“Don’t cry, darling.” He caught tears she hadn’t even realized she’d been crying on the pad of his finger. He was unbearably handsome looking down at her, the light of the far-off windows illuminating his aristocratic features. His eyes were what haunted her most, pinning her to the floor upon which she stood.
“I’m not,” she lied, sniffing and trying to hide her embarrassment. How had they gone from speaking of her old poetry habit to this deep, emotional conversation? She didn’t want to linger over wounds that didn’t have a ready bandage. “My father was not particularly kind to me, but that is hardly your affair. I’m sorry, my lord.”
She licked her lips, embarrassed that she had allowed herself to sink so low in the mire of her past. It was hardly his fault that her father had bartered her for his title. For the first time in her life, she recognized her father’s machinations for what they were. She could be as angry at Simon as she chose, but the truth was that her father had orchestrated it all. He had sold her for a title, and once she was gone, he no longer had a need for her.
Simon brushed a kiss over her forehead. “I’m sorry, my dear. My father was an utter bastard as well. All he left me was a mountain of debt and no true solution.”
No true solution. Maggie winced, for she knew she’d been the solution. Or rather, her father’s willingness to provide him with a fat dowry had been. “I suppose we are both the victims of our circumstances.” She’d never looked at the situation from such a perspective, but the more time they spent together, the more she’d come to see him differently. She felt a deep empathy toward Simon, who was simply a man who’d been set adrift on the ocean of life every bit as much as she.
“I suppose we are,” he agreed, his expression as solemn as his gaze was searching. “Perhaps we ought to begin again, toss away the old hurts between us. What say you, my dear?”
If he’d surprised her before, he amazed her now with his unexpected query. The quiet life she’d led since her marriage had given way to one of passion, excitement and renewal. All the possibilities she’d thought she’d abandoned forever suddenly seemed within her reach.
Was beginning again with Simon what she wanted? Was it what he wanted? Maggie was fool enough to hope. She had a rather persistent feeling that perhaps they ought to be swimming toward each other instead of opposite shores. “I would like that very much.”
He smiled and another new sensation bloomed over her, one that felt suspiciously like the early stirrings of love. Dear heavens. She was doomed.
Chapter Six
“You cannot possibly be serious.”
Simon stared at his fiery-haired wife and decided that, whilst she looked particularly exquisite in a brilliant-blue afternoon frock, her American sensibilities were rotting her brain. Exceptional ability as a poetess or not, she was fit for the madhouse. She appeared quite sincere, her violet eyes huge and bright, pinning him to the spot. From her elaborately styled curls to her silk shoes, she looked every inch the proper marchioness. He longed to muss her up, undo a few of her buttons, bend her over a settee and sink inside her hot, wet flesh. Devil take it. He shook the thought from his mind. He bloody well couldn’t always be making love to her. Could he?
“Of course I’m serious, Sandhurst.” She smiled and he wanted her all the more. “So are you. That’s the problem. It’s occurred to me that I’ve never even heard you laugh.”
Hadn’t she? He pondered her statement for a moment, supposing that he didn’t find much levity in the world. “Laughter is for fools,” he snapped, irritated. She had invaded his home, his thoughts and, dear God, very nearly his heart. Why did she have to be so damn lovely, so sweet and kind? It would have been better had she been a shrew.
Maggie gave him a look that he fancied she saved for motherless kittens. “Laughter is for people who are happy.”
What was he to say to that? He frowned at her, thinking he should have simply acted on his instinct and ravished her. “What on earth has happiness to do with walking about in the rain?” he demanded, returning to her ridiculous idea that they go for a walk in the rainstorm that was currently soaking the countryside. “I daresay drowning one’s self in thunderclouds and mud puddles isn’t going to incite either laughter or happiness.”
She had the cheek to whisk away his statement with a gesture of her small hand. “Nonsense. It’s not thundering and you’ve never lived until you’ve danced in the rain.”
