She would feel both if they were going where she thought they were.
Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and she could now see Nik’s shadowed face and glittering eyes as he loomed over her, if she could not discern the expression in either.
She knew Nik to be an inventive as well as demanding lover, and over the past three years, he had introduced her to pleasures she had not even realized her body was capable of feeling.
She continued to gaze up at him as she slowly turned onto her stomach, unable to turn her head far enough to see him once she had done so.
Nik instantly straddled the backs of her thighs with his hair-roughened legs.
Angelique gasped as she felt the warmth of Nik’s hands against her back before he ripped the flimsy camisole from top to bottom. The cool night air brushed over the sensitive heat of her skin, causing her nipples to harden as they pressed into the sheet beneath her. She gave a shiver, and then a groan, the moment the heat of Nik’s lips pressed against the nape of her neck before trailing more of those hot kisses down the length of her spine to the firmness of her bottom.
Nik moved back slightly so that he now knelt between her parted legs, her body no longer held captive beneath his. “Up on your knees with your head down on the bed.”
Angelique’s heart skipped several beats before she again did as he asked. She felt completely vulnerable with her face pressed into the bedcovers and her bottom up in the air. But at least it was too dark in the room for Nik to be able to see—
She gave a groan, her back arching, heart pounding, as her husband’s hands grasped the firm globes of her bottom and began to squeeze and caress them. He held those orbs apart, and seconds later Angelique felt the totally new sensation of the hot rasp of Nik’s tongue along the crease of her bottom.
Nik had never— It was too intimate. Too—
“Oh God…” Angelique whimpered, her hands clenching the pillow and heat suffusing her body as that tongue now licked and moistened between those full cheeks, awakening nerve endings she had not even known were there.
Nik pulled her bottom cheeks even farther apart as his tongue continued to lick and probe. “Relax and let me in,” he encouraged gruffly, his breath hot against Angelique’s sensitized flesh.
Let him—
Oh dear God!
Angelique had never felt anything like the heat of Nik’s tongue breeching that tight ring of muscle before thrusting moistly inside her.
It was so intimate, so forbidden, that she instantly climaxed. Fiercely. The pleasure unending, as wave after wave of mindless sensation coursed through her body.
She was weak and sobbing and still on her knees when those waves subsided minutes later.
“Stay as you are, Angel,” Nik encouraged gruffly, his hand resting lightly on the base of her spine as he shifted on the bed.
Angelique heard the opening of the drawer in the bedside cabinet, and seconds later. Nik was using his fingers to slather lotion around and inside her sensitive hole. He took several minutes to loosen the tight muscle before breaching that ring and pushing his finger and more of that lotion inside her.
Nik had taken her bottom only twice before, but both times with her lying on her back, and he had never put his mouth there before. On both those previous occasions, the pleasure had been so intense, Angelique had been rendered almost unconscious.
It was, she had decided, the ultimate surrender.
A surrender she now more than ever wished to share with Nik.
“Ready?” he prompted softly.
“Ready.” Angelique braced her arms on the bed, seconds later feeling the moist heat of Nik’s cockhead pressing against her before he gently pushed forward, breaching and stretching that ring of muscle, pushing inside her one slow inch at a time.
It was taking every measure of Nik’s self-control not to enter the pleasurable heat of Angelique’s tight channel in one forceful, claiming thrust, his cock once again thick and engorged with need after those minutes of fingering and pleasuring Angelique to another climax.
He forced himself to pause, to allow Angelique to become accustomed to the painful intrusion, before continuing to push inside her until his cock was seated to the hilt. The tightness of his balls pressed against her cunny, instantly wet from a release of her juices and Nik’s own cum.
He gritted his teeth as he held that position for several more long seconds. Angelique was so fucking tight, so hot inside. The outer ring of muscle might have relaxed and allowed him entry, but the inner muscles were contracting about his cock, a demand he pump his cock in and out of her until he attained his second release.
Nik fought against that need, fingers tightly gripping her hips. Angelique whimpered and groaned her pleasure as he began to drag his cock back along those contracting muscles. Then her gasp when he thrust forward again in one smooth stroke, filling her completely. He repeated the movement, almost pulling his cock out of that hot tight hole before thrusting in again.
The pleasure, the need to claim, rose with every second that passed, and he felt Angelique come and then come again, accompanied by her whimpers and then a demand for more.
It was enough to unleash the fierceness of Nik’s passion as he began to thrust deeply. The room became filled with the sound of flesh slapping wetly against flesh and the heady musk of their earlier release.
“Come with me,” Nik demanded minutes later as his balls drew up tight and he knew his release was imminent. “Now, Angel!” he cried out as he felt the heat of his seed coursing down the length of his cock.
“Nik…!” Angelique cried out as she began to quiver and shake in the throes of another climax, the tightening of her inner muscles sucking greedily on Nik’s cock as he pulsed jet after jet of his cum inside her.
It was daylight when Angelique finally opened her eyes again.
She didn’t need to turn to know she was alone in the bed, knew instinctively that Nik’s warm body was no longer beside her own in the tumble of bedcovers.
