The disbelief in her voice drew him up short, his hands halfway down the front of her bodice. When he glanced around the room, the reality of the situation finally sank in. Bridles, saddles, and tack hung from the wall, along with various farrier and shoeing implements. The place was well-swept, tidy and, given the dreariness of the winter day, almost cozy, retaining warmth from the banked coals in the small stove in the corner of the room. The cot itself looked clean and perfectly comfortable.
But they were in a stable, for Christ’s sake. What was he thinking? Only a brute would take his wife under these circumstances, treating her with no more respect than a bloody schoolboy would treat a kitchen maid.
Or like his father had treated his mother.
Self-disgust snaked through his gut. He drew his hand from her bodice, clenching it into a fist.
“Forgive me, Justine,” he said, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. “I’m obviously forgetting my manners. Not that I ever had many in the first place, as you’re aware.”
She gazed up at him, her brow slightly wrinkled. The air settled thickly around them, invested with the kind of tension that seemed to hint of a momentous decision. Over the pounding of the rain on the tiled roof, he heard Justine’s steady, calm breath and realized he’d been holding his.
As he forced himself to exhale, her lips trembled into a mischievous smile, one so innocently seductive that it made the hairs stand up on the nape of his neck.
“I suppose we could go back to the house,” she said, putting a finger thoughtfully to her chin. “But I’m sure you’re right. Someone is bound to interrupt us there, which would be very annoying. Besides . . .”
When she trailed off, Griffin had to repress the mad urge to growl. As much as he wanted to push her down onto the cot and toss up her skirts, claiming her in the most primitive way, he wanted—no, he needed—Justine to be sure. It suddenly seemed essential that she choose this path of her own free will, knowing there would be no going back. Both his mind and his body rejected the idea of seducing her into submission.
“Besides?” he prompted, almost wincing at his eagerness.
She gave a charming little shrug, as if yielding to fate. “It’s simply pouring out. We don’t want to get soaked running back to the house, do we?”
Griffin finally loosed the predator inside him as he reached for her. “No, my sweet. We certainly do not.”
Chapter Nineteen
As Griffin captured her in his arms—and capture described it perfectly—Justine’s legs began to tremble. In fact, her entire body shook from a combination of longing, anxiety, and excitement.
The trembling had started deep inside when she first heard his step on the stable floor and had then seen him strolling toward her, looking as if he were on a leisurely walk about the grounds in the pouring rain. But the predatory gleam in his eyes had told her better than words why he had searched her out, and that had been a considerable surprise.
God help her, she welcomed his desire, too, on some level that defied every shred of sense she’d ever possessed. But her body had a logic all its own, and no contrary argument she posed in her mind had the power to refute it.
As for her heart, she rather thought it best not to examine it too closely for fear it was even more foolish than her body.
Griffin’s voice was as smooth and dark as polished obsidian. Murmuring in her ear, he told her how beautiful she was as he lowered her to the cot. When he knelt beside her and went to work once more on her bodice, Justine had a sudden, infuriating attack of shyness. She put her arms around his neck and clung to him, trapping his hands between their bodies. She hid her face against his shoulder, taking in the clean scent of rain on his coat and in his hair and silently berating herself for acting like a totty-headed maiden of seventeen.
Still, the prospect of making love to Griffin was intimidating. Along with the trepidation that a normal bride—and the circumstances were hardly normal—might be expected to feel, she had the added burden of exposing her ignorance to a man who surely knew everything there was to know about intimate relations, including things she suspected she’d rather never hear about. It made not one whit of difference that one’s husband was generally expected to have more experience. In Griffin’s case, the gap in knowledge between them was simply too great to contemplate.
His hands slipped around to her back, moving along her spine in a soothing stroke. “Far be it from me to criticize,” he said, a hint of apology in his voice, “but I think things might go more smoothly if you let me take your clothes off. Unless you’d like to suggest another way we could go about this.”
