The Countess Confessions Page 16

  “I need air,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

  “I think you need a kiss, and after that a long night of lovemaking.”

  She laughed. Thankfully, he didn’t need to persuade her. She was only too grateful to oblige his whims. At least so far. “What if I admit I’m already exhausted and wish to sleep for a few hours?”

  One corner of his mouth lifted in a decadent smile. “You won’t know what it is to be tired until we’re both unable to move. Why don’t you kiss me and reconsider?”

  “A kiss? Why not?” She rose a few inches from the bed and offered him her mouth. The moment she did he teased her with slow, light brushes of his lips against hers and then rolled onto his back. “You are indecent at heart, husband or not,” she said in breathless resentment. She drew the edge of the sheet over her breasts, as if that would stop him. “And you have the advantage of being properly dressed.”

  “I might be indecent to the core.” He lifted his hand to unfasten his waistcoat and wool trousers. “But,” he added, “you still have the advantage, believe me.”

  Emily sank back against the pillows while he pulled his shirt over his head. “Nudity is supposed to make us even? I’ve never felt more susceptible in my life.” She chanced a look at his erection as he threw his clothes onto a chair.

  Her gaze followed the hard lines and dark hollows of his body. How well made her husband was. The candlelight cast his figure in bronze as he was revealed to her. He seemed to be more lean muscle than anything else. Strong. Firm. Lovely. She smiled inwardly at the thought. A lovely, indecent lover.

  So this was the card that had been dealt her. Passion.

  Wasn’t he what she had asked for? It wasn’t love. Was it all he wanted? Did the thought even enter his mind? Not at a time like this.

  He lowered himself over her, bracing his weight on one arm. She felt his other hand skimming her inner thigh, reaching her wet cleft and caressing her there with feather-soft strokes of his knuckles. The steady friction made her flesh swell and ache for the ending that he withheld from her. Heat pulsed inside her, where she needed to feel all of him. Yet she didn’t know what to ask for or whether she could wait before pleading for some relief.

  “This is nice,” he whispered as he pressed a finger inside her. “Tight. I’ll try to stretch you a little before I put my cock inside you.”

  Her cheeks felt hot from the words he said. Her body was his playground, and he knew that sucking at her breasts while forcing another finger into her body would madden her. He knew that the sensations bombarding her would strip her of her reason. She wanted him. Inside her. Touching her everywhere. Her body grew taut with the sensual tension that she could not endure much longer.

  “Why are you torturing me?” she whispered restlessly.

  “Torture? I’m just making sure you have enough room to take me without hurting you too much.”

  She caught her lip in her teeth and stared down at the knob of his shaft. She watched his other hand reach down to spread her sex completely open. Damien stopped moving. Her eyes lifted to his to acknowledge the invitation.

  “Please,” she whispered, her hips moving, her breathing uneven. “I want you inside me.”

  He slid down her body without warning, holding her thighs apart with his hands. For a moment Emily thought he was backing onto the floor. But then his head lowered between her legs. In shock and bliss she felt his mouth settle on the bud of her sex. He suckled hard, his tongue flicking below as his hands pinned her hips to keep her from lifting off the bed.

  What degradation. How could she have anticipated the pressure that built in her lower body, that made her writhe against his face? The feelings he unleashed were too intense. She whispered, “Stop. I need to breathe. Stop for a minute. Give me time to think.”

  He didn’t stop. “I can’t,” he explained as his fingers pushed deep inside her, and his mouth ate and teased her without the smallest show of mercy.

  “You don’t understand. It’s more than I expected. I didn’t know it would feel like this.”

  “You haven’t felt anything yet.”

  “How can you say that?”

  He raised his head briefly to stare into her eyes. “You haven’t felt me inside you.”

  “You—” Her voice broke on a groan. He was breathing hard, too, but at least he could breathe.

  “Hmm? What was that? I couldn’t quite make it out.”

  She fought her impending release even as she shook in need. She was his wife. It was his right to unravel her. And the day would come, she vowed, that she would do the same to him.

  Innumerable knots tightened in her belly. Despite her apprehension, she was desperate for him. Her body knew, lifting, moving, opening to take the length of him.

  “It will be good,” he promised, and the knots inside her broke, the pleasure of her release beautiful, unbearable, a rush of sensation that left her shivering and so mindless she didn’t realize that he was between her thighs. In a haze she heard him whisper to her to put her legs over his shoulders. She obeyed. An instant later she felt the fullness of him forcing inside her, and she was his.

  “Look at me,” he said with an urgency that she would not have understood an hour ago. She looked up at his face as he caught her wrists in his hand and strained into her. His body went still before he whispered her name. He pressed deeper and deeper. He moved faster, harder, until he thrust a final time, and he was hers.

  He shuddered, exhaled, and buried his face in her hair. She didn’t move. Her body might have resisted at first; it was embarrassing, unfamiliar, but he fit perfectly inside her like the missing piece of a puzzle.

  She liked the feel of Damien’s body imprisoning hers. Could she be dreaming? She felt as if she were half-awake and yet drifting in a dream. Would she ever become as uninhibited as her husband? She couldn’t deny that what they’d just done had felt natural.

