Twice a Rake (Lord Rotheby's Influence, Book 1)

by Catherine Gayle

  “What do you intend to do with that?” she asked, her voice shaking a bit more than she would have liked.

  He didn’t answer her. At least not with his words, but with his hands. Or more specifically, with his fingers.

  They moved over her woman’s part, cupping and stroking. Aurora’s eyes felt like they would fall out, they were open so wide. Was this even legal? She wasn’t entirely certain. But even though it scandalized her, she could not bear the thought of stopping him.

  His fingers slipped inside her, moving in and out and about. “Oh, God. You’re so wet,” he said, moving faster, more urgently.

  “Is that bad?” Aurora asked. She hoped not. She didn’t know what had caused the moisture, let alone how to prevent it. Especially since the more he stroked her, the more the slickness built.

  Quin smiled at her then, a devilish smile. “No. Stop thinking.”

  Stop thinking? Blast, the man had no idea what he was asking of her. Once her mind was traveling down a certain path, there was no stopping it.

  Then he stroked against her with his thumb, light pressure at first and then rough, still sliding his fingers in and out at a rapid pace, and it suddenly became impossible to think at all. Her hips rose to meet him and her hands fisted in the sheets. “I need…I need…” She didn’t know what she needed. But if she didn’t get it in the next five seconds, someone would have to answer to her. Likely Quin.

  He answered before that came to pass. “I know,” he said, his voice gruff. His mouth again came down upon her breast, grazing his teeth against the tip.

  Aurora nearly came off the bed. She surely ripped the sheets from beneath her. Every nerve in her body, from the tips of her fingers to the soles of her feet, sang out. It was almost operatic. Her moan, however, was most decidedly not. Operatic, that was. It sounded like a tortured animal finally giving in to death. But oh, how that death had been worth it.

  She’d gladly repeat this death every day.

  Before she’d regained her ability to think clearly, Quin was atop her again, with that divine pressure of his frame sinking into her curves as he pressed her into the mattress. He kissed her and nudged her legs apart, settling himself between her thighs.

  Then she felt it again. That thing. Right where his fingers had been performing such wickedly delightful antics to her womanhood.

  He couldn’t. Surely he wouldn’t. There was simply no earthly way that could fit. Not there. At least not if she intended to live through the ordeal.

  But he placed his hand between their bodies and guided it to her opening, and then he was.

  “Oh, dear good Lord,” she said into his mouth, pushing with all her might against his shoulders, but to no avail. “You’ll kill me.”

  Instead of stopping, Quin pushed further into her. “Hush,” he admonished her. “Don’t fight with me. It will be all right.”

  With every inch he moved inside her, she felt her core stretch wider—and her eyes followed suit. Still, it was not an entirely unpleasant sensation. Not at all, really. Not if she was being honest with herself. It just seemed as though it should be painful.

  Aurora tried to relax, to let him do as he would. After all, hadn’t she just told herself only moments before she’d gladly die that same death every day? Perhaps this could give her a similar sensation.

  Then he stopped moving and took her chin in one hand, forcing her to look directly into his eyes—eyes almost black with emotion. “I promise you. It will not hurt long.”

  He was being so tender with her. Aurora wanted to reassure him. “Oh, but it doesn’t—sweet Jesus! Oh, my.”

  It did. It hurt like the dickens. Like she was being split in two and would never be put back together again. Like an entire flock of pigeons were pecking her from the inside out. Like a cat using her insides for sharpening its claws. She could only hope that the scream she let out had merely been in her imagination.

  But almost as soon as the pain started, it eased. Aurora started to breathe again, only then realizing that she’d been holding her breath captive.

  “Better now?” Quin asked, with a pained, studious expression furrowing his brows together. His jaw clenched, causing his dimple to twitch. Gracious, if it hurt him and it hurt her, why were they doing it?

  She nodded. Speaking would require entirely too much effort for her mind, at the moment. It was too busy being occupied by analyzing the rather odd sensation of Quin moving fervently in and out of her womb. First she felt stretched to her limits, to be followed by a contracting emptiness—and all of it enveloped by a strangely addictive friction.

  He rose up on his elbows, staring down at her. “You’re so tight,” he ground out, increasing the pace of his thrusts.

  Aurora’s body seemed to match him of its own accord, her hips rising to meet with his and then falling. “Is that bad?” She hoped not. How on earth was she supposed to change that? Even if she knew what it meant.

  “God, no. Stop thinking.”

  Stop thinking? The man really did not know her. Not at all. He’d already ordered her to do that once, and clearly she hadn’t managed it. At least not for long.

  But then his hands were on her breasts again, kneading, squeezing, and pinching at the hardened nubs, and she was panting for breath and straining for him to fulfill that wonderful and terrible need. Oh, dear good Lord, she thought she would die.

  Again. That might be nice. That might be quite nice, indeed.

  Quin slid one hand between them and rubbed at the swollen center of her universe. She leapt gleefully over the edge to the chorus of a thousand angels. Hallelujah, indeed. She finally understood where Handel had found his inspiration. Quin grunted and pulsed inside her, and a warm, wet feeling spread throughout her womb.

