Her Husband’s Lover (12 page)

‘He thinks he’s giving you something you want,’ Darleston remarked.

‘But he’s wrong. I told him that I only wanted to watch.’ Panic filled her voice. Emma wrung her hands together and paced. ‘I told him. You see that, don’t you? How could he even have thought otherwise? Why would he suppose –?’

Darleston flipped onto his feet. ‘It’s only been a minute or two. Maybe he thought it important to give us some time. This is a little awkward for me too, Emma. It’s not my habit to let people watch me make love. An audience is never something I’ve sought. And my recent experiences with women have not been entirely happy.’

‘Your wife?’

‘Is not nearly so understanding.’ He cast around into the shadowy corners. ‘Is there anything to drink in here?’

‘I believe Lyle keeps some brandy in the decanter.’ Emma waved him towards the side-table, which held a set of three stoppered vessels. Darleston sniffed at them all and then poured a glass. Instead of consuming the contents, he offered it to her.

‘Take this. It’ll steady your nerves. I want you to be comfortable, because then I will be too.’ He gave her one of those elongated smiles of his that was somehow nervewracking, debauched and charming all at once. ‘Let’s sit and talk this through. Set some boundaries, perhaps?’ He settled on the hearthrug before the fire, his long legs stretched out and his coat-tails crushed beneath him.

Emma took a tentative sip from the glass, and then swallowed a larger mouthful. The alcohol poured fire into her veins, but did nothing at all for her jitters.

‘Come where it’s warm,’ he said. ‘I won’t bite.’

If only you would …
‘You bit Lyle.’ She immediately covered her mouth.

Darleston nodded. ‘Aye, I did, but only because he wished it. He bit me too.’ Slowly he unwound his cravat and released the fastening of his shirt so that the neck gaped open, revealing the bruise upon his throat and the pale delight of his chest.

‘Why do that to one another? Surely it hurts.’ The brown and red speckled mark certainly looked sore.

‘I find the line between pleasure and pain is a very fine one. Walking its precipice is a delight that’s hard to describe. Yes, it hurt, but in a good way.’

‘And when he entered you?’

He briefly troubled his top lip with his teeth. ‘The sensations are akin, yes.’ He folded his legs beneath him as Emma hunched down on the opposite side of the fire. How could he speak so frankly without a hint of embarrassment? Her cheeks were burning and her sexual peccadilloes were hardly being discussed.

By firelight, he was quite the most lovely creature. The burnished copper of his hair tumbled around his face like threads of fire, while the shadows softened the harder ridges of his jaw and nose. Again she felt drawn, as she had when looking at him through the library window on the night of his arrival. The palms of her hands itched with the need to reach out and make contact.

‘Did somebody hurt you, Emma? Is that why you won’t let anyone close?’

Aghast, she stared at him. ‘No. Good Lord, no! No one hurt me. Why would you think that?’

‘Because most women do not tremble if you so much as brush past them.’

‘Nobody hurt me,’ she repeated, focusing on the knot she’d made with her fists rather than the kindliness in his face. What in heavens did he imagine to have occurred? ‘I have my reasons. Not that I feel any need to discuss them. All I need to know is whether you’ll respect them.’

‘It’s hard to respect something you don’t understand, but assuming I manage it?’

‘Then I shall respect that you and Lyle are intimate together and I shall make no demands or cause any fuss over it. I shall do nothing to endanger you.’

Darleston drew his hand through his hair and looked into the blaze a moment. ‘Where do you fit into that equation of longing?’ he asked after a moment of quiet consideration. ‘I can hear the need in your voice. You don’t want to pack us off to do the deed in private. We wouldn’t be here now if that were the case. So make some demands. State clearly what you actually want and I’ll do my best to oblige.’

Dear Lord, why did he have to be reasonable? Why was he even prepared to indulge her in this? And why did the hum of his voice thread her veins with hunger? Emma looked at him, not seeing him as he was, but as she’d imagined him on the chaise longue – supine, obliging, still and yet aroused by her caress. But she couldn’t speak her thoughts. They would only arouse ideas that were simply best not explored.

‘I don’t want anything. I don’t –’ Her voice broke off.

Darleston moved so that he was on his knees before her, his expression soft and, dare she admit it, affectionate. ‘Well, if you think of anything … you know you’ve only to ask.’

