Her Husband’s Lover (19 page)

‘What was it you wanted?’ Darleston asked. ‘I assume you did want something.’

For a moment her focus remained upon her husband’s rear. Then she shook her head. What precisely had she come here for, other than to bear witness to this? If deep down she longed for something else, she was not about to confess it.

Darleston made a small dismissive ‘hmm’ and turned his attention back to Lyle, until she drew the shawl from her shoulders. Then he looked at her again.

The décolletage of her dress was far wider than usual, scraping the edge of her shoulders and scooped low at the front to reveal a good deal of creamy flesh. Without the layer of cashmere hiding her bounties she seemed lewdly exposed in a manner she’d crossly denounced Amelia for only a few hours ago; but Darleston evidently appreciated it.

‘Very nice,’ he drawled. ‘Your sister ought to be grateful you didn’t appear thus for dinner, else she’d have lacked for any attention. Now bend forward a little. That’s right. Show me.’

Lyle made to turn his head, but Darleston’s fingers wove tight into his curls and held him in position. ‘Not you. You don’t need to look. You’ve had years to appreciate her assets, and God damn it, you’re a fool for not doing so.’ He tugged at Lyle’s hair until his knuckles whitened and Lyle jerked away. Her husband knelt before her, naked, his erection curving upwards like a white sabre, looking, if not happy to see her, then untroubled by her presence. That was well; she didn’t want to be at odds with him.

‘Why are you here, Emma? What is it you wish to see … or do?’ Darleston asked.

They both knew the answer. It was what had been initially promised to her. She needed to see them fuck. But couldn’t put words to the desire. It sounded so crude, so aggressive. Instead, she floundered, opening her mouth and closing it again without making a sound, while praying they would help her out. Neither man did.

Instead, Lyle mumbled something into the root of Darleston’s cock, and began fellating him again.

Darleston chuckled in response. ‘Yes, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I would dearly like to lick her quim, especially while you’re doing that, but a kiss is a more typical first move, and I don’t think Emma’s ready to allow me even that.’

She couldn’t allow it.

Her heart sped. All the devils that haunted her yelled for her to flee. Yet her muscles locked tight, keeping her on the spot. Would pressing her lips to his really be any different from troubling them with her fingertips as she had done that morning? If he promised not to react, not to press back, might she not dare to try it?

Only he wouldn’t remain passive. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. He’d warned as much earlier. Affection, physicality came naturally to him. How difficult had it truly been for him to lie still upon the chaise and not react?

Darleston ran a fingertip back and forth along his lower lip. ‘Unlace your bodice, Emma. Pretty as your dress is, it’s obscuring the real view.’

‘She’s not a landscape.’

‘That’s exactly what she is, Lyle, a panorama of swooping hillsides and valleys, of pretty chasms and charming hidden arbours.’

‘You read too much bloody poetry.’

‘Are your nipples brown or dusky pink?’ Darleston asked.

‘I …’ In all honesty, she wasn’t sure herself, having never paid them much attention. How they tingled now though, almost as if they were excited by the prospect of exposure. Almost as if they were begging for a touch.

‘She has a brain,’ Lyle protested.

Darleston concurred with a nod. ‘A very fine one, but I’m not really looking for a discussion on politics or natural history right now.’

Lyle rested his cheek against Darleston’s thigh. He shot her a quick glance, his expression unfathomable. ‘I’m not sure I like the attention you’re giving my wife. Observer, remember. It’s rather unsporting of you to be thinking of giving her a pearl necklace while I do the hard work.’

Darleston pressed a kiss to Lyle’s forehead. ‘You know, I hadn’t actually considered that. It is a little crude to be thinking of doing that to another man’s wife.’

Lyle rose to his feet. ‘Everything about this is crude.’ He shrugged in response to Darleston’s frown. ‘No matter, I like crude. Matter of fact, let’s be really goddamn crude.’ He took Darleston’s hand and pulled him upright, then led him towards the bed.

Emma floated ghost-like behind them, hooked on the spicy scent of their arousal. She remained at the foot of the bed when they hopped onto the mattress. They fell upon one another, kissing and rolling over and over, fighting for dominance. Only when Darleston was securely straddled across Lyle’s waist did he look up at her.

‘Emma – floating on the perimeter again? Won’t you undress and join us?’ He cast aside his own waistcoat and shirt at that point.

