He didn’t feel the least reassured as she stood up abruptly before crossing the room to stand beside the fireplace, the soft curtain of her hair hiding her face as she turned away from him. ‘I should never ... This is wrong. I was wrong to force you to do this,’ she added firmly, shoulders stiff above the rigidity of her spine. ‘I apologize for—for... You should know I would never have gone to Lord Standish and told him of your—your involvement with his wife, before their marriage.’
‘I am gratified to hear it,’ he murmured softly.
Tears glistened in those beautiful grey eyes as she lifted her head to face him, her cheeks pale. ‘I sincerely apologize, Marcus, beg your forgiveness for having forced you—’ She gave a shake of her head, her hair like a living flame as it flowed down about her shoulders and over the swell of her breasts. ‘I can only hope that my scandalous behaviour these past three days has not in any way affected your long-standing friendship with my brother.’
‘Not in the least,’ Marcus reassured her gruffly, wary of what she was going to say next.
‘But your poor hand—’
‘My “poor hand”, as you call it, was injured before Christian and I sparred together in the boxing ring yesterday,’ he assured her.
Her gaze sharpened. ‘It was?’
‘Yes.’ Marcus stood up, realizing that it was Julianna’s intention to call an end to their arrangement, and that the time for prevarication was over. ‘I put my fist through the Japanese screen after you left me yesterday, hence it becoming “damaged”.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Accidentally?’
‘No,’ he answered her honestly. ‘After our conversation yesterday I could not bear the thought—’ He broke off, choosing his next words carefully. ‘I was angry, furiously so, at thoughts of how you must have suffered all those years at Armitage’s hands.’
‘It was not all John’s fault—’
‘Yes, it was, damn it!’ he bit out fiercely.
‘No,’ she insisted quietly. ‘I did not love him any more than he loved me. I ... Perhaps if I had—’
‘John Armitage preferred the company of whores to that of a wife, and the looser their morals the better!’ Marcus bit out grimly, having no intention of allowing Julianna to take the blame for her unhappy marriage. ‘His tastes were...unusual.’
Her brows rose. ‘In what way?’
‘I would rather not—’
‘In what way, Marcus?’ Juliana persisted firmly.
‘In the way of his preferring to—to share his bed with more than one person.’ He scowled darkly.
Her face grew even paler. ‘I don’t understand.’
Marcus drew in a deep, controlling breath. ‘Man, or woman, Armitage had no preference as to which as long as it added to his entertainment.’ His gaze sharpened. ‘He did not ever ask you to—’
‘No,’ Julianna assured hastily, feeling ill as she thought of those increasingly rare nights when John had come to her bed—perhaps straight from the arms of his lovers? Perhaps he had even needed that stimulation before he was able to come to her bed at all.
Her nausea deepened at the thought. ‘And I had thought his lack of interest in me to be because I was... because I was not desirable.’
Marcus almost laughed at such a nonsensical notion. Almost. Because he could see from Julianna’s pained expression, and the shadows in her eyes, how she had suffered because of Armitage’s indifference to her. ‘You were, and still are, a lady, Julianna, and a very desirable one. And Armitage’s sexual preferences were founded in the gutter.’
She blinked. ‘H—How do you know these things?’
‘I overheard him talking one night in a gaming club almost four years ago, not long after you were married,’ Marcus revealed reluctantly. ‘He was bragging of his sexual preferences. I—it disgusted me to the point that I—’ He broke off abruptly, hands clenched at his sides at the memory—the shameful memory—of what else had almost happened that night.
‘I—that is—almost four years ago, you say?’ Julianna realized softly. ‘Is it possible you heard this conversation the night before Emily Proctor was to marry Lord Standish?’
Marcus stilled. ‘Perhaps...’
‘Was it?’ Julianna persisted determinedly.
‘Yes!’ A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw.
She looked up at him searchingly. ‘Marcus?’
