Satisfaction settled in his chest and made him feel ten feet tall, but still he wanted more from her. Needed more from her. So he rose behind her and pressed his aching cock against her drenched core for a moment. He still had the other robe belt, and now he knew what he wanted to do with it.
He grabbed a bolster pillow and lodged it under her hips, then took the strip of fabric and looped it around the bindings between her hands and tied it off, leaving the other end long and free. Briefly moving around the side of the bed so he could tie the belt off on the headboard, he took a moment to appreciate how it forced Jules to stretch forward over the edge of the bed until her toes left the floor. With her backside canted even higher, he could fuck her while he kept up her spankings, as needed, to ensure her bliss.
Pleased with how stretched out she was, he returned to the foot of the bed and leaned over her stretched-out torso. Carefully, he placed a series of kisses between her shoulders and down her spine, until he reached the point where her reddened cheeks met. There he took a firm hold of both warm globes, spreading her open until her rear entrance appeared. He slid his tongue down and over the tight whorl, swirling around it a few times before he dipped lower to her sodden entrance.
She gasped. Then his name slipped from her lips. A moan. A plea. Possibly a benediction.
Standing up straight, he notched his cock against her pussy and pressed in…nice and slow. With every bit he fed into her, stretched her, she shifted restlessly. Biting down on his own lip to fight the need to shove his cock inside her in one swift stroke, he appreciated his handiwork, both on her backside, and the fact that she currently could not push backward into his shaft, since she was so stretched out.
She was well and truly at his mercy now.
Of course, it didn’t stop Jules from trying. She started to shift her feet back a bit, but he promptly landed a spank on each side of her arse. “Do not move, my love.”
A low wail of need escaped her. “Please, I need you. Inside me.”
“And you shall have me,” he growled, his own control tremulous at best. “At my pace.”
With a grunt, he continued sliding into her, drawing out their pleasure to the point of near pain as he filled her up.
The minutes ticked by, a slow marking of his entrance, and a reminder of how blessed he was to have this woman bound and eager for his attentions after so many years of separation.
In that moment, his vow to always come for her resonated in his head and in his soul, because he knew he could never again be a whole man without his wife.
At last, his hips met her thighs as she engulfed his erection. The heat of her wrapped around him, making him light-headed with the sheer pleasure of it.
“Yes, yes, yes! Now fuck me,” she demanded, as she wriggled beneath him.
Two more smacks put paid to her notion that she had any say in the matter. She moaned and bucked against him. Finally taking pity on both of them, he slid back in one firm move until just the tip remained nestled inside her heat.
“You want me to fuck you, wife?”
“Please!”
She sobbed the single word, and his control snapped.
He slammed into her hard as she lay there stretched out before him. One hand on her hip and the other on her shoulder, he pumped in and out of her body, setting a furious pace. Pounding into her over and over, he heard himself snarl as he edged closer and closer to climax. Yet somehow, he registered that she still needed a slight nudge. Shifting his hand from her hip to her mound, he dipped his fingertips into her slit and found the distended nub he’d already teased and tortured. He stroked over it once, and her pussy clamped down on him. With stars dancing before his eyes, he kept his thrusting up as he rubbed her clit, swirling the pad of his finger over it.
Her hips bucked and she cried out, “Wolf, I’m going to come!”
With a savage satisfaction he had never experienced, he dragged his finger over the sensitive nub as he slammed into her, and she exploded around him. The strong rhythmic pulsing of her release threw him over the edge. The stars behind his eyes turned black as he continued working in and out of her body. Pleasure shot from his tailbone across his torso and to all four of his extremities as he came inside her.
Light-headed from the intense orgasm, he slumped to the side of her as his cock slipped free. He lay there, his breath heaving in and out of his chest, as exhaustion, or maybe it was sheer bliss, made it impossible to focus on anything.
Then Jules moaned softly and shifted.
