by Julia Quinn
“Mmmmm,” she said.
And then she leaned over and did exactly what she wanted to do. She put her hands on his thighs, and those muscles jumped under her fingers. She stroked him softly, with a feather touch, then more firmly.
He groaned again, and the sound of it went straight between her legs. She was going to do something that she’d never even dreamed of, and yet the moment it came into her mind, she was consumed with the desire to do it.
Without looking at Hugh, because she was pretty sure that he never had this in mind, she bent over, letting her hair hide her face, and put her lips directly on top of him.
He shouted, and his hips jerked up. And just like that, her lips slid around him. He tasted like the outdoors, like a lake and a spicy man, all mixed up together.
She liked it.
He was saying something, but she paid no attention, just dragged her hands slowly up his thighs, teasing him. And then brought them to the same place.
“No,” he said hoarsely. “No.”
She raised her head. “Don’t you like it?”
He stared back at her, his eyes wild. “No one has ever kissed me there. Ever.”
She grinned and turned back to him. He made a strangled noise before her lips even touched him. Joy sprang just from giving him pleasure, from the way the muscles in his thighs were knotted and fierce, from the way his hands clenched at his sides.
She played with him, bringing her hand in the mix, running a finger up his leg, listening to the sound of his groans, until he suddenly said through clenched teeth, “That’s it—can’t do any more.” He put her away firmly.
“Oh!” she said, rather surprised. She had thought that he was enjoying it more and more.
His jaw was clenched, and his eyes were hot. “I have to ask you something, Georgie.”
Her heart stilled, and her hand dropped from his thigh.
“Tell me that Richard didn’t teach you that.”
“Richard?” she said, her voice squeaking. And then pulled herself together. She cleared her throat, not even bothering to imagine how horrified her husband would have been if she had even touched him so intimately. “No, certainly not,” she said, starting to scramble to her feet. Her body felt confused, hot and a little dizzy. “Of course not. It was—just a stupid thought. I—” She bit off the words and found herself standing.
Even thinking of Richard made her feel odd … cold. The very thought of Richard … what would Richard think—not of what she’d just done, but of her, in a field, without clothing? A shiver of distaste went up her spine.
Hugh had stood when she wasn’t watching. She took a step back.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” His voice was dark, thrumming her nerves.
“Well, perhaps not,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering again, just a little. “You know, this—this isn’t really my—I’m not a person who—” She couldn’t even think where to put her hands, on her breasts, or elsewhere?
“Forget Richard.”
Her back stiffened. She couldn’t forget Richard. What sort of wife—widow—would that make her? But then, what sort of woman was she? She turned in a blind panic and headed toward her clothing. “I’m sorry,” she said, over her shoulder. “I have to go.”
She just managed to snatch her skirt before he reached her. A hand came around her waist; she gasped and clutched the cloth to her breasts. “I can’t do this,” she cried, her voice catching. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Please let me go.”
“I’m a jackass,” Hugh said. “Georgie. Please. I didn’t mean to mention—I didn’t mean to bring it up. It was just that no woman has ever—”
“Don’t say that again!” She could feel heat in her cheeks. “Richard would not have countenanced such a thing. Obviously, I’m—It’s only me.” She pulled free of his arms. “I need to go.” Tears burned in the back of her throat. She should have known not to just do whatever came in her head. She wasn’t any good at that sort of thing. Look how many times Richard had had to gently correct her, and she had never even—
She wrenched the skirt up her legs only to realize that Hugh was pulling the fabric away at the same moment.
“Leave me be!” she said fiercely.
He was the biggest idiot in the world. One moment Georgina was looking at him, sultry and hot and a little dazed, and the next her eyes were bleak and—what possessed him to ask such a thing?
It was because when she touched him, when she even smiled at him, he felt a primitive wave of possession.
Her lips touched him, and he thought, mine, and she smiled and he thought, mine, and when she put her lips on him, he thought something that was absolutely idiotic.
“Forgive me,” he said, dropping her skirt and grabbing her shoulders so that she couldn’t escape.
“Of course I do,” she said, pulling her skirt over her hips. “I think I must have gone mad for a moment. I—I embarrassed myself. I apologize.”
“Apologize? For what?”
She shot him a furious look.
Still holding her shoulders, he suddenly understood. If looks could kill, hers would burn him where he stood. “You think I don’t respect you,” he said, pulling her closer.
Her mouth set mulishly.
He dragged her into his arms. She was all soft and warm where he was hard, and just like that his blood started pounding through his body again. He said it into her hair. “You think I don’t respect you.”
“This is a very uninteresting conversation,” she said, pushing against him.
But he held on to her. “You think I am horrified by the kiss you just gave me.”
“I am horrified,” Georgie said, pushing his hand away. “I can’t imagine what came into my head. I’m—”
“It made me delirious,” he said flatly. “Crazed, cracked, mad with pleasure.”
“Wonderful.” She managed to twist away from him and grab her chemise.
He went after her, because he would always, always go after her. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, so quickly that she squeaked like a mouse in the walls. “I love you.”
Her body froze.
