Taking Liberties

by Jackie Barbosa

  No, nor should she have. As a gently reared lady, she expected all gentlemen to behave like gentleman—as Nash himself had behaved once she’d made it abundantly clear she wished him to stop. But he had no confidence that either Hapsborough or Randley, with substantial sums riding upon their success, would be so noble. Someone had to protect her. And though it would cause him an untold amount of suffering—both emotional and physical—to watch her so much as give another man a come-hither smile, the best someone for the task of ensuring her safety was him.

  “And the third condition, my lord?” she asked.

  Nash captured one of her small hands in his much larger one and spun her around so she spooned against him. She fit him perfectly this way, too, the crevice between her buttocks cradling his semierect cock and the tender lobe of her ear just level with his mouth.

  He bent his head just a little and whispered in a low timbre, “The third condition is simply this: for each and every liberty you permit to either of them, you must permit the same one to me, plus one more of my choosing.” He rolled his hips against her arse to emphasize his point.

  “Short of fucking?” she asked, her tone as matter-of-fact as if she had asked if he took one sugar or two with his tea.

  “Yes, short of that,” he managed to choke out despite his astonishment.

  His cock throbbing with renewed purpose. It was going to be a damned difficult promise to keep.

  Chapter Four

  The weather was grand for a picnic. A half a dozen white, fluffy clouds floated lazily across an azure-blue sky. A warm breeze blew out of the west, rustling the full green leaves of the plane tree beneath which Tish had spread her blanket on the outskirts of Albemarle House’s lush formal gardens. From this vantage, it was possible to make out only occasional glimpses of the manor’s pitched slate roof and chimneys through the row of carefully tended cypresses.

  The Duke of Hapsborough, informally clad in a short, black riding coat and tan leather breeches that appeared rather long on wear but were pleasantly short when it came to the concealment of certain masculine attributes, reclined beside Tish as he polished off the last few bites of his cucumber sandwich. She hoped it was his last. He was a sturdy, well-built man but not an especially large one. If he continued to stuff himself full of food, he would run to fat.

  Unlike Nash Langston. The memory of his lean muscled body pressed against hers was almost palpable. Despite the layers and layers of clothing separating them, she’d felt every curve, plane and sinew. There wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on the man anywhere.

  Well, perhaps in one place, she thought, heat rising in her cheeks. Then again, how would she know? And wasn’t that, in large part, why she was sitting here on this picnic blanket with the more-than-passably handsome, more-than-passably intelligent, and more-than-passably amusing Duke of Hapsborough? A man who, at least in theory, should make just as fine a husband as Nash Langston.

  She couldn’t help stealing a glance into the trees behind them. He was well-hidden, but he was out there somewhere. She ought to be mortified by the idea of being watched while she engaged in intimacies with a man. Likely she would have been if her audience had been anyone other than Nash Langston. But because it was him, the prospect excited her. Especially since whatever she chose to do with Hapsborough today, she would experience again with Nash.

  All the more reason to ensure that Hapsborough took as many liberties as possible. Short of fucking. She squeezed her thighs together as a rush of hot, liquid desire flooded her womb. Even in her head, Nash’s coarse words had the power to arouse her. Because what she wanted, of course, was to fuck. To be wicked and wanton and, above all else, well-loved.

  “Delicious,” the duke proclaimed, dusting crumbs from his fingers. “You must give my compliments to Albemarle’s cook.”

  “Would you like another?” Tish offered, sending a prayer to the heavens that he would refuse. The more time he spent eating, the less time there would be for him to take his liberties.

  Fortunately the duke seemed to know his limits as well as Tish, for he pressed his palm to his abdomen. “Ah, I couldn’t possibly manage another bite. From this point on, I shall just have to content myself with feasting my eyes upon my delightful surroundings.” He made a point of scanning the landscape before bringing his eyes to rest upon Tish.

