The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (28 page)

“And you approve,” she proclaimed in charming appeal. “Love me again, Jack.”

He pushed forward, his cock amazingly like iron once more, her core accommodating him with the wet welcome he craved.

“God, you are a sweet piece.” He rocked into her, his tempo swift, his need hard. With his seed spent in her the first time, this second mating came upon him with more rigid heat, more need to kiss her lips and pluck her nipples, more challenge to make her come again in dreamy pace with him. As he plunged inside her, she opened more easily than the first time. Now she flowered, used to his touch, ready for his love. She touched his nipples, squeezed his ass, ground her flesh against his cock and cried out in fulfilment as the two of them reached another torrid peak of need and quaked together, then drifted down to silent and languid peace.

He pulled his cock from her sheltering core and wrapped her in his arms. She sighed as he kissed her cheek. “You must rest.”

She clutched at him, her eyes open and alarmed. “You won’t leave?”

“I doubt I am capable,” he told her the truth. Physically and perhaps otherwise, he was captured.

So, as she snuggled closer to him, her lips pressed in a tender kiss upon his skin, he combed her long sun-kissed hair from her face and marvelled at this woman who was becoming his most excellent lover.

He had not foreseen that. Like so much else in this liaison with her, he could not predict her actions or her words. He had not planned to want her. Only help her. But now, if he also needed her, what was that but a huge conundrum for him?

He hated Pinrose. Loathed Trayne. Knew the minute she spoke their names, even had she not been so charismatic and dear, that he would help her in any way he could.

Some of that was set in motion by his note to Adam the night he left London with Emma. Pinrose’s investments in a shipping company were in question by the Admiralty and Whitehall for war profiteering. Trayne’s quest to buy an estate in Dorset was now challenged by a mysterious counter-offer.

Jack cradled his wife closer, all too readily interested in her warm and giving body. He would have her again. Why not? She wanted him. She was his in sight of god and man. And he desired her as irrationally as he had never wanted another woman.

But where would that leave him and his raging emotions for her three months hence? He might be a bag of bones by then, loving her as often as he knew himself capable. But he could not leave her now. Not after this one fascinating session with her in his arms. Not when he needed to indulge himself in her entrancing body once more. His own dilemma of how to live without her body and her humor and her love of life was a problem for the future. He would enjoy what he had with her and live for the moment. For her. And yes, damn it, for their mutual satisfaction.

****

She awoke and he slept beside her, his huge body lax in repose. She wished to touch him, caress him, make certain he was real and hers. But when she moved, she felt the ache between her thighs and had proof that this afternoon with him had been no daydream but a ravishing reality.

She caught back a chuckle and with a fingertip, pushed the sheets farther down his body. His waist was slim compared to the contours of his chest and massive arms. His hips were trim. His nether hair as raven as the shining locks on his head. And his cock. Hmmm. That most intriguing part of him was a long, thick rod whose dimensions interested her, even slack as it was.
Could she touch him?

She snatched back her hand. No. She had held him in her hand in his sitting room and he had filled her palm. Warm and soft. Hard and red. Hers, now. Well, for a while anyway. Three months.

She glanced away, sorrowful that she would one day lose him and this wondrous friendship they had begun. Lose his loving, too.

She slid to the side of the bed and picked up a knitted throw upon a huge chair. Curling it around her shoulders, she stood and felt a gush of fluid coat her thighs. She sat right back down. The bed bounced.

Jack clasped her wrist. “Don’t go.”

“I think…I must, Jack. Is there a chamber pot?”

“A stooled chair in the bath chamber,” he told her, but held her back. “What’s amiss? You are not hurt?”

“I think I must be bleeding,” she said on a high note of dismay. Her mother was so full of stories of pain and blood after her first night wed. With Jack, Emma had forgotten all of that in the flush of desire. “I’m all wet and…”

He rose up at once on his knees and took her in his arms. “Let me see.”

“No!”

