Chapter Fourteen
He extended his hand, unable to untangle his emotions from his sexual reaction to her. The two things might well be one and the same. There remained a chance he could restrain himself.
Emily remained by the table, one hand resting on the polished surface, the other still holding the book tight against her chest. Such stillness in her despite that breathtaking smile. He drew close and brushed the back of his fingers across her cheek. Her thick, inky lashes fluttered down until her eyes were half-closed. “Such silky, smooth skin.”
Still with her eyes half-closed, she put down her book.
He pulled one of the combs from her hair only to discover it had been used more than decoratively. The mass of her hair loosened. When he pulled the other comb free, the rest tumbled to her shoulders, held up in place by a ribbon and a few pins he quickly removed. A darker gold than Anne’s silver-gilt hair, thick and soft in his hands. The intimacy unmoored him, edging him past restraint.
He searched through her hair, finding and discarding pins. There were only a few more. Carefully, he freed a spray of tiny violet silk roses, much bedraggled from rain and wear.
While she did not precisely relax in his arms, she lifted her face to his. He stared at her, bemused and aroused, until she said, “Make me forget how badly this could go wrong.”
“If the moon crashes down on us, that’s God’s will. But, I tell you, there’s no better way to die than in the throes of passion.”
A smile appeared on her mouth, and she leaned against him. He kissed the top of her cheek. He was going up in flames, and he embraced the conflagration. He kissed the edge of her mouth next, a feather-light kiss, then her lips, and she was soft in his arms, so soft.
Never mind the tension of the past several days. Never mind his doubts and misgivings. Sheer lust occupied him now. He continued to hold her head between his hands as he walked backward toward his countess’s bedroom. She wasn’t the woman he loved, but she was bloody well the woman he lusted after more than any other.
He kissed her several times as they went, in between whispering words no gentlemen should ever use with a lady. “I adore your mouth,” he said. Another kiss, open-mouthed, with her leaning into him, taking and accepting. “I want my cock in you.”
“As do I,” she said without a shred of shyness.
“You’ll have that.”
They ended up near a wall, and he slapped his hand on the surface to balance them. He kissed her again while imagination and reality fueled his lust. He put his hands on her shoulders, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, and his heartache over Anne ghosted away in surrender, occupying a different space in his heart.
They were almost to her bedchamber. If they’d taken another few steps to the right, they’d be at the door. He took her hand and pressed it over his erection. They’d been here before. Poised to commit the sin of fornication. “I’ll have this in you again. And again.” The words came in a needy rasp. He braced his forearms on either side of her head. “Say it.”
“What?” she asked, eyebrows drawn in, but there was a teasing lilt to the question. She knew. She knew, she knew, and she wanted to play.
“The word for that part of me I shall put inside you.” He leaned his pelvis against her. “You know the word. I want to hear it on your lips. I want to remember the sound of you saying it when you have your mouth on me.”
Her eyes were drugged with passion and curiosity and eagerness, and when she looked at him like that, he considered the options if they learned the bed was too far away. Any of them seemed a likely outcome.
She lay a hand over his groin. “The word for this, do you mean?”
“Yes.” He pulled her close, and her fingers curved over him. “Say the word.”
“Your trousers’ front?”
He laughed. “One word.”
“Is ‘manhood’ the word you mean?”
Oh, but she was saucy. “Not that one.”
She pretended to be confused, and he laughed again, pressing his hips toward her. “Privity?” she said.
“There’s another I wish to hear you say. You know the word. I’ve said it to you before.”
She smiled, and this time there was no stillness in her eyes. The door to her was open, nothing withheld. He had but to walk in. “Cock, do you mean? Is that the word you wanted to hear?”
“You say it divinely.” He was enthralled with the way her mouth moved when she pronounced the syllable. “You cannot imagine how wonderful it is for a man to have his cock inside a woman.” Another kiss, this time to her upper chest. “Most especially inside you.”
“You’re the only one who knows that.”
“Warm and snug and bloody damned blissful.”
“It’s blissful for me, too,” she whispered. Her eagerness banished the bleakness that had lived in him for so long. He maneuvered them toward the door, stretching out one arm to open it. Once it was, and they were inside, he used the back of his boot heel to close the door. He whirled around to get them closer to the bed.
Aldreth could go to hell with his insistence that he could only make Emily miserable. She was his wife. She had agreed, eyes open, to marry him, knowing all the reasons she should not, and was there not something noble in that? Marrying a man despite his flaws, loving him regardless? Even if their feelings were unequal, that did not mean they could not get on. Whatever else was wrong between them, Emily Sinclair had always been his champion.
He brushed the mass of her hair over her shoulder and kissed the exposed side of her neck before he started on the fastenings of her gown.
