My Darling, My Disaster (Lords of Essex)

by Morgan, Angie

  “I said I wanted to taste every inch of you,” he murmured, kneading the sides of her stiffened limbs and moving forward until his lips were at her apex.

  She went rigid with wild alarm at his warm breath fanning against her most private place—he couldn’t possibly mean what she thought he meant. “But I—”

  “Want me to? Yes, I know. I’m so glad we agree on this.”

  Before she could say another word, Lana felt one of his fingers enter her. She tensed, closing tightly around him and promptly losing all powers of speech or protest.

  “Relax, my love,” Gray whispered. “I promise you nothing but pleasure.”

  She had no doubt of Gray’s skill or what he could give her, but the very picture of them in the greenhouse, with her splayed on the cushioned bench completely nude, his hands and mouth fulfilling those indecent promises—it should have made her worry. It should have shocked her. Instead, something else took her utterly by surprise: a sweep of pure, unadulterated lust.

  Lana released the muscles in her legs and moaned as Gray stroked in and out of her. Sighing with pleasure, she stared at the stained-glass ceiling, bathed in the moonlight filtering through, and matched his rhythmic plunges with her hips. When he removed his finger, she whimpered—and then gasped loudly as something warm and wet replaced it. Lana arched her spine and dug her fingers into the cushion as Gray plunged his tongue into her core. She held her breath as he took long, deep licks, doing exactly as he’d intended. Tasting her. Devouring her.

  Lana had never felt anything so divine—or as wicked. The wanton position, the sinful feel of his velvet tongue, and the return of his finger had Lana gasping for air. She cried out as pleasure built in swelling ripples, only knowing that the reward was there, right beyond her grasp, and she needed it. She worked her fingers into Gray’s hair and held on, her body quivering and pulsing as each dive of his tongue, every teasing scrape of his teeth, pushed her toward the nameless, shapeless thing she craved.

  And then she caught it, a trembling heat consuming her from the very center of her body. Lana cried out again and again, embracing the heat as it started to flow away from her. And with it went her inexplicable yearning. Her muscles were slack, her fingers no longer tangled in Gray’s hair. He lifted himself from her and kissed his way up her stomach, to her breasts, where he took a protracted moment to swirl his hot, talented tongue around each nipple.

  “Gray,” she sighed, unable to think. Unable to say anything more than that.

  “Did you enjoy giving me what I wanted?” he asked, a teasing lilt to his voice.

  It had felt more like Gray giving her something, but she couldn’t do more than nod and smile.

  He pulled back, standing once more beside the bench. Lana watched him through heavily lidded eyes as he stripped out of his jacket and began to unbutton his waistcoat. Somewhere, somehow, he’d already rid himself of his cravat.

  “You cannot be serious,” she whispered, beginning to rouse from the seductive web he’d woven around them. “What if we are discovered?”

  Sobering, Lana immediately began to consider possible scenarios. Henry, Irina, and the countess, returning to Hartstone to be informed by the butler that, no, Princess Svetlanka had not arrived home on her newly betrothed’s arm. The earl taking to the lawns in search of them. His eyes catching on the entrance to the maze, and then…

  Gray pulled his shirt off in one overhead tug, and Lana stopped worrying. Stopped thinking. Stopped breathing. He was beautiful. The muscles of his chest and shoulders were broad and able, tapering into a narrow, sculpted torso that made her mouth go dry.

  “Then I suppose we will simply have to marry,” he replied, releasing the fall of his trousers and shucking off those next. With them went his smalls, and Lana shot to her elbows, her eyes riveted on his…oh, sweet heavens. She knew that part of him had already claimed her once before and had seen his impressive length between their bodies. But she had not viewed it like this.

  “I think it only fair. I did get to see every inch of you, did I not?” he said, that teasing grin of his falling back into place.

  “Gray. You’re…” She didn’t know how to finish without sounding absurd. Perfect? Manly? Breathtaking?

  He crawled onto the bench and hovered over her. “Exactly where I want to be for the rest of my life.”

