by Renee Peters
“Oui, Dorian. N’arrête pas.” She breathed her encouragement against his mouth, and he flicked his tongue across her lips in answer.
She parted them, and he delved deeper, a low growl of frustration escaping him. The sound sent thrills chasing through her and Joanna grew bolder. He might not want to want her, but she would not make it easy for him to deny her.
The queen let her hands wander over impressively wide shoulders as she reveled in the taste and feel of her husband. She could not know what other nights would bring — but she would make tonight her own.
“Joanna….”
Her name came on a groaned and guttural breath as Dorian tore his lips from her own. “You could drive a man to madness,” he whispered. Then the warmth of his touch was on her skin — a searing trail that heated her thigh as he dragged her nightgown higher and cupped the soft roundness of her bottom to lift her higher against the throbbing heaviness of his arousal.
“This is what you do to me.” His hissed it softly and in the wash of silver moonlight she could see that his fangs had distended with the strain of his want.
“I… am glad.” She said on a soft catch of breath and reached out to touch his face. A face that had such compelling strength in the darkness of its features.
But then she was on her bed, though he was not, and it was as if he had secured it for a barrier between them until she realized that he had not stopped touching her.
“With my body, I thee worship….” He whispered the vow again, strained, as his touch roamed across the skin of her bare thighs and hips. It brushed over the flatness of her quivering stomach to settle on the dewy silkiness of her mons.
“You are so ready for me, Cherie,” he murmured.
Her flutes pitched violently in answer. Jolts of electric pleasure coursed through her body in anticipation, and she shifted beneath the weight of his hand. Her insides tightened, her heart pounded and her body burned with the need for his touch.
“Dorian… S’il vous plait….”
She did not have to plead twice. Gently, he eased a finger inside her, testing her limits and readiness, then a second stretching her. She moaned as she pressed into his hand seeking more.
“Oui….”
He found the erotic bud deep in her folds and teased it, setting up a stroking rhythm with his fingers that slowly increased in tempo while he rubbed. The French queen moved against him — with him — gasping as her hips lifted off the bedding with the climbing urgency of her pleasure.
“Dorian!”
Her climax came on her hard and fast and she cried out — a keening cry of pleasure that he caught on a skillful kiss as he swallowed the shudders that wracked her.
Only when she had quieted did she realize that the weight of his head rested upon her shoulder, and that the rigid tension of his own lack of release still held him. His music was a chaotic storm that battered at the gates of her heart. She reached for him, but he only caught her fingers and brought them to his lips for a kiss.
“Rest now, Cherie.” His voice was hoarse with strain as he whispered the command.
“But….”
He was already rising to his feet stiffly and moving to draw the covers over her sated body. Her brows stitched with confusion, even as she fought against the languorous rise of exhaustion. She knew her question was in her gaze where it held his.
Why?
“Because you are my wife, Joanna.” He answered it out loud, before he turned to walk away from her toward the door that would separate them again. When it closed, the queen laid back and shuttered her eyes with a sigh.
Because she was his wife. And Dorian kept all his promises.
Chapter 14
Lady Sutherly’s Summer Ball, Easthaven
June blew through in a whirlwind of warm showers and dances. In the two weeks since her wedding, Joanna was certain she and Dorian had attended every public event that took place past sunset.
And there were many.
Sometimes, they would attend two different parties in the same night, and Joanna collapsed in bed exhausted well before the sun rose. She was sure it was only her curse that gave her the stamina to endure the endless dances, but the mortal ton seemed to suffer few ill effects for enjoying their celebrations night after night.
The queen much preferred the quiet of her afternoons, before it become necessary for she and Delilah to torture her curls into a style and fit into another evening dress.
Dorian had not returned to her room, but in the shared spaces of the Vaughn Manor, they had found some semblance of the comfort they had shared in Anowen. Some. Their music still betrayed them in the afternoons when she read aloud to her husband, or in the innocent touches that sent a flush through her.
Just the memory made her flutes flutter into a tremolo. Dorian had been relentless in his focus on her launch into society as his Condesa; their schedule leaving little time for awkwardness — or hunger, to bloom between them. She doubted it was a coincidence. Joanna forced herself back into the present moment with a stitch of her brows.
Lady Sutherly’s Ball was only the latest of many that Joanna had attended with her husband and with Delilah. It was the largest thus far, however, and Joanna was not the only Anowen queen in attendance within the press of bodies. She heard several of her sisters’ songs trilling through her blood, though only one was a cause for concern.
Angelica.
However, it was not the queen who had currently cornered the Condesa and her companion, but a trio of mortal women. The overbearing scent of sweat and perfume that clouded the ballroom was nothing compared to the backhanded quips the ladies offered scandalously behind the cover of their fans.
“We had wondered why the Conde had not chosen a wife among the ton. I would not have thought him a man with a taste for the French.”
“Indeed. I had heard a diet of frogs and lack of baths make them stink.”
“Well, we’re all the same in the dark after a bath, aren’t we?” The third giggled.
