Chapter Fourteen
They burst into the entrance hall, and Grace couldn’t hold in a giggle as Everett picked her up from the waist and spun her around. She held tight to the back of his neck and pressed herself to his chest. He was firm, even as he made the room spin. Perhaps she was getting carried away by the romance of the wedding. Perhaps she was caught up in admiration of Everett’s unfailing dedication to people. It could be the punch she’d drunk earlier. The gratitude she felt for his help could have contributed. But after days of denial where she’d failed to concentrate and sleepless nights, a wedding was too much. Watching Jane and Thompson, so happy and carefree, made her wonder why she was struggling against what Everett was offering.
Her heart pinged as he eased her down onto her feet. His hands stayed at her waist, steadying her. He hadn’t even been looking at her when he’d said, without regret during his speech, but his tiny glance in her direction had set her heart thudding as it was now. It had planted in her this reckless trust of him.
“We could go to bed…” The words spilled out of her.
“Yes.” His eyes shone.
“What we did the other day…” Well. Not completely reckless. She wanted more. Not just physically, but she had to know he cared about her, not just wanted to ensure he had an heir. After all, the third promise he’d made her swear was to stay if she was with child. “We don’t have to do anything other than that, do we?”
“We can do precisely what you would like.” He moved infinitesimally toward her. “You’re worried about consummating the marriage?”
“I don’t want to get with child.” Breaking her promise wasn’t an option but leaving her child without a mother was an even worse thought. It had been bad enough for her, losing her mother at sixteen. No child of hers would grow up without its mother if she could prevent it.
He spun her into a waltz, his steps pulling her along in time to the distant sound of music from the ballroom. “There are a great many delicious things we can do together without your becoming pregnant.”
Grace’s body reacted with an all-over flush that heated her skin. “Why are we dancing, Everett?”
“I don’t want you to catch cold.” He twirled her around and pulled her close as he led them across the hall.
“Oh, are you proposing we should get out of these wet clothes?” She stopped them in the dance, as they were at the base of the stairs. Their bargain was to share her dowry, but she needed to be wanted for more than that, not just for being a convenient wife.
“Upstairs, perhaps. A much better idea than dancing.” He stroked a hand down her back and over her bottom.
She shifted into his touch and he moved forward. Their bodies were aligned. Even through her corset, she could feel he was still hard, jutting out, and it sent a thrill from her nipples to between her legs that his desire was for her. He was controlling himself for her.
“Yes,” she breathed.
His regard was hot. “Quickly, then.”
Everett turned but didn’t relinquish her hand, and she had to take the steps almost at a run to keep up with him. His quick step as they made their way down the corridor was audible, despite the sumptuously thick carpet. He yanked the door to her bedroom open, pulled her through, then her back was hard against the panels of the door and his mouth was on hers.
His body was wonderfully strange compared to her own. She wanted to touch every part of him at the same time. Whereas she yielded, the sweep of his buttocks was rigid, and his shoulders were broad, warm, and firm. Including that rod that aroused her curiosity and a molten heat between her legs.
She could imagine his fingers brushing against her in private, oversensitized places. His hands were already sweeping down her sides, scrunching up her dress in his fingers. He was going to kneel before her again and drive her out of her mind, beyond reason, and stay untouched by the madness himself. She couldn’t allow that again. He’d said that he wouldn’t claim any of the rights of a husband, but she was going to impose on him some of the benefits of a wife. She reached down and laced her fingers with his, holding them.
“Don’t, Grace.” Everett drew back only just far enough for her to be able to see his expression, two-thirds lust and one-third concern. “Don’t stop now. I have to feel your skin.”
His eyes were intense on hers, too much. Their faces were inches away, and she wanted the reassuring inferno of his kiss back.
“Take your clothes off for me.” She had to see him, fully.
The sides of his mouth quirked up. “As you wish.” He dropped his hands to her waist and stepped backward, pulled her gently with him, backward into the room, then guided her to sit on the bed.