  She smiled up at him, suddenly giddy. “In Lord Langlevit’s greenhouse?”

  He remained sober, however, and she blinked in surprise at his seriousness. “With you, Lana. It doesn’t matter where I am, so long as we’re together. Like this.”

  Gray touched her, his palms coursing down her body, his serious gaze admiring her figure the way someone might admire a sculpture.

  “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

  Lana knew it couldn’t be true. She had seen a number of women more beautiful than she at the ball tonight and many times before. But whether it was factual or not, in that moment, Gray was being honest. He thought she was beautiful. He wanted her. He loved her.

  And she realized then that she had not yet told him how she felt. That she loved him, too. She loved him more than she’d ever imagined possible.

  “I want one more thing,” he said before she could speak. Maybe it was for the best. They were important words, and she wanted to say them when the timing was right.

  “Yes?” she asked, half paying attention and half ogling the swollen length between his legs.

  Gray didn’t answer with words. Instead, he scooped his hands below her back and moved her again—this time on top of him—as he settled beneath her. He reclined on the cushion and positioned her legs so that she was straddling him. Her hair was somehow still swept up in pins except for a few tousled strands. She pushed them back, out of her eyes.

  “I want to watch you come for me again, this way,” he said, his voice husky. Lana went still, her heart skipping a beat and then throbbing hard to catch up.

  She peered down at him, apprehension filling her. He wanted her to take control, and her immediate reaction was to say she couldn’t. That she didn’t know how.

  But then she remembered that with every encounter she’d had with Gray so far, he’d shown her how. How to find pleasure, and how to give him the same thing. Each time, her body had learned, and swiftly.

  Lana gathered the boldness she now knew he adored and shifted to put him at her entrance.

  “Take your time, my love, I know your body is still new to—”

  Lana rocked against him, feeling the smooth crown of his shaft nudging into her. Gray’s sentence cut off with a groan at the intimate clutch of her body upon him, and he gripped her hips, his own rising in a thrust. She bit her lip as she met him halfway with an indelicate gasp, before fully seating herself and allowing her inner muscles to adjust to his girth. And then what had felt like a foreign body invading her began to feel like an extension of her own. She rocked forward again, the slick friction of their joining spiking her desire. With every decadent roll of her hips, Gray met her with a thrust, and soon their bodies were moving in a rhythm that made her breathless.

  “Lana,” he said, his own breath coming short. “Open your eyes. Look at me, love.”

  She hadn’t realized how tightly shut her eyes had been until he bid her open them. When she did, the sight of his naked body underneath hers, of his dark, passion-filled eyes, made her feel a kind of power she had never experienced before. She was a princess, but she felt like a goddess. He belonged to her, and she to him, and she wanted to stay this way forever.

  Maneuvering her legs around his hips, Gray sat forward and braced her back, giving her the freedom to lean back a little onto her arms. She didn’t break her rhythm, or eye contact, and the change in positioning seemed to open something else up inside of her. An untethered euphoria swept from her core to the ends of her limbs, and as Gray’s thrusts began to intensify, she knew he was feeling the same frenzied rush, that he was nearly to the edge of his own ecstasy. He kept his
eyes firmly hinged on hers, and Lana became as intent to watch his pleasure break through him as he was to watch hers.

  She could barely breathe, much less form actual words, but she had to tell him. Now. “I love you,” she rasped. “I love you so much, Gray.”

  His eyes flared in immediate response, every muscle in his body tightening as if her declaration was the very thing to send him hurtling over the edge. Gray’s fingers dug into her behind, urging her onto his length harder and faster than before, his only answer a grunt of pure satisfaction. With one tremendous surge he groaned his release, fastening his hips to hers. Within seconds she cried out, her inner passage convulsing around him as he continued to grind against her, their bodies cradled in intimate bliss. She clutched at him, wanting to stay in this moment, wanting only to prolong the last pulses of pleasure shuddering between them.

