Love According To Lily (19 page)
Lily and Whitby were married in a private ceremony at Wentworth Chapel, with only James, Sophia, and Annabelle attending. They enjoyed an intimate wedding supper of cream of love apple soup, roast duck and roasted pepper sauce, tossed salad made with flowers, and wedding cake for dessert. They were inclined, however, to retire to Whitby’s bedchamber immediately after dinner, for he was feeling fatigued from standing during the ceremony.
As they entered the room, the warmth of the fire caressed their faces, and with more than a little anticipation for the night ahead, Whitby closed the door gently behind him.
He watched Lily meander around, then turn to face him. She had changed out of her wedding gown for dinner and was wearing the crimson dress she had worn one of the nights during the shooting party—the first night he had noticed how beautiful she was.
She was beautiful again tonight, more beautiful than she had ever been. Her skin looked like smooth porcelain, her cheeks were flushed, and her smile was dazzling. She had worn her dark hair up in a tidy bun for the wedding ceremony, but had changed it when she’d dressed for dinner. Though it was still swept up on top of her head, there was a single wavy lock spilling down between her shoulder blades, with crimson ribbons flowing down as well. And despite his many doubts and misgivings, despite his fatigue, despite his fear that he’d just made the worst, most selfish mistake of his life—the way she looked tonight was enough to drive him mad with yearning. He simply had to have her.
Slowly he crossed the room. He looked down into her eyes and saw love in them—love and joy and anticipation. Today they had signed their names in the church register. He had put a ring on her finger. It was done. They were married.
He shook his head in disbelief, wondering how they had gotten here so quickly. He felt stupefied.
Lily—bless her adventurous little heart— distracted him from all that by stepping forward and sliding her gloved hands up his chest. She smiled enticingly while she unfastened his neck cloth.
“I almost leaped across the table at dinner to do this,” she said. “That was the longest meal of my life.”
“It was rather tedious,” he replied, letting his hands come to rest upon her hips. “But I suspect the evening is about to take a turn for the better.”
He watched her face while she unbuttoned his jacket and waistcoat, and pushed both garments off his shoulders and let them fall to the floor.
“I suspect you’re right, Lord Whitby,” she said. “As long as you’re not too tired…”
“Tired? Why yes I am, but I’ll do much better once I’m horizontal.”
He raised his arms while she pulled his shirt off over his head, then he watched her pull off her gloves, finger by finger, and drop them onto the floor as well. She returned her eager hands to his bare chest, and he shuddered pleasurably at the feel of her warm palms upon his skin.
“Lady Whitby, you are irresistible,” he said.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “Ah,
Lady Whitby
. You have no idea how many times I’ve dreamed of being addressed that way.”
She was indeed Lady Whitby, wasn’t she?
“Since you dismissed your maid,” he said, “I suppose it will be up to me to undress you.”
“That is most chivalrous of you, my lord.”
He took her hand and led her to the bed, then turned her around to unfasten her gown in the back. She held her hair out of the way, and he couldn’t resist the desire to drop open-mouthed kisses along the back of her soft, succulent neck.
“That gives me shivers,” she whispered.
He slid the dress off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. She stepped out of it, and he bent forward to pick it up. He folded it and draped it carefully over a chair, then returned his attention to the task of getting her out of her clothes.
He began to unhook her corset in the front, while he laid gentle kisses across her neckline, and when the corset came loose, he tossed it to the chair on top of the dress and pulled her chemise off over her head.
He stood for a moment, admiring her ample bare breasts in the firelight, noting with some surprise that the rash impatience to bed her was fading. Now, he wanted only to slow everything down.
Whitby laid a hand upon her breast, and gently massaged it.
Lily closed her eyes. “I love the feel of your hands on me,” she whispered.
“And I love what I feel when I touch you.”
It was all very strange, he thought, reflecting upon this slow, quiet foreplay It was not his customary style. He was usually more aggressive than this. Perhaps it was his illness. Or perhaps not. He didn’t know.
He unfastened the ribbons on her petticoats and drawers, and everything fell to the floor in a soft, white heap. His bride stood naked before him wearing only her stockings and dainty black heels, and he took a step back to allow his gaze free rein— to travel down the length of her beautiful body and back up again.
It pleased him to know that she belonged to him—that he was the only man who had ever made love to her. He possessed her virginity and he always would, and it felt very right.
