Unlike the rest of Shire House, the room was furnished from top to bottom. Large paintings of hunting scenes in gilt edged frames hung on the walls. In addition to the desk and lounge there was a table and chairs, two leather benches, and a long cream colored settee. Towering shelves were filled to the brim with books and expensive looking knick-knacks, from a gold pocket telescope to a small crystal swan with a gracefully curved neck.
Picking up the swan she held it high in the air and, feeling rather mischievous, slanted the crystal this way and that until it caught the light from a window and turned Gavin’s face into a rainbow.
He snorted, his nose twitching and eyelids flickering. She persisted, and when he opened his eyes and leaned up on an elbow to glare at her over the back of the lounge, she could not help but laugh.
“Good morning,” she said cheerfully.
“I fail to see what’s so bloody good about it.” Gavin scooped up his discarded shirt from the floor, shrugged into it, and then promptly laid back down. “What the devil are you doing in here?”
“Talking to my husband.” She set the swan aside, demurely arranged her wrapper, and perched on the edge of the lounge by Gavin’s feet. “I was hoping to see you when we arrived.”
“I was in meetings all day.” He ran a hand through his disheveled hair, and she suppressed a smile. “What?” he said crossly. “What are you smirking at?”
“You. Do you often return home and drink yourself into oblivion?”
“I did not drink myself into oblivion.”
She merely glanced pointedly at the empty bottle of brandy still sitting on the desk and lifted an eyebrow.
Gavin grunted. “Maybe I had a few glasses,” he admitted with a grin that was an adorable mixture between drowsy and sheepish. “I do not drink very often, if that is what you are thinking.”
“It is not.” She was, in fact, thinking how wonderfully intimate it felt to be having a playful conversation with her husband first thing in the morning when she was still in her robe and his chin still boasted stubble from the day before.
She had feared they would lose the easy banter they had found in Scotland, and it was a great relief to know it was still there. They weren’t lovers–not yet, anyways–but they were friends. And it was a start.
Reaching out, she flicked the sole of his bare foot with her finger. His response was immediate, and she laughed out loud when he snatched his leg away as if she had burned him.
“Stop that,” he scowled.
“Why, are you ticklish?” Grinning, she did it again.
“Charlotte…”
“What are you going to do?”
“This.” He moved with lightning speed. One second she was perched on the edge of the lounge and the next she was sprawled on top of him in a pile of limbs and wild red curls. His hands streaked across her ribs, tickling her mercilessly until she squealed and giggled and begged him to stop.
“Gavin! Gavin, no, no, enough—”
“Do you give up?”
Catching the victorious gleam in his eye, Charlotte shook her head from side to side, temporarily blinding him with her hair. Taking full advantage of his momentary impairment, she straddled his hips and ran her hands up his sides to attack underneath his arms. His hearty shout of laughter took her by surprise and she froze, her fingers hovering in midair.
“What?” Sweeping her cascade of curls behind her shoulder, Gavin sat partially up, his smile slowly fading when he saw her startled expression. “What is it?”
“I… I have never heard you laugh before,” she whispered.
“That is because I don’t.”
“You don’t laugh?”
“No.”
She sat back on her haunches and studied him beneath a thick fringe of russet lashes. “But you just did.”
“It must be because you’re here,” he said gruffly.
All at once Charlotte became aware of her position. She was all but sitting on his lap, her nightdress rucked up past her knees. She bit her lip and attempted to scoot further back, but that only served to rub her sex intimately against his and she gasped when she felt his hard, swollen length beneath her.
He placed his hand on her thighs, fingers digging into the soft, pliant flesh. The muscles in her belly tightened and a tiny, thrilled gasp escaped her lips when she met his gaze and saw the hunger there.
Ignoring the bells of caution that were tolling wildly inside her head, she burrowed her hands in his hair and sank into him.
Gavin felt as if he were in a dream. One moment he’d been sleeping as a man dead, and the next his arms were full of Charlotte.
Gavin knew he should have pushed her away. This was everything he said he didn’t want…and everything he had been desperately craving. He should have demanded she leave. Instead he drew her closer, racing his fingers up her plump thighs and around to her trim little derriere. He gave a light squeeze and she nipped his bottom lip in response, a playful bite of her teeth that she immediately soothed with her tongue. The scent of her – lavender and sunshine–invaded his nostrils and the feel of her skin–pure silk–was heaven. His cock was already like granite, his breathing already ragged.
Christ, but he wanted her.
He wanted to roll her beneath him, pin her hands above her head, and take her with all the ferocity of a rutting beast. He wanted to pound inside of her until she cried out his name and he spent his seed, claiming her in the truest way a man could claim a woman. The dark violence of his needs caught him off guard, and the disgust he felt for his vile thoughts caused his body to tense and his head to the turn to the side.
Charlotte was not a riverside doxy selling her wares to the highest bidder. She was a lady, a lady far too good for the likes of him. She deserved a man who could be gentle and soft and recite lines of poetry, not one who was ready to take her virginity on a damn chaise lounge.
