A Marquis for Mary (12 page)

Mary jolted at the sound of a voice in her room and threw the pillow away. She lurched to a seated position and her eyes flew to the window. Sitting on the ledge, arms folded and eyes locked on her, was Edward.

His expression was one of anger, one of confusion, but she also saw a hint of desire there and looked down to realize she was in her nightshift, which had a very low neckline. She lifted her hands to cover herself.

“Edward!” she cried. “What are you doing here?
How
did you get here?”

He pressed his lips together. “I climbed up that tree.” He motioned behind him with a thumb. “And found your window happily unlatched. As for what I’m doing here, is that really a question you need to ask, my clever girl? My clever and oh-so-beautiful girl.”

Everything in her wanted to close her eyes and savor the sound of his rough voice complimenting her. To rise up and go to him and make the last twelve hours go away.

Instead, she pulled the sheet up to cover herself more fully and clenched her jaw. She had to remain strong.

“Edward, I asked you not to come in my note. I do not—” She broke off as he pushed away from his seat at her windowsill and slowly came around the bed. He perched himself on the edge, too close. So close. “I-I do not want to see you.”

He smiled at her stammering. “Don’t you? Is that why your eyes dilate with desire? Why you keep looking at my lips?”

She folded her arms. “If my eyes dilate, it is to adjust to the low light in the room.”

He tilted his head. “Don’t be foolish, Mary.”

“I’m not being foolish. I have said what I want to say and now I’m asking you to leave.” She hoped her voice sounded stronger to him than it did to her.

“No.” He said the one word slowly and succinctly, and she stared.

“No?”

“No,” he repeated.

She scooted to the other side of the bed and put her feet on the floor. God, her nightgown felt revealing now. Especially with the moonlight behind her.

“If you won’t leave because I asked, then I will call for the servants and they will put you out.” She edged around the bed to her door as she said the words, watching him with every step.

He lifted both eyebrows. “I don’t think you will.”

She gasped. “How utterly ungentlemanly of you, Woodley! I have said I will do this, don’t pretend as though I am a liar.”

He stood up and took a long step toward her. “You are a liar.”

Her lips parted, but still she didn’t reach for the bell pull. It was like she couldn't.

“I am not,” she whispered.

“You are, because you said you don’t want me and I can see from your face and your trembling body that you do.” He reached out and caught a lock of her hair that bounced around her shoulders. He coiled it around his fingers. “You are a liar and I came here to find out why.”

She could hardly think when he was so close. She could smell his skin, for God’s sake, and it was like heaven. But she couldn’t let her physical needs, nor her deep feelings, keep her from her course. All this was to protect him, even if he didn’t understand that.

“I told you in the letter,” she said as she snatched her hair back. “I do not think we suit.”

“We suited just fine when I made you come at the ball last night,” he snapped. His nostrils flared and she caught her breath.

“I shouldn’t have let that happen,” she whispered, but she didn’t feel it. She was glad he had done it, because once she had convinced him to go away, she was going to cling to that memory for all her life.

“Why did you say you didn’t want to marry me?” he pressed. Now he moved forward, backing her against the door. He caught her hand in one smooth movement and surprised her by lifting it up and pressing it to the bell pull she refused to tug. As he leaned into her, letting her feel his heat, his hardness, he said, “Tell me, Mary. Or ring the damn bell.”

Her hands were shaking as she stared up at him. She wanted to pull the cord. She
needed
to do it. But she didn’t. And he smiled as he ducked his head and pressed his mouth to hers.

This kiss wasn’t gentle like all the others had been. It was hard and heavy, filled with anger and desperation, and she dropped her hand away from the pull and wrapped her arms around his neck with a needy moan.

“You don’t want me?” he growled as he pressed her harder. She felt the ridge of her arousal against her belly, and she gasped at how her body clenched in response.

“N-no,” she lied, but she could hear how weak her refusal was.

“Then push me away,” he taunted her. “Don’t let me turn you…” He did so, maneuvering her away from the door. “Don’t let me take you to your bed…” He backed her across the room, kneading her backside none too gently, making her gasp and shiver in response. Her legs hit the bed and she fell back, his body covering her.

“Don’t let me claim you,” he said, his mouth hovering over hers. “Push me away.”

She lifted her hands to his shoulders, intent on doing just that. But as they rested there, as she stared up into his face, she couldn’t find the strength, couldn’t find the words. Not when she wanted him so very desperately. Not when she loved him so deeply.

“Please,” she murmured as she clenched his shoulders.

“Push me away,” he repeated, his tone rough and breathless.

She gasped out a sob. “I can’t.”

“I didn’t think so,” he murmured. Then he kissed her again.

There was purpose to the kiss. Drive that she couldn’t deny. All she could do was open her mouth to him, open her body to him, surrender all her good intentions and her resistance.

He took them more than willingly, grinding against her as he took her lips. Her body responded to his roughness, arching toward him, her sex growing hot, wet, her nipples hardening beneath her thin nightgown.

“Now tell me you want me,” he ordered her, pulling away from her lips to stare down at her.

She shook her head. “This is so unfair.”

He arched a brow. “More unfair than sending me a letter telling me you don’t want to marry me when you know we will be happy? When you know we both want this?”

“You don’t understand,” she pleaded, her eyes fluttering shut as he ground against her again and her sex throbbed in the most powerful way.

“And when I’m done claiming you, I intend to hear your explanation,” he growled. “But first, tell me you want me.”

“I want you, I want
this
,” she whispered, going limp beneath him because she couldn’t fight him anymore. Couldn’t fight the truth. Couldn’t fight her body’s growing needs.

