WidowsWickedWish (4 page)

Jack growled low in his throat, his hands squeezing her
bottom, lifting her higher still and Olivia wrapped her arms around him, her
fingers digging into his muscled back beneath the silk of his robe. Pleasure
took hold of her, drawing another dark moan from her.

Then Jack was moving, walking her backward until she came up
against the door, their combined weight pushing it open to bang against the
wall, the sound ricocheting down the hallway.

They broke apart, stared at one another in the flickering
firelight.

“Shh,” she whispered, immediately feeling ten kinds of fool
for admonishing him.

“Ah, Livy,” he huffed out around a raspy chuckle, “if that’s
the only noise coming from this room tonight, I’ll not have done right by you.”

Olivia blinked in confusion. “Noise?”

“Oh, yes, noise and plenty of it,” he promised, ushering her
into the room ahead of him and closing the door.

Before she could ponder the meaning of his words, Jack
hauled her against him once more, his head dipping, his lips fastening on hers.
She wound her arms around his neck, dove her fingers into the curls at this
nape and held on as passion reignited between them.

He drove his tongue into her mouth, searching for hers. She
met it with wild abandon, all thoughts of noise and decorum leaving her. She
was lightheaded, weak with desire as she met his demanding mouth, arched into
the heat that radiated down his torso.

Jack widened his legs, bent them, created a space between
and lifted her higher, his hands firm upon her buttocks as he pressed his
arousal against her. With a soft moan, she tilted her hips, fit her mound to
his hard flesh, rubbed shamelessly against him. Light seemed to flare upon her
closed eyelids, heat raced through her veins and down her spine.

He pulled his lips from hers and she moaned at the loss and
moaned again as they roamed across her jaw, down her neck, to latch on to the
soft skin at the juncture of her shoulder. He suckled and gently bit her flesh,
sending arrows of pleasure through her arms, her breasts, her belly, to lodge
between her legs.

“Jack,” she whispered as she threw her head back. “Please…”
She didn’t know what she begged for.

“Shhh,” he soothed. “I know, Livy.”

He straightened and she expected him to pull her nightgown
up and over her head. Instead he began working at the buttons that ran down the
front of the unadorned cotton shift. His fingers shook, his panting breath
caressed her cheek, her throat as he bent to the task. He kissed each new patch
of skin he exposed, kissed her chest, down between her heaving breasts, knelt
before her and kissed her stomach, limned her navel with his tongue. Olivia
swayed, would have fallen had he not grasped her hips firmly and pulled her
forward, pressing his open mouth against her belly just above the ribbon of her
drawers.

He stilled there, on his knees before her, his warm breath
rushing over her flesh, his mouth hot and wet against her. Olivia moved her
hands across his wide shoulders, her fingers massaging the bunching muscles she
found there. Jack groaned, the sound vibrating from his lips across her stomach
and down her legs.

“Jack?”

He rose to stand before her, to meet her eyes. She saw a new
fierceness on his face, in his dark gaze. Desire. His desire shimmered between
them, buffeted her like a warm wind. Olivia welcomed it, rejoiced in it.

Then his hands were moving again, stripping her gown and her
drawers from her body until she stood before him naked. He picked her up and
carried her to the bed, laid her gently in the center and stepped back.

Olivia watched in fascination as he tugged at the belt of
his robe, shrugged out of the garment to allow it to fall at his feet. In the
flickering firelight, he was all shadows and muted golden light. His chest was
wide and covered by a dusting of dark swirling hairs around his nipples and
trailing in a line down his taut abdomen. His member jutted out before him from
a nest of dark curls. Surely it was a trick of the light that made him look so
thick, so long.

He crawled on the bed with her, over her, his knees wedged
between hers, spreading her wide. Olivia braced herself for the coming invasion
as disappointment speared her. She had thought… Well never mind. It had been
wonderful before, with his lips and his hands… But of course he must see to his
pleasure now. She rested her hands on the smooth cotton coverlet, closed her
eyes and waited.

But instead of the inevitable fumbling at her most private
place, she felt his warm breath feathering over her cheeks. She opened her eyes
to find him smiling down at her, his arms braced on either side of her head.
Then his lips were on hers once more and she was again caught up in the
pleasure. He kissed her long and hard, his tongue swirling around hers, along
her lower lip, over the roof of her mouth, delving deep, dragging a low moan
from her. Her hips rose and fell, her legs trembled. She wound her arms around
his broad back and dug her fingers into him.

