The Seduction of an Earl (30 page)

“What is his name?” she wondered, cradling him so his tummy was turned up. She was rubbing it with a couple of fingers while the pup’s tail swished over her night gown.

Surprised by the question, Henry bit his lower lip. “I called him Harold on the way home. He ... followed me when I wasn’t carrying him,” he said with a shrug.

“Harold,” she repeated, her face turning up to give her husband a brilliant smile. “He does look an awfully lot like him,” she murmured, scooping the puppy into her arms and placing it against her shoulder. “He’s perfect, Henry.’

She stood up from the chair, the blanket falling from her shoulders. A pensive smile on her face, she reached up and kissed his cheek. Henry was briefly reminded of Sarah’s earlier kiss, but found he valued this one just a bit more. “Thank you, Henry,” she whispered. And then her free arm wrapped around his neck while she reached up to kiss him on the lips.

Henry wrapped his arms about her waist, pulling her up and against the hard planes of his body. Despite the pup preventing him from hugging as hard as he wanted to hold his wife at that moment, the puppy’s squirming ceased when he returned the kiss. His tongue gently parted her lips until he was tasting her teeth and tongue. Her soft moan spurred him on so that he deepened the kiss. Through the thin fabric of her nightgown, he could feel the curves of her soft body as his hands pressed into the small of her back before moving down to cup her bottom and up to grasp one shoulder. The heat of his hands seared her back as he did so. Another soft moan escaped her when Henry tried to pull away. She had slipped her free hand between their bodies to press her palm against the growing bulge in his breeches. A growl emanated from Henry, but he recaptured her lips and kissed her hard before pulling away with a gasp. Hannah was already undoing the buttons of his waistcoat, her deft fingers working their way down the garment before moving to the fastening of his breeches.

“Hannah.” He barely got the word out as he noticed Harold sleeping soundly on her shoulder. The sight seemed somehow ... right, as if the pup was supposed to be sleeping on his wife’s shoulder at three o’clock in the afternoon. But not right given what she was doing to him at the moment.

Hannah had slipped her hand down the loosened fall of his breeches and through his drawers. His engorged cock was suddenly in her hand, her thumb caressing the top of the wet bulb while her fingers gripped him. Cursing softly, he struggled to maintain his balance.
Whatever was she doing?
It was daylight, for God’s sake.
Had he locked the door?
She was lowering herself before him, and her hand left his cock for a moment only to return to grip and stroke it harder than before. Her other hand had slipped behind his buttocks to pull down his breeches and drawers.

When he glanced down, he saw Harold sleeping on the carpet below, well away from where he stood. A shiver of pleasure shot up his body, forcing his attention back to what Hannah was doing. Her tongue was sliding along the length of his manhood!
How did she know to even try such a thing?
A mix of horror and admiration clouded his thoughts as he realized what was about to happen. “Hannah.” He spoke her name again in the hope she would pause or stop. When she did not, Henry stepped back suddenly. Her grip on him gone, he struggled to regain his breath as he watched Hannah struggle to regain her balance.

Her face turned up to him, her body perched on her haunches, bare feet peeking out behind her night gown. “Did I ... did I do it ... wrong?” she whispered. She looked as if she might cry.

“No,” Henry breathed, reaching down to hook his hands beneath her arms and pull her up. “Quite the contrary, actually,” he managed to get out before stripping his waistcoat from his body. His shirt quickly followed, making him wonder when she’d had time to undo his cravat. Or had he even been wearing one? His boots made a thunking sound on the carpet before his arms wrapped around Hannah and moved her to the bed. She was pulling up on the fine lawn of the nightgown when he simply stripped it from her body. Her nipples were already hard pebbles, her skin flushed with desire, the pupils of her eyes so dilated her blue eyes were nearly black. Kissing one nipple, he kneaded the other with an impatient thumb until he felt her body trembling.
God, she is beautiful in daylight
, he thought as his gaze swept over her slender frame.

He lifted her onto the bed and followed to hover over her as she moved to the middle and left one leg bent. With her hair spread out over the pillows and her body beneath him like a banquet, Henry slowly trailed his tongue down the front of her, caressing her nipples, her belly, her hips and finally the insides of her creamy white thighs before cupping her bottom in his hands and tilting her hips up so that his tongue could lick and tease her engorged womanhood. Her quiet mewling increased as her chest arced up. One of her hands clutched the bed linens, as if to anchor her body. One of his hands moved to cup her breast, her nipple firmly planted in the palm of his hand as he started the slow rotations that matched those he was doing with his tongue. Her ecstasy came hard and quick, her cry of his name muted by her other hand covering her mouth.

