The Look of Love

by Kelly, Julia

  She chuckled. “I’m sure you do, but I’m not certain I should tell you.”

  “Worried it might puff me up?” he asked, sliding his hands around and up her back.

  “Let’s just say that I suspect there were more than a few very jealous women the day we wed.”

  He shook his head. “Of you wedding a second son with almost no income? I don’t think so.”

  She bent her head as though to kiss him but stopped a fraction of an inch away from his lips, and whispered, “Of me wedding a handsome man with a kind heart and brilliant mind who takes delight in the world. I couldn’t ask for a better husband.”

  Her words wrung him out, squeezing the last bit of breath from him. He’d tried to resist her and guard himself so he’d never have to feel the pain he’d once endured again, but she was his siren song. He couldn’t escape her allure, especially when she didn’t even realize how taken in he was.

  “You make me believe I can be a better man,” he murmured against her lips.

  Her nails scraped gently at his scalp where they played with his hair. Another shiver wracked his body and she leaned in so close her lips brushed his ear. “Then show me how to be the woman you need.”

  The urge to command her crashed over him, and he turned his mouth, kissing her. His hand went to the back of her head, cradling her so that he could kiss her deeper, pressing his tongue into her mouth. He wanted her to taste only him. To feel only him touching her. To smell only the salt of his sweat. To hear only the erotic mingling of her pants and his grunts as he claimed her right here. On this desk.

  Ina ground her hips into him as she shifted in his lap, trying to turn fully into him. No. This was his time to show her exactly what he wanted. Her pleasure was tantamount in his mind, but it would come on his terms.

  He locked his arms around her, holding her so she could hardly move, and broke their kiss. She was panting hard, and her eyes were wild. Good. He wanted her ready and yearning and frustrated—just as he so often was. She’d feel what it was to be him before she came apart in his arms, his to hold and cherish.

  “We’re going to play a game,” he said, his voice a growl thick with arousal. “I get to touch you, but you don’t get to touch me.”

  “What sort of a game is that?” she asked.

  A wicked grin spread over his face. “One you’ll enjoy.”

  Warmth flooded her eyes. “Then let’s play.”

  His mouth found the rise of her collarbone and nipped. She gasped.

  “What does it feel like?” he asked.

  “A sting of pain but then it spreads and feels good.”

  He grunted his approval and put his lips to the spot, sucking on the sensitive skin. His tongue licked over the area once, soothing the love bite. Then he slid his mouth up the side of her neck to her earlobe and caught up the flesh of it between his teeth.

  Ina squirmed, rubbing back and forth over the placket of his trousers. If she hadn’t known he was hard for her before, she knew now. His balls ached for release, but he wasn’t going to hurry this. He wanted her to feel every bit of pleasure he could pull out of her body. He wanted her begging for his cock and crying out his name as she reached for her release.

  With both hands on her waist as he kissed her, he lifted her and set her down on her feet. Then he spun her so they were pressed against each other, her back to his front.

  “Put your hands on the desk,” he said.

  She dutifully placed both hands firmly on the wood desk, careful not to send his papers into disarray. But Gavin didn’t want her careful. He wanted her wanton and wild, and he was determined to get her that way.

  His hands cupped her breasts through the fabric of her bodice. He could feel the steel bands of her corset, and he stroked his fingers down them to test the slope of her.

  “You could take it all off of me,” she said. “Right here.”

  He moaned and pushed his hips against her. “As tempting a thought as that is, I have other plans for you. Ones that don’t require any undressing at all.”

  She cast him a look over her shoulder, but his hands were already opening the front of his trousers and pulling out his cock.

  “I want you bent over this desk so that it’s the only thing I can think of the next time Chase sits in that chair right there and tries to make me care about crop rotation and irrigation.”

  “Won’t that be distracting?” she asked.

  He pumped his hand along his rock-hard shaft, preparing himself for her. “In the very best way. Now stay still.”

