The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (27 page)

He took both her hands in his. “Have you never seen a man before?”

She shook her head, mesmerized by the sight of his assets.

“Never known what a male animal looks like?”

“Oh, yes!” She told him forthrightly. “Horses and dogs. Cattle, too. But none are as lovely as you.”

He snorted. “Darling, a man’s accoutrements are never called lovely.”

“But you are,” she felt quite taken with the length of him. And the girth. She reached out a hand.

As she snatched it back, he caught her. “Want to touch me?”

Her eyes, she knew, must be large as melons, but she nodded and said, “I do.”

“Then, here.”

“Oh, my.” His skin was soft as down. She stroked his length. “You’re hard as iron.”

He gulped, then clamped her hand, his breath rasping. “Darling, you must go slowly.”

“Really?” She stared at his cock in amazement. “Does it not like to be caressed?”

“Most definitely.” He inhaled deeply. “But you see if you…ah…stroke me too long or hard, then I wish to proceed too quickly.”

“Mating is not a moment’s passion?”

He looked appalled. “It should never be only a moment’s. But hours.”

“Hours?” she could barely say the word.

“Who told you less?” he asked with sad amusement as he led her to stroke his shaft in languid ease.

She lifted a shoulder. “My mother. And the maids I overheard said it took minutes.” She examined how she seemed to make his cock grow larger, redder. And a drop of fluid now appeared on his tip. “They never said anything about how beautiful a man is. And you are.”

He caught back laughter. “Emma, never say that.”

“No. Why not?” She stroked him softly.

He gulped. “That’s not the commendation a man seeks, my dear.”

“I shall tell you in private then. Will that do?”

“Yes. Anything you wish. Anything at all.” He put a hand atop hers. “May I touch you now?”

“Hmm. No. If you do, I shall have to stop stroking you.” She tossed him a saucy look. “I rather like this, Jack.”

He set his jaw and narrowed his eyes at her. “I’d rather like spanking you, Emma.”

“You wouldn’t!” She stopped her caresses.

“Never spar with me. Let me touch you. It is not fair to let you have your pleasure whilst I have nothing of you to sate me.”

“Mmm. Perhaps you are right. But then, I wonder.” She grinned and squeezed his long, hot rod. “Will this go away?”

“Dear god.” He rolled his eyes. “I am quite certain that is not going away.”

“If you’re sure?”

He gave her a beady-eyed look that made her chortle.

He stepped against her. His gaze in hers. His long arms reaching for her and pulling her into the vise of his embrace. Skin to skin, they each inhaled as their bodies met.

“Emma, darling, you feel like heaven,” he told her as he cupped her face and brushed his lips on hers.

“Take me to bed, Jack.”

“My fondest wish,” he whispered as he bent to gather her up and fulfill the last stipulation in their agreement.

By god, he had promised her a gentle introduction to the art of love. As he strode toward his master bed, he vowed to do it. But in the intervening hours since he’d first agreed to her indecent offer to have her, he’d learned so much about her that he felt changed. Transformed, even noble that he might provide such a service for a woman so abused.

His journey to the bed was only three strides, but each was filled with his newest conflict. He wanted her. Naked. He had her so. Yet to take her as she was—a virgin, willing as the devil—bound him to a finer pledge to himself. He would be gentle. Kind. The finest teacher.

Yet as he laid her to the counterpane and pulsed at the sight of her lithe grace against the sapphire brocade, he prayed he could summon enough restraint. She was not like any of his former mistresses. She was no married lady of the
ton
, eager for romping. She had no concept of what a good fucking might include, yet he yearned to take this luscious body of hers and ravish her like the rake he was.
Like the rake he had been?

He loomed over her on his forearms, one of his knees intruding between her legs as they dangled over the edge of the mattress. He swooped down and ran his nose along her cheek and swanlike throat. Would he ever get enough of such innocence? Christ, that anyone would think it possible for Arrogant Jack to be so conquered!

“You smell wonderful,” she told him, one hand drifting down his ribs.

“Many creatures know their mates by the aroma of the other,” he told her as he caressed the fullness of one breast and had her arching into his hand. “Each marks the other.”