He turned away to walk across and stare sightlessly out of his study window, unable to withstand that penetrating gaze a moment longer. ‘You should know, I did not...agree to our arrangement these past few days because you blackmailed me, Julianna.’
Julianna stared at the uncompromising set of Marcus’s shoulders, the stiffness of his spine beneath the flowing white shirt, wondering if she had misunderstood him, if it were not merely wishful thinking on her part that she thought he might care for her.
Whatever the outcome of this conversation, Julianna knew that there were things between them that needed to be said, and that if they were not said now they might never be.
Her pride dictated that she not open herself up for the same rejection she had suffered in her marriage. At the same time, the memory of the difficulties she had placed herself in the last time she let pride dictate her actions mocked that reluctance. There must be truth between the two of them now, even if that truth resulted in her humiliation. Surely, after these past three days, she owed Marcus that much, at least.
She drew in a deep breath before speaking softly. ‘And I have realized these past few days that I did not blackmail you, and only you, because of a sudden need for sexual knowledge.’
Marcus turned slowly, eyes searching the pale calm of Julianna’s face. ‘Then why did you?’ he finally asked.
She smiled ruefully. ‘Forgive me, but even I had not realized my true reasons until a few minutes ago.’ She closed her eyes briefly as she gave a shake of her head. ‘Do you even remember that night all those years ago when you danced a waltz with me at Almack’s?’
He nodded. ‘It was the night of your eighteenth birthday. You looked... you were so beautiful that night, Julianna, that just to look at you took my breath away.’
‘I fell in love that night,’ she revealed softly.
He scowled. ‘With Armitage? I do not remember seeing you with him—’
‘You were the one I fell in love with that night, Marcus,’ Julianna corrected him softly, having no intention, after the things she had learnt today, of so much as mentioning her deceased husband’s name ever again. He was the past, and it was only the future that concerned her now. With or without Marcus in it.
She could never love another as she now realized she loved Marcus, as she had always loved him, but if he did not want her then she would at least know that she had told him of the feelings she had for him, before she had to leave him to find what future she could without him.
She straightened her shoulders determinedly as she looked steadily across the room at Marcus. ‘I loved you then, I have loved you every day since, and I love you still. I say this not because I expect you to be able to say the same to me,’ she added hurriedly as Marcus looked stunned by her words. ‘But because I have wronged you these past three days, have made demands upon you which must have shocked and dismayed you—’
‘Did you listen to anything I said to you earlier, Julianna?’ Marcus demanded impatiently as he quickly crossed the room to her side, coming to a halt just inches in front of her as he looked down at her. ‘I am neither shocked nor dismayed. And I only allowed you to believe you had blackmailed me into teaching you of lovemaking, when in reality I never laid so much as a finger on Emily Proctor.’
Julianna started. ‘She lied?’
‘She lied.’ He nodded as he reached down to take both of Julianna’s hands in his. ‘I could not—I did not want her. Not even
when the woman I really wanted, the woman I ached for, wanted, was in love with, was denied to me. You were denied to me, Julianna,’ he revealed.
She gasped softly, wonderingly. ‘Me?’
‘You,’ he repeated firmly. ‘I fell in love with you the night of your eighteenth birthday, possibly even before that, but that was the night I realized my true feelings for you. But in my arrogance I believed it best that I wait until the war with Napoleon was over before coming to you and declaring my love for you, that it was unfair to you to do otherwise, when I might make you a widow so soon after becoming a bride. You married Armitage in my absence.’ He gave a humourless smile at the irony of events.
Julianna could barely breathe as she listened to Marcus telling her of how he had realized his love for her on the very same night she had acknowledged to herself the deep love she felt for him. ‘I believed, when you went back to war without seeing me again, that you did not want me, and that I would never become a bride at all if I did not accept John’s offer when it was made. But all the time, all these years, it was you I loved, Marcus. You I wanted to be with. As I want to be with you now. Fully and completely,’ she added breathlessly. ‘As your lover—’
‘As my wife,’ he insisted.
