He felt…victorious. Hopeful. And alive. So very, painfully alive.
Just the way she had always made him feel, only amplified.
Summoning all his restraint, he ended the kiss, breathing harshly as he gazed down at her lovely, upturned face. “I am going to make you come until you cannot move or think. Until the sun comes up. But not in the goddamn library, woman. Come with me?”
Courage, old chap.
He took a step in retreat, putting distance between them. His hands left her. Her arms disengaged from around his neck. If she wanted to deny him, here was her chance. Even if it would bloody well kill him.
Christ, but she was glorious. A goddess in her own right, commanding and elegant, her fiery curls still trapped in an elegant coiffure, her gown modest yet becoming. The only sign she had just been kissed breathless was her swollen mouth and the pink in her cheeks.
For a heartbeat, he was afraid she was not going to answer. Or, worse, that she was going to deny him, deny them both. But then she extended her hand to him. An olive branch, palm up.
“Yes.”
One word. And from her lips, it was everything.
He laced his fingers through hers. “Come.”
Sidney led her from the library, fully prepared to glare at any gaping servants. There were none under foot. Which was just as well. They ascended the stairs together, holding hands. By the time they reached his chamber, he was desperate for her. But she was every bit as eager.
They crossed the threshold as one, slamming the door in haste behind them, hands on each other. Making short work of garments. Kissing. Touching. His lips found hers as he plucked open the line of buttons on her gown, sliding each one from its moorings with dedicated precision. She pushed his jacket off his shoulders.
They toed off their shoes while sucking each other’s tongues. Her gown was a silken pool on the Axminster as he kissed his way down her throat. Fuck, her skin was smooth and creamy. Her scent was exotic and intoxicating. The scent that had kept him awake on so many nights when he had lain alone in the darkness, and even when he had not been alone but had been wishing the woman in the bed beside him had been her instead.
He nibbled on the cord of her neck, pleased when he wrung a moan from her. She tore at the buttons on his waistcoat, and he helped her to undo them. To shrug it away. Her dainty fingers found the knot of his necktie next, plucking, pulling. And he paid similar court, untying the knot of her petticoat and tournure, sending them to the floor. Finding the knot on the laces of her corset.
There was something delicious about divesting Julianna of her layers, removing all the boundaries between them. He wanted her naked and wanton and wicked. He wanted her desperate and voracious and his to do whatever he wanted with. He sucked on her throat, hard, knowing he would likely leave a mark.
She would see it in the morning and remember this delicious frenzy. Recall the man she had married. And he would see it too, scarcely covered up with pearl powder at the breakfast table, and remember in vivid detail everything that was about to pass between them.
He untied the knot. Her corset loosened. He undid the hooks. The last one came undone and her corset slipped to the floor, joining the pile of their other discarded clothes. His necktie was gone. Her fingers were on the buttons of his shirt next. Plucking them away, one by one as he cupped her delicious breasts through the thin linen of her chemise. There was scarcely anything separating them now. Her nipples were eager buds, prodding his palms.
Paradise.
That was what this was. He forgot all the reasons why he should maintain a necessary distance between them. Why he should not simply give in to the desire threatening to consume him. She was all he had ever wanted, and she was his wife.
His shirt disappeared. He dipped his head and sucked a nipple through her undergarment, drawing on it until she moaned. Her fingers were on the fall of his trousers now, plucking, opening. His cock was rigid, springing forth. When she took him in hand and stroked from root to tip, he groaned, pushing into her touch, needing more.
He kissed his way back up her neck, to her ear. “I want you.”
“Sidney.” She moaned when he bit her earlobe, and her head fell back, reminding him he had to get rid of all those bloody hairpins keeping the fiery beauty of her hair hidden. “I cannot think when you are touching me.”
That makes two of us.
A tempest. That was what she was in his life: a storm, a whirlwind. Uproar and tumult.
Danger.