She sighed as his fingers found her nipple and circled the silken nub. “Will you mark me?”

“Aye, darling.” He shifted lower, his gaze widening at the sight of her pale perfection. “Beginning here.” He sucked her nipple into his mouth and she bucked. Smiling, he pulled away. “You like this.”

“I do.” She clutched his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin, exciting him further.

He grinned to himself and held her breast so that her pink little nipple pointed at him. He drew on it gently. Her areola pebbled.

“The other one?” she beseeched him.

He grinned at her eagerness and her generosity, moving to kiss her other appealing breast. This one he laved as she whimpered and wiggled. Then he nipped her, sucking her high and hard to come away with a pop. “More marking?”

“Yes, yes.” She stared at him, wide-eyed and mouth open.

He sank further down her body to her ribcage and her belly. “You are well made here, too, darling Emma. Taut waist. Flat belly.” He swept his hand over her gossamer skin, then followed his caress with his tongue. Beneath his lips, he felt her insides quiver and blessed the years he’d spent in other women’s beds so that he might now bring this sweet woman ecstasy.

He lifted her fully onto the bed and her thighs fell open. He snuggled between them. His cock fit along her seam and she flinched.

But then she purred. “I feel very warm, Jack.”

“As you should.” He pinched one of her nipples and smiled, then kissed her other pert breast. “And do you feel wet?”

Her thighs tried to close but only clamped against his hips. “I do.”

“And full?”

“Empty!”

He chuckled at her. Even in the act of making love, she amused him. “I will soon fill you, sweet Emma.”

“
How
soon?”

“Impatient, are you?”

She hummed in frustration. “You know I am, you beast!”

“This beast has more to teach you and more to savor before I come inside you.”

“Like
what
?” she demanded, petulant as he had never before seen her.

“Ah.” He swept his hand down to her mons and toyed with her moist curls. “How’s that?”

She froze, but blushed bright pink.

He traced her seam. “And that?’

She bit her lips and moaned.

“Or this,” he sank a finger deep inside her scorching little
chat
and she rose right up into his arms.

“That,” she whispered as she struggled to get closer to him, “
that
is divine.”

With his lips to her belly, he declared, “I have never felt so welcomed, darling.”

She spread her legs wider and pushed her hips upward.

Smitten, he sank another finger inside her raging channel and then another. His cock pulsed with urgency and his balls tightened in violent need.
But not yet, man. She needs more.

He slid lower, the fragrance of her core so sweet with musk he feared he’d swoon like an untried lad. With two hands to her outer folds, he nuzzled her pubic bone with his nose, then spread her swollen lips wide. She groaned, praising him and thrashing her head. Whether she moved in modesty or need, he could not tell. Whatever her sentiment, he knew how to replace it with lust. He put his mouth to her slick flesh and licked her with the dexterity of a man who adored the taste of a woman.

“Oh, my god! Jack!”

He had done all he could do to hold her down and let him have his fill. She was salty and creamy, hot as a summer day and so ready to be loved he had to eat her more to keep from plunging into her. “Shhh, my darling,” he soothed her between lavish swipes of his tongue along her plump flesh. “Let me,” he crooned as he found her slick nub and nibbled on her. “
Christ, let me have more. Have all. Have you mad for me
.”

“I am!” she exclaimed as he marvelled that he had said those things aloud. He growled in a passion for her that had him so raging hard he feared he would lose his control and end this all too soon.

“Hold still or I cannot love you as I should,” he told her.

Eager as she was, she whimpered and quieted.

Grateful and spurred to dark madness, he parted her nether hair once more and sank to the feast he had promised himself. She was flowing with love juices, translucent white fluid running over the crest of her lovely lips and onto the curve of her thighs. She smelled deliciously decadent, wanting him, feeding him with her essences and her passion. He licked her delicately, tracing the edge of one lacy fold, up to her bulging clitoris and down the other swollen side. Pushing his cock into the bedding for some relief, he knew he’d better teach her what a roaring climax could be before he took her hymen and gave her pain, no matter his careful preparations of her sweet, hot channel. Pushing her lips together, he offered himself the tasty treat of her clit, which he titillated with the tip of his tongue. Intrigued at her rapture, he laved her nubbin with a slow rasp and pinched her tiny ball of nerves until she moaned that she wanted more. In compensation, he sucked on her while she quivered beneath his lips. Now he’d show her paradise. Plunging two fingers inside her, he massaged her wet walls as she pounded around his fingers, and he prayed for sanity to fuck her now, slowly, as she deserved.