Thinking she might be cold, he pulled back the covers on the bed to discover dozens of fresh red rose petals hidden in the sheets.
Lily looked down and laughed. “Sophia must have done this,” she said, inhaling the fragrance. “She looked rather mischievous today.”
Whitby watched Lily step out of her shoes and climb onto the bed—with an impressive lack of shyness, given her nudity—then he removed the rest of his own clothes and joined her, sitting back on his heels at her feet.
He proceeded to remove her stockings, stroking her delicate foot and calf, until he heard her whimper with anticipation.
His heated gaze lifted, and he caught her staring at his sizable erection. Whitby smiled knowingly.
“Perhaps I should come closer,” he suggested with a husky, enticing voice as he kissed the arch of her foot.
“Yes,” she replied breathlessly, clearly finding it difficult to think and speak.
He continued to lay a trail of kisses up the inside of her calf while she sighed with delight, then he lay down beside her. She turned onto her side to face him, and they stared at each other for a moment.
“When will we go to your estate?” she asked suddenly, surprising him with the question. “I would very much like to see your home. I’ve never been there.”
He brushed her hair off her forehead. “Have you not? James has been there a hundred times. I suppose I assumed you had been there at least once.”
“No, never.”
“Then we shall have to remedy that. When can you be ready to go?”
She paused, her expression growing serious. “That depends. How soon after the biopsy can we leave?”
The biopsy. He had managed to forget about that over the past few days, but he knew he could not put it off forever. It would have to be dealt with.
He slid closer to her and brushed his fingertips across her flat stomach and the gentle curve of her hipbone. “Are you anxious about that?”
“Yes. Aren’t you?”
He took his time before he answered. “It’s a simple procedure.”
She did not appear convinced, so he slid his hand slowly down to the top of her thigh. “You’ve given me reason to come through it, Lily.”
She smiled and turned onto her side to face him. “Then I won’t worry. All I’ll think about tonight is how I’m going to make this the most erotic experience of your life.”
With a naughty little smile, she slid her warm, open hand down the center of his chest to the coarse hair beneath his navel, then reached down and gently massaged him.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, lost in the absorbing rapture of her hand as it worked its magic.
Whitby slid a finger between her thighs and grinned. “You’re off to a good start.”
A burst of energy came to him suddenly from somewhere, and he rolled onto the sweet, soft heat of her body, kissing her lips and neck and working his way down to her breasts and flat stomach. She sighed and wiggled irresistibly beneath him, running her fingers through his hair, spreading her legs so his chest was pressing upon the damp center between them.
“Oh, Whitby,” she whispered in breathless anticipation. “I’ve been waiting so long for this.”
He wanted, with unstoppable urgency, to taste her. So down he went, devouring the intoxicating flavor of her flesh, kissing and suckling, while she gasped first in shock, then in delight. She thrust her hips and wrapped her hands around his head, making sounds only a woman pushed over the edge of reason can make.
Lily
… He couldn’t get enough of her. He hungered greedily for everything she was.
He brought her to a swift orgasm—almost too swift—but contrary to what he expected, the climax only drove her further into a realm of sensual desires, and she grabbed for his shoulders, pulling him up to the supple heat of her lips, driving her pelvis hard against his.
“Make love to me now,” she pleaded, her tongue plunging into his mouth.
“With pleasure.”
So with one firm, deep thrust, he entered the glorious heaven of her body, marveling at the fact that this was so much more than just sex. The pure, unadulterated joy—
yes, joy
—flooding his senses shook him from the inside out, and he found himself believing in angels, for surely Lily had to be one. She had brought something unexpected into his life—a sense of contentment and gratitude and a dozen other things he could not begin to understand or describe.
He’d never experienced anything like it in the whole of his life. He was thrusting into her, making love to her, giving her everything he possessed as a man, and thanking God that she had fallen in love with him.
“I’m glad you’re here with me,” he whispered in her ear as he thrust slowly, gently, then faster and harder.
And he was
so very glad
. If this was the end of his life, he was being rewarded in a way he did not deserve. He was the luckiest man on earth, and he didn’t know why.
She clutched onto him then, tightly, before her body shuddered with another climax that made her sob. He pulled back and saw a tear running down the side of her face.
He kissed it away. “Don’t cry, Lily. Everything will be all right.”