“I suppose you’ve never contracted a lung disease either,” he quipped, unable to help himself. Christ, he was actually beginning to be charmed by her madness. Somehow, she was at her most fetching when she was smiling and daring him to step beyond the boundaries behind which he’d lived his entire life.
“Truly, Simon.” She pursed her luscious lips together in that way she had that made him want to crush her in his arms and kiss her. “What good is life without a spot of fun?”
He scowled, confounded by his intense reaction to her. It was mad. Ludicrous. There was no reason he should want this woman he’d sworn never to bed, fewer reasons to be enthralled by her odd sense of adventure. She was everything he was not. Young, idealistic, filled with laughter and hope and innocence. Ready to give in to her desires, to forget about the strictures of society that said a husband and a wife ought not to love each other. She cared for him despite his abandonment of her, despite his admittedly cool nature. She was the fire to his ice and, damn it, she was melting him. He had to take care or he’d be burned.
He forced his mind to focus. What had she said? Ah, yes. More mutton-headed prattling about fun, of all things. “That sounds as if it’s something Nell would say.”
Pink blossomed over her cheeks, telling him he’d caught her in her own game. “She did say it. But she was utterly right.”
“If you want fun,” he growled, closing the distance between them and sliding his arms about her sweet wasp waist, “I’ve something else in mind. It doesn’t involve rain, but it does involve undoing all seven hundred of your buttons.”
Her eyes widened, darkening with the passion he’d come to recognize. She was not immune. He slid his palms over the silk of her back, moving up to her nape. Her hair was so damn soft and smelled of roses. His cock went painfully erect. To hell with rain and dancing. He wanted her on the carpet of the library, beneath him, his cock slipping deep inside the slippery pink depths of her cunny.
“I believe you’re making a jest, my lord,” Maggie said, sounding as breathless as he felt. “Your eyes are almost twinkling with merriment.”
Perhaps she was making him maudlin. Perhaps he was just as touched as she was. Whatever the case, he rather found he didn’t mind. Desire slid through his body, mingling with anticipation. He gently tipped her head back. “Nonsense. You know very well I don’t jest, and if my eyes are shining, it’s merely because I’m imagining you in the nude.”
Her pretty lips parted. “You won’t have me nude until you’ve gone out in the rain with me.”
Again with the rain nonsense. Very well. She could have him standing in an icy rain for the rest of the afternoon, and he didn’t think it would cool the fervor roiling through his blood. He wanted to have her, and if it meant doing as she asked, he gladly would. Anything to ease the persistent ache in his trousers. “You win, my dear. I’ll venture into the weather with you.”
She clutched his arms in her excitement, apparently shocked that she’d managed his surrender. “You will?”
“I will.” He dropped a quick kiss on her mouth, unable to help himself. But with one kiss, he inevitably wanted more. “But only for a moment, you outlandish woman.” He couldn’t resist another kiss, this one lingering longer than the first. She opened to him and his tongue swept inside, tasting her, claiming her. She was his, by God. His senses were filled with her, the sweet scent of her perfume, the softness of her lips, her breathy sigh filling his ears, the sensation of her hands finding their way to his chest. Dear God. Perhaps the rain would dampen his ardor. He certainly hoped so, for sh
e was growing more necessary to him than air, and it scared him like the devil. With great reluctance, he broke off their kiss, even if he suspected she would have allowed him to prolong the interlude.
He looked down upon her, his odd little wife who had come to mean so much to him in such a short amount of time. The wife he hadn’t bothered to see in over a year. It seemed impossible now as he gazed at her brazen beauty. She gazed back at him, mutual passion reflected in her glazed eyes. She caught her full lower lip between her teeth, almost as if she were struggling to compose her thoughts.
“Shall we?” he asked, wanting to get her peculiar request out of the way as soon as possible to make way for more pleasant pursuits.
She blinked. “Truly?”
Did she think him that much of an arse? He supposed he couldn’t blame her. He had not been kind to her for most of their marriage. In truth, he wasn’t sure he could be kind. Part of him couldn’t believe he was deigning to indulge her silly fancies.
He cleared his throat, his insides all bollixed up. “Truly.”
