Love Reclaimed

by Sorcha Mowbray

  He reached behind her, found the lacings of her gown, and worked them loose. The bodice released, and he eased it down over her shoulders to expose her corset-covered breasts. He groaned as he kissed across the tops of her cleavage before working one breast free. With a step backward, he sat on the chaise and drew Marie closer, twisted her so he could remove her laces. Her skirts puddled around her feet after the lower lacings were released along with the ties of her petticoats. Clad in nothing but her corset, chemise, and hose, real life mimicked his wanton thoughts of a half hour earlier.

  Next, he pulled the corset laces, releasing the constriction from her hourglass waist. Need speared through him like a red-hot poker when she rotated to face him, and he realized her nipples showed through the sheer material of her chemise. She lifted her arms so she could release her hair, making his vision complete. Reality far outstripped the paltry image his feeble imagination had conjured. Drawing her down into his lap, he kissed her again and sought the breast hooked over the chemise’s neckline. He moaned in pleasure as her warm flesh filled his mouth. The pebbled nipple rolled across his tongue, responding to the smallest stroke or nibble. Delicate hands clutched his head, urging him on in silence. He switched breasts, exposing the other one and her breathing grew rapid, shallow. The erotic sound of her soft little pants enflamed him more than the sight of her half-naked.

  Withdrawing from him, she unbuttoned his coat and slipped her soft hands beneath the fabric to ease it off his shoulders. Next, she attacked his waistcoat, and then his shirt. Cool air hit his overheated skin. A vain desire to slip his shirt back on wiggled its way into his consciousness. After all the chests she’d seen over all the years, would his be found lacking? Would she turn from him in disgust of his no longer rock hard abdomen? Steeling himself, he waited.

  “Very nice.” Her whispered words relieved his moment of worry that a man of forty-five might not entice such an experienced woman. Without a doubt, time had changed her, leaving her less firm in places than the young woman he once knew, but nothing about her failed to please. Nothing failed to tantalize. He stood as she opened the fall of his trousers and removed them along with his small clothes. Naked before her, there’d be no hiding his cockstand, not to say he wanted to any longer.

  “My, my, it seems you are eager to see me.” A wicked smile flashed across her face as she sank to her knees before him. Taking him in a firm grip at the root with one hand, she used her other one to fondle his testicles with a gentle caress. The electric sensation of her tongue running from root to tip before swallowing him up came close to unmanning him. After two years of mourning with nothing but self-pleasure, it could best be described as a profusion of sensation to experience not only a woman’s touch, but her eager mouth sucking him with such single-mindedness.

  Pumping the base of his shaft with her hand while her mouth sucked and licked the upper part, brought him to the edge with unreasonable haste. The precipice loomed before him. A bit of gentle pressure on the spot behind his balls had him exploding like a boy with his first woman. Her relentless grip on the base of his member thwarted his attempt to withdraw from her mouth. He understood her message quite clearly; she had no intention of letting him go anywhere until she finished taking his seed.

  Releasing his softening penis, she rose up and walked over to the mystery door he had spotted when they first entered. She opened it and disappeared with a come-hither glance over her shoulder. Left to stand there or follow, he opted to see where she had gone. In the next room, he found an elegant bed draped with silks and satins in various shades of green. Near the fireplace burning brightly with a crackling fire Marie stood holding a glass of brandy.

  She waited on pins and needles to see if she had appalled Heartfield—or enticed him. The latter appeared to be true since he followed her into her boudoir. He retrieved the brandy and hesitated as though waiting for her to take the lead. A sip of her own drink allowed her to ponder the options. To her delight, he tired of waiting for her to decide. Brandy abandoned on the mantle, he took her glass from her hand and pulled her into his strong arms for another plundering, soul-stirring kiss. Being with him would be dangerous to the emotional armor she long ago erected upon agreeing to her father’s plan.