Could anything else ever feel this pleasurable
? she wondered as she reached down to hook her hands beneath his arms and pull him up and over her body. Henry didn’t need the invitation; he plunged his hardened cock into her wet sheath in one swift motion, burying himself to the hilt. His growl filled the room before he stilled himself. And then he began moving, pulling himself out and pushing back into her in a slow, methodical rhythm. But Hannah would have none of it. She clenched down hard on him when he was buried in her. When he pulled out, she clenched again. His next thrust proved his undoing, as she closed herself onto him with such force that he climaxed. Even while his seed spilt into her, he rocked his body one more time before settling his head next to hers on the pillow. His body collapsed onto hers, and he let out a very loud sigh. “You minx,” he whispered in her ear. He kissed the earlobe as he listened to her giggle of delight.

“I could not wait,” she whispered back, her voice sounding seductive against his ear.

“For what?” The words were filled with surprise.

“To hold you like this.” Her arms had wrapped around his lower back, one hand resting on his bottom while another took purchase on his lower ribs. “Thank you, Henry,” she whispered, kissing his ear and the space below it.

Thank you?
She was thanking him for ... his bedding her? He allowed a chuckle to burble up. “You’re welcome, my lady. Anytime, actually. I have to admit I have never been seduced in the middle of the day. You took me quite by surprise.” He lifted his head, which suddenly seemed to weigh a hundred stone. “Whatever possessed you to ... do that?” he wondered, his gaze traveling over her naked body.
And who told her how to do it?
Had she held a man’s organ before? Or had she seen illustrations? Or lithographs of sexual activities? His mind was suddenly imagining Hannah in a large bed with her tongue lathing across some overweight duke’s ... He shook his head to clear it of the offending image. Until he had taken her virtue two weeks before, she was a virgin. Her reaction to his nakedness, to the way he held and stroked her ... just the blood of her broken maidenhead on the bath linens had been a testament to that.

The sun dipped low behind clouds made red and angry from the dust in the air; the late afternoon light left Hannah looking golden. Her firm breasts were still topped with engorged nipples. He reached over with his tongue and teeth and nipped at one. “However did you know to do that to me?” he asked in as neutral voice as he could manage. Although his cock was still firmly inside her, he could feel himself slipping out little by little.

Catching her lower lip with a tooth, she turned to gaze at him. Her face had begun to flush with the question. “Lady Bostwick. She ... recommended I try it with whomever I married.”

One eyebrow cocking into a sharp arch, Henry stared down at her.
Lady Bostwick?
He was suddenly remembering Lord Bostwick at the Attenborough’s ball. No wonder the man had seemed so ... happy. He was married to a wanton woman! “And what else has Lady Bostwick recommended you do to me?” he wondered. His voice took on a teasing tone now that his fears of her having spent time in bed with some other man were clearly unfounded.

Hannah’s face turned that bright pink he found so fetching. “She ... says I should use my imagination,” she hedged, not wanting to get too specific. “And she says I should demand my husband bed me every day, even when I am with child.”

Henry considered her words. “Does she now? I suppose George must be a very exhausted man,” he said, not exactly teasing.
And very happy
. “Does he really accommodate his wife’s demands?”

She nodded, her head still on the pillow. “George Bennett-Jones dotes on Elizabeth,” Hannah answered with a hint of mischief. “He will do
anything
for her. He loved her from the moment he saw her,” she said in a voice that had quieted to a whisper.

Henry stared at Hannah for a very long time. “That
dog!
” he finally said, a grin belying his comment. “How did a man with such an ugly puss manage to land a beauty like Lady Elizabeth?” he asked under his breath. He slipped completely out of Hannah. He couldn’t help but grin at her moan of disappointment. “You are more beautiful than she is, by the way,” he added, hoping Hannah wouldn’t take umbrage at his comment about Lady Elizabeth.

Moving her arms over her head and stretching her body in what looked like a writhing wanton to Henry, Hannah suppressed a grin. “George is rather handsome when he smiles. Or so Elizabeth says, at least. When they returned to town for the Season, Elizabeth and I called on one another every day, and she told me all about her life with him.”

An eyebrow arched up on Henry’s forehead. “It sounds as if she told you far too much if she was describing how she pleasured her husband,” he countered with a snort. “I do hope she didn’t go into
too
much detail.” When he glanced back at Hannah’s guilt-ridden face, he noted the pink blush was back. It seemed to cover her entire body. “I see.”