He kept talking, the happiness of it roaring through his blood. “I love you, Georgina. I think I’ve loved you always, even before you went swimming with me. Nothing you do could ever horrify me, or disappoint me, or make me lose respect for you. Nothing.”
He waited a moment, but she didn’t say anything. Her hair had fallen forward, all around her face, and he couldn’t see her expression. So he started kissing her ear, still holding her so closely that she couldn’t escape. “When you kissed me so intimately, I suddenly realized that if you had ever given pleasure to Richard of that sort, I would have to kill him.”
“He’s already dead,” Georgie said. Her voice was a little muffled, but she didn’t sound angry anymore.
“I know. I’m sorry he died. But I’m not sorry that he died, because you’re mine, Georgie. I think you always have been and I just didn’t realize or I could never have let you marry the man. Never.”
She took a deep breath, and then slowly turned in his arms to face him. Her beautiful eyes were painfully uncertain. “So you asked that because you were jealous?”
He kissed her so hard that she melted into his arms, letting her feel his ferocious desire, the desire that made him crazed at the very idea of Richard. The possessiveness too, and at the bottom of it all—the love. “You’re mine,” he said hoarsely, a moment later.
“Hugh,” she whispered. The tremor in her voice was as intoxicating as brandy. It went to his head.
“Did you really think that I was disgusted by what you did?”
She hesitated. “Richard would have been.”
He clenched his teeth for a moment and managed to keep back a curse. “I’m not Richard.” He pushed his thigh in between her legs, letting her feel the strength of his leg against her most sensitive part. “Not. Richard,” he said fiercely.
Georgie
’s eyes went a little unfocused, just the way he liked them. She shivered against his thigh.
“I want to lick you all over,” he said. “I want you to lick me. I want to make love to you on top of the dining-room table, and in the water trough. I want you to lean over my library chair and smile at me. I want you to let me seduce you in the stables.”
She gave a gasping little giggle.
He moved back and dropped to the blanket once more. His tool stood up proudly. “Please,” he begged. “Please, will you do it again, Georgie, just for a moment, even for a second? I just want to feel it once more in my life. Please.”
Chapter 24
Hugh was almost babbling. Georgie looked hard at his face, just long enough to discover that there wasn’t even a trace of horror or surprise in his eyes. There wasn’t. There was lust and—and something else.
She knelt beside him rather primly and put a hand on his chest. It was muscled and hard under her fingertips. She was too embarrassed to meet his eyes, so she just concentrated on his body, finding what he liked, what gave him pleasure.
It was madness, making love like this, in a way that—
She had to stop thinking of Richard. Wrap up the memories and put them away somewhere. Because Richard, and his rather horrified experience of her body … that didn’t have any part here, in the warm sun in a field of buttercups, making love to Hugh.
Hugh was … Hugh. He was stretched out like a boneless cat, his eyes gleaming with pleasure, his body trembling at her touch. She rubbed her thumb over his nipple, ran her fingers over his taut waist, wandered a little lower. The hoarse sound in the back of his throat was encouraging.
But she had barely touched him before he suddenly erupted under her, and she found herself flat on her back, six feet of hot aroused male on top of her.
“I can’t do it,” he said flatly, staring down into her eyes. “Not without making a possible ass of myself and losing control, and I’m not doing that with you.”
Georgie had to admit, she loved the sound of that. “Losing control?” she said, feathering her hands down his back and giving an experimental wiggle. “What does that look like?”
He didn’t answer, just lowered his head and began to nuzzle her breast. She lost track of her question and started to whimper, her hands curling instinctively, pulling him closer. For the first time in her life, she felt a melting emptiness, a hunger that could only be assuaged by another person.
“Hugh,” she said, her voice coming out a mere whisper. “Please, I …”
He responded by dipping a finger between her legs. Georgie arched straight up against his body with a faint scream. Two powerful strokes, and she broke, shaking and crying against him, clutching him hard.
“Yes,” Hugh said in a hoarse whisper. “I don’t think this will hurt, sweet Georgie.” Then he pulled back, and before she could register what he had said, he thrust.
Georgie’s eyes flew wide open. It felt entirely different than what she had experienced before, when her body seemed to fight her husband’s invasion. Instead, Hugh slid into her, hot and big and powerful—and rather than rebelling, her body ached for more.
“Does it hurt?” he whispered, withdrawing.
She wasn’t listening. Instead, she was trying to pull him back, whimpering. “Hugh.”
A slow grin spread over his face, and he gave her a hard, quick kiss. “I’ll take that as a no,” he said. And slid back into her welcome. The grin fell from his face. “God, you feel so good. So small and wet and damned perfect.” His voice was hardly more than a growl.
Georgie instinctively rose to meet him, clenching hard, trying to keep him with her. He pushed deep and steady, again, and again. Her first orgasm melted into another as she sobbed and cried, her body instinctively responding to his thrusts.
“I can’t—” Hugh gasped.
But Georgie couldn’t answer. She was caught in the moment, arching hard against him, reaching down to pull him even closer.
At the touch of her hand on his arse, he did lose control. She felt it in the way his body ground against hers, in the groan that tore from his throat.