  Her blood thrummed through her veins, pulsing at her woman’s core with the need to feel him buried within. It had been a long time since she experienced the stirrings of hunger with any man. Damn near five years. Not since her last long-term engagement had she reveled in the heady rush. The decision to focus on business and not entertaining was an easy one when no one could fan to life the flames of her desire. No reason to waste her time on men she did not want. But Heartfield remained a different story altogether. Every past stroke from other men paled in comparison to what his touch did to her.

  Ending the kiss, he stripped off her chemise and lifted her into his arms like a groom with his bride. He laid her out on the bed and took his time with his inspection. The weight of his gaze dragged over her flesh in an erotic and far too intimate caress. More than aware of the ravages of time, she struggled to suppress the urge to cover herself. Normally, she was more than proud of her physique. Careful about what she ate, she ensured sufficient activity to keep her figure healthy and curvy as it had always been. Despite her best efforts, her skin looked less youthful and her breasts less perky. She was not the young girl he might remember.

  He, on the other hand, had held up well for a man his age. Not in the first blush of youth, his chest still contained enough muscle to make a younger, less active, man envious. With a stomach tapered to lean hips, a firm derriere, and legs well-muscled from years of riding and controlling horses without the reins, he proved more than she could have expected. In particular since many of his peers sported potbellies and florid faces from years of overindulgence.

  His big hands parted her thighs letting him kneel on the bed. Leaning over her, he returned to her nipples, sucking and biting them to hardened peaks. As he ministered to them, he slipped his fingers between her thighs to delve into her wet folds. He groaned when he found the excess moisture signaling her need. Allowing the peak to pop from his mouth, his salt-and-pepper head dipped down the length of her body and let his tongue trace patterns across her skin, leaving chill bumps in its wake. He dipped his fingers into her pussy, working in and out of her as he descended.

  Upon reaching his goal, he spread her thighs wider and exchanged his digits for his tongue. She gasped in pure pleasure, stabbed her own fingers into his close-cropped hair, and lifted her hips to meet his thrusts. Marie was certain she would come apart at the seams at any moment. The boy of the innocent kisses no longer existed. In his place existed a man who commanded her body’s attention.

  When he pinned her hips down with his hands, she released his hair and let him lead. She let her hands drift back up toward her aching nipples to roll and pinch them while he shifted his tongue up to flick over her clit in a relentless laving of her core. A loud moan rattled up and out of her body as the first waves of orgasm crashed down. He thrust his tongue back inside of her, his thumb rubbing her oversensitive nub. She arched up in a contraction of pleasure as a release unlike any she had provided to herself over the last few years racked her body. Spent, she collapsed back onto the bed, a puddle of bone and flesh.

  Heartfield crawled back up her length to take her in his arms. They lay there spooned together, his growing cock wedged between them. How could she ever have imagined foreplay might be so incredible? He had yet to bury himself in her, and yet she knew a deeper satisfaction than ever before. He held her and caressed her back with his fingertips. His magical fingertips.

  “Mmm. That was lovely.” Her words were muffled by his chest.

  “Indeed. It will be lovelier still in a short while. I want nothing short of burying myself in you and watching you come around my cock.” His words were a rumble resonating deep in her still-pulsing core. Like a siren called to sailors in the tales of yore, his lust called to her. His lips sought
hers again, and they kissed, renewing their ardor in a matter of moments.

  The kiss deepened and he rolled her underneath him. The weight of his body pressed her into the mattress in the most deliciously wanton way. It felt good to bear a man’s weight once again, to bear this man’s weight in particular. Spreading her legs, she urged him to slide into her sheath, to join them in the way they had both been denied for twenty long years.

  A single thrust seated him within her, his balls pressed against her ass, and yet she wanted more. She needed him pounding into her in the most elemental way. No slow lovemaking, she needed a base and elemental fucking meant to leave them sweaty and longing for more. “I won’t break, Heartfield. Fuck me,” she demanded.

  “Christ, woman.” He ground out before his assault began. Lifting up he pulled back and slid home again, a hard, solid stroke that shot a zing of sensation to her toes.

