Gracie closed the door softly on that whispered reminder, and Darius made a mental note to do just that. Were it not for the need to consider Vivian’s inexperience, he’d be going at her twice as often as he did, and twice as hard.
Just once, he’d treated her to a hard, fast coupling, and she’d come like a house afire before he’d even found his rhythm.
And then come again when he had.
But he hadn’t used her so hard since, aware that their goal was conception, and frequent coupling was conducive to that end. This kept him gentle with her, considerate, mindful of the need to savor and conserve when he might have otherwise plundered.
As he lay back on the pillows, sipping his tea and petting Vivian’s hair, he considered that with a woman like Vivian, marriage might not be the trap he’d envisioned it being. With Vivian intent on a child, they were having exactly the kind of unrestrained, frequent sex newlyweds might have.
And it was… overwhelmingly sweet, a backhanded gift from fate that he, a man who never allowed women the intimacy of intercourse, never allowed them to kiss him, should have all that given to him in such unstinting abundance—from a woman to whom he’d have to become, just as he’d said, a stranger in the new year.
He set his tea aside, slipped down into the covers beside Vivian, and drew her into his embrace. She went into his arms trustingly and gave him her warmth without even waking.
***
The weather moderated, and Vivian found herself riding out with her… with Darius. He loved his estate fiercely, and she concluded fierceness was a part of him, part of the boy who’d grown up between battling parents, finding his purpose befriending his brother and protecting their sisters.
As they rode over his muddy acres, Darius told her his plans for this field and that pond. Trout could be raised like a crop, she learned, and it would improve Darius’s crop yields if he set up a system of irrigation and flood control for the water on his property.
“Why not raise flowers? You don’t need a hothouse for them, much of the year, but you could easily sell them in Town.”
“Townhouses all have back gardens.”
“Bachelors buying flowers for the ladies do not have gardens,” Vivian said. “No single townhouse or mansion has enough flowers on hand to decorate for balls and entertaining. There is demand, and you could specialize.”
“In?” He was bringing the same focus to this topic that he brought to every topic, including how best to bring her pleasure. The notion left a lady somewhat breathless, even as her horse merely ambled along beside his.
“Fragrant flowers?” Vivian tossed out the idea. “Exotic flowers, I don’t know. It would be easy enough to see what’s in short supply and provide it.”
“And then when fashion dictated that fragrant flowers were no longer all the rage?”
“You diversify,” Vivian said as Bernice stepped around a puddle. “Just as you have already. You excel at it, with your chickens and sachets and… other things.”
“My whoring.” He cocked an eyebrow, looking pleased to have an opportunity to shock her with bad language.
“Your enterprise. I suspect you feel sorry for those women, Darius.”
“Vivian…”
“Don’t scold.” She kept her tone mild, but this aspect of his life bothered her increasingly. “No matter what they pay you, you have to feel a little something for them, or you’d just sell more chickens.”
“Chickens produce only so much income. The ladies pay very, very well, and they cost me nothing.”
“They cost you dearly.”
“I’ll race you to that stone wall.”
He nudged Skunk with his heels, so Bernice cantered more forward as well, and Vivian knew the point he was making: sexual pleasure, or pain, mattered only like a good gallop on a crisp day, nothing more. So she let the subject drop and let the mare have her head for the next half mile, but when she woke in Darius’s bed on Christmas morning and saw a small, wrapped box on the breakfast tray, the cost of Darius’s enterprises with the ladies came to mind again.
She nodded at the box. “Why is that there?” William gave her presents, on their anniversary or her birthday. Little things—a book of old verse, a pair of ear bobs, nothing unique to her, but thoughtful gestures nonetheless.
“Happy Christmas, Vivvie.” He poured her tea and passed it over to her, the same as he had every morning for more than a week. “Open your gift.”
“I thought you told me my gift was hiding under the covers on your side of the bed?”
“You’ve already enjoyed that gift.” He sipped his tea placidly, though there was something… grave about his demeanor, or watchful, so Vivian took a fortifying gulp of tea, passed the cup back to him, and reached for her present.
“This had better not be naughty, or I’ll leave it here, and you’ll be reminded of your…”
Inside the box was a small, elegantly cut glass bottle holding about four ounces of golden liquid. She lifted the stopper and sniffed delicately.
Her nose woke up, and she sniffed again, finding something that started off a little like the scent Darius himself wore—soft, soothing, a little sweet, a little spicy—but then the fragrance took off in a more mysterious direction, carrying notes both floral and spicy in a blend that intrigued and promised and drew interest on a purely sensual level.
“It’s lovely.” She sniffed again. “What is it?”
“I had it blended for you,” he said, watching as she continued to inhale through her nose and consider, then take another little whiff. “The recipe is under the lining, as is the name of the parfumier who blended it for you.”
“You had this made for me?” She was still trying to analyze the fragrance as she frowned and whiffed. “Did it turn out as you’d planned?”
