Claimed by the Marquis

by Carole Mortimer

  Nicholas followed at a more leisurely pace.

  He had spent the past few days keeping himself busy by combating the damage caused by the fire, as well as seeing his mother and Cousin Maud settled at Oxbridge Park.

  He had also, he acknowledged with self-disgust, been avoiding Sally. Not just avoiding her but ignoring her. Was it any wonder she was thinking of leaving?

  A departure Nicholas realized was abhorrent to him.

  The thought of the long summer, alone here with only his mother and Cousin Maud for company, was enough to send a shiver down the length of his spine.

  The thought of those same weeks and days, without sight or sound of Sally, was enough for that shiver to turn to ice.

  “Where did this tea come from?”

  Nicholas shrugged. “Mrs. Jackson was on her way here with the tray. I relieved her of the task.”

  Sally began to pour the tea. “How kind of you.”

  His mouth twisted at her obvious sarcasm. “Will you stop fussing with the damned tea tray and give me your full attention,” he snapped as she calmly dropped several lumps of sugar into the cup before stirring and then sipping the hot brew from the china cup. “A conversation between the two of us is long overdue.”

  She maddeningly finished drinking her tea and placed the cup and saucer back on the silver tray before answering him. “We have not spoken to each other for the past three days. What is so urgent we must speak of it now?”

  Nicholas clenched his jaw to prevent himself from making a cutting reply. An argument between the two of them now would solve nothing and possibly result in Sally leaving earlier today rather than later. “You know very well the subject of our discussion.”

  “Do I?” She raised mocking brows.

  Nicholas wanted nothing more than to once again throw Sally across his knees before soundly—very, on Sally’s part!—spanking her backside. Except he knew where such behavior would lead. To arousal for both of them. Followed by a satisfying of that arousal. It was what always happened when the two of them were alone together.

  His cock, as if in confirmation of that fact, was already engorging and rising with that need.

  He turned away to stare sightlessly out the window. “You were a virgin.”

  “I was, yes.”

  His mouth tightened at her emphasis on the past tense. “You should have told me.”

  “Why should I?”

  Because then he would not have spent so many days and nights in London imagining her in the arms of other men!

  Or suffered the torture of those imaginings keeping him awake and aching for those same nights.

  “Because you would not have made love to me that first night if you had known?” she continued. “Would not have pursued the attraction at all? Or invited me to spend the summer here with you?”

  “No—”

  “Yes,” she hissed. “What is so wrong with my having been a virgin? Why can I not do with my own body, take my pleasure where I please, as so many of you gentlemen seem to consider to be your God-given right?”

  She was spoiling for a fight, perhaps justifiably so. But a fight was the last thing Nicholas wanted with her.

  He turned to face her. “I do not refute your freedom to do as you wish with your own body. I respect you for it.”

  “You do…?”

  “Yes,” he assured her at her uncertainty. “But if I had known of your innocence, I would have taken more care with you.”

  She frowned. “Did I ask for that care? Did I give any indication I wished for it?”

  “No…”

  She gave a snort. “Because I did not want it. I have enjoyed every moment of our lovemaking.”

  “As have I.”

  Possessing Sally, claiming her, had become something which was beyond Nicholas’s control. A driving, undeniable need to leave his mark on her, as the stubble on his jaw had left his mark on her breasts. He wanted to put that same mark all over her. Her throat. Her breasts. Her belly. Between her thighs. The same way an animal marked its territory, Nicholas craved to put his mark on Sally for all other men to see, so they would know to stay away. Would know that she belonged to the Marquis of Oxbridge.

  He had been fighting that need for days. He could not fight it any longer. “Will you come to bed with me now?”

  “I— What…?” She looked totally disconcerted by his request.

  “Will you allow me to take you to bed, to give you the gentleness in our lovemaking I have not shown towards you to date?” Nicholas now cringed at the roughness of his previous lovemaking. The level of intimacy he had demanded of her.

  Demands she had met, and returned with some of her own.

  Well…yes. But that did not excuse his lack of consideration in regard to Sally’s innocence. Or the crude things he had said to her that day in regard to her grandmother’s collection of erotica.

  Having Nicholas invite her back to bed with him was the last thing Sally had expected when he entered her rooms unannounced. So much so, she could not speak for several moments, and when she did, her voice sounded husky and uncertain. “You have ignored me for the past three days.”

  “Yes,” he acknowledged through gritted teeth.

  “Left me here alone, believing you were displeased and angry with me.”

  “Yes.”

  “And now you expect—”

  “I do not expect, I ask.” He crossed the room in long strides until he stood in front of her. “I ask, Sally,” he repeated gruffly. “Please come back to bed with me and allow me to show you the care and attention you deserve.”

  Sally stared up at him, for once totally bewildered as to what she should do or say next.

  Chapter 15

  Did she do as Nicholas asked and join him in her bed, where he promised to make love to her as he never had before?

  Having realized she was in love with him, would that not make it all the harder for Sally to say good-bye to him when it came time for them to part?

  Of course it would. But could she really pass up this opportunity for the sake of what the future would be, rather than what was, here and now?