Darleston rolled backwards off his knees and onto his feet. His hearing was perhaps sharper than Emma’s for the bedchamber door opened at that moment to admit Lyle. ‘You’re late,’ Darleston remarked, the softness that had infused his words now replaced by a huskier, more sexual tone.

‘One of us has to stay up to see the guests safely to their beds.’

‘Did Father retire early again?’ Emma asked, rising to her feet despite Lyle waving her back to her former position.

‘He did, which was no great surprise. And Aiken and Heath are now securely ensconced too. There should be no disturbances.’

Of course, now that Lyle had arrived matters would progress. She’d only just become accustomed to Darleston’s presence and begun to relax. Now her heart thundered again and her jaw locked tight with tension.
I’ve seen them before. I asked for this. Just relax.
No one would touch her. She’d be like a shadow, clawing at the edges of the room, but apart from their activity.

‘I’m afraid Emma has not been entirely forthcoming with regard to what she desires of us,’ Darleston remarked. ‘I’m not sure at all how we’re to provide satisfaction.’

‘I want nothing for myself. I told you that.’

‘Well, I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but I’ll humour you this once.’

Her opinion of Darleston changed in that moment, but only for a moment. How dare he presume to know her? How could he read her so easily? How could he know what she truly desired? Because he did, she sensed it, saw it in the depths of his shiny dark eyes. He recognised that watching two men fornicate was not her true desire, merely a mask for what she really craved – his companionship, his touch
.

I can’t do it. It’ll never be.

Lyle stooped and retrieved Darleston’s discarded cravat. ‘’Tis lucky then that I remember what you asked for, madam wife. I don’t think I shall ever forget it. You asked to see me fucked, did you not? You wished to watch while Robert swived my arse.’

Emma sank back onto the rug, the strength gone from her limbs. Why did this have to be so blunt and open? She ought to have said that she wished to spy, to remain hidden while they performed the act.

While heat both internal and external washed colour into her cheeks, she noticed that Darleston was smiling. ‘No.’

Her shock was mimicked in Lyle’s face. ‘No?’ he questioned.

‘That’s a privilege you’ll have to earn,’ Darleston said to her. ‘Tit for tat. You have to give something in order to receive. Are you willing, Emma? Or shall I take myself to my chamber now?’

Her breath caught in her throat. ‘What do you want?’

He laughed, his tongue flicking over the points of his canines. ‘I haven’t decided yet, but I’m sure that something will occur to me.’

‘Then how can I possibly agree?’

‘You don’t have to agree, because I’m not going to swive him. I’ll give you a taste of something else instead and then you can judge if you want to take things further. It’s entirely your choice.’

‘Emma?’ Lyle asked with a hint of desperation in his voice.

‘Very well. Show me what you will.’

Kissing
– something she’d never understood, but which she now couldn’t take her eyes off. In some ways seeing their bodies pressed tight, hands grasping, full of urgency, was more intense than watching them fuck. Her own lips burned with imagined sensations of such a caress – deep, furious, passionate and growing in intensity. The ache of their joining seemed to spill into the air around them and raise the temperature of the room by several degrees. Her heart sped, and then hiccupped when they drew apart. Darleston fell onto his knees so that his head was level with Lyle’s groin. Dexterous fingers made quick work of Lyle’s waistcoat buttons. He yanked the front of Lyle’s shirt from his breeches and unfastened the buttons of his frontfall. Lyle’s breeches slithered down his legs with the aid of some tugging. Then Darleston’s large palm swept up the inside edge of Lyle’s thigh with the fingers splayed.

And she knew what was coming, could see it so clearly. He would do as Lyle had described and take her husband’s cock in his mouth.

It was not quite as quick as that. Darleston teased before he delivered. The pink flash of his tongue touched the very tip of Lyle’s prick. He paused there, his breath warming the surface. Even then he didn’t deliver, but placed numerous light kisses up and down the stem, while with one thumb he gently stroked Lyle’s balls.

Lyle’s expression told her everything about how it felt to be held thus. Rapture. His eyes fell shut. He sought blindly for some support, initially finding only Darleston’s head of fiery locks, in which he entwined his fingers. ‘Oh, yes! Suck me, Robert. Please.’

‘Like this?’ Darleston bestowed a firmer kiss to a point halfway up Lyle’s shaft.

‘Not quite.’

