Guilty Series

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  “Are you all right?” he asked, and pulled back to look at her. He pushed soaking wet hair out of her face. “Hmm?”

  “I’m all right.” She rubbed her arms. “Cold, but all right.”

  John bent at the knees and picked her up in his arms, wet clothes and all. “Some reward I get for composing poetry about you,” he told her in mock injury as he carried her toward the bank. “A dunk in cold water and no kiss to show for it.”

  “Serves you right,” she told him as he set her on her feet by the edge of the water. She turned away as he went back to retrieve the boat. “Eyes like mud, indeed!” she added over her shoulder for his benefit, but she couldn’t help smiling as she grasped sodden handfuls of skirt in her hands and climbed the bank toward the grassy knoll above.

  Chapter 15

  After their dunking in the murky water of the pond, it was necessary for both John and Viola to bathe and change before dinner. The kitchen maids brought hot water up to the bathing room and filled the copper bathtub. Viola took the first bath, and as Celeste washed and towel-dried her hair, all she could think of was the look in John’s eyes when he’d recited those lines of poetry about her. Had he meant it?

  The question ran through her mind over and over as Celeste helped her dry off and wrapped her in a robe of heavy rose-colored silk. She walked into the dressing room that adjoined the bath, and Celeste followed. The maid began pulling out gowns for her to choose from, but Viola’s mind was not on changing for dinner.

  Was he sincere? With all the other women he’d had, how could she ever believe she meant more to him than any other? And how could she be sure it would last? Viola could hear servants bringing fresh hot water into the bathing room for John, and she imagined him stepping naked into that bathtub. She remembered full well what his body looked like, and her memories and her imagination began to tease and torment her now, just as her dreams had been doing night after night.

  He’d said there was none so dear as her. He’d said no fairer face than hers. Did he ever mean any of the things he said? She tried to remind herself that words weren’t enough. That his desire didn’t mean anything. But it was hard to care about that when all she could do was remember the desire she felt when he kissed her and touched her.

  It was good with us, once. Remember?

  She remembered.

  Viola pressed her fingers to her forehead, so muddled and upside down she couldn’t think.

  “My lady?” Celeste asked. “Are you unwell?”

  She lowered her hand. “I’m perfectly well, thank you, Celeste.”

  The woman who had been her maid since she was fifteen gave her a smile of relief and held up two gowns. “Ivory or ice-blue?”

  “Blue,” Viola said without caring, and her maid left the dressing room with the blue gown in her hands. Viola remained behind. On the other side of the door to the bathing room, she heard John’s voice as he talked with Stephens. She didn’t know what he was saying to his valet because in her mind she was hearing what he’d said that morning over breakfast.

  I want you, and I want you to want me back. I want that so badly, in fact, I’m going a bit mad…even when things between us were as bad as they could ever be, I still had a little scrap of hope that one day you’d live with me again.

  Suddenly, everything seemed crystal clear, and all her mixed-up emotions fused into one simple decision. She took a deep breath, marched into her bedchamber and walked to where her maid was laying the blue silk gown out on the bed.

  “Celeste,” she said, pausing beside the maid, “go send someone to tell the kitchens dinner is going to be delayed at least a couple of hours.”

  Her maid gave her a puzzled look, but she nodded. “Yes, my lady.”

  “And go find something to do until I send for you. If I send for you at all. I might not.”

  Comprehension dawned in the older woman’s face, comprehension and complete astonishment. But the maid bobbed a curtsy and departed, leaving Viola alone in her bedchamber.

  She walked to her dressing table and picked up a comb. She untangled the damp strands of her hair, but she didn’t braid them back. Instead, she left them loose, put down the comb and walked back through the dressing room.

  He was still in the bath—she could hear the splash of water and his voice as he spoke with his valet. Hand on the knob, she paused long enough to take a deep breath, then opened the door.

  He was leaning back in the tub, his arms resting on the copper sides, and Stephens was standing nearby with a towel in his hands. Both men looked up in surprise as she came in.

