Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(51)
And Daisy’s world was irrevocably changed.
hy did thinking about her bloody laugh make his cock go rigid in his trousers?
And where was the scent of bergamot originating from?
Why was it making him harder?
Sebastian sat in his study, flipping through the efficiently ordered correspondence his secretary had presented him with, numbers and letters blurring before him. Even spies of the realm still needed to manage their empires at home, and sometimes that proved the devil of a task, particularly when he was supposed to focus on the price of wheat and the cost of stone masons and the growing influx of American cheese.
A week had passed since he’d married Daisy. He’d given up any pretense at honor and had given in to his need of her, reasoning that having his fill would slake the all-consuming desire she’d fanned to fire within him. Night after night, he’d gone to her chamber. Not just nights, if he were honest.
He’d come upon her in the library one afternoon, and on another occasion, he’d brought them both to earth-shattering orgasm right here on his desk. There had been the morning he’d lifted her skirts and fucked her in the hall, where anyone could have come across them. The wickedness—in the open, on the verge of being caught by a stray servant at all times—had only propelled them both into a crescendo of pleasure.
Each time his body left hers, he was certain it would be the last, that it would be enough. And the next time he came across her, he couldn’t stop from touching her, kissing her, wanting her.
Even now, beneath the watchful eye of his secretary, he wanted her so much his teeth ached. He had left her abed hours ago. She should have been well purged from his mind, exorcised from his body. A bloody week of losing himself inside her, and he was only left needing her more.
He should never have bedded her in the first place.
Yet how could he not have?
And how could he stop, when he’d already had her so many times and yet his yearning only increased rather than sputtering out like a tired old flame? How many times had it been? Once, twice, perhaps a dozen? More counting, there he went, spiraling deeper into the abyss. Thirteen? Fourteen? With each number, he strummed his fingers on the surface of his desk as though the tactile sensation could somehow shake him free of this infernal torture. Free of this insatiable need to have her again warring with the overwhelming sense of disgust that he’d taken her at all.
That he’d spent the last week the happiest he’d ever been in his entire life, and that he didn’t want it to end.
Bloody hell, Carlisle would have his head on a pike if he ever learned the truth.
None of these thoughts were doing him any good. He crumpled the letter he held in his fist. “Simmonds?”
“Yes, Your Grace?” His eternally efficient secretary interrupted his grim musings.
“Where is the letter from my agent at Thornsby Hall?” he demanded, and if his voice was harsh as a whip it was only because he was doing his damnedest to hide the ridiculous state of his trousers.
Tight. Too bloody tight. He shifted in his chair, but that did him no good, so he forced himself to stare at Simmonds, which would surely force his cock to return to its normal state of order. His secretary was all angles, all male, arms disproportionately long so that his fingers hung to his knees, and a scar on his upper lip rendered his mustache preposterously off-center. He didn’t have golden hair or pink nipples or smell like a sultry combination of dessert and sexual congress.
Christ, that last, rogue thought wasn’t helping. Not a goddamn whit.
Simmonds cleared his throat, his expression growing ill at ease. He was an easy read, and Sebastian liked that about him. It wouldn’t do to have a man he couldn’t see straight through involved in his personal and estate matters. Simmons was trustworthy, dependable, and he never asked questions.
“Your Grace, I believe the letter in question is currently… in your hand,” Simmonds said then.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps he ought to sack him. Did he think he was daft? “Of course it isn’t, or I wouldn’t be asking you for its whereabouts, now would I?”
“Forgive me, Your Grace. It is merely that I know the order of the correspondence. They’re arranged by level of import, and your concern over the cost of suggested improvements at Thornsby Hall led me to place it atop the stack.”
He stared at his secretary, who stared back at him, unrelenting. This was Simmonds’ only fault, his inability to kowtow. And truly, it wasn’t a fault in Sebastian’s book. Not ordinarily. In this moment, however, it was, because he was beginning to fear Simmonds was correct and that he’d been so distracted by thoughts of his glorious American minx that he couldn’t even bloody well read.
His gaze lowered to the crumpled sheet in his hand, and he recognized the familiar slanted scrawl of Carnes, his Thornsby land agent, peering from between his fingers. “Simmonds,” he said without looking up.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“That will be all,” he dismissed.
Far better to wallow in his humiliation and shame on his own, he reasoned, than with his secretary watching over him. With his broad shoulders on his otherwise narrow frame, the man looked like a bloody upside-down triangle.
He waited for Simmonds to take his leave before releasing the letter and spreading it over his desk in a futile attempt to smooth out the many wrinkles. Thornsby Hall was his family seat and his chief concern these days when he wasn’t otherwise engaged in duty. His father had allowed it to fall into disrepair, and Sebastian had begun to undertake the tremendous investment of restoring it to its proper glory. A great, sprawling estate of seven thousand acres, it contained some of his fondest boyhood memories. Thornsby Hall was to be his reward when he retired from service to the League.