Suddenly You (23 page)

“No,” she said, and he laughed suddenly, his eyes bright with passion.

“Then I'll keep you in this bed until you change your mind.” He reached down to the front of his trousers, freed himself, and climbed over her. “You will, eventually. Do you doubt my stamina?”

Her legs spread, and her entire body jumped in reaction as she felt the stiff, blunt-tipped heat of his sex brush against the nest of dark curls between her thighs. She strained upward, wanting him so badly that she had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out. “You are mine,” he whispered, entering her slowly, the head of his shaft nudging inside. “Your heart, your body, your mind, the seed growing in your belly…all of you.” He filled her, impelling himself deeper until she had to lift her legs around his back to accommodate him.

“Tell me who you belong to,” he whispered, pushing rhythmically, stretching her swollen flesh until she groaned at the weight of him inside her, over her, around her.

“You,” she gasped. “You. Oh, Jack—”

He thrust again and again, his body tireless, his hand slipping between her thighs to touch and stroke the vulnerable peak hidden in the thicket of curls. She climaxed at once, overcome with the searing delight of his possession.

Keeping their bodies joined, Jack rolled onto his back so that she straddled his long, muscular body, and he clasped her hips to guide her in a new rhythm. “I can't,” she moaned, her breasts swaying before his face, but his hands gripped and moved her insistently, and she felt the urgent need building again. This time when she convulsed, he joined her with a deep groan, driving the pounding climax into the center of her body. They remained fused together for long, throbbing minutes, their skin warm and salty with mingled perspiration.

Clasping his hands around her curly head, Jack brought Amanda's mouth to his. He kissed her lightly, his lips warm and teasing. “Sweet Amanda,” he whispered, and she felt him smile against her mouth. “I swear I'll have a ‘yes' out of you by morning.”

 

Amanda's small, expedient wedding to Jack Devlin caused an uproar among family and friends. Sophia could not have been more disapproving, predicting that the union would someday result in separation. “I hardly need point out that the two of you have nothing in common,” her sister had said acidly, “except for certain physical appetites that are too indecent to mention.”

Had Amanda not been in the midst of emotional upheaval, she would have replied that there was one more thing that she and Jack had in common. However, she was not yet ready to impart the news of her pregnancy, and she managed to remain silent.

It had not been so easy, though, to face Charles Hartley. She would have preferred condemnation to the gentle kindness he showed her. He was so forgiving, so damnably understanding, that she felt utterly wretched as she tried to explain that she would not be marrying him, but Jack Devlin.

“Is this what you want, Amanda?” was his only question, and she responded with a shamefaced nod.

“Charles,” she managed to say, nearly choking on her guilt, “you have been dreadfully ill-used by me—”

“No, never say that,” he interrupted, beginning to reach for her, then checking himself. He held back and gave her a faint smile. “I have been the better for knowing you, Amanda. All I desire is your well-being. And if marriage to Devlin will secure your happiness, I will accept it without complaint.”

To Amanda's annoyance, when she repeated the conversation to Jack later, he did not seem to feel a shred of remorse. He only shrugged nonchalantly. “Hartley could have fought for you,” he pointed out. “He chose not to. Why should you or I take the blame for that?”

“Charles was being a gentleman,” she retorted. “Something you obviously have little experience with.”

Jack grinned and pulled her onto his lap, his hands cupping insolently over her bodice. “Gentlemen don't always get what they want.”

“And scoundrels do?” she asked, making him laugh.

“This scoundrel has.” He kissed her soundly, until all thoughts of Charles Hartley were banished from her mind.

*  *  *

To Amanda's dismay, the news of her hasty marriage had filled the gossip pages of London papers with lurid speculation. The publications that Jack owned were, of course, moderately respectful, but the ones he did not own were merciless. The public seemed titillated by the marriage between London's most successful publisher and a celebrated novelist. During the fortnight after their wedding, new details of their relationship—many of them fabricated—surfaced every day in publications such as
The Mercury, The Post, The Public Ledger, The Journal,
and
The Standard
. Understanding the voracious appetite of the news industry, Amanda told herself that soon the gossips would lose interest in her marriage to Jack and find some new subject to exploit. However, there was one story that managed to distress her, and despite its obvious untruth, she was disturbed enough to approach her new husband with it.