  Ignoring the valet, she looked at her husband. “Did you mean it?” she asked without ceremony. “What you said?”

  He glanced at Stephens and gave a quick nod. The valet dropped the towel onto a padded bench by the tub and departed at once through the door into the corridor, closing it behind him.

  Viola hooked the fingers of one hand around the fingers of the other, waiting. “Did you?”

  John leaned back in the tub, smiling faintly as he looked at her. “Did I mean what?” he asked, sounding innocent, the hot look in his eyes making him anything but. “About your eyes being the color of mud?”

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, suddenly shy and flustered, wondering if she was about to make a horrible mistake. “No,” she whispered, and her fear began to return. Her heart started thudding in her chest, so loud she was sure he could hear it all the way across the room as she stood there in an agony of uncertainty. “The other poem. About the ‘none so dear’ and ‘precious moments’ and all that. And…and what you said this morning about hoping we’d live together again one day. Did you mean it, or was it all just words you think I wanted to hear?”

  He didn’t answer, and her moment of bravado deserted her. “Never mind,” she muttered, and turned around, starting back toward the safety of her own dressing room. A splash was her only warning before he was out of the bathtub, and she had only taken two steps before his arm was around her waist, hauling her back against him.

  “I meant it,” he said, his voice low and thick. He pressed his lips to the side of her neck. “I meant it, Viola.”

  His body was wet, his mouth was hot, and the feel of both disintegrated any resistance left in her. Like a dam breaking, the hunger she had been holding back for years was unleashed in an instant. With a cry, she turned and wrapped her arms around his neck. She caught his mouth with hers and kissed him, a hungry, open-mouthed kiss borne of being so long without him, of being alone and hurting. She clung to him now, kissing him with all the passion she had denied to him and to herself.

  He made a sound against her mouth, surprise perhaps, but then his arms wrapped around her and he deepened the kiss, his tongue entering her mouth, his hands cupping her buttocks. Everything in the world faded to insignificance. Everything but John.

  His mouth tasted her in hot, deep kisses and quick little nibbles of her lips as he guided her backward through the door into her dressing room and on into her bedchamber beyond.

  Inside her room, he moved and guided her body as if they were engaged in a dance. When her back hit the wall beside her bed, he reached for the sash of her robe. He untied it and yanked the edges apart, then pulled the garment back and slid it off her shoulders and down her arms. It caught on her hips, and she leaned forward away from the wall. The robe fell and landed in a soft pool at her heels.

  The air of her room was cool, but when John’s hands touched her naked skin, warmth surged through her like fire. He cupped her breasts, embraced them with his hands, shaped them in his palms. His fingertips closed around her erect nipples, pinching them ever so gently as he pressed kisses to her cheeks and her chin, her forehead and her lips.

  She put her hands on his broad shoulders. His skin was still slick and wet from the bathwater, but hot, like fire in her hands. She moved her hands over him and watched her fingers touch him. She remembered this—the hard muscular wall of his chest and the rippled muscles of
his abdomen beneath her fingers. John’s body, his hard strength as beautiful now as it had been nine years ago. She flattened her hands on his flat stomach, but before she could move any lower, he took her hands and pulled them wide, away from him.

  “Shhh,” he said as she made a sound of protest.

  “But I want to touch you.”

  “Later.” He kissed her to silence any further argument and pulled at her hands, spreading her arms wide, pressing the backs of her wrists against the wall. Then he bent his head and took one of her nipples into his mouth. He pulled and suckled, first one nipple then the other, as he held her imprisoned against the wall.

  Viola’s whole body tingled as he teased and toyed with her breasts, and she moaned, wanting more. When he grazed her nipple between his teeth, her body jerked and she gave a soft, keening wail of agonized pleasure. She felt the liquid heat forming down low, between her thighs. She stirred, pulling against his hold, her hips moving, wanting still more. She arched her hips toward him, but his body was out of reach. “John, touch me.”

