He laughed, the sound deep and unbearably sensual. “All right, all right, my insatiable little virago.”
He drove hard and deep and fast. Slick, sliding strokes of pure ecstasy. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth—constant moans issued from her throat, growing louder by the moment. Unbearable tension seized her belly, thighs and cunny.
She thrashed her head and clung to him with her whole body.
Tremors shook her. God, it was too much. Just too much. She was either going to come or combust.
His cock began to jerk within her and he groaned. His seed surged inside her. The fierce and hot flood triggered the spastic contraction of her inner walls. They squeezed his thick hardness over and over. She screamed with the pleasure, digging her fingers into his back, raking her nails down his sweat-dampened flesh.
For several moments, he lay panting against her ear. He pulled away and stood, then reached for her and lifted her up into his arms. With faint moonlight guiding the way, he carried her upstairs. She curled against his bare chest, her hand pressed against the sure, steady beat of his heart.
Here she was safe. Safe from all the demons of her past.
* * * *
In the bed, Grey ran a caressing hand over Beth’s flat stomach, delighting in the silken contours. “I should have taken care.”
“I told you before, I prefer you to come inside me.”
“Yes, but do you really want children so soon? Fair warning, Beth—once you’re in my house, I am going to bed you every night.” He bent and placed his lips to her belly. “If I don’t take care, you’ll quickly get with child. I don’t know how wise it would be.”
She laughed softly, caressing his head as it lay against her belly. “I am soon to be twenty-four; I am more than ready to be a mother.”
He looked up at her. With her eyes large and luminous in the candlelight and her hair in disarray about her shoulders, she looked so girlish and vulnerable. He remembered himself at her age. How much had he known of who he was and what he wanted from life then? Damned little. Just enough to make a slew of costly, painful mistakes.
He recalled the events at Hazelwood’s house. Their discord. God, how completely he had lost his head. How recklessly the both of them had courted discovery and scandal. That was certainly not like him. Being in love with his impulsive little vixen was changing him, bringing out a never-before suspected propensity toward wild extremes of emotional reaction.
He took a deep breath. He must not react so rashly to her variances of mood and her rebellious turns. He must remember several things.
Her relative youth.
Her inexperience with his world.
How deeply she had been hurt by others.
She attempted to hide that hurt behind a façade of worldly wickedness but he had become increasingly aware of how soft-hearted and relatively naïve she was underneath. He certainly knew how inexperienced she was with his Society world. How limited her life had been by poverty until this point. It was a type of innocence deeper than mere virginity. She was so vulnerable. It made him want to protect her, even against himself. He should be tenderer with her.
“Maybe we should wait a while before starting a family. For your sake. You’ll have so many things to become accustomed to,” he said.
“You don’t want children with me?” Her voice was softer now, unsure.
With his tongue, he traced circular patterns over her satiny flesh. “I want at least one. A daughter.” Pleasure at the thought made him smile. “But I don’t want you pregnant year after year, wrecking your health and losing all your teeth.”
She laughed again. “But that’s an old wives’ tale. Women don’t lose more of their teeth for having been pregnant.” Her look turned thoughtful. “We should have four. Two boys, two girls. One child would be too lonely.”
His smile had frozen so hard his face ached. He wasn’t sure he wanted to share her just yet, with anyone. One child would seal their bond but a whole houseful of them? God… Yet he was fast becoming addicted to the sensation of coming deep inside her, so unless she proved barren it seemed a foregone conclusion that they would have several.
He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to share her. At least not just yet. She possessed abundant health. She would be fertile at least for a decade or more. Why must they hurry?
“Grey?”
“A houseful of children? You’ve set me quite a task.” He lightened his tone to hide his inner doubts.
She smiled tremulously and her eyes shone like bright blue stars. The sight of so much feminine hope made his stomach tighten, made him too aware of how her future happiness rested on him. The way of life for a wife. He’d already failed one wife—he had no business taking another. Especially not one so young and full of idealism and dreams.
But what the hell was she expecting from her life with him? He’d tried to explain how it would be. He suspected she listened emotionally, filtering his words until they suited her vision of married life. Damn it, when they had started he’d thought her as hardened as he was. The first clue she wasn’t had been when she’d refused his carte blanche. When she had mentioned marriage. He ought never to have come back to her. It was so unfair to her. But he’d been too selfish to resist.
Now it was all too late.
He broke their eye contact and moved up to kiss the soft crest of her left breast. At her little gasp of pleasure, he lingered, letting his tongue slide along her satiny flesh, taking a lazy, circular route to her nipple. When he reached his goal, the tip was pebble-like and sweet against his tongue. She clutched his head and moaned her approval. He wasn’t at all sure he knew how to love her, at least not without losing his focus, but he certainly knew how to make love to her.
She twined her fingers in his hair and moaned. He spent a long time worshipping her breasts until she began to wriggle. He kissed his way down her twitching stomach. Her scent—tangy-sweet like fresh tangerines and gardenias—reminded him sharply of his travels in Asia as a young man.
He devoured the salty taste of her flat belly with lips and tongue. A moving target proved far too exciting and he hastened his way down to the silver-gilt and pink shell of her sex.
