WidowsWickedWish (6 page)

“Livy,” he murmured when she trailed her lips across his jaw
and down his neck, her mouth open and wet.

“Do you like this?” she asked against his salty skin. He
made no reply beyond a soft hum that vibrated through his chest. Emboldened,
she ran her lips across his shoulder, her tongue leaving a wet trail, while her
hands drifted across his chest, her fingers finding his nipples once more.

“Do you…” she began before his hands rose to her back and
journeyed up her spine, his fingers finding each vertebra and paying homage,
leaving a tingling shiver in their wake. “Oh, that’s delicious.”

“Like that, do you?” he murmured before gliding his hands
back down with the same wonderful attention to each bump along the way.

“I never knew my back was so…so sensitive,” she whispered
into the hollow at his throat.

She felt his soft laughter against her lips and rose to look
down at him.

“Last night, what you did to my…” she lifted her hands to
her breasts, cupping them. “When you put your mouth on me…”

Jack jerked beneath her, his gaze dropping to her hands. His
breath left him on a quiet moan.

“Would it be the same for you?”

Before he could answer she dipped her head and placed the
most chaste of kisses on one nipple then the other. Again he jerked beneath
her, his member nudging the folds of her sex in the most wonderful way.

“Ah, Livy,” he moaned when she began to play, teasing his
nipples with lips and tongue.

Olivia could not remember ever feeling as powerful as she
did in that moment. With the power came a wave of desire that had her drawing
in a trembling breath and bearing down upon the hard length of him. Heat shot
from between her legs and raced up her spine and through her limbs.

Jack’s hands wandered from her back down to her hips to wrap
around them and hold her to him. He rocked beneath her, gently thrusting against
her, driving the heat deep within her core. She thought he might intend to roll
her to her back, cutting off her explorations before she was ready. In hopes of
forestalling him she pulled his nipple between her lips, dragged her teeth over
his pebbled flesh and reveled in the dark groan that rumbled from his chest.

“Damn, Livy,” he growled. She twirled her tongue around his
nipple and he nearly unseated her as he thrust up.

She rose to sitting, allowing the motion to drag her aching
flesh down the hard length of him, setting off a riot of sensations deep within
her.

“I’m not ready,” she whispered.

“There’s no rush, love,” he assured her through clenched
teeth.

She looked down to where their bodies met. His member lay
upon his flat stomach, only a few inches visible. Wanting to see more, she
scooted back until she was resting on his thighs and his…his…

“What does one call it?” she asked.

“There are any number of terms,” he replied gruffly.

“Such as?” She lifted one hand to touch him, thought better
of it and dropped her hand before meeting his eyes once more.

“Go ahead,” he urged her, his voice silky and low.

“Is it permitted?”

“God, yes. Permitted, encouraged, begged for on occasion.”

Tentatively she drew one finger around the engorged head,
watched in fascination as his flesh pulsed and seemed to grow even harder,
longer.

“Such as…” she prompted as she trailed her fingers down his
length and through the curls at the base.

“Manhood is the politest term I can think of,” he rasped
out.

“Manhood,” she repeated reverently. His manhood twitched and
Olivia looked up at him through her lashes before dropping her curious gaze
once more.

“Does it pain you?” It looked as if it might. The fat tip
seemed an angry shade of red, almost purple.

“Not pain precisely,” he answered around a groan. “Take me
in your hand, Livy, I’m begging you.”

She wrapped her fingers around him, marveled at the heat,
the life that flowed through his hard flesh. “So soft and yet as hard as
steel.”

“Jesus, Livy.” His hands fell away from her hips to grip the
coverlet as his hips lurched, his manhood gliding through her hand. When he
subsided onto the bed again with a groan, Olivia tightened her grip and drew
her hand from base to tip and back down again, watching all the while. Again
and again she caressed him, slowly, steadily. She listened to his breathing as
it became more labored and peeped up at him through her lashes.

He was looking right back at her, his eyes gleaming as
bright as the hottest, bluest flame, his jaw clamped tight, a fine sheen of
moisture beading his forehead.

“And the less polite terms?” she asked.

Jack looked back at her blankly.