  His mouth left her nipple, kissed the soft swell above it. “I’m already touching you.”

  “Don’t tease me now,” she implored. “Touch me.”

  “Where?”

  “You know where.”

  “No, I don’t.” He resumed suckling her.

  She moaned, straining against his hold. “You do know, you do.”

  He straightened, his hand playing with her breast. “Tell me. I like it when you tell me. Remember?”

  She remembered. Shameful excitement flooded through her and she buried her hot face against his shoulder, shaking her head. He wanted too much, too soon. He brushed his fingers against the apex of her thighs. “Is that where?” he asked tenderly.

  She nodded against his shoulder, and he slid one finger between her legs, to caress the wet, soft place where she ached the most. She moaned into his shoulder. “I love that, John, I love that.”

  “I know, Viola.” He kissed her mouth and said, “But there’s something I know you love even more.”

  He knelt in front of her, and she knew what he was going to do. She began to shiver as he trailed kisses down her tummy, over her abdomen, and lower still. His fingertips followed his mouth, moving in light caresses around her navel. He smiled, touching the tip of one finger to the brown, violin-shaped birthmark on her thigh. “I remember that birthmark,” he murmured. “I’ve been having some damned erotic dreams about it lately.” He pressed his lips to it, then kissed her again a bit higher, his lips brushing the soft bush of her hair. She jerked against him, crying out with the carnal pleasure of that kiss, and his hands grasped her hips, holding her there, pressed against the wall.

  He licked her gently, first down, then up again, his tongue moving along the crease of her sex, tasting her, sending sensations of heat pulsing through her whole body. She shivered, gasping with each soft lash of his tongue, and her hands tightened on his shoulders in convulsive little squeezes.

  “John, oh, John,” she panted, her hips working against his hold. She wanted to move, unable to stand such sweet imprisonment as this.

  His tongue flicked over the special place he knew gave her the greatest pleasure, caressing it in quick, feather light strokes, and just as she thought she would go mad, he relaxed his grip and she was able to move her hips against his mouth to gain her peak. She climaxed in waves against his mouth, rippling waves of ecstasy that seemed to go on and on and on, even as he slowed the caresses of his tongue to brief light kisses. He took one last taste of her, then stopped and stood up.

  All the strength drained out of her, and she fell forward against him, panting, her arms wrapping around his waist, her body still pulsing with the force of her orgasms.

  He pressed his hips against her, and she felt his arousal, hot and hard against her tummy. She took him in her hand, her fingers not able to completely surround his shaft, and she stroked him, her hand exploring the shape, a shape still so familiar.

  He stopped her. “I want to be inside you,” he said with sudden urgency. He grasped both her hands in his and pulled them both down onto the bed. Then he rolled her onto her back and his knee moved between her thighs, urging her legs to part.

  “Open for me,” he groaned, settling his body over her, resting his weight on his forearms. “Now, Viola, now.”

  His turn to be desperate, she thought, taking delight and satisfaction in his plea. His penis pressed urgently against the folds of her opening, demanding entrance, and she spread her legs wide, welcoming him.

  He entered her, and she sucked in her breath sharply. Yes, she remembered this. This was John, thick and hot and so hard, pushing into her. This was John, who kissed and nibbled her neck, her throat and her shoulder, making her shiver even now as he rocked his hips, stretching her to accommodate his size, penetrating her more deeply with each stroke.

  Yes, she remembered this, the hot sweetness of him inside her. When the head of his penis touched her deep within, at that exquisite place even more pleasurable than the one he had tasted moments ago, she remembered that, too, and she cried out. “Yes, John, yes!”

  Frantic with longing for that last and best explosion, she matched his hard thrusts with her own, and her pleading words all began running together in a panting, disjointed series of syllables. “Fasteroh-oh-please-oh-please-yes-oh-yes-oh-please!”

  Weight on his forearms, he obeyed her frantic command, pushing hard and quick, over and over, until he sent her to climax again, his shoulders and arms shaking with the strain of holding back his own.

