His lips molded against hers with far more insistence than when he’d kissed her on their wedding night. His tongue raked against her bottom lip, and when she gasped at the sensation, he slipped it past her lips to tease hers. The sensation was captivating and left her aching to reciprocate the pleasure he was giving her. It left her aching in other ways too.

She reached for him, circling her arms around the broad expanse of his back as she did her best to return his kiss. A tiny voice at the back of her head worried that she was doing it all wrong and that he would think she was a ninny, but before she could do anything about those thoughts, he’d lowered her to her back in the soft, cool grass.

A whole new wave of desire washed over her as he stretched by her side, half atop her, and continued to kiss her, nibbling at her lip and trailing a quick burst of kisses to her neck before returning to her mouth. His hand stroked her side, rising to cradle her breast. His thumb brushed across her nipple, sending a jolt of need through her and making her curse corsets, restrictive bodices, and clothing in general. It seemed wildly strange that she should feel more of the heady sort of passion Elaine wrote about and Lady Stanhope had hinted at with both her and Armand fully clothed and lying in the grass than she had in bed.

Armand brushed a few heated kisses toward her neck, his hand gently squeezing her breast and his knee delving between her legs, but then he stopped suddenly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, panting, and planted his hands on either side of her shoulders so he could hold himself above her. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Don’t stop,” she begged him, clutching the lapels of his coat. “Please, please don’t stop.”

He blinked, his eyes going wide. “You don’t want me to stop?”

He was maddening and endearing at the same time. As charming as the respect in his question was, much to Lavinia’s surprise, she didn’t want to be respected right then. Quite the contrary.

“You’re my husband,” she told him, deliciously breathless. “It doesn’t matter for how long. You have every right to ravish me in the meadow if you wish.” She was fully aware that her tone, and likely her expression, were begging him to do just that.

A wicked grin spread across his lips, making her heart beat faster and the maelstrom of need within her grow frenzied. “Don’t tell me that the whole time, through these last few, difficult days, you’ve harbored fantasies of me having my way with you.”

She shivered at the purr in his voice. “You’re a handsome man,” she said. “My friends are all mad for their husbands and the things they do. And after the little we’ve shared….” She paused, unable to resist smiling over his sudden, curious, embarrassed look. “That can’t be it,” she said. “I know there’s more.”

“There’s so much more,” he said, lowering himself enough to pull a long, tender kiss from her lips. “But I was worried you wouldn’t want it, that you’d be frightened or put off. I didn’t want to start this whole thing by terrifying you.”

“I promise not to be terrified,” she said, moving her hands down to unbutton his coat. “As long as you promise not to leave me in the dark about anything.”

A brief, uncertainty flashed through his expression, and for a moment, the feeling that he was keeping something from her returned. But it was fleeting. As soon as he lowered himself so that their bodies came into full contact from chest to hips, and as soon as his mouth covered hers once more, kissing her with a need that left her shivering, all other thoughts were forgotten.

For a second time, he stopped at exactly the moment she didn’t want him to, when her body was tingling with excitement. But when he rocked back, balancing on his knees and pulling her to sit with him, it was to say, “If I were twenty years younger, I’d take you right here in the grass. But the gamekeeper’s cabin is right there, and I happen to know for a fact there’s a bed inside.”

“Will the gamekeeper mind?” Lavinia asked as he helped her to her feet.

“I suppose he would if I had one,” Armand said, taking her hand and leading her to the cottage door. “I don’t know what happened to the last one, and I haven’t bothered to hire a new one.”

“You really should,” Lavinia said as he fetched a key from the top of the doorframe, then unlocked the door. “He would prevent your game from being poached and provide you with food for—”

Her advice was cut off as he pushed open the door, looped an arm around her waist, and swung her inside. The cottage was a bit musty and had a feeling of disuse, but that was all the assessment Lavinia had time for before Armand closed her in an ardent embrace and slanted his mouth over hers.

It was like being carried away by a whirlwind of instinct. Lavinia had never found herself in a situation of such sensual potency, and while her lack of experience should have made her confused and clumsy, the need to be as close to Armand as possible overrode everything else. She fumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat as he picked at the impossibly numerous buttons of her bodice. All the while, they stepped blindly through the front room of the cottage toward what she assumed was the bedroom, stopping for kisses every few feet. In the process, she nearly stumbled over a chair. She yelped in surprise, and Armand caught her, clutching her tight.

“We could do this the wild, romantic, and potentially accident-prone way and continue to undress each other blindly while kissing,” he panted, humor lighting his eyes. “Or we could choose the far less exotic path of walking calmly into the bedroom, undressing without each other’s help, and meeting in the bed already fully naked.”

