While heat both internal and external washed colour into her cheeks, she noticed that Darleston was smiling. ‘No.’
Her shock was mimicked in Lyle’s face. ‘No?’ he questioned.
‘That’s a privilege you’ll have to earn,’ Darleston said to her. ‘Tit for tat. You have to give something in order to receive. Are you willing, Emma? Or shall I take myself to my chamber now?’
Her breath caught in her throat. ‘What do you want?’
He laughed, his tongue flicking over the points of his canines. ‘I haven’t decided yet, but I’m sure that something will occur to me.’
‘Then how can I possibly agree?’
‘You don’t have to agree, because I’m not going to swive him. I’ll give you a taste of something else instead and then you can judge if you want to take things further. It’s entirely your choice.’
‘Emma?’ Lyle asked with a hint of desperation in his voice.
‘Very well. Show me what you will.’
Kissing – something she’d never understood, but which she now couldn’t take her eyes off. In some ways seeing their bodies pressed tight, hands grasping, full of urgency, was more intense than watching them fuck. Her own lips burned with imagined sensations of such a caress – deep, furious, passionate and growing in intensity. The ache of their joining seemed to spill into the air around them and raise the temperature of the room by several degrees. Her heart sped, and then hiccupped when they drew apart. Darleston fell onto his knees so that his head was level with Lyle’s groin. Dexterous fingers made quick work of Lyle’s waistcoat buttons. He yanked the front of Lyle’s shirt from his breeches and unfastened the buttons of his frontfall. Lyle’s breeches slithered down his legs with the aid of some tugging. Then Darleston’s large palm swept up the inside edge of Lyle’s thigh with the fingers splayed.
And she knew what was coming, could see it so clearly. He would do as Lyle had described and take her husband’s cock in his mouth.
It was not quite as quick as that. Darleston teased before he delivered. The pink flash of his tongue touched the very tip of Lyle’s prick. He paused there, his breath warming the surface. Even then he didn’t deliver, but placed numerous light kisses up and down the stem, while with one thumb he gently stroked Lyle’s balls.
Lyle’s expression told her everything about how it felt to be held thus. Rapture. His eyes fell shut. He sought blindly for some support, initially finding only Darleston’s head of fiery locks, in which he entwined his fingers. ‘Oh, yes! Suck me, Robert. Please.’
‘Like this?’ Darleston bestowed a firmer kiss to a point halfway up Lyle’s shaft.
‘Not quite.’
‘Like this then?’ Avoiding the cherry-red tip again, Darleston kissed the juncture where the base of Lyle’s prick met his cobs.
‘A tad higher.’
‘Ah, I understand.’ But he didn’t rise up. He sank lower instead and took not Lyle’s cock but one of his bollocks into his mouth.
Emma leaned forward straining to see. It was hard to determine from Lyle’s expression whether the touch was entirely pleasing, rather he seemed on the edge of some precipice. ‘Ease off.’ His fingers curled tight into Darleston’s hair, making knots of the coppery strands.
Darleston released him. He sat back on his haunches and directed Lyle to the armchair. Lyle fell gratefully into his bower, his breeches still hanging around his knees. Darleston tugged them off along with Lyle’s shoes and stockings. He rose upon on his knees again to kiss Lyle’s mouth while stroking his prick before finally taking Lyle’s cock in his mouth.
The very act confounded her. Here was a lord upon his knees sucking another man’s – her husband’s – cock as if it were a joy to do so. Emma shuffled around, needing to know if the act aroused Darleston as much as it did Lyle. The front of his breeches, what she could make out around his coat-tails and the tangle of their limbs, stood tented. A sort of triangular protrusion strained against the buttons.
It did arouse him. Sucking another man’s cock aroused him. She wanted a closer look at the evidence. Longed to see his shaft standing erect and watch his seed spill over his fingertips and belly once more.
Darleston’s hips rocked as he fellated Lyle, mimicking the rhythm of coitus, back and forth in a steady figure-of-eight motion.
If she asked, would he expose himself? Would he take his prick in his hand and masturbate as he pleasured her husband and allow her to watch all that? It took every ounce of strength she possessed to open her mouth and ask, ‘Can I see?’
