The Devil Is a Marquess (Rescued from Ruin Book 4) (15 page)

“Why have you not yet purchased another bed?”

“We—we cannot afford one.”

“Rubbish. You’ve bought furniture for many rooms in this house. But no new beds. Why?”

She sniffed and crossed her arms over her middle. “I like sleeping with you.” Her blunt statement hit him simultaneously in the heart and the groin. But she wasn’t finished. “Previously, I had never slept beside anyone else, and you are very warm. I find your presence comforting. Additionally, I enjoy our conversations at night immensely. You listen to me—really listen—as few others ever have. That is why I made my offer. I wish for us to resume our friendship. I wish for things to be as they were.”

“They can never be that way again. Surely you realize this. Consummating our marriage will change everything.”

She shook her head. “I have thought this through. Once your needs are attended properly, your prior good humor will return, and we shall be friends again.”

“Friends.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You are the most maddening woman.”

Suddenly, she was there in front of him, clasping his wrists in her hands. Her touch burned his skin, sent spiraling tremors along his muscles. He wanted to pull away, but his brain could not convince his arms.

She placed his hands on her hips. Stepped into him until her pebbled, tempting nipples brushed his chest, scraping like little diamonds through her muslin and his linen. Then, her arms slid over his shoulders and looped around his neck.

“Charlotte.” His voice was a raw warning.

“Perhaps these excuses you offer are an attempt to spare my feelings. Perhaps you do not want me,” she whispered, her lips brushing the flickering muscle in his jaw. “But I have no such impediment. I will do whatever you need. Whatever must be done. I would ask that you at least try.”

Fingers curling into her hips, he groaned and lowered his forehead to her shoulder. Heaving breaths did not help. Sweat that sprang forth upon his skin did not cool him. The throbbing ache in his groin did not abate.

“Remember that I tried to do the right thing,” he rasped in desperation.

Her hands stroked his nape, her fingers threading through his hair. Her lips moved to his ear and hot breath sent his heart racing ever faster. “Benedict Chatham honorable?” She laughed against him, low and husky, like a siren singing to his lust. “No wonder you are having such difficulty.”

*~*~*

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Go on, then. Take what you want. I suspect there is little I can do to dissuade you.”
—The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to her companion, Humphrey, regarding a tempting morsel dropped unexpectedly at his feet.

Charlotte was glad she wore nearly nothing, for she had never felt such feverish heat. One moment, she was laughing at something he’d said—she could scarcely recall it—and the next, his hands were digging into her hips, yanking her body flush against his. The man was like sun-scorched stone, hot and hard and foreign. Clenching her muscles on a gasp, she settled her lips where they demanded to be—on his throat, caressing and breathing against his skin. Why, she could not say. Everything was instinct and sensation and reaction. Her breasts were fire, the ache between her thighs a pulsing, living thing.

His swallow rippled against her lips, his breath panting and damp against her ear. “Naked. I need you naked. Now.”

She nodded and clasped his head tighter, clenching greedy fingers into silky sable strands and rubbing her body against his like a cat arching into a stroke. Something tugged at her hair, and then it was loose, falling cool across her shoulders and back.

Hard hands gripped her waist, pushed at her. But she did not want distance. Not even an inch. She wished to feel her nipples flattened and pressured against him. She wished to feel that long, mysterious ridge stroke harder against her unrelenting ache.

“Charlotte,” he growled against her ear. “I’m going to tear this gown from you if you do not remove it.”

She ground herself against him, whimpering at the blissful, unsatisfying pleasure. His hands slid from her waist to her back and into her hair. His fingers tightened and forced her head back. She opened her eyes. Shivers rippled up her spine as blazing turquoise ran from her lips to her throat.

Then his mouth fell upon hers, lips grinding, a honey-sweet tongue invading and stroking and playing. She drank of him like someone who had never had more than a drop. Head spinning, need spiraling, she thrust her tongue against his. She knew she was doing it wrong, for her motions were jerky and desperate, nothing like his controlled, rhythmic, pleasurable dance.

A rumble inside his chest vibrated through her breasts, echoed against her lips. Fingers brushed her upper spine, tracing the line of her gown’s edge. They gripped. Muslin tore. Her gown split to her waist.

His hand cupped her nape, holding her in place. His mouth left hers with a jerk.

“Chatham,” she panted. She did not know what came next. But he did. He clasped her wrists and pulled her arms from around his neck, thrusting her an arm’s length away. Within seconds, he had drawn his shirt over his head and tossed it ten feet across the room.