“You cannot be modest now, my pet!” He smiled with consolation. “Don’t fret. Let me tend you. You are my wife, remember? To love and obey?”

Would that that were true beyond this chamber and this day.

He scanned her features. “I would not have you think your health is lost here, not after the joy we’ve had this afternoon. If you are injured, I must know. Lie back and open your legs, darling.”

“I am mortified,” she muttered as she felt his gaze and his breath upon the skin of her upper legs.

“Don’t be, pretty wife. You are well. You only give off those juices you created and the seed I gave you when we loved each other. Look at me,” he commanded with a tender tone and caught her chin. “There is a pink tinge to your emissions, and that was the last of your maidenhead, darling. To be expected. But in fact, yours was an easy barrier to break.”

“Oh, that’s not good, is it?”

“For me, it was,” he proclaimed with twinkling eyes. “And for you, it was a blessing. Some virgins have a bit of a tough go, I am told. Not fun for man or woman, that.”

“You’ve never had a virgin?”

He winced, the knit of his brows indicating his rueful embarrassment. “Before you? No. Never.”

“Why not?”

He scrambled up beside her and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Because initiating virgins to the art of love is what a husband does. I have never been a husband before today and did not wish to be one.”

“Why not?” Oh, she was such a pest to ask him so much but she dearly wished to know the answer to this question. Suspecting it had to do with his father and their relationship, she should have bided her time to get this information. But in her haste, she was imprudent and feared he would not answer.

But he snorted. “Well, had you asked me last week or last month I would have responded that I had no reason to want to be one. No woman existed who had ever needed me for more than a dalliance. No woman existed whom I wanted for more than that. And courtesy of my father, I had an upbringing which showed me that what passed for love between a man and woman was beguiling and temporary.”

“I see.” She took his explanation at its face value and wished for more. Perhaps not today, but tomorrow and soon. She wondered if Jack himself fully understood the enormity of what he had just stated for her benefit. She had not asked for more from him than the wedding and the physical mating, her ruination and redemption. She had not asked him for any consideration that he might care for her, not even in the slightest bit. Yet he mentioned love. She clung to the word but dared not ask him to elaborate upon his last words.

He traced her brow with a fingertip.

If he considered the implications of his last statement, he did not seem disturbed.

He lifted her chin with a forefinger. “Suppose I order the maids to prepare a bath, eh? Should have thought of that before, but I didn’t. Sorry, darling.”

In this diversion, did he attempt to avoid discussing the subject further?

She smiled, letting the moment and the topic pass. “A bath would be welcome.”

He kissed her and rolled away, heading for his armoire where he took down a floor length black velvet robe and tugged it on. “Hungry? You should be after what we did. Heaven knows, I am. I’ll have some supper sent up. Should have done that, too. But I am not thinking.”

Hoisting herself up on her elbows, she smiled at him. “Neither am I.”

“I am too taken with you to be rational.” From afar, he gazed at her naked body, then raked both hands through his hair. “Nothing for that now. What’s done is done. Cover up, but do not dress. I like you naked. Do you mind? Think me a satyr?”

She laughed heartily, delighted at his desire for her, even now from so far across the room. “No, I don’t mind and I rather like you as a satyr. For my benefit, of course.”

He gazed at her with a half-lidded intensity that spoke of admiration and renewed lust. “Wonderful. The maids will be up with the hot water very soon.”

Desperate to keep him or at least have him come back quickly, she asked, “When will you return?”

“You may count the minutes.”

Was he totally daft?

What the hell was he doing making love to this innocent?

Well,
now
not so innocent, old man.

He should have asked himself that question hours ago. But as it is, he’d had one hell of a marvellous time initiating her to the joys of sex. And if once was not enough, then one night was not either. Could he walk away after three more months of nightly ecstasy with her?

Cursing aloud, he took the stairs down to the first floor on bare feet and padded toward the back of the house and the butler’s pantry. There, he saw his servant Simmons seated, polishing glassware. What’s more, the man’s usually pinched face sported a happy countenance as he whistled a merry tune about a lad and his lass. Simmons never whistled. Never smiled. Never spoke of love. Or women.