  Letting go of his cock, he bent to grab the hem of her skirts and draw them up. The steel loops of her crinoline collapsed against themselves, flattening out under the fabric when he hitched the whole dress up over her hips, giving him an exquisite view of her round ass.

  “You aren’t wearing drawers,” he said, his mouth dry with desire.

  “I’ve decided they’re an encumbrance, so I took them off before I came to your study,” she said.

  He stroked a hand over her. “You little vixen. You were planning to seduce me all along.”

  “You aren’t the only one feeling the effects of our stay,” she said, her hips pushing back into his hand as he skirted close to the V of her legs.

  The guilt was back. He knew she was missing home, and she hadn’t voiced a single complaint. He’d taken her away from her art, her friends, and her city and asked her to shoulder the burden of becoming a baronet’s wife overnight. It wasn’t fair, but he’d make it up to her. He just needed more time.

  “Have I ever told you how attractive I find your practicality?” he asked, slipping his hand between her warm folds.

  Her legs spread a little farther apart, welcoming his fingers, which stroked teasingly over the spot that gave her the most pleasure.

  “I’ll have to remember not to wear my full complement of undergarments when we return home,” she said. “It’ll scandalize Ruth, of course.”

  “And make me a very happy man.”

  He slipped one finger inside her and her muscles clenched around him.

  God, he needed her. He positioned himself right against her entrance and planted his other hand midway along her back, pushing her over the edge of the desk.

  “You’ll tell me if this hurts you,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, palms still flat on the desk.

  His breath stirred the hairs on the back of her neck as he leaned close to whisper in her ear, “Good.”

  He plunged into her in one long stroke, ripping a surprised cry from her lips. He thought to stop, but then Ina reared up and hooked her hand behind his neck to draw him closer, deeper.

  Bent over her, his hand pressing her back down against the desk, he drew his hips back until he’d nearly pulled out of her and thrust again. The flesh of his hips hit the softness of her tilted ass, and she whimpered.

  “Gavin, please.”

  “Tell me what you want,” he said.

  She twisted and her burning eyes locked on his. “All of you. Harder. Deeper.”

  Groaning in relief because that was exactly what he wanted too, he thrust again and again. Each time he felt her muscles spasm around him as she fully sheathed him. This was hard and fast. Pure need and desire.

  For his wife. His.

  The fierceness of his climax began to gather in him, and he felt his balls tighten. He was close, but he wanted Ina there with him. He reached around her hip and rolled her clit between his thumb and forefinger over and over with the rhythm of his thrusts, silently willing her to break for him.

  All at once, Ina cried out, grasping for a hold on the unforgiving desk. He slammed into her, wringing moans from her as she went wild beneath him.

  And then he was there. All of the pleasure building in him concentrated into a point and exploded. He sagged forward, scooping an arm beneath he
r to pull her up against him as he pumped into her. He buried his face in her neck, his teeth gently biting a tendon in her neck as he tried to stifle the shout that threatened to let loose. Then he pulled out and spilled himself on her exposed back.

  When his hips slowed and he was spent, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped Ina clean. Then he wrapped both arms around her and rested his head against her back. They stayed there for a moment because he couldn’t stand the thought of letting her go. Despite the steps they’d taken in this marriage, he still half expected her to rear back from him one day, deciding all of a sudden that this wasn’t what she wanted. If she did that, he’d crumble.

  Chapter Seventeen

  INA SAT WITH her hands folded in her lap, trying to be perfect. After their first encounter, Lady Sophia had been cool but mercifully distant with her except for little snipes about Ina’s manners, accent, or interests. Most of these glanced off Ina, and she was determined not to rise to the others.

  What everyone knew and yet no one said directly was that Ina wasn’t up to the role of being the baronet’s wife Lady Sophia thought she should be. In her place should’ve been Grace, who moved with an elegance befitting her name, receiving callers with a soft word and quietly submitting to the hours of needlework Lady Sophia toiled over every day. Lady Sophia had even relinquished some of the responsibilities for running Oak Park’s massive household to her favored daughter-in-law.