  To be with Nicholas one last time, to have him lavish his attention on her—

  The attention he said she deserved…?

  Sally eyed him with suspicion. “Are you still angry with me?”

  He looked at her blankly. “I was never angry with you, merely…surprised. As I said, I would have done things differently if I had known.”

  “But you are over your surprise now?”

  “Yes…” he answered her warily.

  “You do not intend to…punish me, for not confiding in you?”

  Nicholas’s brow cleared as her meaning became clear to him. “Only if you wish me to.”

  Sally’s cheeks warmed as she remembered his last punishment. And her response to it. “Well…perhaps a little punishment might be called for…?”

  The tension left his shoulders, a smile starting to curve his lips. “As little or as much as you desire.”

  Desire.

  The last few minutes’ conversation had already succeeded in rousing Sally’s desires. So much so that her gown now felt overly confining across her breasts, warmth having surged and then pooled between her thighs.

  She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Perhaps we might start with that…?”

  He frowned. “I cannot guarantee gentleness once I have laid a hand on you in that way.”

  “I am a woman, Nicholas, with a woman’s desires. I do not ask for gentleness but the same passion we have already shared to date.” The words had barely left her mouth before she found herself gathered up and once again balanced facedown over Nicholas’s thighs, her gown thrown up to her waist.

  “You are not wearing any drawers.” Nicholas’s voice was guttural with his displeasure. “Were you bared beneath your gown when the footmen brought your lunch up earlier today?”

  “Yes.”

  “For that alone, you deserv
e to be punished.” He landed a resounding smack on her bared bottom. “You are never to go without your drawers again, do you understand?” He emphasized each and every word with another smack to the cheeks of her rapidly reddening bottom. “Do you understand, Sally?”

  “Yes…”

  Nicholas lost count of the number of times he landed his punishing hand against her bared flesh. Long enough for the perfume of Sally’s arousal to have caused his cock to harden and throb to the point of pain, her musky scent more than enough proof of her own pleasure in his punishment.

  He was blind to anything else but their pleasure when he finally laid Sally down on the bed, all thought of gentleness and consideration driven from his head and heart as he threw up her skirts to bury his face between her thighs, licking and tasting as he lapped up the juices wetting her pussy.

  Sally might have been a virgin until three days ago, but she was correct in stating she was a grown and highly sexually responsive woman. Her responses now showed how much she liked his rough love play.

  Those responses drove Nicholas insane with the need to claim her. Possess her. Mark her.

  Sally gasped as she felt Nicholas’s teeth bite into the flesh of her inner thigh before he sucked that flesh into his mouth, bruising her. Marking her?

  She felt a certain primitive delight in thinking that might be the case as he ceased sucking to sweep his tongue across her nubbin, instantly sending her spiraling into a shuddering release. He kept her a captive of his lips and tongue until the last quakes of that release had been wrung from her.

  Nicholas moved up onto his knees. “Are you particularly fond of this gown?”

  Sally stared up at him blankly, unsure what he meant—

  The sound of her gown being ripped down the middle answered that question, quickly followed by her camisole being treated in the same way, her body now completely bared to the dark heat of Nicholas’s gaze.

  “I want to watch you touching yourself while I undress.” Nicholas rose to his feet to throw off his jacket and waistcoat. “Sally?”

  “I do not—”

  “Cup one of your breasts and play with the nipple,” he instructed when she hesitated. “Put you other hand between your thighs and stroke your nubbin.”

  To state that she had never done such a thing before would be a lie. Sally had often found herself aroused by both the visual and tactile touch of her grandmother’s collection of erotica. Occasions when her body had come tinglingly alive and demanded release from that sexual tension.

  Giving herself pleasure in the privacy of her bed was one thing. Doing those things with Nicholas watching was something else entirely.

  It was more, she quickly discovered. More arousing. More pleasurable. More of everything to touch and caress herself as Nicholas watched. Every caress felt magnified under the intensity of his glittering gaze. Each brush of her fingers over the hardness of her nipple, the stroking of her fingers against her hardened nubbin.

  “Dip your fingers in. Yes!” Nicholas breathed his satisfaction as Sally now swirled the wetness of her fingers over and around that aching nubbin.

  “Oh God…Nicholas?” she groaned weakly just seconds later as she felt the heat spreading through her body and knew she was going to climax again.

  “Part your legs and let me see,” Nicholas encouraged hoarsely as he sat on the side of the bed. “More. I want to see your swollen lips contracting and the juices flowing from them—God, yes,” he groaned as she obeyed his instruction. “You are so beautiful here.” He lowered his head.

  Sally groaned and bucked as the caress of his tongue against her sensitive nubbin prolonged and intensified her release, until she fell back weakly onto the pillows.

  Nicholas’s gaze remained on her as he rose back to his feet and removed his pantaloons. His bared cock jutted forward, long and hard, as he climbed back onto the bed, looming over her on all fours. He lowered his head enough to be able to lick and suckle her breasts, the long sweep of his hair a silky caress against her already inflamed flesh.

