A Measured Risk (21 page)

“My Season?” Her stomach churned but with less intensity.

“Yes, your first Season. Were you excited about meeting the queen?”

“I was terrified by every moment of my first Season. I was only sixteen.”

“And a very sheltered sixteen at that.” His voice was so understanding. Just the way it could be sometimes…it melted the last of her resistance to open up to him.

“Yes.” Her stomach lurched but with less intensity. “I had been secluded in Ireland in the countryside. The shock of coming to London was traumatic.”

“But you had your abigail and your mother, correct?”

“Oh
,
Mama. Goodness. She had never had time to notice me before, but she suddenly dictated my every move. She declared me plump as a plum pudding and then they starved me as well. When I met the queen, I was about ready to faint from hunger. Oh
,
and those hoop skirts are a terrible invention. Whoever designed them should be guillotined.”

He slid his hand down the curve of her waist and pinched her side. It tickled. She jumped and laughed softly with a catch in her voice.

“You were plump then?” he asked, as if she were not currently plump despite her curvy waist.

“I was positively fat as a goose. And everyone—well, all the young ladies—teased me about my dark skin whenever they had the chance to do so unobserved.”

“You must realise that they were jealous of your wealth.” He trailed his hand over her hip and down to the swell of her bottom. “You are a duke’s daughter and an earl’s widow. You could return to society and cut them.”

“Why should I do that? They would still despise me and I would hate to intrude where I was not welcome.”

“But it is your birthright.” He leaned towards her and put his lips close to her face. “I happen to adore your dark skin. And I am of a mind to see it bared again.”

Heat washed over her. She caught her breath.

He kissed her cheek, briefly. “We can leave now.”

The hungry, sensual note in his tone sent her pulses racing.

* * * *

Thunder rumbled through the little cottage. Anne was seated on the bed, propped up with a pile of pillows and Jon sat within the circle of her spread thighs. It had been three hours since they had sat together in the carriage. He’d had her twice and now was running his oil coated hands slowly massaging oil onto her breasts in a gluttony of possessive pride. He loved to watch the play of candlelight on her skin. Loved to shape her large, dark rose-brown nipples into erect points. Christ above, he’d always dreamed of such beauty but never expected to actually see it in reality. To be able to fondle it at will.

She frowned, marring her gorgeous face. “Maybe Goethe has it right. However, I can’t see how abandoning reason helps anyone find intellectual liberty.”

He couldn’t help a grin. None of his other women spent their time in bed discussing
The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and Beautiful Lily
. “I don’t think he means we should abandon
all
reason. He means that we should value intuition as a guide to reason.”

“But he seems to hold emotion equal to reason, a sure prescription for self-delusion and—”

Jon groaned, intentionally making it a drawn out sound of extreme exasperation. “Enough, Nan.”

He ran his oiled hand down the length of his shaft. Then he positioned himself at her entrance.

She was staring up at him, her expression serious, as if she were still consumed by her thoughts. “I think Goethe is on the right path. A person can create a connection between the world of the senses and the inner, aspiring man only by his own will. However, his emotional thinking won’t allow him to—”

He chuckled softly. “Enough.”

He thrust into her, partway.

Her eyes widened. “No, no—not yet.” She backed up, the motion of her tight cunt creating the most exquisite sucking sensation on his cock.

He grasped her hips, roughly.

Her mouth fell open. “Jon! You’ll break my trail of thought.”

“Oh, I think we’ve been up and down that trail several times already.”

God, her little intellectual soliloquies drove him mad with wanting her. He didn’t understand it. Didn’t even try to. He just enjoyed the feeling. The moment. Because their time together would not last.

He pulled her down and thrust all the way home. His crown rammed against the mouth of her womb.

She gasped and closed her eyes.

“This is the way it is, Nan. When the master of the manor wants your body, he takes it.”

Her cunt gushed wetness, luscious and sweet. He rocked against the end of her depths. She moaned and fisted handfuls of the sheets.

His body urged him to pull back and thrust hard. He wanted to fuck and fuck and fuck her. Immediately. Christ. She was always taking his control.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to wait. He leant forward and pinched her nipples. The tips hardened into sharper points.

She lifted her hips, her increasingly wet sheath sliding on his cock like a silken glove. “Please…please.”

He wanted… God help him, sensually he wanted so many things from her. With her. But he reminded himself that she had been gently raised. Sheltered and cosseted with physical luxury. She lived in her head. A woman who valued thought and had denied her own sensual side for far too long. He must go slowly, carefully with her.

With both hands, he caressed her breasts again, handling them with increased roughness. She thrashed her head upon the pillow and moaned. He took her stiffened peaks into the thumb and forefinger of each hand and twisted, harder than before. All the while, he watched her.

Her face contorted. But from pain or pleasure? He wasn’t sure until her cunt released a torrent of fluid, surrounding him in succulence. And she arched her back up, pressing those full globes into his touch. His cock throbbed within her snug walls, hungry for slick friction, urgently insisting that he assuage its wants immediately.

