Malia Martin (21 page)

“Oh!” she cried, and he took it into his mouth, flicking it with his tongue.

The wind howled about them, spattering rain against the walls like bullets. Prudence writhed beneath him. He loved the taste of her. A thousand times he had thought her scent would push him beyond control, but her taste did it to him in only a second.

Prudence clutched at his head, incoherent words slipping through her lips as she lifted her hips beneath him. He sucked, taking her nipple far into his mouth, and suddenly he felt her woman’s place clench about his finger over and over.

She gasped, her chest heaving as she throbbed against him in a primitive rhythm that made him desperate to thrust inside of her.

The rain had turned to hail, and the entire barn creaked with the onslaught. Thunder rumbled like a great ship rolling out of dry dock.

“I am angry with you, James.”

“Excuse me?” he said with a laugh. “I should think you would be ready to lick my boots if I asked.”

“Oh you,” she swatted at his shoulder. “Must I beg to have you inside me?”

“Did I not pleasure you?” he asked with mock indignation.

She pursed her lips. “Oh yes, husband, you pleasured me.” Prudence pushed against him, and he fell onto his back with his wife following to straddle him. He was hard, still, hard and aching as watched Pru’s full breasts swing an inch away from his nose.

She shimmied down his body and leaned her forehead against his. “You held back.” She flicked her tongue out and licked the corner of his mouth.

James closed his eyes and caught her tongue with his lips. He felt in that moment like he could live on the taste of Prudence for the rest of his life.

They kissed deeply for a moment. He kneaded Pru’s back, and then slid his hands down to cup her buttocks.

She laughed and wiggled against him. “I would like you to do that to me again only this time I want all of you, James. I want you to do all of it … um … with another part of your … um …” and in the soft glow of the candle James could have sworn that he saw his wife blush.

He chuckled. “If I have finally embarrassed the outspoken Lady Farnsworth, surely the world is about to stop spinning.”

She smacked him playfully on his shoulder.

“’Tis Mrs. Ashley, thank you.”

“Ah, yes, I had almost forgotten.” He squeezed her bottom and laughed when she squealed.

“You ought to laugh more often, husband. When your dimples show you are quite devastatingly handsome.”

“And without them I’m quite the ogre, I take it.”

“Quite.”

James quirked a brow at his wife and moved his hands to her hips. “For that, pretty maiden, you shall be punished by the horrible ogre.”

“Promise?”

James laughed again as he lifted his wife and brought her down on his erection. She moaned, gripping his shoulders, and he closed his eyes as he felt her tight wetness take him in.

She moved above him, and he watched her, not caring about anything else in the entire world except this moment and this woman.

Her incredible hair, the color of moonlight on water, rippled around them, cocooning them in a safe space while the cold wind shuddered against the windows. The storm crashed about them, battering the walls and electrifying the air.

He slid his hands up Pru’s sides to her breasts and thumbed her nipples. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back in invitation.

He could feel the pounding of his heart and the rushing of his blood in his veins. And then his wife clenched around him, and he let go inside of her. Each contraction of his wife’s intimate place brought another pulse of his own, and he closed his eyes and reveled in the ecstasy of the moment.

Prudence dropped across his chest, her legs quivering around his hips. And James felt as if he would never move again.

Sometime in the last few seconds, the wind must have died down, for now there was just a pitter-patter of rain hitting the window. Beauty whinnied from her darkened stall. James sighed and rubbed his hand up Pru’s back.

And he tucked the moment into his mind as one that he would never forget. He did not have many memories that gave him joy, but he knew this one would. And he suddenly hoped, with a strange ache burrowing a hole in his chest, that he could have more.

He smoothed his hand against the crown of Pru’s head, her hair soft and fragrant. “I have never truly trusted a peer,” he heard himself say.

Prudence glanced up at him. “I can understand that,” she said, and snuggled against him. And that was all that had to be said. She understood something he barely understood himself.

“They do tend to believe they
are
good and so they don’t have to
be
good,” she commented.

Exactly. “You say, ‘they.’”

She laughed softly. “Yes, I guess I am one of them, aren’t I? The daughter of the younger son of an earl. The widow of a baron.”

James grimaced. “Earl? I do abhor earls.”

His wife chuckled. “Well, some distant cousin I’ve never met holds the title now, so I guess, technically, I am no longer the daughter of the younger son of an earl.” She sighed. “And I am me, James, not one of them. We’ll not let any of them hurt either of us, what do you say?”

James closed his eyes and pulled his wife’s body closer to him. He was not sure what to say, really. But he knew a hope he had never really felt before in his life.

T
he light was that of late afternoon by the time Prudence finally felt able to throw back the covers and actually attempt to leave her bed. James groaned from beside her, turned, and pulled a pillow over his head.

Pru spent a moment enjoying the view of James Ashley’s bare back. The man had a beautiful body, and she loved to look at it. She loved to feel it against her. His shoulders were wide, and his waist was trim.

She especially liked the dark hair that was shaped like an arrow down the center of his chest. The quill sat at the hollow of his neck, then the shaft shot down toward his stomach, where it whirled around his navel and then pointed straight to what Prudence had begun to think of as James’s handle to heaven.

