A Wicked Lord at the Wedding (13 page)

“You’re not even ready,” he said, unable to keep the desire from his voice.

Her voice dropped even lower. His hopes rose. “Please, Sebastien. We’ll arrive at the theater very late.”

His eyes swept over her. “We’ll arrive there very happy.”

She shook her head in warning. But her eyes
glittered invitingly, and she stood unmoving when she could have retreated back into the closet.

“Are we meeting anyone there?” he asked, the air between them suddenly thick.

“No.” Her voice was soft. Her gaze held his. Which of them wielded the strongest weapon?

He managed to shrug. “Well, if we’re not meeting anyone, a few minutes won’t matter.”

“We can’t arrive in the middle—”

“Why not? Lie with me again.”

“I’m half-dressed,” she protested.

“Half-undressed.” He stared at her, smiling in anticipation. “It’s a question of how one looks at it.”

“One is looking at a rogue.”

“A rogue who cannot resist his wife. Is that so wrong?”

“It takes getting used to. You’ve resisted me for a long time.”

“What an idiot,” he muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“I said I’ve been an idiot.”

He took a decisive step, then another, bringing their conversation to a halt. She bowed her head, submissive or amused, perhaps both. But he recognized desire when he saw it. Steadily he slid his hands up her sides to her shoulders, untying the delicate net sleeve she had secured. Her eyes searched his, acknowledging his need. The unclasped pendant slithered down her throat into the creamy mounds of her cleavage.

She gasped.

“Let me get that,” he said quickly.

“I can do it!”

“Allow me. I’ve missed these small moments.”

“You’ve missed the large ones, too,” she murmured.

“I realize that.” His hooded gaze caressed her. “I won’t again.”

She parted her lips, but said nothing, an omission which Sebastien chose to believe signaled her consent. Staring at her in absorption, he stroked his fingers down her elegant throat and dipped into the cleft between her breasts. She exhaled quietly. She might well have moaned. He wasn’t sure. He could not think properly for the quickening of blood, of his heartbeat, that pounded through his body.

“There it is,” he murmured, wrapping the gold links around his finger. “I believe if this chain lingered here much longer, your warmth would melt even the metal.”

“You are not fair,” she said softly.

He bent his head, rubbing his face in the crook of her neck. “How so?” he whispered, smiling to himself.

“You’re taking advantage.”

He kissed the pulse that throbbed faintly in her throat. “Of—”

“—my neglected sinful nature.”

He drew back, the blood in his veins surging. “Sinful is the state into which we are allegedly born. But neglected—we can’t allow that.”

Did that mean she had slept alone all this time?
He clasped the pendant in his palm and took her by the wrist.

“We’ll have to remedy this problem immediately.”

“How accommodating of you,” she murmured, a shiver going through her.

“I have a lot to make up for you.”

“I won’t disagree.”

His black gaze devoured her. “You were very agreeable last night.”

She raised her other hand to her hair, fretting a little. “It took forever to arrange this just so.”

“No one will notice.”

“I have friends attending who certainly will. Some of them don’t believe my husband even exists.”

He pretended to understand, nodding in sympathy as she complained about the ruinous wrinkles he would put in her gown, about how long it would take to appear presentable again. Her hair lay in a braided knot upon her nape. Hypocrite that he was, he thought only of disarraying it, of how sensuous that heavy silk had felt against his groin.

Suddenly he needed air. No, no. He needed her, trusting again and uninhibited.

He needed not only to reassert his presence in her life, but to reassure her he would honor his vows.

He had always loved her.

He hadn’t always acted as though he did.

And as a man he knew that sexual capitulation didn’t necessarily mean commitment.

What a challenge this was.

“We are not going to the opera,” he said firmly. He pulled her down, between his legs, onto the bed.

She rolled onto one side, barely within his reach. Her elbow pressed into his lower back, an old injury that still ached.

“Yes, we are. I want to,” she added with a winsome smile clearly intended to persuade him. Which only strengthened his plans to amend the evening’s entertainment.

“I can’t go to the opera in this condition.”

She glanced down at the bulge in his trousers. “My goodness, Sebastien. Absence has certainly made your male parts grow stronger.”

He laughed.

“I don’t want to be a stranger anymore. Just your husband again.”

“Perhaps I want to go tonight to show you off,” she whispered.

“And I want to stay home to keep you to myself.” He pulled her back against him, lowering his head, and said, seconds before he kissed her, “I want
you
.”

And what a Boscastle wanted, he always got. Eleanor had overheard a governess at a dance sharing that caution to another lady many years ago in London. The lady had not appeared to listen. Nor, unfortunately, had Eleanor.

She was a Boscastle now herself, if only in name. An equal in passion, she would have dearly loved to rip off his muslin drawers and bend him to her will. He deserved it. And so did she. She could draw out her terms a little later. For now she demanded
pleasure and lost herself with unabashed enthusiasm in his delicious kisses.

“Eleanor,” he said, and she heard the faint shearing of fabric through her dazed thoughts.

“My gown!” she cried as his warm hands forged upward beneath her silk overskirt.

“It’s not your gown,” he said soothingly. “It was my smalls.”

His smalls. She felt laughter form deep inside her, like the bubbles of a hidden brook. “Oh, Sebastien. You are—”

“What am I?” he asked, grinning.

He was fire and darkness. Her soul’s desire. “You’re my estranged husband.”

His breath chased a shiver down her neck. “Trust me?”

“Not really.”

“Do you want me?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

He groaned and finished undressing her with one hand, himself with the other. When they landed on the floor he wasn’t sure how it had happened, but as long as she seemed willing to continue, he did not care.

