The Improper Wife (31 page)

“Gray?” Her voice was softened with champagne. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. Could he be so dishonorable as to take advantage of her now that the drink had removed her inhibitions? He’d promised himself that their first moment of lovemaking would be free of coercion, free of secrets. Was he so willing now to forgo that vow? Eyes still closed, Gray took long, deep breaths, hoping to regain the strength to think clearly.

She rose and swayed against him. His eyes flew open and he grabbed her arm to steady her. His vision filled with her, so close, so soft in his arms.

She ran her hand down the front of his shirt and up again to settle against the bare skin exposed by the gap at the collar. “Are you not going back to the party?”

He shook his head, speech momentarily failing him.

Her expression turned childlike and vulnerable. “You do not wish to be with her?”

Her fingers fogged his thinking. Her words made little sense to him. “Who?”

“Lady Camerville. Our
host-ess.
” She had a bit of difficulty pronouncing
hostess,
but no difficulty reaching inside his shirt to let her fingers play with the dark hairs on his chest.

His hands grasped her waist and kneaded the soft flesh above her hips. He was barely able to keep from shoving her against his groin. “No,” he managed, no longer certain what the question had been.

She gazed into his face, only inches from her. Her brows knit in puzzlement. “You do not wish to make love to her?”

To Lady Camerville? When his body ached for Maggie, when Maggie was so close her fragrance wafted around him and her skin felt like liquid silk?

“No.” The word came out like a groan.

Fingers still playing on his bare skin, she searched his face, where he was certain every impulse in his body was etched. If he could have spoken, he would have said he wanted no other woman but Maggie.

She leaned even closer, sliding her hands up to caress the sensitive skin at the nape of his neck. “Oh, Gray.” She gave a long sigh. “Does this mean you will share this bed with me?”

He knew it was the drink making her words come out like an invitation, an invitation he burned to accept. “What do you want, Maggie? Do you want me to share your bed?”

“I do.” Her voice was suddenly as clear as the ring of crystal. Her eyes bore into him, smoldering with the same heat that burned inside him. “I want it very much. I want you to come to bed with me.”

She tugged at his hand, pulling him toward the bed. Its covers were turned down, inviting them. She scrambled onto the bed and pulled him toward her.

He held back, salvaging one thread of his fraying self-control. “Maggie, you drank too much champagne. You do not realize what you are doing.”

“But I do.” She knelt on the bed and her eyes were nearly level with his. “I have not had so very much champagne, Gray. I know I have no right, and I know you did not want me before—”

“You think I did not want you?”

She nodded, her curls dancing around her face.

Gray stifled an almost maniacal laugh. The reality could not have been more opposite. She’d haunted his nights ever since first appearing at his door, and his body had burned for her since first tasting her lips.

She tilted her head, her expression again vulnerable. “I thought perhaps you could make love to me this one time and you could pretend to want me.”

Gray put his hands on her shoulders, blood coursing through his veins. “I do not need to pretend to want you, Maggie, but you must be sure this is what you want.”

“Yes,” she breathed. “I am sure.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, bringing her lips to rest on his, lips that nourished a hunger in him so vast he felt like a starving man invited to a feast. Her fingers tangled in his hair and the thin thread of his resolve snapped.

He pressed her to him, wild with arousal and need. He tasted her with his tongue and stroked her with his hands while his loins throbbed for her.

Like clouds parting after a storm, freeing the sun to shine, he realized she
was
his wife, as truly as if they had been united in a marriage ceremony. He and Maggie were bonded together and had been from the moment of Sean’s birth. Gray wanted to plant his seed inside her and claim her as his own.

He broke the kiss. “I want this, Maggie.” His words came from the same depth as his hunger for her. “I want you.”

He pulled her nightdress over her head and threw it aside, so he could feast on the sight of her. He devoured her, filling his vision with her full breasts, her slim waist, the dark thatch between her legs.

She put her hands under his shirt. He groaned as she slid her hands up his chest to remove his shirt. Slamming his body against her, he pressed bare flesh to bare flesh.