“You said manhood was a polite term,” she prompted.

“Penis,” he replied around a groan that might have been a
laugh.

Olivia wrinkled her brow. “What else?”

When he did not reply, she squeezed him gently.

“Ah, Livy, you’re killing me,” he panted.

“Sorry.” When she made to remove her hand, horrified that
she’d hurt him, Jack wrapped his hand around hers.

“Killing me in the best possible way,” he assured her before
pumping their joined hands down his length and back up again.

They both watched as their hands moved over him, his large
and dark, hers small and pale, the hard flesh beneath a rosy pink. Olivia soon
found the grip and rhythm he so obviously wanted.

“Shaft,” he whispered before withdrawing his hand from hers
to find her breast. His other hand came up and he cupped both breasts, gently
squeezed.

“Shaft,” she repeated, arching her back to press her breasts
firmly into his hands. She increased her tempo, her hand gliding up and down
his shaft, faster, firmer. Her breath stuttered when he caught her nipples
between thumbs and forefingers and gave her the slightest pinch.

“Oh, my,” she whispered, her eyes drifting closed to better
absorb the pleasure shooting through her like lightning, shooting deep within
her womb.

“Cock,” he growled.

“Cock,” she repeated in a shocked whisper. “Cock, truly?”

Jack laughed even as his hips rose and he pumped his cock in
counterpoint to the movement of her hand, once, twice and again.

“Do you want to put your cock inside me?” Olivia asked, sure
that he must. She certainly hoped he did.

“Yes Livy!”

Jack grasped her hips and raised her over his cock until he
was poised at the opening to her body. It took her a moment to understand what
he intended.

“Are you certain we can do it this way?” she asked
curiously.

“Quite certain,” he assured her with a wolfish grin.

Olivia grinned back at him and guided his cock to that place
that felt so terribly empty. As the fat head prodded her flesh, she met his
eyes and held them, wanting to watch his face, see his expression as she took
him into her body.

Trusting him to hold her steady, she relaxed her thighs,
felt the engorged tip slip into her, welcomed the slight sting, the familiar stretching
sensation as she impaled herself upon him.

“Jack,” she moaned as she slid down his length, as her body
yielded to his invasion.

She flexed her thighs and rose, widened her stance, and
lowered herself down his hot, hard length again, and again, taking more of his
cock into her body with each pass until she was filled with him, wonderfully,
impossibly filled by him.

“You’re so deep inside me,” she whispered in awe.

Jack lay beneath her, completely still but for his heaving
chest, his eyes intent upon her face. Olivia dragged her gaze from his face,
down his neck, his chest and taut stomach. She looked down at the point where
their bodies joined. She rose, her fascinated gaze locked on their bodies. She
bore down again, watched as she took him into her body once more.

“Look at us,” she whispered. “We fit perfectly.”

“Livy,” Jack growled as his hands gripped her hips and he
held her while he thrust up into her, hard and deep. Olivia pushed down with
each thrust, quickly found the rhythm he needed, the rhythm she needed.

“Ah, Jack,” she sighed as she felt the first shivers of
release dancing through her limbs. “Your cock…my God. It’s wonderful…amazing.”

Jack bucked beneath her, ground his hips against her and she
felt him explode into her. It pushed her right over the edge. Her climax was
swift and violent, washing through her, wave after wave of pleasure.

“Jack!”

His hand was on the back of her head pulling her forward,
pulling her lips down to his. He muffled her cries, her moans, his tongue
urgent in her mouth.

Olivia collapsed on him, her arms and legs limp and
trembling. She tucked her head into the crook of his neck, smiled against his
skin.

“Livy, you’re going to kill me,” he whispered into her hair.
“The things you say.”

Jack decided that Purgatory was a small parlor in a gray
stone cottage in the north of England. And that time stood still in Purgatory,
a fact that Dante had forgotten to mention. His particular Purgatorial parlor
was warm and cozy. It was also overflowing with loud, rambunctious children. As
the afternoon fell away into evening the children clamored about the room,
playing some sort of game involving hidden treasures and shouted clues. He
shifted in his chair in an effort to ease the constriction in his breeches.

