
But his arm banded like steel around her waist. “Not so fast, Lady G. You said that earlier, too. What do you mean?”
“The curse. I’ll never love you because you lied.” My, she did sound cheerful. “So you’re safe from it. As am I.”
“I’m safe from it because, if there really is a corruption of transcendent talent passed from one generation to the next, it cannot impact me. I’m not related to you by blood.”
“Proximity, I suppose. What is corrupt in me is triggered by positive emotions, love, then it corrupts you on some unseen level.”
“Absurd.” He let his arm fall from her and turned to stare at the ceiling, folding his deliciously muscled arms behind his head. The blankets settled low across his hips. A hum vibrated in his throat.
“I’m not sure. If I distance myself from it, I feel as you do. But I often cannot. Everyone I’ve loved has been ripped from me. I love my mother, and she sent me away. I loved Tommy, and he died. I loved my first husband as my closest friend, and he too died.”
“Foolishness, youth, and age, Guin. Not a curse.”
She wanted it to be true. But what if it wasn’t?
She slung her legs over the side of the bed and one toe touched the floor before she crawled back to him. “You are grumpy.”
He grunted, his lips twisting.
She put the very tip of her finger between his chest muscles, biting her bottom lip to tame the instant lust that soared through her. His breathing slowed, chest rising and falling with almost careful precision.
“Can I make you”—she drew a line down his torso with her fingertip, circled his navel—“less grumpy?”
His brows lowered, his jaw taking on a mulish angle she knew well, but then his mouth broke into an easy smile. “You can try, lass.”
That deep brogue of his tangled her up inside, and she pressed her lips against the hard ridges of muscle that composed his abdomen. She dragged her tongue lower, right up to where the blankets covered his body, where his body tented the blankets above his hips.
She grasped the edge of them, holding his gaze. “How am I doing?”
“Heading in the right direction.”
She was relatively inexperienced. She’d made love a total of three times in her life.
But she wasn’t ignorant. Her shopgirls and guards had made good use of the stillroom and alley behind the shop.
She’d found them folded over tables and on their knees.
And what did she care if they had a little fun as long as they took the right potion regularly. Indeed, she’d envied their freedom.
Well, now she could have a bit of freedom of her own. So she drew the blankets back, revealing the full, engorged length of his shaft, and she straddled his thighs, and she licked him.
“Fucking Jupiter,” he hissed, hips arching off the bed.
“Now how am I doing?”
“Perfect, Guin, fucking perfect.”
“I’m not sure. You still seem rather out of sorts.” She nipped at him.
He yelped, tangled his hand in her hair. “Absolutely I am. Foul mood.”
She set her lips to the swollen head of his shaft. And hesitated. She knew… theoretically what to do, but practically, specifically, she had no idea. No reason not to try, though.
Well, the size of him might be a reason. He’d never fit, not entirely, but…
She wrapped one hand around the base of his shaft.
He moaned, bucked his hips against her hand.
She was moving in the right direction, and it gave her confidence.
She slipped him between her lips, using her togue, to explore his head, the slit at the tip. His fist in her hair flattened, and he cupped the back of her head, and she arched her neck into it, pulling her lips back up his length.
And—oh—he liked that didn’t he. She liked him, too—the feel of him in her mouth—hard and silky and salty, and she played with him as she mimicked what he’d done to her hours ago in the morning dark. Up and down, in and out, tongue and teeth as he grew wilder beneath her, harder.
Finally, he grunted and ripped out of her mouth, spending on the sheets with a curse.
She watched it all, fascinated, detached, as she wanted to be. As she needed to be.
He rolled onto his back, eyes stunned. “Fucking Jupiter, Guin, you’re going to kill me.”
“No, I’m not, and that’s the point.” She slapped his thigh—which was like slapping a marble statue except for the hair scattered across it—and left the bed. “Get up now, we have much to do.” She rang the bell for Susan.
And Bran lurched to his feet. “I can hardly walk.” He stood in a pool of sunlight streaming through the curtains. He glittered a bit, but the glamour didn’t seem to take hold.
