“Was it good for you?” he asked smugly.
Viola was stunned. “You gave me a pain,” she informed him angrily.
Julian laughed softly. “Wait until you give birth,” he murmured.
Rolling over, he promptly went to sleep.
Chapter Twelve
In the morning, Julian stumbled naked into his dressing room, only to be assailed by a chorus of feminine screams. Viola was having her bath with Cork in attendance. At once, she sank down in the water as far as she could without drowning herself, shrieking, “Get out!”
Cork shrieked as the master climbed bare-bottomed into the enameled tub with her mistress. Viola was forced to the opposite end of the tub with her knees under her chin as he wedged in behind her, his knees on either side. The fit was tight and not at all comfortable. “Are you mad?” she gasped in disbelief. “How dare you expose yourself to my servant!”
“Cork very wisely has left the room,” Julian replied, splashing away. “I’m sorry to inconvenience you, my love, but I’m afraid I’m late for ’Change, and, after last night, I simply must have a bath.”
Viola started violently as she felt his hands slipping past her thighs. Half turning her head, she snarled over her shoulder, “Stop that at once! What do you think you’re doing?”
“Looking for the soap,” he answered mildly.
Viola handed it to him angrily. To her annoyance, he began lathering her back at once, his cool touch raising goose bumps. “Cork has already done my back,” she snapped, squirming in an effort to throw his hands from her. “I want to get out,” she added irritably.
“What’s stopping you?” he inquired pleasantly.
“You are,” she complained. “I’m wedged in. If I try to get out now—”
“I’ll have a lovely view of your delightful bottom,” he said. “I quite understand. Maidenly modesty is a beautiful thing. However, as we are to be married, I’m afraid you will have to accustom yourself to the idea of being gazed upon by your adoring husband.”
“What are you looking for now?” she yelped as his hands again plunged under the water, questing around her bottom.
“Washcloth.”
Viola flung it over her shoulder, slapping his face. She then wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, digging her heels into her thighs with her ankles clapped together. He began scrubbing himself with her washcloth.
“Did you sleep well?” he inquired presently.
“No,” she said coldly.
He chuckled. “If you were restless, you had only to wake me up, and we might have been restless together.”
Viola bristled. “I was not restless, Mr Devize,” she informed him. “I was disgusted. I was disgusted by you.”
Julian flushed in embarrassment. “Well, my dear,” he said. “I had a very good dinner, and, if I made a noise in my sleep, I can only apologize. I’m only human.”
“Noise? You know perfectly what you did,” she accused him. “You gave me a pain—you know you did—and I shall never forgive you for that.”
Julian laughed. “Oh, that,” he said.
“Yes, that!” Viola hissed at him. “You were like some stupid, rutting animal. It was the most horrendous, beastly, nightmarish experience of my entire life!”
“Strange,” Julian said thoughtfully. “I’ve never had any complaint before.”
Viola stiffened. She considered it quite ungallant for him to allude to his other liaisons, particularly when he knew she could not retaliate in kind. “Some girls have never learned to stand up for themselves,” she informed him icily.
“Or perhaps they did not want to hurt my feelings,” he suggested.
“After such treatment, I doubt any woman would care about your feelings!”
“Oh, come now,” he said with a touch of impatience. “It was not all bad. I seem to recall you rather enjoyed it. And I did ask you if you were sure it was what you wanted.”
“I was sure,” she snapped, “until you gave me a pain! Had I known you meant to injure me, I would never have acquiesced to your mad desires.”
Julian sighed. “Darling, it was your first time. Didn’t your mother explain all this to you?”
“My mother died when I was very young.”
Julian slipped his arms around her. “My poor darling,” he murmured in her ear. “It will get better, I promise. Next time—”
“Next time! Do you imagine,” she said, struggling furiously, “that I will ever permit you to do that to me again?”
Julian’s laughter was ill-concealed. “My dear girl, I’m absolutely certain of it!”
“You are mistaken,” she insisted angrily. “The thought is repugnant to me.”
His arms tightened around her. “Forgive me, Mary. I was never with a virgin before. I did not realize how difficult it would be for you. For me, you see, it was heaven.”
To her chagrin, Viola felt the forces of attraction again at work on her weak flesh. “It was not heaven for me, I assure you,” she said peevishly, unable to summon righteous indignation.
“The good news is it only hurts the first time,” he said, smoothing her hair with one hand. “You’re not in pain now, are you?”
In truth, most of Viola’s physical discomfort was long gone. There was only a dull ache in her loins now. “I am in pain,” she declared. “You hurt me quite dreadfully.”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” he murmured. “Should we have the physician?”
“No!” Viola cried, blushing furiously.
“My dear girl, if you are truly injured we must not take chances,” Julian said firmly. “Tell me if this hurts,” he added, one hand slipping under the water.
Viola squirmed so violently that the tub overturned, spilling both of them in a wave of soapy water onto the floor. Viola scrambled to her feet, grabbed her dressing gown, and ran into the next room. Julian discovered her curled in a ball on the sofa. He knelt down beside her and gently pried her hands apart. “Let me see, sweetheart. Don’t treat me like a stranger.”
