Pleasuring the Lady (The Pleasure Wars) (21 page)

But to her surprise, that thought gave her more of a thrill than a terror. She swallowed back hesitation and instead, lifted her hands to the buttons along the front of her gown and parted it in a matter of seconds. She pushed her arms free and sat across from him, breasts exposed, nipples still hard from his earlier touch.

“I want…” she began, thinking of all she had seen. There were so many delights to be explored, but one returned to her mind again and again. “I want to do to you what that woman did to her lover. I want to taste you.”

Miles stared at her, this time his eyes filled with disbelief. She wasn’t sure whether to be triumphant or concerned that she had silenced him so.

“Or do you not like the idea?” she asked.

His smile was one of a wolf in the hen house as he found the buttons of his trousers and loosened them so that his cock bounced free of the confines.

“On the contrary, Portia. I like that idea more than I could ever express to you in words.”
 

He shrugged out of his jacket and laid it on the floor at his feet. She took the hint and knelt there, positioning herself between his legs. She stared at the hard thrust of flesh waiting for her. She had feared this, but now she craved it. She dreamed of it.
 

Slowly, she captured him in her shaking palm and stroked him from head to base. He hissed out a sound of pleasure and his teeth sank into his lip.

“Oh yes, just like that,” he practically purred.

She was buoyed by the enthusiastic response, by the fact that he clenched at the carriage seat as if he had little control. She wanted that control. She wanted to surprise him and shock him and please him.

Since he had already declared this physical union was all they would have, she could only take every moment that was offered.

She lowered her mouth toward him, first gently rubbing the head of his cock against her lips. He was so soft and yet so hard, and she couldn’t help but allow her tongue to dart out to taste him.
 

He let out a cry that said surprise and pleasure all at once, and she looked up the length of his body at him. He met her gaze, and his eyes darkened with wicked desires. Ones that spurned her on in her journey to take just a little of the confident control he always possessed.

She licked him again, this time with the full flat of her tongue. Again. Again. She tried to remember everything the woman at the club had done and slowly she fit him between her lips and into her mouth.

He was hot against her tongue, with a slightly sweet flavor she immediately craved more than any sweet treat she had ever consumed. She began to move over him, mimicking the motions of sex, taking him as deeply as she could manage. As she worked him with her mouth, she also continued stroking him with her hand, using her own saliva as a lubricant to make smooth, even strokes.

He arched his back, fingernails scraping the carriage seat, and swore beneath his breath.

Then suddenly he caught her beneath the arms and dragged her up his body to crush his mouth to hers. As he kissed her with wild, emotional abandon, he shoved at her skirts, finding her bare beneath her gown just as he had asked.

He positioned her onto his lap and she automatically shifted so that she straddled him, her sex stroking his cock before she took him deep inside with one hard thrust.

She gasped at the pleasure of this new position and immediately gripped his shoulders for purchase as she began to ride him. Every move was on impulse—she didn’t think, but only felt.
 

The muscles of her pussy rippled as pleasure exploded inside of her without warning, without control, without anything except pure, unadulterated ecstasy. Her thighs clamped tightly around his and she arched as she moaned his name in the carriage. His driver could probably hear her, but she found she didn’t care. She didn’t care if the world could hear or see, she just wanted more of this pleasure, more of this exquisite feeling that rocked her body like lightning and made her feel more alive than she had before.

He clasped her hips, hard enough that the touch bordered between pleasure and pain and cried out, then she felt the spurt of his seed inside of her as he joined her in release.

She collapsed, trembling, her arms around him as their panting breaths merged into one. It was only the rumbling of the carriage that kept her grounded and aware that they were certainly in a somewhat-precarious position.

She pulled away and looked down at him in the dim light. Her emotions were so tangled. She was at once embarrassed by her boldness and buoyed by it.
 

“Why did you stop me in my pleasuring of you?” she asked. “You seemed to be enjoying it, or am I such an innocent that I misread the signs?”

He shook his head as he gently lifted her away from him. She shifted to the seat beside him and began the awkward task of dressing in a carriage. Without a maid. And with a very handsome man watching her every move.

“I liked it a great deal,” he said, helping her with a few buttons. “Far too much. I would have spent before I pressed myself inside of you. And while there will be times I might allow such a reaction, tonight I wanted to pleasure you. After what we watched, I thought you deserved to come.”

She smiled as she moved to the opposite side of the vehicle and stared at him as he now slowly fixed himself. Damn the man for being just as alluring putting himself away as he did stripping down.

“You tell me so often about what I deserve,” she laughed. “As if you had made some great study of me when we both know that is far from true.”

Rather than laugh or smile with her, his lips pursed. “Perhaps I did not pay close-enough attention to you before, but as my wife, I certainly am making a most detailed examination, much to your pleasure, I think.”

Her smile faded at the flash of powerful desire in his stare. Once again, he seemed ready to pounce. And she found herself eager to allow that. To open herself to him and give him every inch of her body.

What a wanton that made her and how little she cared.

“Yes,” she agreed as they pulled around the corner and into the drive of their home. “I cannot deny that I am most amenable to every attention you pay to me.”

“Then it seems I have guessed correctly on what you deserve, what you need and what you desire,” her husband said, offering a hand as the carriage stopped. “And I am willing to prove that once again, as soon as we are upstairs in our chamber.”

