Private places, p.4
Private Places, page 4
She pulled back a little. “Do you like that?”
“Yes,” he said tightly.
Amelia gave a satisfied smile, a woman learning her power. That was what she never understood, how much power she had over him, how much she always had. She’d thought herself overpowered by him, but she hadn’t realized how much the reverse was true.
She blew lightly where her tongue had moistened him—an odd sensation, but he liked it.
She licked him again, becoming bolder. She held him steady with her fingertips while she learned him a little at a time.
“You taste . . .” She leaned back while she thought. “Like buttercream.”
“Buttercream?” He wanted to laugh. “Are you sure? I don’t recall being iced like a pastry.” Although that gave him some fine ideas. . . .
“Not exactly like it tastes. But smooth and satisfying. How it feels.”
“I think I like that.”
She continued her exploration. He watched her eyes as her gaze flicked over him, her mouth as her red tongue licked and teased and tickled. As she became bolder, she leaned forward and nipped his tip, her teeth sharp.
Michael sucked in his breath. “Dear God, Amelia.”
“Did I hurt you? I don’t know, you see, how sensitive . . .”
He stilled her words by circling her lips with his tip. “Take me,” he begged. “Please.”
Mystified, she parted her lips and let him ease inside her mouth.
Slowly, he growled at himself. Don’t hurt her.
At first she merely held him inside her mouth, her tongue moving on him as it had when she’d licked him. He let her do that for a while, closing his eyes with the intensity of it. He so needed this woman.
“Suck,” he said softly. “Like you did when you kissed me.”
She did, gently pulling him. His head rocked back of its own accord, his body arching hungrily to her, as though he’d never felt the like.
He’d had women. While the harem story was an exaggeration, Michael had never wanted for female company, before or after his marriage. A young, wealthy Englishman abroad attracted attention, and he’d let himself drown in it. Satisfying his body helped him forget that Amelia hated him, that she’d had very good reason to hate him.
But when he’d seen her two nights ago, standing like a proud angel in Preston Lockwood’s house, it hit him in his gut that he’d never stopped wanting her. Ten years, and his longing hadn’t ceased.
He never truly meant to coerce her into this room and have her sitting at the bottom of the bed sucking on his cock. But, damn, he was glad he had.
He threaded his fingers through her hair, stopping himself from thrusting hard into her mouth. A man didn’t do that to his newlywed bride. And right now, in this darkened place, Amelia was his world.
She knew how to pleasure him, in her innocent way. Tongue and lips working, fingers stroking him, she explored from his tip to his tight balls. Urgency rose in him, and he wanted to come. The thought of her swallowing him down was unbelievably erotic, but no. . . .
No.
He wrenched himself out of her mouth, leaving her staring in shock, and grabbed the towel he’d brought for his own relief. Wrapping it around himself, he shuddered into it, releasing his seed.
Amelia’s shocked look turned to disappointment. “Oh, then we will not be able to complete . . .”
Dear God, what kind of man had Basil Lockwood been? Michael swept Amelia off the bench and deposited her on the bed. She landed with a thump, her hair swinging, her face flushed in confusion.
Her night rail slid from her shoulders, baring her chest and upper arms, a lovely, lovely woman. He could tup her all night, and be instantly randy for more.
“How could a man be anything but ready for you?” he asked her. “Take off the nightdress and get under the covers, my sweet wife.”
He tossed aside the towel and raked back the covers. She hesitated a short moment then skimmed off her night rail and burrowed quickly under the blankets.
Michael climbed in beside her, tangling his legs in hers. He liked the feel of her smooth hips and thighs backing into his, the curve of her waist under his hand. He spooned her into him and nibbled her ear.
“A good way to share a bed, I think.”
She looked over her shoulder, not saying anything, but Michael sensed what she was thinking.
“Don’t worry love,” he said. “I only want to make you feel what you made me feel. You don’t have to do a thing.”