“I won’t permit it,” Viola said primly. “I’m perfectly all right.”
Julian tugged at her legs. “Mary, don’t be foolish. If you are still in pain, that could be a sign of some permanent injury. If, for example, there was blood—”
“There was blood!” Viola choked, panicking. “Heaps of it! Is that a bad sign?”
Julian knew perfectly well that there had been blood, but he doubted her assertion that there had been heaps of it. There had been a few streaks on his member, but none on the sheets. However, he was more interested in soothing her anxiety than in correcting her exaggerations. Her anxiety seemed real enough.
“It can be a very bad sign,” he said very gravely. “Let me look,” he added gently, applying pressure to her knees. “Let me in.”
Overwrought, Viola gave up guarding her lower body, but she screwed both eyes shut and clutched her dressing gown around her shoulders as Julian gently spread her knees apart.
In order to get a better view of the lady’s injury, Julian was obliged to arrange her with her bottom a little over the edge of the sofa. “I beg your pardon,” he murmured courteously as he made the necessary adjustments. He spread her legs a little wider and blew gently on her sex, coaxing it to open like a rose.
Viola bit her lip and whimpered. The ache in her loins intensified almost to the point of pain. Her breasts, which, as far as she knew, were disinterested parties, were beginning to tingle too. “How does it look?” she ventured to ask. “Don’t spare me.”
To him, the sight was one of infinite fascination. The lips, scarlet and inflamed, to be sure, nonetheless seemed to be pouting most invitingly. “It’s just as I feared,” he said grimly. “You are very tender and swollen. I’d better bathe you with my handkerchief.”
“I’ve had a bath already,” she protested weakly as he went off in the direction of the dressing room.
“Yes, a hot bath. A hot bath is the very worst thing for a sore young lady.”
N
ever in her life had Viola felt so ill-informed. Viola looked at him between her fingers as, still quite naked himself, he studiously dipped his handkerchief in a bowl of cold water. His manner was scientific and impersonal as he approached her.
At the first touch, the center of pleasure stiffened with such exquisite pain that she gasped.
“Too cold?” Julian asked solicitously—too solicitously. Viola suddenly had the sneaking suspicion that he knew precisely what effect his ministrations were having on her. And when he bent his head suddenly, his warm, moist mouth replacing the cold, wet handkerchief, she was certain of it. Outrage and need and pleasure all mingled together in sublime confusion as his soft tongue entered her swollen opening, soothing the tender flesh. Her body trembled with shock, and, even though she did not feel at all repelled, as any decent woman ought to have done, she felt obliged to protest.
“Please don’t,” she whispered. “It isn’t nice.”
He seemed not to hear her weak protests. He continued to stroke her gently with his lips and tongue. He had stroked her before in this intimate way, but only with his fingers. She had not thought anything could please her more, but she had been quite wrong. The pleasure of his driving tongue and clinging mouth was as keen as a knife’s edge. Incoherently, she cried out for release, but, when he stopped suddenly, she cried out again. “No, don’t stop,” she pleaded humbly. “I didn’t mean it.”
Julian laughed softly. He had no intention of stopping until she achieved enough pleasure to erase the pain of the loss of her virginity. “You’re strangling me, love,” he chided her gently. Placing his hands firmly on the insides of her thighs, he loosened the hold her legs had on his neck.
The feel of his hands forcing her open, which had been so strange to Viola the night before, excited her now. It was but the work of a few seconds to drive her to the first shuddering climax of her life. Satisfaction of a kind unknown to her spread through her body, invading her from the roots of her hair to the ends of her toes. Her lover remained between her legs until the tumult subsided. Then he sat back on his heels with a very smug look on his face.
“Better?” he asked kindly.
Viola summoned her dignity. “Thank you. I think it is a little better.”
“I’m afraid I am a little worse,” he said apologetically. Rising to his knees, he presented her with his dark, straining member. “You will let me try again, won’t you?”
Viola groaned. She was as weak as water, and he knew it. “You tricked me,” she complained as he climbed over her. Her eyes widened as he filled her, but there was no pain, even when he had entered her completely and she swore she could feel him all the way to her navel. “Are you really inside me?” she whispered in disbelief.
Julian brought his mouth to hers as their bodies joined. “Yes, love, I really am.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“This is not a good beginning,” he observed wryly. Slowly, he pulled his sex from its tight sheath. Then, in one hard thrust, he took her again. “Do you believe it now?”
“Oh, yes,” she whispered, her head thrown back.
“And how is the pain?” he inquired, holding her haunches firmly with both hands as he thrust into her again. “Better?”
Viola flung her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “It’s lovely,” she confessed recklessly. “It’s quite the loveliest pain I’ve ever had.”
“You’re bloody well right it is,” he muttered through gritted teeth.
He was maddening her with slow, careful strokes. It took great self-control and concentration not to give in to the urge to take his own pleasure as quickly as possible, but he did not care to be likened again to an animal by his future bride. The pleasure of her snug passage was almost too much to bear. He groaned deep in his throat.
Viola was apologetic. “Was I very unkind to you this morning?” she asked, her head lolling in lazy pleasure from side to side.
