Bound to Be a Groom (7 page)

Sebastian had a way about him, a military efficiency beneath his amusement that led Anna to hope he, if anyone, could make that happen. Somehow.

She turned back to Isabella. “Yes. This is what I want.”

Isabella still was not convinced. She opened her mouth, but her husband interrupted before she could elaborate on her displeasure.

“There. Everyone is happy.” Javi spoke quickly, as if he’d handily repaired a wheel on a carriage and now they would all make it to the ball in a timely fashion.

Isabella stared at Anna, silently willing her to say more. When Anna did not, Isabella turned on her husband, opening her mouth again, obviously on the verge of saying something pointed and rude. Before she said a word, however, she must have caught the look of feral delight in Javi’s eyes.

“Think before you speak, my darling wife.”

Anna watched as some powerful, unspoken negotiation passed between them. Isabella looked as if she wanted to lose her temper further, maybe even to vex her husband on purpose, but then her face changed. The heady desire that passed between bride and groom permeated the huge room. Javi smiled, almost willing her to defy him.

In a moment of near magic, Isabella transformed her entire being from a bundle of petulance to noble grace. She lowered herself into a delicate curtsey. “My lord.” She bowed her head without a hint of irony and stayed perfectly still in that lowered position. Javi trailed one finger along her pale, elegant neck, and she shivered visibly at the light touch.

When he looked up to see Sebastian and Anna, Javi was already beginning to remove one of his leather gloves. “Please leave us,” he said, dismissing them with a brief nod.

Sebastian laughed, and Anna gasped. He pulled her along with him as they headed out of the library. Anna kept glancing over her shoulder as they crossed the large room. She was enthralled by Isabella in that completely beatific pose, holding her head at that exquisitely submissive angle while Javi stalked around her, removing his other glove, then trailing the soft leather along Isabella’s neck and shoulders.

“Enough gawking for now, my dear.” Sebastian’s amused voice pulled her back from that strangely alluring tableau. He closed the door and surprised her by pulling her into a warm embrace, his back against the stone wall and her body flush up against his front. “Do you want to be the one on your knees or the one with the glove?” he asked, his breath hot and his voice eager between kisses.

“The glove . . .” Her words escaped on a moan that betrayed the truth of them.

He laughed low and raw against her neck, kissing her and licking her. “I suspected as much. How delightfully convenient . . .”

Anna inhaled sharply, unable to believe his words. “You . . . you would kneel for me . . . like that?”

“Oh, my dear. I believe kneeling is the veriest start of what I will do to please you.”

Her mind flooded with images: Sebastian perfectly still and beautiful for her, like Isabella had been for Javi, like Pia had been for Anna in the past. So willing, so pliant, so receptive . . . Oh, the possibilities. Anna’s face clouded in guilt when she thought of Pia in those same positions, so eager and loving. Could Anna be so changeable, so easily distracted from the one person who had brought her the only joy she’d ever known?

“What is it, love?” Sebastian stared into her eyes. “Is it your lover? Do you miss Pia?”

She nodded but firmed her lips. “I will try to learn to forget her. I have accepted your offer. There is nothing more to be done.”

He narrowed his eyes, and her heart began to speed up. “There is always more to be done, my love.”

“What can possibly be done? Pia has no connections, no family to speak of. How will she ever escape the convent now if I should abandon her?”

“Why would you abandon her?”

“Why? What? Because I have agreed to marry you—” Anna was becoming frantic with a mix of hope and fear.

“Shhh,” he soothed. “We three shall live together, of course.” His hands were roving across her ribs and waist, touching her everywhere. “With Pia as your companion—
our
companion, if I’m to be truly blessed—but nothing untoward as far as the outside world is concerned. I shall write a letter to the abbess right after supper to let her know of our betrothal and our eager wish to have Pia as a member of our household. Nothing to it.”

Anna’s mind had been so knotted for so long. Convoluted plans and machinations were the only remedies at her disposal. She wanted to rail against the injustice of a society that kept her and Pia locked behind walls while this man could move human beings like chess pieces with the flick of his quill.

But she would take. And take some more. Perhaps that made her complicit in her own oppression, but she was no fool. This man was giving her his power, asking her to take it.
Kneeling is the veriest start . . .

Her thoughts crystallized as he found her wet heat again. He’d slipped his ungloved hand under her dress while she’d been thinking. “We are in the hall, my lord . . .” Her breath was short.

“Are we? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Yes, write the letter, Sebastian. You will make me a very happy woman.” She rested her palm over his heart and felt it accelerate at her praise. “Very happy,” she repeated in a lower tone of voice.

“Let me pleasure you once again before we have to sit through that interminable wedding supper. Please.” The combination of his supplicating voice and the not-so-distant murmur of other guests who could happen upon them at any moment whipped her into a new froth of desire. “You like that we are risking discovery, don’t you?” he whispered, teasing her silky flesh with his strong fingers.