  Or more accurately, upon her bosom, which she had made an effort to ensure was displayed to maximum advantage by the scooping décolletage and wide red sash of the white muslin day dress she had chosen for the occasion. It was gratifying that Hapsborough had taken note. She was never quite certain which of her most prominent assets he admired more: her purse or her breasts. At least for the moment, she could imagine it might be the latter.

  No time like the present to discover the truth of the matter.

  She leaned toward the duke and batted her eyelashes. “Perhaps you would like to feast more than your eyes. We are, after all, practically betrothed.”

  His eyes widened further, though whether this was due to his enhanced view of her cleavage or her unquestionably improper suggestion or a combination of the two was uncertain.

  “Do you mean it?” he asked.

  Tish frowned. “Do I mean what?”

  “That we are practically betrothed.” He arched an eyebrow. The gesture emphasized the dusky green of his eyes and the way his dark blond—and slightly overlong—hair fell across his forehead. “Are we?”

  He really was quite an attractive man, and Tish’s stomach fluttered with anticipation. Would she enjoy kissing him as much as she enjoyed kissing Nash? Would she like touching him and twining her fingers in his thick, unruly locks?

  “That depends,” she said. “Do you want me?”

  Both eyebrows went up now. “I’ve asked you to marry me, haven’t I? Twice.”

  Tish sighed and shook her head. “I didn’t ask whether you wanted to marry me. I asked whether you want me.”

  He looked at her blankly. “I fail to see the difference.”

  Why were men so dense? Was it that they imagined well-bred ladies cared only about position and security, not love and passion? Or were they simply so self-absorbed that it never occurred to them to think about what ladies wanted at all?

  “May I ask you a question, your grace?”

  “Of course. Although, if we are indeed practically betrothed, I think you can dispense with ‘gracing’ and call me Stephen instead.” The corners of his lips tilted upward in a half smile.

  “Very well, Stephen. Tell me, how long have you been courting me?”

  That seemed to catch him off guard. He had to think for several seconds. “Since the end of last Season, I suppose. Eight months or thereabouts.”

  “Yes, that seems about right,” she agreed with a nod. “Now, in that time, how many times have we kissed? Or touched, other than on the dance floor?”

  “Well, none, of course. There has never been an opportunity—”

  “Because you have never attempted to engineer one.” She leaned toward him again, and he took a hissing, inward breath. “And now that I have, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you to take advantage of the situation. That hardly suggests you harbor a consuming passion for my person.”

  “You want me to take advantage of you?” he asked, rather stupidly she thought. Wasn’t it obvious by now?

  “Yes,” she answered. No sense being coy at this juncture.

  “I see.” He raised his hand to cup her cheek and jaw. His thumb drew a circle in the delicate spot beneath her earlobe, sending gooseflesh down her neck and arm.

  Oh, but that was a lovely sensation.

  “Do you?” Now she was the one who sounded stupid.

  “Mmm-hmm,” he murmured, lowering his face toward her until his mouth was so close she could feel his cucumber-and-lemonade-scented breath caress her skin.

  She tensed, waiting for what seemed eternity for contact. When at last it came, it was almost unexpected. His lips were soft and a trifle squishy,
and she couldn’t decide whether she liked that or not as he pressed and rubbed his mouth over hers. The sensation was not entirely unpleasant, but the duke’s labors suffered significantly by comparison to Nash’s efforts. Where Nash’s kiss had all but robbed her of thought, the duke’s had her thinking too much. What would he do next? Would he try to sweep his tongue into her mouth the way Nash had done? Would she like it if he did? And then his tongue was in her mouth, and she found it…nice. Worth reciprocating.

  When she tilted her head to one side and mimicked his movements with her own, he groaned and pulled her flush against him, falling back onto the blanket with her atop him. Bracing herself with her hands, she wriggled to find a more comfortable position, and her breasts brushed against his heavily muscled chest, the buttons of his coat digging into her sensitive flesh. To her surprise, she didn’t find this painful. Instead her nipples tingled and hardened, sending a pulse of heat to her core. Well, that was more than nice. A mewl of pleasure escaped her lips, and his fingers clamped down on her upper arms as he kissed her with even greater urgency.