“Yes, you were,” he told her plainly, moving slowly between her thighs.
Viola smiled bewitchingly. “Oh, I am sorry,” she purred. “I did not understand.”
“And now you think you do?” he said harshly.
“Yes,” Viola said happily.
Julian pulled out of her until only the very tip of his sex touched hers. “I think not,” he said, and, this time, when he thrust, he pulled her sharply to him at the same time, so that he went deeper than he had before. Viola cried out as he struck her womb, but he was remorseless. “If you really understood, Mary, you would move your bottom. Like so,” he added, guiding her into his stroke a little more gently. “I cannot do it for you all the time, you know.”
Viola did her best. Her legs flailed over his hips; then they found a brace in the arm of the sofa. She arched against him awkwardly at first, but, as he wisely let her set the rhythm, the awkwardness soon vanished and they moved together.
Despite his best efforts to let the lady outrun him, Julian reached the end of the course before she did. Viola was perfectly content as he drew away from her, but Julian could not conceal his disappointment. “What’s the matter, darling?” she cried tenderly.
“You didn’t go off with me,” he murmured, beginning to dress.
Viola sat up and pulled her dressing gown around her. She did not understand his dismay, but she was sorry for his disappointment. “I will try to go off with you next time,” she said, in her most conciliatory tone.
“See that you do,” he said sternly, but his eyes were twinkling. “And now I really must get ready for work. God knows what those fools are getting up to on the Exchange without me to lead them.”
Viola laughed in disbelief. “You’re not really going? Not now?”
“I must,” he said, going into the dressing room. “I don’t mean to keep you in shameful poverty for another day if I can help it. I must get to work.”
“You worked yesterday,” she complained, following him into the little room.
“I must work every day,” he told her.
“Not today, surely. I thought, perhaps, you might marry me today.”
Julian looked surprised. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, my love.”
Viola went cold. “What?” The word fell from her lips.
“I shall marry you, of course,” he told her quickly. “But, first, we must have money. One cannot buy a special license on credit, after all. Then I must find someone to marry us. That costs money, too.”
“How much money?” Viola demanded.
“Let me worry about that,” he said. “And, no, I don’t want you pawning anything else—my pride couldn’t take it. I shall have the money we need at month’s end, and then we shall be able to…do all things we want to do,” he finished awkwardly as Hudson came into the room to help his master dress.
“So long?” said Viola, oblivious to the fact that she was in Hudson’s way.
“I’m afraid so, my love.”
Hudson cleared his throat angrily, and Viola had no choice but to leave the room.
In a few moments, Julian emerged from the dressing room looking remarkably gentlemanlike in a brand-new suit of clothes: a dark gray, short-waisted coat with matching trousers, a peacock blue waistcoat, and a snowy white neckcloth. On his head was a curly brimmed beaver.
Viola smiled in delight. “Oh, they fit you like a glove. I was a little worried.”
“Madam,” he said coldly, “would you care to explain this?”
“You needed new clothes,” she said. “How gentlemanlike you look,” she purred, going over to him to make some minute adjustments.
“I look ridiculous.”
“Not to me you don’t,” she said persuasively. “I’ve got butterflies.”
“Where are my old clothes?” he demanded, refusing to be distracted. “Hudson can’t find them.”
“I’m afraid I had to get rid of those clothes, Dev,” she told him without apology.
“What!”
“They were horrid, shocking clothes,” she said
defensively. “These are much better.”
“The coat is too short,” he complained. “And the waistcoat is garish.”
“The coat is cut to show off your waistcoat and give you access to your watch,” she helpfully explained. “The color of your waistcoat does wonderful things to your eyes. And your eyes do wonderful things to me,” she added silkily.
“I don’t even have a watch at the moment,” he snorted. “And this putrid hat has got a curly brim! I look like a dandy!”
“Well, I think you look splendid,” she said. “Your old hat wasn’t even a true beaver! No wonder it couldn’t hold its shape—or its color,” she added scathingly.
“It kept my head dry.”
“I doubt that very much,” she drawled. “This hat will keep your head dry, and hold its shape in the rain. Most importantly, it will declare you to the world as a respectable gentleman.”
“I’m surprised you don’t put me in tall Hessian boots with twee tassels,” he grumbled.
Viola frowned. “Why should I put you in Hessian boots? You are an English gentleman, I think, not a German mercenary. And I don’t object to trousers. I think men should dress as sensibly as possible, and leave high fashion to the ladies.”
“Thank you for that, at least,” he muttered. “How much did all this low fashion cost?”
Viola shook her head. “It’s my wedding present to you. You’re not allowed to ask.”
“I suppose I could get married in this getup,” he said grudgingly. “A man shouldn’t look his ordinary shabby self on his wedding day, after all.”
“No, indeed,” she agreed. “But I want you to be married in your uniform.”
“Then what do I need this for?” he grumbled.
“I think you owe it to me to look the gentleman,” she answered firmly. “Come to that, I think you owe it to the people you ruin. How do you think they feel being bested by a badly dressed young man? It must be humiliating.”
The Heiress In His Bed Page 19