But danger had never felt so good. She ran her clasped hand up and down his shaft, her thumb finding the mettle seeping from his tip and swirling it over the head. His hips pumped. He found her mouth. Kissed her as her hand continued to work its wicked magic. Until his ballocks tightened, the ache growing.
Only then did he tear his lips from hers. “Bed. Now.”
Sentences were beyond him. It hardly mattered. His terse words had their intended effect. Her eyes went wide, those endless blue pools he had dreamt about so many times stormy and deep. Dark with desire.
Their past was tangled and complicated and painful as hell, but none of that mattered when they were in the bedchamber. He shucked his trousers. She whisked her chemise over her head. Her drawers were the last to go, until she was in nothing but her stockings. When she would have removed them, he stopped her.
“Leave them.”
There was something unspeakably erotic about the sight of her legs encased in ivory silk. Damnation, there were embroidered peacocks on her ankles. She still loved birds.
And he still loved her. The realization slammed into him, hitting him in the chest, constricting his heart like a fist. He tamped down the feelings and moved them to his bed. Later, there would be time to unpack that unwanted valise.
She fell to the bed on her back, thighs open in welcome. He took a moment to admire the sight of her—all lush curves, peaches and cream, stocking-clad legs gorgeously spread, the copper curls on her mound, the pink glistening flesh of her cunny. Hell. He was a starving man. She was the feast.
Sidney was upon her in the next breath. Between her legs, poised to enter, pressed against her center. He ran his cock along her slit, coating himself in her wetness, groaning at the sensation. His body roared with the need to be inside her, but the rest of him wanted to prolong this exquisite torture. To make it last.
She was whispering his name. Writhing beneath him, bucking her hips. So responsive. As desperate for him as he was for her. It had never been like this for him with another, and he knew now that it never could be. He did not want anyone else. All he wanted was her.
All he had ever wanted was Julianna.
“Tell me what you need,” he said, rubbing the head of his cock over her swollen pearl.
“You. Always you.” There was an undercurrent in her breathy voice.
Anger? Resentment? Resignation?
He wanted more from her. Sidney kissed her shoulder. Dragged his mouth along her collarbone. Lower. Between her breasts. Sucked the tip of each one into his mouth, all while working his aching cock over her hungry, slick flesh. He bit her nipple lightly, grazing the distended bud with his teeth. She rocked against him, the keening cry bursting from her making him suck harder, flick his tongue over her.
“You have such pretty titties, chérie.”
He drew the peak into his mouth once more, savoring her, then released it with a pop. They were not just pretty—they were perfect. Everything about her was perfect—except the past. But he would leave that where it belonged for tonight.
Her hands were on him, caressing. Nails raking over his shoulders, fingertips caressed a path of fire over his chest, his abdomen. When he sucked her other nipple, she thrust against him, her caresses ghosting over his lower back. Finding his arse. Urging him on. He liked the way those dainty fingers of hers bit into him.
In fact, if she wanted to take control, he was going to let her.
Sidney paused in the act of worshipping her gorgeous breasts and
rolled them as one, until he was supine, and she was straddling him. He caressed her waist, then reached between them, cupping the delicious weights of her breasts. He rolled her erect nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, then tugged both at once.
She cried out, rubbing her slit over him.
Her dew drenched his aching cock, and he had never wanted to slide inside her more. But there was something wrong. Her hair was still trapped in that damned Grecian braid of hers, coiled behind her head.
“Your hair,” he managed thickly. “Take it down.”
This sensual battle of theirs had him on the edge. When she did not immediately oblige him, he tortured the peaks of her breasts some more, tweaking them, rolling them between his fingers.
She gasped, arching into his hand, and rocked over him again, finally giving him what he wanted when she reached up and plucked the pins from her hair. Her gaze held his as the heavy copper braids keeping all that rich loveliness confined dropped. Pins scattered everywhere. On his bed. On the floor.