He resisted. Instead, he bent over her, captured one pebbled tip into his mouth and nipped it. Her whole body flinched under his and she cried out sharply. A thrill raced through him. She clutched his shoulders, her nails biting him in return. He licked at her nipple. She moaned loudly, her lush body writhing against his.

He should take her by wrists, pull her hands above her head and not allow her to mark him. But he liked the sting of her claws cutting into him. It reminded him of the banked fires he had seen in her eyes during the first days he had known her. He had longed to feel her heat and now he was.

He nipped the tight nub again, more sharply.

She squealed and dug her nails in deeper. He bit her again and again, giving each straining peak equal attention.

She was shrieking and shrieking in that hitching, tremulous way of a woman who had been suppressed and finally let go. She ran her nails down his bare back, leaving stinging trails of burning flame.

The pain ignited a charge in his blood. It was beautiful. For it was honest. It was truly the way men and women interacted. Pleasure for pleasure, pain for pain.
      
 

He groaned, pulled his hips back and then thrust into her with force and vigour. God, she was so wet now, it was hard to fuck her. He should stop and wipe the excess from his shaft. But there was no stopping. She was screaming, her pelvis was plunging down then arching up to meet his violent thrusts with a speed to match.

He held her hips more firmly, ruthlessly stilling her. She fell back against the pillows, her hair like a spill of ink on the white pillow cases. She went limp even as her quim squeezed him harder. The scent of her arousal was heavy in the air like the most exotic, exquisite perfume.

“Jon…Jon…
Jon
.”

The sound of his name in her breathless voice maddened him. He wanted all of her. Now. He slammed the head of his cock against the mouth of her womb again and again and again.

Her cunt clamped down on him, clenching his cock as her screams became convulsive. Her walls gripped and grabbed him as if demanding his own release.

His balls were heavy, like leaden weights and his whole body thrummed on the edge of release, yet he wanted to hold back. To give her a second climax. But the spasms began deep inside his body. His seed came roiling up his shaft.

“Damn it,” he growled, jerking himself from the snug heat of her.

His seed erupted in torrents all over her thighs and her mons and the sheets. Everywhere. Ecstasy exploded through his whole being with such force he shuddered with it. He’d not known anything like it.

He lay in the wake of it, breathing harshly and dumbstruck. Their sex so far hadn’t been anything outside of his experience. It wasn’t even particularly adventurous.

But it was
her.

She made him lose his control. She took him to heights he’d never before experienced.

He lifted his weight from her then lay on his side. Watching her.

Sweat drizzled down her face, making her honey tinted skin glow in the candlelight. Her lips were swollen from too many harsh, passionate kisses. Her eyes remained closed, their lids shadowed purple with exhaustion.

“Goethe almost got it correct but his emotionalism blinds him…” Her sleepy voice trailed off.

Breathless, he chuckled roughly and placed his hand at the base of her throat. “Later, my lady. You best get some sleep now.”

A moment passed. Then another. Her breathing became regular and deep, growing a little louder.

An odd feeling swelled within him. A lack of restlessness. A sort of quietude.

Contentment?

How the devil would he know?

He got up, fetched a towel and gently wiped her clean of his seed. She didn’t stir. He had managed to wear her out. He went and took care of his own needs then poured himself a brandy and had intended to go and sit in the other chamber.

But it was cold and damp there. And he found himself drawn back to the bed.

 
He studied her sleeping face, slowly, as if memorising every beautiful line and curve. Each step she took along the road to getting over her fears revealed more of the woman inside. A woman he was fast growing to adore. She was like no other woman he’d known.

He couldn’t help but admire her. She’d been left alone. To the care of servants and an indifferent governess who had stayed only long enough to teach her the basics of reading and writing.

Beyond that, Anne had educated herself, had read all the books in her father—the duke’s—study and knew mythology and philosophy better than he did with his fine Cambridge education. Before meeting her, he’d never expected that from a woman.

More than that, for someone so young, she had a strong sense of responsibility for her station in life. When she related her stories of her life before Cranfield’s death, he could hear her love for her estate and the people who occupied it in resonating in her voice. She wasn’t some spoilt, wilful woman like Cherry or his grandmother. She had a soft heart and a strong mind. It was just that she’d been sheltered as a child, allowed to remain too shy and her husband had neglected her. She’d been alone, with no one close to her of her own class to care about her. Cranfield’s death had simply been too much for her to bear alone.

There was nothing ailing Anne that time and some regular human contact couldn’t heal. He could wait to see her flowering from girl into woman.

But then again, their time was limited. Another man, her next husband, would be the one to share the beauty of her full maturing.

At the thought, his chest seized up. Such a peculiar feeling. Already their first week was nearly over. There would only be three more like it. A month was really a great deal shorter a time than he’d previously given it credit for being.

* * * *

Anne stood inside the stable door. It was morning on her seventh day at the cottage. She’d spent every morning and afternoon like this, watching Ruel as he’d demanded
,
but unable to bring herself to get any closer to the horses.

He’d demanded much of her. Making her sit in that closed carriage. He’d remained adamant that she must obey him on this. Yet once inside, like before, he’d been tender and compassionate, distracting her with tales from his years spent in the dragoons—and much kissing and fondling.