Lady Arabella's Scandalous Marriage (12 page)

But then if they had been alone Darius doubted he would have had reason to feel that impulse. Arabella was obviously severely displeased at the thought of having Lord Gideon Grayson as a guest at Winton Hall for the next few days!

As one of the agents who had long worked for Darius, Gray had been the obvious choice for Bancroft to send in response to the message Darius had had his footman deliver to the Earl following the fire at the coaching inn.

Now that Gray was rested from his hell-for-leather ride to Winton Hall the previous day, the two men had to discuss the situation further before deciding upon an appropriate course of action, even whilst disagreeing as to the identity of the perpetrator of these accidents. Darius still favoured his brother Francis, whereas Gray believed it to be the traitor Helena Jourdan—the Frenchwoman having escaped from captivity on the day of Sebastian St Claire’s wedding to Juliet Boyd by seducing her jailer into releasing her.

Whilst Darius sympathised with Arabella’s resentment at Gray’s continued presence here, he also knew that the other man would be helpful in preventing any more of those ‘accidents’ from proving to be fatal.

Arabella’s cheeks burned with obvious temper. ‘I am sure Darius will appreciate having you for company after I have gone.’

Darius became very still. ‘After you have gone where?’ He looked across at her with flintily narrowed eyes.

Their lovemaking the previous evening had convinced Arabella into abandoning her decision to leave Darius come the morning. But his avoidance of sharing her bed the night before, and now his desire for Lord Grayson’s company rather than her own, only days after their wedding, surely meant that Darius did not feel the same way about their lovemaking as she did. Besides which, Arabella had far from forgotten the existence of that ‘vengeful woman’ from Darius’s past…

She met Darius’s flinty gaze unblinkingly. ‘It seems an ideal opportunity for me to visit with my family at Mulberry Hall now that Lord Grayson has arrived to amuse you in my stead.’

‘Oh, I say!’ Lord Grayson protested awkwardly.

Forget temptation, Darius decided grimly. The moment they were alone he
was
going to spank Arabella’s bottom until she screamed for mercy!

‘Would you mind leaving us, Grayson?’ His voice was dangerously soft, his gaze still fixed firmly on Arabella’s angrily flushed face. ‘It would seem that my wife and I have a few things of our own to discuss this morning,’ he added with deceptive pleasantness.

‘Of course.’ Gray grimaced uncomfortably. ‘I should go upstairs and bathe, anyway. Excuse me, Your Grace.’ He bowed formally to Arabella and received a cool nod of dismissal for his trouble.

Darius waited only long enough for Gray to shoot him an apologetic grimace and beat a hasty retreat, before crossing the room to stand mere inches away from his wife. ‘You were not very polite to our guest, love.’

Arabella’s eyes flashed with golden lights as she looked up at him. ‘I believe Lord Grayson is
your
guest, not mine.’

‘Nevertheless…’

‘Nevertheless he is
your
guest and not
mine
!’ she maintained with haughty stubbornness.

Darius drew in a sharp breath. ‘You will apologise to Lord Grayson when he returns downstairs.’

‘I most certainly will
not
!’ Arabella eyed him scornfully.

‘I believe that you
will
.’ Darius’s tone once again possessed that deceptive softness that most of his acquaintances and all of his enemies would have warned his young and defiant wife to beware.

Unfortunately for Arabella, none of those acquain
tances or enemies was now at hand to administer such a warning!

‘You may believe what you choose, Darius.’ Arabella gave a dismissive movement of her hand. ‘Now, if you will excuse me? I need to go upstairs and pack—
What
do you think you are doing?’ She gasped indignantly as Darius caught hold of her wrist with steely fingers to pull her along behind him as he strode over to the settee.

‘What am I doing?’ Darius mused, even as he sat down on the settee and pulled a struggling Arabella face-down across his thighs. ‘You have been rude to a guest in our home, Arabella. A rudeness for which you have refused to apologise. It is now my intention to administer suitable punishment for that refusal.’

‘But—Darius!’ she screamed in protest as her skirts were thrown up over her back and he revealed the plump cheeks of her naked bottom. ‘Darius, if you do this I will—’

‘Yes?’ Darius prompted, as he administered the first light slap against those shapely orbs.