  Such a delicious, sexy man, and he happened to be buried between her thighs. “Yes. That’s it.”

  His movements became more rapid as he pumped in and out of her body. Her heels dug into the mattress so she could meet each thrust with her own. Their bodies slapped together over and over as he took her. Tingles skipped across her skin and pooled where they joined. She could feel her need building and reveled in the way his cock worked her soaking pussy. Mad with desire for him, all self-control lost, she shouted his name as she shattered around him. He drove into her, unstopping as she came until his own release shot deep inside her. He, too, shouted her name as his climax took him. Their bodies, still joined, pulsed in an animalistic rhythm that wrung every last drop of energy from her.

  Chapter Two

  Jonathan woke up from a nap to find Marie still asleep. The fire had burned to a flickering flame, and in the soft glow of the low light he stared at her. In a slow, sleepy sweep, her lashes revealed her eyes and her wakefulness. He rose from the bed and added some wood to the fire, as much a stalling tactic as a need for warmth. He’d searched her out with the intent of discovering what still lay between them, if anything. The crystal-clear answer left a lone course of action as far as he could see. Despite her sordid life, she’d been raised a gently bred young woman. She’d wound up living the life of a whore through no fault of her own. He could never condemn her for sacrificing herself to save her sisters.

  If her wastrel father had done right by his family, she would have become his wife when he returned from his first campaign. Instead, he’d had to marry Miss Jane Landing, a young missish heiress, whose dowry bailed his family out of the poorhouse. All he’d been asked to do was to marry a plain but sweet and wealthy girl. By any reckoning, he’d gotten off lucky.

  “Tell me, Marie.” He stood and turned back toward the bed. “If I had returned from my first campaign, and your father had not been so in debt, would you have considered marriage to me?”

  She lay silent on the bed, still snuggled under the covers. He returned to her side and slid between the sheets, but left her alone to ponder the question. “What could that possibly matter now?”

  He pulled her into his arms, enjoying the feel of her soft woman’s curves against the harder planes of his male body. Beneath the covers he stroked the underside of her breast with a lightness that elicited a purr of contentment from his partner.

  She angled herself more toward him. “What is this about?”

  “I have always remembered our time together with fond memories. Summers in the fields chasing the cows, wading in the creek between our properties, and Christmas caroling. You always had the loveliest voice.” Obvious discomfort at his remembrances caused her to tuck her face into his shoulder.

  “I, too, have fond memories of our times together. Learning to jump fences, swimming in the pond on your property, and the sled races we always held after the first snow.” Her husky tones wove deep inside him and wound themselves around his heart.

  “What if we could be together? As we should have been.” He tossed the dice and waited to see how they landed.

  The warm woman in his arms stilled before pulling away. Rising from the bed, she donned her dressing gown while turning to face him. “Heartfield, what precisely are you suggesting?” Her eyes narrowed and seemed to bore into him.

  He sat up, dragging the covers with him. “I am suggesting exactly what it sounds like I am. I wish to marry you. To spend the rest of my life with you as I should have from the beginning.”

  She shook, a visible clue of the emotions simmering beneath her cooling exterior. Her eyes turned a dead mossy color, which did not bode well for the outcome he desired. A pit formed in his stomach in anticipation of her coming refusal. “That is ludicrous. Beyond the obvious issue of everyone in the ton shunning you, there is your familial duty. You owe your line an heir.”

  Familial duty. He somehow managed to contain the need to snort. But wait. “I have not mentioned the absence of heirs. How exactly would you know that if you had not seen me before now?”

  “I traffic in gossip as well as pleasure. It is almost as lucrative a commodity.” Her hands knotted and unknotted over and over again in an unconscious gesture he remembered from their youth. The rest of her tall form stood as still as a statue.

