Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) (20 page)

Ash bit down on a triumphant shout of pleasure and fought to hold his release at bay. “If you but knew it, Larkin, size has the advantage in this instance. If you would let me demonstrate—”

Lark gave him a withering glance, though he would never wither if she kept playing him in this way. That she did not stop sat splendid with him, until she raised a brow and took a loud, blatant, crunching bite off the end of her parsnip.

Discomfort replaced titillation. Ash felt himself go cold, felt the withering of his hornpipe begin. Insecurity replaced surety. “Is that supposed to be symbolic?” he asked, unable to bear the suspense, shriveling now, by God, at an amazing rate. “Because I have to admit that you are frightening me.”

Of all the reactions he expected at this juncture—none of them good, given his bride’s bloody bruising record for self-defense—he did not expect the secretive grin that transformed her as she tossed the parsnip over her shoulder, and reached for his hornpipe once more. With more enthusiasm than he’d heretofore seen in her expression, she took to playing him like a high caliber instrumentalist with a love for her music.

Ash groaned and fell back to the bed—palpitating pleasure overcoming racking fear—sure in the knowledge that life with Larkin Rose would never be dull, and that he would forever walk a fine line between both.

Silken smooth, thick and erect, pulsing power filled Lark, and yet she felt as if she were taming her scoundrel of a husband by the simple act of holding him in the palm of her hands. The slightest quiver of her fingers, the least stroke seemed to make him writhe and moan, curse her and bless her.

Heady, this command she held and wielded, enough to make a baby, she hoped, trying to believe what Ash had said about her sister, for it was consoling to think that Lise might not have suffered pain but rather love in the act. Lark pushed the old illusion of dark aside and looked toward a future bright with possibility as she concentrated on giving pleasure to the man she’d married.

She owed him this, and yes, she owed it to herself as well. She’d dreamed of him for years and now he was hers. “Ashford Blackburne,” she said. “Earl of Blackburne, you are at my mercy!”

“Be gentle,” he said even as he lifted her to straddle him. On all fours she looked down at him, shocked, surprised, in control, as if she might be a threat to him, rather than the opposite, and she reveled in the arrangement.

He pulsed against her thigh, so she moved her leg to stroke him, make him want….

“Take off your shift,” he said.

“Take off your trousers,” she retorted.

They shed the remainder of their clothing in a fever, barely changing position, her on top, him her captive. Nevertheless, somehow Ash managed to kiss and caress where each inch of her skin became exposed, and as he did, Lark rode a rushing tide of sensation. When her breasts grazed his chest, and when his arousal nestled against her warm wet exposed center, she knew a moment of terror.

Ash saw, and hesitated, and she thought there couldn’t be another on this earth who would stop and wait for a wife’s alarm to recede.

“A minute,” he said gentling her as she imagined he’d gentle a colt. “It will hurt for a minute, maybe two,” he said. “I’m sorry. There may even be blood, as much as a cut finger, a thimbleful, perhaps less I’m told. Lark, you’re my first virgin, so I cannot be certain. Will you trust me to take care of you?”

That she was his first anything made her rejoice as she sat towering over him, his eyes intense, alive, his body skimming hers. Skin to skin. Heart to heart?

She felt almost whole. “I have always believed that I could trust only me,” she said. “But if I were forced to trust another, a man, you might be that man. It is the best I can give at the moment,” she said. “Forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive, but you will understand if I say I have always felt the same about trusting, that I feel the same now, in reverse.”

“I am humbled.”

“As I.” He watched her. “Are you comfortable now?” he asked, even as he began to stroke and ready her to receive him in the way he’d explained. She caressed him in return, readied him as well—not that he needed much preparation—still she would never tire of her newfound ability to move him to voice his pleasure.

He impaled her before she expected him to, so she screamed with surprise more than pain, and she tried to move from discomfort, but he held her still. “Shh, shh love. It will not hurt for long I am told. I did not expect to hurt you so. I am sorry you must suffer such pain, more sorry than I can say. I would take it upon myself, if I could.”

She believed he would. She loved that he stroked her at the base of her spine in tender circular motions, calmed her, brought her close and kissed her brow, her neck and cheek. He kissed her eyes, wet with the tears she had not known she shed. He crooned to her and made her feel wanted, special, cherished, for the first time that she could recall.

More tears filled Lark’s eyes. She blinked them away, angered by her show of emotion. “It … I no longer feel uncomfortable, as if I— You are stretching me. Can you feel it?”

“Indeed, I have felt every nuance of your virginity, from that first wild tear, to the amazing sensation of your stretching around me, and though the pleasure I have derived is nothing to any I have ever before known, I find myself humbled anew by your gift.”

“Gift?” Lark sat up with surprise. “What gift?”

“Your maidenhood.”

“You doubted me. That’s why you sent the doctor in.”

“I did not know you on our wedding night, Larkin. I had won you in a card game, you will recall, a drunken card game, where half your father’s pot landed back in his lap. Do not fault me for prudence.”

Lark sighed and raised her chin. “You should have said something, if you knew Da was cheating.”

