Wild Lily (Those Notorious Americans Book 1)(84)

He raised his head and wiped the drops of water from his jaw. “We’re not a bad looking family.” He turned his head to gaze at her and let his eyes caress her features. “You make us look even better.”

She winked at him and went back to her task of washing him. He was so masculine. Muscular and fit, he was a handsome creature. Her husband. Hers. And not hers completely. She tried to be valiant. “Elanna resembles your aunt.”

“She does. In looks.” His last words held an ominous note. “I’m glad she and Carbury go home tomorrow. I cannot bear their animosity.”

“How can she be so indifferent to him?” Lily asked and hated that she’d let slip such honesty.

“I gather he merits it. Though I’m not certain why.”

Her worst fear of the Carburys’ relationship was almost outlandish. “Does he mistreat her?”

Julian snorted. “Ha! You mean like my father ‘mistreated’ my mother?”

“Well, I—”

“You can say it.” He leaned over, bunching up his knees and circling his arms around them. “You did not see much of it.”

She paused. “Enough. I saw enough.”

“They never stopped punishing each other.”

“For what?” she whispered. Oh, that was bold. She bit her lip.

He pivoted and looked her straight in the eyes. “They loved each other when they first married, but in turn, each one took another to bed.”

“That,” she said with tears in her throat, “is very sad. Why would they?”

“Why would they?” Julian winced and lifted his face to the ceiling. “Because it was possible. Because he was a duke. She was a duchess. Men and women coveted the chance to say they’d bedded them. Because he was obsessed with his title and his pride. And she was obsessed with…”

What? Her reputation? Her title? Her—

“Revenge.”

“How—how do you know?”

He shrugged. “Bits and pieces of the resentments came out in their arguments over the years. They were reputed to be a unique couple, renowned lovers, fated mates, envied. But others sought to ruin the perfection. For their own amusement, I gathered. Society can do that. Indulge in such cruelty. And the two of them were silly enough—weak enough—to allow it.”

She sought to put distance or perspective between his parents’ tragic marriage and what could happen to her own. She stopped her ministrations, the cloth dropping to the water with a splash. “Elanna is not full of vengeance.”

“No. She’s full of hatred.”

“But—”

He raked a hand through his wet black hair. “It doesn’t matter. Her marriage appears to be a disaster as well.”

“I don’t want ours to be.”

He spun to look at her. The frown that creased his brows alarmed her.

She shrank away.

He grabbed her hand. “Neither do I.”

She began to smile when he shook his head.

“I fear I don’t know how to be a proper husband.”

Tell me you love me. That would make you a perfect husband.

He rose from the tub, grabbed a towel from the rim and anchored it around him. Stepping out, he reached for her and drew her to him.

He lifted her face and kissed her with a ferocity she hadn’t known from him. As if he were not thinking, only feeling, he led her to their bed, brushed her peignoir and her negligee to the carpet and put her to the edge of the mattress. There, he cupped his hands behind her knees and brought her legs around his hips. The towel had fallen and she embraced him, naked and full and ready for him.

In a second, he sank inside her. Her eyes fluttered shut as he filled her and satisfied them both with breathless passion. But what they built together out of this lust for each other left her wondering, wanting more that she feared he might not ever be able to give her.





“I’ll bid them all goodbye,” he told Lily the next morning. He bent to place a kiss on her mouth, her lips swollen from their love play last night. She’d been pliant in their first coupling, then turned ravenous in their second. He was a fortunate man to have a wife who loved her bed sport. He could not have planned for a better mate. And yet, he was ashamed to say, he denied her what she needed to make it perfect.

Denied her the declaration that teased his lips every time he kissed her and pushed inside her wet and giving walls. If he said he loved her, would he—like others he knew—lose his pride, his very self in the process? Could he give himself away so completely?

If he did, she’d have such power over him. Such terrifying power.

He lifted her hand and kissed her palm. Escape was easier. “Have your breakfast here, will you?”

“I don’t like to.” She fingered the buttons on his coat, fixing it so that he was dressed to perfection to greet his guests downstairs over breakfast.

“I know, but you needn’t endure them.” The sheet over her breasts slipped, her large rosy nipples a ripe temptation. He’d bitten one last night in his madness for her and his teeth had marked her. Tempted once again to join her in bed, he compensated by bending to lick her luscious skin and suck one hard point into his mouth. His cock jumped.

She undulated and clamped shut her eyes.