Then, her eyes feasted. Heat ballooned inside her belly until she had to soothe it with her palm, pressing flat against her abdomen.

He was perfection. A chest that had once been long and thin had thickened and hardened into marble-like swells dusted with sable hair. Shoulders once elegantly slim had broadened and now bulged with brutish strength. Ribs once prominent were now ridged with muscle, which rippled down his belly.

“Remove your gown,” he said, his fingers working at the buttons of his breeches.

Charlotte was not a drunkard. She had never enjoyed the loss of control one felt with intoxication, and so had little experience of the sensation. But she imagined this feeling was similar. She could not stop looking at him. Dizzy and nearly sick with want, she was fascinated with every bead of sweat on his skin, the small copper nipples, the scent of him filling her head. Citrus and musk and mint and honey. Clean and male and delicious.

“Bloody hell, woman, this is going to last all of five seconds if you do not do as I say.”

Her eyes slid to where the buttons had been loosened and the fall was … falling away. Heart pounding, mouth dry, she waited for what would be revealed.

His hands stopped maddeningly short. “Charlotte.”

“I wish to see,” she murmured, afraid to blink.

“If you wish to see, you must take off your gown.”

Mindlessly, she clutched the sheer muslin of her cap sleeves and began pulling the gown down over her shoulders, aided by the long slit he had torn in the back. The edge of the bodice skated across her nipples and fell to her waist, where she bunched and shoved until the apricot fabric pooled around her feet.

“Now you,” she demanded.

She sensed he was amused, but she did not want to move her gaze from his hands and his fall and his … oh, dear.

Perhaps he had rid himself of the breeches entirely. Perhaps not. All she saw was his … what did one call it? The anatomy book had termed it penis. That sounded rather weak and inadequate to her given the sheer size and thickness and the veins and the color—

“Are all men of similar … magnitude?”

“Go and lie on the bed, Charlotte.”

“If so, I fear Mr. Cheselden has perpetrated a gross deception.”

“Who the bloody hell is Mr. Cheselden?”

“The author of my anatomy tome. None of the men portrayed in those sketches resemble—”

“Sweet Christ—”

“—you in the slightest. Does he expect his readers to accept a mouse for a stallion as well? Accuracy is important, after all.”

“Lie down, Charlotte. Now.”

She blinked then met his gaze. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes gleaming with a distinctly predatory light. A queer, rolling sensation squeezed her belly. She swallowed hard and nodded, moved to her side of the bed and did as he asked, the linens sliding cool and soft against her skin. When she glanced to where he stood on his side, she saw he was running his hands over his face, the muscles in his arms and chest and belly tight, the long, thick stalk of his manhood extending upward along his belly, an angry, throbbing red.

Quickly, he turned and sat on the edge of the mattress, hunched as though in pain, his breathing labored. “I shall take you now,” he said, his voice guttural. “I will make it as pleasurable as I can, but there will be some pain the first time.”

She sighed. “I know all that.”

His back straightened. “You do?”

“I have educated myself thoroughly. You may proceed.”

Shoulders trembling suspiciously, he shook his head. Then, he slid beneath the coverlet, much to her disappointment. She liked looking upon his nakedness.

But as he drew her toward him, scooting her body next to his, she rediscovered the pleasure of his heat and rolled onto her side to press her breasts to his chest. He groaned her name. She kissed the corner of his lips and the roughened edge of his jaw. He gripped her hips, holding them away from him.

“Let me pleasure you, Charlotte. Just lie back.”

“I do not wish to lie back,” she mumbled against his neck, her hands reaching for his chest and finding crisp hair and hard muscle and hot skin. “I wish to touch you simply everywhere.”

“Did you not say you would do whatever I needed?”

She paused. “I suppose so.”

“I need you to lie back.”

“Why? This position appears to be working quite well. Although, I do wish you would let me touch your—”

“Charlotte,” he snapped, capturing her wrists and rolling on top of her. “If you continue to push, I will lose what little control remains, and this night will prove most unsatisfying for you. Is that what you want?”

The feel of him pressing down upon her, his weight carefully controlled and yet dominating her, was a pleasure in itself. Perhaps he had been right about lying on her back. “I want you to kiss me again.”

A wicked grin—his first since this evening had begun—curled his sensual lips. “Oh, I plan to, love. But not, perhaps, where you are anticipating.”