She couldn’t help giving a smothered laugh. “I suppose that makes sense,” she said against his shoulder, still too shy to look at him.
“Well, it is rather what one expects. Of course, we could pretend you’re the kitchen maid and I’m the stable boy, and I could just tup you under your skirts. That might be fun. On second thought, however, I don’t think I’d recommend that for your first time.” His voice teased her with polite regret.
Justine pulled back and gave him a rueful smile. And even though his eyes still smoldered with heat, the taut, almost wolfish cast to his features that had so unsettled her had been transformed into amusement.
“Now, that’s just silly,” she said, resting her hands on his chest.
“You’d be surprised at how much fun silly can be.” He leaned back on his heels, bracing his palms on his lean, muscular thighs. He looked so at ease that the ball of tension in Justine’s chest started to unwind.
That is, until her gaze took in the substantial bulge pressing against the fall of his breeches. When she jerked her eyes back up to his face, he regarded her with a great deal of wry sympathy.
“It’s normal to be nervous, but that will fade fairly quickly, I promise.” He raised an arrogant eyebrow. “I do know what I’m doing.”
She blew out an exasperated breath. “That’s the problem. You do and I don’t.” When his eyes widened a fraction, she flapped her hand. “Of course, I know the basic mechanics, but you know a great deal more than that. You know all the . . . the . . .”
“Finer points?” he finished for her in a sardonic voice.
She tried not to wince as heat rushed to her cheeks.
He laughed softly, then reached forward to carefully part her unbuttoned bodice. “Mechanics are the least important part, believe me. There’s an art to making love, Justine, and you’re about to get your first lesson.”
When he pulled the fichu away from her shoulders, exposing her underthings and the tops of her breasts, her breath seized. But both the way he stared at her body, as if riveted by what he saw, and the tick of a muscle in his tense jaw, also triggered a glow of warmth low in her belly.
“And what is that lesson?” she whispered as his fingers traced along the top of her stays. Wherever he touched her, shivers danced across her skin.
“Learning to trust,” he said, not taking his eyes from her body. “Do you trust me, Justine?”
She closed her eyes and thought about it for a few seconds. The answer wasn’t long in coming. “I do trust you, although I’m not sure why.”
“We’ll turn our minds to that interesting little question later. For now, please open your eyes.”
When she did, his lips parted in a full-out smile that dazzled her with its charm. “If you trust me, then everything will be fine.”
This time when he moved to undress her, Justine helped him. And even though her hands trembled a little, the heat in his gaze and the hungry cast to his handsome features unleashed a growing desire inside her that warred with her nerves.
With surprisingly little fuss, Griffin soon had her out of her garments. She perched on the edge of the cot, clad only in chemise and stockings, her half boots pushed under the cot. He’d piled her clothes neatly onto a nearby rush chair, as if he helped her undress every day. But the look on his face as he inspected her, his hands clenched into fists, turned her brea
th ragged. Nothing about this moment was like anything she’d experienced, or had hardly even imagined.
“Now what?” she asked in a thin voice as he rose to his feet.
“Now I get undressed.”
He’d already discarded the heavy wool greatcoat, and now pulled off the rest of his clothes but for his breeches. He quickly folded his shirt, coat, and neck cloth, stacking them on top of her riding habit. Justine wanted to giggle, struck by the oddly cozy domesticity of the scene. Who would think that a reprobate like Griffin Steele would so casually undress his inexperienced bride and then fold their clothes in a tidy stack? It made him seem almost like a normal man, as human as anyone else, and not the least bit exotic or dangerous.
But when he turned back to her and started to unbutton the fall of his breeches, the lie was given to that notion. His body was hard, lean, and well-muscled without being coarse, and possessed a tough, masculine elegance that was as far from safe as she could imagine. A stripped-down, almost primal sense of power wrapped itself around him like a second skin.
