Seduced by a Marquis (Regency Unlaced 8)

by Carole Mortimer

  Bella considered for a moment, giving every appearance, she hoped, that she did not feel self-conscious at being naked in front of him. “I believe the middle of the bedchamber will suffice.”

  Lysander stepped to the center of the room, his gaze holding hers as he shrugged out of his jacket before discarding it. His long, graceful fingers unfastened the buttons on his waistcoat before placing it with his jacket. His neckcloth was removed next, then the fastening on his shirt was undone before he pulled it up and off, over his head.

  Bella watched as muscles shifted and rippled beneath firm flesh tanned a light gold, as if he had spent some of last summer outside without a shirt. Which perhaps he had; he had not been a marquis then and could do as he wished without fear of censor from his peers.

  Her gaze was drawn to flat, hard nipples nestled among the dusting of blond hair across the center of his chest before veeing down to disappear beneath the waistband of his pantaloons. The front of that garment tented outward, evidence of the fierce arousal beneath.

  “You may sit on the bed to remove your boots,” she invited huskily.

  His face was flushed, eyes fever-bright as he walked as if in a dream to sit on the side of the bed and bend down to remove his boots.

  Bella moved up onto her knees behind him, no longer able to resist touching him. She heard Lysander draw in a harsh breath as her fingers skimmed up the warm and muscular length of his back to his shoulders, learning each dip and hollow along the way. Her fingertips tingled when she touched him, as if there were something connecting them on a level she did not understand. She only knew it was there, each touch increasing that excitement thrilling through her body.

  Lysander’s skin felt warm beneath her lips, and he gave a low groan as she pressed her torso along the length of his back and her teeth scraped over his rapidly heating flesh. He tasted slightly salty as her tongue flicked lightly over that taut skin before she allowed her teeth to nip and then suck the flesh between his neck and shoulder.

  “Bella…!” He arched like a cat did when its back was stroked and caressed, his hands clenched as they rested on the tautness of his thighs.

  Her hands dropped to her sides, and she sat back on her thighs. “You have yet to finish undressing,” she reminded him softly.

  Lysander’s control was balanced on a painful edge. On one side, the desire to give Bella the control she wanted, on the other, the fierceness of his need to stop this torture and just plunge his cock into the wet velvet heat of her pussy. The aroma of her arousal had invaded his senses so deeply, it was driving him insane with lust.

  This was their wedding night, damn it, and Bella deserved more from him than the lust she had experienced from other men in the past.

  He drew in a deep, controlling breath as he stood and moved back to the center of the bedchamber, unable to look at her as he used shaking fingers to unfasten the panel at the front of his pantaloons.

  Bella still knelt upon the bed, drawing her breath in softly as Lysander’s cock sprang free of its confinement. It was long and thick, with engorged veins running along its length from the gold curls at its base to the dark red and slick tip.

  She moistened her lips, longing to lick that slickness, to know what he tasted like. “Come here to me.”

  A look of uncertainty darkened his eyes. “I am too aroused, too sensitive to allow you to touch me.”

  She viewed him through thick lashes. “And I wish to taste.”

  “I have not washed yet…” His protest was strangled, as if he could barely breathe, let alone talk.

  “I will taste you as you are. Lysander, you gave me command of your body when you gave me command of yourself,” she reminded him.

  He walked toward her slowly, almost as if in a dream, his cock bobbing enticingly.

  Bella allowed herself no hesitation as she reached out and curled the fingers of both hands around that turgid thickness, leaving only the angry red and bulbous tip visible. She lowered her head to slowly lick around the crown, feeling Lysander start to shake as she flicked her tongue and gathered up the juices escaping the slit at the tip. He tasted sweet and salty at the same time. Delicious. Addictively so, as she took the whole of his crown into her mouth and licked and sucked, gorging herself on his taste.

  “Dear God…” Lysander felt as if his cock were engulfed in raw heat, a furnace that tormented as much as it pleasured.