“You won’t be sorry,” she promised, even though he was altogether certain he would.
But somehow, none of his reservations mattered. “Let us be done with it,” he said solemnly, not wanting to allow her to see just how deeply she affected him.
She wriggled free of his grasp, much to his dismay, appearing suddenly like a fairy. Her entire face brightened, becoming even lovelier, if at all possible. She grabbed his hands, tugging him in her wake. “Come along,” she tossed over her shoulder as she headed for the double glass doors at the end of the library that led into Denver House’s extensive gardens. “If you tarry any longer, I fear the rain will stop.”
“That would be the greatest shame,” he said dryly, allowing her to pull him as if she were a horse and he the carriage. He wasn’t accustomed to following anyone, to bending to another’s whims. In the past, even with Eleanor, he had always had his way. She had deferred to him always. Indeed, now that he thought on it, Eleanor hadn’t seemed to have any whims of her own. She had simply wanted to please him, but in a completely different way. Maggie wanted to see him happy. By God, she wanted to make him laugh, of all things, and she thought to accomplish it with raindrops. But as harebrained as her idea seemed, what warmed his cold heart was that she cared.
“Don’t be a milksop, Simon.” Maggie tugged him to the door before stopping and glancing back his way, looking almost shy now that she was about to have her way. “Are you ready?”
He trusted she wasn’t looking to his trousers, for if she was, she wouldn’t have asked. He raised a brow. “Ready as ever.”
“We must dance,” she informed him. “Those are the rules.”
“Ah, now we’ve rules?”
“Every good game requires rules,” she confirmed before throwing open one of the doors and hauling him over the threshold in her wake.
The rain was as unrelenting as it was cold, but he dutifully followed Maggie as she led him a few steps away from the house onto the gravel path leading into the manicured gardens. She stopped and turned into his arms, looking up at him as water slicked her face and flattened her glorious curls. She was even lovelier in the rain than she’d been in the dry confines of the library. There was something freeing, something ridiculously rebellious about being in the midst of a thorough soaking with her. Before he knew it, he was smiling at her. He couldn’t help it. Her good cheer was infectious.
“Now we must waltz,” she informed him. “But take care, my lord. You almost appear as if you’re enjoying yourself.”
He laughed at that. He couldn’t help it, and he had to admit, even if only to himself, that it was truly the first time he’d laughed in earnest in as long as he could recall. She was wild, his little wife. And he wanted more. “You’re making me as mad as you,” he said at last, still grinning like a fool.
“You laughed,” she said, reaching up to cup his jaw.
The touch was so gentle and yet so arousing that he grew rigid again despite the chill and the moisture. His cock was hard as marble, aching for release that he could only find in her voluptuous body. His hair was plastering itself to his forehead and he was sure he looked as if he’d escaped from an asylum for the frail-minded. But he didn’t care.
“I believe you requested a waltz, my lady,” he told her instead, enjoying every moment of their impromptu embrace in the rain. And with that, he began humming, leading them into a very proper dance that would have done any ballroom shame.
She followed, grinning up at him and blinking through the raindrops that continued to inundate them. “I did indeed, my lord.”
It wasn’t long before she’d trounced on his toes. She was an abysmal dancer, he discovered, almost gratified to find something at which she did not excel. For it surely seemed to him that in most ways, his wife was perfection. She laughed up at him, the happiest he’d seen her, and it struck him that this was what she’d meant. Unabashed, raw happiness. Her cheeks were flushed, her coiffure hopelessly defeated, the silk of her blue gown perhaps ruined forever, and yet she was glowing, tilting her head back to laugh as if she didn’t care who heard her. It was infectious, and soon he was laughing along with her as they twirled and she trod on his instep.
“Devil take it, you’re a horrid dancer,” he told her as she laughed at another misstep.
“I am,” she admitted easily. “A proper gentleman would keep that observation to himself.”
“I begin to think I’m not a proper gentleman.” He stopped them and yanked her into his body, tipping up her wet chin with his fingers. “After all, a proper gentleman wouldn’t do this.”