  “Come, John, come,” she pleaded, “take it, take it.” When he came fully into her again, she squeezed his buttocks hard and all her inner muscles clenched in tight convulsions around his shaft.

  He gave a hoarse cry smothered against her hair and slid his arms beneath her, crushing her against him as if he couldn’t get her close enough, thrusting as deep as he could. He shuddered violently as his own pleasure was at last unleashed, and his body went rigid as the warmth of his climax poured from him into her.

  He collapsed on top of her, breathing hard against the pillow. His hand came up to stroke her cheek. “Viola,” he groaned. “Oh, God, Viola.” He sucked in deep breaths of air, pressing kisses against her hair and her ear and her temple. “Meant it,” he told her in a hoarse, fierce whisper. “Meant every damn word.”

  She smiled, caressing his back, running her fingers over the strong, lean lines of muscle and sinew, relishing the familiar, heavy weight of her husband’s body. John, she thought, holding him tight and deep within her, welcome home.

  Chapter 16

  “John?”

  He woke at the sound of her voice, and it was only then that he realized he had fallen asleep. He inhaled the scent of violets, and it aroused him in an instant, bringing him fully awake as he remembered the passionate lovemaking of a short time ago. His arms tightened around her and he pressed closer to her, his chest against the soft, smooth skin of her back. He nuzzled her neck, kissed her bare shoulder. “Hmm?”

  “It’s dinnertime.” Viola stirred in his hold. “I’m hungry.”

  “So am I,” he said with feeling, trailing one hand along her naked hip.

  She began to laugh and pushed his hand away. “For food. I want my dinner.”

  “Can’t we frolic first?” He spread one hand across her tummy, cupped her breast with the other. “Then have food?”

  “Frolic requires sustenance,” she pointed out, but even as she said it, she began to yield, arching her body against his, her hips pressing his groin.

  Gently, he nipped her shoulder and toyed with her breast. He brushed his fingers along her tummy, feeling her muscles quiver at the light touch. “Still ticklish, I see.”

  “John!” She wriggled in his hold, laughing.

  He slid his hand between her legs. When he did, her laughter changed to a moan of pure pleasure.

  She was already moist, and he began to caress her. “Food or frolic? Which
do you want first?”

  “Food.”

  “Really?” He stroked her slowly, gently, teasing. “I think you want this more. I know I do.”

  He could see her profile in the dim light of late afternoon that peeped between a gap in the draperies. He saw her bite her lip, shake her head. “Uh-uh,” she denied, even as she began to move in rhythm with the touch of his fingers. “Food.”

  “Frolic first.” He pushed the tip of his finger into her, then pulled back, spreading her moisture in light circles, then stroking again. “Come on, Viola,” he coaxed. “Give in.”

  She shook her head again, panting now.

  John pushed his cock between her thighs, but he did not enter her. He groaned even as he continued to tease her. She began to shiver with each upward stroke of his fingers, and began to make the soft, whimpering sounds that told him she was close to climax.

  “If you really want food,” he went on, his own breath coming faster, “I could stop now, and we could go have dinner. Hmm? You want me to stop?”

  “No, no. Don’t stop, John. Don’t stop.”

  “Sure?”

  She nodded, frantic. “Sure.”

  “Want me more than food, do you?”

  “Yes, yes,” she gasped. “Yes.”

  He entered her, pushing deep into her from behind as he stroked her in front. She came almost at once, crying out as she tightened around him in the tiny convulsions of feminine bliss that sent him to climax as well.

  Afterward, he caressed her hip as the muscles inside her slowly stopped clenching him and she was sated. Even then he did not move. He liked this, holding her this way, with himself deep within her. He always had.

  “John?”

  Her voice was almost plaintive.

  “Hmm?”

  “Now can we have dinner?”

  He gave a shout of laughter and rolled onto his back. “I should hope so,” he said in an injured voice. “If you keep demanding these strenuous demonstrations of my affection, you’re going to have to feed me once in a while.”