She had to move away from the hearth, the heat in her body was now so fierce.
Darleston turned his head towards her. ‘His prick?’ Lyle’s shaft glinted in the firelight, shiny with saliva and precome.
‘Yours,’ she mouthed, words barely audible.
He heard her though. She watched the delight at the request run into his eyes, filling them with powerful dark magic. His lips were moist and berry-red as if he had smeared rouge on them, and just for a second she imagined leaning in and tasting them and the essence of Lyle’s sex left upon them.
‘Say that again,’ he said. ‘Tell me you want to see my prick again.’
Embarrassment tied her tongue in knots. She couldn’t look at him as she said it. ‘I want to watch you stroking your prick.’
Saying ‘prick’, that was the truly toe-curling part, followed by the sharp sound of Lyle’s indrawn breath and then a terrible moment of silence before Darleston smoothed a hand over his frontfall and cupped the prominent bulge there. He slipped one button, then a second, before teasing the waistband of his breeches away from his skin so that it slid down and clung to his hips.
She couldn’t see nearly enough skin. Really, she wanted to strip the clothing from his upper body, so that the lines of his torso were displayed for her amusement, but he could keep his breeches on. Somehow that made the act more sordid and beautiful.
Darleston wrapped his large hand around his cock. He worked his wrist, steadily picking up the pace while he resumed sucking Lyle. The sight of them provoked a fever that made her tremble inside. Later she would lie alone and rub herself to climax, the images of the pair of them playing in her head. Now her fingernails dug into the centres of her palms and she squirmed so that the lips of her puss rubbed together, providing much-needed friction to her nubbin.
Darleston’s eyes remained closed while he sucked and stroked, but Lyle watched her writhe, his face full of enchantment.
‘Touch yourself,’ he mouthed.
Emma shook her head. She couldn’t. She simply couldn’t while they were watching.
‘Please.’
She shook her head again.
‘Stroke your breasts.’
Darleston made a mmpfh noise in response and tried to turn his head while somehow still sucking Lyle. His eyes blazed as they met hers. The look, wild and ferocious, caused her insides to melt. She stared back at him open mouthed and sopping wet, so desperate for a touch to her clitoris that her hand strayed in that direction without any conscious thought on her part. She pressed herself once, greedily, through her shift. It was as if spring had bloomed all over her body. ‘Again,’ Lyle urged, while he drew Darleston to himself. She shook her head, but then did exactly as he asked. It was impossible not to. She simply couldn’t keep still and remain aloof to what they were doing, not with all those wet clicks filling her ears and the lewd vision of Darleston – fellating Lyle, cock in hand – devouring her control.
‘Oh boy!’ Lyle’s hand returned to Darleston’s hair, guiding him, restraining him. His closeness to orgasm glowed in his face. He jerked Darleston impulsively, the motion becoming increasingly arrhythmic.
What happens when you come? She wanted to ask. The answer became suddenly apparent as Lyle raised his hips up off the chair in a final desperate thrust. He gasped, seemed to gargle a host of endearments, unable to articulate any of them properly, as he came into Darleston’s mouth.
She watched Darleston swallow and
almost cried at the intimacy of the moment. The sheen of Lyle’s gift coated Darleston’s lips when he turned his head and rested his cheek against Lyle’s thigh. He looked right at her as he stroked and rutted against Lyle’s leg. A desperate sob escaped his shiny lips. His tongue flicked across them, so that he tasted Lyle’s seed as his climax broke.
Emma shared the moment with him, watched the lick of fire in his eyes, knew his heat and pain, his loss and his bliss. Pearlescent fluid coated his hand and made a wet patch upon the rug.
She knew hunger in that moment – deep, desperate, gnawing hunger – like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
He saw it too, and knew her desire, but he didn’t act. He remained clamped fast to Lyle’s thigh, breath laboured and muscles lax.
They’d both come but she remained unsatisfied. It was the most terrible and traumatic moment of her adult life.
Frustration needled her skin, making the situation even worse, yet she couldn’t give in to that need. The same part of her that had kept her free from physical contact for so long now stopped her pursuing the release she so desperately craved. She knelt, frozen in position, afraid to react because who knew where it would lead.