His fire seemed to catch hold in her. He was on the bed with her and her hands were all over him, pushing down his breeches, pulling them off. She nipped at his lips and dueled with his tongue, making small impatient sounds that threatened to whip him into a frenzy. She ground herself against his arousal and he almost drove himself inside her.

He would not be content with a frenzied coupling. No, he wished to give her more than a hurried delight. He eased her down against the cool linens. With a touch as light as gossamer, his fingers savored the creamy skin of her breasts, dancing lower and lower, only to climb again firmer and more insistent. He lowered his lips to taste of her rosebud pink nipples, ravenously hungry, yet taking his time to savor each taste.

She clutched at his back, her fingernails pressing into his flesh. He slipped his fingers into her, relishing how moist and ready she was for him.

Maggie writhed under his touch. “Please, Gray,” she cried.

He knew she begged for release, but he wanted this first time of physical pleasures between them to match the intensity of his feelings for her.

“Please,” she begged again.

With his own arousal aching and throbbing to grant her request, he still held back, finding new ways to touch her, to increase the promise of pleasure to come.

He touched her breast again, and she gave a primitive cry. Abruptly she rose above him, suddenly straddling him, touching him as he’d touched her. Any scrap of control within him burned to cinders. When he thought he could stand it no more, she positioned herself above him. He entered her.

All thought fled as the bellows of their rhythm fanned their flames even higher. Nothing existed for Gray except Maggie pushing their passion to a white-hot heat. Her strokes quickened, as did his, both so attuned to each other now that they moved as one, faster and faster.

Her release spasmed around him, and a second later he exploded inside her. The moment of their release seemed to make eternity stand still.

As their once-wild flames turned to embers that warmed Gray all over, Maggie slid off him. He held her close to his side, facing her so he could see how the guttering candlelight bathed her face in a magical glow.

“Thank you,” she murmured in a voice so soft, he was uncertain if she spoke aloud or if he had simply heard her thoughts.

He lifted one corner of his mouth. “My pleasure.”

She smiled, a warm, satisfied, sated smile. He pulled her even closer to him and wrapped his arms around her. She made a contented sound in the back of her throat.

Gray held her until her breathing assumed a slow, even cadence. As she slept, he kept hold of her, loathing to break the spell of their lovemaking. Eventually his eyes became heavy, and with her head cradled next to his chest, he succumbed to sleep.

Maggie roused to the strangeness of a dull headache, the arms of a naked man around her, and an acute case of shame.

Through the haze of half sleep, she recalled their lovemaking as if it had been a dream. How beautiful his masculine body had been, how skillful his hands, how intense her pleasure. She wanted to drift back to sleep, to never have to fully wake and realize she had seduced him. She had not consumed so much champagne that she did not remember every moment between them. She had asked him to make love to her. She had taken advantage of the intimacy of their situation to push him into giving her what she had so long desired.

She dared move enough to press her fingers to her aching temple. He rustled and resettled so she looked directly into his sleeping face. Maggie released a long sigh, examining the slight curl of his dark lashes, the faint lines creasing his forehead, the moistness of his bottom lip.

She wished he had come freely to her bed, instead of her forcing him into it, using feminine wiles she had not known she possessed. She wished he had been properly introduced to her, had chosen to court her, to marry her, and to make love to her. Never before this moment had she more regretted trapping him into a connection with her. If only she had met him in some respectable drawing room, to be properly introduced by respectable people, and properly married by a respectable country vicar.

But that was truly an impossible dream.

She could never make up for deceiving him, for making him her pretend husband. No amount of toil around Summerton would do it, no amount of care of Summerton’s people. Her heart ached with loving him, the feeling grown more intense and painful since the gift of his body.

Maggie shook her head. Not a gift, but something else she’d stolen from him. She felt her throat tighten and her eyes sting. She wished she could give something back to him. She wished she could give him all that was good and happy in life.