So many layers of clothing. He wasn’t careful, despite knowing she had almost no clothes here. If necessary, he’d send her maid into Hinderhead to buy replacements for whatever could not be repaired.
With her back to him, he regained some composure. Not enough, though. Not nearly enough. One woman’s clothes were much like any other’s. The basic tasks were the same. He wasn’t an oaf when it came to undressing bed partners in need of such services. He pushed away her gown, separated from tapes and hooks and fastenings.
She sighed, low and replete, the sound of a woman in the arms of her lover. She looked at him from over her shoulder, heartbreakingly beautiful. She wanted him. She always had. Broken nose, unhandsome face, his rough life before he became Bracebridge. All of it.
He put his mouth by her ear as he slid a hand from the back of her neck to the side. “Beautiful.”
She froze.
He kissed her ear. This time, he would be gentler. No anger. No impatience, just a night of sexual play. She tipped her head to give him access. “So beautiful,” he murmured.
“Thank you.”
Was that disappointment? It made no sense, so he dismissed the possibility. She’d heard such compliments hundreds of times. Like all the other men who’d praised her beauty, he meant the compliments. They were indisputably true.
“Unoriginal, I know.” He started on her corset and quickly lost patience. The girl Pond had engaged for Emily would have to deal with the results.
When he dropped her corset to the floor, she bowed her head. Slowly, her fingers curled at her sides. He put his hands on her shoulders and slid them down her arms and turned her to face him. She looked away, then at him, into his eyes with such longing and uncertainty that his heart turned over.
He did not want to see her so vulnerable to him. He did not want to be reminded he had the power to devastate her, as losing Anne had done to him. Another kiss swept away the moment of poignant melancholy, burned it to ash.
“You’ll tell me what you like,” he said, half plea, half demand. “I’m nearly out of my mind.”
She met his gaze with a forthright stare that spiraled him back to a world of pure lust. All else vanished. “I adore everything you do when we are like this.” She draped her arms around his neck, leaning against him. “Be as brutish as you like.”
The request wound him up tight. “Anything, everything you desire.” He grabbed a handful of her shift and drew it up and over her head. The fabric unevenly exposed her knees, thighs, her sex. She only just got her arms up in time.
Bodies were made to fuck and be fucked, but even he, inveterate reprobate that he was, was momentarily stunned. How could he have forgot her unearthly perfection? He stood entranced, lost to desire, to her beauty. He put his hands on her shoulders and slowly drew them down. He stepped in and just to one side and continued to stroke her. “Allow me a moment to properly worship you.”
“Tell me,” she whispered. “Tell me everything.”
He cupped her breasts. “These in my mouth, under my hands, against my body.” He touched the outside of her thigh. “Your legs wrapped around me. My hands holding your lovely round backside. Your shoulders.” He curved one hand around the side of her hip. “You moving with me.” He pulled her close, one arm around her waist, his hand sliding over smooth, silky skin. So warm and soft and curved. He drew his other hand from her shoulder to her lower back. “So soft.” He backed her toward the bed, a four-poster with the curtains tied back with tasseled ropes. She was stunning against that background of grey. “Help me undress.”
He meant that as a question, but the words came out as a demand.
“But of course, my lord.” She began with his neckcloth. He was distracted through the entire process because he kept looking at her body, touching her, bending to kiss one shoulder, then the other, or to draw a hand along her side. At one point, he dragged a chair close so he could toss his clothes on it. At it. Whatever didn’t land on the chair joined her clothes on the floor. He pushed his braces off his arms and shoved his clothes off the chair so he could sit and pull off his boots and stockings. He dropped them on the heap of their clothing. The rest came off quickly enough.
“I want to look at you,” she said when he was nude.
He lifted his hands as he stood. “Look all you like, but I’ll not complain if you touch me.”
There was deviltry in her eyes when she brushed her fingertips across his chest. Her attention flicked downward. “You seem bigger now.”
He dropped his head back and took a deep, steadying breath. “Your powers of observation astound me, Lady Bracebridge.” Those last two words slid across the familiar wound of his heart, then slipped away to live with the rest of his regrets. He took himself in hand and grinned at her. “I am bigger now than when we came in here.”
“It’s—”
“Massive?” His language was shocking. Ought to be shocking with Emily a lady born. Right now, the beast in him didn’t give a damn about delicacy or gentility. He wanted her primed for him, ready to accept all his depraved and pent-up desire.
Her smiled turned arch. “I adore your body. The way you’re shaped. My heart races just from looking at you. Touching you might kill me dead.”
“I’ll die with you.”
She set her hands on his chest. “Such hard muscles.” She smoothed her palms over him, lingering on his abdomen. “You are magnificent.”