And then there was his tattoo. The beautifully inked creature in shades of blue and black was both graceful and fierce, with its sharp-beaked head reaching over to Griffin’s breastbone, its wings spread wide and its long tail curling up to his shoulder. Both exotic and evocative, it defined the man who wore it with a strange perfection, highlighting a balance of skin, bone, and muscle. Justine had always found him to be a handsome man, but only now could she fully appreciate why the girls at The Golden Tie had been so eager to lure him into their beds.
But it wasn’t just his body that seemed designed to undermine a woman’s self-control. His dark eyes, so knowing and wicked, his arrogantly elegant features, his hard sensual mouth—all seemed to touch something deep in her core, something that clicked smoothly into place. Just looking at him made the hidden parts of her go soft and damp, and she blushed at her eager response to him.
Then again, he was her husband, so she supposed it wasn’t a bad thing to desire him, despite her nerves over the . . . mechanics. For once, Justine was more than happy to engage in conduct that might count for less than respectable, at least by her terms.
Griffin made short work of his breeches and then stood before her dressed only in his smalls, which she suspected he’d kept on to protect her modesty. He needn’t have bothered, since his erection pressed thick and long against the fabric, the wide top of it straining up and out the top like a tempting piece of smooth, forbidden fruit.
“Would you like to touch it?” he asked in a husky rumble.
“Ah, perhaps later,” she said. She did, but she hadn’t quite worked up the confidence for that yet. “But it’s very kind of you to ask,” she finished, trying not to seem thoroughly flustered.
When he laughed at that spectacular piece of idiocy, she dropped her head in her hands and groaned.
A moment later, his hands were on her body. He stretched her onto the cot and came down next to her, crowding her to the edge. Justine squealed and flailed her arms, convinced she was about to topple over the other side. But with superbly controlled strength, Griffin lifted her and a second later had her straddling his hips while he settled onto his back.
“There, that’s better,” he said.
His lips curved into a self-satisfied smile as he arranged her on top of him. Too startled to resist, Justine let him do as he wished. But then she realized with a mental jolt that her shift had rucked up around her hips. That meant that her most intimate parts—naked parts—were pressed firmly against his hard length.
When she wriggled, embarrassed to be so blatantly exposed, a spasm unexpectedly pulsed out from her most tender flesh. It felt so pleasurable that she gasped and grabbed his forearms, steadying herself.
“Ah, that was lovely,” he purred. “Did you like that, Justine?”
His voice brushed over her like a silk scarf, making her want to squirm again. “I take it that’s supposed to happen,” she said with a weak smile.
True, she’d felt nice things down there before, but not quite like that. Not so strongly that she wanted to slide against him, rubbing into his hard length. To her mind, sexual congress had always sounded like a rather messy and unpleasant business. For the first time she could begin to see its appeal.
But only with Griffin.
“Yes,” he said with a quizzical smile. “Did you never touch yourself down there? Make yourself climax?”
She felt her eyes go wide. “Or course not! Really, Griffin, where would you get such an idea?”
When he opened his mouth to answer, she waved both hands. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
“Oh, but I think you will want to know what I have to teach you.” His hands crept up her thighs, slipping under the hem of her chemise. His slightly rough fingertips felt divine on her skin. “Take off your shift, love, so we can begin your first lesson.”
Her pulses jumped at the heat in his eyes, making her feel almost light-headed with excitement. Never had Justine imagined she could be so naughty. But with Griffin, it seemed . . . natural.
She didn’t want to examine that thought too closely, so before she lost her nerve she dragged her shift over her head. Still too rattled to look at him, she twisted a bit and tossed the garment onto their pile of clothes.
A low hiss startled her, and she turned back to him.
“What is it?” she asked, peering at him with concern. His eyes had narrowed to glittering slits, and his mouth was pulled into a tight line. “Did I hurt you?”
“God, no,” he said. His voice, low and harsh, sounded as if the words had been dragged from his throat. “Christ, Justine. You’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Blushing, she looked down at herself as his long fingers settled at the top of her stockings to play with her garters. Her heart jolted to see her breasts, the nipples rosy and hard, and her auburn curls nestling against his erection, barely hidden by his smalls.
