She blushed. “I just never imagined . . .” Her voice trailed off as she realized he was looming over her, holding his necktie in his hands. A shiver coursed through her. Did he mean to tie her up? Did she mean to want him to tie her up?
But no . . . he was handing the necktie to her.
“What are you doing?” she asked in confusion.
“Proving my inventiveness knows no bounds.” He flashed her a grin. “I would promise to behave without it, but we both know I’m not to be trusted.”
West settled down onto the mattress and held out his wrists.
It was the only thing he could think of that might prolong the moment, slow down the mad pace they were setting. The taste of her was still warm on his tongue, the sight of her, disheveled and shattered against his sheets, a beautiful memory he wanted to repeat.
He wanted to go further, faster with her. He very nearly frightened himself with how much he wanted her. She tested his restraint at every turn, and he was beginning to doubt his capacity to be as careful as she needed this first crucial time.
He halfway expected her to refuse. This was a woman who had once fainted on him, after all. But it was also a woman who had bravely borne a kiss from a brothel owner. A woman who had just read aloud from a salacious book, lingering over the filthy parts.
Who knew what she would decide to do in this moment?
She lifted the necktie. Pulled it through her fingers.
Looped the necktie loosely around his proffered wrists.
He thought she might leave it at that. Or, at best, give him a half-hearted sort of tie, something he would have to pretend held him fast. The necktie might prove nothing more than a symbolic restraint in the end, but it would remind him of the need to go slowly. But she surprised him by suddenly moving, twisting the ends with deft hands. Before he could blink, he found his wrists bound in a perfect, immovable Highwayman’s Hitch.
“Good Christ.” He stared at his hands. “Where did you learn to do that?”
“The Seaman’s Manual.” She tested the strength of the knot, then lifted his hands over his head to secure them to a bed-post.
“You mean . . . you read more than novels and newspaper accounts?” He stared at her bare, rounded breasts, which were currently hovering a tantalizing inch or so from his mouth, shifting as she worked. “I thought you favored gothic novels.”
“I’ve read every book in my brother’s library.” She leaned back, regarding him with what might be characterized as a smug smile. “The Seaman’s Manual had excellent illustrations.”
West tugged against his restraints. Realized he was well and truly tied. And that he, a former officer in the Royal British Navy who ought to know how to tie a knot with the best of them, had no idea how to undo the damage.
“Well then,” he said slowly, wondering just what sort of derangement he’d just invited upon himself. Clearly, one ought to not tease bookish women. “I . . . ah . . . hope you haven’t read anything about castration techniques.”
“Oh, English Agriculture, by Sir James Caird, also had a series of excellent illustrations.” She raised a dark brow. “I’ve read it twice, so you might want to behave.”
He nodded, praying she was teasing. “Yes, ma’am.”
For a moment, she stared down at him, her gaze roaming with a shy intensity. “So, this is my chance to . . . touch you?”
“Yes.” It scarcely sounded like his own voice uttering the hoarse word.
She ran the backs of her fingers along his ribcage, pulling a coarse, involuntary shiver from him. “However I want?”
“I haven’t a way to stop you,” he pointed out. And even if he had, even if she had tied him up with nothing more complicated than a half-loop, he wouldn’t have. Because she was rising up over him like a goddess, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, her breasts peeking out through the dark strands. She was glorious. Uncertain. Brave.
His.
He held his breath as her fingers moved lower, across the terrain of his lower abdomen. In spite of the faint edge of worry that he was incapable of escape, his cock was fully engaged in whatever game she was playing. It jerked, throbbing against his skin, wanting her touch. Her fingers curled over it, squeezing, testing, making him hiss out through his teeth. “Just have a care with how far you tease me, Mary,” he groaned hoarsely. “I’m apt to spill in your hands.”
She hesitated, her touch lightening against his skin to something akin to agony. “I hadn’t imagined I might . . . be in control of this.”
“No?” he asked, trying in vain to pull away from her endless, innocent touch, his cockstand so painful as to cause him to grit his teeth. “You can be in control whenever you want,” he panted. “Just promise to untie me when you are done.”
Her smile turned saucy. “You probably should have extracted that promise before you let me tie you up.” She leaned over to press a kiss against his upper thigh, too close to the sun for comfort. Her tongue, so small and perfect, reached out to lave him in small circles, but her nerve seemed to fail her at the thought of going higher.
No matter. They had a lifetime to discover such things.
She ran her questing hands down his limbs, each curious touch of her fingers making him want to leap off the sheets. He’d started this game, but it was clear now that she was the one playing it. Her mouth pressed here and there, her tongue swirling hot against his skin. She lingered in places he’d never imagined as all that interesting: the side of one knee, the lower curve of his calf muscle. She seemed to find each spot on him fascinating, a thing to unravel. He was panting beneath her ministrations, writhing against the restraints he’d so stupidly offered. But he’d committed to this course, and so he bore it: breathlessly, if not bravely.
Finally, she kissed her way back up to land on his mouth. He welcomed her there with an almost-anguished groan. “Have you seen enough yet?” he murmured against her lips, praying that now, perhaps, she might untie him.
