Everything about this estate was ducal to its core, and the massive bed was no exception. She suspected it dwarfed even the duchess’ bed. Had she flopped to her back, she imagined she could have rolled across it three times without finding the edged. The covers were cool; a blessing, since her skin felt so warm. Before she had met James, she hadn’t thought she was the sort of woman who blushed excessively, but it seemed as though she had misjudged herself.
Knowing that he was making preparations to join her in his bed, to do what it was that married people did, set her skin to prickling with a sort of nervous excitement that she had never experienced before. She had the vague notion that the act would be accompanied by some sort of pain, that ladies were not reputed to enjoy it.
But she had enjoyed what he had done to her at the theatre, and she could not believe that he would show her any less consideration now that they were married than he had before. He had always been the soul of courtesy, and if he was half as wicked with her as a husband as he had been as a suitor, then she suspected she would find marriage very pleasant indeed.
She watched without shame as he tugged his shirt over his head, draping the discarded garment over the back of a chair. In the low light, the muscles in his back flexed and bunched, and she wondered what they would feel like under her hands, whether or not he would let her touch him as he had touched her. Her fingers itched to smooth across the flat planes of his body, feel the play of muscles beneath them, learn the contours that shaped him. Given the bent of her thoughts, she supposed that between the two of them, she might be the more wicked. Ladies weren’t supposed to entertain such thoughts.
He hesitated, his hands on the buttons of his breeches, slanting her a queer glance. Should she have undressed? Was she supposed to undress? She felt a fresh blush rising into her cheeks and hoped he didn’t think her a witless, giddy girl. Her fingers curled into the coverlet, and she pulled it up to her chin, feeling suddenly very awkward.
His mouth hitched into a wry grin. “You might want to look away for a moment,” he said. “I’d rather not feed any fears you might have.”
Fears? Oh—he was about to reveal that male part of himself. “I’m not a complete lackwit,” she said, with no small amount of indignity. “I’ve seen statues, and—and paintings.”
If anything, that grin grew wider. “Suit yourself,” he said. Quickly, efficiently, he stripped off his breeches, and she stared with rapt fascination, wonder…then trepidation.
Something of her worry must have shown in her face, for he made a brisk business of climbing into bed beside her, flicking the covers over himself with a chuckle. “I did warn you,” he said.
Of course, he had. Jilly swallowed hard, hearing the flutter of concern in her voice as she asked, “Are you certain this is going to work?”
James buried his face in a pillow, muffling his laugh in the feather stuffing. “At any other time, I suppose I’d be flattered,” he managed at last. “But now, all I want is for you not to worry.” He levered up on his arm, leaned over her, and brushed her hair away from her face. “Yes, it will work. There will likely be a few moments where it might be uncomfortable, but I promise you, I will make certain you enjoy it.”
She shivered as he peeled the wrapper away from her shoulder and brushed a kiss along her newly-revealed flesh.
“You’ve got freckles here, too,” he murmured. “I wonder where else they’ll turn up?”
“They’re everywhere,” she said. “They’re a plague. Aunt Marcheline has always despaired of them. She says they make me look spotty.” Her wrapper had come open. No—he’d somehow unbelted it without attracting her notice. His palm slid inside, coasted over her stomach, and paused.
“No nightgown?” he inquired near her ear. His voice had dropped a full octave, tinged with surprise and pleasure, and it did strange things to her insides, like she’d swallowed a drop of sunlight and it had pooled heat in her belly.
“I—I thought it would be a waste of time.”
“Practical.” She could hear the amusement in his voice. His hand continued a slow glide up, edging the wrapper away from her skin. And he whispered in her ear, “I think I’m going to have to find every single freckle.”
“Every—” She took a shocked breath. “No—no, some are…well, they’re everywhere.” She stressed the word, hoping he would understand that it just couldn’t happen.
A laugh rumbled in his chest. “Every one,” he insisted, peeling the silk wrapper off of one arm, and finally whisking it away altogether. It had taken him only seconds to divest her of the garment, and her sudden nakedness surprised her.