Portia smiled as she watched him step down and allowed him to help her do the same. But even as she took his arm and followed him into the house, even as her body tingled with anticipation of all the pleasures to come, a tiny part of her resisted.

A tiny part of her that couldn’t help but remind her that her husband’s attentions only seemed to focus on her body’s needs, which left her heart, her mind and her soul jealously waiting, and knowing that she would never be completely fulfilled.

Chapter Sixteen

“How do you keep your eyes from crossing when you do that?”

Portia laughed as she looked up from the needlework she was focused on and stared instead at her mother. Thomasina was reading, glasses perched on her nose and Potts safely by her side, laughing along with them.

“Perhaps they do cross—I cannot see myself,” Portia teased, putting her handiwork aside with a contented sigh.
 

It had been over a week since Miles had taken Portia to his sinful little club, and in that time she had begun to settle into what was now feeling like home. And accepting her new life as well.

She spent her days learning the routines of Miles’ house, fostering relationships with her very kind new servants and having final fittings for the gowns Miles had ordered before they wed.
 

It was a quiet life, peaceful, and she found she very much liked living here, being Lady Weatherfield, feeling safe for the first time in so long that she couldn’t even remember it.

Between that and watching her mother relax, her episodes spreading out further and further, she could ask for nothing more.

And yet Miles provided more. The moment he was in a room with her, the sexual tension between them simmered. She was aware of him in every way, from the intoxicating scent of his flesh to the brush of his skin to the way his voice rumbled. Her awareness of herself had grown, as well. She now knew what it meant when her nipples tightened, when heated wetness flooded her thighs, when she could scarcely catch her breath for looking at her husband.

He had taken her over and over, both gently and roughly, in every position, with wicked words flowing from his mouth, and with such tenderness that she had to hide her tears when it was over.

It was enough. It would be enough.

“Good afternoon, ladies.”

She turned to watch the subject of her thoughts enter the chamber. Miles had been at meetings with his solicitor all day and she had not seen him since he pleasured her with his mouth before he slipped from their bed that morning, leaving her gasping for air.

She rose to her feet and walked to his side to press a kiss to his cheek. Fire lit in his eyes that told her it was only the fact that her mother and Potts were sitting by that he did not move that kiss to her mouth…and then perhaps to other places.

“We didn’t expect you so early,” Portia said, voice wavering a little as she stepped away to reduce his effect on her. “Have you eaten? I could ring for an early tea.”

“I did eat,” he said, settling himself onto the chair that was positioned beside hers. “So you needn’t trouble yourself. I merely finished my business a little early and thought I would see what trouble you ladies had created for yourselves.”

Portia laughed as she returned to her seat and held up her needlepoint. “We are sadly lacking in trouble, my lord.”

“Unless you count the adventures in a book as trouble,” her mother added, smile wide.

Portia’s heart swelled at the expression. Her mother had created such a strong connection to Miles. She adored him and was always lighter when he entered a room. For that alone, Portia loved him.

The world screeched to a halt and Portia stiffened. Around her Miles continued his conversation with her mother and Potts, but Portia could hardly hear their words. She could only hear her own thoughts, echoing in her head.

Loved him.
 

No, that wasn’t possible. Not in so short a time, not with a man who had already declared anything deeper than sex was impossible for them. Loving him would be disastrous indeed.
 

And yet, as she watched him with her family, those words rang so true. So deep. So painfully real.

“Portia?”

She blinked, clearing her mind of the realization that rocked her world, and forced a smile for Miles, who was staring at her, awaiting some kind of response to whatever he had said.

“I’m sorry, I was woolgathering,” she said, her breath short. Would he notice the change in her mood? Would he be able to see her heart?

He frowned slightly. “I was only saying that the night will be very clear.”

She nodded with relief. The weather was a safe-enough topic.
 

“Yes. It has been sunny today, despite the cold.”

“So you shall have to dress very warmly,” he continued, locking gazes with her.

She hesitated. “Warmly? I-I’m sorry I must have been lost in thought longer than I believed. Where will I be going that I will require warm clothes?”

He turned toward her. “I was telling your mother and Potts that you and I have been invited to a gathering at the Duke and Duchess of Laurelgreen’s London estate and I have accepted.”

Portia’s stomach turned and she found herself scooting back against her seat, trying to make herself smaller.
 

“No,” she whispered.

The entire room was now focused on her. Potts shook her head slightly, Miles stared and even her mother worried her hands in her lap.

“My dear,” he said softly. “We are expected to attend these sorts of things.”

“Not yet,” Portia said.
 

Her mind flashed to brief images of eyes on her. Judging eyes that burned. Of whispers, unconnected snippets of ugly words like
madness
and
spinster
and
worthless
.
 

“Please don’t force me to do this.”

Potts cleared her throat and rose to her feet. “My lady, I believe we were going to take a turn around the rose garden to enjoy this rare winter sun, weren’t we?”

Portia’s mother stared at her daughter a moment longer, then got to her own feet with a nod. “Y-Yes. We shall leave you two.”

The two women slowly exited the room, but not before Portia’s mother placed a gentle hand on her arm and smiled weakly.

Now her mother was pitying her? She had sunk low indeed.

When they were gone, Portia pushed to her feet and paced to the window that overlooked the street. Outside people bustled about, not looking up at her, not even aware of her in her protective bubble of Miles’ home. But once she left that protection…

“Portia,” he said, rising to join her at the window. “We will have to face Society some time. You know that.”