  For a minute, Gray simply held her, their damp bodies still joined. He tried to even his breathing, and she did the same, her chest heaving.

  Gray leaned forward and nuzzled her breasts, his lips then tracing just underneath the glittering necklace she’d forgotten all about, resting along her collarbone.

  “Say it again,” he said.

  Lana tried to clear her head and determine what he meant, but then she remembered. “I love you.”

  He stayed rooted within her, and she realized then that he’d spilled his seed inside of her. He hadn’t pulled free at the last moment to avoid unwanted consequences. Because whatever child they created together would never be unwanted. Or a mistake. Gray was going to be her husband, and she his wife. The mother of his children.

  He kissed her lips, though softly. Unlike before. This was the kind of kiss that seemed to say they had plenty of time for other kisses.

  “And I love you,” he said, then heaved an affected sigh. “Though I do think one of these times I should get you into a real bed before defiling your luscious body.”

  She pressed her lips to his neck. “And why would you want to do that, my lord?”

  “It seems like a more proper place for a man to ravish his wife.”

  Lana licked his earlobe and felt the responding rise of gooseflesh over his shoulders, where she’d wrapped her arms. “I think I prefer the inappropriate places more.”

  He captured her mouth with a less chaste kiss this time. “I’ll take that as a challenge, Your Highness. Prepare yourself.”

  Lana laughed and kissed him again, quite certain that when it came to Gray, she would never be fully prepared. And she could not dream of having it any other way.

  Epilogue

  St. Petersburg, Russia

  October 1819

  Gray glanced at Lana sitting opposite him in the carriage, cradling their eight-month-old son to her breast on one side and a sleeping five-year-old Sofia on the other. Now, finally on their way to Volkonsky Palace—their first visit there as a family—he felt a fullness rise in his chest. Sometimes, he still couldn’t fathom that Lana was actually his. That she had married him. Accepted his daughter. Borne him a son. Some days, he half expected to awaken one morning to see everything had disappeared, as if part of some imagined fantasy. But it never did, and Gray had never been happier.

  Experiencing St. Petersburg through his wife’s eyes was like nothing Gray had ever imagined. Widely traveled, he had seen all manner of stunning architecture and breathtaking cathedrals across the continent, but Lana’s natural exuberance and pride for her home transformed the visit into something magical. Whether it was her love for her city or the fact that she brought new light to anything they shared, Gray was in awe. He viewed the magnificent Winter Palace with fresh eyes, listening to her riveting accounts of the sumptuous balls she’d attended there with her parents. They visited the abandoned Mikhailovsky Castle together, and she regaled him with tales her father had told her of when Emperor Paul had lived there and was assassinated sixteen years before. Her anecdotal stories made the old city come alive.

  Prior to their wedding in London, Lana and Irina had taken several trips back to Russia with the Earl of Langlevit to ensure that things were running smoothly at Volkonsky Palace. But Gray had remained in London to tend to his affairs. Lana’s uncle was stripped of his title, along with his guardianship of his brother’s daughters.

  Alexander, the tsar himself, had attended their nuptials, causing quite a stir in London with his unplanned arrival, and had expressed his gratitude to both princesses as well as to Lord Langlevit and Gray for their assistance in unearthing the plot and the two traitors. The honor of Alexander’s presence was noted by many in attendance, adding to Gray and Lana’s startling rise in popularity among the ton, which of course meant little to either of them.

  After their wedding, though Lana’s visits to her ancestral home had grown shorter, Irina’s had not. And on the last trip they took together, Irina had decided to stay in St. Petersburg for an extended period. Her absence had been tough on Lana, but Lana understood that her somewhat impetuous sister needed to find her own way. The Earl of Langlevit had secured a suitable chaperone who had met with Lana’s approval. Gray knew that Lana was looking forward to a long overdue reunion with her younger sister at Volkonsky Palace.

