A Most Unladylike Adventure (19 page)

‘Run out of creatures vile enough to compare me to, my sweet?’ he asked smoothly and shifted her so her body draped itself very closely about his as he let her slide back on to
her feet even though her skirts were rucked up against his breeches and she knew just how aroused he was after her explicitly informative journey back to solid ground.

‘I’ll think of something,’ she assured him breathlessly, but he didn’t give her the time.

Instead he took her mouth in a fiercely desperate kiss that told her volumes about his state of mind and body and any doubts she’d ever had that he wanted her to the edge of madness evaporated under the heat of that kiss. Every bit as eager, she opened her mouth wantonly under his. His tongue tangled with hers and she closed her eyes and just revelled in real, substantial Hugh under her exploring hands, where she’d had to make do with the most shocking dreams and frustrating memories for far too long.

Engulfed in her Hugo’s warmth and strength and feeling as if she was surrounded by urgent, so very much-needed man, she ignored the vague discomfort of an elegant bedpost at her back as she used it to stretch further up against him than she could of her own accord as he backed her blindly towards whatever surface stopped them first. Oh, this was wonderful, so all engrossing that Aunt Poole and half the strictest hostesses of the
ton
might have been watching on a set of very odd chaperon’s benches for all she knew or cared. She let out a very necessary breath and gasped in another while she had the chance and felt so many of her inhibitions and insecurities leave the room along with those imaginary dragons.

‘I love you, Hugo,’ she informed him, using the name she was only now adjusting to, as he realised just where he’d placed her and turned her about so his back was to the smoothly turned mahogany instead while he busied himself exploring her back through the ivory silk of her gown; then, while he happened to be round there, he undid each satin-covered button until he could get down to just exploring uncovered Louisa instead. ‘I really and truly love you,’ she added and all the surprise she felt about the startling reality of their love must have been obvious in her voice, because it made him laugh and she felt as well as heard it since they stood so close his voice echoed through her own narrower ribcage and had a delightful effect on her already hard-peaked nipples and very aroused breasts.

‘Good,’ he spared breath to tell her before he silenced them both by shucking her undone gown off her shoulders and setting his mouth to one of those begging nipples before
he could disentangle her arms from the puffy little apologies for sleeves a spring bride could afford to have on her going-away gown.

Trapped in a fine web of loving and absolute desire, Louisa felt her head go back as she arched to encourage her husband’s possession and she gasped out something incomprehensible to both of them as words faded from her understanding of the world. Then she was lying dazed and not quite sure how she’d got there on the bed, with her gown a pool of neglected dusky-rose silk on the floor and she was vaguely conscious that Hugo was busy ripping off his own finery with eager abandon. Somehow she managed to force her suddenly heavy-lidded eyelids open so that she could appreciate the view; maybe the sight of them—all darkest of midnight blue, and dilated at actually being able to see the splendour of his golden-skinned torso, heavy with muscle and taut with wanting her—properly for the first time made him even more urgent. Lying like some wickedly sensual empress eyeing her lover, she let her kiss-swollen mouth open on an ‘Oh?’ of curiosity and just the slightest touch of awed apprehension as he tore off his boots, then struggled out of his breeches and finely clocked stockings in one
fluid move and stood for a moment in all his naked glory.

It really surprised her that he was such a glorious sight, despite that magical interval in Kit and Ben’s deeply shadowed warehouse. Thanks to him she knew exactly how a man made love to a woman, but he was so beautiful in his obviously extreme need of her. Not a word he’d appreciate if she said it out loud, of course, but he was all finely honed muscle and long, lean limbs, but her gaze centred on his manhood with eager fascination. A girl—and she realised she had been a girl until he made her his woman too many days ago now to recall—could speculate and wonder about what gentlemen were like under their clothes and even peer curiously at classical statues of apparently perfect young gods without their togas, but nothing could ever equal the fact of a naked man’s raw desire for a woman he very clearly wanted very badly indeed. Or at least it couldn’t equal her naked man’s desire for her, as she had no interest whatsoever in seeing any others.