  Would he view her differently from here on? Would they mate again before the morning? She wondered whether he’d mind if she squeezed out from beneath him to wash herself in the dark before he stirred again. She wanted to brush her hair. She also yearned to touch his body and learn every inch of him.

  She wasn’t quite ready to disturb this unexpected intimacy or to arouse all that dormant sexuality. She felt altogether possessed, taken. Ploughed. That was the vulgar term the village boys used to describe the deed. It made a woman sound like a field.

  Could she have conceived Damien’s child after their first lovemaking? She didn’t doubt his virility. How many times had she heard Iris warn the younger maids? “It is entirely possible for a man to put a bun in your oven the first time he tries. Many a girl loses her maidenhood only to realize a month later that she’s to become a mother.”

  At least Damien had married her before ploughing—she smiled at the word—her.

  “Emily,” he said, his voice slurred with sleep. “Stop doing that.”

  “Stop doing what?” she whispered.

  “Stop smiling and playing with your hair like a siren. You’re asking for trouble if you don’t.” He rolled onto his shoulder, staring down at her face. “What is it?”

  “I didn’t realize I was smiling.”

  He raised his brow. “I shall take it as a compliment.” He studied her face and the shape of her against the sheets. “I only have to look at you like that and I’m hard. Are you too sore?”

  “Are you wanting to plough me again?” she asked quietly.

  “Am I—” He laughed. “Yes. I am.” He ran his hand down her breasts to her belly and then between her damp thighs. “Do you mind if I don’t wash our scent away yet? I find it pleasant.”

  “Like an animal,” she whispered, trying not to laugh.

  “Yes.” He hesitated. “What a shame you are still too tender to ride me.” He brushed away the hair that hid her breasts from his view. Emily felt shivers deep in her own stomach as he bent his head to kiss each sensitive peak in turn.

  “Ride you?” sh
e whispered.

  He glanced up, his eyes rueful. “Not yet. I have to remember that you are to be tenderly used our first few times in bed. I am long estranged from innocence. You make me forget that fact.”

  “You make me forget a great deal myself.”

  “I’m struggling,” he said, sliding his knee between her thighs, “to keep my depravity under control for as long as I can.”

  “If what happened in bed is an example of what you consider self-control, I am in more trouble than I thought.” She went quiet for a few moments, working up her courage to whisper, “Damien? Have you done this many times before—ploughed other women?”

  “If you use that word again, I will start to think of myself as an ox. I don’t know how many times, to be truthful. Not as many as you appear to think.”

  “Tell me again how you became wealthy.”

  He smiled. “I wanted fortune more than anything. I worked hard. I fought. I invested, until one day I realized I was nothing but a marauder with fine ancestry. I suppose I was as interested in plundering as well as ploughing at the time.”

  “Isn’t that what most gentlemen are like?”

  “Yes. But I grew tired of it. So did the woman I was going to marry.”

  Emily’s eyes widened. In a neutral voice she asked, “You were engaged?”

  “Until I lost everything. She married another man.”

  “Oh. How very cruel of her.”

  “It was kindness, in retrospect. It allowed me the freedom to do what mattered the most.”

  Emily desperately longed to know everything about the woman who had first captured his heart. “Do you still love her?”

  “Let me put it this way. I’d sooner kiss the innkeeper’s arse than kiss her again.”

  She sighed. “Romantic sentiment just rolls off your tongue, doesn’t it?”

  He stared down at her with a darkly unapologetic smile. “Do you want a poet or a protector?”

  There, that was blunt. Well, at least she recognized it as honest. “I’ll take a protector for now. If we live to a good old age, then we can write poems to each other.” Emily knew he was tired, but he seemed to be in a mood that was receptive to her questions. “What did you do before I met you?”

  “My past in foreign service is hard to explain to a young woman who has never left England,” he said. “Several years ago at the urging of my cousin, Heath, I was asked to find out once and for all the fate of Heath’s youngest brother Brandon, and Brandon’s friend Samuel. The family had been led to believe they’d been murdered in Nepal.”

  “And they hadn’t?”

  “I pursued false leads until at last, in prison, a guard’s daughter gave me reason to hope that they had survived. It was an Englishman, Samuel’s uncle, who had ordered their execution. Their bodies had never been recovered.”

  Emily was silent.

  “All I discovered was one mystery leading to another until ultimately the end of the search led me back to England. I thought I would put my financial affairs in order, meeting up with old friends and family, when I was asked to become involved in crushing the conspiracy, which meant assuming a false identity.”

  “Of course you accepted.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you one of those men who need action and purpose all the time?”

  “Emily, go to sleep.”

  • • •

  She closed her eyes. But now Damien was awake and full of his own questions. Would his wife prove to be another mystery he’d spend the rest of his life trying to solve?

  He looked down to see that she had drifted off to sleep in his arms.

  Was it possible that a woman, like a flower, could physically blossom before one’s eyes with the right exposure? He was far from a poet. But he had to admit that Emily had either brought out his vulnerabilities or her hidden talents.