  The exotic scent of her arousal continued to surround and claim him. If he closed his eyes, he could even imagine it was Bella’s wet pussy clasping his cock. Riding him, sucking him in, the walls caressing, squeezing, and taking him ever closer to that—

  “No!” He placed his hands on her shoulders to pull her off him. “No…” His chin dropped down onto his chest, his breathing labored, his eyes still closed. If he looked at her even once, those glittering eyes, her swollen lips still moist with his pre-cum— “Dear sweet Jesus!” His fingers gripped her shoulders tightly as he realized he was no longer imagining those things but was actually looking at them.

  Bella’s eyes were no longer violet but a deep, dark purple beneath heavy lids. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips—dear God, her lips were so plump and red, no wonder they had felt like her nether lips wrapped around him. Her swollen breasts were tilted up away from her body, the nipples as red and engorged as her lips, and Lysander could see the dampness of the curls between her thighs from the slickness of her juices.

  “I wish to eat your pussy again.” His voice was guttural as he stared down at her swollen clit protruding from beneath its hood, his desire too out of control for him to behave in the least gentlemanly. “I need to taste you, drink you in.” The heat of his gaze returned to her face. “Are you going to let me?”

  Am I going to let him?

  Bella had been longing to have Lysander’s mouth and hands on her again. To feel the pleasure, followed by that wondrous release.

  “Do not torture me any further, Bella, please,” he groaned. “My control is hanging by a tenuous thread.”

  She nodded. “Finish undressing.” She moved back up the bed to lie back against the pile of pillows and watch as Lysander removed the last of his clothing. His body was truly magnificent. Muscular shoulders and chest, narrow waist, powerful thighs and legs, and that huge cock jutting out from his body, the bulbous tip once again slick with his juices. Once, even a week ago, she would have been afraid of such blatant maleness, but she knew Lysander would never hurt her.

  “Part your thighs and show yourself to me.” He knelt on the bed and watched her do so, pushing her legs even farther apart to he lay down between them. He groaned at the taste of her before sucking gently on her exposed nubbin.

  Bella bucked and writhed beneath him, wanting more, wanting… Oh dear God, wanting him to suck harder, deeper. A fierceness of need she accommodated by putting her feet on his shoulders and lifting herself into the possessive strokes of his tongue. She gasped as, seconds later, his fingers separated her swollen folds and that hot, wet tongue plunged inside her.

  Lysander drank greedily as Bella’s juices flooded his mouth, never for a moment easing the invasion of his tongue. His hands moved to grip the sweet curve of her bottom before caressing lower, his fingers stroking along her narrow crevice, sensitizing the nerve endings with his touch but not breaching. He continued that forbidden caress as his tongue thrust inside her pussy, faster, harder. His other hand moved to pinch her swollen clit between thumb and finger.

  His tongue thrust harder and deeper still as he felt her orgasm building. Her clit pulsed against his fingers and her hot channel contracted about his invading tongue.

  Her body tensed, fingers tightly gripping the coverlet beneath, her nipples puckered and engorged as a low and keening cry left her lips. She used the leverage of her feet on his shoulders to thrust up into his mouth as her release exploded onto his tongue.

  For Bella, the pleasure seemed never-ending, shattering her into a million pieces as each caress, each thrust of Lysander’
s tongue, the stroking of his fingers, ignited a fresh wave of ecstasy.

  Her legs had dropped back to the bed, and she lay sprawled and open to him when Lysander finally released her and raised his head. It was agonizing torture against her sensitized flesh as he moved up until his body completely covered hers.

  “Do you want me inside you, Bella?” The head of his cock rested against the entrance of her pussy.

  “Please…” She ached to feel the fullness of him pushing slowly inside her, to know what it felt like to—

  Pain and pleasure in equal measure!