Julianna looked up at him in shock. ‘You wish to marry me?’
‘More than anything! I know you were unhappy in marriage the first time, that you have decided not to marry again, but I assure you marriage to me would not be like that. Not ever! I love you, Julianna.’ Marcus swept her into his arms. ‘I will always love you.’
‘And I love you!’ she assured him fervently as she clung to him. ‘Make love with me, Marcus, please? Here, or in your bedchamber, I do not care where, as long as you allow me to make love with you as I have long wished to do. As you have so pleasurably taught me to do,’ she added huskily.
Marcus moved back slightly to look down at her wordlessly for several long seconds before laughing happily at the unwavering love he saw shining in those beautiful grey eyes. ‘Then I choose the privacy of my bedchamber.’ He swung her up completely into his arms, pausing only long enough to allow her to open the door. ‘In the knowledge that I will always love you, Julianna,’ he told her throatily.
‘Let us show each other our love.’ Julianna glowed up at Marcus as she allowed him to carry her up the stairs.
To heaven.
Chapter Nine
‘Sight,’ Julianna murmured longingly just minutes later as she looked at the muscled contours of Marcus’s bared chest.
‘Sight,’ he echoed huskily. Both of them were naked as they stood so close but not quite touching, having quickly undressed each other, their clothes scattered on the floor about them.
‘Scent.’ Julianna laid her cheek against that perfect chest as she breathed in the lemon and sandalwood, the musk that was so uniquely Marcus.
‘Scent.’ Marcus nuzzled against the delicate curve of her throat, breathing in her essence before slowly, oh-so-slowly, dropping to his knees in front of her. ‘Scent,’ he repeated hoarsely as he buried his face gently against the silky red-gold curls between her thighs.
Julianna’s breath hitched in her throat as she looked down at him. ‘Taste?’ she murmured curiously.
Marcus looked up at her, still concerned about shocking her, frightening her, with the depth of his need for her, and was instantly reassured by the longing in Julianna’s eyes and the fevered flush to her cheeks. ‘Taste,’ he groaned achingly as he now nudged her thighs gently apart, his hands on her hips to steady her as he moved closer.
Julianna gasped, her hands moving quickly to grasp Marcus’s shoulders as she felt the first pleasurably rasping caress of his tongue against her sensitized flesh.
The repeated rasp of that marauding tongue, the suckling of her centre between surprisingly soft lips, the gentle bite of teeth, was pleasure such as Julianna had never known, never realized existed. That wicked tongue moved lower still, thrusting into her heat at the same time the soft pad of Marcus’s thumb caressed the hardened nubbin above.
‘And sound,’ Marcus murmured with satisfaction as Julianna groaned with each prolonged thrust of his tongue.
‘It is too much, Marcus!’ she gasped long minutes later, fingers gripping his shoulders tightly as he felt her nubbin pulsing against his thumb, as evidence of her rapidly approaching climax.
‘It can never be too much between the two of us, Julianna. Never!’ he said raggedly, filled with the taste of her, the scent of her arousal as he laid siege to that ripe nubbin. He suckled deeply, again and again, as she mewled softly, desperately, and he knew she was poised on the edge of her release. His cock surged to bursting as he thrust a finger into her moist and welcoming sheath in the same rhythm in which he suckled her deeper, harder, into the heat of his mouth.
Julianna had never known that such pleasure as this existed. She wanted it to go on forever, though at the same time as she knew she was beyond control. Pleasure washed over her in ever-deepening waves as she moved her hips instinctively into Marcus’s complete possession. Until that pleasure soared free and all-consuming, wave after wave of earth-shattering pleasure exploding into a kaleidoscope of colour beneath her closed lids as she clung on to Marcus’s shoulders, her only point of contact with the earth.
Marcus closed his arms about Julianna as she crumpled and fell to her knees in front of him. Her breath a rasping sob, she lay weakly against his chest. Marcus was full to bursting with the satisfaction of knowing he had been the one to give her this first taste of pleasure. And that there was more, so much more for them to explore.
