Her Husband’s Lover (13 page)

‘Oh boy!’ Lyle’s hand returned to Darleston’s hair, guiding him, restraining him. His closeness to orgasm glowed in his face. He jerked Darleston impulsively, the motion becoming increasingly arrhythmic.

What happens when you come? She wanted to ask. The answer became suddenly apparent as Lyle raised his hips up off the chair in a final desperate thrust. He gasped, seemed to gargle a host of endearments, unable to articulate any of them properly, as he came into Darleston’s mouth.

She watched Darleston swallow and almost cried at the intimacy of the moment. The sheen of Lyle’s gift coated Darleston’s lips when he turned his head and rested his cheek against Lyle’s thigh. He looked right at her as he stroked and rutted against Lyle’s leg. A desperate sob escaped his shiny lips. His tongue flicked across them, so that he tasted Lyle’s seed as his climax broke.

Emma shared the moment with him, watched the lick of fire in his eyes, knew his heat and pain, his loss and his bliss. Pearlescent fluid coated his hand and made a wet patch upon the rug.

She knew hunger in that moment – deep, desperate, gnawing hunger – like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

He saw it too, and knew her desire, but he didn’t act. He remained clamped fast to Lyle’s thigh, breath laboured and muscles lax.

They’d both come but she remained unsatisfied. It was the most terrible and traumatic moment of her adult life.

Frustration needled her skin, making the situation even worse, yet she couldn’t give in to that need. The same part of her that had kept her free from physical contact for so long now stopped her pursuing the release she so desperately craved. She knelt, frozen in position, afraid to react because who knew where it would lead.

Darleston fell onto all fours and crawled towards her. The dip in his back as he stretched added to the illusion of sleek male beauty. He stopped in front of her and rose to his knees. He and she were mere inches apart, as they’d been in the amphitheatre before he touched her. He reached out now. Emma’s breath caught. Tears stung her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Could only watch in terrified silence as his curled fingers drew level with her face, but he didn’t make contact. Instead, he traced the curve of her cheek an inch away from her skin. He didn’t speak, but in truth he didn’t need to. The message was clear in his eyes. I can give you what you need. All you have to do is grant me permission.

It didn’t matter how much she craved release. She could never ask for his touch. Never. ‘Please step back.’

‘Is that truly what you want?’

She choked upon an affirmative, while tension rippled through the space between them.

‘Very well, Emma. Though it pains me to see you left unsatisfied. I would however beg a favour of you before I depart.’

‘Wh-what favour?’

‘Show me a glimpse of yourself.’

‘Now hang on there, Darleston,’ Lyle interjected. He pushed himself up from his sleepy repose in the armchair. ‘We never agreed to this.’

‘Are you protesting?’ Darleston raised a brow, while passing Lyle a handkerchief.

Her husband accepted the monogrammed linen and cleaned himself. ‘No. Of course not, if Emma’s happy with it. You just took me off-guard there. She was only meant to be an observer.’

‘I was, yes.’ Emma agreed. It had never been her intention to be a part of what they’d shared other than as an observer. Yet they’d both made her part of their lovemaking. Lyle had pretty much ordered her to take part and Darleston continually pushed against her boundaries, urging her to extend them.

‘I’ll leave what portion you choose to share entirely at your discretion, but know that this is my price. If you wish things to progress beyond this point then give me an image to fuel my dreams. Don’t worry, Lyle, you’re already there.’

What he asked was fair. She couldn’t refuse him. Yet her whole body trembled at the thought of exposing any more skin than she already displayed. All this time she’d been sitting in her underthings with a shawl around her shoulders as if her attire were entirely respectable. Emma cautiously removed the woollen wrap and let it fall onto the rug. She thought he might like to look upon a breast. Men seemed to like such things. She’d seen paintings depicting women with their breasts bared and onlookers’ gazes fastened upon them with an almost religious zeal; some even depicted the men reaching to out to squeeze the nipples. But to expose herself thus would require the unlacing of her stays, far too much manipulation for her currently agitated state; and she would have to face him and know what was in his heart as he looked. What if he found her lacking in some regard? She wasn’t robustly endowed like some of the ladies in town. Her bosom was rather modest. It would likely only just fill his hand.

