by Megan Mulry
“Come with me.” He stood up, bare-chested and glorious with his buckskins around his thighs and his hard cock jutting away from his incredibly firm body. He glanced down at his exposed self and then smiled at her. “I am officially beyond the pale.”
“As long as it’s official.” She accepted his offered hand, and he pulled her up easily.
“This way.” He led her toward the back of the laboratory. She thought perhaps there was a chaise or daybed of some sort that they could use, but he pressed a panel and the wood opened to reveal a hidden staircase. “Long hours and crazy ancestors. You know how it is.”
Preceding her through the door, he drew up his pants and buttoned them enough to keep them low around his hips. The turn of his arse was charming, but the view was quickly swallowed into the darkness when he shut the door behind them.
“You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?” He squeezed her hand.
“No.” Her voice echoed into the void and then he was guiding her up a circular set of stone steps.
When they reached the top, he opened the door and led her into what must be the marquess’s suite.
“How divine!” She squeezed his hand tighter as she looked around the lavishly appointed room. The ceilings were high and intricately carved, but they were not gilded or showy. The bed was raised and covered in the finest pale gray silk.
“I’m glad you like it. I want you here—”
“You have me.” She turned into his arms and kissed him again. All of his hesitance and worry of the previous weeks seemed to have slipped away. He was eager and joyful in her arms, touching her waist and reaching for her bosom through the velvet. She pressed her hand over his when he finally cupped her breast. “Yes, just like that.” She guided his hand and sighed her pleasure when he began kneading and shaping her flesh.
“May I take your clothes off?” His voice was utterly polite and his fine manners were incredibly stimulating under the circumstances.
“Yes, my lord. You may.” She turned and presented him with the hooks at her back. His fingers were quick and steady as he undid her overdress, then the laces of her bodice.
“Where did you learn how to undress a lady with such dispatch, Lord Camburton?” She glanced seductively over her shoulder as she held her hair off her neck to give him room to work.
His cheeks reddened. “I’m very good with knots and that sort of thing from many years of sailing.”
“What a wonderful skill to have,” she nearly purred. For some reason, being with him made her want to purr.
He hesitated when she was undressed down to her shift, with nothing but her stockings on beneath. The lamps around the room and the glow of the fire cast them both in a warm light, and she was sure Archie could easily see the dips and shadows of her body through the sheer linen that covered her. Her nipples hardened as he watched.
“Archie?”
He seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, reaching out to touch her body . . . but not quite managing to do so. “I knew you would be beautiful, but I had no idea.” His fingertip traced the arch of one breast, so hesitantly she almost didn’t feel it, but the sensation was exquisite, light and hot.
She pulled her shift up over her head and put it on the back of the armchair where Archie had carefully placed the rest of her clothes. After removing the few remaining pins from her hair and setting them on the small table next to the chair, she shook out her long blonde tresses and enjoyed the clean scent of citrus and verbena that wafted around her. “Look your fill, my dear man.” She stepped closer to the fire to stay warm, then bent to remove her stockings and garters. “Take the rest of your clothes off, beautiful. I want to see you too.”
The sound of his stilted breathing, of his nearness, made her body heat from the inside out. She closed her eyes in anticipation, then stood up straight and looked at him.
She felt the press of tears . . . again. What would that be? The tenth time this week? “You should not be permitted to wear clothes. It is a crime. Stand still while I look at you.” As she closed the distance between them, he shivered and stared at the carpet. “Don’t get nervous now, silly. This is the best part. I finally get to touch you . . . everywhere.”
He was, quite simply, an Adonis.
Leaning in close, she inhaled the essence of him. She licked his neck and adored his answering moan and quiver. Tracing the hard edges of his arms, the turn of his ribs, the columns of muscle along his spine—she marveled at his physical perfection. “I can see why you’ve been saving yourself for the right woman. You are quite something, my dear.” His hard cock jolted at the sound of her voice, at her compliments.
“And are you the right woman?” His voice was strained as he tried to remain still for her examination.
She kissed one of his nipples, then pulled away slightly and smiled up at him with mischief. “That depends upon whom you ask. I’m sure some people will tell you I am very, very wrong.” She teased the hair leading from his navel to the base of his straining shaft. “But I think I may be the right woman for you. What do you think?”
“Yes, I think—I think you are.” The way he said it, with that stuttering reluctance, gave her a peculiar thrill. She loved him eager and open, as he’d been in the laboratory, but she also loved him like this, when he was fighting himself just a little. Because she was the wrong woman in so many ways. She was complicated and willful and damaged.
She loved Beatrix.
She loved Archie.
“Have you ever been with a woman?” She touched him while she spoke, circling his nipple with one hand and grazing the hair on his stomach with the other.
“No.” It came out like a gasp.
“Ah.” Selina’s heart slammed again, making her ribs feel too tight and her lungs feel too full. “We shall be each other’s firsts. A jumble of awkward grabs and thrusts, yes?”
He moaned and shut his eyes.
“Yes. Even though you thought me a whore, no man has ever touched me.”
He moaned again and shook his head in what might have been self-reproach.