With a groan he lowered his chest until it rested on hers.
She bowed up into his weight, rubbed her breasts against him, pulled him
closer, harder against her. His hips settled between her legs, his erection hot
and pulsing against her. She squirmed beneath him, bent her legs and dug her
feet into the mattress in an attempt to bring him closer.

Jack broke their wild kiss, laughed deep in his throat at
her murmured protest. In the next instant his lips were on her breast. He
twirled his tongue around her nipple, pulled the peak into his hot wet mouth
and Olivia arched off the bed as desire engulfed her. Her hips jerked against
him, her fingers dug into his hair, holding him against her as wave after wave
of heat rushed over her. He moved his attentions to her other breast, his mouth
hotter, more demanding as he rolled her nipple around on his tongue before
dragging his teeth across her flesh.

“Jack,” she panted, her head thrashing on the pillow.
“Please.”

“Ah God, Livy,” he groaned as he rose over her.

“Jack…I need…please,” she moaned. She dragged her hands down
his back, over his firm buttocks. She grasped him, her fingers digging into the
taut muscles, pulling him down as she tilted her hips to receive him. “Please.”

Jack leaned forward, rested his weight on his forearms,
captured her mouth, drank her moans of need and brought the tip of his engorged
flesh to her opening. He prodded carefully. Olivia moaned at the gentle
invasion, moaned again when he retreated. But he was back again, surer, firmer.
He flexed his hips, nudged until the head of his member was inside her,
stretching her, filling her. He broke the kiss and Olivia opened her eyes to
find him watching her, a look of fierce concentration on his face.

He lunged forward, withdrew, and lunged again, planting himself
deeper inside her body. It was amazing. It was astonishing.

“You’re so big,” she whispered in wonder as she felt him
thrust deeper yet. “So hard.”

Jack growled, his eyes slamming shut. “Jesus, Livy.”

“It feels so good,” she moaned. “I never knew…I never knew.”

Jack opened his eyes, stared intently into hers, drew back
and thrust hard and deep until he was buried inside her to the hilt. And Olivia
came apart. She simply flew apart, into a million tiny pieces. She bucked
shamelessly against him, ground her aching flesh against his hard pelvis,
pulling him hard into her as she lost herself to the blessed relief that washed
over her, stealing her breath, stopping her heart, sending her spiraling into
nothingness.

“Oh my God,” she cried. “Oh, oh, oh!” Jack captured her
lips, muffling her cries, absorbing her passion. He rocked against her, riding
her pleasure. And then he joined her. Olivia felt him jerk against her as his
weight came fully onto her and his hands dug beneath her to grip her bottom. He
held her hard beneath him and thrust furiously into her waiting softness.

“Christ, Livy,” he groaned, his entire body trembling on
hers.

Minutes later, Jack withdrew from her warmth and rolled onto
his back taking her with him, tucking her against his side with her head on his
chest. Olivia listened to his heartbeat, a rapid thumping at first, then
gradually slowing to a steady drum, its measured beats soothing her into a deep
sleep.

Jack awoke just as the first rays of the sun crested the
horizon. Those first golden beams trickled through the lace curtains at the
window, drifted across the room to alight upon Olivia’s sleeping form. She was
cocooned in blankets, curled onto her side facing him, her head snuggled into
the pillow so that all he could see was her profile. It was a lovely profile,
perfect. Her thick dark lashes cast shadows upon her cheekbones, her nose was
straight and elegant, with the smallest tilt at the end. Her full lips, those
same lips he had worshiped during the night, were parted slightly. She made not
a sound as she slept.

She’d surprised him, Olivia had. Who would have thought she
had so much passion buried inside? And buried it was. He knew without being
told that he’d given her the first orgasm of her life. She hadn’t even known
what she was reaching for, what she needed as she strained against him in
helpless yearning. He’d known. But he hadn’t known, hadn’t been prepared for
the uninhibited joy she’d found with her release. He hadn’t expected it to
trigger his own. So quickly. So completely.

You’re so big. So hard.

Jesus. Those words, whispered in awe, had nearly undone him
then and there.

It feels so good. I never knew.

No surprise there. The Earl of Palmerton had been an idiot.
Even back during their Cambridge days, Jack had known that Palmerton was a
shallow, empty-headed man, puffed up on his own importance, interested only in
the pursuit of his own pleasure, his own gratification. He’d gambled away his
allowance within the first weeks of each quarter. What he hadn’t lost at cards,
he’d blown at the brothels.