She giggled.

Her husband turned over and opened one gray eye. “What?” he asked, his hair sticking out in all directions.

“Nothing,” she said, but dived across the bed and landed atop the chest she had just been thinking about.

James’s arms went automatically around her, but he groaned. “I could not possibly do it again.”

“Hmm, yes, I might have to wait a good hour before I attempt another go at it myself.”

James dropped his head back against the mattress. “I have married a wanton.”

“Yes, you have, you lucky devil.” She shifted about on top of him. “It seems that you have underestimated yourself, Captain.”

He cocked one dark eyebrow. “It does, doesn’t it?”

Pru pushed away from her husband, grabbed a pillow and threw it at him. “I am not sure I can take your arrogance.”

James scrambled up and threw the pillow back at her. “Hmm, I’d say you have no choice.”

She whacked him on the side of the head with the pillow, and he went down backward.

Prudence laughed, but jumped away when she saw that her husband had got a hold of another pillow. He slung it at her, and it bounced against her naked breasts.

“Now that is a lovely picture,” he said, and grinned.

Nothing in the world was more incredible than Captain Ashley grinning. It made her actually feel faint, he was so perfect. Prudence scowled at him and thumped her pillow over the top of her husband’s head. He grabbed at it, but she pulled it away quickly.

Feathers poofed out from the pillow and rained down on them. They laughed and continued their fight for a few more minutes until the entire room was blanketed in fluffy white down.

Finally, James pinned Pru’s arms above her head and kissed her, and the fight was forgotten in a moment. She reveled in her husband’s mouth, the feel of his large, callused hands against her body and his strong legs pushing between her own.

Her husband had taught her much this night. She knew exactly what to do in order to achieve the climactic release she now craved with every intake of breath. And her husband knew as well. He rocked against her, holding her buttocks in his hands and kissing her so deeply, she thought she might drown.

The feathers flew around them, sticking to her husband’s hair and shoulders and making Prudence feel as if they inhabited some dream world come to life. She laughed joyously and arched into her husband’s body as the first feelings of release swirled in her lower belly, then tightened her woman’s place and crashed through her.

Her husband spilled his seed within her on a great shout and they rolled over together in the soft white down. Prudence closed her eyes and waited while her breathing went back to normal.

James nuzzled against her neck, one hand still cupping her breast. His own breathing slowed, then evened out.

“James?” she asked.

“Hmm,” he said, sliding his thumb over her nipple.

She gasped and grabbed at his hand. “No,” she laughed. “We must get up. We have to eat.”

“We do?” He glanced up at her, a mischievous glint in his eye she had never seen before this morning. “Really? I do think I have found something much more sustaining than food.”

Pru rolled her eyes. “No, dearest, this will never do. Food is the only way that we will be able to continue on in this way.”

“Well, if it is food that will make it possible to live the rest of my life making love to my wife, then food has just become of utmost importance.” James kissed her nose and rolled away from her.

Prudence lay for a moment watching her husband as he found his breeches thrown over a chair and pulled them on. For some reason the words that had just tumbled from James’s mouth sounded again and again in her mind.
Make love to my wife. Make love to my wife
.

Love. Wife.

She closed her eyes, and suddenly felt fear. This was real. She was married. Mrs. Ashley. She belonged to another man—a man who might just ruin her.

She smelled the dark musk of her husband, and then his lips pressed against hers. “Up, dearest, we shall eat and then return to our play.”

Prudence blinked at James. When he knew exactly who she was, he would understand, wouldn’t he? He smiled the smile that before last night had been so fleeting and rare.

She wished he would smile more. She wished he would be like this always. She wished the real world would retreat and never come knocking at her door again.

James pushed away from her, and Prudence sighed. They would eat and return to their play, and hopefully the world would stay away for just a little while longer.

It came knocking way too soon. Though James had her up against the hallway wall before it came. In fact they had just finished when a loud knock came at the front door.

“Who on earth could that be?” James asked.

But Pru knew. “’Tis Clifton, I’m sure.”

James actually laughed as he pulled her dressing gown together and tied her sash. “Then by all means get the door, milady. You have the look of a woman recently tumbled. It will make the man crazy enough to have my head.”

Prudence scowled at her husband. “You are altogether a different man from the one I married.”

James kissed her so that her knees buckled, and he had to hold her up. “Truer words have never been spoken. Now tell your faithful keeper that we are not finished and to be off.” James turned and started for the servants’ stair. “Oh,” he turned, his expression going somber for the first time since the night before, “and remind him of the promise he gave you. No more Wolf.”

Pru bit at her bottom lip and wanted to cry, but she forced herself to nod and turn away from James. “Of course,” she managed to say as she went to open the door for the person who was now knocking even louder than before.

Prudence tidied her hair as best she could before she pulled the door open for Clifton, but she knew that he would not be fooled at all.

“Well, at least the two of you are going to get this thing out of your systems, then,” he grumbled when he had finished glaring at her with his one blue eye.