Lavinia shivered at the mere thought of being naked with Armand. She hadn’t been naked with anyone since she was a child with a maid helping her bathe. Thus far, they’d made love in their nightclothes. “Which would be faster?” she asked, eyes wide with expectation.

“Probably undressing ourselves, since we’re likely to get distracted if we try to undress each other,” he said.

She glanced down at his unbuttoned coat and half-unbuttoned waistcoat, but it was the bulge in his trousers that caught her eye. She bit her lip, partially eager to explore that part of him, but partially certain she’d do something utterly ridiculous with him and ruin the delicious mood.

“We’ll undress ourselves then,” she said, glancing up to meet his eyes.

There was so much heat in his gaze that she almost rethought her decision, just so she could see his expression as he peeled off her clothes. “Good choice,” he said. “But first….”

He pulled her into his arms, planting one more long, wet kiss on her mouth. By the time he let her go, Lavinia wasn’t certain she would be capable of movement, let alone working open the myriad buttons that kept her constrained in her clothes. She wouldn’t have moved at all if Armand hadn’t stepped away first, taking her hand and leading her into the bedroom.

Like the rest of the cottage, the bedroom had a distinct feeling of abandonment. There was a bed, but it wasn’t made, and a puff of dust swirled up from the mattress when Armand tested it with a firm pat. Lavinia continued with the process of climbing out of her clothes all the same, as certain that Armand would think of something as she was that it didn’t matter what sort of surface they had available, as long as she could continue to feel the magnificent stirring inside of her. As it happened, Armand found a pile of neatly-folded and relatively clean blankets and quilts in the wardrobe. As Lavinia shrugged out of her bodice and set it aside, going to work on her skirts, he draped several layers of blankets over the mattress.

With that done, he undressed. Lavinia’s pulse shot up as she watched the layers of his clothes come away out of the corner of her eye. She cursed her tendency to tremble when overcome with emotion as she loosened her skirts and stepped out of them in one go, leaving a pile on the floor.

She had just managed to unhook her corset and toss it aside when Armand stepped up behind her and circled his arms around her. She gasped as his hands spread across her stomach under her chemise, then broke out in tingles at the sensation of his completely naked body against her back. His staff was hard and stood upright as it pressed against the small of her back.

“I got impatient,” he growled against her ear, sliding one hand up to cup her breast and the other down to pluck open the drawstring of her drawers. As soon as they were loose, his fingers delved into the curls between her legs.

“Dear heavens,” she panted, reeling with the sensuality of the way he touched her.

“Please tell me this feels good,” he said, kissing her neck and fondling her in more places than her over-sated senses could keep track of. “Because I intend to do this frequently if it does.”

“It does,” she echoed.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, shifting his hands so that he could catch her chemise and lift it over her head.

Once that had been discarded, he smoothed his hands down over her hips, pushing her drawers and stockings down with them. It took a moment of completely unromantic wriggling to kick them aside, but once they were gone, he spun her in his arms until they were face to face, body to body. Lavinia let out a tremulous sigh as he pulled her into his arms, holding her back with one hand and cradling her backside with the other. There was nothing between them, nothing at all. His thick staff was hot against her belly, but she was afraid to peek at it.

He tilted her head up for a kiss, but as sweet as that was, when he leaned back to see what she thought, the only thing that burst from her mouth was, “We’re naked.”

He laughed, lines crinkling around his eyes and joy filling his expression. “We are,” he said. “Fortunately, there are a lot of very enjoyable things we can do in this state.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

He bent to kiss her again, his tongue sliding along hers in a slow, heady rhythm that instantly brought other things to mind. Like the way he’d felt inside of her the night before. The memory had her body instantly begging to feel that invasion again.

For a moment, Lavinia thought she was going to get what she wanted. Armand picked her up, and she instinctively wrapped her legs around him. That brought the part of her that wanted attention right up against to the part of him she wanted attention from. She was on the verge of following impulse and wriggling against him when he walked two steps to the bed before setting her down in the nest of blankets.

“If I do anything you don’t like,” he said as he settled between her legs, tossing one blanket over top of them to block out the slight chill in the air, “let me know. I’ll stop anything you don’t want.”

“And what if I want it all?” she asked, raking her hands up his sides and digging her fingertips into his back.

He laughed, the sound rumbling through her, and kissed her neck. “Darling,” he said, “you don’t know half the things that are possible, in spite of what your friends might have told you.”

“I don’t?” Her heart raced and every part of her wanted to encompass every part of him.

“No.” He kissed his way to her collarbone, then lower. “But after a while, if you find you want to explore, I am perfectly willing to indulge any fancy that might take you.”

Her mouth fell open at the underlying wickedness of his statement. Her mind couldn't even fathom what sort of naughty things he was implying, but the rebellious part of her wanted to find out.