He sat down, his arm brushing hers, and yanked at his shoelaces, then pulled off his shoes and socks in one motion. She thought for a second he would stay and undress there, not quite in her view, and felt a pang of dismay that she wouldn’t be able to watch him properly. Though she would be able to touch, so perhaps she could compromise.
Instead, he rose and turned. Holding her gaze, he shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it onto a chair. Next, he undid his cravat, undoing the complicated knot with clever, practiced fingers. He slipped his braces off and Grace’s fingers itched to follow their fall. One at a time, he popped open his shirt buttons. She watched their parting, revealing a smattering of dark hair and his solid chest. Her mouth went dry at the beauty of the smooth planes of his skin. He was unbothered by undressing, watching her closely as he let his hands continue downward. Whatever he saw in her face made him smile and reach for the fastenings of his trousers. The front of his trousers should have been flat, in keeping with the fashion, but there was a distinct bulge and Grace watched avidly as he pushed down the fabric. He stripped off his underwear with his trousers. She exhaled slowly.
Naked before her, he ought to have looked vulnerable. But he was as powerful and arrogant as when she’d first met him, claiming her for a dance in the ballroom. She wanted to look at every perfect, foreign-to-her part of him at once. He was rough hair and taut muscle, all held in check for her. She wanted to commit every detail of him to memory: the contours of his shoulders, the pattern of hair on his chest, the lines of the muscles on his stomach. Especially his upright male part, his erection. She’d been intimidated before, but all she could think now was how beautiful he was. “You took me in your mouth. Do women do that to men, too?”
His pupils dilated, and his smile was full of wicked anticipation. “Yes.”
Thank God. She coveted everything about him. She hungered to take him in with her eyes, to take him into her mouth, to take him into her body, and most of all, take him into her heart. She wasn’t going to do two of those, however.
He was standing there, all supple lines and muscles with a confident smile, waiting for her instruction. As if he thought she knew what in heaven she was doing, when that wasn’t in the least bit true. She’d had an idea she would take him in her mouth, but looking, that seemed impossible: he was much bigger than could fit. But she’d been resisting the lure of his dares for too long. “Come here, then.”
She reached out as he approached her. Instinctively, she wanted to touch the male part of him that was practically leaning in toward her. Grasping his hip, she drew him closer. Her cheek was the first contact, just a brush with his smooth tip. A slight turn and her lips touched him fully, and Everett made a sound from the back of his throat. Yes. That was what she wanted, and beyond. She pushed out her tongue to taste him. He was musky, with a hint of salt, and completely delicious. What would be most effective? She listened to his breathing for indications. He was aroused, but not enough.
“Put your mouth over the head,” he directed her, his voice strained.
If what she’d been doing so far was lewd, she felt positively obscene as she slipped her mouth over the head of his member. His response was a deep, guttural sound, and it filled Grace with a sensation of dizzying power. She withdrew, then pushed back down farther, and the feel of his hardness against the back of her mouth was unbearably intimate.
When he’d licked her, he’d followed the patterns with long, hard, repetitive strokes of his tongue that had driven her over the edge. She could do the same, with her mouth taking him in and almost out, her lips kissing the tip of his cock, then opening out to encompass it. Perhaps this was why he hadn’t wanted her to do this for him, because it made him as helpless with sensation as it had made her. He was at her mercy, a nip of her teeth could turn this into pain and speed, she was discovering, could make the muscles in his legs tighten as he tried to keep control.
“Fuuck…” He drew out the word like an alleluia.
It sounded like a curse and a blessing, a word she’d heard and girls had giggled about at the finishing school. Hearing it from his lips made Grace burn to know. She wanted to know every secret there was between a man and a woman, in name and in action. Everett would know, he would tell her. On a whim, she lifted her mouth. “What does that mean?”
His eyes opened into slits. “What?” He sounded confused, as though he were within a fog.