Joanna’s smile strained, and her arm slipped into a tighter hold on Delilah. From across the ballroom, she could hear a warning rumble of Dorian’s violins for her distress. Her brows pinched, and she schooled her expression into a warmer smile.
“Oui? If one believes we are all the same when the lights are out, it is no wonder the Conde had a palate beyond the blandness of English cuisine,” she said sweetly, and began to turn away from them. “If you would like some advice on seasoning, I should be pleased to oblige. Perhaps it may help you secure your own husbands.”
She did not look back to see the expressions that accompanied the shocked intakes of breath for her directness, even if she knew a faint echo of guilt for what would no doubt become gossip for the rumor mill. The Conde’s wanton. The bubble of an untimely giggle caught in her chest, trapped.
If only it were true.
“Goodness, Joanna,” Delilah breathed at her side. “Well I suppose that showed them. You’re coming into your own I think. They will not try it again.”
“I was only speaking of cooking.” Joanna shrugged. “I cannot help if their minds stray elsewhere while letting their insults fly.” Her expression shifted to one of brief concern, and her fingers slipped to her chest. Beneath the fabric of her dress, nested against her heart, she kept now a silk pouch with Marjolaine’s ribbon stored within. “Perhaps it was too much.”
“It was not — though perhaps unexpected. I sometimes think gently bred females are surprised to discover their own passions in others.” Delilah cast a look Joanna’s way. “It would seem that you have overcome your own concerns on that front,” her voice held a soft tease. “I will be surprised if the Conde allows another to dance with you tonight. He has scarcely taken his eyes off you as we mingled.”
“I am… trying not to look,” Joanna admitted. “I can feel him watching well enough.” And hear it, too. Despite herself, her gaze flickered to the place where Dorian’s dark shadow stood speaking quietly with Lian and Cel
ia.
The Arch Elders turned away from him with the rise of a new dancing song, and Joanna and Delilah began their rounds through the ballroom.
The Condesa was certain that she managed to visit with everyone of import within ten miles of Easthaven — all in the span of three dances. She turned to mention as much to Delilah, but before she could speak, Angelica’s flutes pitched a violent shriek through her blood.
Wincing, the woman leaned forward before her attention shot to the ceiling and the source of the other queen’s distress a floor above. She could hear the Elders’ songs echoing their own concern, and she flashed a glance toward Lian as he pressed his way quickly through the crowd before returning her attention to the ceiling.
“Are you well, Joanna?” Delilah’s voice was quiet.
“Oui,” she murmured, distracted. Save for the first shriek, Angelica’s music only quivered with more pain than fear or true anguish. “Only a head pain.”
It was Delilah’s coaxing that led her to the edge of the room where her companion could fuss her until she was sure Joanna would recover. Joanna’s attention, however, remained on the music overhead until the orchestra’s violinists struck up a dancing tune she recognized. It was the violins in her blood, however, that finally dragged her attention away from Angelica.
“Perhaps now would be the time to dance?” Delilah suggested.
“Mon dieu.” Joanna’s breath was quiet, and she felt a familiar ripple of awareness shimmy down her spine as she caught sight of Dorian approaching. In his dark evening suit, he appeared all of a walking shadow, an Immortal perfection that drew appreciative looks as he walked by — toward her. “Perhaps I should not tonight.”
“Don’t be a nit, you silly thing. You’re a fine dancer. Your husband is waiting.”
With an inhale, the Frenchwoman stepped forward, meeting Dorian to lace her fingers in his. His hand was warm beneath the silk of her glove, and the memory of his skill with it had Joanna flushing before she managed a smile.
“My lady,” he murmured the polite greeting as his lifted her fingers to his lips to salute the silk with a kiss. The darkness of his eyes touched over her face and searched her eyes. As if he had found what he was looking for, tension that she had not realized was holding him eased from his frame. “I believe they are playing our song.”
She permitted him to guide her around the formation of dancers to the place where they would begin. It was as she parted her lips to speak that a second, more desperate pitch of Angelica’s music pealed through their blood.
Joanna paled. If there was one song in their symphony with the power to drag her into the shadows she was learning to forget, it was Angelica’s. She could not imagine what trouble her sister had found at a mortal entertainment.
Distracted, she almost failed to realize that Dorian had drawn her closer, his hand warm against the small of her back.
“It seems that we are having an eventful evening, Cherie,” he murmured. “We can sit out the dance.” His voice was low and soothing. “I am certain it is nothing Lian cannot handle.” His touch drifted lower, a comforting sweep that nonetheless sent a tendril of lazy desire curling through her core.
She could not help her flush, but she lifted her smile and shook her head. “Non, I want to dance with you.”
They did not stop at one dance. The music was like poetry all on its own, despite how it fell at odds with the symphony coursing through their blood. One song became two in a flutter of whirling fabric and the hand holds or touches that lasted only a few beats before the dance broke them apart again. By the third dance, Joanna hardly minded that the steps forced her to switch partners. Her attention was on Dorian, and between his violins rumbling possessively and his unbreaking gaze, it did not feel like quite an eternity before they stood before one another again.
