Twice a Rake (19 page)

“God, no. Stop thinking.”

Stop thinking? The man really did not know her. Not at all. He’d already ordered her to do that once, and clearly she hadn’t managed it. At least not for long.

But then his hands were on her breasts again, kneading, squeezing, and pinching at the hardened nubs, and she was panting for breath and straining for him to fulfill that wonderful and terrible need. Oh, dear good Lord, she thought she would die.

Again. That might be nice. That might be quite nice, indeed.

Quin slid one hand between them and rubbed at the swollen center of her universe. She leapt gleefully over the edge to the chorus of a thousand angels. Hallelujah, indeed. She finally understood where Handel had found his inspiration. Quin grunted and pulsed inside her, and a warm, wet feeling spread throughout her womb.

Then he collapsed atop her, crushing her to the mattress like a rug to the floor.

Within moments, he was snoring lightly, his breath blowing at the hair against her neck, tickling and teasing her sensitive skin where his stubble abraded it.

Aurora felt rather sleepy as well, after all of that. Perhaps she would nap again.

There was only one thought on her mind as she trailed off into slumber: Why would any husband and wife ever choose to sleep in separate beds if
that
was what happened in the marriage bed?

Preposterous.

~ * ~

Quin woke with a start. Or more precisely, he woke with his delectable bride’s hand on his cock. Squeezing, no less. She kneeled on the bed. Somehow he’d ended up on his back with this temptress forever more to be known as his wife leaning over him.

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” he asked, trying with all his might to keep his tone calm and sedate, but failing abjectly.

She jumped, probably because his words came out more as a roar, pulling her hand back like she’d just touched fire. It would be, soon enough, if she didn’t stop. On fire. In need. Flaming to life. He prayed she wouldn’t stop.

It had taken every ounce of patience he owned to bed her earlier without scaring the life out of her, hurting her more than absolutely necessary, or rutting with her like an animal. He didn’t think himself capable of holding back again. Not if she kept touching him like that.

This was precisely why he avoided bedding innocents. They were too damned much trouble, what with their death-sentence combination of curiosity and inexperience. Much easier to visit a whore and not have to worry about such things.

Her huge, clear eyes were wide as saucers again, staring at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I won’t touch it again.”

“Bloody hell,” Quin said, taking Aurora’s delicate hand with those long fingers, and placing it back where it had been. He groaned aloud at the sweet torture.

Her lips formed a perfect O as she watched her ministrations. Slowly, ever so slowly, she wrapped her fingers around him, providing just enough pressure to remind him of how hot and tight she was, how sweet the sound of her passionate, little cries had been, how eagerly her body had responded to his every touch.

The late afternoon sun was beginning to set outside, casting an orange-pink glow about her silhouette above him. Christ, she looked more a goddess than ever, leaning over him with massive waves of hair cascading around her naked form, falling softly around those perfect, bouncing breasts—more than a mouthful, but not quite a handful.

She, however, was proving to be far more than a handful.

Just then, Quin was inclined to allow her to do anything she pleased to him.

After a moment, he wondered if he’d said the words aloud, because she started to slide her grip up and down over his shaft, creating an exquisite friction. He grew hotter, harder, larger.

Aurora’s eyes followed suit. Just before he thought he would lose control of himself, she let him loose and leaned over to look intently in his eyes. “May I…may I touch you like you touched me?”

Christ, the temptress was out to kill him. He didn’t trust his voice after her heavenly torment, so he nodded.

Feather-light fingers eased over his chest, his shoulders, his arms, tracing the demarcations of his muscles. Then she splayed her hands over him, spreading her palms, leaving a path of fire in their wake. Quin clenched his jaw to hold himself back. He would only be able to take so much before he had to have her.

When she touched his nipples and they instantly hardened, her breath caught in her throat. “I need…” she said, her brow furrowed in concentration, “I need closer.”

Good God. She threw one leg up and over him like she’d done to mount Jonas’s horse that morning, straddling him. Her knees rested on either side of his torso, and her sweet little bottom sat dangerously close to his cock.

A devious smile of victory brightened her face. “That’s better,” she said.

Before he could stop her—before he could think—she leaned down over him and kissed his skin. She placed thousands of tiny kisses all over him, licking here and biting there, moving ever lower as she adjusted her position.

To his abdomen, which flinched of its own accord under her attentions.
     

To his navel, which burned where her tongue laved at it.

To his—
damnation
! —to his cock, which jerked to life when she kissed it on the tip, a chaste and tender kiss that was entirely too erotic for an innocent such as his wife.

She grinned back at him, like the cat that had its fill of cream, and licked her lips.

Reason left him entirely.

Quin reversed their positions in one swift move. He slid his hands up her arms, drawing them above her head, linking them together where they knocked against the bedpost—and held them there, bracing them both in one of his own.