  Though it might be her right, Ina didn’t bring her complaints to Gavin. She didn’t relish the thought of taking over the management of a manor house she didn’t want, and every day saw Gavin sequestered in his study with Chase. The last thing he needed now was his wife tearing in to complain about his mother.

  What she needed was to get out of Oak Park. She told herself over and over that Gavin had work here, but it took every ounce of her resolve not to beg him to return home. She missed her Edinburgh, but it was more than that. This grand house looking out over the sea to the west and sweeping green hills to the east should’ve been beautiful but it couldn’t shake the deep, bone-chilling cold that hung about it, as though the happiness had been sucked out of it long ago. It made her want to rebel, filling the hall with laughter and throwing open the doors to someone other than the solemn-faced, black-clad members of this miserable household.

  Just a little while longer—that’s what he’d promised her—a few days and he’d conclude his business. Then they could return to their life in Edinburgh. They’d visit Oak Park, a home neither of them wanted, only when absolutely necessary.

  For now, she just had to survive another interminable afternoon in the drawing room with Lady Sophia and Grace.

  From her seat on a sofa near the window, Ina offered her sister-in-law a little smile, but Grace hardly met her eyes. The poor woman looked miserable, and although she never protested at Lady Sophia’s ridiculous criticism, Ina would’ve pulled her into a hug to comfort her if she wasn’t half convinced Grace would break into pieces at such an outrageous display of affection. She’d asked Gavin for guidance about how she might approach her sister-in-law, but he’d clammed up immediately. She supposed he worried that his brother’s widow resented that it was Gavin assuming the title rather than Richard.

  Stifling a sigh, she picked up the sketch pad she’d armed herself with in anticipation of the long stretches of silence that personified the gaps in the afternoons that were not filled with callers. She flipped the bound pages open to a blank spot and picked up a pencil she’d sharpened in her room that morning.

  With quick strokes, she outlined the shape of a jaw up to a set of cheekbones. Her pencil whispered over the page, lending a soothing meditative quality to the work. She hadn’t set out to draw anything in particular, but a face was appearing, so she added shading to bring out a man’s chin and defined a divot in the center of it. A pair of lips were followed by the slope of a nose.

  Her thoughts wandered to Hero and Leander as she added two long lines for a neck. The days she needed to finish her sculpture were ticking by. She had just six weeks before the deadline for entries passed, and she still had detail work and polishing to complete. At the moment, her tragic lovers still looked vague, more like suggestions rather than fully fleshed-out people.

  “You’re drawing Gavin,” said Grace from over Ina’s shoulder.

  She jumped, her pencil skittering over the page and leaving a light lead mark on the upper right corner.

  “I’m sorry,” said Grace, turning quickly.

  “No, please stay,” Ina said, patting the spot next to her in a gesture of goodwill. “Why do you think it’s Gavin?”

  “His jaw is quite square, and he has that cleft in his chin.” Grace traced her finger over the spot.

  Oh. Without meaning to, Ina had begun sketching her husband. She hadn’t even been thinking about him. Not really. And yet now that Grace pointed it out she didn’t know how she could have imagined the sketch was of anyone else.

  “It’s unmistakably Gavin even if you haven’t filled in the eyes,” said Grace. “He has wonderful eyes.”

  “That’s easy enough to fix,” Ina said.

  With a few quick pencil lines, she filled in his deep-set eyes and the strong set of brows that topped them.

  “There. That looks just like him,” said Grace. “Does he approve of you sculpting?”

  “He must be horrified at the sight of a woman wielding tools like a caveman,” said Lady Sophia from her sofa.

  “No,” Ina said sharply. “I believe he’s rather proud that his wife has an occupation she finds fulfilling.”