The warmth of the arm he slid beneath her seared her skin. He eased closer by inches, as if he suspected she might bolt for the door if he moved too swiftly, but each new brush of his flesh against hers dazed her, and she didn’t think she could have moved if she had tried. His hip touched hers, and she felt her heart thunder in her chest, her breaths grow shallow. A burst of nervous energy assailed her, a brief, disorienting sense of spinning out of control. Of their own accord, her arms slipped around his neck, her anchor in a sea of uncertainty. She didn’t know what she was meant to do.
But he did. His knee slipped between hers, and he levered himself over her. It was such a strange feeling, his naked flesh against hers, the hair burnishing his legs gently abrasive. That intimate part of him, hard and hot, pressed against her. How could something that looked so small, so non-threatening on a statute, look and feel so imposing on a man?
His broad shoulders cast her into the shadows, in a cocoon of heat and darkness. Lightly, the fingers of his free hand traced the outline of her collarbone, drifting lower by slow degrees, as if there were all the time in the world. Despite her nerves, she felt herself relaxing into the caress, lulled into complacency by the feather-light touch, the pervasive warmth of his body over hers.
“There,” he said in whisper. “That’s it.” His head dipped, and she thought he would kiss her, but instead his mouth touched her chin and slid smoothly over her cheek. The faint stubble on his jaw abraded her sensitive skin, leaving a tingling sensation in its wake. His lips found the tender skin beneath her ear, provoking a shiver.
She shifted restlessly, turning her head to invite the caress of his lips. The dark pressed in around her, but it was only that her eyes had closed, as if she had surrendered her sight to amplify her other senses. Summoning her courage, she let her hands drift over the hard planes of his back, feeling the play of muscles beneath his warm skin. His purr of approval singed her ear, and, emboldened, she raked her fingernails gently over his back.
A rough, feral sound escaped him as his hips arched into hers, and his lips seared her throat as he murmured, “God, Jilly.”
She froze. “Did I—should I not have—”
“No,” he pressed the word along with tiny, stinging kisses, against her shoulder. “No. You’re perfect. You can do nothing wrong.” He gave her a bit more of his weight, his lean hips blanketing hers, his chest to her breasts. She had expected to feel crushed, trapped—but it was surprisingly pleasant. She could feel his heart pounding in his chest, feel his lungs expand with his breaths, and it was overwhelming, but she felt no urge to protest, or to push him away. Heat bloomed in her belly, a sort of primitive sense of knowing what was to come. Anticipation fired along her limbs. Her blood sang in her veins, and her legs drew up, hitching her hips to his in primal instinct.
Something approximating a groan rose in his throat, and for an instant his arms clutched her in a fierce, possessive manner that delighted everything feminine in her. Her nails needled his shoulders, and she felt herself softening, that strange tension ebbing to a curious lassitude. And she wanted more, more than just to lay in the comfort of his arms, than their entangled limbs, than the sweep of his lips across her throat. She simply wanted.
“James,” she said. “At the theatre—”
“Ah,” he said. “Yes.”
His mouth slanted over hers, and her
head spun as she realized that his idle caresses, his gentle touch had been for her benefit, to acclimate her to the feel of him, to conquer her nerves before he unleashed all that magnificent passion.
And it was magnificent. There was no room left in her for shyness or shame as his hand skated over her body, over flesh that had never felt the touch of another man’s fingers, to where she was already damp and aching. She had just enough sense to know that she should have been embarrassed, that ladies probably ought not welcome such intimate touches, that they certainly did not invite them.
But the thought was lost in the wake of the agonized groan he smothered against her breast, the shudder that slipped down his spine, the satisfaction of knowing that she was not the only one so affected.
It was wicked—she was wicked. With every gentle stroke of his fingers she lost a bit more of herself, lost the trappings of the lady she had so carefully cultivated over the years, as if she had been broken down into a wild, sensation-seeking, hedonistic creature. It wasn’t even remotely dignified, but it was incredible nonetheless.
