A Wicked Lord at the Wedding (9 page)

He shook, from his shoulders to the calves of his legs, his hard body responding dangerously, inviting her efforts to arouse him. All that strength at her command.

It was tempting to misuse this temporary power.

But why not? A license to lust. And if she pushed him too far—a provocative thought. She had a wildly excited husband at her command. She was willing to pay what ever price he demanded in return.

Her tongue darted like a flame. She licked her way from his tight sac to the heavy purple knob of his sex. His hips jerked. His muscles relaxed, then tightened again. He knotted his fingers in her hair and tugged, not hard enough that she felt pain, but so that she understood he wanted more.

“Have mercy on me, madam.” His voice rasped pleasantly at her nerves. Revenge might be more sweetly served than she’d hoped. “Don’t make me spill into your mouth on our first night in bed together.”

She raised her gaze in acknowledgment, conceding nothing, holding his gaze for a satisfying moment. At his burning look she lowered her head to resume
her campaign until she sensed he would break. It was then, at the moment she sensed victory, his body taut, dangerously still, that he suddenly caught her beneath her arms and threw her gently onto her back.

“You’re overpowered,” he said simply.

“You—”

“Time to give the devil his due.”

Her heart pounded, as if seeking to escape from her chest. In a simple act of unfair domination she had become his captive. Or had she? True, his large hands had locked around her wrists like shackles.

But she had to admit there was certain advantage to having provoked Sebastien to this point. They could have been two strangers who had met at the masquerade.

No confidences had to be shared.

No promises made. Tomorrow they might be estranged again.

Tonight they belonged to each other.

“How can you be more beautiful than I remembered?” he mused, his husky voice warming her all over. “And even softer.”

“I’m not as soft as I look. Not anymore.”

“No?” He swallowed. “That’s all right. I’d rather you didn’t break easily.”

She wanted to ask him to reveal more of what he felt. Instead, she allowed a moment to pass. “Your body is harder,” she whispered. “I might have bruises all over me in the morning. And I noticed a few lines
around your eyes. Not many, but … they are becoming.”

“If you find them so,” he teased, “then I won’t fret the next time I look into a mirror.”

His hand smoothed the muscles between her shoulder blades, caressed her ribs then her hips before skimming across her belly. She seemed responsive, but he sensed she was holding part of herself back. He suffered no such restrictions.

She’d made him so hard that every drop of blood in his body had apparently rushed to his cock. He buried his face in the curve of her neck. He let his hand wander lower, lower, into heat, into the creamy hollow between her thighs. He spread her folds and pushed two fingers into the slick passage. Was she still only his?

She moved her hips as if to guide his fingers deeper, as if every instinct he possessed would not have found the way without her help. She was so silky wet that he could sink inside her and drown.

“Hurry up, Sebastien.” Her hips lifted from the bed.

“Why?” He pressed the palm of his other hand hard against her mound. She inhaled sharply, her eyelids fluttering. He leaned down and kissed her mouth, capturing the little moan that escaped her. “I’m not in a hurry.”

“Well, I am.”

He laughed. “I’m not the kind of man who loses his girl at midnight, either.”

“Did you bring a slipper?”

“The same one you wore before.”

Every night for the past year, as his soul had come back to life, he had thought of her. He’d been prepared for tears and anger, for the bedroom door bolted in his face. He had searched his mind for ways to appease her, for excuses as to why he had not behaved like a husband. Trust Eleanor to take his intentions by the throat and shake them into such an uproar that he couldn’t tell seduction from surrender.

He surrendered.

But so would she.

“I don’t want to wait,” she whispered, pulling one hand free to walk her fingertips up the length of his shaft. He flexed his back, his blood pulsing in need. How he had missed her, missed not only sex but the intimate moments of laughter they had shared afterward in the dark. He craved that closeness again. He’d never been this comfortable with anyone else.

“Not yet.” He kissed her ripe mouth. “Soon.” He sank another finger inside her, stretched her until she whimpered. “I might have to make room first,” he teased. He bent his head to her plump breasts. “What do you think?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

“You’re wrong.” He drew one pointed nipple into his mouth, suckled hard and heard her groan softly above his head. “There are several ways, in truth. I doubt we’ll explore them all in one night, but we could try.”

“You mustn’t say such things, Sebastien.”

“Fine. As long as I’m allowed to do them.”

She panted lightly. She scratched his shoulder again and strained and swore that she would never forgive him. And when he felt her arch, her back taut, he released her hand and held her through the climax that shook her. Her uninhibited release drove the limits of his control to a mindless edge.

His desire for her intensified. He fought to subdue his most elemental instincts. If he unleashed them all at once, he feared he might lose his sanity, frighten her by revealing his darkest needs.

“Give me another chance,” he said, his body anchoring hers. She looked so beautiful, so completely wild, that when she straddled him a few moments later, he resolved to give her the pounding of her life. But then she lifted her bottom and sank down upon his swelling erection with such unmerciful slowness that a groan broke in his throat. She was taking every inch of him into her body, sheathing him in fire. Sensation overwhelmed him.

“I think the slipper still fits,” she whispered in a husky voice.

“Do you think you can keep it on for the entire ball?” he asked, inviting her to try.

She shivered as he thrust upward, giving her a little more incentive. “I suppose it depends on whether you’re dancing a minuet or a country reel.”