‘You’re obviously a very proud man in every sense of the world,’ she managed to recover enough language to tell him huskily.

‘Very proud of you, love,’ he rumbled back, ‘very desperate for you.’

‘Then you’d best come closer,’ she whispered, ‘very much closer would be my best guess, as well as my pleasure.’

‘So close we’ll be one,’ he half-promised and half-warned her as he smoothly surged on to the bed and the heated fact of his skin against hers sharpened every sense she had with anticipation.

‘We already are,’ she murmured and wondered at his rumble of male amusement, until he moved so he was resting half across her splayed body while still holding most of his weight on his impressively muscled arms.

‘Just wait and see, or rather wait and feel, how very much better it can be with a decent bed under us and the whole night ahead of us,’ he promised, then sank his head and a little of his weight towards her, so he could kiss her with what felt like all of him as well as just his wickedly knowing mouth.

Silenced for once, she loved the weight and strength of him and wriggled her legs against his to urge him closer, faster into this, their first sanctioned, married loving and she wondered that it could feel so wonderful and novel and right. Frustratingly he just used his superior
strength to lift himself off her again for a while to gently, almost soothingly brush kisses across her brow, then her eyelids, then her cheekbones as her eyes opened again almost of their own accord when he worked his way down those cheekbones to slip kisses along the line of her jaw and back up to her mouth. There he lingered, eyes open and full of all he felt for her as they stared wonderingly at each other. His gaze was molten silver, shot with blue, his breath quick and shallow and she could feel herself quivering with excitement and scorching desire. Maybe even Hugo thought she was ready for more, because he hiked up the gossamer chemise that was all the boning and lining of her gown had needed beneath it and set himself to learn the burning heated place at the centre of her again as she parted her thighs eagerly to welcome his touch. Their mesmerised gazes still held as he tantalised and roused her, teaching her how much he loved the dark, springy curls at her secret centre, how he loved the soft wet folds of her outer sex even more and how he absolutely adored her molten inner core.

Her hands were almost as busy, even if she was still too shy to boldly set her hand to his rampantly aroused member. Yet she learnt
how sleek and sensitive the corded muscles supporting his spine were as they flexed under her fascinated touch. He delved one of those wickedly exploring fingers of his further into her and she moaned a demand as that pulse of pure need tightened, then subsided around it only to burn again even more strongly. She gasped an incoherent protest and tried her best to pull him closer to her, kneading his tightly muscled buttocks with demanding fingers as she knew she had to have him inside her and love him in every sense of the word. Had to appease the hot, almost painful need to be full of the rigid, straining manhood he was denying them both until she was nearly weeping with frustration.

‘Hugh,’ she demanded reverting to the name of the man she had first fallen for, ‘you in me. Must have you in me’, and if he didn’t spread her legs and take her soon she’d have to scissor her legs together and try to appease this grinding, magical need without him.

‘Aye, it’s high time we had each other again, my love,’ he affirmed and raised her knees, then eased his emphatically aroused shaft into her at last and she sighed with blissful relief, so stretched and full of this wonder of a man, and her wide-eyed gaze sought his for confirmation
that this was them, husband and wife, together on the road to somewhere wonderful at last. ‘Let me come right into you again, my darling love,’ he demanded and she relaxed her inner muscles, took the fact of him into herself in more than just the physical and trusted him absolutely.

She felt the freedom of this time, after he had gentled himself so much to take the fact of her virginity last time they’d loved, and that never-to-be-forgotten first time gave way to this equally important next time, now they truly loved and openly acknowledged it. Then he raised her knee a little higher, rocked back until he could angle her more receptively for one long, desperate thrust and she was his lover in every way there was once more. It didn’t hurt this time and she gasped as he slid home into the very depths of her and burning need took over as Hugo withdrew from her so far that she let out a long moan of frustrated desire, then he thrust home again and sweet heat bloomed inside her like wildfire. The rhythm of his thrust and withdrawal taught her an even deeper delight in each other than she’d dared imagine before now and she eagerly moved to learn it.