“Gavin, what’s the matter?” Her hazel eyes were anxious, her face flushed. She hovered above him, affording him a clear view of her creamy breasts as the bodice of her nightdress gaped open. Her dusky nipples were already swollen with arousal, and it took every fiber of strength he possessed not to slide underneath her and take one of the sweet tasting nubs into his mouth.
“I cannot do this.” He forced his gaze to the ceiling. Maybe if he didn’t look at her, he’d forget she was there. Forget he had a beautiful, half-naked woman sprawled on top of him? Not likely. “Charlotte, I cannot.”
“No, no, you can,” she urged. “We can. I need…” She broke off with a soft mewl of distress and lowered her mouth to his ear. “I need you,” she whispered.
Three little words, sliding across his skin like silk.
She might as well have waved a red flag in front of a bull.
He closed his hands around her slender waist and picked her up easily, positioning her breast until it fell into his waiting mouth and he could taste her to his heart’s content.
She moaned and arched her back, her fingernails digging into his shoulders as he nipped and licked and nibbled. Impatient to feel her bare flesh against his body and already half lost to reason, he pulled at her clothing, skimming it up and over her thighs until it bunched in a ball around her waist. He growled in frustration.
“Here.” Laughing, Charlotte lifted her arms high over her head and he was able to whisk the offending garment away. It fluttered to the floor, landing on top of the wrapper she had already removed. She hovered above him with sunlight streaming onto her back; a titian haired siren with the body of a goddess. Her smile turned shy as he devoured her with his gaze, and she started to raise her arms to cover her exposed breasts, but he stopped her with a desperate shake of his head.
“No,” he said hoarsely. He wanted to say more. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was. He wanted to let her know how much he ached for her. How he had always ached for her. But he couldn’t, because words were impossible. There was only touch and taste and taking.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
She writhed against him as he suckled one breast, then the other. Her breaths came in short little pants of delight that only served to heighten his desire. When her fingers plucked inexpertly at the stays of his breeches he lifted his hips off the lounge and helped her, taking secret pleasure when his cock sprang free and her eyes widened.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
Gently guiding her hand, he wrapped it around the hard, pulsing length of him and closed her fingers. “Touch me.”
Her eyebrows knitted together and she bit her bottom lip in concentration as she allowed her fingers to explore across every inch of him, from the thick base to the rounded tip already damp with his seed. He groaned when her thumb circled the swollen head and her eyes flew to his.
“Does it–does it hurt?” she questioned naively.
“It feels like bloody heaven.”
“Will it hurt me?”
“Not if I prepare you.” And he proceeded to do precisely that. He slipped two fingers into her mouth to wet them before he began to stroke the curls between her thighs. She quivered when he gently massaged her small bud, tensed when he slowly, slowly, began to stretch her.
“Easy, love. That’s it. God, you’re tight. So bloody tight.” At first he could hardly squeeze in past his second knuckle, but as her eyes grew heavy and her breathing quickened, he was able to slide both fingers all the way into her sweet chamber.
When she was thoroughly damp and nearly delirious with pleasure, he centered his staff between her legs, guiding it into her entrance inch by slippery inch as he took her mouth in a hot, searing kiss.
With a steady thrust he sheathed himself off the way inside of her. And it was even more glorious than he’d ever dared imagine.
“Is–is that it?” she asked.
Chuckling, he began to move his hips. “We haven’t even begun.”
Together they moved as one, their bodies slick with sweat, their eyes glazed with lust. He coaxed her up, up, up, and when she teetered on the edge he brought her crashing down into oblivion. She sobbed her name into his neck and she convulsed around his cock, and that tight squeezing was all he needed to find his own release.
She collapsed on top of his chest and he held her against him, running his fingers through her hair as he felt her heartbeat start to slow. For a long while they remained sweetly entangled in each other’s arms, neither willing to be the first to move.
At last Charlotte sat up. Her cheeks were blooming with color. Her eyes sparkled. She grinned down at him, and he couldn’t but grin in response, for she’d never looked quite so stunning, or so pleased with herself, as she did now.
“Well,” she said, arching a brow, “that’s one way to start your morning.”
Gavin couldn’t agree more.
Chapter Twenty
If someone had dared to ask Charlotte where she imagined losing her virginity, she would not have immediately answered on top of a chaise lounge. However, having done the deed (so to speak) on precisely that, she had no complaints.
If her neck was a bit stiff and the area between her legs sore, well, it was a small price to pay for the mind numbing pleasure she had received.
For a long, luxurious moment, she allowed herself to nestle in the nook provided to her by Gavin’s chest and shoulder, inhaling his scent and listening to the steady thump thump thump of his heart. His fingers combed through her tangled curls and she stretched like a cat beneath his touch, complete with a bit of purring.
Lifting her chin, she smiled at him and reached out to absently trace the corner of his jaw. He hadn’t shaved since she saw him last, and she found the dark scruff of beard becoming. “That was wonderful.”
He stared at point on the wall several feet above her head. “Yes.”
“Yes?” Her nose wrinkled. “Is that all you have to say?”
“If you wanted sonnets sung and poetry recited, you should have tupped a different man,” he said indifferently. “Yes is all you will get from the likes of me.”