“It doesn’t matter to me. As long as we’re together at the end.” He stared up at her for several moments, drinking in every detail of her seductive
beauty. Her soft mouth curved in the familiar smile that twisted his heart. And while his own body hungered for completion, he wouldn’t protest if she hoped to use her sensuality to teach him a lesson. He welcomed her aggression, a punishment he well-deserved. Let her prove he could not ignore her again without a price.

She raised herself again and slowly eased down on his shaft, whispering, “You’re the one who’s different. I don’t know who you are.”

He grasped her hips. “Your husband,” he said, and surged with all his strength inside her.

She lay against his outflung arm, sated, her mind fully awake. Sebastien slept beside her, his breathing slow and steady. A pleasant sound when one had gotten used to lonely peace. Still, she also had grown comfortable sleeping alone, having tea and toast in bed, reading until dawn when she liked. A husband took up an unseemly amount of space. Suddenly everything in the room appeared to shrink.

“I will not love you again, Sebastien,” she whispered, studying his lean backside. Had his scars completely disappeared? Her initials? She sat up, straining her eyes for a better look.

His deep voice startled her. “I won’t give you a moment’s peace until you do.”

She flushed guiltily, pretending she hadn’t been studying his muscular torso and buttocks. “You’re deceiving yourself if you think it’s going to be that easy.”

He turned onto his shoulder, his tone neutral. “I never expected it to be easy. Nothing else in my life is.”

“I hope that isn’t a ploy for my sympathy.”

“Not at all. Merely a statement of fact which should be interpreted to mean that I don’t intend to give up.”

“We have probably lived apart long enough to warrant a legal desertion,” she said, combing her fingers through her tangled hair.

“I visited you when I could.”

“You came and went so at whim that your own dog no longer recognizes you.”

He pursed his lips as if contemplating her viewpoint. He did not fool her for a moment. She’d caught that wolfish gleam in his eye again. Her husband was heat and danger. Love and all the risks it entailed. She would never allow herself to care as much or cry over him again. It wasn’t possible to fall in love with the same man twice, was it?

He said, “As long as that dog recognizes no other man as master I shall not have cause to object.”

She settled back down beside him, absently pulling a sheet over his bare behind. “The dog rejecting you is the least of my worries.”

“Perhaps, but I feel rather like a father whose own child does not recognize him on his return.”

Silence dropped between them.

She stared into the dark. He does not remember that we lost a child, she thought. How else could he have made such a careless remark? She swallowed, suddenly feeling cold. She’d hoped he might. Neither of them had realized that she’d become pregnant on their wedding night hours before. He had
been eager to set sail for France after their disgraceful ceremony. She hadn’t known where to send him a letter informing him of the news.

She had miscarried in the middle of the night before anyone except her lady’s maid knew. Certainly it wasn’t Sebastien’s fault, but she blamed him for not being there to grieve with her all the same.

On his return, four months after the day they’d married, she waited for him to ask why she looked as if she’d been crying for an entire week. Or why all her corsets had been piled on the bed for the seamstress to alter.

He didn’t appear to notice. And when she finally broke down and told him, he looked so bereft, so guilty, that she wished she’d kept it to herself.

His visits home became less frequent over the next three years. Eleanor’s intuition told her that even if his physical wounds had healed, he hid a deeper pain inside. By their first Christmas together she perceived that her husband seemed more intent on reproving his worth to his commander than on caring that she needed him, too.

She stopped looking forward to his leaves. His desire for her had grown so cool that even on summer evenings she wore her warmest woolen shawls to keep from shivering. More than once in the night she would touch his body, and he would turn away, pretending to be asleep. The next morning he might be gone; she had to wonder whether he had taken another lover because he no longer found her desirable. When they had first fallen in love, he
touched her every chance he could. Then, after three years, he didn’t come home at all. And still she loved him.

But at some indefinable point in the past year she had stopped imagining him in her future at all. Even his voice grew fainter in her memory, like an echo, until one day she woke and she could hardly hear it at all.

She’d felt panic. What did it mean?

She decided she had fallen out of love with the Sebastien she had married. It was like mourning a death, not only his, but that of the woman who had been waiting for him to come back.

She never wanted to feel that pain again.

A warm hand at her shoulder brought her back to the present. A shock sizzled down her back. A handsome stranger was lying in her bed.

“Do you mind trading sides with me?” he asked politely. “I prefer to sleep closest to the door.”

“What?”

“If it doesn’t inconvenience you.”

Inconvenience her? His arrival disarranged every aspect of her life. “But … as you like.” And as she slid over his body, she saw another smile cross his face. “Is that better?”

He stretched out with animal grace, glancing across the room at the furnishings, as if studying his next move on a chessboard. “Yes.”

“Why do you have to watch the door?” she ventured after a pause.

He hesitated for such a long time that she thought
he wasn’t going to answer at all. “I’ve made a few enemies.”

Her skin prickled. “Surely none that would follow you here to Mayfair.”

He turned his head to regard her. The dark honesty in his eyes made her a little afraid. “Probably not. But some habits are difficult to break. I don’t always sleep well at night.”

“I sleep like the dead myself.”

He laughed gently. “Then you have a clear conscience.”

Didn’t he?

“Go to sleep,” he said, his voice compelling. “You’re in no danger, I promise.”

Was
he
?

Her eyes felt heavy. Drowsiness weighed down her thoughts. She could not stop from curling against him when he reached for her. His hard body offered warmth and comfort. His hands stroked away her resistance. “We could have done better tonight,” she whispered with a little sigh.

“Then let’s try again.”

She laughed at him. “The letter, man of a single mind. We took twice as long as we should have. I should not waste time getting the next one on the list.”