Sidney didn’t give a fuck. He was mesmerized by the grind of her cunny over his cock, the sight of his hands on her creamy breasts, her fingers making short work of the braid, sending curls spilling down her back, around her shoulders.
Her hair was long. So long that when she arched her back to rock over him again, it trailed over his thighs. He swallowed down a surge of rampant lust and forced himself to release her breasts, skimming his palms down the seductive curve of her waist. If she kept writhing on him as she was, he was going to come all over her.
“Put me inside you.” His words were ragged. Almost guttural.
Sidney’s body was smoldering. His cock throbbed and his ballocks ached. He caressed her hips, watching as she raised herself and took his cock in a firm grip. His eyes almost rolled back in his head. He clenched his jaw, held his breath.
Control, old chap. Control.
Slowly, tentatively, she guided him to where he belonged. The tip of his cock was bathed in the hot silk of her cunny. And then she sank down on him, taking him inside her, so deep inside her.
Yes.
Hell yes.
Yes in every bloody language that existed and all the ones that didn’t, too.
The feeling was exquisite. She was tight, clamped on him so deliciously he had to grind his molars to stave off the need to thrust. But he wanted her to do what she wished to him, to set the pace. The angle was perfection, as was Julianna, assuming control. Taking her passion. Taking him.
“Sidney.” She moaned his name as she began to move at last, up and down on his shaft. “Oh God, Sidney.”
“Give it to me. Surrender.” He lifted his head as she fucked him and caught one of her nipples in his mouth, sucking.
“I will…never…surrender.” She was breathless, the denial emerging from her in pants.
“We shall see about that,” he growled against her silken skin.
A flood of wetness bathed his cock, and she tightened even more. She rode him, moaning, balancing herself on the bed and offering him her breasts at the same time. In and out, up and down.
It was madness.
She was glorious.
A storm, consuming him, capturing him. A tempest. His tempest.
He could not remain still any longer. His hips jerked off the bed as he met her thrusts. Deeper. Higher. He turned his attention to her other nipple, biting it, then sucking hard.
She convulsed around him as she rode her crisis.
“That’s it. Spend all over my cock.”
She cried out, tightening, and he surged deep, turning his attention to the need for his own release. His head fell back to the pillow, and he anchored her waist, thrusting into her as he guided her through the first wave of her spend. He was close. So close. Her lips were parted, her fiery curls hanging around her, pink nipples pointed and hard. Breasts bouncing as she regained her momentum.
“I’m going to spend.”
“Yes.” She clenched on him, milking his cock. “I want it. I want you. Fill me up.”
That was all it took. Her husky demand made him erupt like a goddamn cannon. He came hard, fire licking up his spine, as he emptied himself into her. His cock pulsed as she drew the last drop from him. His chest was tight, his vision sparkling with silver spangles. The breath he had not realized he had been holding fled him.
That was when the rush of love he had been doing his damnedest to ignore hit him.
Tempest, indeed. What the hell was he going to do now?
Chapter 15
Our daughter was born yesterday. I would have penned this journal entry then, but in truth, my lying in was exhausting. It was more than I had anticipated in every way. More painful, more arduous, and more wondrous. At the end of it all, the most beautiful baby girl I ever beheld was placed in my arms. She has her father’s chin and dark hair. Mama is firmly decided that I must allow her to be placed with another family, but my daughter already owns my heart. She is the last piece of him I have left. I named her Emily.
~from the journal of Lady Julianna Somerset, 1884
Julianna’s hand shook as she lifted her teacup to her lips the following afternoon. As prearranged the day before, Tilly, Duchess of Longleigh, was seated opposite her for one of the first official social calls Julianna had received since marrying Shelbourne.
“Is something amiss?” Tilly asked. “You look concerned, my dear.”
She was not concerned. Was she?
Yes, yes she was.