He showed her where, and he was right—she’d had no idea he would desire such a thing. His lips nibbled along her neck to her collarbone, leaving a trail of damp heat as he stroked her skin with his tongue and suckled bits here and there, sending the most enchanting shivers up across her scalp and down to her toes. But then, he reached his true destination, capturing one nipple inside the scalding interior of his mouth. She gasped and arched, the fire of it too intense. But he refused to release her, now stroking and swirling with his tongue, now suckling until she thought she could not bear another pass, now delicately nibbling with his teeth. It was this last that made her arch and cry out.

“Shh, love,” he rasped, nuzzling her breast with his chin. “These nipples are beautifully tender. They require much attention, don’t you agree?”

“It is too much, Chatham.”

“Oh, I believe it is not yet enough.” With that, he gave similar attentions to her other breast, causing spiraling tension to wind and ache and twist in her lower belly and between her thighs.

She clawed at his shoulders and writhed under his mouth. “Please. Please, husband. I cannot …”

He shifted, his muscles rippling beneath her hands as he grasped one of her knees and drew her legs apart so that he might fit himself between them. As he braced himself above her, he stroked her hair away from her face, kissed her lips and slid his tongue inside. Then, one of his hands disappeared and hooked beneath one of her knees, drawing her thigh up alongside his hip.

She felt the length of his manhood, hot and solid and pulsating, settle along the seam of her core. It brushed against nerves there that had been rendered swollen and exposed, and she jerked at the wild, volatile sensations.

Someone was gasping and moaning. Probably her. But she was molten and malleable, controlled by his hand beneath her knee, and then at the mercy of his fingers exploring her liquid folds.

Squeezing against the invasion of one finger, she grunted.

He broke their kiss to whisper commands in her ear. “Let me touch you, Charlotte. You are so sensitive here. You see?” What felt like a second finger sank into her channel, stretching and pleasuring. “Soaked and tight. Bloody hell.”

“Do something, Chatham.” Her hips writhed against his hand. “I am dying. This is torment.”

His fingers slid from her, leaving her appallingly empty. But, before she could protest the withdrawal, they were replaced with the blunt, hot tip of what was obviously his manhood. His hand once again grasped her knee and pushed it up until her leg was propped against his backside. “Wrap your legs around me.”

Moving her other leg into place before he had finished the command, she felt him penetrating her slowly, stretching her at first pleasurably, then painfully. Her breath caught as the stinging burn grew and he pressed further and further inside.

“Chatham?”

“Yes. Just a little more. Well, not a little. But more, certainly.”

More, indeed. More and more and more in a seemingly endless slide. Withdrawing one inch and forging two more. She winced. The pain was sharp, but not unbearable. It had, however, diminished her heat considerably. Once he was fully inside, halting and panting, she squeezed experimentally.

Which elicited a deep, agonized groan from the man currently atop and inside her. She quite liked the sound. So she did it again.

He gasped.

She wriggled her hips and tightened her legs around his lower back.

“You are trying to kill me.”

She tunneled her fingers through his hair and kissed his lips. “I think I like having you inside me,” she confessed in a whisper.

A moment of agony shown in his eyes before something shifted, his chest heaved, and his hips thrust hard and deep. The resulting pressure deep against her womb and the burning stretch at her opening made her realize he had not previously been fully embedded. But he was now. So deep it was both a new pain and a new pleasure.

Except that he was withdrawing again. And thrusting again.

And out again. And inside again. Harder. Grinding.

And—oh, that was quite … oh, lovely … oh, yes.

The way her nipples brushed his chest, the way his manhood pressed and dragged against her on each stroke. The strain in his muscles and the sweat and the heat. Oh, the heat. It was back. And it was detonating, and the spirals from earlier were gathering, and the sparks along her spine were meeting with the fire in her breasts and all of it was …

Exploding.

Pulsating.

Gushing in a long cascade over a precipice.

Of its own volition, her body squeezed and seized and screamed his name. Chatham.

So much pleasure, she could not contain it, rippling along her every nerve, flashing bright behind her eyelids.

And still he was thrusting, his eyes locked upon her face, one hand gripping her hip, the other delicately fingering her hair. The contrast of ferocity and tenderness stole her breath as surely as the pleasure.

His brow crumpled into agony, and on his next thrust, he withdrew entirely, sliding out of her and taking his own pleasure against her belly with a hard, gasping groan and powerful shudder, his seed spraying warm and wet on her skin.

Great, heaving breaths rocked them both as she stroked the cool strands of his hair and savored his weight atop her, his lips nibbling her neck.