‘I—How
dare
you?’ she squealed.

‘Oh, I believe when you know me better, Arabella, you will learn that I dare any number of things. Disciplining an unruly wife being the least of them!’ His expression was grimly determined as he struck another light blow.

‘I swear, I will kill you if you do that again!’ Arabella ground out between clenched teeth, her face fiery red as she turned to glare up at him.

‘You will have to get in line, love,’ Darius drawled ruefully as he administered another slap to her naked flesh, the skin now flushed almost as much as her face.
‘Those were for your rudeness and your refusal to apologise to Lord Grayson. Now, explain what you mean by your claim that it is your intention to leave me this morning.’

‘You have made it more than obvious that you consider our marriage to have been a mistake—’

‘In what way obvious?’ he demanded incredulously.

‘You abandoned my bedchamber last night in preference to drinking brandy with Lord Grayson. You prefer his company this morning instead of my own. You—Oh, you
monster
!’ Arabella screamed as another slap resounded upon her bottom.

‘We will get at least one of your complaints settled right now, Arabella,’ he declared.

‘Which is?’ she challenged.

‘I have
no
intention—of allowing you—to leave me.’ Each phrase was accompanied by another light smack to that delicious little bottom as Darius held Arabella’s squirming body firmly captive with his arm across her back. ‘Not today. Not the next time you take it into your beautiful head to be angry with me. Not ever. Do I make myself clear?’

Arabella continued to struggle against that grasp. ‘You cannot stop me from doing exactly as I please—’

‘Wrong answer,’ Darius said mildly.

She glared at him. ‘It is the only answer you shall receive from me. No matter how much and for how long you beat me!’

Darius caught her wrist as her hand came up to strike him. ‘I do not in the least
enjoy
beating you, Arabella—’

‘Liar!’ she accused heatedly.

Darius’s arousal testified the truth of that claim. As
did his giving in to the temptation to fondle and caress that plump and fiery-cheeked bottom. Such a warm and deliciously plump bottom. So soft and smooth and—What was this…?

A light caress between Arabella’s thighs revealed that his wife of four days was as aroused as Darius himself!

Arabella could not hold back her groan of pleasure as she felt Darius’s caressing fingers exploring her intimately. That groan became a husky moan as one of those fingers entered her, and another found and rubbed the swollen nubbin hidden amongst her damp curls. That moan became a strangled cry as Darius continued his assault upon her senses until she became consumed in a release so long and so achingly pleasurable that Arabella felt a rush of the tears on her cheeks that she had refused to cry when Darius spanked her bottom.

She was instantly mortified at her loss of control, and kept her eyes closed as she felt Darius lifting her up and over him, so that her nakedness now straddled his thighs. Thighs that she could feel were hard and pulsing!

Her lids opened wide in surprise. ‘Darius…?’

He smiled down at her. ‘I want you just as badly, love.’

Arabella stared at him, not understanding how they could have gone from anger with each other to such arousal in just a few short minutes.

‘You are right to feel angry with me.’ Darius groaned with self-disgust as Arabella only continued to stare at him. ‘I should not have struck you. You—’

He broke off with a strangled groan as Arabella reached down between them to unfasten his breeches and release his arousal.

He was just as beautiful as Arabella remembered
from yesterday evening. Hard. Pulsing. With skin like velvet as Arabella curled her fingers about him.

She watched Darius’s face as she slowly began to move her hand up and down his length, noting the flush that appeared in his cheeks and the clenching of his arrogant jaw. His hair was already dishevelled from his sword practice, several tendrils clinging damply to his brow, and the hair on his chest, visible at the deep vee of his unbuttoned shirt, was also slightly damp from his earlier exertion.

‘God, Arabella,’ Darius groaned weakly as she smoothed her thumb across the sensitive tip of his arousal. ‘Are you very sore from last night, love?’

‘Not at all,’ she assured him as she stroked him once more.

Darius’s back and shoulders were tense. ‘Then will you just take me inside you and be done with this torture?’

That groan and his words emboldened Arabella, and she realised that the control, the power of this encounter, was now hers. ‘How much do you want me, Darius?’