  “Bollocks! I am a low-ranking baron of little to no consequence. There is not one man or woman in the ton who would be interested in whether or not I had successfully gotten children on my dear departed wife except for our own mothers who are long since gone to the great beyond.” He rose from the bed, angry she would not admit the truth. She had been keeping abreast of his life.

  She still cared.

  With a dismissive wave of her hands, she stalked toward the fire. “I must have heard it mentioned in passing by someone. Regardless, what I said still holds true unless you have some heir tucked away I’ve not heard about. Not that you could recognize a bastard.”

  “No. There are no bastards and no legitimate heirs. I was a good and faithful husband while Jane lived.” Anger over her lies and casual dismissal of his character burned through him. “As for my family line, there is a cousin who can inherit. I can marry when and where I wish.”

  “Heartfield, we do not even know each other. Yes, we enjoyed a physical exchange. We reminisced about our childhoods. But we only know the boy and girl we were. I am a very different woman than you might ever have imagined me becoming.”

  “All surface layers to be explored and peeled away. At your core….” He came behind her and pulled her against him until her buttocks nestled against his groin. “Here.” His fist pressed against her chest and over her heart. “Here, you are the same person I knew. Kind, generous, and self-sacrificing.”

  A bitter laugh rumbled from her as she pulled away from him. “Kind? Just yesterday I threw one of my girls out on the street with nothing but the clothes on her back.”

  Doubt assailed him. Did he know her? His confidence resurged to the fore. “She must have been a thief.”

  “She broke one of my rules.” Her face hardened around eyes like green ice. “Generous? I do not help anyone who cannot help me. Nothing is free, my Lord. And the last time I committed the sin of self-sacrifice—nearly twenty years ago—I allowed myself to be auctioned off. After that night, I swore every act I made would be for my benefit alone for the rest of my days.” She prowled toward him, a mocking smile on her face.

  Horror washed through him as he gained a peripheral understanding of the differences between the woman before him and the girl he had known. Shoring up his reserves, he dug deep for his belief in the innate goodness of people. Of her. “You have been forced into a hard life which required hard decisions and a need to look out for yourself to survive. But, Marie, it does not change who you are at the core. I cannot believe you are not still fundamentally the same loving person you always were. And none of what you have said changes my desire to be with you. Forever.”

  Turning away from him, she faced the fire, but her words carried in biting clarity. “Get out. Put on your clothes in the office and leave. Your
money is always good at The Market, but I have no desire to personally indulge you again. Good evening, my Lord.”

  Jonathan’s heart crawled up his chest to lodge in his throat. Could she not want him in truth? Perhaps he had pushed too hard, too fast. He’d go and give her a little space, but he would be back to claim his Marie.

  The door closed behind him, and Marie let her shoulders slump. Holding them up had been more wearing than everything else they had done together. She raised her hand to her face and discovered the wetness from her silent tears. She wiped it away. With a ragged breath, she straightened up and went to her vanity. There she tidied herself up and repaired her hair to some semblance of order. Draped in her dressing gown, she rang for Phillipe.

  “Madame.” He bowed.

  “Has Baron Heartfield departed?” She sipped a fresh brandy.

  “About five minutes ago, Madame. Is he to be allowed to return in the future?”

  “Yes. As long as he appears with a token or a member and pockets to let, the door is always open to him. But if he asks for me, I am indisposed.”

  “Very good, Madame. You should be aware Lord Bethany became too rough in the dungeon. We escorted him from the house and I took the liberty of barring him for a fortnight with payments.” Her client liaison looked concerned.

  “He had been warned previously. One more incident and he will be banned from this establishment for life. When the fortnight is up send around a note inviting him to return with the understanding his outbursts of violence will not be tolerated again without permanent repercussions. Who did he attack, and how is she?”

  “Yes, Madame. It was Celeste. Some of the other ladies are caring for her with a poultice Cook prepared. A few days rest and she will be right as rain. Some of the men in the room restrained Bethany before he could inflict any lasting damage. Is there anything else I may do for you before I close the house up for the night?”