by Jenna Kernan
“Laurie, do you want babies right away or would you like a little time?”
She didn’t hesitate, knowing exactly what she wanted. “Right away. I want everything right away.”
He grinned. “All right then.”
Boon stroked her neck and drew away the lace that shielded her breasts from his lips. His kisses descended and Laurie’s body responded. She ached for him deep down within herself. Laurie lifted her hips and finished removing her frilly nightdress, thinking that from this day on she’d come to their bed naked.
Boon used the gathered lace to stroke her needy body, brushing her skin until she arched and clung. She tried to draw him on top of her, spreading her legs in welcome, but he slipped away, using his smooth cheek and clever tongue on her abdomen and then her inner thigh.
Laurie forgot how to breathe as his fingers delved into the thick nest of dark hair between her legs. She remembered that first night when they rode double on a fast horse and Boon had touched her here. Anticipation curled, only this time she felt not one moment’s embarrassment. The awkwardness had been replaced with eagerness; the shame with anticipation. He loved her and she loved him so nothing they did together could ever be wrong. She knew that now, deep in her heart, and felt the rightness of this joining. She lifted her hips to meet his delving fingers, his expert tongue.
She clutched the bedding, his hair, the bedposts, as she tossed her head and lifted to meet each exquisite stroke. Her passion built. Gasps and moans and sounds that were not quite words all tore from her. He only increased his pace and she knew he had the endurance that had carried her to safety and would now carry her home.
This time she did not try to staunch the rising tide of pleasure. Instead she threw herself into the void, trusting her husband to support her weight as the rippling contractions burst through her. She arched meeting the pleasure and then collapsed with the retreating waves. Boon lifted his dark head, slid his slippery mouth over her inner thigh and then scaled her body until his erection pressed hard against her soft belly. He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her, his mouth now tasting salty, and she realized that she tasted him and herself together on his lips.
A thrill of excitement beat inside her at what they would do next. She wanted to give Boon everything she could and knew that he offered the same. But her legs trembled and her limbs had gone limp as an old rag doll’s.
His kisses were soft at first, but relentless, as her husband continued to lick and kiss. When he reached her earlobe, she groaned half in reluctance, accepting the building craving he rekindled.
Curiosity tantalized her. She was wet and wanting. Laurie reached down and captured the object of her desire in her hand.
Boon stiffened and drew a long breath. She loosened her grip and slid her palm up and down the lovely, long length of him. His skin was soft as velvet, but oh, my, the difference between that texture and what lay beneath.
He extended his arms and stared down at her. She glanced at the prize she had captured and then met his eyes.
“Come here, husband,” she commanded.
One side of Boon’s mouth twitched upward. “Yes, ma’am.”
He settled between her open thighs and she placed both feet on the mattress, angling her hips to meet him. He paused there a moment, just outside her body. She gripped his taut backside and pulled. Boon’s eyes never left hers as he slipped inside and slid home inch by satisfying inch. Their hips locked. He waited. She wrapped her legs behind his lower back and squeezed. He withdrew and began a slow steady rhythm meant solely to drive her to distraction. Laurie’s eyes widened as she felt the now familiar building of desire. Boon smiled and increased his pace. Like a mustang, her husband had good wind and an excellent, smooth gait. The pleasure overtook her again and she arched against the mattress, giving a long moan as her release danced outward from where their bodies met.
When she opened her eyes, it was to see the fracturing of her husband’s unbreakable control. Like a wild horse feeling the cinch or a cow scorched by the branding iron, he broke into a wild, riotous bucking that lengthened Laurie’s pleasure and had her gasping for breath. He arched his back and gasped. She stared up in wonder at the expression of rapture so intent it bordered on anguish. She stilled and stared and then felt the surge of his release.
Laurie could not draw air fast enough. She used the last of her dwindling reserve to encircle her arms about his neck as he rolled to his back, carrying her along to sprawl across his wide chest. She held him as his ragged breath blew soft against her neck and the dampness of their skin cooled in the still dry air.
“That was the most breathtaking, soul-shattering experience of my life,” she whispered.
Boon lifted up to one elbow. His hair now fell down over his forehead. She swept it back and then caressed his smooth cheek.
“I love you, Laurie. I’m so proud to have you as my wife.”
She crumbled inside, knowing it was true and feeling so very grateful.
At her change of expression, a line formed between his dark brows. “Laurie?”
“I wanted to marry a respectable man but I never believed I deserved one as fine as you.”
He started to speak but she pressed two fingers to his lips.
“Justice, you saved me twice. First from those outlaws and now you’ve given me a life that I only ever touched in my dreams. I didn’t believe I deserved this or could ever have a husband as decent as you are. But you changed all that. You told me I was worthy and I believed you. I want to make you so proud of me because I am so proud of you.” The tears blurred her vision and he kissed them away.
Boon rolled to his back and gathered her up so she lay pressed to his side, her head upon his wide capable shoulders.
“I already am,” he said. “And not just because you’re beautiful. I love you through and through, both the iron and the lace. Never knew a female could be hard and soft all at once. Most are one or t’other. But you’re all that and now you’re mine.”