  Now he had to wonder who had pulled the wool over whose eyes and who, when every last layer had been bared, they would become.

  Chapter 30

  It was early morning when Emily finally woke and opened the bed curtains. A light breeze stole through the window Damien had cracked open. He was sitting at the table before a brace of pistols and a breakfast tray. Emily sat up, grateful for the food and the consideration he had shown by drawing the curtains around the bed before their breakfast had been delivered. How had she slept so soundly?

  “Good morning,” she said, poking her head through the curtains. “I hope you don’t have an immediate reason for putting those pistols out on the table.”

  He looked up, his hard face so handsome in the half-light that she sighed with longing. He had already shaved, she realized. His linen shirt and black pantaloons made her embarrassed that she had slept so deeply in her disheveled nudity.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, as she swept her hair off her face.

  Wicked. Wonderful. Uncertain. “Well enough,” she said, blushing at her thoughts.

  “No physical complaints?”

  “Nothing that I care to discuss.” She bit her lip as he rose from the table and approached the bed. “Are we staying in this room all day?”

  “I regret not.” He pushed aside the curtains and sat down on the bed beside her.

  A moment later his hand swept down her back to her bare hip. She was in the same predicament as the night before, if only a little better prepared. He cradled her face in his other hand for a kiss that she hoped was a prelude of pleasures to come.

  “I don’t think my heart can withstand this, Damien.”

  “Neither can mine. But it’s a decent way to die.”

  His tongue penetrated her mouth. She lifted herself to meet him, but he pushed her farther down onto the bed. Still kissing her, he cupped the fullness of her breast in his palm. The instant dampness she felt between her thighs disconcerted her. She had turned into a wanton in one night.

  As if he sensed her readiness, he stroked his hand along her outer thigh and into the warmth between her legs. She turned her head, needing to catch her breath, needing him even more. Tremors ran through her not only at the intimacy of his touch, but also at her desire for it. She felt tender inside, and yet her body’s moisture eased the burn, the intrusion of his fingers to prepare her for their coupling. She started to hide her face in the pillow. She heard him unfasten the flap of his trousers. She wanted to plead for him to stop, or to move faster, or maybe to slow the rush of blood through her veins.

  “Damien,” she said, daring a look at the starkly handsome face of her husband as he stood poised, his shaft in hand, ready to enter her. “Aren’t you even going to remove your boots?”

  “Yes. No.” He threw back his head. “Will you forgive me if I don’t?”

  “I think boots might leave marks on the bedding.”

  “Emily, please. This is not something you’re supposed to think about. At least not when I’m ready to burst.” He inhaled. His eyes locked with hers. “Tell me if this is too soon. Tell me that I am causing you discomfort. But do not expect me to care that my boots might damage the blessed sheets. I can afford to replace them. Do you want me or not?”

  She glanced down from his face to his flat stomach and full erection, and nodded before she closed her eyes. There was no point in denying with words what her carnal self had so unashamedly admitted.

  “Thank you.” His raw voice quickened her pulse. The bed clothes slithered to the floor. “Place your legs around me, Emily.”

  His sexual power pulled her from the mist that permeated her thoughts. She had unlocked her knees and lifted her legs to grip his buttocks when she felt his deep thrust inside her.

  “Sweetness,” he whispered in a low voice, sheathing himself in her depths.

  His untamed sexuality made her shiver, made her feel a little wild. She raised her bottom from the bed to take as much of him inside her as she could. He kissed her again, groaning into her mouth, and gave her more than she expected. She swallowed a cry. It hurt a little, but her body wanted more. Her body
needed every inch of him.

  “God,” he muttered, withdrawing only to surge back inside her.

  Sensation took over. She put one hand over her face, certain he would pummel her through the mattress. She would beg him in silence for more and more until she broke into pieces.

  “I’m going to fill you with come,” he said above her, his voice deep, distant.

  She spiraled out of control. She grasped his wrist with her other hand, whether holding on to him or holding herself back, she was at a loss to know.

  • • •

  He was still buried inside her when Emily worked up the nerve to open her eyes. He offered her a smile that filled her with sweet humiliation, as though to say he knew he’d unhinged her and would do so whenever he pleased.

  She met his stare. “You don’t have to gloat.”

  “A gentleman doesn’t gloat.”

  She laughed in reluctance. “But he does rob a lady of her reason?”

  “Yes. Of course. It’s only fair when she has disarmed him of his wits. I’m sorry to tell you that now we must get dressed. I’ve lost track of time since yesterday afternoon.”

  Emily sighed as he withdrew from her and refastened his trousers. How easy it was for a man to take his pleasure and return to the ordinary world. But had he implied that she had been responsible for their mutual loss of control? If he needed time to adjust to her innocence, then surely she could reciprocate and make accommodations for his impropriety.

  She put on her robe and went to the washstand, grateful to see soap and fresh water for her toilet. Her hair needed brushing, and she was wishing for her maid when Damien cleared his throat.

  “You might want to move a bit faster than usual,” he said. “I’ve invited your brother, your maid, and Winthrop to take luncheon with us before we set out on the road.”