His gaze searched hers. “The manner of man I am?”
“Yes, the man you are, Elijah Decker. You are good. Kind. Honorable.” She squeezed his fingers. “Sweet. Handsome. Shall I go on?”
He treated her to one of his rarer smiles, the sort that made his bright eyes sparkle and somehow rendered him more devastatingly handsome. “You may go on, darling, but I have a pressing need to finish what we have begun.”
As did she.
“Then finish it, sir,” she told him boldly, knowing he liked the way she had called him sir earlier.
“With pleasure.” He pulled her toward his desk, laying her hands flat on the polished edge. “Stay like this, darling.”
He was behind her, kissing her neck, her ear, tonguing the whorl, making her knees go weaker still. And then, her skirts were lifting once more. Although the summer day was warm and the air in the study was correspondingly stifling, the air on her bare thighs felt somehow cool. She shivered.
Decker guided her legs apart. And then his long fingers were upon her, finding the slit in her drawers yet again. He dipped into her cunny, then slicked her wetness up her seam all the way to her pearl. Painting that endlessly hungry and all-too-sensitive bud with her dew. She jerked against him, moaning.
He kissed her throat in response. “Tell me what you want, bijou.”
She struggled to find words. To find her tongue. To remember the dratted English language. “I want you inside me.”
There.
She had managed it.
He sank a finger deep, and from behind, the angle was exquisite. She was so incredibly sensitive from her two climaxes that she could have spent again from his finger alone. But she bit her lip, staving off such an unwanted reaction.
“Like this?” he asked, wickedness incarnate.
He slid in and out of her, her eagerness lubricating his path with shameful ease.
“Yes,” she gasped when he plunged inside her again, fast and swift. “But I want your cock.”
Today seemed to be the day of crossing boundaries. What was one more? He had shown her there was no shame in the pleasure they shared. And he had awakened her to desires she had never known existed. Speaking plainly about her body and what she wanted, felt freeing. Owning the desires that had plagued her but had made her feel filthy and guilty—likely a legacy of younger years spent with her rigid Aunt Lydia—was a wondrous feeling.
“If my lady wants this cock, then it is my duty to give it to her,” Decker said then, his finger withdrawing.
In the next breath, he had positioned the blunt head of his rod at her entrance.
“Give it to me,” she ordered him.
He hummed his approval as he plunged into her. One swift thrust, and he was seated to the hilt. Each time they had made love thus far had been within one of their chambers. This angle, this position, was new.
She liked it.
There was something about being pleasured in her husband’s study, utterly at his mercy, whilst their servants went about their days beyond the closed door, that made her wild.
His big body surrounded hers, his lips on her neck, her ear, her jaw, as he began a rhythm, sliding in and out of her. Slowly and tenderly at first, thrusts that made her sigh at the delicate manner in which he played with her body. But when she tightened on him and arched her back, needing more, everything changed.
On a guttural groan, he clasped her waist, slamming into her. Fast and deep and hard. She splayed her fingers wide on the sleek burled walnut surface to keep from sliding.
“I’m going to spend,” he said low in her ear.
His announcement hastened her own crisis. Her inner muscles spasmed, and another wall of pure bliss hit her. In two more pumps, he slid from her, and she felt the hot spurt of his seed on her flesh. He collapsed against her back, his breathing harsh and ragged, and kissed the nape of her neck.
Jo closed her eyes against the force of her own climax, still rippling through her, and tried not to think about her husband’s mysterious past or the reason why he had yet to spend inside her. They had time, after all.
Chapter Fifteen
The letter was unassuming from the outside. Plain and nondescript, not a seal or a flourish, no portent of what was to come. Until Decker flipped it over and took note of the scrawl. It was his name, his direction, written in a hand he had not seen in ten years.
But it was still the same.
And he would recognize it anywhere.
Nora.
“Is something amiss, Decker?” Jo asked calmly, unaware of the mutiny festering inside him. “You are looking suddenly Friday-faced.”
He glanced up from his stack of correspondence, which he had—for reasons that now eluded him—requested be brought to him while he breakfasted with his wife that morning. For a moment, he was at a loss for words, his stomach churning until he felt sick. He ought to take the letter and throw it into the dustbin. Or, better yet, rip it into a thousand shreds, then set it on fire.
Tell her, said his conscience. Tell Jo who sent you the letter, and then consign it to the ether.
He cleared his throat. “Everything is fine. I was merely thinking of the Athena. Such a travesty, four yachts crashing into each other at once. I hope to hear how the repairs are faring soon so we can commence our honeymoon.”
Liar.
He soothed his guilt by reminding himself nothing he had said was a lie. It had merely not been the heavy news weighing upon his mind in the moment Jo had asked.
“I do not need a honeymoon,” said his sweet wife. “You know that, Decker.”
He tore his gaze from the letter which felt as if it were burning his hands, taking in the sight of the woman he had married. This morning, she was wearing a navy-blue silk that complemented her dark hair and creamy skin to perfection. His obsession for her had not dimmed. If anything, it had continued to spark and burn. They had made love again last night after sharing a bath, and then again this morning as the sun rose.