“Scents are tricky.” He set the breakfast tray on the night table. “You think you know what will go together, but then the ingredients react with one another, and with the wearer, and sometimes it turns out better than you planned, but not always.”
“This is fascinating.” She passed him the bottle, and he took a cautious, glancing sniff, held the bottle away, and repeated the move several times.
“It’s what I wanted for you,” he decided, “maybe a little richer.” He tipped the bottle against his finger, then replaced the stopper and set the bottle aside. “Hold still.”
With his wet finger, he touched the sides of her neck then drew a line from her throat to her cleavage.
“We’ll see how it takes on you, assuming you like it?”
“I love it. Thank you very much.”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her against his side, and for the moment, Vivian was content to lie against his warmth, the lovely scent subtly spreading over them as they drowsed together.
“I’ll miss you.” Vivian’s words came out without any warning, to her or him, and Vivian felt Darius stiffen beside her.
“Vivian…”
“Don’t Vivian me.” She hitched her leg over his thighs, as if he might toss back the covers to escape her. “I’ve been married five years, and never once has William given me a gift this thoughtful. This personal. I’ve known you two weeks, and you give me this… and frocks, gloves, and waltzes, and… I know, it means nothing to you, but to me…”
“To you?” His face was unreadable, but he wasn’t telling her to hush or to finish her tea, nor was he lecturing her about ices on hot days.
“I was a married spinster—you were right. Not so much in my dress and choice of reading material, but inside, where no one sees. Where no one cared to see.”
“It can’t mean anything,” he said sternly, as if he were reminding himself and hoping it was true.
“Too late, Darius.” She closed her eyes and relaxed against him. “What you think you mean, is that the sexual business means nothing.
What you really mean, is you want Darius Lindsey to mean nothing to me. The two are not the same, and you won’t convince me they are.”
He kissed her into submission, gently, slowly, entrancingly, and she let him sweep her away again, because he’d at least let her have her say, and she owed him the fair hearing he was demanding with his hands and mouth and body.
But what was wrong with the man, that he’d try to convince them both such tenderness and caring meant nothing at all?
She bided her time and waited until the night before the New Year to counterattack. By tacit agreement, they now slept together in his bed, and on a few occasions, had fallen asleep without having intercourse. On those occasions, Vivian would wake up to find Darius making love to her sometime in the middle of the night. She had cuddled up with him and let sleep overcome her, because he’d exhausted her once again with final fittings, riding around the property, a rousing argument over the Catholic question, and a long chess match, which she’d won.
When she was sure he’d fallen asleep, she got up, built up the fire, and then gently eased the covers back to reveal Darius’s naked form.
Everlasting God, he was beautiful. The whip marks had faded, leaving only smooth, burnished skin over hard muscle and powerful bones. She knew his body now, knew the scents and textures, the sounds and touches. Tonight, she wanted to know the taste of him.
“Vivvie?”
“Here.” She curled down to rest her head on his stomach, and felt his hand stroking over her hair. Heaven help her, when did his touch create in her the desire to purr? Her hair, her hands, her shoulders, anywhere and everywhere on her body, she wanted his touch and missed it on some level when she didn’t have it.
She curled her fingers over his shaft, and his hand went still.
“Vivvie, no…”
“You hush,” she chided as she touched her tongue to the tip of his cock. “For once, Darius Lindsey, you hush, and you let me.”
His fingers laced through her hair, and Vivian was sure he was going to gently deny her this—deny himself this, more significantly—but then his palm cradled the back of her head, and she heard him sigh.
He said nothing, verbal surrender being too much to expect, and Vivian settled in to explore him with her mouth. He was religious about his personal hygiene and typically bathed before retiring. There was a lingering fragrance of lavender about his person, but something beneath that unique to him, and just as distinctive. Cautiously, Vivian used her tongue to wet the length of him, feeling his erection grow as she did.
When she concentrated her attention on the silky-smooth head of his cock, she felt the jump of arousal in his stomach where it lay under her cheek. She suckled gently, and his fingers tightened in her hair.
“Let me,” she whispered again, rubbing him against her cheek and easing off to stroke the wet length of him with her hand while she held the head of his cock in her mouth.
“You don’t owe me this,” Darius whispered, his voice oddly tight.
“Hush.” She emphasized her command by drifting her fingers over his balls, and he sighed and arched toward her. He liked her hands on him. He’d never said as much, but he’d told her nonetheless, and so she explored him with leisurely thoroughness, using her tongue and lips and fingers to map him over and over again.
His cock was magnificently hard, his hips moving in small, slow undulations when he again attempted to tug her away.
“Darius, no.” She returned to the spot under the tip of his cock and applied a hint of suction. “Let me, please.”
He went still, and she drew on him slowly, feeling arousal coil up more tightly in him, though his hips weren’t moving. She knew his struggle: This wasn’t merely an ice on a hot day, not merely a brisk gallop on a cool morning. There was nothing merely anything about letting himself have pleasure like this.
Holding him carefully in her mouth, Vivian reached over and found Darius’s free hand. She slid it up his torso until his fingers rested over his own nipple, and then she retrieved her hand and wrapped her fingers around the thick base of his shaft again.