Darleston fell onto all fours and crawled towards her. The dip in his back as he stretched added to the illusion of sleek male beauty. He stopped in front of her and rose to his knees. He and she were mere inches apart, as they’d been in the amphitheatre before he touched her. He reached out now. Emma’s breath caught. Tears stung her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Could only watch in terrified silence as his curled fingers drew level with her face, but he didn’t make contact. Instead, he traced the curve of her cheek an inch away from her skin. He didn’t speak, but in truth he didn’t need to. The message was clear in his eyes. I can give you what you need. All you have to do is grant me permission.
It didn’t matter how much she craved release. She could never ask for his touch. Never. ‘Please step back.’
‘Is that truly what you want?’
She choked upon an affirmative, while tension rippled through the space between them.
‘Very well, Emma. Though it pains me to see you left unsatisfied. I would however beg a favour of you before I depart.’
‘Wh-what favour?’
‘Show me a glimpse of yourself.’
‘Now hang on there, Darleston,’ Lyle interjected. He pushed himself up from his sleepy repose in the armchair. ‘We never agreed to this.’
‘Are you protesting?’ Darleston raised a brow, while passing Lyle a handkerchief.
Her husband accepted the monogrammed linen and cleaned himself. ‘No. Of course not, if Emma’s happy with it. You just took me off-guard there. She was only meant to be an observer.’
‘I was, yes.’ Emma agreed. It had never been her intention to be a part of what they’d shared other than as an observer. Yet they’d both made her part of their lovemaking. Lyle had pretty much ordered her to take part and Darleston continually pushed against her boundaries, urging her to extend them.
‘I’ll leave what portion you choose to share entirely at your discretion, but know that this is my price. If you wish things to progress beyond this point then give me an image to fuel my dreams. Don’t worry, Lyle, you’re already there.’
What he asked was fair. She couldn’t refuse him. Yet her whole body trembled at the thought of exposing any more skin than she already displayed. All this time she’d been sitting in her underthings with a shawl around her shoulders as if her attire were entirely respectable. Emma cautiously removed the woollen wrap and let it fall onto the rug. She thought he might like to look upon a breast. Men seemed to like such things. She’d seen paintings depicting women with their breasts bared and onlookers’ gazes fastened upon them with an almost religious zeal; some even depicted the men reaching to out to squeeze the nipples. But to expose herself thus would require the unlacing of her stays, far too much manipulation for her currently agitated state; and she would have to face him and know what was in his heart as he looked. What if he found her lacking in some regard? She wasn’t robustly endowed like some of the ladies in town. Her bosom was rather modest. It would likely only just fill his hand.
Emma turned away from him instead. Tentatively she lifted the hem of her shift, raised it higher and higher, exposing the length of her stockings and the garters clasped around her thighs. Higher still – they were now seeing the bare skin of her upper thigh, lily-pale even by firelight. With one last tug she raised the shift to her waist, exposing the cheeks of her bottom. Why didn’t he say something? What was going through his head? What was he imagining? Would the image of her pert, luscious bottom fuel dreams of him swiving her in the fashion she’d asked him to take Lyle tonight?
Emma released the gathered fabric and let it fall to hide her shame. She remained with her back to the men, still aroused and hopelessly frustrated.
‘Thank you,’ Darleston said. That was all. She heard the click of the latch and turned in time to see the flash of his coat sleeve as the door closed behind him. Lyle had left too. She was alone. The room felt vast and the pit of her stomach empty. And no amount of frantic, solitary masturbation would change that.
CHAPTER NINE
Lyle followed Darleston into his room at the far end of the upstairs corridor. ‘You ought not to have pushed her like that. It was too much. Bullying her isn’t going to gain you anything. You’ll just prompt her to withdraw and then you can call cuckoo on your wretched plan.’
The glow of a single candle lit Darleston’s face as he turned. ‘She performed, didn’t she?’ He quirked his brows. ‘And I don’t think you actually believe it wretched. You want your wife happy, don’t you? Believe me. It’s preferable to being saddled with a sour old cow.’