More than willing. She was eager. Ardent. His wife and yet someone else. What had she called him—her
estranged
husband? He didn’t like that one bit.

He reached up to the bed for a pillow to thrust beneath her bottom. He leaned to suckle the tips of her breasts. She brought her hand down firmly on his shoulder and gave him a good push onto his
back. He fell back, laughing. Her hair broke from its knot and tumbled against his belly. He was breathing so hard he thought he would black out.

“Isn’t this better than the opera?” he whispered with a taunting smile. He lifted her by the waist and brought her down on his thick cock. The slick walls of her sheathe stretched to take him.

She sobbed, turning her head, bouncing gently on his curved shaft.

“My God,” he groaned. He caught her by her buttocks, gripping her soft flesh. “That’s good. Very nice. Do you want it harder?”

“Do you think it’s possible?” she asked feverishly.

“I can’t think at all.”

“Then harder.”

“Like this—”

He flexed, impaling her. Her back arched. She gave a low uninhibited moan. He groaned, lifting himself higher. She pushed down. He reared up, his eyes half-closed, his pulses quickening. Her knees dug into his hips. He increased the intensity of his strokes. She whimpered, her movements unbridled, her body meeting his thrust for thrust. Her cleft was soaking his groin. He would carry her delightful fragrance on his skin all night.

It took several minutes for both of them to recover. He felt like worshipping at her feet. Instead, he lay motionless on the floor, his mind drifting until she shook his arm. He jolted back into awareness.

“Don’t fall asleep,” she said.

“Asleep? I’ve never been more awake in my life.” He opened his eyes, studying her beautiful, unclad body in the candlelight. “And aware. Now tell me the truth, madam.”

“Not again!”

“You never answered properly in the first place.”

“Because there is nothing to say.”

“Then placate me. Put my mind at ease.”

She started to lean away. He sat up, his arm sliding around her waist. “I want to know,” he said fiercely. “I
have
to know. What is this Bellisant to you?”

She settled back against his arm. His body heated involuntarily and sought her closeness. He stroked his knuckles across her dusky nipples. “He is champagne,” she said after a silence that seemed to last forever.

“Champagne?” he said with an insulting laugh. “Isn’t that lovely?”

She turned her head and scattered kisses across his bare chest. “Champagne,” she whispered. “Pleasant enough at first, but its lightness is deceptive, an acquired taste.”

“Spare me,” he said, his anger rising as he sifted his hands through her heavy hair.

“You,” she went on, her voice completely even, “are water.”

“Water?” he said in disgust. “So I am ordinary—”

“—essential,” she corrected him. “One can survive without champagne. But not without water.”

She rose before he could stop her. “Water,” he
said, his gaze cynical as he followed her movements across the room.

She looked back over her shoulder with a wistful smile that stole his breath. He gazed down at her arse before staring back up at her face. “Oh, all right. Water mixed with raw Scottish whiskey. That’s a little better, but not quite what I wanted to hear.”

She shook her head. “Why do I have a feeling that you’re going to get what you want?”

He smiled before rousing himself from the floor. “Why do I have the feeling the day will come when you can’t tell your wants from mine?”

“The day when the gates of hell are frozen shut?” she asked laughingly before disappearing into the closet again.

“Or when the flames of passion set them ablaze?” he retorted with a grin right before the door slammed.

Was her husband an accomplished schemer or sincere in his promise to make amends? She sat beside him in their opera box, contemplating his character. It was a challenge to feign absorption in the concert when his presence engrossed her every thought. She felt rather plain in his presence, dressed in her sweet lilac taffeta dress.

He wore black.

Undeniably he was the finest-looking lord in London, if an utter enigma to Eleanor.

No sooner had they set foot from the carriage than several old acquaintances rushed forth to welcome him into the shallows of the beau monde. One gentleman rather rudely inquired whether his return meant that offspring could be expected. Eleanor lifted her nose and pretended she had not heard the question.

The subject of heirs seemed to be in the air.

She had headed toward the stairs, although not quickly enough to escape hearing Sebastien reply, “Soon. It is my primary objective. Eleanor, wait
for me, darling. Don’t wander off in the dark alone.”

“Your primary objective?” she whispered on the stairs when he caught up with her. “You might have shown restraint instead of announcing your breeding intentions to a virtual stranger.”

He shrugged, his amused eyes searching her face. “What else could I say?”

“You should have just smiled in a lordly manner, and said nothing.”

And so he said nothing, in what he judged to be a lordly manner, until the opening aria ended. Then he slid his hand up her back, to her nape, a fleeting caress that left her trembling inside.

“You were right,” he said in an undertone. “I should have discussed my intentions with you first.”

“You really don’t like the opera, do you?”

He smiled, tugging a little curl at her nape. “I’d rather play than watch.”

She flashed him a look. He grinned back at her, tracing his fingers down her throat to where her pendant lay.

Her lips parted. She moistened the corners of her mouth with her pink tongue. He leaned forward, apparently keen to prove what a player he was, when someone called her name from another box.

They both ignored it.

“I don’t think the gentleman in the lobby meant to be vulgar,” he said reflectively. “Nor did I. I grew up in a large, boisterous family. It isn’t wrong
to hope we will start one of our own. Didn’t we discuss this? We’ve been married for years.”

She snapped open her rose-scented fan, her face suddenly hot, and stared at the stage. “I’m glad you’ve noticed.”

“I’ve noticed nothing but you since I came home.”

She lowered her fan to her lap.

Another voice, young and male, shouted from an opposite box.

Sebastien came to his feet, scowling in the sap-skull’s direction. “This is very distracting. What kind of friends have you made while I was gone?”