That Kind of Woman (37 page)

When he lay next to her and she had caught her breath, she turned to him and murmured, “What of the ‘restraint’ of married love?”

He nuzzled her nose with his and she breathed in the scent of her own desire. “Ours is a wedding that breaks all the foolish rules. Why need there be any difference between a wife and a mistress in bed?”

“Why indeed?” She pleasured him with her hand and watched the rapture transform his face. Then she caressed the silk-soft sac between his thighs as she took him deep within her mouth.

He pulled her away, and they kissed and touched and tormented each other until neither could bear it a moment longer. Still, they held back, their breath harsh, their sighs broken as he moved above her and filled her with tantalizing slowness. Miranda locked her legs high up around his back so he could plunge deeply, withdraw gradually, then plunge again.

They hovered, neither willing to fly without the other. Just when Miranda felt all control slip, Andrew quickened the pace, slamming into her again and again until there was nothing left of her but pure, throbbing sensation—something far beyond mere pleasure.

A half-hour later, Andrew returned to the party. He explained that his bride had also overexerted herself and had a slight headache, but she would be down shortly.

Upstairs, Miranda scrutinized Lizzie’s handiwork and decided the maid had come as close as she possibly could to re-creating the hairstyle Miranda had worn when she had left the dining room. However, nothing could erase the rosy glow that lingered in her cheeks and over her breasts. When she rejoined the revelers long after dessert, her mother chuckled softly and Lettie pursed her lips so tightly she might have been sucking on a lemon. The Throckmortons were just in the process of bidding everyone good night, so Henry barely spared his mother a glance before he tripped out the door to assist Amelia into the carriage. Amelia’s father took one look at Miranda and hastened after Henry, apparently deciding it was unwise to allow a Carrington man a moment alone with a woman.

It was hardly worth getting dressed again,
Miranda thought.

“I take it you won’t need me to help you get ready tonight,” Barbara said softly as she and Miranda stood side by side, waving to the departing guests.

Miranda laughed. “My husband has proven himself quite adept as a lady’s maid—at least where undressing is concerned.”

Barbara turned her daughter to face her. “You have everything you want now, don’t you?”

Miranda nodded. “And I intend to keep it.”

“Oh, I do not think you have a thing to worry about. He is madly in love with you, my dear. I can’t imagine he’ll ever be tempted to stray.”

“Like Montheath, I hope.”

“Monty?”

“I don’t think you ever had anything to worry about either. I imagine he was at your mercy from the very beginning. We are daring women, we Henley Harlots. We are intelligent and confident and brazenly sensual. You taught me to be all of those things, and I think I am about to discover that they are as important to being a wife as they are to being a mistress.”

“Well, then, perhaps I was not so hopeless a mother after all.”

The two women embraced, holding each other a moment before Barbara bristled at the unaccustomed sentiment between them and broke away. “I imagine your husband has a good bit of play still left in him, although you naughty children have already sneaked off and had your wedding night. Off to bed again! If you wait much longer, you risk stumbling across your father and me in some dark alcove on your way to your chambers.”

“Mother!”

But there was no time for too much indignation. Miranda gave Andrew a slow, sly smile, and then they were following her mother’s orders and hustling up the stairs.

Paula Reed is an English teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. After surviving the tragic shooting there, she, not unlike many students and teachers who were there that day, decided the time to pursue all of one’s true passions is now. Paula’s passions are teaching and writing.

Visit her Website at
http://paula-reed.com
.