“Fuck. What does it mean?”
He groaned. “Right now, it means please put your mouth back on me, immediately. Please.”
A smile stretching out her lips, Grace lower her mouth back until her lips just brushed him. “What does it mean?” she whispered against his skin. Then his hands were in her hair, urging her onto him, gentle and yet firm, and she opened her mouth, allowing him in.
She slipped her mouth over his member and down as far as it would go, touching the back of her palate. It was only a couple of inches of distance, and there was clear space of two inches between her little finger as she held him and the rough curls of hair. But his moan for that short movement was gratifying.
“Fucking.” He was out of breath. “Fucking is sexual intercourse,” he gasped out. “Consummation. Fornication.”
She took him deeper, making a contrast between her lips covering him, the softness of her cheek, and where she was pushing him against the back of her throat. Her other hand crept around to hold his firmly muscled buttock to give her better purchase.
“Oh fuck… Don’t do that,” he said as she took him into her mouth quicker and quicker. “Really, you won’t like it when—”
He tried to pull away from her, but she didn’t let him, digging her fingers into the resistance of his muscles. Even if she couldn’t have every part of him tonight, she would have this part of him. She couldn’t have love, or fuck, but she would have him lose his mind like she had hers. He stiffened, seizing up under her hands and his member swelling harder and bigger in her mouth, before he convulsed. Amongst his incoherent sounds, she heard her name and it made heart ache, even as her mouth filled with his seed. She swallowed automatically, the taste of him too brief for her to have more than an impression of bitter musk.
Hesitantly, she withdrew from him and sat back.
He was watching her with something like reverence, or perhaps calculation. He took a shaky breath, then a contained one. Then he smiled, fully in command himself once again. “Now, it’s my turn.”
A tremor went through her. She would pay for making him lose himself, she was sure. But perhaps that was what she’d wanted all the time.
Everett pulled her to him so they were standing chest to chest, her clothes next to his skin, and Grace felt a pang. She wanted to feel his skin against her. But his naked body was imposing, godlike, as he leaned slightly over her, nuzzling her ear as he reached around her to release the pearl buttons on her dress. With each item of clothing he took off and revealed flesh, he fitted an openmouthed kiss in its place, spreading heat despite the coolness of the room. He created jolts of pleasure, too, lavishing attention on her breasts. When he squeezed her nipple, the pressure sent want searing through her.
As she helped him to finally remove her drawers, his pupils were dark and wide with lust. His impatient hands left the ties and plunged inside her drawers. She felt the garment pool by her feet, but she couldn’t move her gaze from his eyes. She was captured, and he didn’t stop his exploration now that she was bare before him. He went over each part of her body with diligent attention, his mouth and his fingers stroking down. Every touch was greater than she’d felt before, as though her skin was increasingly sensitive. She’d been living every sensation before she’d met him as though through a pane of glass. She’d been seeing and hearing, but not sensing anything like this, not experiencing every touch as a sting of pleasure.
What was worse was it was too intense, as well as not enough, as it had been when he’d gathered up her skirts in the study. He reached around to release her hair, tumbling her strands down as he picked out the pins that held it and tossed them away. Grace felt her defenses fall in the same way.
“Lie back onto the bed.”
A part of her mind rebelled at being told what to do, but her body obeyed, sitting down then shifting backward toward the pillows. Hadn’t she ordered him, only a little time before? He followed her movements onto the bed as though they were held together by an invisible rubber band, until she was lying stretched out on her back and he was poised over her, not touching her. Just looking.
…
Grace was a sensual delight, reclined like a goddess on the silk coverlet. And yet, even with her lithe body laid out underneath him, Everett just wanted to drink in her beautiful face and the smile playing around her lips. The rest of her was perfect, too—glossy walnut-brown hair, curved breasts, and long legs that would encircle his waist as he made her his.