Had the earl taken the time to introduce his wife to the
pleasures of the marriage bed, had he awakened that secret passion in Olivia,
he would never have needed the mistresses and whores. He would not have shamed
and humiliated his wife. He would not have nearly ruined her by dying in a
dingy room in Cheapside atop an old whore so debauched and disease-riddled
she’d taken to plying her trade in dark alleys.

Jack hadn’t expected to find Olivia at Idyllwild. But as he
watched her sleep, watched the sunlight drift over the riotous, sable curls
framing her face, he thanked providence for affording him the opportunity to
begin his campaign away from the prying eyes of Society.

In one night he’d accomplished what would have taken him
weeks, months, hell the entire Season, in London.

Jack intended to marry the Countess of Palmerton. He’d
thought of little else since he’d read Simon’s letter more than a year ago and
learned that Olivia was a widow.

She had stolen his future from him. In one careless, jealous
moment, sixteen-year-old Lady Olivia had set in motion events that had
destroyed his dreams.

Why?

The question had plagued him for more than a decade. He had
spent five of those years married to a selfish, greedy, reckless wife who had
cared nothing for him or her daughter. To be followed by seven more years of
trying to make a life for that motherless daughter. And all the while he’d been
learning all he could of the mining business his father had begun that would
one day be his. Years of investing every extra sovereign at his disposal so
that he finally had a small fortune of his own, a small manor house in
Sedgefield where Justine could ride and roam and be happy. Now, a dozen years
after his life had been obstructed, he was ready to marry again and go about
the business of filling his nursery. With children of his own.

Elizabeth had come to him almost three months gone with
child upon their marriage. Regardless of what Society had believed, Jack had
gotten no further with the wanton Elizabeth Portman than a few kisses and a
quick peek at her small, pert breasts. He shouldn’t have been forced to marry
the girl. It was common enough knowledge that she’d lain with any number of
young gentlemen.

But because Jack Bentley wasn’t a true gentleman, an
education at Eton and Cambridge could not turn the son of a miner and a
shepherdess into a gentleman, he had always felt the need to prove himself
better, nobler, more honorable than any son of a peer. So he’d married the scheming
harlot and lived to regret it.

Not that he did not love Justine. He did. Justine was the
only good thing to come of his hellish marriage. Since the moment the squalling
infant had been placed into his arms, he had loved her, vowing to treat her as
if she were the child of his own loins. He’d vowed to love her so well that she
would never feel the lack of her mother’s love.

Elizabeth had been incapable of love, had not even loved
herself, instead searching out new men to conquer in an unending need to be
desired. When she had died in a carriage accident on the way to meet one of her
lovers, Jack had not mourned her. He had felt only a deep well of relief that
finally, finally he would have a quiet life uninterrupted by her wild bouts of
fury and his worry that tales of her exploits would somehow reach his
daughter’s ears.

And during all that time Jack had nursed a smoldering anger,
a banked resentment against the woman now lying so quiet and still beside him.
He recognized that Olivia was only partly to blame for the nightmare he had
endured with Elizabeth. She had been at that most dangerous of ages, no longer
a child but not yet an adult, too young to understand what she saw but old
enough to allow jealousy to rule her. Jack had known that she fancied herself
in love with him, he’d felt her worshipful eyes upon him as she followed him
about. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Jack accepted his fair share of blame for the events of that
fateful day. He’d had no business kissing a gently bred lady, as Elizabeth had
screamed at him within the first week of their marriage. Who was he to reach so
high? It hadn’t been Jack she had been hoping to find that long-ago day. Bad
timing and even worse luck had Jack walking into the stables to find her
standing in a beam of sunlight, her blonde ringlets disheveled becomingly, her
bare hands beckoning him. She’d thought only to play with him, to demonstrate
her desirability, until she could sink her claws into a more worthy gentleman.

They had both gotten a bad bargain, but while Jack had been
determined to make the best of a barely tolerable situation, Elizabeth had
spent the next five years railing at the fate that had befallen her. Marriage
to a miner’s son who had dragged her kicking and screaming to the north of
England to live on his grandparents’ sprawling sheep farm with his father, a
man whose mines were only just beginning to pay off, the nearest town a rural
backwater with almost no society to speak of.

Jack had dreamed of a different life for himself, one in
which he worked alongside his father to make the mines a success and only then
returned to London to choose a bride. He’d imagined choosing a proper lady from
the debutantes, one whose family had perhaps found their coffers in want of
replenishing. He would marry a pretty young lady who would smile at him across
the breakfast table and welcome him shyly into her bed. And his sons would be
gentlemen, welcomed into Society with open arms, rather than barely tolerated
as he had been.