  “An occupation?” laughed Grace. “Surely you mean a hobby.”

  Ina tried to remind herself that Grace didn’t mean any harm by it. She was simply unused to the thought of a woman who considered the pursuit of art a serious endeavor. In Grace’s world, women didn’t toil at anything.

  “Gavin is very used to seeing me at work,” she said. “Before we were married, he used to treat my studio as a way station between my father’s study and his bachelor apartment.”

  “Were you alone?” Lady Sophia asked, horrified.

  “The servants were just in the next room, and the kitchen was just down the hall. We always kept the door open,” Ina said, annoyed at having to defend herself to her mother-in-law. There had been nothing scandalous about Gavin visiting her while she worked, but this woman was making it seem dirty.

  “I cannot believe your father and mother would’ve allowed such an arrangement,” said Lady Sophia.

  “My mother died when I was young, so she can hardly object,” Ina said.

  Grace squirmed in her seat, but Lady Sophia only narrowed her eyes. “Your father then.”

  “He takes a rather enlightened view of friendship between the sexes,” she said, although really her father had hardly noticed.

  The dowager sniffed and turned back to her needlework, effectively ending the conversation.

  “Have you ever seen someone carve before?” Ina asked Grace, trying to move beyond her mother-in-law’s ugliness.

  Grace shook her head.

  “I’d be delighted if you’d stay with us in Edinburgh for a time,” she continued. “I can show you what it is that I do. Perhaps you might try your hand at sculpting too.”

  “She most certainly will not,” said Lady Sophia from across the room, where she sat embroidering a pillowcase. “The very thought of traveling when her husband has been dead less than two weeks.”

  Ina’s cheeks burned more from anger than embarrassment. She understood that the rules of mourning were strict. Young as she might have been, she could recall the seemingly endless number of stiff black crepe dresses her nurse had outfitted her in the year after her mother had died. Yet Grace wouldn’t be a freshly widowed woman forever, and there was no harm in giving a grieving woman something to look forward to.

  “I only mentioned a visit beca
use I was looking to the future,” said Ina with a glance at Grace. “The distant future.”

  “Perhaps a trip to London, when you and Gavin open up the house for the season,” said Grace hopefully.

  “We don’t have plans to do the season,” she said.

  “Of course not this year,” said Grace, “but once we’re out of mourning.”

  “I’m sorry, you misunderstand me. Gavin and I aren’t interested in doing the season any year.”

  “What?” Lady Sophia asked. “Whyever not?”

  “We’re perfectly happy in Edinburgh.”

  “But the house,” gasped Grace. It was the most emotional display Ina had seen from her since arriving at Oak Park. “There are certain expectations of the baronet.”

  “Appearances must be maintained,” said Lady Sophia.

  “Expectations and appearances have never been of much concern to Gavin or myself,” Ina said firmly. “It may’ve been the habit of Gavin’s father or Richard to go to London, but it will not be ours.”

  Grace bolted up out of her seat, her cheeks red. “I was skeptical when you arrived at Oak Park, but I was willing to overlook some of your eccentricities. Now I see you’ve turned Gavin’s head and would have him shirk his responsibilities here. He deserves a better wife than you.”

  My imperfections, she corrected herself.

  Turning to their mother-in-law, Grace said, “Please excuse me. I’ll take supper in my room this evening. I find I have a splitting headache.”

  The door thumped shut behind Grace, punctuating Ina’s astonishment. She’d suspected from the start that she’d never be close companions with her sister-in-law, but she certainly hadn’t expected such an attack. That was Lady Sophia’s purview.

  Her sister-in-law couldn’t have known how precisely her words jabbed at Ina’s worries. Ina knew Gavin deserved a better wife than her, but instead she’d landed him in this mess with her. In Edinburgh it had seemed just possible that they could stumble through this lifetime together, finding a happiness in each other’s company. Here in Ashington, however, it was like having a bright light shone on all of their imperfections.