Soon, but not tonight. He would cherish every discovery of her body he made, but he would always treasure her smile best because it had been hidden entirely for so long.
Sitting back, he shifted so he could best please her with his mouth on her quim, leaving his hands free to roam from her breasts to her sweetly rounded bottom. He nudged her thigh with his hand, and when she spread for him, he felt a surge of lust and affection. Then, the revelation of the glistening pink folds of her sex made him want to lick his lips in anticipation. He glanced up at her, and holding her intrigued regard, Everett lowered his head with slow deliberation. Her soft folds quivered beneath his mouth. A gentle kiss revealed that she was soaking wet, as aroused by this as he was, and that lit his need anew. She tasted of musk and woman, and he’d never had anything so good. Despite having come only some minutes before, he was getting hard. He pushed out his tongue and swiped her nub over, her little bead delicately robust as it withheld his assault and moved with it. Repeating the action again and again, he pushed her higher.
When he’d done this against the wall in the study, time had been short. He’d pushed her to climax with determined strokes that allowed her no moment to resist. He took his time to taste her fully now, building the sensations and pressure slowly. His lust so recently satisfied, he had the patience to put aside his own needs, not just his desire to have her, but his hurry to feel her quake for him. He increased her pleasure with solid foundations that would make it all the more violent when she did release. He added in a graze of his teeth against her, interspersing the regular sweeps with playful nips that elicited moans from her. Then he drove her with definite licks forward toward completion.
She mewed, on the cusp of release. Everett withdrew his mouth. Immediately, she made a frustrated sound of protest.
“Say you will stay.” He said the words before he knew that was what he intended.
“What?” Her voice was thick and confused with arousal. She thrashed around, trying to get his mouth onto the needy part of her. His own desire throbbed to see her so desperate.
“Promise you will stay, and I will bring you to completion.” His muscles clenched with the instinct to pull himself over her and satisfy them both in an overwhelming coupling. Instead, he tightened his forearms over her hips, forcing her still and under his control, unlike his own yearnings. They had so little time left, and she had to stay. He couldn’t bear for her to leave. She wriggled and he held his mouth just over her, tempting her with the prospect of relief. He held fast as she moaned.
“Yes. Yes, yes, just please…” Her begging was incoherent.
Everett felt a rush of triumph as he lowered his head and licked her bud. With hard, even strokes that pushed, he forced her over the edge into orgasm. As she bucked and moaned through his onslaught, he held her firm. Feeling her pulse beneath his tongue swelled in him an answering surge of lust.
But even as he felt her pulse, among his satisfaction at her ecstasy, a part of him knew he was a cad. A true gentleman would never take advantage of a lady seduced in this way. Holding her to a promise made under coercion would be wrong, but he would do it. He wanted her, every bit. He’d held himself back, not claiming anything physical, allowing her to dictate the pace of every intimacy. But this, this he had to claim, even if it turned out in the morning to be nothing but a long evening shadow.
When her movements finally calmed, he lifted himself over her to look into her yellow-brown eyes. She was just recovering from her peak, but he was going to have more. Give her more. He stroked his finger down the hair between her legs, then slipped inside. Feeling carefully for the right place, he thrust one finger into her tight passage, eliciting a gasp and an answering lifting of her hips. His hard cock twitched as though it could feel the softness of her. He was aching for the release that was so close and yet completely unobtainable. She grasped his shoulders, seemingly undecided whether to pull him down to her or push him away.
He wanted to keep looking into her eyes. But they were so clear, so trusting, she seemed to look straight into him. He couldn’t hold her gaze, so he let his lids close. The darkness focused him on the delicious warmth of her welcoming body around his finger and under his chest, and of her promise not to leave.
She was tight and slippery around his finger. “Tell me what made you this aroused.” He pushed a second finger deep into her as he ground out the words. It felt like claiming her, so he said it again, punctuated with a solid thrust that took his hand all the way to her slick skin, stroking his thumb over her tender bud in circles.