Even those thoughts were cast aside when his mouth reached her breast and closed over her nipple. She let out a long moan of pleasure as he licked and suckled her. At last, the implications of everything her friends had whispered about seemed fulfilled. His mouth was magical as it worked her nipple into a hard point. He teased her other breast with his hand, sending electric sensation soaring through her. Every touch and kiss increased the ache in her core and made her feel more and more as though she was at his mercy. Strangely enough, she loved the sensation, loved feeling as though she was his to play with.

“If I had known you would be so sweet,” he murmured as he moved to treat her other breast to the same delicious sensations as the first, “I would have bedded you this way on our wedding night. I wanted to, you know.”

“You did?” she managed to squeak out.

“Yes,” he confessed, trailing his fingers over her belly and lower. “I wanted to do all sorts of things to you then, and last night, and this morning.”

“Why didn’t you?” she panted as his fingers delved into her curls once more.

“We hardly know each other, remember? We are mere acquaintances who were maneuvered into a loveless marriage by conniving friends and family.”

He brushed over her clitoris as he finished, causing Lavinia to arch into his hand. At the same time, he closed his mouth over her breast, nipping at her nipple with his teeth, then sucking. The burst of pleasure sent Lavinia flying and brought her very close to what felt like an explosion. The only thing that stopped her from shattering was Armand’s change of position. He inched down, disappearing under the blanket covering them.

“What are you doing?” she asked, laughing excitedly.

A moment later, his hands gripped her knees, pushing them far apart. She gasped at the sensation of being spread and gripped the blankets. He kissed her inner thigh, and she would have gasped again if she’d had any air left in her lungs. It was maddening to not be able to see him or what he was doing. All she could see was the mound of him under the blankets below her waist and her breasts, the nipples reddened and taut, where the blanket had been pulled low enough to expose them.

Then she felt his hands slide up her thighs and right into the heat between her legs. She cried out at the sensation as he traced her opening, then teased a finger inside of her. Her fists tensed in the blankets as he stroked her inner walls finding the most delicious spot inside of her and working it.

“Armand,” she moaned, not sure if it was a plea or a prayer.

He answered with a throaty laugh that tilted her even closer to the edge. His fingers continued to play, to part her in delicious ways. He kissed her thighs higher and higher, making the most unnerving noises of pleasure, until his mouth reached the apex of her sex, and he groaned in delight.

He wasn’t the only one. She let out a wanton moan as his tongue repeated what his fingers had done. The pleasure that had been building inside of her swelled to unbearable intensity. He had barely begun to stroke her clitoris with his tongue when she came apart with a powerful burst like sunlight that tipped into throbbing waves of pleasure. He groaned in victory and slipped two fingers inside of her, intensifying everything she was feeling.

He pushed the covers back as her body pulsed with pleasure, catching her with what she was sure was a contorted expression of ecstasy. “God Almighty,” he growled, watching her as he moved his fingers inside of her, extending her climax. Her whole body was exposed to his view as she was overcome, and only as the sensation began to settle did it dawn on her he might enjoy the sight.

A feeling of utter bliss filled her as Armand withdrew his fingers and shifted above her. She sucked in a breath, her heavy-lidded eyes popping open as he thrust inside of her. There was no pain, only the amazing feeling of being stretched and filled by him. And unlike before, there was nothing careful or methodical about the way he thrust in her. He was just on the other side of control, moving with a measure of desperation inside of her. Part of her wondered if she should be frightened by his frenzy after all, but she wasn’t. It felt so unbelievably good to be taken that way, in spite of how big he was, that she was crying out in time to his thrusts and speeding toward another release herself in no time.

At last, something switched within him. Lavinia could feel his body tense as his thrusts became even more urgent. He gripped her backside, lifting her off the bed and thrusting at a different angle. That was enough to send another wave of orgasm ripping through her. Her body clenched his, and within seconds, he groaned and tensed all over. From there, his thrusts slowed and softened until he had no energy at all. He flopped over top of her, his body still inside of hers, panting and hot.

“Yes,” she gasped for breath along with him, closing her arms and legs around him to keep him joined with her as long as possible. “I believe that’s what my friends were talking about.”

His panting shifted to laughter—light, joyful laughter. He extracted himself from her, rolling to the side and collapsing onto his back. Lavinia snuggled against his side, ignoring how blazing hot she was and how sweaty they both were.

“So you don’t hate me now?” he asked, stroking her back lightly.

“Hate you?” She propped herself on one arm to look down at him so she could gauge whether he was serious.

“For being a lustful, old roué and having my way with you.”

Her brow rose. She couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “You’re welcome to have your way with me any time you please,” she said, laughing, then snuggling by his side once more.