  Her eyes opened wide in panic before squeezing tightly shut as pain unlike any she had ever known ripped through her body, spreading outward and inward, the invading fullness of Lysander’s cock lodged firmly inside her contracting channel. Then came an undreamed-of pleasure, that fullness no longer painful or invading but feeling like a missing part of her had been returned, the other half of herself, fitting perfectly. It was almost profound in its beauty—

  Lysander remained frozen above and inside her, his body possessing the rigidity and coldness of a marble statue.

  Bella blinked as she raised her eyes, noting the tightness of his jaw and thinned lips, before their gazes clashed. She moistened her lips before speaking. “Did I do something wrong?”

  Had she done something wrong?

  Lysander had never been so shocked in his life as when his cock breached what could only be Bella’s virginity. Damn it, he had felt the tearing of flesh and heard her cry of pain when he had slowly pushed his cock past that barrier. She had felt tight inside earlier when he claimed her with his tongue, but Lysander had thought that was because it had been some time since she last had relations with a man. It was one of the reasons he had taken his time with her, ensuring she climaxed and moistened as he stretched and prepared her for the girth and length of his cock.

  A long and thick cock that was firmly entrenched inside Bella’s virginal channel. Because Lysander was no more capable of pulling out now than he was of moving, gripped as he was by the fear of hurting her further.

  “Lysander…?”

  He could hear the trepidation in her voice, an indication Bella was no longer the commanding woman of a few minutes ago. As if she feared what he might say or do to her.

  Half of him wanted to shout his possession of her to the rooftops, and the other half wished to know how this was even possible. He had thought she was… Bella had done nothing to dispel his belief…

  She had never said she had copulated with any of those men her brother had forced her to entrap into blackmail. Lysander had assumed that was what she meant when she explained how her brother had bullied and abused her if she did not do as he instructed with that dozen or so men she had admitted to seducing. That bastard Reynolds had confirmed as much the night Lysander took her and Esther from her brother’s house.

  As Bella had warned him her brother would tell him lies about her…

  Lysander would not have trespassed, demanded Bella’s boldness yesterday or today if he had realized she was as innocent as this.

  What did he do now?

  To proceed might cause Bella more pain. To withdraw would almost certainly create that chasm between the two of them which might never be breached.

  He must proceed.

  He leaned on his elbows as his hands moved to cradle each side of her face, and he looked at her searchingly. “You should have told me… I would not have…” Now was not the time to say he had believed she’d had other lovers before him. “The last thing I want is ever to cause you any pain.” Any more pain, because he had hurt her when he breached her innocence. Just as her brother had almost certainly beaten her before. Perhaps many times.

  For that alone, Lysander now wished to tear the other man apart. For deliberately having added to Lysander’s belief Bella was not a virgin, he fully intended to beat the other man to within an inch of his life.

  Except Lysander knew he had chosen to believe those lies, in spite of Bella’s warnings about her brother. Because it had suited him to do so. Because it meant he had no obligation to admit or acknowledge the feelings he had for her.

  Well, no more. Now he wished to make her wedding night as memorable and beautiful as any bride might hope for.

  Some of the tension had left Bella’s expression. “It does not hurt anymore. In fact…” She smiled shyly. “It feels wickedly wonderful. I loved what you did with your hands and your mouth, but this is…delicious” Her arms moved up about his shoulders. “Can you not feel it, Lysander? That deep connection, with no end and no beginning, only us, linked together.”

  He could feel it. He even knew what it was if Bella did not.

  Love.

  He was in love with his own wife.

  In spite of the circumstances of his birth, his childhood had been a happy one. He had been protected by his mother and brother from the worst of the taunts about his illegitimacy. His teenage years alongside Sebastian, first at Eton and then Oxford, were equally so. Lysander’s life had only been thrown into turmoil three months ago, when he was claimed as his father’s heir and thrust into a Society that judged and gossiped behind closed doors, even if publicly they enfolded him into their midst.

