The Seduction of His Wife (30 page)

“Dante and I wanted to see if Waverly was still in residence at his estate. We made some inquiries.”

“I would think after yesterday that he’d stay away permanently. Are you worried he’ll come back?”

“There’s that too-trusting nature of yours again.” Richard shook his head in disapproval. “Waverly’s bound to make another appearance. I’m sorry you and your sisters ever had to be in his company.”

“The only thing I’m surprised about was his ability to trick us into thinking him a friend.”

Emma had never made such a bad judgment of someone before.

“He’s clever when he needs to be. It would have been no hardship to fool everyone around him. For short bursts of time, at any rate.”

Richard walked toward her, like a lion tracking a gazelle separated from the herd. For some reason she knew it was imperative to hold her ground, sure and steady, though inside she wanted to dash across the room and out of his reach. She knew what he was about, what he planned to do. Seduce her into not thinking clearly.

She desperately wanted to know what Richard’s intentions were for their future. If a baby did not grow in her belly from their unions, would he leave? If she wasn’t pregnant, would they still petition for a divorce? Did she have it in her to make such a permanent break from Richard? She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to do that. Strong enough to hold herself together when he left again.

What a foolish woman she was. She was letting her heart rule her better judgment. This could only end badly for her. She didn’t trust the feelings running rampant in her mind. They were all conflicting and confusing.

So focused was she on her own thoughts, she didn’t realize how close Richard was until he dropped to his knees between her thighs. There was nothing lascivious, nothing mischievous about his intentions if his calm presence was anything to go by.

Wrapping his arms around her waist, he did nothing more than put his head in her lap and sigh. She didn’t know how to handle her husband. He was usually more playful and teasing, and when he wasn’t those things, he was demanding and far too domineering. Never did he act as though he needed her for any sort of compassionate embrace. Setting her hands on his shoulders, she rubbed them soothingly, venturing higher to run her fingers through his dark hair and massage his scalp.

“That feels good, Emma.” His voice was muffled since he spoke into her lap.

“Is there something I can do for you?”

“This. I like this. No one has ever let me hold them for a while. Not that I’ve ever wanted to hold just anyone.”

He pulled her in tighter to his body, putting her so close to the edge of the mattress that she’d have fallen to the floor had Richard not been holding her in place. She liked to be needed by her husband. Liked that she could simply hold him if he needed that kind of comfort from her. He’d never needed her in any capacity before this. Not as a true wife, a lover, or a friend. He’d never seemed to need her—really need her—before now. Before tonight.

Then he pulled her from the bed to sit astride his thighs. Her hands still threaded lightly through his hair, allowing her to keep her husband close.

What a horrible place she had put herself in. She was irrevocably in love with her husband. It would tear her apart from the inside out when they parted ways.

Richard’s dark eyes focused on her, their faces inches apart. He didn’t apologize for his actions or the lust radiating from his body. Tension bunched the muscles of his thighs and arms as he held her.

She should ask him about their future. Ask him about his plans. Would he tell her he still didn’t know? His answer was likely to wrench at her heart. She would wait. Wait to see if she was pregnant.

“I must confess,” she said. “I always thought that our intimacies would never change from our first night together.”

“Who led you to believe such a lie?”

“It’s what I always believed.” She dropped her gaze to his chest, and stared at the dark coarse hair, and traced her fingers through it.

“You must have thought me a veritable fiend. Rutting for my own pleasure, without a care for yours.”

“I don’t think you a monster, Richard.” She circled her finger around his nipple; it was so tiny compared to hers. He closed his eyes, hands tightening around her back. “Simply a man with desires.”

“I was angry the day we were married. I knew I’d hurt you, but didn’t know how to comfort you.”

“Angry because you had to marry me?” she ventured.

He shook his head. “With my father. You were too young. I felt like a monster having to take your innocence.”

“The only parent to blame was my father. He insisted we marry because he thought he’d be dead before the year was out. He didn’t want me to go into another year of mourning after my mother’s death. I think he was afraid you’d find another woman to marry in London.”