But three dances were all that polite society would allow a married couple without gossip, even if Joanna was sure as she wrapped her hands in her husband’s that she might have managed another four or five. He adjusted his hold to free one of his hands, resting it instead against her back as he led her toward the terrace and the warm, fresh air that rolled across her face.
The queen drifted away from him to the terrace railing and turned with her back resting against it to watch Dorian’s approach. Her expression softened somewhat, as she drank him in. “I forgot air existed in the house,” she admitted the tease.
The Conde’s lips quirked in answer. “Perhaps because it did not,” he said dryly as he closed the distance between them.
As if he could not help himself he reached out to skim a touch his knuckles over the angle of her jaw before his thumb lifted to sweep away a bead of the moisture that threatened to trickle beneath her hairline. She tilted her head into his touch.
“But you were not enjoying your evening otherwise, it seemed,” her husband said quietly. His expression had sobered. “You had unpleasant company, Cherie?”
The giggle that had caught in her chest earlier finally broke free, and she lifted her hands to catch it. Instead, however, the woman only leaned forward, the flats of her palms settling on Dorian’s stomach and her brow resting against his shoulder before she lifted her head to meet his gaze again.
“Je m’excuse,” she murmured, but the smile reappeared. “I will be the cause of your trouble. I insulted English cooking.”
A dark eyebrow arched over his strong features, and a wary amusement lit the warmer notes of amber in their depths. “English cooking, mhmm?” And his touch reached out to tweak one of her ringlets where it fell over her ears. “French treachery, Minx,” he murmured. “But I am certain they gave you cause.”
His thumb brushed over her lower lip then, and a wash of a sweeter pleasure softened her knees and made her music tremble.
“I find I do not care that I shall have to defend my taste for French cuisine.” His words were softly spoken, but not nearly as soft as the kiss that settled over her lips.
For as demanding as his first kiss had been, this second was just as dangerous in its gentle coaxing, and in the approval that it offered. Joanna sensed his pride in her, as his Condesa and as his wife.
He did not breach the seal of her lips, though she parted them in welcome. Rather, he took the time to nibble and tug on the softness of the flesh with the patience of a connoisseur sampling the delights that were her own. His touch cradled her face, and all his attention seemed focused on the single zone that suddenly seemed to house her every nerve ending.
Between them, their music flowed, sensuous and lazy, advancing and retreating as it explored this different flame, and Joanna feared that she would melt if he did not stop — or kiss her more thoroughly. He lifted his head, and his thumb returned to damp the moisture of the swollen fullness of her lips. His eyes flashed.
“It will do, perhaps,” he murmured, “For proving how much I enjoy your… cooking.” And his lips twitched again, into a smile of masculine satisfaction.
“Most men would have a full course if they enjoyed it so, mon Seigneur.” The deep green of her eyes shaded peridot with the rise of the beast beneath her skin, and she willed it back as she claimed his hand to touch a lingering kiss against his palm. Her smile blossomed against his skin. “But it will do, oui.”
He smiled, an unreadable ghost that curved his lips.
“I have always been overly fond of aperitifs,” he said, and lifted her fingers to his lips for a nibbling kiss of his own. “Besides — I am not most men.” He lowered her hand.
“But come. We will discover what’s afoot with the family.”
He had not forgotten, despite their reprieve.
She had, however. Breathing in to steady her song, the French queen tucked her arm into his and followed him back into Lady Sutherly’s Manor where the music of their siblings had eased into a quieter cadence.
Chapter 15
The months flew by quickly after the ball. August arrived with a heady heat and dripping humidity that made the occasional rain sh
owers a welcome reprieve. At least until the next dry day made the air suffocating to breathe again. The windows of the Vaughn Manor were open to the night near constantly, regardless of the weather, and satisfied with Joanna’s progress through the ton, her husband had finally relented on their schedule.
What had been a near daily series of balls or routs to attend, began to diminish into one or two social events a week. In the peace of home, the French queen had begun to write again.
The inspiration had come in droves, at first; though it was nothing she could have read in polite company, least of all under the pretense that she was a man. She had taken some amusement in reading a few drafts to Dorian and in the dark-eyed looks that had burned amber as he watched her.
Still, nothing seemed to progress between them, and she had finally given up on the High Lord taking their relationship further than it already was. When she made peace with the fact, it was easier to settle into his company with the slow burn of their music eliding into a softer harmony between them.
She wrote of the night sky instead, and of the moon it cradled so lovingly. She wrote of the waning and waxing, and the changing of the tides, and sometimes of fiery sprites that still danced long after they became smoldering spirits. Eventually, the Condesa counted herself fortunate that gloves were in fashion for the stains she was gathering around her nail beds again.
Then she had begun to gather a collection of writing that made her feel as if she would break into a thousand pieces for sharing it as Mr. Holt. These were not meant for the giggling ladies of the ton to read and think of as sweet with shallow sighs. Nor were they for men to use in seducing their company. Not the words she had written for Marjolaine — or the poetry for Jakob’s spirit. And certainly, not the secret whispers she had breathed into verses for Dorian.