  Then he collapsed atop her, crushing her to the mattress like a rug to the floor.

  Within moments, he was snoring lightly, his breath blowing at the hair against her neck, tickling and teasing her sensitive skin where his stubble abraded it.

  Aurora felt rather sleepy as well, after all of that. Perhaps she would nap again.

  There was only one thought on her mind as she trailed off into slumber: Why would any husband and wife ever choose to sleep in separate beds if that was what happened in the marriage bed?

  Preposterous.

  ~ * ~

  Quin woke with a start. Or more precisely, he woke with his delectable bride’s hand on his cock. Squeezing, no less. She kneeled on the bed. Somehow he’d ended up on his back with this temptress forever more to be known as his wife leaning over him.

  “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” he asked, trying with all his might to keep his tone calm and sedate, but failing abjectly.

  She jumped, probably because his words came out more as a roar, pulling her hand back like she’d just touched fire. It would be, soon enough, if she didn’t stop. On fire. In need. Flaming to life. He prayed she wouldn’t stop.

  It had taken every ounce of patience he owned to bed her earlier without scaring the life out of her, hurting her more than absolutely necessary, or rutting with her like an animal. He didn’t think himself capable of holding back again. Not if she kept touching him like that.

  This was precisely why he avoided bedding innocents. They were too damned much trouble, what with their death-sentence combination of curiosity and inexperience. Much easier to visit a whore and not have to worry about such things.

  Her huge, clear eyes were wide as saucers again, staring at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I won’t touch it again.”

  “Bloody hell,” Quin said, taking Aurora’s delicate hand with those long fingers, and placing it back where it had been. He groaned aloud at the sweet torture.

  Her lips formed a perfect O as she watched her ministrations. Slowly, ever so slowly, she wrapped her fingers around him, providing just enough pressure to remind him of how hot and tight she was, how sweet the sound of her passionate, little cries had been, how eagerly her body had responded to his
every touch.

  The late afternoon sun was beginning to set outside, casting an orange-pink glow about her silhouette above him. Christ, she looked more a goddess than ever, leaning over him with massive waves of hair cascading around her naked form, falling softly around those perfect, bouncing breasts—more than a mouthful, but not quite a handful.

  She, however, was proving to be far more than a handful.

  Just then, Quin was inclined to allow her to do anything she pleased to him.

  After a moment, he wondered if he’d said the words aloud, because she started to slide her grip up and down over his shaft, creating an exquisite friction. He grew hotter, harder, larger.

  Aurora’s eyes followed suit. Just before he thought he would lose control of himself, she let him loose and leaned over to look intently in his eyes. “May I…may I touch you like you touched me?”

  Christ, the temptress was out to kill him. He didn’t trust his voice after her heavenly torment, so he nodded.

  Feather-light fingers eased over his chest, his shoulders, his arms, tracing the demarcations of his muscles. Then she splayed her hands over him, spreading her palms, leaving a path of fire in their wake. Quin clenched his jaw to hold himself back. He would only be able to take so much before he had to have her.

  When she touched his nipples and they instantly hardened, her breath caught in her throat. “I need…” she said, her brow furrowed in concentration, “I need closer.”

  Good God. She threw one leg up and over him like she’d done to mount Jonas’s horse that morning, straddling him. Her knees rested on either side of his torso, and her sweet little bottom sat dangerously close to his cock.

  A devious smile of victory brightened her face. “That’s better,” she said.

  Before he could stop her—before he could think—she leaned down over him and kissed his skin. She placed thousands of tiny kisses all over him, licking here and biting there, moving ever lower as she adjusted her position.

  To his abdomen, which flinched of its own accord under her attentions.

  To his navel, which burned where her tongue laved at it.

  To his—damnation! —to his cock, which jerked to life when she kissed it on the tip, a chaste and tender kiss that was entirely too erotic for an innocent such as his wife.

  She grinned back at him, like the cat that had its fill of cream, and licked her lips.

  Reason left him entirely.

  Quin reversed their positions in one swift move. He slid his hands up her arms, drawing them above her head, linking them together where they knocked against the bedpost—and held them there, bracing them both in one of his own.

  He drove into her like a man deranged.

  Aurora’s eyes—blast, her eyes were filled with fear. He was behaving like a brute, rutting into her like an animal. But he couldn’t conceive how to stop himself.

  So Quin kissed her, long and hard and deep, using his free hand to stroke her to a passionate fire, to build a need within her comparable to that which she had created within him. She whimpered against his mouth and he came up. Her eyes had glazed over with passion, burning with the same insatiable, all-consuming lust that fueled him.

  He wouldn’t last much longer. His loins ached with the need to spill their seed. But he’d be damned if he couldn’t watch her climax again.

  “Hold this,” he ordered, wrapping her hands about the post at the foot of the bed. “Don’t let go.”

  With both hands free, he kneaded her breasts and licked her nipples and stroked against the nub of her womanhood until her eyes rolled back into her head and the walls of her womb constricted around his cock and she called out, “Niles,” as loud as he’d ever heard a woman in climax scream.