  Even more interesting than any of these sensations, however, was the ridge that pressed against her belly as he shifted beneath her. Yesterday, when Nash had pressed her up against the door, she’d felt this same part of his anatomy, but it had already been long and thick and very hard. This was different. It felt like a living, breathing entity, wholly separate from the man to whom it was clearly attached.

  Emboldened by a hot wave of curiosity, Tish rolled her hips experimentally from side to side. His shaft pulsed and stretched, longer, thicker, harder. Fascinating. Her body hummed with excitement…and power.

  The duke—Stephen, she corrected herself, for it really was absurd to think of him so formally when they were this intimately engaged—released his grip on her arms and grabbed her by the waist to halt her movements. “God, if you keep that up,” he muttered into her mouth, “I won’t be responsible for what happens next.”

  She raised her head, breaking the kiss. “Don’t be,” she whispered.

  “But what if Lady Albemarle returns?”

  Tish gave him a reassuring smile. “She won’t. She knows better.”

  “If you’re sure…” He ran his fingers along the lace-trimmed edge of her bodice, tracing his way down from her collarbone to the top of her left breast.

  “I’m sure,” she whispered, her breasts achy and swollen in anticipation of an imminent release from their prison.

  “That is excellent news,” he said, reaching behind her to undo the eyehooks that fastened her gown, “because I have been longing to get a closer look at these beauties for a very long time.”

  He was more efficient than any lady’s maid, for in no time at all her bodice was gaping open. From there, he swiftly liberated her breasts, lifting them so they rested atop her chemise and stays.

  “Ah, lovely. Just as I imagined.” He cupped them in his palms, as though testing their size and weight, then teased her nipples with his thumbs, bringing them to an instant, near-painful stiffness. And when he took one of her nipples into his mouth and flicked it with his tongue, the tender, sensitized flesh between her legs throbbed in response.

  He made a hungry, frustrated noise in his throat as he nibbled at her breast and thrust his hips upward. For several seconds, she was baffled, but then realized what he wanted. When she ran her fingers along the edges of the elongated ridge beneath the placket of his breeches, the sound instantly transformed into a moan of approval.

  “Please, Leticia—”

  “Tish,” she corrected. She hated being called Leticia. It was so stiff, so formal.

  Although, she reflected as she continued to trace the length and breadth of his shaft through the soft leather of his breeches, there were some stiff things that were not formal at all. Some stiff things were, in fact, quite improper.

  He released her nipple with an abrupt pop. “Please, Tish, I’m going to—”

  He was going to what? His voice was thick and strained, almost as if he were in pain.

  Concerned that she might actually be hurting him, Tish hesitated in her exploration just long enough for him to reach down, jerk open the buttons of his fall and release his member from its confinement. Pale-skinned and laced with veins, the appendage rose from a tangle of dark curls, reminding her of nothing so much as the stamen of a flower poking out from between the petals. Larger, to be sure, but the overall shape was right, as was the way the softer, more delicate-looking tip was delineated from the shaft by a loose ridge of skin. A tiny slit bifurcated the head, reminding her uncannily of an eye.

  She watched in astonished fascination as he took her hand and wrapped her fingers around the shaft. It was thicker than she initially thought; her fingertips didn’t quite meet on the other side. The skin made her think of flowers, too, for it was soft and velvety as rose petals, but underneath it felt like hard, hot steel. She squeezed experimentally, and he made a sound that was a half groan, half chuckle.

  “Not like that, sweetheart. Like this.” He covered her hand with his and moved it up and down along the shaft. The soft skin moved over the rigid core beneath. Up and down, up and down. He released her hand and closed his eyes, his features becoming taut with what looked like anguish until, suddenly, his body stiffened then jerked. He rolled to one side from her, and with a groan, spurted thick, ropy strands of white liquid onto the picnic blanket.