  So many women had thrown themselves at him since then that when he learned of Bella’s miserable existence with her brother, he had felt he was doing them both a service by offering her the convenience of marriage. Bella so she could escape her whoremaster bastard of a brother, Lysander because Bella would make him as good a wife as any.

  As good a wife as any!

  What had happened to him these past three months that he could think of any woman in such a derogatory way as that?

  Not just any woman but his own wife, damn it.

  Only now to discover, to realize, he had been deceiving himself about his motives for marrying Bella. Because it was easier, made his heart less vulnerable, to withhold his emotions. To avoid and evade having to acknowledge it when he could tell himself there had been other men before him.

  When the truth was he was deeply, irrevocably, in love with his own wife.

  Chapter 13

  The longer Lysander remained silent, the more uncertain Bella became, and the more convinced she was that she had done something wrong. Behaved in a manner which had displeased Lysander.

  Had her demands of him earlier shocked Lysander? Had her wantonness, her complete loss of control as he made love to her, disgusted him?

  He had said that he wished for her to behave the vixen in their marriage bed, but perhaps the reality was not to his taste after all.

  Her lashes lowered. “I have been too bold—”

  “No! No, Bella,” he repeated gently after that initial outburst, his smile reassuring when she looked up at him. “I love your boldness,” he assured her. “Can you not feel how much I love it?” he teased.

  Bella blushed as his cock seemed to flex as it expanded and swelled to even bigger proportions inside her. “I can, yes.”

  “I wish to make love to you now, Bella.” His hands caressed those blushing cheeks. “To worship you with my body, as I promised I would in church earlier today. Will you allow that? Please say you will.”

  “Of course.” How could she ever deny Lysander anything? He had become the singularly most important thing in her life. More so even than Esther, and she loved her sister dearly—

  Love?

  Did that mean she loved Lysander too?

  “Oh.” All other thoughts fled as he began to slowly push farther inside her, stretching her fully open.

  He ceased instantly. “Am I hurting you?”

  “No.” She smiled at him tremulously. “It is just so overwhelming to be joined to you in this way. I had no idea how wonderful it would feel. Please do not stop.”

  It was overwhelming for Lysander too. More so than anything else he had ever experienced as his hands moved to cup her bottom and he began to slowly and gently thrust in and out of her contracting channel. It
felt wonderful. She felt wonderful.

  “Lysander…” She held on to his shoulders and arched up into those thrusts as he claimed her mouth with his.

  He tried to go slowly, to retain control, but with each thrust, her wet inner walls claimed him, sucking him in as if wanting to keep him there. And God knew he wanted to remain there. Not just for minutes, but for hours, days.

  His kisses grew wilder, his hands gripping her bottom as his hips pumped harder, more fiercely. Those thrusts became erratic as he felt that familiar tingle at the base of his spine, along with the tight drawing up of his balls, and knew his release was imminent.

  Not until he had given Bella another release. Watched her fall apart with that pleasure.

  His hips stilled as he broke the kiss to trail his lips down her throat to her breasts, suckling her nipple into his mouth and then biting as he began to thrust again, and heard her low groans turn to ecstatic gasps. The snug wetness of her channel began contracting tightly about his cock as she came.

  Lysander’s climax followed quickly behind, pumping his hot seed deep inside her until he was totally spent and moving his still-hard cock in and out of her for the sheer pleasure of being inside her. Of feeling her come again. And again.

  It was some time later before he collapsed down weakly onto her breasts, holding her in his arms, his cock still buried deep inside her.

  Bella held Lysander to her tightly, knowing she had never been so close to anyone. She was so satiated. So happy.

  Surely they could not have made love like this if they did not care for each other. Surely now they would lie together in each other’s arms and talk of their feelings—

  She looked down in amazement as she heard the soft and yet unmistakable sound of Lysander snoring.

  When Bella woke, it was morning and she was alone in the bed she had shared with Lysander the night before.

  A glance about the room showed that his clothes and boots were gone, as he was gone. In fact, there was no visible sign he had been there at all.