She drew back, then reached over to fumble at the bedside table, returning with one of the French letters. “Can you guide me?”
He stilled. His body wanted to sink into her, skin against skin, no hint of ugly beneath. He’d meant what he had said: she, alone was his future, and in a perfect world, they would have no need to ever use the French letters again. But he’d made the promise she could use them as long as she wanted, and he was determined to be a man who kept his word.
“Not with my hands. Not unless you untie me.” His wrists were already straining against her very skilled knot. He exhaled, cursing his inventiveness. How could he help her enjoy this properly if he couldn’t use his hands?
“With your words, then,” she suggested, blushing deeply.
“Slide the open part over the tip,” he instructed, his voice a hoarse caricature of its usual confident self. She complied, and he arched in vain against the fumbling perfection of her inexperienced touch. “Now, slide it down and tie the ribbon near the base.” As she began to fix the ends, he added, “Not too tight.” He forced a laugh, though he was half-terrified of what sort of knot she might be capable of in this instant. “This isn’t ship’s rigging.”
“Like this?”
He nodded. As her nails scraped pleasurably against him, he shuddered, sure he was going to embarrass himself.
“What comes next?”
He unclenched his jaw, willing his body to stay the course until she’d done whatever it was she had in mind. “Whatever you wish, Mouse. Just promise you will be gentle with me.”
She had a notion of it all, the mechanics of what went where.
But Mary’s understanding of the act—framed by the hurried notations in the books she had read—was of a technical variety.
Now that she was here, on the cusp of discovery, with West tied up in the bed and clothing strewn here and about, she found herself uncertain of what to do next.
She raised herself up, positioning herself over the covered tip of him. Slowly, she joined their bodies togeth
er. Settled lower, letting her weight pull her down, then stopped as she felt a bit of pain. She tensed. Retreated. Tried once more, only to draw in a sharp breath as the pressure became too much. She’d imagined it might pinch the first time, of course, but this was something more. Though, surely they were done now.
No need to drag it on.
She climbed off and lay down beside him, resting her head upon his chest. She felt a dull ache in places that just minutes before had felt such an astonishing sort of pleasure. It was nearly disappointing to realize there hadn’t been more to it than that. “Well, I suppose that wasn’t so bad,” she breathed.
There was a moment of silence. She felt an odd, fluttering movement beneath her cheek, as if he was trying not to laugh. “Mary.” He pulled against the knot binding his hands. “If you are . . . er . . . finished, do you think you might untie me now?”
“Oh.” She blushed, pulling the ends of the hitch and releasing his hands. “I am sorry. I did not mean to leave it on so long.”
But the moment his hands were free, she found herself flipped onto her back, and he was looming over her, his handsome face lowering toward her. He kissed her, his hands framing her face, lifting her to meet the demands of his mouth.
“Now it’s my turn,” he told her, his lips moving against hers. “And I intend to banish the words ‘not so bad’ from your otherwise impressive vocabulary.” His hands swept down her body, as if they’d spent an eternity planning the course they would take when finally granted permission to roam. They lingered on her breasts, kneading them to heady awareness, then moved lower, two fingers slipping inside her. They moved gently, in and out, a building promise of something yet to come. And all the while he kissed her, his tongue sweeping inside her in nearly the same rhythm.
“God, Mary. You are so ready for me,” he murmured against her lips.
“We are going to do it again?” she asked, tensing in anticipation of the pain.
He chuckled, shaking his head slightly. “We’ve not even started.” He shifted. She felt him push against her, less pinch now, and more pleasure. A surprised squeak escaped her lips as he seated himself deeply inside her, far more deeply than her first fumbled attempt. She lay still, stunned by the completeness of their joining, her body adjusting to accommodate the invasion. All the while, his mouth still played against hers, a welcome distraction to whatever was happening down there.
Finally, he began to move, the slide of his body inside hers a strange, wonderful thing. Whatever discomfort there had been faded. Or rather, she soon forgot it existed. Every movement was an epiphany, every inch of her skin consumed by this fever. She felt that coiling inside her, a quickening in her abdomen that fanned outward like a flame. More intense than before, and more centered inside her. And all the while, with every thrust, every gasp, every murmured word of encouragement, his mouth wreaked tender havoc against her lips.
Oh, the stupid, stupid simplicity of books. She wanted to cry, she’d been so wrong about this. Last night, West had told her the right friction could create the most delicious kind of pleasure, but she’d thought his words hyperbole, the rhetoric of a practiced scoundrel to talk her into wanting more than she’d been willing to give.
But his explanation in the dark coach last night hadn’t even come close to what they were doing, what she was feeling now. The slide of his body over hers, the burning beneath her skin . . . she closed her eyes, lost in the cacophony of sensations. She’d never imagined the intensity of the emotion, how she’d feel connected to him, from the inside out. It was a joining of souls, and she was falling in a direction she’d never anticipated.
Too soon, she found herself tossed upward, once again, to that place he’d taken her before, where the world receded in one large rush and she was suspended in time, breaking apart, reformed as something beautiful. He thrust once again inside her, gasping his own release into her mouth, his big body going tense above her.
She realized, dimly, that he’d found his own crisis, as brilliant as her own.