But perhaps that did not mean anything?
A glance at the bedside clock told her it was nine o’clock in the morning, and Nik had always been an early riser, usually up and about before seven.
She stretched in the bed, feeling a delicious ache…everywhere. The physical side of their marriage had always been deeply satisfying for both of them, but last night, Nik had seemed possessed, driven by a depth of passion Angelique had never seen in him before.
Because he was saying goodbye to that part of their marriage? To her?
Possibly.
But if Nik could still feel such a deep desire for her, then Angelique refused to believe their marriage was over. Perhaps this other woman, whoever she was, did not have such a hold on Nik as he thought she had. Angelique would fight for him, if necessary.
A brief knock sounded on the door of the bedchamber before one of the maids quietly entered the room. “Your breakfast, Your Grace.” She placed the tray down on the bedside table.
Angelique knew the servants had all been too well trained by Foster to reveal any surprise, even by the slightest sideways glance or rise of an eyebrow, to find Angelique in the duke’s bed rather than her own. In the past, Angelique had always tried to return to her own bedchamber, or Nik to his, before morning.
She was also completely naked beneath the bedcovers, and she knew there would be at least that one bite mark on her shoulder, and possibly even bruises on her hips and breasts from their night of intense and intimate pleasure.
She remained fully beneath the bedclothes as she smiled at the maid. “Thank you, Mary. Is His Grace downstairs or out and about on the estate?” she voiced casually in an effort not to reveal how much she wanted to see and be with Nik again.
Yesterday, she had run from here, from Nik, believing there was no reason for her to stay. But after last night, Angelique was determined she would fight, for Nik and their marriage.
“The duke left early this morning, Your Grace,” Mary told her lightly.
Angelique really wished she could sit up, but the thought of the maid seeing those bites and bruises kept her firmly in place. The servants did not need to know the depth of the passion between their master and mistress. “Did he say what time he would be back?”
The maid gave a shake of her head as she picked clothes up from the floor and began folding them neatly. “Only that he would be in London for several days and we were to take every care of you in his absence. As if we would not have done that anyway.” The maid continued to chatter, unaware she had just totally shattered Angelique’s world as well as all her hopes for the future.
Nik had gone from Stonewell Park without even saying goodbye.
Chapter 9
“I do not know what you want from me, Nik.” Titus Covington, Viscount Romney, said, a concerned expression on his scarred face.
Scars Nik knew the other man had acquired during the accident which had killed Jeremiah Worthington and Priscilla Germaine.
He continued his restless pacing of the confines of the other man’s study. “I told you, I need all the notes you have on your own private investigation into the traitor to the Crown.” Several weeks ago, the other man had gone completely against Nik’s instructions as his spymaster and carried out a private investigation in an effort to prove Prudence Germaine innocent of treason.
Romney’s brows rose. “And I told you, my investigation added nothing to the original findings.”
Nik’s jaw tensed. “Nevertheless, I wish to see it.”
“Why?”
“Because I refuse to believe my wife is guilty!”
There. Nik had said the words that had been burning a hole in his chest all morning as he rode from Kent to London. Despite his dusty and unkempt appearance, Nik had gone straight to Romney’s house once he was back in the capital. His mother-in-law was currently in residence at Stonewell House, with or without her lover, and Nik found he did not have the stomach for seeing Lady Jacqueline again so soon after throwing her out of Stonewell Park.
All the Sinners except Nik were gathered in London ready for Romney’s wedding to Lady Prudence Germaine tomorrow, but it was Titus to whom Nik needed to talk.
Romney’s brows rose at Nik’s vehemence. “We are all agreed there is no other possibility—”
Nik’s hands clenched at his sides. “Then we will find one,” he insisted fiercely.
The other man’s expression softened. “Nik, I know how hard this must be for you, and you know how much we have all always admired and cared for Angelique—”
“Not enough to believe in her innocence, apparently.”
Romney winced at the accusation. “But—”
“She is not guilty, I tell you.” Nik glared his displeasure.
“Titus?”
Both men turned to face Lady Prudence Germaine as she entered the study, her blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty shown to advantage in a dark blue gown, worn as a sign of mourning for her twin sister, who had recently died.
No, Priscilla Germaine had not simply died, she had been murdered, alongside Worthington.
Nik knew Romney and Lady Prudence believed those deaths to have been carried out on Angelique’s instruction.
Nik no longer believed that to be true.
It was the reason he had left Angelique in his bed at five o’clock this morning and ridden like the devil to London.
Last night had been… Dear God, Angelique had given herself to him so wholeheartedly, her surrender complete and beyond a doubt as she gave him permission to do with her as he chose, to hurt or to pleasure.
No matter what Nik had demanded of her, what he wished to take from her, Angelique had opened her body and her emotions to him in a way Nik did not believe she could have done if she was the scheming traitor and murderess they all believed her to be.
Yes, Nik accepted that could have been her plan all along. That it might simply have been another means of lulling him into that false sense of security. But he would swear there had been no artifice to Angelique’s actions. There had been something too honest, too raw, in the way Angelique gave herself over to him so completely.
