Cressida's Dilemma

by Beverley Oakley

  Even through her disguise, he could see she was looking at him like he could imagine her looking at no man, not even her husband—indeed, with such lascivious intent that he felt his cock jump to attention in such a desperate call for immediate satisfaction that he had to drag air into his lungs to stave off the reeling in his head.

  Dear God, he’d never beheld such a captivating creature, and the fact that she was his wife and that clearly she wanted him brought him so much pleasure it took all his willpower not to close the few feet between them and ravish her on the spot.

  Cressida’s frank examination made it clear there was no need to extend the polite preliminaries. A small toss of her head and a knowing look was all it took to have him cross the floor in two great strides to greet her, turning the lock in the door behind her before crushing her in his arms. She wilted like a hothouse flower, pliant and clinging, and the light fragrance of lavender water that seemed then to epitomize her essence of goodness nearly undid him on the spot. If she did not want more children, he knew how to ensure the loving frolics he was so looking forward to could become a daily ritual without ever adding to their family.

  The blend of ruse and ritual was a heady combination. How many times had he held Cressida in his arms as adoring husband, passionate lover and comforting helpmate? Never, however, had he done so while pretending both were strangers. It offered license to behave with playful artifice, and as he grazed her jawline with kisses, murmuring, “The lonely widow need not remain lonely.” He was sure he sensed her tacit acceptance, that gone were the rules that had hitherto governed their relations.

  God, he was mad to have let her drift away like he had, he reflected as he cupped her shapely bottom, pulling her tightly against him so she could be in no doubt as to his arousal. He would let her know what he wanted now, instead of risking confusion and flight once matters had proceeded.

  Her warm, sweet breath tickled his ear as she clung to him. “I’d hoped you’d be waiting for me,” she whispered, offering him greater access to her bosom so he could slip his hand inside her bodice and gently squeeze one taut—and, he hoped, aching—nipple.

  In the dim light, the fire crackled and the heat level rose.

  “Waiting for you, my love?” He rasped in a breath. “I’ve been waiting for nothing else.” His hands were unable to halt their exploration of her shapely body as he trailed kisses over her décolletage and shoulders. Since Thomas’ birth, she’d grown slender again. Yet it was not only her body that sent him wild. It was everything. He had to make sure she knew. “I’ve been insane with desire…driven mad the whole week at the mere thought of this.”

  Her shuddering sigh suggested she ached with the same need that consumed him. He wondered how any woman could combine such sweet innocence with such a provocative manner. He felt doubly blessed. He was a man who could enjoy two wives—the demure angel of the house she presented to the world, and the lust-crazed vixen in the bedroom.

  “My beautiful widow has the most magnificent breasts,” he murmured, nibbling her lower lip, loving the way she arched against him, thrusting her chest against his in open invitation for more of his tender ministrations. He was pleased to find that the tiny buttons that fastened her gown ran down the front rather than the back. With his right hand still cupping her delectable bottom—she was not part of the daring set who’d adopted the craze of wearing underwear—his other deftly undid the top five pearl fastenings, his senses thrilling to hear her low groan as her breasts spilled out of their confinement, for tonight she was without her constricting stays. Beneath her figure-hugging gown was just flesh.

  “I have missed my husband so very much,” she gasped, whimpering as he suckled first one soft, white mound then the other. “So very much,” she reaffirmed on a sigh, stroking his cheek while he rolled her nipple against the palm of his hand before tickling it with his tongue. He felt her tense, then her legs buckled as he gripped her hips, grinding them against his almost painful erection as he took possession of her lips once more.

  So much for taking it gently. The pace escalated quickly, yet his response was entirely governed by her own eagerness. He would not hasten this and be caught out by his own urgency when he knew the importance of this first time after so long. Cressida needed to be reassured, though not in words, that she would have no fear of conceiving another child. The fact was that she’d followed him here, choosing to reignite their passion in its rooms away from their own house and their own servants. She’d clearly discovered Justin was innocent of seeking out its pleasures and was here for some other purpose, and now she, too, had daringly chosen to utilize its ‘other’ purpose.