All he wanted was to whisk the Countess of Palmerton into
some secluded corner of the cottage, an empty chamber, the pantry, even the
tiny linen closet in the hall would suffice.

So long as there was room enough to take Olivia into his
arms, to pull her soft curves against him, to bury himself in her heat.

Dinner was no better but for the fact that the pristine
white tablecloth hid the erection that had been his constant companion
throughout the interminable afternoon. He attempted, with little success, to
keep his eyes and his mind off the lady responsible for his uncomfortable
condition. It was impossible.

Olivia sat directly across the round table, seemingly
unaffected by their earlier lovemaking, as if she hadn’t taken his cock into
her small hand and nearly brought him to climax with her enthusiastic, if
somewhat clumsy, caresses. As if she hadn’t risen above him and willingly,
eagerly taken him into her body, ridden him with abandon. What the lady lacked
in experience, she more than made up for in curiosity. Her curiosity was an
aphrodisiac, one he was only to eager to enjoy once more. And soon.

“Elbows, Fanny,” Olivia gently admonished and Jack looked to
her daughter sitting nearly slumped over the table, her chin propped in one
hand, the offending elbow resting perilously close to her plate. With the other
hand she plowed her fork through a mountain of mashed potatoes.

“I can’t eat all these potatoes,” the girl grumbled,
stabbing her fork into the peak before withdrawing her hand. The fork waved precariously,
a silver flag atop Mount Everest.

“Perhaps next time you won’t pile quite so much on your
plate,” Olivia replied calmly.

“I know, I know,” Fanny grumbled as the fork listed left.
“There are starving children in France.”

“Fanny’s grumpy,” Charlie piped up across the table.

“What I want to know is what difference it makes to hungry
French children if I eat all my dinner?” Fanny asked of the table at large, her
fierce blue gaze raking them all before landing on her mother’s startled face.

Mary Morgan tilted her head down, no doubt to hide her grin.

“It seems to me,” Fanny continued, “that I can only feed
those Frogs if I don’t eat my dinner, if we all stopped eating, every single
English person, this instant, and packed up all of our food and sent it across
the sea to France.”

“I don’t want to give my tatoes to a bunch of slimy, green
frogs,” Charlie replied with a frown.

“Frogs are Frenchies,” Fanny replied, her words dripping
disdain.

“Frances Marie,” her mother admonished. “That is a
derogatory term for the French people and not one that we use in this family.”

“If we don’t, then why did I just now use it? Huh, why did I
do it? Riddle me that,” Fanny demanded just before her flag lost its efforts to
say upright. The fork clattered to her plate, sending a shower of gravy across
the tablecloth.

“That’s more than enough, Frances Marie Gibbons.” Olivia
scooted her chair back and rose with dignity. “Make your excuses.”

Fanny ignored her mother in favor of dipping a finger into
the gravy beside her plate and swirling it about. From his seat across the
table Jack couldn’t be certain but he thought she spelled out the word “Why” in
a sloping, rather elegant slant.

“Excuse yourself, Frances, it is time for you to find your
bed,” her mother said, pulling her daughter’s finger from her gravy inquiry.

“I know where my bed is,” Fanny muttered before yanking her
hand from her mother’s grasp and sticking her finger in her mouth.

“Now.” Olivia eased Fanny’s chair back from the table.

“I don’t want to go to bed,” Fanny cried, jumping from her
seat to stand glaring up her mother. “I am Lady Frances and I can do what I
want.”

“I am the Countess of Palmerton,” her mother replied without
batting an eye. “Thus, I outrank you.”

“Someday I’ll be a duchess or a princess or even a queen!”
Fanny put her hands to her hips and stomped her foot. “Then you’ll be sorry!
I’ll make you go find your bed! In the dungeon of my castle!”

“I wholeheartedly welcome the day,” Olivia replied without
an ounce of the aggravation she must have been feeling coloring her words.
“I’ll likely need the rest after seeing you raised to such heights. But until
that day, you are simply Fanny and I am your mother.”

Mother and daughter stared at one another, neither blinking,
long enough for Jack to turn to his daughter beside him, to see the wonder in
which she watched what threatened to become an all-out battle.