Ash shrugged. “Drunk is
not
prudent. Besides, for all that I was a horse’s arse that night, look what I have for my trouble.” He bounced her, as if to remind her where she sat. “More than I deserve, I’d warrant.” He grinned and raised a hand to pebble a nipple. “Have I taken your mind sufficiently off your pain? We will take a minute more before we continue, shall we, so you may accommodate yourself to my size?”

Lark felt him pulsing inside her, the more for his words. She also felt an answering throb deep in her womb—especially when he touched her breast—as if she craved his seed, as if without her knowledge or cooperation, her body sought to … milk him, in an effort to steal it from him.

Lark understood the primitive impulse. She wanted to move, fought Ash’s restraining arms, and succeeded in sliding against him. When he took to moving as well, finally, slow and easy, thrusting gently, as if he could not bear remaining still, pleasure came alive for her, grew like stars awakening, scores at a time, and blazing to life. As she climbed toward a pinnacle, impossible to reach, she spiraled almost out of control, reaching, reaching….

“Are we making a babe now?” she asked. “When will I know to stop? I feel as if I won’t know, as if I cannot, never will, but I cannot bear to continue either. What is wrong with me? It is good and it is bad, this strange lethargy that borders on pleasure. Ash, tell me what to do.”

He continued to work inside her, touching her in ways and places that increased her pleasure. “No babe yet,” he said, not time to stop … yet.” His voice grew hoarse and breathless. “Soon—you will know soon when to stop.”

“This is a splendid way to make a babe. I did not understand the vigor involved. I did not expect it to be so—”

“Brilliant.” Ash moved with greater speed, greater determination. He held her hips and plunged deeper, took her higher, and they seemed to fly together toward the heavens on the back of a shooting star, then the earth fell as if from beneath them, and they toppled, lost themselves in darkness, and came to rest upon some distant alien shore.

In the aftermath, in moonlight, they kissed—sublime kisses made of dreams—her spread atop him like a wilting blanket, heavy of limb, light of heart. Him, slick with perspiration and all but purring. She adored the pleasure-filled sound he made deep in his chest. Contentment. Satisfaction. “Did we make a babe, then?”

Ash stroked the sweat-slick hair from her brow. “Only time will tell, my love.”

Lark reared up to regard him but, that fast, her husband had dropped off to sleep. My love, he had called her. Did he mean it? Ashford Blackburne had called her—pub rat that she was—his love. Did he love her? Did she love him? How would she know? Would he teach her that as well?

Did loving mean trusting? Should she make what she had always considered would be the mistake of offering her trust to another, despite what she had told this new husband of hers? She had not given her full trust, praise be, even at a time when she had been more likely ever to give it.  

She did not know the meaning of love. She had loved her sister and about died when she died, and she would give her life for Micah’s—that was love. What about Ash? She would never be called upon to give her life for his, but she had dreamed of him for years. Was that love in itself? Was pulling him deep inside her a form of love? Or was love this heavy, tender, happy feeling in her chest, because he was here? Lark did not know. How could she?

She knew only that when Ash went off on estate matters, she peeked outside every ten minutes hoping to catch sight of him returning. Did someone who loved wait, as if for her next breath, for a lover to return? Lark wished she knew someone she could ask.

She awoke a short time later, for the candles were not much shorter, still blanketing him, and wondered if she were not crushing him, but when she tried to move to his side, he urged her to remain.

“Lark,” he said, closing his arms around her, holding her there. “Do not go. I like you here.”

“Let us try for a babe again,” she said. “I enjoyed the attempt.”

“One way or another, you will be the death of me,” Ash replied with a chuckle, kissing the top of her head.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked.

“I am most assuredly not hurt, but more sated than I thought possible. I am, however, no more than flesh and blood and must recover my strength so I may expend it once more.”

“When then?”

“Soon,” he said with a lazy chuckle before drifting back into sleep.

Lark remained where she was, a smile on her face. “I enjoyed my first lesson,” she whispered into his sleep-warm neck, “and I am eager for another.”

“Mmm,” he said, mumbling something about his superiority to parsnips.

Lark smiled and memorized every chiseled feature of his face with her gaze, loving each angle, moon-kissed and handsome as sin, a rogue, yes, her very own. She guessed he had been since she was eleven.

As if he felt the intensity of her study, he took to nuzzling her neck, then her breast, then he suckled her greedily, which Lark could happily allow for days, until her hand found that his hungry hornpipe had surged back to life despite his earlier assurances that she had done him in.

“Time to try again,” said she, mounting her favorite stallion.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

They woke at dawn to find Micah setting kindling in the hearth like the lowliest of servants. “Oh no,” Lark said, which made the boy start and scurry into the corner.

When Ash slipped into his trousers and approached her nephew, Micah covered his head, as if Ash might strike him. “No, little one,” he said. “I will not hurt you,” and Lark thought she might find herself falling a little bit in love with her husband after all.

Unable to go to her nephew, for she lay naked beneath the bedcovers, Lark wept for seeing his fear. She became angry as well at the family who had kept him, especially after all the money she had put into his care, only to see that he’d not been kept at all well.

Ash lifted Micah in his arms and carried him to the window. He pointed out the ghostwalk, the spinney, the orchard, the bridge over the lake, the lavender field—all the places on an estate a boy might like to explore.