He separated the plump outer lips. Her inner lips glistened with moisture, swollen with her need. Her hips arched up. He touched his tongue to her. He cupped her arse, then he thrust his tongue deeply into her core. Honey surged from her, tasting of salt and sweetness. He thrust again and again, his grip on her fierce as he sought to bring her pelvis as close to his mouth as possible. God, he’d never be able to get enough of her.
Her inner walls contracted over and over.
“Grey, Grey… Oh God… I can’t, I can’t…can’t.” She gripped his head, bucked her hips. “Please, I need you inside, I need you so badly.”
Christ, she drove him insane with desire.
He jolted into a sitting position, took her by the shoulders, rolled her onto her side, lifted her leg and thrust into her.
She cried out and her inner walls hugged him. He caught his breath. Christ, she was so tight, so unbearably tight. And wet. And hot.
With a gentle touch on her cheek, he turned her face back towards his.
Her eyes were closed and her lips slightly parted. He tasted her mouth hungrily for a moment, but he wanted more from her. A connection deeper than the physical. He lifted his head. “Open your eyes, my love.”
Her lashes fluttered open and her eyes met his, as wide and blue as the summer sky, sucking him in, and it was as if he was losing his own identity, merging totally with her. But he didn’t hold himself back, not one single degree. He just let himself enjoy being fully immersed in her. He slowly rolled his hips against hers, again and again, providing just enough sensation to keep both of them aroused. Oh Christ, it was too sweet. He took her mouth, tenderly, deeply. One long kiss and one long fuck blended together, both soul deep.
Beth savored the taste of his tongue, even while she reveled in the exquisite tenderness with whic
h he fucked her. Holy Heavens. She had never experienced closeness like this. He lifted his head and his eyes held hers, telling her all the things she’d hungered for so long to hear.
Her inner walls drew tighter and tighter, the pressure increasing. Oh God, she was going to come. She didn’t want to. If she came with him, so close to him like this, she’d never be the same, ever again. He’d be too deeply imprinted on the most vital parts of her.
She’d never be able to exist without him after this. But her heart swelled with love—overflowed with love. She couldn’t deny him, not when his loving demanded her response. Slow, strong contractions convulsed her inner muscles, rocking her to the depths of her soul with sweet, sensual satisfaction.
“I love you.” His words drifted to her as part of her dream. His hands smoothed her hair. He bit lightly at the side of her neck. “I do, Beth—I love you so ardently, I cannot bear it.”
Their panting breaths filled the silence.
He was waiting for her to answer him. She couldn’t say it.
She had yet to voice her love for him in overt words without it being phrased as teasing. Maybe she never would. Some things just carried too much risk. Not knowing what else to do, she put her lips to his and poured all her love into her kiss.
Chapter Five
Ruff, ruff, ruff.
The dog in the yard next door had been barking non-stop for over an hour. Loudly. Beth pressed the pillow more tightly to her ears. Why didn’t someone toss a bucket of water over the infernal mutt?
Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff.
She sighed. It was no good. She opened one eye. Pale gray light seeped in between the cracks of the curtains. Relief washed over her. She didn’t have to be back at Mrs. Hazelwood’s until ten. She moved closer to Grey and pressed herself to his strong, warm body. She slid her hand down his bare, hard-muscled stomach.
He caught his breath.
So he wasn’t sleeping. She smiled and moved her hand lower until she captured something harder yet. She stroked him and he grew firmer and longer, his juices leaking profusely over her hand. Her breathing quickened and her nipples drew into tight points. Wetness surged from her core and a tingling need awakened. She squeezed her thighs tight and her internal muscles contracted spasmodically.
He gripped her wrist and stilled her hand.
She laughed.
He rolled over, pulled her beneath him and mounted her. His knee parted hers and she spread wide for him. He probed the softness between her thighs, gliding his fingers over her wet inner folds. She arched her hips up to his and little hoarse pleading sounds issued from her lips.
He thrust into her. Quick. Hard. Filling her to bursting.
She clutched his shoulders and wrapped her legs about him. “Oh God, yes, yes, yes!”
He moved within her at an ever-increasing pace. Her cries echoed in the chamber, growing more strident by the moment. She was bouncing and bouncing on the bed, meeting his every thrust. He gripped her hips tightly, ruthlessly stilling her.
“Oh Grey, oh Grey! Fuck me!”
He rammed himself against the entrance to her womb, over and over, driving her higher and higher, faster and faster. She hit her peak, raking her nails down his back as she shrieked her joy.
A frenzied shudder raced through his body and he groaned against her ear.
God almighty. She’d never been taken to those heights so quickly. So perfectly. So completely.
Oh, sharing a bed with Grey was very nice indeed.
* * * *
Grey sat in the dressing chamber, watching the street come alive
He had come back to Philadelphia meaning only to soften the blow when he told Beth that he needed to go back to New York for the remaining weeks until their marriage.
Yet he had allowed her to draw him into a whole emotional melodrama ending with last night.
God, last night.
Even now the elation of it hummed in his blood and distracted his clear thinking. He was not comfortable with this level of emotion in himself. Yet with Beth, he craved to experience it again and again.