Of course there had never been any question that Lady
Olivia, the Earl of Hastings’ daughter, could ever be his chosen bride. Even
had she somehow remained unmarried long enough for him to make his fortune and
return to Town, her family was one of the oldest, wealthiest and most revered
in England. While her parents had accepted his presence in their home, they
would never have condescended to allow him, a miner’s son, to sully either
their daughter’s or their name.

But when Jack had imagined his future bride, she had shyly
smiled up at him as if he hung the moon. She had gazed at him with solemn
silver-gray eyes. Her voice had been soft and sweet. And the hair that had
spread out upon his pillow had been a luminous cascade of lustrous sable waves.

Now just such a lady lay beside him. She was different than
the girl he remembered, her smile softer, mysterious and tranquil, her gray
eyes warm and direct, her voice darker, huskier, her dark tresses cropped short
to hug her head and tease a man to wrap a wayward curl around and around his
finger. Even so, Jack thought she would still make an ideal wife, an ideal
mother to his daughter and his future children.

The Countess of Palmerton was now a widow and independent in
a way that unmarried ladies could never be. She was in control of her life, her
future. She could marry where she chose. She could marry the wealthy son of a
successful miner, the grandson of sheep farmers, father of a twelve-year-old
girl. Olivia could marry Jack and give him back the life he had dreamed of
living.

Olivia murmured and rolled onto her back. As Jack watched,
her lips lifted into a gentle smile and her lashes trembled. She sighed softly
and lay still once more. For all of two seconds, then she frowned and opened
her eyes, blinked once, twice and locked her startled gaze upon Jack where he
leaned over her on his elbow.

“Oh my God!” she whispered, her eyes widening. “You’re still
here! What are you doing here?”

“Where else should I be?” he asked as he bent his head to
capture her lips.

Two small but strong hands landed on his bare chest and
pushed. “In your room,” she whispered, turning her head away, withholding the
kiss he wanted. “You should be in your room.”

“Not just yet, sweetheart,” he murmured as he kissed a path
down her exposed neck. Her skin was warm, musky.

“Now,” she insisted. “You must go now.”

Olivia shrugged, dislodging his lips that had wandered down
to feast upon the sprinkling of freckles he discovered on her shoulder. “Jack,
really, I don’t mean to be rude.”

“Rude?” he asked in surprise as he sat up.

“You really must go. Now.” Then she pushed him and made
little motions with her hands, those small delicate hands with unlikely
calluses on them, shooing motions one might use to herd a small child hither
and yon.

Jack laughed, the sound rusty in his ears.

“Are you attempting to get rid of me, Lady Palmerton?”

“Shhh,” she whispered and then more forcefully, “Get out.
Please”

She was serious. She was tossing him from her bed like last
night’s leftovers. Jack couldn’t decide whether to be insulted or amused. He
chose amused and laughed again as he rose naked from her bed. He found his robe
and wrestled his arms into it, all the while aware of her eyes upon him.

“I can’t seem to find the belt to my robe.” He turned to
find Olivia just rising from the bed and he froze. He hadn’t been able to see
much of her the previous night, what with only the warm glow from the fire to
light the room, but he had touched her, ran his hands and his lips over her
curves and valleys and known she was beautiful, perfect. In the soft yellow
haze of the dawn, he could see that she was even lovelier than he could have
imagined, softer, rounder, more womanly.

She did not shy away from his gaze as he might have
expected. She stood still for one, two slow beats, allowing him to quickly take
in her long firm legs and the swell of her hips, her tiny waist and sumptuous
breasts with their pink tips, her long sinewy arms and swanlike neck. Then she
was in motion, sprinting across the chilly room to grab a nightgown from the
dresser.

“Hurry,” she whispered urgently, her words muffled by the
flannel as she pulled the gown over her head.

“My belt,” he reminded her and watched as her head whipped
around the room in search of the missing item.

“I don’t see it,” she wailed. “I’ll find it later and return
it to you. You must go.”

Jack strode across the room, grasped her flannel-covered
shoulders and pressed one quick, hard kiss upon her startled lips. “Good
morning to you too,” he whispered before he walked from the room.

He’d barely closed the door to his room across the hall when
he heard little feet running down the hall. He cracked the door just enough to
see Charlie toddling unsteadily over to his mother’s door.

“Mama,” the boy called as he pushed the door open.

“Come in here and cuddle with your mother, Bonny Prince
Charlie,” Olivia sang to her son, her voice warm and happy.

Yes, Mr. Jack Bentley thought as he crawled into his own
cold bed, Lady Olivia Palmerton would make an ideal wife and mother.