‘I can’t.’

‘Truly?’ Lyle raised a brow. ‘When was the last time you required a maid to unpin you?’

‘No, no, I didn’t mean it like that.’ Of course she could disrobe herself, but in privacy, not to stand before two horn-mad men.

‘Undress or leave,’ Darleston said.

Truly, did he mean that?

‘You have to give something in return. We established that last time.’

‘We did.’ Lyle added. Both men were looking at her now, one naked, one partially undressed, both potently erect, the hunger in their eyes doing nothing to quash her fears. Tit for tat – she’d shown her bottom. This time they wanted her to stand in the altogether.

‘What will you do? You know I can’t participate.’ The edge of fear crept into her voice, so that her words came out shrill.

It was Darleston that edged towards her, while Lyle turned to plumping the pillows. ‘I know what you can give. I know exactly what you can give and what you can’t. Are you forgetting this morning, Emma? Perhaps I dreamed you running your hands all over my body.’

Her palms burned as she relived the moment. So too did her cheeks.

‘Is that true, Emma?’ A flicker of hurt shone in Lyle’s eyes. Oh, God, now he thought her unfaithful, when the caresses had been largely chaste.

‘I did nothing wrong, Lyle, truthfully. Besides, that was different.’ She stared pointedly at Darleston. ‘You were still. And fully clothed. It wasn’t sexual.’

‘The hell it wasn’t. You left me with an acute attack of priapism.’

Her gaze immediately sought his cock. He stood proudly to attention now too, the head ruddy and taut, shaped just like a perfectly ripe plum. No wonder Lyle enjoyed licking it so, although at present her husband’s teeth were pressed hard into his lower lip. His eyes were narrowed, and his gaze darted between her and Darleston, hurt seeping into the fine lines of his face.

Emma quailed. ‘I think maybe it’d be best if I left.’ It had been a mistake to assume she could intrude upon their happiness. She reached to pick up her shawl, only for Darleston’s hand to close tight around her wrist. She’d never even heard him leave the bed.

Lyle crossed the room too and claimed the latch key. ‘I really think you should stay.’

Stay. She couldn’t move. Emma stared numbly at the circle of fingers around her wrist. No one had held her thus since she’d left the schoolroom. No one had truly touched her for years. Darleston’s hold bit hard into her flesh.

Let go.
She ought to have shouted it. The cry ran loud enough in her head. She knew he sensed her distress too, but still he held on. Then somehow he managed to turn her palm so that it fastened tight to his, interlocking their fingers so that heat surrounded the whole of her hand, as if she’d slipped on a mitten that had been warmed by the fire.

‘Come and watch.’ He gently tugged her towards the bed. ‘Hold my hand and watch me fuck your lover.’

Her lover! His lover, more like. She and Lyle had only ever shared the most polite sort of affections. They had never loved one another in the sense he meant.

‘Rest here.’ Darleston kept a tight hold of her hand as he urged her onto the bed. ‘Settle yourself and then just hold my hand. I won’t ask any more than that.’ Not even to unlace her bodice? Maybe she’d have been wiser to comply with his first desire. Lyle sat on his haunches and watched her smooth her skirts around her legs.

‘That’s all that you want?’ Emma questioned. If he truly only wanted to hold her hand, then perhaps she could do this. The sensation was not unpleasant: his touch was nice, his hand much larger than hers, so that it enfolded hers in a cocoon of warmth. It was not at all like the hand-holding she remembered, when Bea’s pudgy fist had filled the centre of her palm. ‘What are you going to do?’ she whispered, already aware of the answer. They’d do exactly what their disrobed state suggested, exactly as she’d bid them do for her entertainment. They would swive one another as they had done in the woodland. ‘Won’t you need two hands free?’

‘That wholly depends on who is doing the doing.’ Darleston mounted the bed behind her, causing the mattress to dip and shake. He had removed the rest of his clothing, so that he crawled towards her completely nude. Emma stared at him. She had not seen him entirely naked before. He was long and lean, broader than Lyle across the shoulders and slimmer at the waist. The raised brand she’d earlier spied on his stomach drew her attention. Darleston spread his hand across it to cover it from view. ‘What is it?’ she longed to ask. Instead, her gaze became transfixed upon his cock. She had seen it before, of course, but this was different. He had not been pursuing her in quite such a predatory fashion before. He settled beside her, the lengths of their bodies a mere two inches apart, which was far closer than she’d ever lain with Lyle. That knowledge was clear in Lyle’s expression, but he did not seem overly angered by it.