“Interesting.”
“What’s that?”
“Go.” She pushed him toward the bathing chamber, and he groaned but disappeared into it then out of it on the other side and into his room.
Guin was rummaging through her wardrobe when Susan appeared.
“A simple day dress, I think,” Guin said. She went to the washbasin to freshen up. Her face, between her legs where she was tender and wet. She’d aroused herself by pleasing Bran. Perhaps she should have made him please her before leaving.
Across the room, the door to the bathing chamber was ajar, and across the bathing chamber, the door to Bran’s room was, too. She could see Bran striding around, his pace quick, his steps languid.
“Your Grace? Your Grace!”
“Oh! Yes, apologies, Susan. I was woolgathering. I’ve much to do today.”
Through two doorways, Bran stopped, studying his hands. No glamour.
“Bring a cloak,” she called out. When he looked up at her, she added, “Just in case.”
He nodded and swept out of her line of sight.
“No, not the silk,” Guin said, studying the options Susan laid out for her. “I need simple, forgettable. And a cloak too. Preferably brown.”
“Brown cloak won’t hide you,” Bran called out. “You’re impossible to hide.”
She stepped into a fresh chemise and corset, and Susan tightened it. “I hid well enough for six years.”
“Did you?” He leaned into the doorway, eyebrow raised.
Ah, yes, she hated him. It sent a thrill right through her. She tossed him a crude gesture, and he grinned and disappeared once more.
“You and his grace are friends now?” Susan asked.
“I wouldn’t say that.” Guin stepped into her gown and Susan fastened it. It was a dull yellow that would be easily hidden behind a dull cloak. “But we’ve come to an understanding.”
“Good. He deserves some happiness.”
“Why would you say that?” He was a duke. He had everything he could desire. Including a secret second life.
“We didn’t see him much before you returned. But whenever we did, he was… blank. The glamour hides most everything, but you learn to tell. A good servant knows. He was tired and empty.”
“Guin!” Bran called out from his bedchamber. “Are you ready?” He stood in the doorframe, his back to her, wearing all black as usual, brown cloak with multiple dusters thrown over one arm, his hair tamed backward and a little wet on the ends.
She knew it felt thick and silky. “I-I am.”
He shot her a curious look, and she turned away, flustered.
“Your hair, miss!” Susan lurched for the hairbrush.
“I’ll braid it.” Guin took her cloak and ran off, and when she stepped beside him, she took his arm.
“We have time for you to do something with your hair,” he said, twisting a lock of it around his gloveless fingers.
“I’ll manage it in the coach.”
“Where are we going?”
“The docks.”
A half hour later, they stepped into a warm winter sun. The air was thick with mud and salt and fish, and Guin blinked at the glare of the sun across the muddy Thames as her eyes accustomed themselves to the light. Beside her, Bran pulled up his hood.
“Your glamour appears dormant,” Guin said.
A few golden sparks bobbed about him, but his sleeves were black, his hands big and calloused, the face peering at her from the hood craggy and beautiful.
His thick, dark brows seemed lighter today, and there was no deep groove between them.
His eyes beneath the hood were the dark green of shadows in the woods.
“Think I’ll keep the hood up. Not taking any chances the Duke of Braxton is seen walking about the docks.”
Guin set her steps toward a particular set of low and crowded buildings nearby. “Would you mind if the duke’s reputation was so sullied? He did, after all, marry Lady Guinevere.”
“The duke has his uses, and outside of marrying you, I’d like to keep his reputation spotless.
The duke is useless to you if I don’t. Besides, no one seems to mind I’ve married you.
You may be notorious, but your father is an earl from an incredibly wealthy and well-connected family.
And you’ve given the transcendent ton something to gossip about.
I think you’ve improved the duke’s reputation. ”
He always spoke of himself as if the duke were separate from Bran, an entirely different person. “In here,” she said over her shoulder, stepping into a building with the words Biira Shipping Company painted in gold over the door.