“I don’t… Oh…” She threw back her head as he increased the pressure against her.
“It was me, wasn’t it? No one else makes you feel like this.” He kept up an insistent rhythm. Beneath him, her thighs began to tremble. “You want me.” The scent of her skin was intoxicating.
She moaned, head thrown back and hands clutching at his back. He wanted to feel her gasp and writhe under him when it was his cock deep inside her, rather than just his fingers. Until then, he wanted her words, even though he knew it wouldn’t relieve the ache. He thrust his erection against her hip, an illicit, pin-sharp euphoria. He stroked himself against her, imagining he was inside her.
“Say it,” he demanded.
“Yes, yes. I do. I do.” A shuddering moan tore out of her. She was beyond herself again, pulsing around his fingers.
Even so, the words overcame him. Just one further stroke against the skin where her body met her thigh tipped him over the edge and into the harsh release of oblivion, spilling across her.
For a few seconds, he felt as though he’d been cracked open. The rawness of their pleasure was like a wound in his chest. Would she reject him now? He had torn a confession from her and sullied her.
Before she could push him away, he rose and fetched the jug, basin, and washcloths from the dressing room. She was languid, relaxed on the bed as he cleaned her skin. A part of him didn’t want to wipe away all the evidence of their lust. But she was so beautiful he couldn’t bear to see any stain on her. He gently smoothed the cloth across her skin, leaving her untarnished.
“I thought you said, ‘without deception.’” Her voice was still hazy from their lovemaking.
“Erotic duress isn’t deception,” he said lightly, as though this were of no consequence. Not talking to her about Peter’s debt, that was deception. Ignoring that his brother’s reputation might destroy her chances of getting Henry back, that was deception. He pressed a kiss to the yielding skin of her inner thigh, then looked up when she didn’t respond. He’d told himself trying to force her would be a mistake, and here she was proving him right.
“You cannot expect anything said under such conditions to be any truer than a tarot card reading.” She didn’t meet his eyes.
Tarot, a prediction of the future. God, he hoped that was what this had been.
“I understand.” He restored the wash things to their place. “Matrimony without regret, remember?”
When he returned to the bed, she was lying on her side, having pulled the covers up over her nakedness, watching him. He lay down, waiting for her reaction. She didn’t withdraw, but she didn’t come to him, either.
She offered only a token resistance when he gathered her into his arms. He wanted the closeness they had found. And deceptive or not, when she was lying with her head tucked next to his heart, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.
…
“I thought you might appreciate coffee in bed, m’lady.”
Grace opened her eyes just enough to see Letty place a tray over her knees.
“Thank you,” she mumbled. There was a heaviness in her limbs and a tiredness that she couldn’t identify for a moment. But then she remembered.
The wedding. His speech. Her sudden understanding that he was trying to keep her and everyone else safe.
Everett and she had spent all night together, he a solid wall of heat in the bed while they hadn’t quite slept. In the early hours of the pale light, he’d woken her by bringing her to climax again, his dexterous fingers between her legs, slippery again, despite his ministrations. Her hand had found and closed around his member, which responded and hardened beneath her touch. When they peaked, her closely after him, it was face-to-face, his tongue stroking the inside of her mouth in a mimicry of the act he really wanted. She’d opened her eyes just before the pleasure had exploded and seen his face inches from hers, seemingly drinking her in.
Her skin warmed at the recollection.
“I brought the morning post.” Letty placed a stack of letters onto the tray and a nightdress onto the edge of the bed, just within her reach.
She couldn’t meet her maid’s eye. “Thank you, Letty.”
When she sneaked a hand out of the bedcovers, the air chilled her skin. Grace wriggled into the nightdress, then reluctantly raised to a sitting position and nodded gratefully when Letty placed a cushion behind her.
“Could you give me ten minutes to drink this, then I shall be ready to dress.” She hoped she’d be ready. She felt like she might never be quite the same person again.