“I did not…I was not…oh!” she exclaimed. Ignoring the twinge in her muscles, she scrambled off him, picked up her nightdress from the floor, and yanked it on over her head.
Gavin remained stretched out on the lounge with no care for his nudeness. He watched her silently, his gray eyes shuttered and unreadable, and she wanted to scream.
“I guess this changes nothing between us, then.”
“Should it?” His face was as cold and hard as stone.
Where was the man who had just held her so tenderly? The man who had coaxed such passion from her body? How could he be that man one second and this one the next? She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him, but that would most likely only serve to hurt her arms since he had rocks where his brain ought to be.
“I do not understand you,” she cried. “Why can’t you just let yourself be happy?”
“I am happy,” he countered, but Charlotte only shook her head.
“No, you’re not. Happiness is the one thing that cannot be bought and measured. You cannot purchase it as you would a carriage or a house. It must come from within, from your heart and from your soul.”
Gavin’s jaw clenched. “Are you happy?”
“I could be,” she said. “But not like this. I feel like a bit of rope being tugged back and forth and I’m beginning to fray at the ends.”
“Do not be ridiculous,” he scoffed. “You’re not a piece of rope. You’re a woman.”
“Precisely. A woman with hopes and dreams. A woman with emotions. A woman with feelings.” She threw her hands into the air. “Do you not feel things, Gavin? Joy, sadness. Love.”
Gavin sat up and yanked on his breeches. “This is why I did not want this to happen,” he muttered, gesturing vaguely towards the lounge. “It complicates things that have no business being complicated.”
“A marriage is supposed to be complicated!”
“No,” he said stubbornly, “it’s not.”
“Then what is it supposed to be if not complicated and messy and wonderful?” She crouched down in front of him and rested her hands on his knees, squeezing fast until he lifted his head and looked at her. “You have worked hard all of your life and look at what you have now. Imagine if you put even half of that effort into a marriage. Into our marriage. We could be amazing together, Gavin. If you would just open yourself up. I know we could.”
Please, she thought desperately, please let him see.
For a moment, she thought he did. For a moment, something in his eyes shifted and lightened. For a moment, he looked at her with affection. For a moment, she felt loved. Then the moment was gone and he was staring past her as if she did not exist at all.
“If you would excuse me, I have to get dressed. I have meetings to attend.”
“Gavin, wait.” She clung to his arm, forcing him to drag her with him as he moved about the study. “If you would simply listen to me—”
He stopped so abruptly she stumbled. Closing his hands around her waist, he lifted her off the ground as if she weighed no more than a bag of feather down and set her firmly to the side.
“You are asking for something I cannot give you. That I do not physically have inside of me to give you.” He hissed out a breath and raked a hand through his hair. “I know what you want. I know what you are asking. Despite my lack of education, I am not a stupid man, Charlotte.”
Her eyes widened. “I never said—”
“I have meetings. I will see you later this evening.”
Stunned into speechlessness, she watched him leave the study.
He did not look back.
A few hours later, bathed and dressed in a violet dress with her hair properly arranged in a coiffure, Charlotte prepared to call on Dianna. She needed her friend to distract her from the knowledge she’d all but pleaded with Gavin on her knees to love her.
And he’d refused.
To date, it was the most humiliated she’d ever been.
I am
not a stupid man, Charlotte.
She certainly begged to differ.
Gavin may have been a genius when it came to making money, but he was a fool when it came to women. A great brainless boar of a fool, and she was done with him completely. Except she wasn’t. How could she be? Even now, when she had every right to hate him, she could barely summon up a trace of annoyance. It was herself she was angry with. She knew it would take time to bring Gavin around and make him realize he needed her every bit as much as she needed him. Yet what had she done? All but pounce on the poor man their first morning together in London. Pounce on him, and then demand a declaration of his undying love.
Perhaps she was the stupid one.
The ride to Dianna’s townhouse was mercifully short, giving Charlotte little time to dwell on her husband. After telling the driver to come around again in an hour, she walked briskly up the stone pathway to the Foxcroft’s modest brick townhouse. Before she could raise her hand to knock, however, Dianna darted out, wearing an emerald shawl and matching bonnet tipped low over her brow.
“Hurry,” she hissed, taking Charlotte’s arm and dragging her back down the steps. “We have to go before Mother sees it’s you.”
“What do you mean?” Charlotte’s nose wrinkled. “Who else would it be?”
“Dianna, is that you, dear?” Dianna’s mother called from somewhere within the house, causing Dianna to visibly wince.
“Yes, Mother! Lady Felicia is here. We were just heading out.”
“Is her maid with her? You know you need a chaperone.”
“Yes, Mother!”
“Have a splendid time, then. Oh! Remember to return by two. You have your singing lesson.”
“Yes, Mother!”
Charlotte blinked in bewilderment. “Dianna, what in the world–”
“Hush!” Her friend pressed a finger to her lips and shook her head. “Come on. We can talk when we get to the park.”
Runaway Duchess (London Ladies Book 1) Page 18