Together.
It still seemed like something of a dream to him, an unexpected but oh-so-welcome dream, that Julianna loved him, as he loved her, and he vowed then and there to tell her so every day for the rest of their lives together.
She roused slightly in his arms to look up at him with satiated dark eyes. ‘My turn to taste you,’ she murmured longingly as she shifted out of his arms to kneel in front of him. ‘Ah,’ she murmured knowingly as her hair lay as a fiery caress across Marcus’s thighs.
Marcus’s breath caught at the back of his throat as her fingers closed possessively about his rock-hard arousal before she lowered her head and flicked the rasp of her tongue across the glistening tip. ‘Dear God!’ he groaned weakly as the pleasure surged through him, proving that, as he had suspected, the pupil had no more need of the teacher.
Julianna had never tasted anything as intoxicating as Marcus. She continued to lick his shaft from base to tip before daring to part her lips and draw that bulbous tip completely into her mouth, drawing, suckling on him in the way he had her just minutes ago, moving one of her hands to cup the sac beneath, and emboldened by the increased raggedness of Marcus’s breathing, which told her how much that pleasured him.
‘No more, Julianna!’ Marcus finally gasped as he pulled her gently away. He wanted nothing more than for her to continue that pleasurable suction with her hot little mouth, and the increasingly daring caress of her fingers, but he was also aware of the outcome if she did. He wanted to be buried inside Julianna when he came. Deep, deep inside her.
She looked up at him with dark, aroused eyes as she licked her lips. ‘You taste delicious.’
‘As do you,’ he said gruffly as he stood to lift her up into his arms and carry her over to the bed. He laid her there before he settled above and between her parted thighs, his weight on his elbows. ‘Will you allow me inside you now, darling Julianna?’
‘I long for it!’ she breathed, her hands caressing his back.
‘I do not ever want to hurt you—’
‘You couldn’t,’ she said with certainty. ‘I know without a doubt that you never could.’
As Marcus had hoped, their previous lovemaking had more than prepared Julianna, her sheath hot and so very moist. Even so, he too
k care with her, easing his cock inside her an inch at a time, until he filled her completely. He stilled above her, allowing her time to adjust to the fullness as he cupped a hand either side of her flushed and satiated face and looked down at her beautiful smile. ‘I love you so very much, Julianna. Will you please make me the happiest man alive and become my wife?’
‘Oh yes, Marcus.’ Her eyes glowed as she smiled up at him brightly, trustingly. ‘Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!’
‘Thank God,’ he murmured thankfully as he claimed her mouth with his and they both became lost—and, at the same time, found—in their mutual pleasure and love for each other.
* * * * *
About the Author
CAROLE MORTIMER
was born in England, the youngest of three children. She began writing in 1978, and has now written more than 150 books for Harlequin®. Carole has six sons: Matthew, Joshua, Timothy, Michael, David and Peter. She says, “I’m happily married to Peter Sr. We’re best friends, as well as lovers, which is probably the best recipe for a successful relationship. We live in a lovely part of England.”
If you loved Marcus Wilding: Duke of Pleasure by Carole Mortimer, be sure to read her much-anticipated follow-up, Darian Hunter: Duke of Desire (November 2014) only from Harlequin Historical!
The Players:
Darian Hunter, Duke of Wolfingham: legendary rake and notorious bachelor Mariah Beecham, Countess of Carlisle: society’s scandalous widow and secret agent of the crown
The Stage:
A notoriously debauched house party
The Scene:
Forced to pose as lovers, Darian and Mariah must work together to stop an assassination plot
The Twist:
As the shocking and oh-so-sensual games play out around them, the romantic ruse becomes all too real. And the tantalizing temptation to indulge their every desire becomes overwhelming...
Available wherever books and ebooks are sold.
Marcus Wilding: Duke of Pleasure Page 5