A home. Family. Children.

Instead those were the things he had given her. She fought the tears of her regret.

He stirred and opened his eyes, gazing at her with an unreadable expression. A part of her went dead inside for what could never transpire between them. No real love, just a masquerade of it. Another part of her sprang to life, and she knew she would want to make love to him again. And again. And again. A pretend love between them was better than nothing at all, though she feared her desire to give him pleasure was a mere excuse for wanting the pleasure he could give her.

She closed the inches between them and put her lips against his. She ran her hands down the smooth muscles of his back and pressed herself against him, glad to feel the evidence of his arousal.

Was it so very bad to make him want her again? As his lips tasted the tender skin beneath her ears, her conscience flagged and the ache within her grew. His fingers soon sought that secret part of her as they had the night before, creating sensations she’d never experienced in hurried couplings with her false husband. How she wished that man had never existed and Gray had been the only man in her bed. She wanted no other man. Needed no other.

He stroked her and teased her and her excitement grew. She tried to match his every move, to give him as much pleasure as he gave her. More. She wanted to give him more. She wanted to give him everything.

She tried, tried when his body joined hers, tried when their mutual need built, tried when their release came, every bit as spectacular as the night before. Afterward, as he nestled her in his arms and planted soft kisses on her brows and cheek, she knew it would be impossible to ever give him as much as he had given her.

There was a soft rap on the door.

“The devil,” Gray muttered, sitting up. “Who is it?”

The door opened a crack. “It is Decker, sir. Lord Camerville bade me fetch you for breakfast and some shooting.”

“Of all the fool . . .” He glanced at Maggie. “I suppose I must.”

“Go if you wish,” she said.

He rubbed his face. “Give me a moment, Decker.”

She thought Gray would hurry out of their bed, grateful to be released from the spell binding him. Instead, he gazed at her as if reluctant to leave her.

“You must go?” She wished valiantly not to once again impose her will upon him, but even she could hear in her voice a yearning for him to stay.

He raised her to him, clutching the back of her head as his lips hungrily devoured her. She savored once again the feel of his muscular body under her fingers, the heady intoxication of his lips.

“I suppose I must,” he repeated in a groan. He broke the kiss, but came back to kiss her once more before he climbed out of the bed and searched among the scattered clothes for her nightdress. He handed it to her and caressed her hair gently. “Pretend to sleep.”

Maggie put her nightdress over her head as he pulled on his drawers and hurriedly picked up his shirt and breeches. He started to close the curtains around the bed, but stopped and climbed back atop it, giving her another kiss so full of passion she was left aching for him all over again.

Then he climbed off the bed and closed the curtains before letting Decker in. Maggie listened to the two men speak quietly, unable to believe that a moment before she and Gray had been making love. Now ordinary life had resumed, a valet assisting his gentleman to dress. Because that gentleman was Gray, Maggie strained to hear every word of their ordinary conversation, until all too quickly, both men left the bedchamber.

As Maggie rolled over and burrowed beneath the linens, she realized she and Gray had said nothing of what had occurred between them.

The beaters walked the fields ahead of the gentlemen, pounding the brush, scaring the grouse into the air. The gentlemen aimed the guns Lord Camerville had provided for their sport, and fired. More servants stood by to reload, saving the guests that tedious chore. Gray entered into the sport as best he could, given he had no wish to be traipsing through the countryside and no interest in shooting grouse.

He would rather be with Maggie. He rested the gun in the crook of his arm. He wondered if she was still abed, so warm and comfortable, so delightful to see upon awakening. So magnificent to make love to. Her dark tresses spread out upon the pillow, bed linens tangled around her—

“Gray!” Camerville shouted. “Take heed! You did not even fire!”

One of the beaters ran to retrieve the results of a successful shot.

Gray waved his hand to acknowledge Camerville’s admonition and tried to pay better attention. Sir Francis was one of the party and he gave Gray a concerned look. The other four gentlemen handed over their guns for reloading, seeming to take little notice.