She bit his earlobe, hard, in reply, reveling in his answering moan of pain-pleasure. “Let’s see which one of us enjoys the risk more,” she challenged. “Open your trousers and let me hold your cock while you pleasure me with your hand.”

And, oh, how he wanted to be told to do it. His breathless hesitation was glorious. She licked his earlobe where she’d bitten him. “Now.”

He let out a stifled cry of submission and quickly unbuttoned the placket of his trousers. She adjusted her skirts so he was mostly concealed if anyone passed by the other end of the long hall. And then his greedy mouth was on hers, his fingers finding her again through the layers of fabric, her hand wrapped tight around his hard length as she pumped him until he begged for release.

“No,” she growled, wanting to drag out his pleasure until he was beyond desperation.

He turned his hand inside her and pumped into her with the same rhythm she was using on him. She cried out, the sound muffled by his kiss, and then felt the slick warmth of his release coat her hand a few seconds later.

He let his hand rest amid the heat and pressure of the layers of fabric, as he recovered from a white-hot grip of desire unlike any he’d ever imagined. When he’d felt her shudder and pulse against his fingers, his cock had exploded in an answering cry. He moaned against her mouth, drawing out every last remnant of her pleasure with long strokes of his fingers. He’d always loved the taste and smell of women, but this woman was something else entirely. After one final kiss of appreciation against her swollen lips, he pulled his hand out from under her skirts. He used the wall like the back of a chair and squatted to adjust his trousers and rebutton himself. When he finished, he rested his forearms against his bent knees and tried to catch his breath.

“Come here, my sweet.” Her voice was so gentle and loving, so different from the commanding growl he’d responded to moments before. He loved them both.

He rose up to his full height.

“Clean me,” she whispered. She held out the delicate hand she had used to grip his cock, and he stared at the glistening evidence of his release.

“What would you have me do?” His voice cracked, unable to conceal his interest.

“Taste yourself on me.” She put her fingers into his mouth, and he was lost to the sensation of it, his eyes drifting closed as he entered that dream state she seemed to be able to hurl him into whenever it pleased her. “I think we shall get along admirably, don’t you?”

He sucked her slowly, licking between her fingers, along her palm, and then around each of the sensitive tips. He finished with a hot kiss into her palm. “Yes,” he finally answered. “I believe we shall get along splendidly. Especially once I contact the convent, and the three of us are joined.”

She dove at him then, devouring his mouth with kisses of gratitude and renewed pleasure. “Three,” she whispered between kisses. “Think of it.”

“Believe me,” he said on a low laugh. “I have.”

As she kissed him more deeply, he sensed that she was floating back into the current of sensual desire, tasting the two of them on his lips. “Oh my, you are delicious,” she said, her voice full of wonder.

He laughed at the back of his throat. “Perhaps you think
yourself
delicious.”

“No,” she whispered, “I think you and I mixed together . . . we are something else entirely . . . delicious . . .”

Many long hours later, Sebastian got Anna almost to himself in a far corner of the bustling postprandial drawing room. He let her know that he’d sent a courier with letters to his parents in Madrid and to the abbess of the convent in Burgos, telling them of his intention to marry her. He’d also told the abbess that his fiancée’s dear friend Pia was needed in their entourage and that they would arrive four weeks hence to retrieve her.

“Oh, I wish I could’ve written a short postscript to Pia.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t think of it.”

Anna smiled at his contrition, and it warmed his blood. “It’s probably best that I stay silent,” she added after a few seconds, looking out across the crowded room, sparkling with candlelight and bejeweled aristocrats.

“Why is that, darling?” Already he longed to touch her whenever they spoke.

She must have sensed it. Anna reached out and skimmed a finger near his waist, knowing he was standing at an angle that prevented any of the people in the room from seeing the small contact. He felt the slight touch reverberate through every muscle in his body.

She smiled at his reaction, then withdrew her hand and continued. “I probably would have been overly effusive in my correspondence. I’m fairly certain the abbess was beginning to suspect something
untoward
had developed between the two of us. If I’d given the cruel woman any reason to suspect more, I know she would do everything in her power to prevent our happiness.”

“I believe my request shall not be denied.”

Anna raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

“I mentioned how the extent of my gratitude at having secured the affections of my future wife would only be exceeded by my generosity to the convent upon my arrival to retrieve her dear companion.”

Anna’s smile was complicit. “You are a naughty one, aren’t you? Do you always get what you want?”

He shrugged, the thrill of pleasing her simmering to the surface once again. “If it means fulfilling your desires, then yes. I shan’t stop at anything.”

She leaned in slightly and whispered, “You will be rewarded handsomely, Sebastian.”

He shivered and stood up taller, regaining his composure as an elderly aristocrat from Madrid passed nearby.