She looked mystified. He realized she had no idea what he meant, had no idea what sweet release was. His estimation of her husband dropped another notch.
He wrapped one arm firmly about her waist so she couldn’t wriggle away, then eased his hand between her legs. He used the back of his thumb to tease her berry until it swelled, feeling her warm to him.
She gasped, but in delight. “What are you doing?”
He chuckled in her ear. “That’s pleasure, love. Sweet, pure pleasure. Want me to do more?”
“Yes, please,” she said, her voice breaking.
He rubbed and tickled her, first gently then with more power. She opened to him like a flower, her body arching to his touch, her gasps turning to moans of delight.
She was wet and slick as his fingers glided and danced, her hair at her cleft thick and warm. Some daring women shaved themselves for their lovers—his wife had—but he liked Amelia’s wiry hair, which tickled his fingers.
He took her to climax, and when she reached it, he knew she didn’t understand what was happening. Her eyes opened in surprise, and she bucked and rubbed against his hand, her body knowing what it wanted.
He rolled her onto her back, his body also knowing what it wanted. Michael thrust himself quickly inside her, no need to ready her. Her gasps turned to sobs of need, and he caught the cries in his mouth.
A few more thrusts and her tight, hot body did its work. He squeezed his eyes shut and spilled his seed for the second time that night.
“Michael.” Amelia looked at him, eyes wide, as though needing him to explain.
He withdrew, spooning her against him once more. “Hush, love,” he said. “Time to sleep.”
She said nothing, but her hand tightened on his. The look she gave him with her beautiful eyes nearly broke his heart. He kissed her cheek, then lay down behind her, holding her close.
Whether she fell asleep immediately or not, he never knew, because oblivion took him almost at once. The release of being with Amelia had been greater than any he’d ever had, and it left him exhausted.
When he awoke in the morning, Merriman was throwing back the velvet drapes, letting sunshine stream through the windows. Michael sat up in bed, seeing nothing in it but scattered pillows. Amelia had gone.
“She’s ’aving breakfast, guv,” Merriman said, his dark eyes twinkling. He threw the dressing gown at Michael. “She looks neat as a pin. I’d say ye need to do better next time.”
AMELIA was determined to say nothing to Michael when he entered the breakfast room. Not one word, not one look to bring to mind the way she’d screamed in his bed.
She’d never experienced anything like it. The time spent in his bedroom last night taught her that she’d not known what bodily relations with a man truly were.
What she’d had with Basil had been . . . nothing. The entire act had embarrassed him, and he’d avoided it whenever he could. She realized that now.
Michael embraced it wholeheartedly. He’d shown her what she believed in her heart to be true—that bed did not have to be humiliating or shaming. It could be beautiful and joyous.
She purported to hate Michael, angry at how he’d ruined her life and sent her running from him. But she knew that she’d never fallen out of love with him, and now that Michael had returned to take over her life, she was letting him.
Amelia heaped her plate with food from the sideboard, finding herself exceedingly hungry. She’d seated herself and started in when Michael entered.
She looked up, her fork stopping halfway to her mouth. Last night he’d been naked and untamed; this morning he was every inch an aristocrat. His black suit hugged his trim body in a fine feature of tailoring, the ivory moiré waistcoat emphasizing his narrow waist.
His large hands bore only two rings, the signet ring of the Duke of Bretherton on his right and a wedding band, one of a pair he’d given her the night of their hasty marriage—Merriman had been dispatched to fetch them for the ceremony—on his left. The twin band resting on Amelia’s hand felt suddenly heavy.
On his way to the sideboard, Michael said, “Good morning, my dear,” and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Loading his plate with food, he took his place on the other end of the table.
The ostentatious dining room was so huge that he sat a long way from her. Floor-to-ceiling windows with lace curtains looked out toward Hyde Park, giving the house a countrified feel in the middle of the city.
Michael leafed through a newspaper the correct butler had deposited on the table, like any other husband would do of a morning. Her man in the night with the wicked eyes had gone.