It was the worst kind of self-indulgence.
Pure fecklessness.
He could picture his father’s stern visage twisted into a smug expression. The grim satisfaction a cynical man takes in being proved right. The same expression his face had held on the morning Grey had admitted he must marry Juliana de Lange.
“Sensualist!” His father had added the label to others he oft hurled at Grey—dreamer, romantic, pedant.
But this label had held particular disgust.
“I had thought you possessed of a rare intelligence. For that reason, I have tried, hard, to be patient with all your idealistic, dreaming nonsense. I thought that at the very least, all your romantic foolishness would engender a higher minded nature in you. But you have proven yourself no more intelligent or higher minded than your own generative organs.” His father had leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “What an utter disappointment you have turned out to be.”
Even now, Grey could feel his stomach turn with the terrible nausea of his failure.
“Did you think I had planned to simply give my son away to one of these New York families? The daughters of these men of small minds and even smaller vision?” His voice had been so controlled, cold as death. “This de Lange chit doesn’t have the kind of wealth and social power you could have commanded on the European marriage mart.” His father had paused to wipe some unseen speck of dust from the top of his massive, highly polished desk. “You’ve been nothing to me but one disappointment after another. But this—I should disown you for this.”
His cold gray eyes had bored into Grey.
Grey had felt sicker than ever. Ashamed of having fallen to the temptation that Juliana had presented.
“However,” his father had continued. “You are my only son. And I must have an heir.” He compressed his mouth into a thin line. “I certainly have no wish to marry again.”
Asahel Prosperity Sexton had never kept a mistress and had sneered down his narrow nose at men who needed to crawl under a woman’s skirts to seek sexual heights. Putting another positive profit into the ledgers had seemed to be the only satisfaction the senior Sexton had ever needed.
If Grey had to guess, he would say his father had been relieved that Grey’s mother had proved too frail to risk childbed a second time and had kept to her chambers.
As a small child, Grey had been allowed to see her, by appointment, in the late afternoons. He could still remember the hushed voices, the chamber darkened by heavy velvet drapes. He could still feel the servant’s hands gripping his shoulders, admonishing him to restrain himself, that he must be quiet. He must be gentle.
He must not do or say thing to disturb her peace of mind.
He had stood by the edge of her chaise lounge and stared up into her pale as alabaster face glowing in the dim light, her eyes large and dark blue, so full of anguish and longing, that it lashed into him.
She seemed to stare at him without seeing him.
A lady clad in a dressing gown of deep crimson velvet, trimmed in gold lace.
Beautiful.
Elegant.
Remote.
“Your son is here, to see you, Mrs. Sexton,” the servant said in a soft voice, full of forced enthusiasm.
She leaned down. The glossy mass of her loose, dark-chestnut hair fell about him. Her breath sickeningly sweet, tinged with claret and laudanum, blew over his face.
His tiny body trembled with the awe, the fear of doing or saying anything.
She put her lips to his cheek.
Cold lips.
The chill transferred into his blood.
His bones.
These visits had lasted only mere moments before the servants would whisk him away. All other times, she remained hidden behind the fortress of her locked doors, a fragile flower protected against the world. She had sought solace against the pain of long-term illness and the devastation of loneliness in
the opiate medications her well-paid physicians were all to happy to prescribe.
A distant, sad lady.
For years, her husband had ignored her until that day he could not publicly ignore her. He’d had to leave his warehouses and counting rooms for form’s sake. No gentleman, no matter his wealth or position, could ignore his own wife’s funeral.
It seemed the coldest day in the history of the world. An early spring day. Whipping wind bit through Grey’s new, itchy black wool suit. His father walked ahead of him, pulling on his hand. His father strode swiftly, keeping his face forward, his tall, broad-shouldered back held straight as a frigate’s mast. He didn’t turn. Not even once, the whole way from the carriage.
He didn’t notice how Grey struggled to keep up on his far shorter six-year-old legs.
Stumbling along the rain soaked graveyard, Grey tripped and fell face down in the mud. His father’s hand grasped his collar and hauled him to his feet. A cloth roughly wiped the muck from his face. The taste of blood filled his mouth as he stared up into icy gray eyes, devoid of any emotion save for impatience and exasperation.
The sharp sound of the dog barking below the window pulled Grey back into the present moment. He blinked several times, readjusting to the benign warmth of the dressing room.
He shivered.
Christ, how many years since he’d allowed himself to think of that day?
Shaken, he took another long sip from his glass. Yes, it was before noon, and yes, he was drinking brandy. By God, he’d needed something to steady his nerves after last night.
The dreaming, imaginative boy had got himself in too deeply now. Beguiled by the sad-eyed girl with hair like shimmering moonlight.
The burn of the alcohol in his stomach did little to steady him. He sat the glass down and shook his head. He did not need distraction now. He could not risk it. His political contacts had told him that Congress was poised to declare war. All else was a mere formality.
Beth would soon be living in his house.
Sleeping in his bed.
How was he to maintain a businesslike focus under the effects of night after night like the last? Again, he remembered his parents keeping their separate chambers. The stiffly polite stance they had conducted themselves with during those few times they interacted in his presence.
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