Awareness surged inside of him. He had her bound, and had had her that way for quite a while. Moving quicker than he might have expected, he released her from the bed, then worked her wrists free until she was able to drag her arms down to her sides.
“Are you well?”
He reached down and massaged her arms as she lay there as limp as a rag.
She whimpered softly.
Worried, he rolled her over and found her eyes closed and a huge grin on her luscious lips.
“Oh, I’m quite lovely, thank you.”
His pang of worry slipped away as he let loose an unexpected chuckle and found he couldn’t stop. The sheer joy of having this woman as his burst free from him in a long hearty laugh that seemed to never end.
Chapter 28
Julia enjoyed a good spectacle. Watching the actors prance around, singing and dancing during the intermissions, and the bawdy tone of many of the exchanges, delighted her. Wolf, Emily, and Cooper all seemed equally as entertained. Cooper’s box at the Adelphi Theater had proven to be a fine entertainment.
Once the program came to its inevitable conclusion, the four of them remained seated. It seemed silly to clamber from the box with all the other patrons doing the same. If they waited a few minutes, the worst of the crowd would dissipate.
As the others chatted about the play, Julia marveled that just the night before, Wolf had stretched her out across his bed and fucked her until she had nearly passed out. In her post-orgasmic haze, the man had coddled her until she’d roused enough to satisfy his concern. He’d wrapped her in the blanket from the bed and held her as little shivers and aftershocks of pleasure had continued to zip through her body. Then he’d produced a glass of water for her, and insisted she drink some before he’d allowed her to tuck in under the covers and drift off to sleep.
“Shall we?”
Cooper stood and offered his hand to Emily, who smiled at him. Julia envied them a bit. They were head-over-heels in love with each other. Certainly, she was aware that Wolf cared for her a great deal, and was willing to go to great lengths to protect her. But while she’d never intended to fall in love with him again, she had. She’d known it the night he’d tied her to the bed, and she knew it now. What she didn’t know was if he felt the same about her. And she was tired of the not knowing. It was past time she told him how she felt. Her stomach flip-flopped in her belly, but her resolve grew stronger with every heartbeat.
He offered her his arm, and together they followed Cooper and Emily out of the theater. The crowd had lingered some, so a throng of people still loitered, making it difficult for carriages to draw up to the curb. They spotted Wolf’s carriage across the street and decided to cross, in lieu of making the vehicle traverse the busy road.
They dashed out into traffic, but Julia stepped on a loose cobblestone. With a painful jolt, her ankle twisted and she stumbled, losing her hold on Wolf’s arm. He stopped and turned back to see what had happened when a carriage pulled up behind her and halted. The door opened as two hulking men leaned out and snatched her up. She was hauled backward into the cab of the vehicle on a scream fueled by fear and anger.
Wolf lurched toward her, his brows drawn down in fury as she was jerked deeper into the conveyance. “Stop! Julia! Julia’s been snatched!”
She fought the strong hands that held her, desperate to get back to the door before they moved. Despite her bunched skirts and injured ankle, she used the edge of the bench seat and the coat of one of the vi
llains to drag herself toward the still-open door. She was close, could even see Wolf clinging to the door while he fought with one of the men.
Then the man she’d grabbed onto drew a gun and pointed it at Wolf. The strong hands that had held her before returned. Fisting his hand in her hair, the man yanked on her head—hard. Ignoring the burning pain of her hair being torn from her scalp at the roots, she continued to strain toward freedom and Wolf.
To her utter horror, a shot rang out. Her gut twisted as she saw him crumple to the ground. “Wolf!”
The fist in her hair jerked harder, and yet she refused to give in. But with Wolf now dispatched—Oh, God! He couldn’t be dead!—and the carriage moving, the two thugs at the door closed the opening. Then the one who’d shot Wolf turned around, ripping her hand free of his clothing.
“Stupid meddling bitch,” he snarled, spittle flying from his lips to land on her face.
