Seven Years to Sin(96)
“I love to hear you play,” she said softly.
“I know.”
She smiled. “And I love the sight of your bare back and provocative backside, as well.”
“I know that, too.”
He faced her and her breath caught. He was partially aroused and wholly beautiful.
Jess licked her lower lip. “I feel overdressed.”
“You are.” His approach was both predatory and graceful, his rippled abdomen and confident stride engaging all of her feminine instincts.
“What lascivious agenda do you pursue?”
“We’ve been wed just over a year, yet I have not been granted my husbandly right to a honeymoon.”
A shiver of heated pleasure rippled through her. “Oh? My poor darling. Have you been denied any other husbandly rights?”
“You wouldn’t deny yourself.” Alistair caught her by the elbows and tugged her to her feet. There was a roughness and urgency to his touch that belied the softness of the melody with which he’d mesmerized her. Her nipples beaded tight beneath her bodice in response.
He knew, of course. His hands cupped her swelling breasts and kneaded with slightly more pressure than necessary. The edge to him made her hot and wet, eager. She loved all the ways he made love to her, but the times he sought her out while at the end of his control were special. She no longer had to drive him to the precipice. He stood on the cliff and called for her, deliberately bringing her close at the times when he was capable of being most vulnerable. Then, they would make the fall together, as they did everything together.
She set her hands on his hips, tugging herself closer. “I’m too self-indulgent when it comes to you,” she agreed.
“Indulge yourself with me on a honeymoon,” he coaxed in that dark voice of sin. “Weeks on a ship. Months in Jamaica. We have unfinished business there, you and I. Hester is strong enough now to bear the loss of you for a time, and Michael will look after her with as much care as he would look after his own heart.”
“Can you go now? Can you afford the time away?”
“I’ve spoken with Masterson. Now is the time to go, while he is fit and able.” His hands slid up to her face, cupping her cheeks. Tilting his head, he brought his lips to hers, kissing her softly. “I want to swim with you naked. I want to show you the fields burning. I want to—”
“—f*ck in the rain,” she whispered, just to feel the tension grip him. “There is no need to seduce me to elicit my acquiescence. I would go with you anywhere, for any reason.”
“But this way is much more enjoyable.” Bending his knees, he matched his thick erection to the juncture of her thighs and rolled his hips against her. “With the windows open and our guests outside, you will have to be quiet in your pleasures.”
“While you do your worst to make me scream?”
“My best.”
Her mouth curved against his lips. “Perhaps you will be the noisy one. Perhaps I will make you groan and curse and beg for mercy.”
“Is that a challenge, Lady Baybury?” he purred. “You know I cannot resist a challenge.”
Jess reached behind him and gripped his taut, delicious buttocks. “I know. In fact, I am counting on that.”
Acheron, well versed in the proclivities of his lord and mistress, padded out of the room and found his mat beside the chaise in the adjoining sitting room. Flopping to his side, he fell into a blissful canine slumber, lulled by the sweet sounds of laughter and love that spilled from the bedroom behind him.
She’ll be his MISTRESS BY MARRIAGE.
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London, 1820
Edward Christie had been an utter fool six years ago. True, he’d had plenty of company. Every man in the room gaped when Caroline Parker entered Lady Huntington’s ballroom. Conversation stilled. Hearts hammered. Shoulders straightened. Chests and areas lower swelled.
There were many reasons for those changes. Her hair, masses of it, red as lava was swirled up with diamonds. Diamond earrings, a diamond necklace, and diamond bracelets were festooned all over her creamy skin—skin so delicious every man whose tongue was hanging out longed to lap it. Her eyes were liquid silver, bright as stars and fringed with midnight black lashes, so at odds with her hair. And her dress, a shocking scarlet for an unmarried woman—for any woman—had a diamond brooch hovering over the most spectacular assets he’d ever seen. The jewels were all paste, as he was later to find out, but her breasts were very real.
There were known drawbacks, which quickly circulated about the room, prodded along by spiteful cats who were quite eclipsed by Caroline’s magnificence. She was old, at least twenty-five, and her family—what there was of it—was dirt poor and touched by scandal. Some said her brother died in a duel; others said he was killed by one of his many mistresses. She had a sister in Canada, living in some godforsaken outpost in the snow with her lieutenant husband and howling wolves. Her parents were long dead and she was clinging to the ton by the weakest of threads. The distant cousin who had inherited her brother’s title was anxious to get her off his hands before he put his hands all over her and irritated his irritable wife.
Edward had obliged in a courtship of less than five days. Baron Christie had spent his first thirty-four years never, ever being impulsive, and his sudden marriage by special license to a woman who looked like an expensive courtesan was the on dit of the season. He had buried one wife, the perfectly staid and proper Alice, whose brown hair would never be compared to living fire and whose brown eyes could only be compared to mud. Alice, who’d quickly and quietly done her duty, had provided him with an heir, a spare, and a little girl who looked just as angular and forbidding as her father. Alice, who’d caught a chill one week and died the next was no doubt rolling over in her grave to be supplanted by Caroline Parker.