“Jack,” she said warily, approaching him in their massive green-and-burgundy bedroom.

“Mmm?” Jack shrugged into a neat charcoal-colored waistcoat that matched his trousers exactly. The sleek, powerful lines of his body were followed faithfully by the clothes, which had been tailored in the new fashion, a fit that was easy and comfortable rather than snug. Picking up a patterned silk stock that had been selected by his valet, Jack examined it critically.

Amanda extended the paper to him. “Have you seen this item in the
London Report
‘s gossip section?”

Jack set aside the stock and took the paper. His gaze scanned the rustling page with practiced speed. “You know I don't read gossip.”

Amanda frowned and folded her arms across her chest. “It is about you and me.”

He smiled lazily, still scanning the printed lines. “I especially don't read gossip about myself. It annoys the hell out of me when it's false, and even more so when it's true.”

“Well, perhaps you can explain to me which category this bit of news falls into…truth or untruth.”

Hearing the rising tension in her voice, Jack glanced at her face and then dropped the paper onto a nearby table. “You tell me what it says,” he suggested, becoming serious as he realized that she was genuinely upset. His hands came to her shoulders, stroking her upper arms. “Relax,” he urged gently. “Whatever it is, I have no doubt that it's of little consequence.”

She remained stiff against him. “It's a nasty little piece that speculates on the unions of older women and younger men. There is a mocking paragraph on how wise a man like you must be to reap the benefits of an older woman's ‘grateful enthusiasm.' It's a completely dreadful article, and it makes me sound like a lust-crazed old crone who has managed to ensnare a young man for stud service. Now, tell me at once if there is any truth in it!”

One would have wished for immediate denial.

Instead, Jack's expression became guarded, and Amanda realized with a sinking heart that he was not going to refute the newspaper's claim. “There is no solid proof of my age,” he said carefully. “I was born a bastard, and my mother never registered the event in any parish records. Any speculation that I am younger than you is merely that—a bit of guesswork that no one can confirm.”

Amanda jerked back and stared at him incredulously. “You told me the first time we met that you were thirty-one years of age. Was that true or not?”

Jack sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. Amanda could practically see the series of rapid calculations in his mind as he devised a strategy to handle the situation. She did not want to be handled, damn him! She merely wanted to know if he had lied to her about something as fundamental as his age. Finally he seemed to acknowledge that there was no way to avoid admitting the truth.

“It was not true,” he said gruffly. “But if you recall, you were damned sensitive about your thirtieth birthday at the time. And I knew that if you became aware that I might be a year or two younger than you, I'd probably be set out on my ear at once.”

“A year or two?” Amanda repeated, her voice taut with suspicion. “That's all?”

The wide line of his mouth tightened impatiently. “Five years, dammit.”

She felt suddenly as if she could not breathe properly, her lungs deflating inside her chest. “You're only five-and-twenty?” she managed in an airless whisper.

“It makes no difference.” His sudden reasonable manner sparked fury amid her distress.

“It makes every difference in the world,” she cried. “For one thing, you lied to me!”

“I didn't want you to think of me as a younger man.”

“You
are
a younger man!” She glared at him vehemently. “Five years…oh, God, I can scarcely believe I've married someone who is practically a…a boy!”

The word seemed to catch him off guard, and his entire face hardened. “Stop it,” he said quietly. He caught her as she backed away from him, his big hands closing around her.

“I'm no damned boy, Amanda. I take care of my responsibilities, and as you know, I have a hell of a lot of them. I'm not a coward, a gambler, or a cheat. I'm loyal to the people I care about. I know of no other requirements for being a man.”