Emma turned away from him instead. Tentatively she lifted the hem of her shift, raised it higher and higher, exposing the length of her stockings and the garters clasped around her thighs. Higher still – they were now seeing the bare skin of her upper thigh, lily-pale even by firelight. With one last tug she raised the shift to her waist, exposing the cheeks of her bottom. Why didn’t he say something? What was going through his head? What was he imagining? Would the image of her pert, luscious bottom fuel dreams of him swiving her in the fashion she’d asked him to take Lyle tonight?

Emma released the gathered fabric and let it fall to hide her shame. She remained with her back to the men, still aroused and hopelessly frustrated.

‘Thank you,’ Darleston said. That was all. She heard the click of the latch and turned in time to see the flash of his coat sleeve as the door closed behind him. Lyle had left too. She was alone. The room felt vast and the pit of her stomach empty. And no amount of frantic, solitary masturbation would change that.

Lyle followed Darleston into his room at the far end of the upstairs corridor. ‘You ought not to have pushed her like that. It was too much. Bullying her isn’t going to gain you anything. You’ll just prompt her to withdraw and then you can call cuckoo on your wretched plan.’

The glow of a single candle lit Darleston’s face as he turned. ‘She performed, didn’t she?’ He quirked his brows. ‘And I don’t think you actually believe it wretched. You want your wife happy, don’t you? Believe me. It’s preferable to being saddled with a sour old cow.’

Lyle guessed Darleston would know. He’d never met Lucy, Lady Darleston, yet somehow he knew her. Leastways, he knew her type – selfish, insouciant and resentful. It wasn’t enough for her that she’d been handed an Earl’s son as a husband. She wanted more. Believed she deserved everything. Rumours of her misdeeds and flirtations had passed his ears long before the recent newspaper scandal erupted.

Darleston set aside the candle and sank onto the centre of the tester bed. Lucy, had she been present, would have moaned incessantly about the room, but Darleston seemed remarkably content with it. Owing to his late and rather unanticipated arrival, he had not been given the grandest apartment. That room had gone to Phelps and Heath to share as the highest ranking and most distinguished of the expected guests. The fact that they were also both young and robust helped, as the room was somewhat prone to drafts and damp; even the heartiest fire rarely elevated the temperature to any sort of cosiness. Darleston’s current chamber, however, was a good deal more pleasant, having benefited from a warm palette of red and gold and a lower ceiling. It also stuck out on a limb from the main corridor, making it ideal for illicit assignations, which was exactly what Lyle had in mind. Fellatio was all well and good, but it wasn’t what they had planned.

Darleston propped himself up on his elbows. ‘Be reassured, Lyle, the most traumatic thing I’ve done tonight is walk away and leave her unfulfilled. No true gentleman would have done so, which shows us both up for the rogues we’ve become.’

‘Speak for yourself.’ Lyle poured a stiff drink, which he downed in a single gulp. The most traumatic thing Darleston had done was refusing to swive him. ‘You may consider yourself a rogue if you wish, but I was only acting in accordance with my wife’s express wishes. I won’t push her into something she doesn’t desire and, after two years of marriage, I think I know what that is. I agreed only to provide her with a delicious tableau. Nothing was required of her in return. You’re the one who insisted upon repayment. Be it on your head.’

‘Lyle.’ Darleston combed his fingers through his fiery locks. ‘If she didn’t desire what I’m egging her towards then I wouldn’t have been treated to the sight of her very comely behind.’ Darleston’s lips curved into a smile that accompanied an ‘mmm’ of appreciation. ‘You’re a lucky man. Lucy is skinny as a rake and not half so peachlike.’

‘You know perfectly well that I have no interest in women’s bottoms whether they are legally mine or not.’ He took another measure of sherry. In truth he had been more stirred by the glimpse of Emma’s flesh than he’d anticipated, perhaps because he’d never seen any part of her except what was strictly decorous to observe. Her skin was impossibly white. Her bottom reminded him more of the lower swell of a teardrop than the chubby flesh of a peach. There had been something stately and elegant about it, but he wasn’t sure that his admiration extended to arousal. He didn’t long to gaze upon her rear for hours, or cling to it, or dig his fingernails into its surface leaving brightly coloured marks behind as he wished to do to Darleston’s arse. He didn’t wish to plant his cock firmly in the furrow between the cheeks and ride them both to satisfaction. No, if he was honest, Emma’s frigidity had never truly bothered him. In many ways it had been a relief not to have to worry about whether he could even fulfil his duty.