“Yes, m’lady.” Letty bobbed a curtsy and left.
The coffee was strong and hot. She took a sip, then set it aside and picked up the letters, the top letter showing Caroline’s spikey handwriting in the address. She ripped it open with her fingers and began to read.
Her friend wrote that she was bored to tears by sewing and had been banned from collecting even butterflies from Hyde Park. Maurice had gone back up to Cambridge, and that had focused their mother’s matchmaking effort on her only daughter. Grace relaxed at the familiarity. Nothing had changed. No catastrophe had ensued because of her night with Everett. It was silly to have been worried at all.
Caroline signed off with her usual affection and a picture of a stag beetle from her collection. Then, in the postscript: P.S. I have just heard from reliable authority that Mr. Brooker married in June. I thought you should know.
Grace’s skin prickled as she stared at the words. Two months ago, before she’d returned to England, Samuel had married. Looking around for a wrap to cover her shoulders, she found nothing and instead picked up the coffee again. It had cooled and even as she enclosed her hands around the cup, it provided little comfort. When she took a sip, it was watery, devoid of warmth and flavor.
She ought not to be surprised Samuel had married. He hadn’t stood by her when her father had objected to their marriage. But still, he’d been faithless and that hurt. He must have been courting the lady he married, for what, at least a month before marriage? No crying over their broken engagement for him, evidently. While she’d been gray and listless in Geneva from missing Samuel, apparently, he’d been courting someone new.
Hurt pushed up at the spot behind the bridge of her nose, making her eyes water. She closed her eyes to block it out, but that brought the vision of her fiancé as he was nine months ago, the man she’d cared for and could trust.
Grace took a deep breath through her nose. Samuel’s actions spoke very poorly of her judgment. She trusted the wrong men and gave her heart too easily. Stupidly. It was an illusion, made in her own mind, just as it had been with Samuel Brooker. He hadn’t loved her and neither did Everett.
How could she know that this was anything more than wishful thinking on her part? Close proximity to Everett was addling her mind. She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted and chase a meaningless idea about staying with Everett when there were important issues to be dealt with. There would be plenty of time to examine her feelings for her husband once Henry was safe. She had to remember this was a six-week bargain and not a marriage.
Grace’s resolve wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. She kept her thoughts on the solicitor’s letters all morning and ignored the Larksview household tasks that she’d taken on since Everett had started helping with the Chancery case. They walked around the lake after lunch, and Everett told Grace about the gossip from the wedding; thankfully there was no mention of them. She didn’t allow herself to read anything into his actions, either of catching her hand while they walked or the sweep of his gaze down her body. When he smiled at her, she knew it was because he had money to look after the cattle. The honeymoon plans of Jane and Thompson—Everett had insisted they went—signified not his kindness but nothing other than two staff taking a holiday. Even over dinner, she’d kept a semblance of normality as they’d discussed how she ought to respond to questions from the solicitor about Alnott Stores. But now at the end of the day, she was standing in front of their adjoining door.
If she opened the door, that would be it. The things he did to her would drive her to words of love and utter capitulation. Copulation. Consummation.
If she went to him now, there was no way she’d be able to restrain herself. With the things he did to her, she would be begging him. If he was hard and said her name in that rough voice, she would guide his manhood between her legs and let instinct and lust overcome her.
A truthful marriage would be impossible if she allowed her passion to rule. Her aching quim wouldn’t care that he didn’t love her. Even now, the beat inside the hidden place of her demanded him fully. If she set a precedent for going to him, she wouldn’t know whether she was just a convenient wife, an outlet for his lust, or his love.
She walked away from the door and climbed into bed. Her instincts with men were atrocious and not to be trusted.
Under the lonely covers, looking at the ceiling, she made a concession. When the six weeks were over, she would go to him. When their bargain was complete, it would be clear and simple. She would know by then if this feeling in her chest was desire and proximity. Or love.