“Perhaps honesty?” she suggested acidly.

“I shouldn't have lied to you,” he admitted. “I swear I will never do so again. Please forgive me.”

“This cannot be resolved that easily.” She rubbed her brimming eyes with miserable wrath. “I don't
want
to be married to a younger man.”

“Well, you've got one,” he said flatly. “And he's not going anywhere.”

“I could seek an annulment!”

Jack's sudden chuckle infuriated her. “If you do that, peaches, I'll be forced to publish exactly how many times and ways I've already had you. No magistrate in England would grant you an annulment after that.”

“You wouldn't dare!”

He smiled and pulled her resisting body against his. “No,” he murmured. “Because you are not going to leave me. You're going to forgive me, and we'll put this behind us for good.”

Amanda strove to retain the remnants of her anger. “I don't want to forgive you,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder. She stopped struggling, however, and let herself rest against his chest, sniffling back her remaining tears.

He held her for a long time, cuddling her in the shelter of his body, murmuring apologies and endearments into the curve of her neck and the soft indentation beneath her ear. She began to relax against him, unable to maintain the mortified resentment of discovering that she was the older partner in their marriage. Indeed, there was nothing she could do about it now. They were locked together legally and every other way.

His hands moved to the backs of her hips, pressing her lower body against the tremendous, arching shape of his erection.

“If you think I will go to bed with you after this,” she said against his shirtfront, “you are absolutely mad.”

Jack rubbed her slowly against the bulge of his sex. “Yes. I'm mad over you. I adore you. I lust after you constantly. I love your sharp tongue and your big gray eyes and your voluptuous body. Now come to bed and let me demonstrate what a younger man can do for you.”

Startled to hear the word “love” escape his lips, Amanda inhaled sharply at the feel of him through the veil of her white, ruffled dressing gown. He tugged the shoulders of the garment until her upper half was exposed. “Later,” she said, but the glide of his fingertips over her back left trails of fire in their wake, and the downy hairs on her body prickled in sudden excitement.

“It has to be now,” he insisted, a flick of amusement in his voice. He nudged his burgeoning loins against her. “After all, you can't allow me to go around like this all day.”

“From what I've learned so far, this is your natural condition,” came her pert reply. She felt his mouth touch her neck and wander to the pulse at the base of her throat.

“And I depend exclusively on you to relieve it,” he murmured, tugging at the ribbon tie that closed the front of her gown. The covering of fine white muslin dropped from her body, and he clasped her naked limbs against his clothed ones.

“You'll be late for work,” she said.

His bold hand traveled over the full shapes of her buttocks, squeezing and kneading the pliant flesh. “I am helping you with
your
work,” he informed her. “I am giving you new material to use for your next novel.”

A gurgle of reluctant amusement rose in her throat. “I would never put such a vulgar scene in my book.”

“The Sins of Mrs. D,”
he mused, lifting her in his arms and carrying her to the unmade bed. “We'll give Gemma Bradshaw some competition.” He released her to the bed, gazing appreciatively at her abundant pink-and-white flesh, and the cascade of her auburn curls.

“Jack,” she said faintly, torn between excitement and mortification. She reached for a sheet to cover her naked body.

He joined her among the heap of snowy bed linens, still fully clothed. Snatching the sheet from her grasp, he pulled it far away from her and spread her limbs wide beneath his.

“You can't solve anything by taking me to bed,” she told him, gasping a little as the silken fabric of his waistcoat brushed over her breasts.

“No. But I can make both of us feel a hell of a lot better.”

Her hands came up to his arms, gliding over the muscular shapes covered in thin shirtsleeves. “Is there anything else that you have lied to me about?”

His blue eyes stared directly into hers. “Nothing,” he said without hesitation. “Just that minor, inconsequential difference in age.”

“Five years,” she moaned in renewed discomfort. “Good God, every birthday will be an agonizing reminder. I can't bear it.”