Still struggling to get free of the third man, it was a shock when the snarling man’s hand quickly followed his spit. Pain bloomed over her cheek and made her eye throb as she found herself huddled on the floor of the carriage. Her heart shattered as she watched Wolf struggle and then crumple over and over again behind her closed eyelids.
Tears streamed down her face as she realized that the man she loved had just been taken from her in the most vicious twist of fate that life had dealt her yet. Her body shook with pulsing anger and despair.
Then a cacophony of sound filled the carriage, an asynchronous mix of the ragged breath of one of the thugs and her own sniffling, punctuated by the steady clop of hooves.
The ragged breather slowly recovered, and the snarly man turned his fury on his companions. “Your fancy bloke had best pay up when we get there. No one said anything about me have’n to kill one of them puffed-up dandies. I ain’t signed on for that kind’a trouble.”
Julia gasped. This wasn’t random, though if she stopped and considered her recent past, that realization shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Sitting up, she gathered her wits and blocked out the throbbing across her cheek and eye, as well as the growing pain in her ankle.
“If money is all you three are after, I can offer you plenty of ready cash. How much is this man paying you?”
One of the other men snorted. “More than you likely have, even as fancy a piece as you may be.”
Julia considered who would have resorted to this kind of nefarious action, and only one man came to mind. Granted, she couldn’t be sure until he showed himself, but she had little doubt he would eventually reveal his role in this drama. “I am far richer than the man I suspect hired you lot.” She hesitated, but decided she had nothing to lose but her life at the moment. “I’ll double whatever he’s paying you.”
Snarly growled as he reached down and grabbed ahold of her bodice. He jerked her toward him until his fetid, gin-soaked breath slammed into her. She considered that there might be permanent damage to her ability to appreciate anything more delicate than smelling salts in the future. If she escaped alive.
“How do we know you’ve got that kind of blunt?”
Her head spun at the stench, but she managed to keep her wits about her. It seemed she’d piqued his interest. “Stop and consider my attire. I am wearing a gown made of the finest Indian silk, and my earbobs and matching necklace are real rubies, not paste copies, I assure you.”
Her hand trembled as she directed his glare to the necklace circling her throat.
It was a risk. They could simply rip the baubles from her person and then demand more, but she had little ground to stand on under the circumstances. As they passed a gas streetlamp, the interior of the carriage glowed dimly, but enough so that she could see the greed in the man’s beady eyes.
Just as a spark of hope flamed to life, it was snuffed out.
“Hold on there. This ain’t just about money, you know. That fancy bloke has my Sarah. If we don’t do as he says, he’ll hurt her.”
The third man then ripped Julia away from Snarly, tearing some of her hair out when Snarly didn’t let go quickly enough.
Snarly grunted, clearly not happy with letting the extra payment go. “Fine.” Then he reached down and ripped the rubies from her neck. “But I’m taking these, and neither of you will say a thing.”
The other two mumbled acquiescence as the carriage continued down the lane. Feeling trapped and utterly alone, Julia sagged to the floor. Her body ached from the struggle, and with the burst of adrenaline that had allowed her to fight earlier now depleted, exhaustion swept over her. Clearly these three were taking her somewhere, and she doubted much else would occur until such time as they reached their destination.
Then Wolf flitted to the forefront of her thoughts. She pictured the smile he’d offered her as they exited the theater. One that spoke of caring and emotion—love—that she would never know. Not now. Not ever again. Her tears returned, a silent mourning for all that she’d lost in the blink of an eye.
Blinding rage thrummed through Wolf. If Cooper’s wife, Emily, had not been present, he might have resorted to venting his fury on the furniture in his study. Instead, he sat calmly, sipping a brandy as the poor woman tried to steady her hands long enough to stitch up his shoulder.
“Wolf, a doctor should be doing this,” she said, for possibly the tenth time in as many minutes.
He stilled. “Absolutely not. I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with some pompous blowhard telling me I should be in bed resting.”