He blinked. ‘How much?’

‘Mmm, how much?’ Arabella slowly leant forward so that she might kiss the smooth column of his throat, and was able to feel his shudder of response as her tongue licked the saltiness she tasted on his skin.

He smiled ruefully. ‘Enough to know that if you do not soon take me I may just embarrass both myself and you.’

Arabella laughed huskily. ‘How much, Darius?’ she persisted, and she sat up to deliberately move forward, so that the slick nakedness of her thighs now pressed against the hard throb of his arousal.

He moistened dry lips. ‘What do you want from me,
Arabella? You want me to let you leave today after all? Is that it?’ He shook his head. ‘I cannot allow that.’

Arabella was no longer convinced that she wished to leave Darius! Yes, she had been angry with him for his desertion last night. Disappointed when she discovered he had invited Lord Grayson to stay with them. Furious with humiliation when Darius had thrown her over his knee and spanked her bottom. But then Darius had touched her, giving her the pleasure that she had been craving since the previous evening—and now he was all but begging her to give him that same pleasure in return.

Arabella realised that she secretly enjoyed their heated disagreements as much as Darius obviously did. And she especially enjoyed the result of those disagreements!

‘And if I agree to stay…?’ Once again Arabella moved her heat against him, eliciting another groan from him. ‘You may do as you wish during the day, Darius, but I
will
have your promise that in future you will join me in my bedchamber every night—’

‘
Every
night, Arabella?’ he cut in, with a quirk of an eyebrow quickly followed by an indrawn breath as again Arabella deliberately and torturously rubbed herself against him.

‘Every night,’ she repeated firmly.

‘Every night.’ He nodded, his jaw clenched once more. ‘I really need to be inside you now, Arabella!’ His teeth were bared as he clasped her arms fiercely, and his eyes glittered with intense desire.

Arabella deliberately held that gaze as she reached between them to guide the hardness of his arousal inside her, inch by silken inch, until she was fully impaled.

Arabella stilled. ‘You are now inside me, Darius.’

‘Dear God…!’ Fine beads of perspiration broke out upon his flushed brow as he moved restlessly beneath her.

‘Is that not enough?’ she teased him deliberately, determined not to forgive him too quickly for his high-handed treatment of her just now. ‘Is there something else you wish from me?’

‘Move, Arabella,’ he breathed raggedly. ‘I need you to ride me!’ His hands tightened about her arms as he began to thrust urgently beneath her.

Arabella’s father had placed her upon the back of a horse at the precocious age of four, and as she slowly began to ride Darius, lifting up until his hardness almost slid completely out of her, then moving down to so pleasurably fully impale herself on him again, she recognised that it was not so very different.

At least not initially. Not until she became so very distracted by the force of her own pleasure, her breathing becoming as ragged as Darius’s own, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she felt the heat of her own release building for a second time.

Darius reached out desperately to pull down the front of her gown and release her breasts above its low neckline, needing to taste Arabella’s swollen nipples. He laved them skilfully with his tongue and finally achieved his own incredible release—only to learn she had far from finished with him!

Arabella took complete advantage of the fact that Darius remained hard inside her, riding him fiercely, wildly, until he reached a second, aching climax at the same moment as she—a release more excruciating and pleasurably powerful than Darius had ever known before.

‘Dear God…’ Darius rested his forehead damply against Arabella’s as she collapsed forward weakly. ‘If we make love like this every night, love, then I shall be dead within the week!’

Even with the most accomplished of courtesans Darius had never before reached a second shuddering climax so quickly after the first. The fact that his wife was so inexperienced, her lovemaking completely instinctive and so incredibly erotic, only made Darius’s complete lack of control all the more incredible.

Arabella’s senses returned slowly, and along with them came a feeling of embarrassment at her brazenness just now. Had she
really
just taunted and physically tormented Darius until he agreed to her terms? Demanding that he share her bed every night? Make love to her every night?

‘Oh, dear.’ She sighed shakily as she buried her face against his shoulder.

‘Oh, dear, indeed.’ Darius chest rumbled beneath her cheek. ‘I fear I am completely unmanned, Arabella. In fact, I am not sure that a certain part of my body is still my own!’