‘You know, you say that, Lyle, but I didn’t imagine you giving her orders to frig herself.’

Heat of the moment. It wasn’t as if he didn’t desire her happiness. They were friends, a partnership of sorts, after all. ‘That is altogether different. I can offer her contentment without desiring to couple with her.’

Darleston rolled onto his stomach with a sigh, turning his back on Lyle. ‘I swear you’re determined to make this twice as difficult as necessary.’

Lyle cautiously perched upon the lip of the mattress. He reached out but kept his hand poised just over the curve of Darleston’s thigh. ‘I guess things are moving in a slightly different direction from how I’d imagined. You want her. Perhaps more than you want me. Be honest with me, Robert. This isn’t merely about fashioning some sort of safety net for the two of us. You genuinely desire her.’

Darleston rolled over again. He pushed up into a sitting position and scrunched a few pillows under his right side. In the dim light of the candle his eyes were like two splinters of onyx. His expression gave nothing away, though, as they looked at one another, something softened around Darleston’s jaw. ‘I fear my tastes run a little less purely than yours. Your wife fascinates me. How can she stand to live like that? I would die if I had to go more than a week without some manner of touch. I want to know how she does it.’

Lyle worried his lip as he watched him.

‘I want her because she won’t let anyone close. Good Lord, I wish I had the ability to survive like that.’ Darleston shook his head in disbelief. ‘And yet, I’ve also observed the way she looks at me, as though she would strip me naked and ride me until I was completely spent and it’s very hard not to respond to such yearning. I know you understand that.’

‘Do I not look at you in that way?’

‘That’s what I just said, isn’t it? That you understand. The difference is that you’re within easy reach.’ Darleston’s fist tightened around the open edges of Lyle’s shirt. ‘I know that you’re not going to bolt if I act upon the desire I see.’ He further knotted up the linen, pulling Lyle closer, so that he was forced to move, to straddle Darleston’s legs and look down into those wide pool-like eyes.

‘She is beautiful too, beneath all those dowdy clothes she hides behind.’

Lyle didn’t resist, even though he thought he should. Instead he simply let Darleston reel him in until their lips were almost touching and their breaths mingled.

‘If I’d acted as we’d planned,’ said Darleston, ‘there’d be no reason for a next time.’

‘I’m not so sure I need there to be a next time,’ Lyle said. The thought of Emma in the bed between them gave him jitters that ran through his body and caused his knees to knock against the muscles of Darleston’s thighs. ‘All I ever wanted was you. That’s what I have, right now. I don’t want to change that, Robert. I’m perfectly happy keeping my relationship with Emma as one of friendship.’

‘We’re not changing it. We’re safeguarding the future.’ Darleston’s hands clasped either side of Lyle’s face. ‘Allow me my fun, Lyle.’ He pressed a single kiss to Lyle’s forehead, followed by another to the tip of his nose. Then he swept a fingertip over the lower swell of Lyle’s lip. ‘Do it and I’ll make sure you have yours.’

A shudder streamed though Lyle’s body like an arc of lightning, sparking arousal so sharp he could taste it on his tongue. Fine. Let Darleston lead Emma in whatever merry dance he wished. He had what he needed right here and, providing that didn’t change, Robert was right. There was no problem.

Lyle danced his hips forward a fraction, bringing them down on top of Darleston’s, communicating his need by action rather than words. There weren’t words for what he wanted. Not really. Yes, there were crudities, but none of them really described the feelings invoked, the pure poetry of their bodies interlocked and moving together as one. Feeling as one.

He tugged at Darleston’s breeches, virtually tore them off and dealt quickly with his own. This time it had to be fast.

‘Straddle me,’ Darleston insisted. He remained supine on the bed, only his shirt left as a covering. His prick stood up proudly. ‘I don’t think we need to be that quick, do you?’

Lyle sank down slowly until he felt Darleston’s cock nudging his entrance. He really meant to take things gradually as Robert suggested, but his body had other ideas. Full penetration occurred a mere moment later, and then he was rising and falling and no longer in control of his movements. Need had taken possession of his body. And he danced the devil’s jig until he was entirely spent.