“Good,” Armand said, hugging her close and closing his eyes. “Then perhaps I shall find it in my heart to forgive your mother for her machinations after all.”

Lavinia made a disgusted sound as she settled against her husband’s side, fully intending to sleep for a bit. “Don’t mention my mother at a time like this.”

“Never,” he agreed, then let out an exhausted breath.

Lavinia smiled in spite of the mention. Perhaps she would have to forgive mother as well.

Armand floated in and out of sleep, happy as a clam. A not-so-silly part of him mused that he might just be falling in love. He wasn’t debauched enough to believe it was merely Lavinia’s sensuality that attracted him. She’d driven him to new heights of pleasure, true, but it was the way she made him feel so accepted afterwards, the way she snuggled with him as they napped to recover from the exertion, that left him feeling as though he never wanted to leave the musty gamekeeper’s cottage. No matter what course his life took, no matter what duties were thrust upon him or what changes his life was forced to undergo, she accepted him. Acceptance was a powerful aphrodisiac.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered to her after they’d spent an hour dozing. “We’d better find the horses before they run back to the stable and set everyone to worrying.”

Lavinia replied with a wordless grumble, then stretched her way out of sleep. She was simply gorgeous in every way imaginable. Whether it was the sweetness of her half-asleep smile as she nodded and pushed herself to sit, or the erotic beauty of the way she’d looked as she came earlier, Armand had a feeling he would never get tired of looking at her. He would never get tired of making love to her either, and if not for the nagging problem of the horses roaming free, he would have indulged a second time.

As it was, they tumbled out of bed and stretched the languidness away as they picked up their scattered clothing and got dressed. He would have preferred a long bath after love-making like that, or at least a wash with a sponge and jug of water. They could change as soon as they got back to the house, though. It wasn’t as though they had guests or anything.

They walked out of the gamekeeper’s cottage hand in hand. Armand made a note to ask Bondar to send someone down to clean the cottage and to keep it fresh, just in case he and Lavinia found themselves in need of a getaway some other time. Fortunately for them, both Mozart and Kitty were nearby, munching on fresh grass in the meadow. It didn’t take long to call them over, but rather than helping Lavinia to mount Kitty, he had her ride with him atop Mozart while leading Kitty back to the stable.

But when they reached the stable, Armand was surprised to find Dashiell busy rubbing down three unfamiliar horses.

“What’s all this?” he asked as he helped Lavinia dismount, then climbed down himself. He led Mozart and Kitty into the stable, where Dashiell’s assistant came to get them.

“Guests, my lord,” Dashiell said with a frown. “They arrived about an hour ago.”

“Guests?” Lavinia asked. She glanced to him in question.

Armand shrugged and frowned. “Thank you, Dashiell.”

He nodded to the groom, then took Lavinia’s arm to escort her up to the house.

“We’re in no condition for guests,” she said as they walked at a brisk pace. “Are you expecting anyone?”

“No.” Armand clenched his jaw and tried to imagine who would show up at Broadclyft Hall unannounced. It couldn’t be Lady Prior or any of his friends. They were idiotic enough to coerce him into marriage, but they were also smart enough to know not to follow him home to cause more trouble. Besides, none of the three horses belonged to anyone he knew.

“Bondar, what’s this about guests?” Armand asked as Bondar opened the door for them on their return.

“They’re in the sitting room, my lord,” Bondar began, his stern face even more foreboding than usual. “I thought to bar them from entering, but your cousin has a right—”

“Ah, Dr. Lord Pearson Helm,” a sharp voice called out from the side of the main hall where the sitting room was located. “You’re back from whatever romp in the woods you’ve been on.”

Armand clutched Lavinia’s arm tightly and turned to face the familiar voice. There, standing in his front hall, looking as smug as a badger, stood Theodore Shayles. Shayles’s toady, and Armand’s cousin, Lord Gatwick, stood to one side, hands behind his back, staring up at the artwork in the hall that might have been his with a blank expression. Worse still, none other than Dr. Miller stood on Shayles’s other side, looking as though it were Christmas and he was about to be served pudding.

“Get out of my house, Shayles,” Armand said, instantly furious. He stepped slightly in front of Lavinia, shielding her from the unwanted guests. “You’re not wanted here.”

“No?” Shayles asked, all false innocence. His cold, blue eyes practically glittered with malice, and his pale hair made him look as washed out as a menacing ghost. “Not even when we’ve come to return something you’ve lost?”

Armand scowled and opened his mouth to order Shayles to leave once more, but Shayles produced a thick envelope on pure white stationery edged with berry red, holding it up with an evil grin. Winterberry Park stationery. It was the letter his friends had sent to Gladstone.