  Just like that, it was over.

  He lay on his back again and carefully tucked his wilting member back into his breeches, which he proceeded to button without acknowledging Tish’s presence in any way. He neither looked at her nor spoke to her. In fact, she felt with absolute certainty that he was doing everything in his power to ignore her very existence.

  Was this the way men always behaved after they had spent themselves? If so, it was a wonder women put up with them at all.

  She sat up and righted her bonnet, which had slid off her head and hung down her back from its red ribbon.

  After what seemed a very long time, the duke—Stephen—cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should be getting back to the house as we promised Lady Albemarle.”

  Tish nodded, her throat thick with an emotion she couldn’t quite name. Wordlessly she accepted his assistance to pack the last few items back into the picnic basket and then fold the blanket.

  “Are we still practically betrothed, Tish?” he asked quietly as they began the walk back to the manor.

  “No, your grace, I don’t believe we are.”

  Chapter Five

  Nash took his time in walking back from his hiding place in the woods to the main house, wandering down several side paths in the extensive, intricate gardens rather than taking the direct route up the main walkway. He did so both to ensure that he was not present for what was bound to be Hapsborough’s awkward departure and to give his ardor—not to mention his erection—a chance to subside. If he encountered Tish in his current state, it was safe to say he would not be able to confine himself to the requisite liberties-plus-one he was permitted to take this afternoon.

  But if he were honest with himself—and he did not count a propensity toward self-deception as one of his more notable character flaws, although he had a good many others—he would be forced to admit that the primary reason for his meandering was that he needed time to think. Time to come to terms with his response to seeing Tish in an intimate embrace with another man.

  He had expected the entire enterprise to be torture, of course. It was simply that he hadn’t expected the torture to be of this nature, for rather than seething with rage and jealousy, as he’d imagined, he had seethed with the most intense, the most primitive desire he’d ever felt. For the life of him, he could not fathom how that was possible. How on earth could he enjoy watching the woman he loved in the arms of another man? Particularly when it had been blatantly obvious that she had not been merely tolerating that man’s kisses and caresses, but actively taking pleasure in them.

  In fa
ct, had it not been for Hapsborough’s spectacular confirmation of his reputation for having a hair-trigger, Nash was not at all certain things would not have gone a great deal further between the pair. Not as far as fucking, of course—Nash would have prevented that—but he wondered if he could continue to count on being the man to most rouse and satisfy Tish’s passions. He’d simply assumed up to now that any other man’s attentions would pale in comparison to his. But Tish was so innately sensual, so naturally uninhibited, he no longer had the same level of confidence.

  As he blindly navigated the narrow paths that snaked between the sculpted hedgerows and flowering vines, Nash wasn’t sure what worried him more: the possibility that he might lose her to another man or the likelihood that he wouldn’t particularly mind…so long as he was allowed to watch.

  The thought gave his waning libido another instant kick. Christ, what was wrong with him? Unbidden, the afternoon he’d spent drinking with Viscount Fitzgerald at White’s came to mind. At the time, he’d presumed Fitzgerald’s particular form of sexual perversity must be unusual, but perhaps it wasn’t so rare, after all. Perhaps Nash himself was afflicted with the same malady…

  “Ah, there you are.” Tish’s melodic voice cut through his dense, untidy train of thought as effectively as a scythe through a field of tall grass.

  She had materialized without warning about twenty feet in front of him, so silently she might have been a figment of his overheated imagination. He only knew she was real because she still wore the same white gown she’d worn earlier this afternoon, and if his imagination had conjured her, he was certain it would have conjured her in the nude. Or at least with her pale, plump breasts free from her bodice and her sweet, berrylike nipples bare and taut and awaiting the touch of his hand, the sweep of his tongue.

  Bloody hell. He wasn’t ready to see her yet. Not when he was hard enough to pound horseshoes. Again.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked sharply, then instantly regretted it. He was trying to woo her, not chase her away, for God’s sake.