He drove into her like a man deranged.

Aurora’s eyes—blast, her eyes were filled with fear. He was behaving like a brute, rutting into her like an animal. But he couldn’t conceive how to stop himself.

So Quin kissed her, long and hard and deep, using his free hand to stroke her to a passionate fire, to build a need within her comparable to that which she had created within him. She whimpered against his mouth and he came up. Her eyes had glazed over with passion, burning with the same insatiable, all-consuming lust that fueled him.

He wouldn’t last much longer. His loins ached with the need to spill their seed. But he’d be damned if he couldn’t watch her climax again.

“Hold this,” he ordered, wrapping her hands about the post at the foot of the bed. “Don’t let go.”

With both hands free, he kneaded her breasts and licked her nipples and stroked against the nub of her womanhood until her eyes rolled back into her head and the walls of her womb constricted around his cock and she called out, “Niles,” as loud as he’d ever heard a woman in climax scream.

Finally, he collapsed on top of her again, filling her with his seed.

Niles
. She’d called him by his name.

No one had called him by his given name in more than twenty years.

His breathing slowed and Aurora’s did as well. He started to roll off her before he fell asleep and crushed her, but she grabbed hold of his shoulders and wrapped her legs about his waist, holding him in a vise. “No. Stay like this,” she said. “Please.”

At the moment, he would do anything for her.

And all because she’d used his name.

Chapter Eleven

4 April, 1811

Truthfully, they ought to tell all the young ladies on the marriage mart about what goes on in the marriage bed. Granted, I do not know how they would find a way to put such a thing into words. But it is now my firm belief that any young lady who understands what awaits her after marriage will gladly accept the first acceptable offer that comes her way. This could save their fathers a great deal of duress and heartache, suffering through Season after Season of attempting to find a match of which the young lady approves. In fact, I could perhaps volunteer my services to these fathers. I am certain I could find a way to describe the experience. At least I could after experiencing it a dozen or so more times, myself. Perhaps I will have to encourage my husband to assist me in my research.

~From the journal of Lady Quinton

The morning sun cast a golden glow over Aurora’s skin as she slept. She looked so angelic in that light, so innocent—a far cry from the daring vixen she’d proven herself to be the previous afternoon and evening. And night. And again in the early morning, not long before dawn. Quin felt himself hardening again just from the memory of their lovemaking, but couldn’t wake her again. She needed rest—something neither of them got much of that night.

No, he wouldn’t wake her. Not yet.

Quin rose and pulled on a pair of breeches, then stole into his dressing room to ring for his valet. Breakfast in bed was precisely what this situation called for. Much like they’d eaten their supper in bed.

Then later in the day, after a languorous morning and perhaps another bout of conjugal play, they would visit Rotheby. He’d let the old goat see his wife—see that he’d done it, gotten married. That he’d become a proper bloody gentleman.

Maybe then his grandfather would relax somewhat, and stop threatening this nonsense about taking the abbey away from him.

But first, he wanted to enjoy this morning with his wife. He shuddered at the realization that thinking of her as such had come so easily. It felt almost natural, even in all its unnatural glory.

Him—Quin—a husband. Respectable.
Ha
. That last part was up for debate. Nevertheless, hell could now officially freeze.

Perhaps it already had.

~ * ~

Nerves were so terribly unattractive. They tended to make one appear rather gauche, if not downright vulgar. As such, Aurora tried never to let hers show.

Tried
, being the important part of that thought.

Seated next to her husband in a curricle he’d borrowed from Sir Jonas, she knew she had lost this particular battle against her nerves. In fact, it was quickly becoming obvious even to her that attempting to quash them would be a fruitless affair.

“Do you truly think he’ll like me?” she asked for what had to be at least the twentieth time since Quin had informed her (only two hours before, mind you) that they would be meeting with his grandfather. A grandfather who, according to Quin, was a crotchety old windbag who’d griped and complained and bemoaned so much that his wife, Quin’s grandmother, had found herself in an early grave, likely from the strain of listening to his constant complaints.

Aurora kindly informed her husband that such a description did nothing to soothe her in those stressful moments before their departure. He claimed he’d only done so in order that she could be fully prepared for the greeting she was bound to receive.

Clearly, Quin had a thing or two to learn about how best to prepare her for a potentially uncomfortable situation. She’d done nothing for the past two hours save change her gown four times, fret over the particular styling of her coiffure, lament the fact (repeatedly) that Rebecca was not present to help her make her decisions, and seek her husband’s reassurance that his grandfather would like her. Which, if she were honest with herself, was really a means of asking if he was a fire-breathing dragon that would blow her over, should she appear in anything that did not suit his particular tastes.