Because last night, following the apology she had made to Shelbourne—Sidney, whispered a voice inside her—she had dismantled every brick of caution in the wall she had been attempting to build around her heart. She had tossed her plans into the wind and allowed them to scatter. She had gone to bed with her husband, just as she had been determined she would not do. The pleasure had been intense. Unlike anything she had experienced with him yet. And she had been wicked. Desperately so. Telling him things she never should have spoken aloud…
She cleared her throat, chasing the thoughts, and feigned a smile. “I am perfectly well. Forgive me. It is just that I do have a great deal weighing on my mind. Settling here at Cagney House with Emily has been somewhat more involved than I had supposed it would be.”
And how.
By involved, she meant that she was falling back in love with her husband, a man who had never loved her. Oh, who was she fooling? Had she ever stopped loving him?
No, said the same traitorous voice within.
Yes, she countered. He did not deserve her love. Never had. And it had taken her the entirety of two years to move past the way she had felt about him, only to find herself here, firmly mired in all her feelings once more. What had she been thinking, marrying him?
Moreover, what was she thinking now, part of her willing to abandon her decision to return to America at the first opportunity?
Tilly smiled back, unaware of Julianna’s inner tumult. “I understand it must be challenging. Your daughter is a year old, is she not?”
“Yes.” Her smile deepened, becoming genuine as she thought of Emily. “She is. I will own, after living in New York City for so long, returning to London has required some adjustment for both of us.”
“As has remarrying Lord Shelbourne, I would imagine,” Tilly observed. “Do tell me if I am being too frank. Rob—a friend of mine was fond of saying I am like a terrier with her beloved bone when I am curious. I sink my teeth into a subject and refuse to relent.”
Julianna noticed Tilly’s slip, the name she had almost spoken before catching herself, and she could not help but to be curious. Whose name had she nearly said? And why had she stopped herself? There was a story there, simmering beneath the surface. But Julianna could not judge; she had secrets of her own.
She longed to confess the truth of her relationship with Shelbourne to Tilly now—to unburden herself and reveal they had never originally been married. That the story they had fed everyone around them was indeed just that, a fiction. Howeve
r, there was too much at stake, and Julianna trusted her friend, but she had to put Emily first. The secret would have to belong to a small, trusted circle for now.
She frowned, wondering if Shelbourne had told his parents the truth. He had not mentioned it, and the past few weeks had been such a maelstrom that she had not considered it until now. The marquess and marchioness were not the most forgiving or liberal members of society. That much was certain. Lord Northampton had been attempting to strong-arm Hellie into marrying one of his boorish political cronies who opposed women gaining the Parliamentary franchise.
Dreadful toad of a man.
“I have pressed you too far, have I not?” Tilly asked into the silence, making Julianna realize she had once more been too lost in her own thoughts.
She blamed Shelbourne.
Last night had been…good heavens. Words failed her. She had fallen asleep in his bed, then woke in the darkest depths of the night confused and disoriented. He had kissed her sweetly, half asleep himself.
Stay with me, my sweet tempest.
She swallowed, wishing her tea were laced with something stronger. Brandy, perhaps. “You have done nothing of the sort, Tilly. You forget I have been abroad these past two years. Candor and bluntness are embraced in America. Forgive me for my distraction, however. Marrying Shelbourne has brought a great deal of change and upheaval for me.”
“I expect so.” Tilly sipped her tea, then sent Julianna a small smile. There was such sadness in her eyes—unrivaled. “Marriage is a terribly complicated business. At least Shelbourne does not strike me as a man who is cruel.”
He could be cruel, but in his own way. Cutting words, scathing remarks, biting looks. He resented her, however, and she well understood his anger after seeing how much he cared for Emily. She had denied him much.
“Shelbourne is a difficult man,” she said slowly, struggling through her own emotions where he was concerned, as always. “But not cruel in the sense he would ever do me violence. Has His Grace…hurt you, Tilly?”
“He has.” Tilly’s countenance had gone pale, a tremor in her voice. “There are things which we are told never to speak of as wives, of course.”
Lady Wicked: Notorious Ladies of London Book 4 Page 20