  Across from him in the coach, Lord Oliver Gregory Findlay cooed contentedly, snug in the capable arms of his mother. Although Lana had agreed to the occasional assistance of a night nurse, she adored taking care of their young son. As Gray watched her, his hooded gaze falling to her lush body, he felt something stir in his loins. Motherhood suited her, and his passion for her had not diminished in the least. Neither had hers, thankfully. His thoughts wandered to a few hours earlier, when she had screamed his name, her body arching beneath his as he brought her to fulfillment. He could never get enough of her, it seemed. And the ripe changes of motherhood had made her delectable body even more luscious, more irresistible. She drove him mad, and right then his desire for her drummed through him. He resettled himself in his seat, trying to think of something other than ravaging every inch of his radiant wife with his mouth. But it was an uphill battle.

  Lana’s laughing eyes met his as if she could read his thoughts, and he arched a lazy eyebrow in response. “That, my lord, is the reason I am with child yet again,” she said softly.

  “I cannot help it if you wish to seduce me at every turn.”

  Her low laughter filled the interior of the carriage. “Well, if that is your stance, I shall endeavor to be less…bold in the future.” She paused, licking her lips and drawing his attention there. All attempt at controlling himself went out the window as the blood rushed to his nether regions, making him grimace. Her smile turned coy. “Which will be a pity, as there are so many inappropriate places to discover at Volkonsky Palace.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Gray growled with a laugh, taking her meaning and growing stiffer. He groaned and adjusted his position, fervently wishing that they’d let the children ride in the other carriage with the nurse and the governess. He’d have had his sweet wife’s skirts over her head before she could blink. “And for the love of all things holy, can we talk about something else before I embarrass myself?”

  Thankfully, she took pity on him. “I’m so looking forward to you seeing my home.”

  “I am, too.”

  “We’re almost there,” she said, leaning forward, her eyes lighting. “It’s just beyond those hills. There’s the village. And the old church!”

  Desperate for any distraction, he peered obediently out the window, feeling his baser urges lessen at the sight of the picturesque landscape. It reminded him somewhat of Essex, although there were many differences.

  “Look now, just past this bend.” Lana’s voice hummed with excitement as they neared Volkonsky Park, which she’d told him surrounded the palace.

  But nothing had prepared him for the sight that greeted him as the carriage crested the hill…not Lana’s stories or Langlevit’s curt descriptions. The glittering curve of the Slavyanka River caught his attention first, and then his gaze lif
ted to the lush landscape crowned by a sprawling castle at least five times the size of Ferndale’s manor house, resting like a jewel at the peak of a second rolling hill. He admired the long, sweeping lines of the architecture and the elegant neoclassical mix of Greek and Roman influences. His eyes drank in the aesthetically pleasing landscape park surrounding them, dotted with manicured gardens, shimmering lily ponds, and marble pavilions.

  “What do you think?” Lana asked softly, watching him.

  “It’s beautiful. But I did not expect anything less.”

  The carriage ambled up the road and rolled to a stop in the courtyard, giving in to a flurry of activity as servants bustled out to welcome them, and the nurse came to take both still-drowsy children. But before Gray could descend to help Lana down from the carriage, she barred his way and closed the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  Lana moved to ensconce herself in his lap. “Before we go, there’s one thing I wish to tell you.”

  “And what is that?” Gray said huskily, the firm press of her bottom against his thighs inflaming his senses. He nibbled her ear and dragged slow kisses along her jaw.

  “Do you remember the maze I told you about?” Her voice shook as he kissed the corner of her mouth.

  “Yes.”

  “You recall what I told you lay at its center?”

  “A fountain. Why?”

  His wicked wife raised a laughing gaze to him. “You should know that I used to sneak away to swim in there at night.” She kissed him, her teasing tongue coaxing his to action. “Naked,” she whispered into his mouth.

  “Lana,” he groaned, the combination of the erotic kiss and the thought of her frolicking like a water sprite beneath the spray of a fountain filling his brain with wanton desires. “I will not be responsible for what your servants think when I toss you over my shoulders and sprint for said labyrinth.”

  “My servants have learned to turn a blind eye to my antics.”