“Oh, all right, but this is all your fault,” Fanny finally
muttered with a huff. “If you hadn’t allowed me to skip my nap, I wouldn’t be
as grumpy as a bear. What sort of mother lets her six-year-old daughter get
away with skipping her nap?”

Olivia shot a glance across the table as if just remembering
that they had guests, guests who’d been gifted with a drama during dinner. A
blush rose to her cheeks but she held her head high, her gaze catching Jack’s
for a moment before she trained it once more upon her tired, recalcitrant
daughter.

“As usual, you are quite right,” Olivia said as serenely as
if she were discussing bonnets and bustles. “It’s terribly annoying, your
talent for correctly hitting upon the heart of the matter.”

“I’m precocious,” Fanny replied by way of explanation.

“Fanny’s precocious,” Charlie repeated for anyone at the
table who might have missed the girl’s statement. “And awfully grumpy.”

“No, Charlie,” his sister replied around a wide yawn. “I’m
quite finished being grumpy.”

“Thank the Lord,” Mary Morgan murmured.

“If you will excuse me?” Fanny descended into a wobbly
curtsy, her tired eyes drooping, her legs nearly giving out on the ascent.

Olivia reached out a steadying hand, held it just over her
daughter’s arm, and waited until her daughter regained her footing, before
laying it on the top of her dark head. “I will also excuse myself. Good night.”

As she turned her daughter from the room, Olivia caught
Jack’s eyes, her gaze full of promise.

It was that promise that had Jack pacing the parlor,
impatiently waiting as the cottage’s inhabitants made their way to bed, one
after another.

Molly Jenkins was the first to disappear above stairs,
calling out a cheerful good night to all before admonishing her husband to keep
away from the whiskey and hurry through his chores.

Twenty minutes later, Mary stifled a yawn behind her hand
and put aside the book she’d been reading to Charlie. Jack followed her into
the entrance hall and watched her ascend the stairs, her hand wrapped around
Charlie’s as he lurched along beside her, his left foot dragging on each step.

The boy stopped about halfway up and gave an impressive
bounce. “Aunt Bea’s step,” he told the elegant woman beside him over the
unmistakable creak of a step in need of repair. “Aunt Bea’s your little girl,
Aunt Mary.”

“Yes, she is,” Mary answered as they continued on their way.

“One time Aunt Bea…she said she would let me hold baby
Willie…and you know what?” the boy asked before rushing on without waiting for
a reply. “She did let me hold Willie…and I didn’t drop him, not once. And you
know what else? He didn’t cry, not even a little bit. When the new baby comes,
I’m to hold her, too.”

Whatever reply his grandfather’s long-time mistress made was
lost in a gust of wind that whipped through the foyer. Jack turned to find Tom
Jenkins standing in the open doorway.

“I’m off to see to the horses ’fore I find my bed,” the
older man said in his cheerful, Cornish way.

“I’ll help,” Jack offered, pulling his coat from a blue peg
upon the wall.

“I won’t turn away the offer,” Tom replied. “Two hands
lessen the load by half.”

The air outside was bitterly cold, the wind icy wet.

“Will we have more snow?” Jack fell into step beside Tom who
leaned into the arctic wind with his head bent low.

“In a day or two, mayhap. Leastwise not tonight.”

“That’s good,” Jack replied thinking just the opposite.
Without more snow, the roads would be clear enough for travel, would in fact be
just frozen enough to make the journey a relatively easy one.

“You’d be wise to go while the going’s good,” Tom told him,
pulling the stable doors open and ducking inside. “Rain’s more likely than snow
in the coming days and Lord above what a sorry state the roads be then.”

Inside the stables the air was almost warm, and blessedly
wind-free. Jack and Tom fell into a companionable silence as they shuffled hay
and poured oats for the dozen horses housed within the warm confines. Jack
checked on Pacer, his tall gray gelding, and Posy, Justine’s steady sorrel
mare.

“Always liked the stables of a night,” Tom said. “Beasties
be sweet when they’re tuckered out.” As if to prove his point, a big shaggy
draft horse nudged the man, his immense head gently bumping his shoulder before
he burrowed in to sniff along Tom’s neck.