He pulled back, braced on his forearms. “You are mine,” he said between clenched teeth, his voice no more than a growl.
He was—Georgie squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the heat building again, shuddering helplessly.
“I love you.” Hugh’s voice broke, and he bent down to take her mouth, his body driving her straight into a firestorm of pleasure. But not enough to obscure his words. Or the joy in her heart.
Chapter 25
When people talked about fallen women, they never discussed how those women handled the embarrassing moments. The aftermath of the fall, so to speak. Everyone knows that the first thing Eve did was fashion herself a gown from some leaves, and Georgie could see exactly why.
It was embarrassing.
One moment you were so caught up in the pleasure of it that you were … well, grunting, and crying, and generally acting as if you were cracked. But then, when it was over, you found yourself lying in a field with clover stuck in the back of your knees, and likely other places as well.
And your hair is rumpled, and you aren’t as clean as you would like, and your clothes are a good distance away.
“Damn it,” Hugh groaned, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Richelieu took off.”
Georgie sat up, happy to think about something else. Her breasts bobbled against her chest, and she wrapped her arms around them. She looked around, but while Elsbeth was still peacefully cropping grass, there was no sign of Hugh’s pride and joy. “Where did he go? Do you suppose that he returned to his stable?”
She looked back at Hugh, but he didn’t appear to be as anxious as a man should be who had just misplaced the future winner of the Ascot. Instead, he was looking at her breasts.
“God, you’re so beautiful,” he said, his voice hushed and almost reverent.
That made her feel a bit better. “So are you,” she said shyly. “That is, you’re very handsome.”
He rolled over on his side. “I’m a bit brutish, and I always have been. But you, Georgie … you’re all curves and your skin is so smooth and you taste so good. I feel as if I shouldn’t even touch you.” He reached out and ran a finger over the curve of her breast.
She loosened her arms, and her breasts plumped into his hand. In one smooth movement, Hugh came up on his knees, just before her, and pulled her to her knees as well.
Georgie was mortifyingly aware of her bare arse, the way her breasts were touching his chest, the tangled grass under her knees. But then she looked up into his eyes and forgot all about her discomfort.
“Lady Georgina Sorrell,” Hugh said formally, taking her palm and putting it to his lips, “would you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
Tangled sentences went through Georgie’s mind … She never meant to marry again. She never thought to …
An uncharacteristic touch of uncertainty flashed through Hugh’s eyes. “Georgie?”
She had to ask. “I’m just—”
He kissed her palm again, his eyes on hers. “What is it, sweetheart?”
“You didn’t even know I was in the room last year at Twelfth Night,” she said in a rush. “I just …” Her voice trailed off.
“I’m an idiot, and I always have been,” he said. “Carolyn would concur, wouldn’t she?”
Georgie nodded.
“I don’t dress like an earl. Hell, most of the time I don’t even smell like an earl. But I know how I feel,” he said fiercely. “I love you, Georgie, and you are mine. You’re going to marry me because that’s just the way it is.”
The smile in Georgie’s heart must have been in her eyes, because his grip on her hand loosed a bit. “You want me to marry you, even though you sometimes go off and practically live in the barn?”
“I have never put my horses ahead of my sisters, ahead of the people I love. And I will never, ever put my stables ahead of you.”
&
nbsp; Georgie’s smile trembled. “I’ve never been first in anyone’s life,” she said before she could stop herself.
It was a few minutes before Hugh stopped kissing her, and by then she was convinced that in his mind, she was the first. “Will you?” he asked, once more.
Georgie’s eyes were filled with tears. “I love you, Hugh,” she whispered.
“But will you marry me, the way I am, with all the horses, and the stupidity, and the stink of the stables?”
“I wasn’t going to marry again.”
His fingers tightened on her shoulders. “Was it so awful with your first husband that you can’t contemplate it again—or is it something about me?”
“I didn’t mean to love you,” she said, smiling through her tears.
“Then?”
“I thought perhaps that if I didn’t marry I wouldn’t …” But her words were tangled in her head, and her fears seemed paltry and foolish now. Still, there was one thing that had to be said. “I’m not sure I can have children.”
The words seemed almost to echo in the air, so Georgina kept talking. “You made the list, or rather Carolyn made the list, and it was all about having children and making an heir.” She swallowed hard. Still Hugh said nothing. “I just don’t think that I—perhaps we could just have an affaire?”
“An affaire,” he said. “With you? No.”
“Oh, well—”
But he took the words away. “You are my life and my heart, Georgie. I feel as if I have been walking around the world blindly, at least until last week, when I looked up and there you were; it had been you all the time. I don’t give a damn if we never have children.”
This time tears rolled down her cheeks. He kissed them away.
“In fact, you are the only person I want in my life, so perhaps it would be better if there weren’t any children,” he said, sitting back and scooping her onto his lap.
“Richard and I tried and tried,” Georgie told his chest. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes yet.
“I don’t care,” Hugh said. The words were a deep rumble in his chest, and she knew she heard the truth in them as if it were written on his skin.