“Sleep well?” he asked behind the newspaper.
Amelia nearly choked on her buttered toast. She put it down and wiped her mouth. “Yes.”
A page turned softly. “You rose early.”
“I had many things to do.”
“As do I. Much business that will take me all the way to the City and back.”
Amelia looked at her plate. He’d disappeared from the house for two days and now he was leaving again. There was so much between them they needed to say, but she had such a horror of becoming a scolding fishwife that she remained silent.
At the other end of the table, Michael suddenly threw down the newspaper and got to his feet. “I can’t do this.”
Amelia looked up in surprise. “Do what?”
“Behave like the country parson and his wife.” He stalked to her end of the table, scraped back a chair, and sat down, leaning elbows on knees. “As though there is no passion between us. All the time I keep imagining you licking butter from my naked body.”
SIX
A Visit to a Man of Business
Amelia went hot. “There would not be much left for the toast.”
He laughed, the exotic man with the sinful green eyes returning. “I would not give a damn.”
Amelia was not used to desire, not used to anything but the ordinary. No one in Basil Lockwood’s house had ever expressed emotion; even Preston, as sniveling as he was, had been merely annoying. No dramatics.
Michael displayed all his emotions; he always had. He might claim he’d run through his wild oats out in the world and was ready to settle down in England again, but she saw that deep down he hadn’t changed.
He’d quit England in rage, had married a woman and watched her die, had sired a child. But still he smiled at Amelia with the recklessness of his boyhood, the recklessness that had caused their parting.
She wondered what his marriage had been like. His wife had been Russian, she’d heard, the youngest daughter of a baron or some such, who’d run away from home. She’d married Michael in a far-flung Baltic province and fled with him to Alexandria.
Michael leaned forward and kissed her, a long, passionate kiss that tasted of marmalade and coffee. Fire stirred in her. She’d never stop wanting him, and she wondered what kind of woman that made her. A lucky one, something inside her whispered.
As Michael eased away, she saw the footman replenishing the trays on the sideboard, pretending not to notice what they did. Good footmen were to perform like automatons, but when this one turned away she saw his amused smile.
Michael touched her cheek as the footman departed. “No need to blush so in front of the servants. We are married after all. Convenient, isn’t it? We can live in the same house day after day, share the same bed night after night, and no one will say a word against us.”
“There will still be talk,” she pointed out. “I imagine once news of our marriage gets round, we’ll face much speculation.”
His look turned evasive. Amelia had learned during her marriage to Basil that bringing up an unpleasant or embarrassing topic sent men scuttling away to do something—anything—to avoid serious talks about it.
“Ah, but we are elderly now,” Michael said. “Thirty and stodgy. What we did in the heat of youth is interesting; the marriage of an elderly widow and widower is far less so.”
Amelia wasn’t so certain. Michael’s leaving England and Amelia’s hasty marriage to Basil Lockwood had been the talk of the Town for some time. She’d buried herself in the country to still wagging tongues, hoping everyone would forget about her.
“I’d like to meet your little girl,” Amelia said to change the subject.
Michael snorted, but looked relieved that they were pursuing a different topic. “No you wouldn’t. Little girl is too sweet an appellation for my Felice. She’s a hellion.” Pride flickered in his eyes. “I hope my friend Fuller’s wife has at least managed to comb her hair. I’ll take you to see her—but not right away, I fear. Too much business to keep me in town.”
Amelia couldn’t stop her question. “What sort of business?”
She braced herself for a husband’s answer: Nothing to concern yourself with, my dear. Men’s work. Basil had said that often enough.
“Settlements,” Michael answered promptly. “I am a duke now, in control of vast funds, lands, tenants, and livestock. A glorified sheep and cattle farmer, in truth, but then, most peers are. I have been attempting to set up a trust for Felice so that she’ll be a rich woman in her own right when she comes of age. My man of business has a blind spot when it comes to this idea—he believes a woman should dutifully give everything to her husband upon her marriage. But what if the husband is a blackguard?”