“Aw get on with you, Romeo,” Tom told the horse before
running one gnarled hand down his neck and along his withers.

“Romeo?” Jack asked doubtfully.

“Beatrice named him more than fifteen years ago. She was
reading the Bard. Was a time we had critters of all kinds named from ’is plays.
Constance, Richard, Mercutio, Viola. We even had a pair of love birds went by
Hamlet and Ophelia.”

“And now her favored mare is Lancelot,” Jack replied.

“He’s a clown for certain, nothing that gray beastie likes
better than acting the buffoon, but he rides like the wind.”

“Which horse is Lady Palmerton’s?” Jack asked as he looked
over the horseflesh.

“Don’t know what she keeps a mount, leastwise she didn’t
bring one with her,” Tom answered, turning toward the doors. “She rides the
gold filly, Mirabel, Mary calls her.”

Jack eyed the pretty little horse. “How old is Mirabel?”

“Don’t rightly know. Mary bought her off a fellow in London
when we first come back from foreign parts. She must be more than a dozen years
old. But she’s a lady, she is, and the gentlest mount you’ll find. Fanny’s
learning to ride on her. Girl has the makings to be a fine horsewoman.
Leastwise if she survives growing up. Never known a child but was so all fired
up to grow up quick like. Been that way since she was a wee mite and her mum
first brung her to Idyllwild.”

“She’s quite a handful,” Jack agreed diplomatically.

“A handful she is, and make no mistake,” Tom agreed with a
rumbling laugh. “Her mum has the right of it, I’m thinking. Some says idle
hands be the devil’s workshop. Me, I’m thinking it’s an idle mind what leads a
body to mischief. And Fanny has a mind can turn to trouble quicker than spit
even while she’s working her sums whilst practicing her scales on the pianny.
Girl needs to be engaged, her ladyship says, before she tears the house down
around us all.”

“Tears the house down?” Jack repeated in some alarm.

Tom waved his beefy hand in the air. Unsure whether he was
waving away Jack’s concerns or motioning him through the stables doors, Jack
walked outside.

“Now, her ladyship,” Tom said as they bent into the wind
once more. “She’s a whole other kettle of worms.”

“Lady Palmerton? She’s as proper as they come,” Jack replied
in surprise.

“All the more reason she needs someone to keep an eye out,
I’d say,” Tom argued good-naturedly. “Sometimes it’s the quiet ones ends up
making the most mischief, thems the ones who take a man by surprise and slap
him upside the head when he’s just traveling through his life, not stopping
along the way to read the signs ’cause she’s never given him reason to.”

Jack followed Tom into the house not a little taken aback by
the man’s words.

“Mary, she were just such a one, never did give her father a
lick of trouble,” Tom continued as he divested himself of his coat and tossed
it over a brown peg. “Perfect angel was Lady Mary right up ’til the day she
sweet-talked a groom into saddling her horse afore the rest the household was
even outta their beds.”

“Mary Morgan?” Jack asked in surprise.

“Lady Mary she was then, only daughter to the Earl of
Dunstan.”

Jack draped his coat over his assigned peg, his mind
spinning. He knew the present Earl of Dunstan, a sanctimonious ass if ever he’d
met one. And he was Mary’s brother?

“That groom knew she weren’t up to no good…” Tom tossed the
words over his shoulder as he ambled into the parlor and made straightaway for
the whiskey decanter on the sideboard.

“And still he saddled her horse?”

“She’d have saddle the beastie herself,” Tom answered a bit
defensively.

“You were that groom,” Jack guessed.

“Watched her ride off into the rising sun, didn’t I?” Tom
poured amber liquid into two glasses before turning to face Jack. “Next I knew
she was ’board ship to France and I was let go without a character.”

“She’d run off with a man?” Jack asked. “With Hastings?”

“Nah, that was years later, after her family’d cut her off,”
Tom replied. “She just up and took off one day. Bored with her life she was.
Wanting to put off marrying and do a bit of adventuring. She’d have come
around, maybe later rather than sooner, but she’d have come back.”

“Except her family turned from her,” Jack murmured.

“Lady alone in the world…”