‘Like this then?’ Avoiding the cherry-red tip again, Darleston kissed the juncture where the base of Lyle’s prick met his cobs.

‘A tad higher.’

‘Ah, I understand.’ But he didn’t rise up. He sank lower instead and took not Lyle’s cock but one of his bollocks into his mouth.

Emma leaned forward straining to see. It was hard to determine from Lyle’s expression whether the touch was entirely pleasing, rather he seemed on the edge of some precipice. ‘Ease off.’ His fingers curled tight into Darleston’s hair, making knots of the coppery strands.

Darleston released him. He sat back on his haunches and directed Lyle to the armchair. Lyle fell gratefully into his bower, his breeches still hanging around his knees. Darleston tugged them off along with Lyle’s shoes and stockings. He rose upon on his knees again to kiss Lyle’s mouth while stroking his prick before finally taking Lyle’s cock in his mouth.

The very act confounded her. Here was a lord upon his knees sucking another man’s – her husband’s – cock as if it were a joy to do so. Emma shuffled around, needing to know if the act aroused Darleston as much as it did Lyle. The front of his breeches, what she could make out around his coat-tails and the tangle of their limbs, stood tented. A sort of triangular protrusion strained against the buttons.

It did arouse him. Sucking another man’s cock aroused him. She wanted a closer look at the evidence. Longed to see his shaft standing erect and watch his seed spill over his fingertips and belly once more.

Darleston’s hips rocked as he fellated Lyle, mimicking the rhythm of coitus, back and forth in a steady figure-of-eight motion.

If she asked, would he expose himself? Would he take his prick in his hand and masturbate as he pleasured her husband and allow her to watch all that? It took every ounce of strength she possessed to open her mouth and ask, ‘Can I see?’

She had to move away from the hearth, the heat in her body was now so fierce.

Darleston turned his head towards her. ‘His prick?’ Lyle’s shaft glinted in the firelight, shiny with saliva and precome.

‘Yours,’ she mouthed, words barely audible.

He heard her though. She watched the delight at the request run into his eyes, filling them with powerful dark magic. His lips were moist and berry-red as if he had smeared rouge on them, and just for a second she imagined leaning in and tasting them and the essence of Lyle’s sex left upon them.

‘Say that again,’ he said. ‘Tell me you want to see my prick again.’

Embarrassment tied her tongue in knots. She couldn’t look at him as she said it. ‘I want to watch you stroking your prick.’

Saying ‘prick’, that was the truly toe-curling part, followed by the sharp sound of Lyle’s indrawn breath and then a terrible moment of silence before Darleston smoothed a hand over his frontfall and cupped the prominent bulge there. He slipped one button, then a second, before teasing the waistband of his breeches away from his skin so that it slid down and clung to his hips.

She couldn’t see nearly enough skin. Really, she wanted to strip the clothing from his upper body, so that the lines of his torso were displayed for her amusement, but he could keep his breeches on. Somehow that made the act more sordid and beautiful.

Darleston wrapped his large hand around his cock. He worked his wrist, steadily picking up the pace while he resumed sucking Lyle. The sight of them provoked a fever that made her tremble inside. Later she would lie alone and rub herself to climax, the images of the pair of them playing in her head. Now her fingernails dug into the centres of her palms and she squirmed so that the lips of her puss rubbed together, providing much-needed friction to her nubbin.

Darleston’s eyes remained closed while he sucked and stroked, but Lyle watched her writhe, his face full of enchantment.

‘Touch yourself,’ he mouthed.

Emma shook her head. She couldn’t. She simply couldn’t while they were watching.

‘Please.’

She shook her head again.

‘Stroke your breasts.’

Darleston made a
mmpfh
noise in response and tried to turn his head while somehow still sucking Lyle. His eyes blazed as they met hers. The look, wild and ferocious, caused her insides to melt. She stared back at him open mouthed and sopping wet, so desperate for a touch to her clitoris that her hand strayed in that direction without any conscious thought on her part. She pressed herself once, greedily, through her shift. It was as if spring had bloomed all over her body. ‘Again,’ Lyle urged, while he drew Darleston to himself. She shook her head, but then did exactly as he asked. It was impossible not to. She simply couldn’t keep still and remain aloof to what they were doing, not with all those wet clicks filling her ears and the lewd vision of Darleston – fellating Lyle, cock in hand – devouring her control.