And that contrary to her initial thoughts on the topic, the stick she’d been given with this man wasn’t short at all.
Chapter 18
Mary awoke with a start and sat up, blinking into the gray light.
Five o’clock then. Odd how her body kept to such a staid routine, even when her world had been shaken inside out. She stretched, feeling sore in strange, new places. Embarrassment rose as her nudity registered. But as she turned her head to see West’s rumpled blond head, lying on the pillow they’d shared during the night, the embarrassment receded.
This was her husband.
And she was now well and truly a wife.
West seemed dead to the world, snoring in a soft, gentle patter. She smiled to think she now knew such an intimate thing about him. She filed the small fact away, tucking it tenderly beside the dreadfully short list of things she knew about her husband.
But . . . hadn’t he once told her he was plagued by nightmares? At the moment he looked peaceful in slumber, the planes of his face relaxed and unguarded. The sheet had slipped down to his waist, and she was able to see the muscled ridge of his chest muscles, the gold dusting of hair that wanted to catch the morning light. The scar on his shoulder.
She reached out a hand to touch it. Yesterday, he’d refused to divulge its origins when she had asked. A product, perhaps, of the duel he was rumored to have had?
Or something more sinister?
After all, the man carried a pistol around in his pocket like it was a pocket watch.
Old, cold fears tried to creep back in, whispers of what she feared might still come, but she forced those withering thoughts to one side. She couldn’t go into this marriage paralyzed by the fear she was going to lose him. Each day, each breath, was a new start, and she needed to cast off her fear of the past and concentrate on the present. It didn’t matter if he’d had a dozen duels, or how many women had come before her. She was here now. She was the one in West’s bed. She was the one he had kissed last night.
The one he had called his future.
The least she could do was trust the man he was proving himself to be.
And at the moment, he was proving himself to be a solid sleeper instead of a gun-wielding philanderer, and so Mary set her bare feet on the plush carpet and pondered her next steps. She had no books to read, no journal to write in. Her trunks with her things had been put in the room next door, when she had foolishly still imagined this might be a marriage of convenience. That meant that she lacked a wrapper or even a nightrail to pull over her head.
But perhaps, given the early hour, she might have a chance at fetching a few things before any of the servants began to stir.
She slipped from the bed. Taking the top sheet with her, she wrapped it around her body as best she could, tripping over the long, dragging trail of it. But as she passed the bureau, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her hair stood out in a wild halo about her face, and there was a pink, fresh-scraped look to her cheeks. But worse—far worse—there was a distinctive reddened mark on her neck where West had laid his claim last night. She stepped closer to the mirror and peered at it, rubbing with a frantic finger.
It didn’t come off.
She began to tug her fingers through her hair, wishing she looked less like a demented hedgehog and more like a radiant, well-pleasured wife. She began to hunt for a comb amidst the items that littered West’s bureau top, pushing aside a silver case with West’s initials engraved on the top. But instead of finding a comb, she stilled as she saw something else entirely.
Clutching the sheet to her chest with one hand, she lifted the medal up with the other, gasping in awareness. Even in the early light of morning, its distinctive blue ribbon and square points were unmistakable. A Victoria Cross. She’d seen a likeness of it printed in the London Gazette, had read about the men who had been given this newly created honor, just last year, for the most heroic deeds performed at the Crimean front.
Sh
e swung around to stare at his sleeping form. West had spent time in Crimea?
Just who was this man she had married?
But like a puzzle, the missing pieces slid into place. The lines of his body were muscled, hinting at hours spent doing something more than drinking with friends or playing at future viscount. Her gaze pulled to the glint of the revolver on the bedside table. She’d seen him wield it with precision, checking the chamber as though it was long-standing habit. She remembered how at the cathedral he’d asked about her opinion of the war, even as he’d withheld his own.
He was a soldier. Or had been a soldier.
Her fingers tightened around the Victoria Cross. It was Britain’s highest honor, newly created by the queen. Why was he so reticent to talk about it?
A noise from the bed jerked her gaze away from the revolver and back to West. He gave a low moan, a sound of anguish, and she darted toward him as he began to thrash about the bed.
“West,” she hissed, suddenly afraid.
She’d suffered from an occasional nightmare herself as a child, especially in those terrible months after her brother and father had died, but she had never seen someone caught in the grips of a nightmare like this. West was trapped in something terrible and unseen, his eyes a flutter of motion beneath his eyelids.
Kneeling on the bed, she tried to wake him, but finding a handhold proved difficult in the flurry of motion. Dodging a flailing hand, she added her voice to the mix. “West.” She placed a gentle hand against his chest, startled by the rapidity of the pulse she could feel there. “West,” she said again, more firmly. “Wake up.”
He gasped, followed by a long inhalation. His eyes opened. Tossed about. Settled on her. “Mary?” he breathed out. “You are here?”
“Yes,” she said simply, placing a hand against his damp brow.
Without warning, she found herself crushed against his bare, muscled chest, her ear pressed too close to the scar on his shoulder. She let herself go limp, knowing he needed something of comfort from her but not entirely sure how to give it.
The Perks of Loving a Scoundrel Page 21