Any hint of humor in Hannah’s face was gone, replaced by an expression that suggested she might cry at any moment. “If she hadn’t told me, I would not know what ... what to
do
, my lord,” she reasoned, “Would
you
have told me?”

Henry stared at her in surprise. “Henry,” he corrected her, as he tried to decide how best to answer her question. “I do not know that it is ...
appropriate
for a wife to do something like ...
that
,” he finally got out. He remembered that Sarah had tried once, a long time ago, but he’d pulled himself away, thinking that only lightskirts and courtesans would engage in such practices. But how did he know? He had never employed any ladies of the night. He hadn’t wanted to since the time he and Sarah had experienced their first coupling.

Thinking of Hannah using her tongue on him was so out of context from what he expected of a virginal fairy princess – even her just sharing a bed with him seemed odd, as if the woman he married was suitable only for display in the pages of a fairy tale. And yet, he did feel ...
lust
for her. Every day since that first time he’d seen her playing with Harold, in fact. He’d wanted to bed her even then.

“Did it ... please you?”

His head snapping up to regard Hannah, Henry furrowed his brows. “What?” he wondered, his mind still on his thoughts of her as a virginal princess. “Oh, um. Yes,” he admitted with a nod. “Very much, actually.”
Damnation!
Now that he knew what it was like, he’d likely beg her to do it the next time they were together.

Hannah sighed happily before allowing the smile to fade from her face. “I know you were not ... pleased with me. Were you ... angry, though?”

Henry lifted his head, wondering why she would ask such a thing.

“... Over what happened to Harold,” she added in a whisper. “My ... reaction, I mean.”

Furrowing his brows, Henry rolled off the top of her body and lifted himself on one elbow. “You were mourning,” he stated simply. “I could not find fault with that,” he reasoned, trying to keep his voice from betraying how he had felt earlier that day. But she was right in that her mourning had caused him a great deal of concern. He wondered if, when he died, would she mourn him like she had mourned Harold? She’d been sitting in a rather cold window for hours on end, weeping, putting her own life at risk. She could have caught a terrible cold. Or influenza. Or a fever. Perhaps she was already carrying his child, in which case she was endangering it ... “Are you with child?” he asked suddenly.

The question startled her. “I ... I do not know,” she replied with a shrug. She hadn’t felt any different during the two weeks she’d been at Gisborn Hall, but how did one know if you were pregnant when it wasn’t yet time for your monthly courses? Seeing his genuine concern, she lifted a hand to his face. “I’ll know soon, though.”

A thumping and mewling sounded from somewhere along the bottom of the bed. Peering over the side of the mattress, Henry found himself face to face with the puppy, who had stretched himself as tall as he could with his front paws at the top of the bedskirt. His hind legs tried to push his body up and onto the bed, but he was still far too small to make the leap. Chuckling, Henry reached over and captured the ball of fur, pulling it onto the bed. The excited puppy stepped onto and over Henry’s body, inciting a series of ‘oofs’ and ‘ows’ out of Henry as Harold made his way to Hannah, who giggled as the little beast snuggled into a space between her body and her arm, his tongue hanging out and his body panting with the exertion.

Henry sat up on the edge of the bed. “He’s probably thirsty ... and starving,” he said as he reached for his shirt. “And he needs a bath.”

The floor was littered with their hastily removed clothing. He was rather glad Murphy wouldn’t come into Hannah’s room. His valet would have a fit if he saw this. As Henry pulled on his shirt, he nearly chided himself for the missed time working on the estate. But the sight of his naked wife lying satiated and prone on her bed, her skin all golden in the late afternoon sunlight and the panting puppy against her body, quickly put that thought out of his head. “If you wish it, I will come to you later tonight,” he suggested, wondering if expecting to bed her twice in one day would seem selfish. Even now, his manhood was hardening at the thought. He pulled on his drawers and breeches as quickly as he could, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

She noticed.

“I would like that,” she purred, a suggestive grin lighting her face. “And, if you are so inclined, you are welcome to stay with me when we are finished,” she added, hoping she didn’t sound as wanton as her words made her out to be.

What was happening to her? It was as if she wanted nothing more than to stay in bed with her husband and make love all the time! And if he was in her bed, it meant ...

It meant he wasn’t in Sarah’s bed.

She swallowed hard at that thought.
Guard your heart
, she warned herself. The last thing she could allow to happen was to fall in love with her husband. And yet, truth be told she was quite sure she already had.