  Sally had no idea how long he continued that torturous caress, her body so aroused, so sensitized, she was mindless with that pleasure.

  “You are ready for me to be inside you now.” The warmth of his breath was almost too much as it stroked across her wet and engorged nipples.

  “Deep inside me,” she encouraged as she reached up for him. “As deep as you can go.”

  Nicholas’s need was as great as Sally’s. Perhaps more so. Watching as she pleasured herself, seeing his love bite between her thighs, had pushed him to the limits of his control. He had wanted to mark her, and he had, a deep purple bruise at the top of her thigh. Visible only to him. And Sally. He felt a certain satisfaction in knowing she would see that mark, his brand, the next time she bathed. Knowing she would think of him then and remember their lovemaking.

  Despite the rawness of their lovemaking so far, Nicholas still took great care as he guided his cock to her entrance and slowly pushed forward. He had breached her virginity the last time they were together, but this was still the first time she had felt a cock all the way inside her, stretching her, filling her.

  “That feels so good. So, so good,” Sally groaned, fingernails digging into the muscular strength of Nicholas’s shoulders, clinging to him as he slowly filled her, inch by pleasurable inch.

  There was no pain this time, only that intensity of pleasure as Nicholas’s thick cock stretched the sensitive walls of her channel and the length filled her completely.

  He stilled once he was fully inside her. “I am not hurting you?”

  Sally could see, by his agonized expression and the sweat popping up on his brow, the willpower he was exerting not to simply go deep and hard, to claim. “Not at all,” she assured him huskily. “I feel so stretched. So full.” She also felt totally joined to Nicholas in that moment, as if the two of them were one. “Take me, Nicholas,” she encouraged. “Please, take me as hard as you wish. I assure you I will not break.”

  Nicholas already knew that. The woman in his arms matched his passions and pleasures as none ever had before. Sally met him on every level asked of her, encouraged the darker side of himself he usually kept under rigid control. Nothing he asked of her was denied or forbidden.

  That freedom with a woman acted as an aphrodisiac on Nicholas, his thrusts slow at first, but quickly becoming deeper, wilder, as Sally wrapped her legs about his waist, her heels digging into his back as she pulled him in deeper still, their bodies slapping noisily together.

  Nicholas withdrew at the last minute to come on the sheets beside them, his cock still hard as he entered her again, only to have to withdraw again mere minutes later as Sally’s climax pushed him into a second, even stronger climax.

  Still his cock remained hard, demanding more as he entered her for a third time, both their bodies glistening with sweat as each remorseless entry pushed Sally farther up the bed, her gasps and cries like music to his ears as she climaxed again.

  His balls drew up tight between them as Nicholas felt his third release building higher and higher, quickly withdrawing again but not having time to move away as his cum exploded up the length of his cock to spurt over Sally’s thighs and abdomen.

  “I think I might have died,” Nicholas groaned as he allowed his head to drop down onto her sweat-dampened breasts.

  She chuckled softly. “A dead man could not have made love like that.”

  “No.” Nicholas took most of his weight onto his elbows so as not to crush her beneath his weight. “Then perhaps I am not dead after all, but only in danger of having my cock fall off.”

  She gave a sleepy chuckle. “Oh, I think it will survive—and revive—quickly enough.”

  “No doubt you are right,” Nicholas acknowledged as his cock gave an interested twitch. “Do we have time for a nap and then more lovemaking, before your maid comes to help you dress for dinner?”

  “I fear we only have time for one of those things.” Sally looked down at him a
s his cheek lay against her breasts. “I am to join you for dinner this evening?”

  “I have not been sitting down to a formal dinner in the evenings but dining off a tray in my study,” he assured her. “My mother was disorientated the first night when I visited her, but she has been even more so since the fire. I have been sitting with her whenever I could, and Mrs. Jackson and Cousin Maud have been taking it in turn to sit with her when I cannot.”

  “I am sure she will recover once the shock has passed.”

  Nicholas shook his head. “As I said, my mother was disorientated before the fire.”

  She caressed her fingers soothingly through the long length of his hair. “In what way?”

  “The night we arrived, she mistook me for my father,” he reported unhappily. “Her conversation to me was most revealing.”

  This was a strange conversation for the two of them to be having after having made love together so wildly, and Sally did feel so terribly tired all of a sudden. But she sensed a need in Nicholas to talk to someone, to her, about what had happened. “In what way?” she prompted evenly.

  He sighed. “I had always thought my mother was to blame for my parents’ years of estrangement, but it seems my father had other women. So many my mother could not and would not accept it. As she should not.” His jaw tightened. “No woman should have to accept her husband’s adultery.”

  “You never suspected?”

  “No. Which is odd, don’t you think?” He raised his head to look at her, as if the realization had only just occurred to him. “I was nine and twenty when my father died ten years ago, and yet I never saw any evidence of his infidelity. Or heard so much as a breath of scandal attached to his name.”

  “Perhaps people did not like to discuss it in front of you?” Even before his father died, when he was the Earl of Aldershot, Nicholas had a reputation for being formidable.

  “Perhaps.” He didn’t sound convinced. “My father denied her accusations, in any case.”