His fingers were drawing lazy patterns on her bare hip, under her shirt. “We always did have that in common. Crazy fathers.”

“Your father wasn’t so bad. He was very kind to me over the years.” Emma ran her fingers through the hair between his pectorals. It was too tempting to ignore any longer.

Hands moving from her hips, Richard brushed the sides of her unbound breasts. His hands roamed over the back of her shoulder blades, then higher till his hands rested on her scalp. His fingers tangled through her hair.

Her lips parted to ask him something, anything to break the silence. He pulled her head closer to his. The slide of his tongue against hers set her body afire. She liked kissing her husband; she liked doing things a countess probably ought not do. Instead of worrying, she hesitantly explored his tongue with her own. The taste of whiskey was faint in his mouth.

She would have kept exploring him like this if he hadn’t pushed his groin up into hers. She tried to scramble off his lap at the rough scratch of his trousers against her very naked womanhood.

“Stay with me like this,” he whispered between heated kisses. “Let me make love to you this way. Right here. Right now. Clothes on, lights burning bright, everything as it is. Just let me have everything of you tonight.”

She settled back into his lap with the soothing, pleading tone in his voice. Biting her lip, she looked him in the eye. His gaze was expectant. As though he couldn’t bear for her to reject this small concession.

If she did this, she knew without a doubt that there would be no turning back to the proper marriage she’d always envisioned. This would change things between them. Not that the games they’d played at yesterday and this afternoon hadn’t put her on this path to begin with. But something about this seemed different.

“Only if you kiss me like that again. I love when you kiss me that way.”

When he smiled back at her, all the tired lines around his eyes smoothed out. “I will do so much more if you’ll trust me. Permit me leave to pleasure you in all the ways I can think of.” He demonstrated his desire by running his hands up the sides of her thighs, slipping them around to grab her bare buttocks. “No pantalets. I like this wild side I’ve brought out in you.”

She could do no more than blush at the praise. His smile brightened, and he pulled her in tight to his hardened groin.

“Do you feel how badly I need you?”

Eyes wide, she clutched at his arms, which flexed strong and masculine beneath her hands. She wanted to stroke the corded strength, shade it in charcoals on a piece of paper. Run her fingers along each and every line until it was memorized.

She couldn’t continue on this path with her husband. It was dangerous. For her. He was slowly destroying her from the inside out. Meddling with her heart for his own purpose.

“Tell me what you want of me, Richard.”

“Nothing more than to give us both pleasure.”

Of course that was all he wanted. He didn’t want her heart, even though she’d torn hers out of her chest and handed it to him still pumping and full of life. She might as well throw it down in the dirt for all he cared.

She closed her eyes. She could play the same game he played. She could enjoy the newfound intimacy they shared.

“Will you pleasure me in kisses?” She wanted to ask for explicit details, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, refusing to give voice to the questions she had.

“Just trust me. Can you do that?”

“I did this afternoon. I have so previously. I could do no less now.”

As though he couldn’t help himself, his hands kneaded into her backside, fingers inching closer to her wet core. She was sure she’d remained drenched for him the whole of the day. His finger slid along her slit.

“God, Emma. I love that you’re always ready for me. I’ve been negligent where you’re concerned. If there is one thing I can promise it’s that my inattention stops now.”

That was a tall promise to make.

And she didn’t believe him for one second.

Pulling his hands away from her core, he brought them around to release the buttons on his trousers. He fiddled with his smalls till she felt the smooth warm flesh of his cock resting against her lower stomach. She wanted him inside her body. She craved him.

He pulled her rear in closer with one hand. The other hand spread her nether lips over the base of his cock.

“What are you doing?”

“Relieving some of the pressure. How does that feel?”

“Different,” she replied without hesitation. Though she was too embarrassed to elaborate—to tell him that she wished him to stand so she could learn his body by sight, by touch.