“Do you enjoy the idea of deflowering me?” she pressed.
He nodded and hummed, and his body said yes, but he didn’t actually say the words.
She leaned in closer. “Does the marquess want to do unspeakable things to my innocent body?”
His chest heaved, and he exhaled through his nose in seeming disgust, yet he nodded.
“Open your eyes.”
He obeyed her immediately, and a thrilling joy ran through her. She brought both her hands to his cock and stroked him lightly while she looked into his eyes. “Take me to your bed, Archie. Now.”
He swept her up in his arms, and nothing had ever felt so perfectly right in his life. No experiment. No familial duty. Only this. Only Selina Ashby, naked in his arms, as he carried her to his bed. Her skin was soft and warm, feminine silk against his masculine roughness. He dipped his face into the crook of her neck and inhaled the scent of her, then pressed his lips to her neck with wet, hot kisses.
The bed had been turned down, and he settled her delicately on the clean linen. Her blonde hair spread across the pillow, and he was torn between wanting to preserve her in this perfect state of innocent purity and wanting to imprint his possession on every inch of her creamy skin, to leave his mark and his scent all over her. She arched her back and stretched out her legs, moaning delightedly. “This bed is quite wonderful. I can see why the floor of your laboratory seemed quite inferior. Will you join me?”
He dove at her like a beast. And she fought him admirably, clawing at his back, nipping at his neck. They wrestled at first, like a pair of drunken louts, and he relished all of it. Her slick body wound around his, scratching or soothing, sucking or biting, until he was blind with lust. His body needed hers like his lungs needed air. Just as Christopher had said, she rode him. Straddling his hips, Selina rose up with her neck extended and her long hair falling in decadent waves around her breasts and shoulders, and then she
descended onto him and they were locked together. All the frantic groping ceased, and she looked down to where they were joined, then up into his eyes.
“You are perfect.” Then her eyes slid shut, and he’d never felt such a profound sense of joy.
“Selina . . .” He wished he could have been more eloquent, but his mind was stripped of words, awash in pleasure.
“I know.” Then she began to move, and he reached for her waist to follow her rhythm, to feel her feeling him. When she threw her head back and he knew she was taking her pleasure, he lifted his hips to join her.
“That’s it. Right there.”
God, how she worked him, rotating her hips and grinding against him and then withdrawing slightly before taking him again, deeper. Every cell in his body felt as if it were preparing to leave his body, to gather and reside inside her.
“Selina . . .” His voice was more urgent.
“Hold on . . . hold on . . .” And he did. For her. And then he felt the crashing pulse of her orgasm around his cock, and she cried out his name and fell against his chest, clawing at him and calling his name again and again. “Now,” she whispered against his ear, and he joined her then, pulling her close, closer, until they both quaked and finished.
He didn’t feel any of the shock or shame he’d felt in the coach several weeks ago, nor any of the chaotic lust he’d felt in the laboratory earlier that evening. He only felt . . . whole. He stroked down the length of her silken back and breathed in her delectable scent.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked quietly.
She kept her cheek against his chest, and he felt the jolts of her laughter. “Hurt? If that’s hurt, I beg you, please hurt me. Often.”
He smiled and kissed the top of her head. “Do you want to get married straight away or take the time to plan something quite grand?”
She stiffened in his arms, like a blanket that had been dipped in water and left outdoors in the middle of winter. Lifting her head, she looked him in the eye. “Don’t be silly. You don’t want to marry me. I’m a filthy whore, remember.”
He was instantly furious. “Don’t you dare say that! How could you throw my own foolish misconceptions in my face at a time like this? How could you?”
She wriggled to get free but he held her firm.
“Are you the one who is feeling penitent now?” he tried to tease.
Her face stayed serious. “No. I’m neither penitent nor deluded. We don’t need to make this into something more than it really is.”
“There is nothing more, as far as I’m concerned.” His heart pounded as the ground of certainty shifted beneath him. “I love you and I want to marry you and I hope my seed is embedding itself in your body right this moment and that you will be with me until my dying hour.”
He could feel her heart beating frantically against his chest. She pressed her small hands between them and forced him to release her.
“Please, Archie.” She slid off the bed and reached for her shift, pulling it over her body. She was just as alluring out of bed covered in a bit of linen as she had been resting naked against him.
Shaking her hair behind her, she attempted to collect herself and appear formidable. He sat up a bit, punching the pillow and then clasping his hands behind his head. “Yes?” he prompted.
“Don’t sit there in that manner.”
“In what manner?”
“As if you are the lord of all you survey.”
He smiled arrogantly. “But my dear, I am the lord of all I survey. And many hectares beyond those I can survey with the naked eye.”
She stomped her foot, and he crossed his ankles at the far end of the bed, liking the way she glanced at his naked body and then reluctantly forced herself to look away.
In her typical fashion, she began pacing around the large chamber. Pace away, he thought happily, enjoying the turn of her ankle and the flex of her thigh through the fabric as she did.
“You can’t possibly want to marry me now when you couldn’t stand the sight of me only an hour ago.” She swiveled around to face him. “You couldn’t even bear to be in the same room with me! You couldn’t eat at the same table!” Her voice was fierce and her cheeks flushed.