He was twice her size and more than double her weight; he was fully, even massively, aroused; and she responded to all that he was. He held her face in one hand. “We’ll fit and fit well.”
“Miraculous.” She was teasing him, deliberately. He adored it.
She tried to hide a smile and failed, then gave up the attempt. “You are impressive, indeed, my lord.” She spoke with such innocence he was briefly convinced she had no idea what she’d done to him. The flicker of amusement in her eyes gave her away, and his arousal ratcheted up. “I want to worship your body all night.”
“All night?” The urge to put her on her back and himself between her legs crashed over him. “I promise you, I shall make every attempt to satisfy that worthy goal. But tell me, please, what would you do during those hours of adulation?”
“Touch you. Kiss you.” Her fingers slid over his belly, alongside his cock. For half a breath, the side of her finger brushed his shaft. The look she gave him set his blood on fire. “Accept you.”
Jesus. He was gone. Absolutely gone. He filled his hands with her hair and kissed her long and hard while he simultaneously moved them toward the bed. The scent of lavender rose from the sheets when he pulled them back. Clean and still warm. He slid into bed beside her, turning and pulling the covers over them in the same motion.
“Tell me what you like, and I’ll tell you the same.” He draped one leg over hers, a hand propped on the mattress just above her shoulder.
“Everything you did before,” she said. “And everything you did not dare.” She curled one hand around his nape, and he fell, fully and willingly, into his desire for her. “All that rogue Mr. Devon Carlisle wants of me. Everything Bracebridge does not.”
Her use of his name stripped him of guilt. He’d reformed, was a man better than he’d once been, but she had never rejected Devon Carlisle. Never once, even though her father disliked, disdained, and disapproved of him. He pressed a kiss to the top of her shoulder. “I’ll grant you that wish.”
“You are generous indeed, my lord.”
He laughed, then pressed several more kisses inward along her collarbone before asking, “Do you like that?”
Remnants of a smile lingered on her lips. “I believe I do.”
“Believe? Is that all? I must search for a spot that suits you better.”
“If you must, my lord. I shall not gainsay you the attempt.” She brought him closer, holding him tight as she arched against him.
He breathed in the scent of lavender from the sheet and a trace of jasmine from her skin. His senses were full of her, of the softness of her, of her curves against him, and of his longing to be inside her. He drew a hand down her body and shuddered with anticipation. His fingers slipped between her thighs, so slick with desire.
She pressed upward, rising to his touch.
“Have I found something agreeable?”
“You have,” she breathed. “You have.”
Beneath the covers, he settled a hand on her hip. She was naked. He was naked and in bed with Emily Sinclair. He was going to lose his mind. “My heart is pounding. Can you hear it?”
She shook her head. He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. He sat back, letting the sheets slide down his back. “There. That’s because of you.” His attention fixed on her breasts. He touched the curves of her and watched, with great satisfaction, her eyes go hazy with passion. “Do you like that?”
She spread her fingers wide. “I like looking at you.”
He leaned back farther and put his hands on his spread thighs. “For your pleasure, Lady Bracebridge.”
She sat up, and that was a magnificent sight. He gazed at her, transfixed, his pulse racing with anticipation. She trailed a finger along his rib where a jagged scar the width of a man’s fist angled slightly downward. “What happened here? I suppose you got that in a mill.”
“I did.”
“Did it hurt?”
“A ribber from the only battle I had no chance of winning.”
She passed a fingertip over the scar. “Were you outnumbered?”
“The Devil Himself hit me.” The Devil Himself was none other than Devil Wilcott, her sister Lucy’s first husband.
Her attention flicked to his face, curious. She’d been quite young when her sister married, and he did not actually know how much she knew about that scandalous marriage.
“He was bigger than I, and a better fighter. I wouldn’t have had a chance at any time, but I faced him when I was far too raw. I hadn’t the science or the experience to come away without a memento like this.”
“You poor man.” She leaned in and pressed her mouth to the scar. Her breath warmed his skin, and his entire being centered on her. He smoothed a hand along her side, then up enough to cup one of her delicious breasts. He brought a finger over her nipple, and she looked up at him with those astonishing clear blue eyes, so darkly lashed. “Do that again.”
“Tonight, I oblige your every desire.” He was harder than felt safe.
Her eyes closed, and her lips parted, and that was in itself an aphrodisiac, no less of an arousal than having her breast in his hand, her nipple beneath his fingers, between his fingers. He tugged and was gratified by her moan.
Her eyelids fluttered up, and once again he was lost in those pools of impossible blue. He set about kissing every inch of her, learning what made her gasp and moan. By the time he was kissing her breasts, he was half-gone himself. For a moment, he feared he was being too rough with her, but she moaned his name and twined her fingers in his hair until he had to lean back to take the edge off his urge to be inside her, now, this moment.