Lyle guessed Darleston would know. He’d never met Lucy, Lady Darleston, yet somehow he knew her. Leastways, he knew her type – selfish, insouciant and resentful. It wasn’t enough for her that she’d been handed an Earl’s son as a husband. She wanted more. Believed she deserved everything. Rumours of her misdeeds and flirtations had passed his ears long before the recent newspaper scandal erupted.
Darleston set aside the candle and sank onto the centre of the tester bed. Lucy, had she been present, would have moaned incessantly about the room, but Darleston seemed remarkably content with it. Owing to his late and rather unanticipated arrival, he had not been given the grandest apartment. That room had gone to Phelps and Heath to share as the highest ranking and most distinguished of the expected guests. The fact that they were also both young and robust helped, as the room was somewhat prone to drafts and damp; even the heartiest fire rarely elevated the temperature to any sort of cosiness. Darleston’s current chamber, however, was a good deal more pleasant, having benefited from a warm palette of red and gold and a lower ceiling. It also stuck out on a limb from the main corridor, making it ideal for illicit assignations, which was exactly what Lyle had in mind. Fellatio was all well and good, but it wasn’t what they had planned.
Darleston propped himself up on his elbows. ‘Be reassured, Lyle, the most traumatic thing I’ve done tonight is walk away and leave her unfulfilled. No true gentleman would have done so, which shows us both up for the rogues we’ve become.’
‘Speak for yourself.’ Lyle poured a stiff drink, which he downed in a single gulp. The most traumatic thing Darleston had done was refusing to swive him. ‘You may consider yourself a rogue if you wish, but I was only acting in accordance with my wife’s express wishes. I won’t push her into something she doesn’t desire and, after two years of marriage, I think I know what that is. I agreed only to provide her with a delicious tableau. Nothing was required of her in return. You’re the one who insisted upon repayment. Be it on your head.’
‘Lyle.’ Darleston combed his fingers through his fiery locks. ‘If she didn’t desire what I’m egging her towards then I wouldn’t have been treated to the sight of her very comely behind.’ Darleston’s lips curved int
o a smile that accompanied an ‘mmm’ of appreciation. ‘You’re a lucky man. Lucy is skinny as a rake and not half so peachlike.’
‘You know perfectly well that I have no interest in women’s bottoms whether they are legally mine or not.’ He took another measure of sherry. In truth he had been more stirred by the glimpse of Emma’s flesh than he’d anticipated, perhaps because he’d never seen any part of her except what was strictly decorous to observe. Her skin was impossibly white. Her bottom reminded him more of the lower swell of a teardrop than the chubby flesh of a peach. There had been something stately and elegant about it, but he wasn’t sure that his admiration extended to arousal. He didn’t long to gaze upon her rear for hours, or cling to it, or dig his fingernails into its surface leaving brightly coloured marks behind as he wished to do to Darleston’s arse. He didn’t wish to plant his cock firmly in the furrow between the cheeks and ride them both to satisfaction. No, if he was honest, Emma’s frigidity had never truly bothered him. In many ways it had been a relief not to have to worry about whether he could even fulfil his duty.
‘You know, you say that, Lyle, but I didn’t imagine you giving her orders to frig herself.’
Heat of the moment. It wasn’t as if he didn’t desire her happiness. They were friends, a partnership of sorts, after all. ‘That is altogether different. I can offer her contentment without desiring to couple with her.’
Darleston rolled onto his stomach with a sigh, turning his back on Lyle. ‘I swear you’re determined to make this twice as difficult as necessary.’
Lyle cautiously perched upon the lip of the mattress. He reached out but kept his hand poised just over the curve of Darleston’s thigh. ‘I guess things are moving in a slightly different direction from how I’d imagined. You want her. Perhaps more than you want me. Be honest with me, Robert. This isn’t merely about fashioning some sort of safety net for the two of us. You genuinely desire her.’
Darleston rolled over again. He pushed up into a sitting position and scrunched a few pillows under his right side. In the dim light of the candle his eyes were like two splinters of onyx. His expression gave nothing away, though, as they looked at one another, something softened around Darleston’s jaw. ‘I fear my tastes run a little less purely than yours. Your wife fascinates me. How can she stand to live like that? I would die if I had to go more than a week without some manner of touch. I want to know how she does it.’
Her Husband’s Lover Page 10