The sound he made was low, pained, and soft, but when Vivian began to stroke him, he moved slightly in counterpoint. She caught the rhythm and gradually got her mouth, his hips, and her hand synchronized, until it was as if she could feel his arousal building in her own body.
“Vivvie…”
She neither paused nor sped up, but kept at him with the sort of determined patience he’d shown her time after time. His pleasure was the object of this exercise, and she would neither relent nor show him mercy. She’d learned that from him, that to pleasure another person took discipline and self-sacrifice and genuine caring. When she felt the tension in him drawing impossibly tight, she realized he was holding off, purposely, maybe trying to hold off altogether.
She drew on him, strongly, and when he would have pulled her away at the last moment, she held her ground and kept him in her mouth, where she could force pleasure upon him more, longer, deeper, than he’d intended to allow. His body had its revenge for all his discipline, and his release had him groaning as he bowed up, shook, and bucked against Vivian’s mouth and hand.
When he finally lay quiet on the mattress, breathing harshly, his hand loosely tangled in her hair, Vivian was still unwilling to relinquish him.
“God, Vivvie…” He sounded bewildered and spent. “Why?”
She closed her lips around his softening length, so he’d feel himself being drawn gently from her mouth, and got off the bed to fetch the wash cloth. As she tidied him up and offered him first crack at the water glass, she considered his question.
She’d done this because, in some regard, she’d come to love him. She’d wanted him to have something of her that was unique, something she’d never share with another. She had a need to give to him she couldn’t question at that moment, and it had felt right to do this with him.
But that answer would hardly serve, not with him already in full retreat. When she bundled in beside him, he obligingly wrapped an arm around her, but his touch was cautious and… withholding.
“Why?” He reiterated the question, sounding more in possession of himself and not particularly happy.
“I wanted to know I could,” she said, thinking it was a version of the truth. “I wanted to know what it was like.”
“Don’t do it again.” He kissed her temple; his tone was relieved. “Not with me. We’re supposed to be getting you a baby, if you’ll recall.”
She nodded, knowing if she didn’t do it with him, she wasn’t going to do it with anybody else. Not ever. Not because it was vulgar and base, as he no doubt thought, but because with Darius, it was sweet and lovely and unbearably intimate. She’d given this to him, but to demand one iota more would be more than his damaged image of himself could sustain.
***
Darius lay awake, his arms around Vivian, the weight of a thousand regrets on his heart.
Why on earth had he permitted this? None of them, not the laughing barmaids at Oxford, not the good-hearted ladies in Italy, not the scheming bitches he consorted with now—not one of them had been allowed what he’d just permitted with Vivian. Bad enough he was her stud, worse yet that he’d taken a hand in her wardrobe and appearance, worse still, he’d admitted to himself it was going to be hard to send her back to her William, but this…
He told himself he didn’t trust Lucy or Blanche not to harm him, did he allow them to French kiss him. Putting his cock between a woman’s teeth was an act of trust, no matter what else a man might say or boast or brag regarding the experience. With those two, it was unthinkable.
With Vivian, it had been impossible to deny her.
So she’d been curious, and he’d obliged her. That’s all it was. A small erotic experiment, quickly concluded and not to be repeated.
He dropped off into sleep on that thought, but when he
woke and Vivian wasn’t with him, he was almost relieved.
Or so he told himself.
***
“So the smallest one, who could climb higher than any of the other kittens, went way, way, way up into the tree, until his brothers could see only his tail twitching among the branches, and from there he could tell them exactly in which direction the castle lay. All four kittens made it home by dark, and every other cat in the castle envied them their great adventure.”
“Did they live happily ever after?” John stifled a yawn, and it was clear he’d kept his eyes open by sheer determination.
“They did,” Vivian said, “although the smallest one grew up to become a great, lazy black tomcat who spent his time protecting his favorite little boy from mice.”
John smiled sleepily and scooted farther down under his covers. “Wags does that. Will you stay until I fall asleep?”
“Of course.” Vivian tucked the covers in more closely around the boy, kissed his forehead, and resumed her seat at the foot of his bed.
“Darius sings to me sometimes, when I’ve had a nightmare,” John said, eyes drifting closed. “I like the one about the lady with the green dress.”
Vivian took a moment to translate, but then she started in on a quiet version of the folk song “Greensleeves,” switching to a soft hum as John fell back to sleep. When she looked up, Darius was standing in the shadows by the door, arms crossed, regarding her from across the room. She rose, and he held out a hand. “Nightmare?”
Vivian tucked herself under his arm. “Gracie came to get you, but I heard her knocking, so I let you sleep. Does he get them often?”
“Yes.” Darius ran a free hand through his hair. “I think he dreams of his mother, of the few months of his life when she was extant, and then wakes up, and she’s not here, not anywhere.”
“But you’re here.” Vivian leaned up and kissed his cheek. “And he goes right back to sleep, the same as any child.”
Darius Page 13