‘For example, if I were to lie upon my back –’ Darleston reclined so that his head lay upon a pillow ‘– then you can hold my hand without impinging on anything. Matter of fact, we might lie here and leave Lyle in sole command of our pleasure.’

‘Sole command, eh?’ Her husband gave a jocular little laugh. By candlelight, he really was most handsome, his sweeping widow’s peak giving way to a halo of golden curls, even if his expression remained more lecherous than beatific. ‘When do you ever relinquish control? Lie down, Emma. You’re making me nervous and nerves play havoc with
amore
.’

She did. She lay down with her head on the pillow beside Darleston’s and looked into his eyes while holding his hand, and her husband grinned at them both in that endearing way of his that lit his eyes with dark magic. When he dipped his head and pressed first one kiss and then another upon Darleston’s bare torso, she jumped a little, sensing those fleeting caresses as though he were pressing them to her belly and not his lover’s.

Darleston’s pulse raced, growing faster as Lyle’s attention strayed upwards to one of his pale nipples. Emma’s own nipples steepled in response, poking against the boning of her stays, making them feel over-tight, so that her breaths became laboured just as Darleston’s were rasping. The heaviness that filled her breasts soon spread to her abdomen. An ache started between her thighs. Her gaze shifted from the faces of the two men to their pricks, which bumped gently against one another. Lyle encompassed both members with one hand and proceeded to stroke them as one. The buzz of energy continued to fill her. It uprooted all her long-held virtues and threw them out of the window. She longed to be as wild and free as the men, to know the heights to which they sailed. ‘How does it feel?’ she asked, not really expecting either of them to reply.

‘Incredible,’ Lyle sighed.

‘There’s no easy way of describing it.’ Darleston stared straight into her eyes as he spoke. He was not quite on the same plane of existence, she realised, but lifted to some rapturous state that she’d formerly imagined was only reached by religious devotees. ‘Say the word and I’ll kiss you there, and then you’ll know for yourself.’

He meant to press his lips to her breast. She shivered, imagining the sweeping touch of his tongue to her nipple. Her back arched in anticipation, but she shook her head. She wasn’t ready yet. ‘I’ll just watch.’ Best her skittishness didn’t destroy the bond between them

‘As you wish,’ he said and turned back to Lyle.

* * *

Darleston held onto Emma’s hand, slowly increasing the intimacy between them. Anything faster and he knew she’d take flight. He didn’t want to wrestle her to keep her in the room, nor risk chasing her out of his life. She’d given him such pleasure earlier – unintentionally, of course – but he wanted the chance to return it nonetheless. Her earlier engagement had lit the whole of her face, turning her frequently worried frowns into joy. Still, like the virgin she undoubtedly was, she trembled at the thought of his touch, held herself so rigidly, wrist and arm – indeed, her whole body – so stiff and unyielding that any attempt at penetration would leave bruises on both of them. It was a blessing, then, that it was her husband he intended to tup and not her. Not on this occasion anyway. Though he’d be a liar if he denied that his pulse raced at the thought of sliding deep inside her.

Maybe he really had become jaded, if only the very antithesis of eagerness could raise his pulse.

Lyle’s lips traced the edge of his jaw, drawing him back into the present. The man had learned a thousand tricks in the years they’d spent apart. He knew exactly how to give pleasure and take it away with the simplest of touches. Worse still, over the last few days he’d been learning all Darleston’s ticks, like the tickle of warm breath against his ear. The touch of a tongue to that delicate organ captivated him every time. On this occasion, though, Lyle was merely teasing, his hovering lips refusing actual contact.

‘Where are we going with this?’ Lyle hissed. ‘Can I expect any sort of satisfaction from you, or is this all fluff? Can’t we say, “Enough with the performance” and cut to the final act? I want you now. I’m sick of drawing things out. It’s obvious what she wants. She wants to see you spend. She’s only ever been interested in seeing you.’

‘In both of us,’ Darleston hissed back.

Lyle solemnly shook his head. ‘In you. She’s lapping up your every murmur as if she can imbibe your pleasure right out of the air.’