Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(50)

Her hair was unbound, trailing wild down around her face, and she was sure she looked a fright. This was her punishment for ogling him. She could have slipped from the bed, thrown on her robe, taken a brush to her unmanageable locks. Instead, he’d caught her at her frumpiest while she looked upon him the way a caged lion watched a hunk of raw meat on the other side of the bars.

He watched her intently, his sensual lips tightening as he appeared to weigh his next words. “I was in a house fire as a lad. Fortunately, I survived almost unscathed.”

Almost unscathed. She wondered if he referred to the scars he bore or to something he didn’t wear on his skin but carried inside. A fire must have been frightening, and for a small child to have experienced… well, her heart ached for the boy he must have been.

She ran her fingertips over the evidence of that long-ago inferno. He didn’t move away from her touch, simply allowed it. His skin felt smooth and warm, every bit as perfect as the rest of him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and her apology was twofold. She was sorry for what had happened to him, sorry for staring.

“I’m not worthy of your pity, buttercup.” His tone was wry.

“I don’t pity you,” she said quickly, for she didn’t. Empathy and pity were two different beasts. Touching him was having a strange effect on her heartbeat and her ability to concentrate. Her body hungered for his, but she was keenly aware that she didn’t wish to appear overeager. “I’m curious. There’s so much I don’t know about you.”

And she wanted to know all of it, all of him. Already, she knew his scent, his body, the way he moved in her. But she wanted more from him. She wanted their marriage to be more than a necessity.

“Curious.” He watched her in that predatory way he had that sent a thrill straight to her core.

“Yes,” she forced herself to say with as much feigned nonchalance as she could muster. “I find myself wondering whether you prefer poetry or prose and whether or not you take sugar in your tea.”

“Poetry and tea?” The frown returned, furrowing his brow. “If those are your most pressing bloody thoughts this morning, then I’ve been terribly remiss.”

Of course they hadn’t been her first thoughts. She searched his face now, wondering if he was dismayed or he was teasing her. “You haven’t been remiss, Your… Sebastian.”

A slow smile curved his lips, his dimple reemerging to taunt her. “I must have done something right in order to only receive half a Your Grace.”

He was teasing her, alright. She was certain of it. This was a different side of her husband, one she’d yet to see. He seemed at once self-possessed and perfectly at home, yet vulnerable. His customary ice had thawed. And here, in this distrait morning light, she felt as though she were perhaps seeing the true Sebastian for the first time.

“You’ve done many things right,” she told him, blushing even more furiously as the words left her lips. Sweet Lord, what was she saying? She’d meant that he had been kind and honorable, had rescued her from an intolerable situation when he hadn’t owed her anything, and that he’d stood up against her father on her behalf. That he’d touched her with the sort of worship she’d never imagined possible.

But as his deep, blue gaze bored into hers, the air between them was suddenly heavy, charged with sexual innuendo she hadn’t intended.

“I could do more things right,” he told her with unrepentant cheek. “Perhaps we could pare it down to a one quarter Your Grace by the time we break our fast.”

A one quarter Your Grace.

Truly.

She laughed. Threw back her head, embraced it. Laughed as she hadn’t ever done before. Her life had not held much room for mirth. Perhaps the time had come to change that, in the most unlikely form: a man she’d married out of necessity and desperation. A man who carried a burden on his shoulders he’d yet to share with her, who hadn’t any living family, and who had defended her in the face of her father’s wrath.

Her heart felt… light.

Whole.

She was still laughing when he rolled atop her, pressing her to the bed.

His hands cupped her face, and he rocked his hips into hers so that she felt every marvelous part of what was hidden by the bedclothes against her now. He was hard and demanding, and answering sensation blossomed between her thighs where their skin met. She wanted him. Her laughter dried up.

His gaze bored into hers. “I like the way you laugh, buttercup.”

And just like that, her heart felt… full.

A new awareness budded within her as she caressed the taut muscles of his upper arms and let her legs fall open to welcome him. “Perhaps you can even manage to make it a one-eighth Your Grace,” she teased him back.

He undulated against her again, running his length over her slick mound, grinding against the bud of her sex that he’d plied with such delicious torture last night. Slowly, he fitted his mouth to hers, his upper lip nestling into the seam of hers. He bit her lower lip, swiped away the sting with his tongue. Her fingernails sank into his arms, urging him in silent plea.

He broke the kiss at last, running his nose alongside hers and inhaling deeply of her scent, as though it pleased him. “I’m aiming for one-sixteenth, buttercup.”

His mouth, swift and knowing, swallowed her laugh. And then his fingers dipped between their bodies to toy with her pearl, sending need shooting through her, and she stopped laughing and kissed him right back with all the crazy tumult bubbling up inside her. She embraced it, embraced him, and he made love to her as the sun rose over London and the world came back to life.