She raised her chin to look up at her husband. Her heart spilled over with joy. The certainty in his eyes and the hope in her heart held them fast, would hold them fast for the many years to come. For this was only the night of the first day of the long and respectable marriage of the respectable Mister and Mrs. Justice Boon.
* * * * *
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
The wind keened outside the ancient walls of Beresford Abbey. Bane, following on the heels of the ancient butler along the stone passageway, noticed that only one sconce in five had been lit. Blown out by draughts? Or a sign of his welcome? No matter which, the gloom suited his mood.
‘You should have left the dog in the stables,’ the butler muttered over his shoulder.
Bane glance down at Ranger, part-lurcher, part-wolfhound, pressed to his left side. ‘The dog stays with me.’
The butler tutted. ‘And how shall I announce you, sir?’ He gestured to the open door a few feet along the gloomy corridor.
A wry smile twisted Bane’s lips. Was there a protocol to be followed? If so, he didn’t know it. ‘I’ll announce myself.’
Looking shocked, but also relieved, the doddering old man turned back, shuffling down the dim stone corridor shaking his head. A wise old bird for whom discretion was the better part of valour.
Bane approached the doorway on feet s
ilenced by carpet. He paused at the entrance to the cavernous chamber. The flickering light from ten-foot-high torchères on each side of the heavily carved four-poster bed fell on the features of the shrunken man propped up by pillows. A face lined by dissipation and framed by thin strands of yellowing grey hair straggling out from beneath a blue silken nightcap. Bony shoulders hunched in silk valuable enough to feed a family of four for a year shook with a spasm of coughing.
A dead man breathing his last. Finally. The chill inside Bane spread outwards as he took in the others clustered at the edge of the circle of light. Two women, three men, some of whom he recognised as family. He’d investigated all of his relatives to avoid unnecessary surprises.
The older woman was his aunt, his grandfather’s daughter, Mrs Hampton, returned home as a widow. Her gown was the first stare of fashion as befitted her station. Tight curls of grey hair beneath a lace cap framed a middle-aged but still arresting face. As a young woman she’d been lovely, according to his mother, and too proud to make a friend of a lass from Yorkshire. At her side stood her son, Gerald, an almost too-pretty lad of seventeen with a petulant mouth and vivid blue eyes. The other young man was a distant fourth cousin. A Beresford through and through, slight, dapper, with blond hair and light blue eyes and a man his grandfather would have been happy to see as his heir had Bane not stood in the way.
An aspiring tulip of fashion in his early twenties, Bane had seen Jeffrey Beresford in town. They had no friends in common, but they bowed in passing—an acknowledgement of mutual distrust.
The other woman he did not know. Young, with a willowy figure, standing a good head taller than Mrs Hampton, she had inches on both young men. A Beresford also? She had the blonde hair and blue eyes to match the name, though she was dressed simply, in some dark stuff bespeaking modesty rather than style. The desire to see that statuesque body in something more revealing caused his throat to close.
Surprised him.
As a boy he’d had lusty thoughts about anything in skirts. As a man, a businessman, he had more important things on his mind. Women like her wanted home and hearth and a man to protect them. His life was about taking risks. Gambling all, on the chance for profit. No woman should live with such uncertainty. They were too delicate, too easily broken as his mother had been broken. The pain of her death had been unbearable. Not something he ever intended to experience again. Nor was it necessary. He was quite content to avoid the respectable ones while enjoying those who only wanted money in exchange for their favours, the demi-monde.
So why couldn’t he keep his eyes from this most respectable-looking of females? Who was she? He wasn’t aware of a female cousin, close or distant. Not that there couldn’t be a whole host of relatives he didn’t know about, since he didn’t give a damn about any of them. But as his gaze ran over the girl, a prickle of awareness raised the hairs on the back of his neck. A sensation of familiarity so strong, he felt the urge to draw closer and ask for her name.
Yet he was positive they had never met. Perhaps it was the wariness in her expression that had him intrigued.
A blinding flash of lightning beyond the mullioned windows lit the room in a ghostly light. An image seared on Bane’s vision. Stark otherworldly faces. Mouths dark pits in pale skin as the air moved with their startled gasps. They looked like the monsters who had peopled his childish nightmares. His enemies. The people who wanted him dead, according to his uncle. His mother’s brother.
In truth, he hadn’t expected to see family members here. He’d preferred to think of the old man alone and friendless as he gasped his last.
Just like Bane’s mother.
If not for this man, his mother might be alive today and the guilt of her death would not weigh so heavily on Bane’s shoulders. No matter how often he tried to put the blame where it belonged, on the man in the bed, he could not deny his own part in the events of that day. His thoughtless anger that had put her at risk. Hell, even his very existence, the reason she had run from this house in the first place.
Power and wealth brought invulnerability. His mother had drilled it into him since the day he could understand his place in the world. And that was why he was here. That and to see the old man off to the next world. He simply couldn’t pass up the chance to see the dismay in the old earl’s gaze.