He rolled away from her just long enough to tug her nightgown up. She sat up and let him yank it away, leaving her naked before him. She blushed as he stared, but lifted her chin and forced herself to remain still beneath his scrutiny.

“By God, you are divine,” he murmured. “Even better than I pictured. And I want you to look at me, Mary.”

She did it even though it was hard to keep eye contact with him when he was so close, so hot, so distracting. “Yes?”

“I’m going to make you mine tonight. It will be like what happened at the ball last night, but with my body, not just my fingers. I don’t want you to escape the future we have planned.”

“Edward—” she began, intent on explanation, but he ignored the plea and cupped her sex, cutting off her words as he gently massaged the already sensitive flesh.

His fingers were magic, just as they had been the night before when he first gave her pleasure. Her words and thoughts and protests fell away, her mind and body only attuned to the sensations that began to mount in her.

He leaned over her as he continued to stroke his fingers over her sex, and suddenly his hot, wet mouth latched over her nipple. She squealed softly at the unexpected sensation and her sex rippled with the precursors of release.

“So responsive,” he murmured before he swirled his tongue around her nipple. “And so sweet. Are you so sweet everywhere?”

She stared down at him at the question, not understanding it or why his words made her hips arch just a little more. He chuckled before he slid his mouth down her body, over her hip, and finally let his lips join his fingers at her center.

He traced her with his tongue and she jolted, eyes wide, at the intimate intrusion. He delved into the act, kissing her slit like he had so often kissed her lips. He held her steady with one hand while he breached her with two fingers of the opposite hand and licked her mercilessly through it all.

The pleasure mounted and suddenly, with little warning, starbursts exploded, her sex shuddered, pleasure won its war with anticipation, and she came. She turned her head into the pillow, letting her cries of release be buried in the fabric and feathers.

As the little tremors faded, he kissed his way back up the apex of her body, hesitating to swirl it around her nipples, to nuzzle her neck. Then he rose above her, positioning himself between her spread legs. He was still fully clothed to her nakedness and she lifted to rub against him, all propriety lost to pleasure.

“I won’t let you go,” he whispered. “Ever.”

She watched as he pulled away, rising to his feet and slowly stripping away his clothing. She lifted to her elbows to enjoy the show of what he did. His jacket hit the floor, he loosened his cravat, then he unfastened his shirt to reveal a toned, muscular chest, peppered with a thin dusting of hair.

She swallowed hard, taken aback by a stunning urge to lick that handsome chest. But her thoughts were erased as he removed his boots and then his trousers.

As the fabric fell away, she got the first look at him fully naked, and she stopped breathing entirely. He was…
beautiful
. Like a statue carved of marble, the best representation of man. Only she didn’t want to admire him from afar, she wanted to touch him. Tease him. Claim him and let him claim her.

She shouldn’t, especially considering the danger he would be in once she did, but the temptation was overpowering. Her love for him and her desire to express it in this physical way was too great.

“Edward,” she whispered. “Please. I don’t want to hurt you.”

He smiled as he returned to the bed, leaning over her, trapping her in a cage of his strong arms, positioning himself once more between her trembling thighs.

“The only way you’ll hurt me is to deny me,” he whispered as he stroked the hard head of his cock against her entrance. “But you won’t, because your body has already told me that you want this, want me, want it all.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I do want this. I can’t deny you, even if I should.”

He gently pushed and breached her just a fraction. She gasped, digging her nails into his shoulders with both pleasure and a hint of pain as he opened her untried body.

“You were meant for me, Mary,” he continued, taking her a little more, just until he reached the barrier of her hymen. There he stopped and looked down at her. “And now you’re mine.”

He drove forward and she bit her lip at the rush of pain that greeted the action. But it was a good pain, one that woke her senses, one that made her feel alive in a way she had never experienced before.

He waited for her to relax around him and then slid further, further, until he was fully seated in her. She flexed around him, trying out his length, experiencing his girth. It was done now, over. She was his in the last and most powerful way.

So whatever was going to happen next, they would have to face it together.

With that terrifying thought in mind, she wound her arms around him and drew his mouth to hers. He kissed her with passion as he began to move, thrusting first gently. They were shallow movements that built the pleasure he had created earlier with his mouth. She surrendered to it all, meeting his thrusts, trusting him to give her what she needed, as much as what she wanted. And she was rewarded when he swiveled his hips, grinding against her clitoris, touching some equally sensitive place deep within her until she cried out into his shoulder as she came for the second time that night.

He groaned with her pleasure and his thrusts increased, harder and faster, pulling sensation from her, driving him toward his own release. She felt it coming, saw it on his strained face and finally, he let out a low, pained groan and she felt him pump inside her, hot seed soothing her, pleasuring her as he collapsed over her with a final satisfied moan.

Edward didn’t know how long he lay with Mary in his arms, her tangled hair spread across his sweaty chest, her body curled into his. Time had ceased to have much meaning to him the moment he claimed her. But now, as the fire crackled and the moonlight shone upon her skin, reality began to return.

The reality of why he had come here.

He pushed her hair back so he could see her face and touched her chin, tilting it up to look into her green-gray eyes.

“There can be no secrets between us. Secrets will poison even the sweetest thing—I know this to be true,” he said softly, watching her face light in fear, but also understanding. “Mary, why did you write me that letter? Why did you try to end our engagement? And please don’t lie to me, because I will know it.”

She blinked at tears that suddenly filled her eyes. Then she sat up, separating their bodies just as she had tried to separate their lives. She tugged her sheet up to cover her breasts and sighed.