“Your patience is admirable, my dear,” he forced himself to say. “But just as soon as the repairs are made, we will escape London, I promise.”
Her confession yesterday returned to him then.
I love you.
Only one other woman had spoken those words to him in his life, and she had written the letter that was still clutched desperately in his hand. His knuckles ached, and he was wrinkling the paper.
What a devil he was. He had not wanted to hear those words. Had not been ready for them. And he had stiffened, frozen in her embrace. She had hastened to correct herself, but he was not fooled. Jo fancied herself in love with him. They had not spoken of it again, and he was happier that way. It was for the best. He did not believe in love. He had been disabused of that fantastical emotion’s existence ten years ago, when he had been little more than a lad in leading strings.
Jo sent him a small smile. “I like it here well enough. There is no need to escape on my behalf.”
He had hurt her, he thought, with his reaction. She deserved better than him. But he was not convinced he could offer her anything more than pleasure. Ever. Hell, he could not tell her what was in his hands, coward that he was. Or banish it from his life as he ought. No, he was going to read the dratted thing.
He wanted to know what Nora had to say, and yet he did not.
“I am glad you are content here, my dear,” he told Jo, before turning his attention back to the letter. “But I insist you deserve a honeymoon. A trip to Dover will be just the thing.”
His heart pounded and his hands shook as he opened it.
Dearest Eli,
Undoubtedly, you will not welcome word from me. I expect you ought to detest me for the manner in which we last parted. I cannot blame either sentiment, as both are equally well-deserved. However, I am writing to you in the hope you will read this letter rather than sending it directly to the rubbish heap.
I would like to beg your forgiveness for my defection. My actions were those of a petulant c
hild, a girl who feared her father’s wrath and who was not strong enough to withstand his threat of severing all familial connections with me were I to wed a man who was not of his choosing. Please know there has not been one day, in all the days between now and the day I last saw you, that I did not think of you.
I am writing you now as a widow. You may not know that my husband, Lord Tinley, has unfortunately met his reward a year ago. Having observed my mourning period, I felt the time was right to contact you and let you know how sorry I am for the events of our past. I hope to see you again, Eli. I never stopped loving you.
I wish I had been strong enough to deserve your love then.
Yours in regret,
Nora, Viscountess Tinley
Decker felt as if the breath had been robbed from his lungs. They burned. His stomach clenched. His reaction to the words, swirling before him, was visceral. An acute combination of rage, resentment, anguish, and outrage filled him.
How dare she contact him, after all this time, and now, when he had a wife, in such a manner?
How dare she tell him she had never stopped loving him?
Fury won the battle for supremacy within. He crushed the letter in his fist and rose from his chair with such abrupt haste, the chair tumbled backward. Decker did not give a damn. He was going to burn this piece of tripe. And then he was going to piss on the ashes when it was nothing but a smoldering heap, just as she had left him.
Viscountess Tinley.
May you rot.
He had not been good enough for her ten years ago, but now that she had her title and her freedom from Lord Tinley and her papa, she thought to contact him?
“Decker?” Jo’s soft, concerned voice tore him from the bowels of his past.
He blinked, focusing upon his wife. Her countenance was strained, a furrow marring her brow. Bloody hell, the past had come rushing back to him with such unrestrained warning that he had forgotten for a moment that he was not alone. He had been so consumed with the need to purge this hated letter from his life.
Tell her, his conscience urged.
But he stood there, numb, his tongue refusing to cooperate. What was he to say to the wife who had told him she loved him and had been greeted with silence? The woman I once believed myself in love with is now a widow who wrote me a letter to tell me she never stopped loving me?
What did the letter mean? Did Nora want to resume a relationship with him? The very thought made him ill. More than likely, she did not know he was married. News traveled slowly to the country, and Lord knew he was not a subject of proper gossip.
“I have just recalled an urgent meeting this morning with Mr. Levi Storm concerning his electric company,” he lied to his wife. “Do finish your breakfast, my dear. I will be home at half past four, as always.”
Without awaiting her response, he turned on his heel and strode from the dining room, leaving Jo and his half-eaten breakfast behind. It was not until he was stalking down the hall that he realized he was still clutching the letter.
He made his way to the nearest room with a fireplace—the library, as it happened. Last night had been unusually cool for summer, and he and Jo had settled together before a fire after dinner. The coals were still glowing red. He tossed the letter atop the embers, watching the edges catch flame and slowly curl together, Nora’s words disappearing one letter at a time.
He should have cut the ties binding him to his past long ago. He owed as much to Jo, to himself. He wanted to be the sort of man who could be worthy of her love. Forgetting Nora was the first step in what would surely prove an arduous and painful journey.
But for the woman he had married, he would do, he realized, absolutely anything.
Jo told herself not to fret over her husband’s strange behavior at the breakfast table.
She told herself that as she finished dining alone, with no companion save the footman hovering about lest she need anything. But as she poked at the eggs on her plate, which had long since gone cold in her inability to summon the enthusiasm it would take to consume them, she could not keep her mind from wandering.