He lifted his chin and licked his lips. “I think I’m over that. I’m quite pleased to be in the same room with you. Very well pleased. And I’m perfectly happy to order a tray of fruit and cheese, if you like, to be sure I can also eat in the same room with you.” He reached for the embroidered silk pull that hung near his bed in order to summon a servant.
“Don’t you dare!” She ran back to the side of his bed.
He placed his hand behind his head again. “Fine. As long as you concede I was in a state of unrequited . . . longing . . . and that’s the only reason I was ill at ease during dinner. Now that I am . . . requited . . . we shan’t have any such disputes in the future.”
“Disputes?” she scoffed. “You couldn’t even ride in the same carriage with me! You accused me of falling in love with a songbird!”
He smiled at how ludicrous that sounded, and shrugged easily. “Obviously, I have a very jealous nature.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “A jealous nature? You were a beast. Constance was taking advantage of me and all you could surmise was that I had somehow seduced her, like I seduce every man, woman, and bird in my path, apparently.”
“Please accept my sincerest apology.” He sat up and then stood naked in front of her. “I was falling in love with you and, well, I did not recognize the evidence.”
“Evidence? Are you mad? I am not a science experiment. I’m a woman.”
He smiled as he placed his hands firmly—possessively—around her hips. “I know what you are. And I love you.”
She inhaled sharply, and he had the first hint of a realization that she might not share his feelings. He loosened his hold on her, and she shook her head slightly. He didn’t know whether that meant she wanted him to hold on tighter or release her entirely.
“Archie . . .” Her voice was soft and soothing, but it was also placating, and the alarm bells began to ring in his mind. His arms fell away from her, and he felt suddenly exposed. He’d been relaxed and natural without his clothes on a few minutes ago; now he was embarrassed and at a disadvantage. He reached for a sheet and wrapped it around his waist.
“You can’t mean to say you thought I would do that—” He gestured toward the tangled sheets on his raised bed. “That we would . . .”
“We fucked. You can’t even say it outright. What is the matter with you?”
Her words hit him like a punch in the gut. “Matter? Matter!” He took a breath so he didn’t continue shouting. He did not shout. He had never shouted at another human being until he met this woman. He exhaled slowly. “Of course I can say the word ‘fuck.’ There. I just said it.”
She smirked.
He sighed and continued, “But that is not what we just did. That is not what I just did, in any case. Perhaps I mistook your interest for something more than a meaningless romp.” He lifted his chin, baiting her.
She stomped her foot again, and his heart sped up. There was nothing meaningless about her physicality; he wanted to be there for every stomped foot, every clenched fist, every kiss. He reached for her without thinking, reached his hand out to her cheek.
“Selina . . .” He whispered her name like a breath. “Please . . .”
She softened against the palm of his hand, and her eyes slid shut. “It was not meaningless, Archie. But it wasn’t . . . It doesn’t need to be . . .” He began caressing her neck and then the smooth turn of her shoulder.
She leaned into him and rested her cheek against his bare chest. “You scare me.”
“Don’t say that. Please don’t. Tell me what you want, and we will make it work.”
“Talk of children scares me.”
He swallowed. “Are you saying you never wish to have children?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. Just . . . not right this m
inute, if you take my meaning.”
“Oh!” He held her closer against him, one hand at her lower back, the other still gripping the sheet at his waist. “I will have a large delivery of French letters sent up from London immediately.”
He felt the rumble of her laughter against his fast-beating heart. “You plan on using a large quantity of French letters?” She looked up at him, and he was so grateful to see the spark of mischief had returned to her deep-green eyes.
“A very large quantity.” He kissed her forehead and released the sheet. “Because you may not wish to have children for many years, which is fine. As long as you do wish it . . . eventually?”
“I do wish it,” she answered breathlessly. “In my dreams I have pictured my children . . . your children . . . our children.”
His heart pounded at her words, from the sheer blessed relief of realizing he had not been imagining a shared future in some solitary, demented dream of his own. “That is more than enough for me.” He still sensed her residual tension, something held back. “What else? Tell me.” He hugged her close in his arms, and they stood together like that for a long time, breathing into each other.
She gathered her courage and, after a few long minutes, finally said, “It’s about Beatrix.”
He exhaled and kissed her neck, then pulled back slightly to look in her eyes. “You mean that you love Beatrix?”
His eyes were so caring, so earnest, so true. She didn’t want to lose him, but she would never give up Beatrix; yet some part of her was certain he would never abide an ongoing relationship outside of their marriage. “Yes. I can’t give her up, Archie.”
“Of course you can’t. Giving her up would be like giving up your family. You would never ask me to give up my family.”
She stared at him in stunned disbelief. “You mean it?” When he caressed her cheek and traced the outline of her lips, she melted into him.
“I mean it. Your happiness is the root of my happiness, darling. I want you with me—always, I suspect—” he laughed and pulled her tighter against him “—but I know you will also want to be with Beatrix when she returns. She is always welcome here. We can build her a house if you like, for her own particular use.”