To Love and to Loathe (The Regency Vows #2)(73)
It occurred to him a moment too late, in the silence that followed, that asking a lady about marriage while lying next to her, in bed, in a state of undress, her skin still glistening from the pleasure he’d recently given her, might be an example of poor timing.
“Willingham,” she said after a moment, bracing herself on one elbow with a hand to his chest, “if you are about to propose to me, I might advise you that this is hardly the time or place.” She quirked her mouth at him. “Don’t come over missish on me now—do I need to explain to you the benefits of a discreet, mutually enjoyable affair?”
“Missish?” he asked, ignoring the rest of her sentence entirely.
She nodded solemnly, her hazel eyes wide. “Not everyone can be wise to the ways of the world, you see, and I feel that I perhaps need to keep a wary eye on you. You might fall prey to some unscrupulous seductress—”
Silent as a cat, he sprang into action, drawing her onto his lap to straddle his hips and leaning back against the headboard before she seemed to quite realize what had happened. Certain portions of his anatomy woke up again at this unexpected, enticing dose of female proximity. She adjusted to their situation with her typical speed, however, and reached a hand down to wrap around him once more. He bit back a groan as she leaned forward and placed a series of kisses along the underside of his jaw, and flung his head back so sharply that it hit the headboard a few moments later when she sank down atop him.
She didn’t move for a moment, staring at him in concern. “Are you all right?”
He opened his eyes, ignoring the faint throbbing in his head, far more focused on other sensations. “I have, quite literally, never been better.”
She grinned as she rose to her knees and sank back down onto him, and his heart stuttered at the sight of her, naked and beautiful and smiling. “It seems I fell prey to an unscrupulous seductress after all,” he said on a gasp, anchoring her hips with his hands to slow their rhythm slightly.
“Indeed it does,” she said solemnly. “Fortunately, I shall take pity on you”—she gasped at a particularly well-timed thrust on his part—“and ensure that you know what you’re doing.”
Jeremy forbore to remark that, based on her breathing and the urgent sounds coming from the back of her throat, he thought he had a fairly good idea already. She leaned forward to brace her hands on his shoulders, and he stole a lingering kiss from her, their tongues twining and mimicking the movements of their bodies.
He felt heat building at the base of his spine and knew he could not hold off much longer. Previously, he would have plunged onward without further thought—he had, after all, satisfied the lady in the not-at-all-distant past—but now, listening to the sound of her breathing, he instead redoubled his efforts, sliding a hand between them and applying the same vigorous effort that had yielded such pleasant results some minutes before. He was rewarded, several minutes later, by the sensation of her tightening around him in helpless pleasure, and he dropped his hand, wrapped both arms around her waist, and—with a display of will that he thought worthy of some sort of medal—withdrew, just before joining her in the plummet to mindless release.
It was several minutes before either of them mustered much in the way of words. She was slumped atop him, her head resting on his chest, his cheek against her hair, his hand stroking up and down the smooth skin of her back. At last she mumbled something, the words indecipherable against his skin.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked—slurred? He felt as though he’d been drugged.
“I said,” she said, tilting her head up slightly so that her mouth was no longer pressed against his shoulder, “you’re a remarkably quick study.”
He quirked a smile at her. “I do have some experience, you know. It was more a matter of… polishing my skills.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why I expected you to exhibit some humble gratitude at this particular moment.”
“Neither do I. I am feeling rather nauseatingly self-satisfied at present, if you must know. You should count yourself lucky that I’m not preening.”
“Aren’t you?” she asked, giving him a skeptical look.
He shrugged. “I’m not perfect.”
“Of that, I promise you I am perfectly aware,” she said, sitting up straight, then glancing down and wrinkling her nose at the mess they had left behind.
“I’ll fetch a cloth,” he said, lifting her by the waist and depositing her next to him before rising to his feet and crossing to the washbasin in the corner. He dampened a cloth and gave it to her to use before he attended to the mess on the bed.
“This bit isn’t terribly romantic, is it?” she asked with characteristic candor, watching as he discarded the cloth and returned to sit beside her. He stretched out his legs and leaned back against the headboard, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. He half expected her to stiffen and pull away, now that the evening’s physical activities were at an end, but she rested the back of her head on his arm and looked up at the ceiling.
“It’s not the portion of the proceedings I’d choose to write poetry about,” he agreed. “But it’s either withdraw or use a French letter, and I didn’t have one to hand, so this charming scene is the result.” She snorted, the noise indelicate and unladylike, a sound that he could not imagine any of his previous paramours making at any point, much less when they were naked in bed with him. A fortnight ago, he would have said that Diana was as full of artifice as any woman of his acquaintance—because even then he had known the face she showed to the public, the face she allowed him to see, was not the real Diana. But now, he also knew that no other woman he had ever met—and certainly none that he had bedded—had been as honest with him as she had been these past few days.