He kissed her, through the rain and the cold and the fear that he was falling under the spell of the tiny American in his arms. Her hands flitted to his shoulders, her mouth opening to him. Their tongues tangled. He relished the crush of her breasts against his chest, the heavy weight of her skirts against his painfully hard cock. She smelled of roses and autumn.
He wasn’t going to last much longer. He had to have her. He wanted to strip the wet silk from her, reveal pale curves layer by mouthwatering layer, lay her on the library floor and press his rain-slicked body into hers. He wanted to lick her sweet cunny, make her come on his tongue as she had before. God, how he wanted.
When he broke their kiss to gaze down at her, the laughter had fled from her beautiful face as well. He recognized the same passion claiming her that raged through him, the need to be one. Her breathing was heavy, her mouth open. Her eyes were the deepest violet he’d ever seen them.
“My God, Maggie,” he rasped. “I need you desperately.”
“Yes,” she said, gripping his hand once more. “Come.”
Once more, he allowed himself to be pulled back across the gravel path, through the torrent of rainfall to the library doors. He didn’t know what had gotten into him. She’d done something to him, something irreversible, and it had nothing to do with dancing in the rain and everything to do with her. If he wasn’t careful, he could love her.
Dear God. He wouldn’t allow that to happen. Couldn’t allow that to happen. As they reached the dry sanctuary of the library once more, he turned his mind to the task at hand. Getting his wife naked.
He kissed her again, then began working on her buttons. The limpness of the wet silk wasn’t being overly cooperative, and his progress was slow. Too slow. He’d ruined her train once, he reasoned. To hell with it. Grasping each side of her bodice in his hands, he tore with all his strength. Buttons fell to the carpet.
“Simon,” she gasped, perhaps shocked.
“I’ll buy you a new bloody dress,” he grumbled, yanking again until her bodice fell open to her waist. “One without any damn buttons.”
She smiled, sending a foreign emotion slicing through him, and helped him to remove her arms from her sleeves. “I should like to see such a dress.”
“Better still, I shall keep you nude for the rest of your days.” He gave her a wicked smile of his own, lik
ing his idea immensely. “To hell with the dresses.”
She shivered as she opened the hidden placket on her skirts, dropping them to the floor. She stood before him in her undergarments, her breasts a creamy swell of temptation. He passed his still-wet hands over her smooth shoulders, wanting her with an intensity that frightened him. “Are you cold, darling?”
“No,” she whispered, and he knew then that it was the same for her.
He pulled away the strings of her bustle and helped Maggie to shuck her corset cover. “Turn,” he told her, wanting to undo the laces of her corset.
She spun as he commanded, giving him her back. Her curls sagged under the weight of the rain, but her hair was still impossibly vibrant and beautiful. Even her shoulders were sheer perfection. He pressed a kiss to her neck as he settled his hands on her nipped waist. So tiny, such a delicious contrast to the lush curves of her bosom. When she tilted her head to the side, allowing him greater access, he kissed a path to her ear. His fingers unerringly found the knot her indefatigable lady’s maid had tied in her corset and began undoing it. With great care, willing himself to go slowly, he kissed her ear. When she shivered again, he took her earlobe between his teeth and gently tugged, earning a soft moan from her.
Ah, hell. Just the sound was enough to make him thrust into her, pressing his cock into the ample curves of her bottom. She arched back into him, making him groan as he met with her softness. He kissed the patch of skin just beneath her ear, tasting her, licking the rain from her.
“Oh,” she cried out, turning her head to nuzzle his. “Oh Simon.”
His fingers at last met with success, opening the knot on her corset ties. He moved between the crisscrossing laces, pulling them apart, intent on his quest to have her gloriously nude.
“Darling,” he murmured, nipping at her skin enough to make her shiver but not to create a mark. “I can’t wait to have your beautiful breasts in my hands, to take your nipples in my mouth and suck them until they’re hard.”
Her Lovestruck Lord: 2 (Wicked Husbands) Page 12