“Remove your nightshirt, darling.”

Looking toward the windows, she saw the curtains were pulled away from the glass to reveal an orange-and-red-toned evening sky. The sun was mere minutes from fully setting, and she was baring herself to her husband without a care. She liked this new Emma she’d grown into.

“I’ve been craving another sight of you since we arrived back at the manor.” He rocked her body along his, the dampness at her core slicking over the firm ridge wedged between the lips of her sex. So thick and so demanding it nearly had her mouth watering to taste it. To taste him.

“It’s only been a few hours since we were at the pond.” It felt good doing this. Different, but the way she was stretched out over him, the way her nub was stimulated, had her breath coming faster.

“Too long … Remove your night rail.” He helped her by hitching it over her waist.

Gathering up the linen of her nightclothes, she pulled it over her head and set it aside without delay. What did he think as he inspected her body? Did he like what he saw? Afraid to see the answer in his eyes, she focused on his chest again, feeling the muscle as she moved her hands higher so she could mold them around his shoulders and biceps.

“What are you thinking so hard about?” she asked.

At his sharp intake of breath, her eyes snapped up to his. He no longer stared at her face but studied her breasts.

“You are beautiful, Emma.”

He lifted one of her breasts in his hand and ran his knuckles over the areola and nipple. It immediately formed into a hard point. She was afraid to look down and watch his ministrations. Afraid of how her body reacted to his touch.

“Is it sensitive when I touch you here?”

She nodded. So sensitive, she sometimes didn’t know if she liked his touch or not. The tingly, anxious feeling skittering across her flesh told her just how pleasurable it was.

“You’re so damned soft I can’t stop touching you here. I’m going to suck on these pretty titties. Suck them till you’re writhing against me.”

At her gasp, he picked her up by the waist and sheathed himself within her body. He sucked the tip of her breast deep into his mouth, and held her hips inert as he rotated in slow sensuous circles against her pelvis. Releasing her breast, he swore crudely, then heaved upward.

“Bloody hell, I could stay here for an eternity.”

He held her shoulders tight, pulling her in close as he jerked up into her body. He only stroked up into her for a few blissful thrusts, then he lifted her from his body and set her on the edge of the bed again.

He stood before her, his privates exposed where he’d undone his trousers, and in plain sight. She swallowed. She wanted nothing more than to lick that part of him.

“Don’t seem so shocked.”

Scooting up the bed, she looked for the nearest pillow to toss at him. She wasn’t quick enough to grab one before Richard clasped his hand around her ankle, slowly pulling her back down the bed and closer to him.

He kicked off his trousers, then knelt on the bed, his manhood sticking out hard from his body. What a curious thing it was. She watched it as it bobbed all on its own.

Breath hitched, she looked back up and met her husband’s gaze.

“When you look at me like that, it makes me harder. Do you want to touch me, Emma?” He wrapped his hand around himself, pulled the skin fully from the tip of his instrument to reveal a smooth rounded head.

Good Lord. She’d never seen it in such clear detail before. Never been given the opportunity. Now that the occasion was here, she didn’t know quite how to handle it.

Walking to her across the bed on his knees, he stroked his hand over the straining length.

“Touch me, Emma.”

She shook her head no. How could she do that? What would he think of her if she acted so forward? He didn’t ease up on the grip he had on his cock.

He lowered his head and curled his tongue around her nipple, which immediately firmed at his cool wet touch. “I want to see you do wicked things to me … to yourself.”

“Isn’t this the reason men have mistresses?”

As soon as the words were out she wanted to snatch them back.

Richard lifted his head from her tender breast. “Never suggest such a thing again. I might not have remained pure during the course of our marriage, but I never understood the need to shower any woman with riches and affection.”

She pressed her lips together, refusing to form any sort of rebuttal. Of course he didn’t need to shower a woman with anything.

Her expression must have shown her dissatisfaction, for he quickly amended, “No woman other than one’s wife, that is.”