Nik had been unable to sleep after carefully withdrawing to get a washcloth and clean them both before Angelique had fallen into an exhausted slumber beside him. Nik had lain awake beside her, his thoughts in turmoil. It had been almost dawn when he finally accepted he would not find the truth in Kent.
He slid silently from the bed to go through to his dressing room, quietly donning his riding clothes before going back to the bedchamber to take one last look at Angelique.
Her hair was a wild red cloud about the bareness of her shoulders, Nik was able to see several more bite marks on that ivory flesh where he had bitten her at the height of their passion. Her face was slightly flushed, her lips red and swollen from the fierceness of the kisses they had shared.
Nik knew there would be other signs of their lovemaking on her body. Her breasts would have scrape marks from the stubble on his chin. Her bare mound would show those same scrapes from when he had eaten and then thrust his tongue inside her pussy until she came. The nubbin above would be swollen from the caress and press of his fingers. There would be finger-shaped bruises on her hips and the cheeks of her ass from where he had held her in place as he pressed the tip of his cock to breach and then slide into her bottom hole. She had climaxed the moment he did that, Nik remembered. Before she had come again, and then again, as he slowly thrust in and out of that sensitive cavern until the heat and tightness caused him to lose control and she came again as he spilled himself hotly inside her.
Even now, it gave him deep satisfaction to know that the excess of his seed, despite his having washed them both, would have dripped from her cunny and her ass and be dried on her thighs and bottom cheeks when she woke this morning.
“Angelique is not guilty,” he stated again. “Of treason or anything else.”
“Nik—”
“Titus.” Lady Prudence placed her gloved hand lightly on her fiancé’s arm. “If His Grace says his wife is innocent, then I believe him.”
Nik gave her a grateful glance, knowing that lady had every reason to want to believe in Angelique’s guilt. “As the future wife of one of my dearest friends, you should call me Nik,” he invited gruffly.
She smiled. “Thank you. And you must call me Pru.”
Romney rose to his impressive height of several inches over six feet before placing a possessive arm about his fiancée’s waist. “I am sure this little exchange of informality is all well and good,” he snapped his impatience, the scars livid on his flushed face. “But it does not alter the facts.”
“Facts can be misconstrued and twisted,” Lady Prudence reasoned softly, her hand resting on the broadness of Romney’s chest. “We know that better than most, Titus.” She gently reminded him that only a week ago, those facts had caused him to harbor suspicions of her own guilt as being the traitor to the Crown.
“There is no one else,” Romney insisted.
“Have you ever known His—Nik,” Lady Prudence amended ruefully, “to be wrong before?”
“Well…no. Except,” Romney added pointedly, “in regard to initially believing you or one of the other Sinners’ wives must be guilty of the crime.”
“You cannot blame him for wanting his own wife to be innocent.”
“But Nik’s wanting that to be true is the whole point—”
“You will excuse Titus, I hope, Nik.” She turned to smile at him. “I am afraid his nerves are slightly frazzled from all the wedding arrangements we have had to deal with these past few days.”
It was easy for Nik to see exactly why Titus had fallen in love with this young lady. Prudence Germaine was not only beautiful, but she also had a confidence and strength of will that would no doubt stand her in good stead in a marriage to one of the arrogant Sinners.
The same strong will Nik had seen emerging in Angelique these past few days.
His jaw tightened. “If you will hand
over your report, Titus, I will be on my way and leave you to continue with your wedding arrangements.” In view of Lady Jacqueline’s presence at Stonewell House, he intended to seek accommodation at his club for tonight.
“My mother has all of that well in hand.” Lady Prudence was the one to answer him dismissively. “Titus and I shall help you to read and go over the report.”
“I could not—”
“Pru, I do not—”
Both men began talking at once and then stopped at the same time.
Nik gave Romney a rueful grimace before continuing. “I did not come here with the intention of intruding on the eve of your wedding.”
“Titus, have you offered Nik something to eat and drink and the opportunity to refresh himself after his journey?” Lady Prudence frowned as she obviously took in Nik’s disheveled appearance for the first time. “Men!” She rang the bell to summon the butler, obviously taking Romney’s silence as a no. “I truly believe you would all turn into savages if we women did not insist upon some level of civilized behavior.”
It was neither the time nor the place, but still, Nik could not hold back the smile that now curved his lips. Prudence Germaine was magnificent in her stubborn insistence of helping Nik, despite the fact she was to be married tomorrow. Most women would be on the verge of hysteria under such circumstances, but Prudence was calm and totally in control of both herself and the situation.
“I give up!” Romney was obviously of the same opinion as he unlocked a drawer on his desk and took out a thick folder which Nik could only assume contained the report he had asked for.
Somewhere, in amongst those numerous pages, Nik hoped he would find the identity of the true traitor.
The alternative was unacceptable.
Angelique decided Stonewell Park was nothing but a shell of bricks and mortar without the vibrant presence of her husband in residence.
Nik had only been gone for half a day, but she felt his absence keenly as she moved restlessly about her sitting room tidying ornaments that did not need straightening. Her ankle, she was pleased to note, barely troubled her at all today.
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