His fingers pierced her over-sensitized flesh just as his teeth closed gently on her nipple, and rational thought fled from her brain as her back arched, her head thrashed on the pillow. Dimly, she heard his guttural murmur. In between tender swirls of his tongue on her breast, he suggested scandalous things, shocking things, things no gentleman would ever say to a lady.
But she had never felt less like a lady, and she thrilled to them, responding to his outrageous words in ways that surprised her, with strange, husky sounds of delight, rolling her hips to his thrusting fingers in a primordial rhythm, like a dance she had never learned, but the steps to which she intuitively knew.
She whimpered when his fingers at last withdrew, tried to coax him back with the press of her perspiration-misted skin to his, but he quieted her with a drugging kiss, swallowing her small sounds of discontentment. She had been on the verge of that miraculous culmination, moments away from bliss, and he’d taken it away from her.
“Shh,” he murmured against her ear, settling himself between her thighs. In a fit of uncharacteristic petulance, she twined her legs around him, holding him lest he try to draw away from her again. His breath hissed out as his intimate flesh touched hers, and his hips jerked reflexively, as if on impulse. His weight bore her back into the mattress, and he pried her hand free of his shoulder to interlace his fingers with her, pressing it down into the pillow beside her head as if to anchor both of them to the bed. Wise of him. She felt as if she could shoot off into the sky like the fireworks over Vauxhall Gardens.
He laved himself in the dampness his fingers had coaxed forth from her body, the hot, hard length of him rekindling that incandescent joy that his fingers had evoked. With each slow stroke he rubbed a part of her that sent licks of flame cascading through her, until her whole body was naught but kindling ready to be set ablaze.
“Jilly.” His voice was a velvet rumble near her ear. “When you come, I need to be inside you.” A scorching kiss followed. “I need to feel you.”
“Yes. Yes.” It was building inside her already. She could feel herself stretching toward it, reaching out to capture the sun in her hands, her whole body coiling with tension.
It splintered abruptly, and the moment rapture struck her, he surged deep, past her body’s brief hesitation, straight into the heart of her. His groan was drowned out by her sharp cry of release. She could feel her flesh pulse around him, lush contractions tugging at him, and he rocked against her as if he could not resist the urge to move within her.
His hand clenched on hers, and the rasp of his breaths cut through the silence. She squirmed beneath him, gasping at the strange sensation of his body inside hers, at the exquisite after-tremors even the slightest movement evoked.
“Don’t move.” The words were a harsh command, but she sensed an undercurrent of concern in them. “I don’t want to hurt you. I need…I need a moment.” His head dropped beside hers, and she traced the lines of his back with her free hand, feeling the tension that drew his muscles tight and taut. Her fingers tripped along his spine, reached the small of his back, and he gritted out a curse as he ground his hips to hers.
“Jilly, please. Have mercy,” he groaned.
She surprised herself with a giddy giggle, pleased by her power over him. “It doesn’t hurt,” she assured him. “It’s rather…pleasant.”
“Pleasant?” he echoed incredulously. “Hell, no, it’s not pleasant. It’s torture.” But he withdrew slowly, and sank back inside her with such deliberate delicacy. It was not what he wanted, what he needed, but he restrained himself. For her. And he watched her face, the flicker of awe that washed over her, searching for signs of distress or pain.
There was none. Only a restless hunger for that moment when his hips touched hers, when she was filled with him, and the inexplicable emptiness when he left her. She gave another wiggle, relishing the harsh sound he bit off. He clutched her hip with his free hand, holding her still. Some nameless aggression burned in his eyes, as if she had frayed the last of his self-control down to its final thread.
She rather liked that. And she did it again, tempting him to shed the last of his self-discipline. With an oath that burned her ears, he exploded into motion. He was not gentle, and he was not restrained, and she adored it. He drove into her, and his furious lunges stroked nerves that had not quite recovered, sending her hurtling straight back up into ecstasy.