She rocked in his arms, gasping, writhing. Soon as her pulses ceased, he rose on his knees, hungry, famished, raging to sink inside her, spreading her lovely thighs wide, admiring the deep red of her flesh coated by her glistening cream.

“Come now, again, sweetheart, with me inside you,” he crooned as he sank so slowly into her and felt the barrier he knew awaited him. “We’ll do away with this, my Emma,” he whispered and pushed forward. In one fervent stroke, he sank further into her lush cavern and held.

She did not squeal, nor whimper, nor cry out, but wrapped her long arms around his chest and pressed her warm lips to his mouth. “Darling Jack, oh do give me more.”

He nearly shouted in quick relief, but the urge to truly claim her consumed him like a storm. Sliding deeper, he caught her to him, took her lips in a desperate kiss, and moved so slowly he marvelled he had the willpower. “How’s this, my pet?”

“Thick.”

He paused, a laugh in his heart. “You’ll make me insufferable with pride.”

“Wonderful,” she told him, her eyelids fluttering in ecstasy he could see in every line of her lovely face.

“And this?” He sank deeper, lodged fully inside her sopping wet core.

“Sublime.” She undulated in her joy and hooked an arm around his neck. “Now make me pound again as you did with your tongue and your fingers.”

“Christ, how lucky can I be?” At her invitation, he ravished her mouth. Had he ever known a lover could be so wet and wild? No, never. He hauled her legs up over his forearms, her succulent channel clutching his cock—and he took her. Took her hard. Took her fast. And slow. And damn grindingly delicately until he knew her walls quivered and he gave her every bit of his hungry shaft, every ounce of his seed and every iota of his devoted lust.

Her nails raked his arms, her legs hugged his hips, her core pulsed around his spurting shaft, milking him, absorbing him into her as if he had never existed but to be her lover.

He fell forward, his head to her breastbone. His breathing rapid, his hands still cupping her shapely thighs, he kissed her chest. He rested for long minutes, allowing her a respite, too. Slowly, he returned to a conscious world he barely knew.

Astonishment swept through him at his circumstances. This was his wife. His darling. His Emma. A Stanhope. A woman he adored here in bed—and yes, out of it. A treasure he had never thought to even imagine.

He looked up at her, curious, terrified now that their first engagement was complete that he had not enchanted her this first time. “You are well?”

She was smiling at him, her hand lifting to stroke his cheek, his jaw, his chest.

“More than,” she told him in a husky tone that made his cock twitch to take her again.

He made to pull away.

“Don’t go!” She caught his arm. “Not yet. I…”

Thrilled at her entreaty, he moved forward inside her and she squeezed him with her vaginal walls. She was a talented lover for a lady so new to the art. That thought humbled him, stirred him to admire her veracity and her
joie de vivre
. “You should rest, and if you hold me here like this and caress me as you do, I will remain much longer.”

Her eyes flashed like lightning as she hugged him. “Stay then. I like you here.”

He chuckled and swooped down to capture her lips. “You take well to making love, madam.”

“Because I have a good instructor.”

“He is your husband,” Jack affirmed, aware that in the statement he staked a further claim on her affections—and an end to his past existence.

She flashed him a temptress’s smile. “And as his wife, do I not have the power to ask him to make love to me again?”

“He might not leave.”
For hours.
Or days. Or ever.

“The day is young.” She flung back her arms to the sheets, her tempting breasts up in invitation, as she glanced toward the window where fresh rain sluiced the panes. “The weather is bad for riding…out of doors.” She arched both beautiful brows. “What could we do to pass our wedding day, hmmm?”

He ran his gaze over her naked body. Flushed and sinuous, she was spread before him. His body, still deep inside her lush one, grew ravenous. What man, what mate could refuse this offer? “You are a terror.”