  Finally, he collapsed on top of her again, filling her with his seed.

  Niles. She’d called him by his name.

  No one had called him by his given name in more than twenty years.

  His breathing slowed and Aurora’s did as well. He started to roll off her before he fell asleep and crushed her, but she grabbed hold of his shoulders and wrapped her legs about his waist, holding him in a vise. “No. Stay like this,” she said. “Please.”

  At the moment, he would do anything for her.

  And all because she’d used his name.

  Chapter Eleven

  4 April, 1811

  Truthfully, they ought to tell all the young ladies on the marriage mart about what goes on in the marriage bed. Granted, I do not know how they would find a way to put such a thing into words. But it is now my firm belief that any young lady who understands what awaits her after marriage will gladly accept the first acceptable offer that comes her way. This could save their fathers a great deal of duress and heartache, suffering through Season after Season of attempting to find a match of which the young lady approves. In fact, I could perhaps volunteer my services to these fathers. I am certain I could find a way to describe the experience. At least I could after experiencing it a dozen or so more times, myself. Perhaps I will have to encourage my husband to assist me in my research.

  ~From the journal of Lady Quinton

  The morning sun cast a golden glow over Aurora’s skin as she slept. She looked so angelic in that light, so innocent—a far cry from the daring vixen she’d proven herself to be the previous afternoon and evening. And night. And again in the early morning, not long before dawn. Quin felt himself hardening again just from the memory of their lovemaking, but couldn’t wake her again. She needed rest—something neither of them got much of that night.

  No, he wouldn’t wake her. Not yet.

  Quin rose and pulled on a pair of breeches, then stole into his dressing room to ring for his valet. Breakfast in bed was precisely what this situation called for. Much like they’d eaten their supper in bed.

  Then later in the day, after a languorous morning and perhaps another bout of conjugal play, they would visit Rotheby. He’d let the old goat see his wife—see that he’d done it, gotten married. That he’d become a proper bloody gentleman.

  Maybe then his grandfather would relax somewhat, and stop threatening this nonsense about taking the abbey away from him.

  But first, he wanted to enjoy this morning with his wife. He shuddered at the realization that thinking of her as such had come so easily. It felt almost natural, even in all its unnatural glory.

  Him—Quin—a husband. Respectable. Ha. That last part was up for debate. Nevertheless, hell could now officially freeze.

  Perhaps it already had.

  ~ * ~

  Nerves were so terribly unattractive. They tended to make one appear rather gauche, if not downright vulgar. As such, Aurora tried never to let hers show.

  Tried, being the important part of that thought.

  Seated next to her husband in a curricle he’d borrowed from Sir Jonas, she knew she had lost this particular battle against her nerves. In fact, it was quickly becoming obvious even to her that attempting to quash them would be a fruitless affair.

  “Do you truly think he’ll like me?” she asked for what had to be at least the twentieth time since Quin had informed her (only two hours before, mind you) that they would be meeting with his grandfather. A grandfather who, according to Quin, was a crotchety old windbag who’d griped and complained and bemoaned so much that his wife, Quin’s grandmother, had found herself in an early grave, likely from the strain of listening to his constant complaints.

  Aurora kindly informed her husband that such a description did nothing to soothe her in those stressful moments before their departure. He claimed he’d only done so in order that she could be fully prepared for the greeting she was bound to receive.

  Clearly, Quin had a thing or two to learn about how best to prepare her for a potentially uncomfortable situation. She’d done nothing for the past two hours save change her gown four times, fret over the particular styling of her coiffure, lament the fact (repeatedly) that Rebecca was not present to help her make her decisions, and seek her husband’s
reassurance that his grandfather would like her. Which, if she were honest with herself, was really a means of asking if he was a fire-breathing dragon that would blow her over, should she appear in anything that did not suit his particular tastes.

  Since Aurora could not possibly know the man’s tastes, having never met him before, she needed Quin’s guidance.

  He had neglected to provide her with any. “Oh, you’ll look lovely in any color, I’m certain,” he would say. Or, “Truthfully, ringlets or not, you look fine.” Fine, indeed. The blasted man just did not want to make a decision.

  Likely because he did not want to make the wrong decision. So surely, she had.

  They would have to have a discussion about that. Later, though. Much later. At the moment, she was busy melting under the scowl her husband had fixed upon her.

  “Aurora, I swear, if you ask me that question one more time…”

  She frowned in return. “Perhaps if you would answer my questions when I ask them, I wouldn’t feel the need for repetitiveness.”

  But before he could give her a proper answer, he pulled the curricle to a stop before a monstrous home—Mansfield House, according to the sign at the street. A stark, white cornice molding crowned red brick walls. The image was further enhanced by pilasters placed in regular fashion along the facade of the structure, situated alongside beveled windows.

  It felt very austere, too precise. Granted, this was the house and not the man. But Aurora wanted desperately for her husband to turn the curricle around and then they could go back to their home. Perhaps Lord Rotheby could come to visit them? Maybe she wouldn’t be quite so intimidated if she were meeting the man on her own terms.