Amelia hid a smile. Michael looked the essence of a worried father who would distrust any man who glanced at his daughter. She wanted to remind him that her father had felt the same way about Michael, but thought it wouldn’t be politic at the moment.
Michael clasped her hand, never minding the butter on it, and pulled it to his lips. “The other piece of business is to work up settlements for you, so when I am carried to the mausoleum on the ducal estate in Cheshire, you won’t have to play cards with someone like Preston for your bread. I promise that will never happen to you again.”
In a flash, he’d become the generous Michael who thought nothing of tossing gold guineas at beggars. Even the beggars laughed at him for his extravagance.
“Come with me,” he said. “Leave the running of the house to Mrs. Coleman; she’s used to it. Together we should be able to twist this man of business around our fingers.”
Ever after, she was glad she’d gone with him, although she could never have guessed that a simple appointment with a man of business would nearly lead to the destruction of her marriage. But with Michael handsome in his rich suit and his smile and warm eyes, and remembering the incredible way he’d made her feel the night before, she readily accepted.
APPOINTMENTS with men of business were generally dull, and this one was no exception. The best point, in Michael’s opinion, was Amelia sitting next to him like bright fire.
The man of business, Mr. Holderness, was punctilious, exact, and dry. Michael easily talked him into generous settlements for Amelia—a house for use in her lifetime, money in trust for herself and for any children she might have, a large allowance while he was still alive.
Michael would give her more, jewels, horses, whatever Amelia wanted, and put them in trust so no one could take them away from her. He was very aware that women could easily lose all they had if legal provisions for them weren’t nailed down.
When they turned to the question of Michael’s daughter, Holderness became more difficult. He was of the old school that believed if a person didn’t wear trousers they had no business controlling money or making decisions or even thinking. Perhaps Holderness’s own wife was a terror, Michael mused, and he had to take out his feelings on the rest of the fair sex.
Holderness balked when Michael mentioned putting income-producing land in trust for Felice for her lifetime. He balked again when Michael wanted Amelia named as Felice’s guardian—and the guardian of any children Amelia and Michael might have together—in the event of his death.
“Er, it is more customary, Your Grace, to name a gentleman of one’s family to look after one’s children,” Holderness said in his whispery voice.
“It might be customary,” Michael stated, “but I cannot imagine any person better suited to the task than my wife.”
Holderness looked utterly baffled and cast an imploring glance at Amelia. “Perhaps, Your Grace, you will want to wait in the outer room. My assistant will give you tea, anything you like. Men’s business is dreadfully tedious.”
“Her Grace is fine where she is,” Michael said with a growl.
Amelia touched his wrist. “I think he means he wants to speak privately with you, Michael.”
“I ascertained that. Say what you need to say, Holderness. I keep no secrets from Her Grace.”
Holderness looked pained, but cast Michael an on your head be it glance. “I hate to embarrass you, sir, but there is some question as to the—legitimacy—of Lady Felice.”
Michael let his voice cool. “Baroness Anne-Marie and I were legally married in Wallachia.”
“Which is unfortunately part of the Ottoman Empire.”
“I made bloody certain it was legal. I wanted to rub my father’s nose in it. I have the documents.”
Holderness winced, if anything looking displeased with this answer. “Would you mind if I examined them?”
Michael looked exasperated. “I don’t have them with me. In any case, what does it matter? Felice is a daughter, not a son and heir to the dukedom, and I can give any unentailed lands to whom I wish.”
“That is correct.” Holderness drew a wheezing breath. “Are you certain, Your Grace, that you do not wish to claim that your daughter, Lady Felice, is illegitimate? That the marriage never took place?”
Michael grew colder. “No, I don’t wish to claim she is illegitimate, because she is not. Please change the subject; you are distressing my wife. Who, by the way, I also married legally. I may be impulsive, but I am also careful.”