“Simmons?”

Startled, the butler shot to his feet. “Milord! Is ought amiss?”

“No, Simmons. We are well. I want two trays sent upstairs from that cold supper I ordered. Does Cook have roast beef and potatoes on the sideboard as I requested last night?”

“She does, milord.”

“Excellent. Serve much of it on one plate. And my lady needs hot water sent up to my bath chamber. In fact, have the footman haul in the tub from the bedroom across the hall and draw two baths in my suite while we’re at it.”

“Yes, sir. At once.”

Jack headed for his library, then turned back with a nagging question. “And Simmons?”

“Yes, milord?”

Jack frowned in playful challenge to this usually stoic man. “Have you taken to becoming a whistler since I’ve been in London these past four months?”

The butler’s large eyes popped wide. “No, sir.”

“Why today then?”

The man pondered that for a long minute. “Well, sir, it is your wedding day, isn’t it? And we were celebrating along with you and your new wife.”

“I see.” Jack scratched his head as he considered that answer. “Not a bad idea.”

“No, sir.” Simmons grasped his hands together like a minister about to deliver his favorite Sunday sermon.

Jack suppressed a grin and ventured, “Is my getting married such cause for celebration among the staff?”

Simmons beamed. “Yes, sir.”

“Oh? And the reason for that is what?”

The once unflappable butler flexed his shoulders. “Ah. Well, my lord. Many of us never thought you would take a wife.”

Jack feigned a grimace. “And now that I have?”

“I won the bet.” The man looked like he’d won at the races.

Jack put both hands on his hips and leaned forward to examine the man who never seemed to have enough red blood in his veins to be passionate, let alone gamble. “Which was?”

“That if you did bring a woman home to us, she would be a good girl, I said. The others thought differently, my lord.”

Jack blinked. Dear god. His staff had opinions of him. Some of them dastardly, it seemed. “How much money did you win, Simmons?”
How big was the fear I was unredeemable?

“Forty pounds. Sterling, that is, my lord.”

“Forty—!” Was he blubbering like a fool? “Handsome.”
Outrageous!

“Yes, my lord.”

Jack shoved his hands in the pockets of his robe and rocked on his heels. “And you can readily see the Viscountess is a good girl, as you put it?”

“Oh, yes indeed, my lord.”

So could I. From the moment I looked at her. Soaking wet. Pleading with me. Lovely and lonely.

“She is quiet and graceful, my lord.”

“That she is.”

“And very pretty, too, sir. My compliments on securing her hand in marriage.”

More than her hand. Her luscious giving body
. Jack cleared his throat. “Yes, well. Totally her doing, Simmons. Wish I could lay claim to having begun the relationship.”

“My lord?”

Jack examined the man’s confusion at his revelation. “Yes, of course. Thank you, Simmons. Enjoy your winnings, man. What will you do with it, I wonder?”

The butler blew his chest up like a prize boxer strutting the ropes. “I do have an ambition, my lord.”

“Do you? How interesting that I would never have known. Well, this certainly is a day for new developments of all types. Out with it, Simmons. What is your ambition?”

Simmons cleared his throat, once and then again. “I would like your permission to marry Cook.”

Blow me over
.
Jack grinned. “Is that so? For how long have you wished this, Simmons?”

“For more than five years, my lord.”

For a man who had wed a woman he wanted within five days of meeting her, as many years to wait to possess the one a man wanted seemed extraordinary to Jack. “Then you must do so. Immediately.”

The servant’s face split in a grin. “Thank you, my lord. I am delighted, my lord.”

“Better put down your glassware, man, and go propose, don’t you think?”

Shock fell over the butler’s features. “I have your permission to go now?”

“You do. We must get the vicar to give you a time. We’ll have the wedding here and the Viscountess and I shall be your witnesses.”
Emma would like that tremendously
. “Shall I go tell her?”

“Yes, do, my lord. Two days from now?”