When he had control of himself, he put a hand on her stomach and drew his palm downward. She lifted one knee in a restless motion, and he curved his hand over the back of her thigh. He stared at her body. Long legs, well-shaped and, God, the dip to her waist, the flare of her hips. More curves than he’d expected from so slight a woman. She put a hand on her belly beside his other hand, then slowly, watching him from beneath her lashes, slid it over her mons.
“I wasn’t gentle with you before, and I ought to have been.”
“Why?”
“I promise you, we’ll come to know each other and what we like and how we like to . . .”
She pushed him so he looked at her face. But she wasn’t angry. With a wicked grin, she said, “You are thinking perhaps of a certain word used in the poetry of the Earl of Rochester?”
He tipped his head to one side. “Rochester.”
“I like his poetry better than Byron’s, I’ll have you know.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
“Say the word,” she whispered. “Lord Rochester’s favorite. I want to hear you say it.”
After another pregnant moment, he said, “Fuck.”
She drew a breath, and he was scandalized and aroused that he’d said the word to her, even though she’d led him there and he’d gone willingly. She was seducing him, this night seduced him, and he was eager to be ruined.
In a low, languorous voice, she said, “Will you tell me something?”
Gold curls fell over her shoulders and his heart felt so full, he briefly closed his eyes against the sight of her. But there was no escape from this cascade of emotion that must be kept at bay. With every breath he took came lavender and jasmine and an undertone of Emily. He dared not meet her gaze for fear his eyes would hold even a faint reflection of what he felt. “Anything.”
“How many hundreds of virgins have you despoiled?”
“My God. What kind of question is that?”
She laughed softly, a sound that eased his fear. “Approximately,” she said. “A round figure is sufficient.”
He settled his hips against hers. “Fewer than a thousand, I reckon.”
“Less approximate than that.”
He pretended to consider the subject. “More than none.”
“More than none, you say.” She stroked his chest. “I can’t have been the first.”
He slid his mouth down her shoulder, and when he came to the side of her breast, he explored for a bit. “My dear—” My dear was a dangerous phrase all on its own. What did he mean by that? Dear Emily? Dear wife? Brat? My dear God? He settled on the safety of humor. “My dear no-longer-virgin bride. You were my first virgin fuck.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Nevertheless, it’s true.” He took her nipple in his mouth.
“I cannot think when you do that.”
He lifted his head. “No? What of this?” He slid his fingers along the inside of her thigh. “Can you think when I do this?”
“There are no thoughts in my head but those of you.”
“Believe whatever you like about me, but know my past indiscretions are just that.” He pressed a hand to her cheek until she was looking at him. “Past. The only information you must have tonight is that when I put my member inside you—”
Her eyes widened. “Cock, do you mean?”
“Yes, I do mean when I put my cock inside you.”
She slid her fingers between her legs, another of her devastating smiles flitting around her mouth. “Here?”
Lord help him. He squeezed his eyes shut until colors burst behind his eyelids. When he opened them again, her hand was still between her legs. “Have you ever touched yourself?” His breath hitched. “I cast no blame if you have. I find that arousing.”
“Have you?”
“I have,” he said. More than once while thinking of her. Something he ought not to tell her, so he kept that behind his lips.
“Tossed off, do you mean?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“That’s no answer.”
“Take it as a matter of faith that I am an unrepentant sinner.”
“You are wicked,” she said.
“I shall be wicked again in the future.” He was used to the volatility of the two of them. He recognized the heat and fever that had stamped their previous encounters on his soul, so hurried and desperate. “Answer me this time. I insist. Have you?”
“Yes.” She met his gaze full on. “I have.”
He stroked down her side again and stopped very close to her thigh.
“I thought of you,” she said.
He took away his hand, but his fingers lingered on her thigh. “Show me,” he said.
“Show you what?”
“You,” he replied. “Touching yourself.”
She rested a hand on his upper arm and curved her fingers around him. The echo of her voice centered itself in his belly. “No proper lady would do such a wicked, sinful thing.”
“You—” He elongated the word. “—are a right proper lady.” Even to his own ears, he did not sound a gentleman. Devon Carlisle or Lord Bracebridge, both men were wicked sinners. He dipped his head close. “I want and desire you to touch yourself while I watch.”
His focus stayed on her face so that as she returned her hand to her sex and did as he asked, he saw the subtle changes that told him she was deeply affected. He turned his head to look. Lord, but his wife was a fetching sight.
He watched her fingers and committed to memory what he learned about how she brought her body to pleasure. He’d do the same to her soon. She sighed, eyes closed, and shifted her hips. She wasn’t the least bit shy or reserved, was she?
“Are you thinking of me now?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He had never been more aroused by a single word in all his life.