She bit her lower lip, then sighed. “I do understand that, and I certainly would not expect you to do any such thing when poor Julia is out there somewhere in those men’s clutches. However, alcohol and your housekeeper’s needle and thread are not precisely how a bullet wound should be cared for, I am quite certain.”
“Nevertheless, this is how I am choosing to handle mine. I wish I did not have to sit here and wait for Cooper to return. I am sure that Wallthorpe lies at the heart of this plot, and I should be making haste to his house.”
Wolf tightened his grip on the ball of the armrest as Emily stabbed the needle through his flesh once more.
One of the villains who’d taken Julia had shot at him as they struggled. He’d seen her there, hovering just behind the blackguard when the gun had fired. Lucky for him, the carriage had hit a pothole right at that moment, or he might have been dealing with a whole different level of bullet wound. Possibly the fatal kind.
As it was, the bullet had grazed his left shoulder, causing him to let go of the vehicle and fall to the cobblestones. His luck had held as the trailing carriage had been far enough behind the villains that he had time to roll out of the way before another team of horses trampled him.
Cooper had been working his way to the top of the roof when Wolf was shot and the conveyance took off. Wolf cursed again as he remembered laying there in the street, watching as Julia was driven away. But then he’d seen his friend clinging to the back of the carriage, and he knew as soon as Cooper had ascertained where they were taking her, he would let Wolf know.
Somehow.
So here he sat, with his friend’s wife, who had insisted on sending for a doctor. Failing in that, she had opted to at least treat the wound herself. So, with a splash of brandy both in the wound and in his glass, he waited. And seethed.
He’d seen the fear and anger in Julia’s eyes as she’d fought hard to free herself. And he’d have to live with his failure to protect her yet again when she’d needed him the most. He knew that whatever chance he’d had to make her fall in love with him had been lost when he’d failed to rescue her from the carriage.
What woman would want a man who continually proved unable to safeguard her? And with the knowledge of his bastard state to boot? Doubt assailed him even as a fierce need to be the man Jules needed swept in.
Emily finally finished setting the last of the neat stitches in his arm.
He glanced down, surprised at how tidy her work was. “Thank you.”
“It’s not my
best needlework, but then I am not accustomed to my sewing being alive.”
She smiled, but then clenched her teeth together as though biting back her words.
Wolf noticed her restraint as well as the worry that clouded her normally merry hazel eyes. Yet another woman he’d put in jeopardy by his deficiencies. “I know words are not nearly enough, but my apologies for the fact your husband is currently at risk as a result of my actions.”
She snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. I put Cooper in jeopardy to a far greater extent when he courted me. I’m merely worried for your wife. While she is an independent woman, I am not certain this kind of adventure is something she would appreciate.”
Despair threatened his composure. “What woman would?”
Emily laughed. Not a delicate, mincing tinkle, but a full belly laugh. “Oh, I imagine Theo and I would find the whole thing rather exciting, once it was over.”
He eyed Lady Brougham in a new light as he swallowed another gulp of brandy. Regardless, she was right. Julia would not appreciate the experience of being snatched from a London street and hauled off to parts unknown. Before he could respond, the door of the study opened and all the Lustful Lords walked in.
Stone, as usual, led the group. Behind him came Linc and Flint, as well as their newest member, Emily’s brother, Arthur.
Stone didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “Any word from Cooper?”
“Not as yet.”
Wolf resisted the urge to growl when he knew his friend was risking his neck for him.
The others ranged out around the room, Arthur immediately checking on his sister.
Stone sat next to him in a wing chair. “We’ll get her back.”
Wolf nodded, unable to reply. Because while he knew he would free her no matter the cost to himself, he wasn’t sure if he would make it in time to prevent something unforgiveable from occurring. Not to mention, he didn’t know if she would even want him still under the circumstances.
His Scandalous Viscountess (Lustful Lords Series Book 3) Page 22