And this time he gasped, and shuddered, and joined his shout of bliss to her own.
∞∞∞
James had never shared his bed with a woman. Always he had joined them in theirs, then made his excuses and left before any of them could mistake lust for love and grow clingy. He had never wanted a woman invading his sanctuary, encroaching upon his space, disturbing his rest.
But he wouldn’t have had Jilly anywhere else. She had tried, just briefly, to do the proper thing and leave his bed for her own. She knew as well as he did that husbands and wives of their class did not share bedrooms, that their routines worked best when uninterrupted by the inconvenient presence of one’s spouse.
But he hadn’t wanted her to leave. And when she had at last located her silk wrapper, he had snatched it from her fingers, balled it up, and hurled it across the room. It had taken only a moment to coax her back into bed, to tuck her head beneath his chin and the rest of her into the curve of his body, to permit his arm to drape over her hip. She had surrendered to sleep gracefully, her breaths soft and even, untroubled.
He envied her the pleasure. The guilt he had temporarily blotted out of his mind had settled back in anew, sharper and more poignant. But he thought he could suffer it the rest of his life, if only he could fix things so that she never discovered how he had deceived her from their very first meeting. If only he could keep her, hold onto her love, he would suffer beneath that burden forever. If only he could keep it from becoming hers.
He brushed her hair away from her shoulder and kissed the soft curve of her cheek, breathing in that biscuit-sweet fragrance that clung to her skin.
She had surrendered herself into his keeping. How could he do any less?
“I love you, Jilly,” he whispered into her ear.
And even in her sleep, he would swear that she had smiled.
Chapter Twenty Four
Marriage agreed with her. She had to admit it. It seemed so incomprehensible that just weeks ago she had been merely counting down the hours until she would at last be freed of any expectation of marriage, until her dowry could be released into her hands and she could finally eschew all those wretched societal expectations to travel instead. Somehow, though it seemed beyond the bearing of imagination, she felt as though she had finally found her place.
James had proved to be a magnanimous husband, a rare species of man who did not place the burden of ladylike behavior upon her shoulders. He encouraged her wild streak shamelessly, raced her on horseback across the rolling hills surrounding his es
tate, plied her with brandy until she shared her secrets with him, and he shared his with her.
He had taught her how to play billiards, and then distracted her from her aims by slipping his hands up her skirts. She had never expected that marriage would be so much fun. Or that her husband would choose to spend so much of his time with her. She had had the vague sense that married couples met at the breakfast table, and occasionally for dinner, if neither of them had more pressing engagements, and little in between. Nora and Robert had been an exception, not the rule. She doubted very much that her current experience of marriage would be matched if she had in fact married Adrian. He had been kind and pleasant, but also rigid and unbending. She could not imagine that he would approve of his wife indulging in spirits, or smoking cigars. Nor would he have ever considered—and as James had done just three nights ago—chasing his wife through the east wing in the early hours of the morning, stark naked. Together they had discovered rooms that James hadn’t even remembered existed, and the illicit thrill of making love in an airy music room, and surrounded by walls of books on the chaise lounge in one of the many libraries.
The thought elicited a giggle, and James looked up from the handful of correspondence he’d brought with him to the parlor, where they awaited Bartleby’s summons to dinner.
“What can you be thinking of?” he asked, momentarily diverted.
“Adrian,” she said honestly. “He would never have approved of half the things you have.” She paused reflectively, before admitting, somewhat sheepishly, “Probably all of them, in fact.”
Very deliberately he set his correspondence aside and rose from his seat, stripping off his coat as he did so. His cravat was next; he hooked a finger through the fabric, yanked it from around his neck, and cast it aside.
Her heart fluttered in her chest, and she squirmed restlessly in her seat. “James,” she said on high, nervous laugh. “What are you doing?”
His Favorite Mistake Page 19