He could count the number of times he and the old man had met face to face on one hand. But he had always been there, in the shadows, a threatening presence. Forcing his will where it was not wanted. Guiding Bane’s education, trying to choose his friends, but his mother’s brother had been more than a match for the earl. Bane still remembered his horror as he stood with his uncle on the doorstep of this house and listened to an argument over him, about money, about cruelty and murder. Accusations that had haunted him as a youth. Fed his anger at this man.
But his temper was not the hot flash of his youth, the kind that brought trouble to him and those around him. It was a cold burn in his gut, controlled, and carefully directed. Guilt over his mother’s death had taught him that lesson.
Since then, Bane had striven to be the gentleman his mother always wanted him to be. He had battled for the respect of the scions of other noble houses at school and held his head high. But at heart he was the son of a coalminer’s daughter. And proud of it. Mining was in his blood and showed in the scars on his knuckles and the muscles in his shoulders developed at the coalface.
He was more Walker than Beresford, whether or not he had any Beresford blood.
The lightning faded. Shadows once more reclaimed all but the man in the bed. As his coughing subsided, the earl’s gnarled fingers clawed at the bedsheets, then beckoned.
Resistance stiffened Bane’s spine. He wasn’t about to be called to heel like some slavering cur. But, no, apparently this particular summons was not for him. The old man must not have seen him yet, since it was the two women who moved towards the bed, Mrs Hampton nudging the younger one ahead of her, making her stumble.
Bane took a half-step, a warning on his lips, but the girl recovered inches from the earl’s warding hand, mumbling an apology.
Who was she? Some indigent relative looking for crumbs in the final hours? There would be no crumbs for any one of them. Not if Bane had a say.
‘So you are Mary.’ The old man’s voice sounded like a door creaking in the wind. ‘She said you were no great beauty, but not that you were a beanpole. You take after your father.’
‘You knew my father?’ the girl asked, and Bane sensed how keenly she awaited his answer. Her body seemed to vibrate with the depth of her interest.
The old man grimaced. ‘I met him once. Kneel, girl. I’m getting a crick in my neck.’
Like a supplicant, the girl sank down. Anger rose hot and hard in Bane’s throat on the girl’s behalf, but she seemed unperturbed by the command and gazed calmly into the dying man’s face.
She spoke again, but her low voice did not reach all the way to Bane in the shadows beside the door.
The old man glared at her, lifted a clawed hand to twist her chin this way and that. Glimpses of her profile showed strong classical features, a straight aristocratic nose. Lush, full lips. A narrow jaw ending in a decided chin. Not a classical beauty, but a face full of character.
The sight of the old man’s hands on her delicate skin caused Bane’s hands to fist at his sides, made him want to go to her rescue. An impulse he instantly crushed. A weak old man could do her no harm. And Bane had no interest in her, despite her allure.
She was not his type of woman.
Ranger growled, more a vibration under his hand than a sound. Bane glanced down at the dog and signalled him to settle. By the time he looked back, the old man had released his grip on the young woman. ‘No,’ the old man said, answering the question Bane had not heard. ‘My reasons are my own.’
The girl’s shoulders seemed to slump, as if she had hop
ed for a different response.
Bane remained still in the shadows, content to watch a little longer, content to choose his own moment to reveal his presence.
The old man peered into the shadows on the other side of the bed. ‘She’ll do,’ he said with a triumphant leer. His smile was a mirthless drawing back of lips over crooked yellow teeth.
The woman, Mary, jerked back. ‘I have given my thanks, my lord, I do not need your approval.’ Her words rang with defiance. Brave words, but the voice shook.
Bane ruthlessly quelled a tiny surge of pity. He had no room for pity or mercy.
Beresford wheezed a laugh. ‘Bold piece, ain’t you. No milk-and-water miss. All the better.’ He flicked his fingers in dismissal. The girl rose to her feet and turned.
Bane knew the moment she saw him. The widening of her eyes, the hesitation, the flare of recognition in her gaze, not recognition of him as a person, but of his presence. The connection between them was a tangible thing, a twisting invisible thread that kept their gazes locked. And he felt...something. A tightening of his body. The kind that heralded lust. Not something he wanted or needed right now.
He shook his head, a warning to remain silent, and it seemed she understood for she strode back to Mrs Hampton’s side as if she hadn’t seen him at all. An unwanted trickle of admiration for her quiet calm warmed his veins.
He dragged his gaze back to the man in the bed. It was time to be done with this farce. Bane forced himself not to square his shoulders or take a deep breath. He was no boy worried about his acceptance. He belonged here and he cared not a whit if they thought otherwise. He signalled Ranger to lie down, yet still he hesitated to take the first step.
The earl again looked over into the shadows on the far side of the bed. ‘You said he would come,’ he quavered.
A man trotted up to the bed. Tight lips. Eyes that darted hither and yon, never resting long enough to be read, bald pate shining. ‘He is expected, my lord. I sent word as you ordered.’ A dry, officious voice. A clerk of some sort.