His body set a glorious rhythm and his
mouth enforced it first on one tightly aroused breast, then the other until she was thrashing her head from side to side in desperate pleading as that great and relentless force they experienced before beat at them in unison and beckoned that sensual edge to all this blissful closeness she remembered falling over last time they loved so completely, even if neither of them had fully known at the time how powerful that love truly was. He increased their already-wild rhythm, plunged into her even more deeply as he gasped out a plea of his own, then took her mouth in a long, desperate kiss, his eyes wide open on hers this time as his tongue plunged in time with his mighty body and something so exquisite bloomed between them that she felt tears glaze her open eyes, as she gazed into his wildly silvered blue eyes and finally let go.

They span into ecstasy as she felt her body spasm with heat and light and fulfilment, pulse after pulse of absolute pleasure ripping through both of them as he convulsed in driven fulfilment inside her and she felt the hot surge of his seed release within her, even as the last ripples of her own unimaginable pleasure smoothed her into satiated bliss and complete freedom and lovely little pulses of
their ecstasy occasionally rocked her as she drifted at least halfway back to earth.

‘Love you,’ she said as soon as she had enough breath.

‘You certainly did,’ he murmured huskily as he withdrew from her and rolled them over far enough so he could pull the covers over them and cocoon their cooling bodies in the warmth of their marriage bed.

‘I’m so glad I love you, Hugo, my own Hugh,’ she confided.

‘Then I’m very glad that you do to,’ he teased.

‘Monster,’ she told him with a sleepy, contented chuckle that couldn’t be bothered with
faux
outrage just at the moment.

‘And very happy to report that I still love you, even after having my wicked way with you once more.’

‘It really was lovely and wicked as well, wasn’t it?’ she asked, still a little insecure about her own attractions, even though he’d just proved how irresistible he found her in the most unarguable fashion imaginable.

‘Just as you are, my lovely, wicked wife,’ he told her with a long, sweet kiss of confirmation and heat stirred and snapped deep inside
her belly all over again for a moment, before subsiding to a contented thrum of satisfaction.

‘How many times a night do husbands and wives get to do that, husband?’ she asked sleepily as she nestled her wildly tangled, dark-chestnut curls against his naked shoulder and sighed with contentment.

‘Wasn’t that enough wonderment for one wedding night?’

‘This is certainly a very memorable wedding, but does it matter to you that we didn’t wait for tonight to love each other, Hugo?’

‘No, I shall look back on that stack of coffee sacks and a musty old warehouse with fondness for the rest of my life, love. But I shall now have to buy this place after all, exactly as its current owner wants me to and probably at some ridiculous price, because he’ll know how much it means to me as soon as I open my mouth to agree. Then at least we can come back here every year and remind ourselves how exquisitely we made love on our actual wedding night, then do it all over again,’ he told her with a quick kiss to the top of those rebellious curls of hers.

‘We have so much in front of us, Hugo,’ she said a little too seriously for a woman who’d just made spectacular love in her husband’s
arms, and he secretly marvelled at his own self-restraint in not hammering into her with wild need as soon as his unruly body had rubbed against hers once more and longed to do so from that first desperately sweet kiss to the last.

‘We have each other, love. Nobody else stands a chance against Captain Hugo Kenton and his warrior wife now we’re finally united.’

‘Least of all Captain Hugo Kenton,’ she told him with a great yawn and settled into his arms with a sigh of utter happiness.

‘He was a lost cause the instant you set eyes on him.’

‘So how many weeks do you think we’ll spend at Gracemont Priory before you have enough and we can go to sea together instead, Captain?’

‘Not that again,’ he said in disgust. ‘I think I’ve created a monster,’ he added as he recalled how it was his own fault if his wife now believed in herself enough to fight for the right to carry out every hare-brained scheme that came into her lovely head.

‘No, just a wife,’ she argued and butted her head against his shoulder in a gesture of affection he found more touching than any poem or sophisticated phrase his first wife and one or
two other lovers had deployed to try to capture his until-now elusive heart.