And wondering.
Surely his cool, almost angry mien at breakfast was not the result of her humiliating confession the evening before? He had said nothing of her words after she had corrected herself. And afterward, they had not only made love but enjoyed dinner together and then read in the library before a cheerful, crackling fire. They had bathed and then made love again.
In his bed this morning, he had been the same attentive lover she had come to know so well.
What, then, had happened this morning?
His correspondence—that was the only answer. He had been systematically going through a pile at his side rather than his customary newspaper ironed and laid out. And then there had been the letter he had crumpled before recalling he had a prior engagement.
The letter had been long. She would be lying if she said she had not been curious about its contents. His reaction had been quite unlike anything she had ever witnessed in him, now that she thought upon it. And he had left his correspondence by his plate, most of it untouched.
Misgiving unfurled within her. There would be no more breakfast; her hunger had been effectively banished. She rose and circled the table, taking up the neat stack of his untouched correspondence. And that was when she noticed the envelope he had discarded.
The handwriting was undeniably feminine.
Viscountess Tinley.
Her heart sank to the soles of her shoes. The name was unfamiliar to Jo, but that was to be expected. She had only just come out this year, and she had only studied her Debrett’s as well as had been possible without falling asleep from sheer boredom. It stood to reason she was not familiar with every lord and lady in the realm.
It was not her lack of familiarity with the name that disturbed Jo, however. It was the fact that a woman had written Decker the letter he had run off with. Who was Lady Tinley to him, and why had he been so disturbed by whatever that missive contained?
So many questions.
And no solid answers because Decker was nowhere to be found.
She was sick as she fled from the dining room. Part of her felt as if it had been wrong of her to pry in his affairs. Part of her told her he had left her with no choice after the manner in which he had suddenly taken his leave. The husband who had retreated from breakfast was decidedly not the Decker she had come to know.
Jo tried to calm her madly racing mind as she took his correspondence to his study and laid it upon his desk, along with the envelope. The familiar scents of his study ought to have calmed her. But without her husband in the room, it somehow lost its vibrancy. Not even the naughty engravings on the walls interested her.
Indeed, the absence of her husband only served to haunt.
To mock her.
She had told him she loved him, and he had not returned the words. He was a notorious rake. What was wrong with her, losing her heart to such a man? Why, he had never promised her fidelity. Nor had he told her about the woman he had loved—she had learned that unpalatable truth secondhand. His past, aside from his estranged relationship with his father and his mother, was a mystery.
Was Viscountess Tinley his lover? More importantly—and terrifyingly—was she the lady who had broken his heart?
Jo supposed she had only one place to turn for answers: Decker himself.
Why had she allowed him to simply run off in such haste earlier? She should have been firmer, should have pressed the matter. Being a wife was not as easy a situation as she had imagined it would be.
Jo sighed, thinking it fortunate indeed that she had more business with the Lady’s Suffrage Society to attend to today. The distraction would be necessary and much-appreciated.
Decker arrived at his offices, still at sixes and sevens, and happier than he ordinarily was to see Macfie awaiting him in the vestibule, as had become their custom over the past several years. If his aide-de-camp took note that Decker was fifteen and one half
minutes late, he wisely kept mum.
“Just the man I was looking for,” Decker said, heading to his inner sanctum. “Do come with me, Macfie, and make haste. I have not the time for tarrying.”
That was yet another lie today in what was fast becoming a vast sea of falsehoods. Bloody hell, one would think him no better than his self-righteous prig of a sire. In truth, Decker had finished his rough proofs. He had no meeting with Mr. Levi Storm—at least, not a pressing morning one—and he had nothing to do save review some ledgers from the piano factory, along with a leasehold investment in Belgravia he was not particularly keen on.
He made his way through the busy swirl of the men—and women—in his employ, going about their day. Some lady typewriters had been newly hired and were serving well. Decker nodded as he went, doing his utmost not to appear as agitated as he felt. He had learned long ago that one never showed a weak underbelly in business matters.
Not even with one’s own staff.
Macfie, however, was a different matter altogether. Decker trusted the man nearly as much as he trusted Sin.
Decker realized belatedly that he was still wearing his hat and coat as he entered his private office. He had been too damned preoccupied to remove them upon his arrival. He spun about as Macfie crossed the threshold and closed the door at his back.
“Devil take it, man,” Decker snapped, scowling, “why did you not say something?”
Macfie’s bushy red brows rose. “About what, sir? Yer hat and coat? I thought mayhap ye were a wee bit cold this morning.”
He raised a brow, doffing his hat and coat and throwing them into a nearby chair with complete disregard for whether or not they ended up rumpled and crushed. “Why should I be cold, Macfie? We have nearly reached the month of July.”
Macfie blinked. “I cannae say, sir. Why would ye walk about in yer outerwear if not to ward off a chill? In Scotland, July can be as cold as a winter’s privy.”
He sighed, knowing his man was testing him. It was an old game between them. “This is London, Macfie.”
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