“Thank you,” she said, feeling shy all over again. “I think the same about you.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You think I’m perfect?” He let out a low chuckle. “You would be in a minority of one, if that’s true.”
“Not according to the women at The Golden Tie,” she teased, tentatively stroking his arms and then letting her fingers trail to his chest. She explored his ribs, then traced the outlines of the mythic beast inked onto his skin. His muscles seemed to jump under her fingertips. Justine couldn’t help smiling.
“Did it hurt when you got this?” she asked. “It’s quite large.”
“God, yes. It was all I could do not to cry like a baby,” he replied.
“Then why did you go to the trouble?”
His hands continued their exploration of her body, slipping along the inside of her thighs, dancing their way up to the curls that hid her feminine flesh.
“I liked the artist’s work,” he replied, sounding distracted. “And I liked what it said about me, about what I had become.”
Justine frowned, not sure what he meant. But then his fingers carefully delved through her curls and parted her flesh to brush the little nub hidden there. She sucked in a breath at the shock of sensation, her back instinctively arching as he gently rubbed her. She grabbed his forearms, stunned by the intensity of what she felt, but she didn’t try to stop him.
“So beautiful,” he murmured as he stroked her damp, tender flesh. “Let your body do whatever it wants, my sweet. Move however it wants.”
She moaned and let her head fall back. A moment later, he quietly urged her to clutch at the blanket beneath them rather than grip his arms. Once he’d done that, his hands once more explored her dampening flesh, seeking out that most tender part of her body to begin teasing her again.
Tease he did, stroking and gliding over the exquisite point, making her grow even wetter and softer with the luxurious little pulses that seemed to ripple out from her sheath. All the while, he murmured encouragement in a husky, dark
voice, telling her how beautiful she was and how he couldn’t wait to be inside her.
It didn’t take Justine long to reach a point of such heightened sensation that she felt almost frantic. One moment she wanted to arch her back, as if to strain away from him, and the next she was pushing her body down into his hands, desperately trying to increase the pressure. But Griffin controlled her, one hand clamped firmly on her thigh while the other slipped through her drenched folds, keeping her poised and straining for more.
“Griffin, please,” she finally panted out, not recognizing her voice. Her entire body was drowning in pleasure, but somehow it wasn’t enough.
He gazed up at her, his black eyes glittering with feral intensity, his features taut and fierce with wanting. “Lean down to me, love,” he growled. “That’s it. Just bend down a bit.”
Awkwardly, she braced her hands on the cot and leaned forward. His hand left her thigh and came up to capture one of her breasts. He squeezed it and then thumbed her nipple. She moaned at the delicious tingle that seemed to dart straight from the tight point to her womb.
He plumped her breast between his fingers and then his mouth fastened on her with a firm suck. A strangled cry forced its way from her throat and she squirmed, unable to remain still under the delicious onslaught. His other hand moved to snake up her spine, urging her forward so that her breasts hung low and heavy. While he suckled one nipple, alternately drawing on the tight bead or flicking it with his tongue, his hand went to her other breast. He gently squeezed the aching tip, rolling it between his fingers.
Unable to stop herself, Justine moved against him, spreading her legs even wider and rubbing against his thick erection. Sensation rose up through her in a heady spiral, every rational thought in her head blasted away by the sensual storm he evoked in her as he suckled and played with her breasts. They felt full and aching. Indeed, her entire body ached with a need only he could fulfill.
A wave of carnal desire swept through her, so strong it threatened to overwhelm her. But just when she thought she’d reached her limit, every nerve in her body on fire, one of his hands moved between her legs again and he found the tight knot of flesh, so hot and incredibly sensitive. Then his fingers slid over it and slowly came up into her body, parting the folds and penetrating her sheath.
Confessions of a Royal Bridegroom Page 26