  Cressida’s mouth, usually so sweetly yielding for the chaste kisses she’d always enjoyed, was a cavern of unexpected delights. She kissed him back with passion, her little tongue darting, licking, exploring. Her breath came in short, staccato bursts as he led her to the mantelpiece, only just able to restrain himself, and placed her hands on the shelf at shoulder height, facing her away from him so that he could nuzzle her neck, his hands roaming all over her. The grinding of her hips and her sighs of pleasure as he ran his hands over her thighs and skimmed her waist before pulling her against him to suckle her earlobes left him in no doubt as to her enthusiasm.

  Sinking to his knees, Justin gently turned her round, lifting the hem of her skirt to trail hot kisses from her ankles, up her calves to her knees. He felt her tense as he reached her inner thighs. She’d not been pleasured like this before, but then she’d been an innocent when he’d married her, and lovemaking was for producing heirs. Now that she’d obviously, and no doubt unexpectedly, learned a thing or two at Mrs. Plumb’s, she’d come to him with the express purpose of indulging in lovemaking with absolutely no desire for procreation, and Justin was determined she’d enjoy it to the full.

  She was his paragon of virtue, his vixen of pleasure. She was everything to him, and he longed to be reinstated to the exalted position she’d once held him in. He’d failed her once, but he’d not do so again.

  Justin’s explorations to the font of her desire were smooth, slippery and unimpeded. He could never remember feeling his wife quite so excited. Arching her back, Cressida tried to push him away as she moaned her guilty pleasure—clearly she’d not expected to be so enthralled by this new pastime he’d devised for her.

  By the light thrown out by the Argand lamp, he could see the ecstasy in her half-closed eyes when, still kneeling, he tipped his head up to reassure himself that the book in which he’d placed the French letter was still on the mantelpiece. It was an observation that sent another spear of lust charging through him.

  “Dear Lord, no!” she cried as he kissed her swollen bud. Her movements were becoming jerky, he could tell she was on the cusp of her pleasure, but long experience had taught him how to measure her responses, bringing her to the summit before letting her down again.

  He was nearly ready to explode himself. It had been so long, though he thought he’d conditioned himself to a life of celibacy. Now he realized how combustible his responses to his sweet wife really were. She held his heart in the palm of her hand. But he would not let her down. Right now it was only her pleasure that was important, though her excitement merely ratcheted up his own. When she gripped a hank of his hair and did not let go as her pleasure mounted, her excitement traveled all the way down the shaft to spear his heart. Then farther, to his cock, and he had to remind himself once again that it was not his night to indulge in his own pleasure.

  Carefully, he continued his honed assault upon her senses, dipping several fingers inside her as he swept his tongue across her most sensitive parts, loving the heat and scent of her excitement. Why had he not imagined indulging in such wicked pastimes with his own wife before? Cressida was in paradise and so was he.

  She gasped, one minute begging him to stop, the next minute begging for more. He’d never seen her in such thrall, making his own excitement almost unbearable. He’d counseled himself that he would not i
ndulge in his own pleasure, yet her pleasure was his. He felt he was playing her like a finely tuned instrument, and his success in creating such responses was fascinating. He longed to tear the mask from her face and then discard his own mask, revealing themselves, but he sensed it was this distance from reality which enabled Cressida, for now, to hurl herself with such enthusiasm into their sexual congress.

  Later she would accept him back into her bed with her former enthusiasm, now that all restraint had been banished between them and each knew, secretly, the desires of the other.

  Her climax was cataclysmic. She bucked and moaned, twisting her hands in his hair as she fought against it, finally crumpling to the floor beside him, her breath coming in short bursts.

  Kneeling, he stared at her, a slow grin spreading across his face. Clearly she was determined not to show herself, for the mask remained firmly in place, but she’d know that he’d know her body, her responses, the scent of her desire, anywhere. Justin had never believed in keeping secrets, but tonight was an exception. If secrecy for the meantime gave Cressida the confidence to realize her potential in the marital chamber, she could have as much of it as she wanted.

  In a minute, he would retire to regain his composure now that he’d taken her to the zenith of her pleasure. Then he’d meet her back at home, where she would dictate how to proceed.

  After that, there’d be no looking back. He would coax her into confessing her fears, and he would reassure her that there were ways other than complete abstinence to achieve her desires. Their desires.

  Soon they would be as one again.

  He was caught by surprise by her low, wicked laugh as she rolled onto her stomach and clawed her way on top of him, her little fingers clumsy in their haste as she grappled with the buttons of his breeches.

  He could hardly believe it. Now she was straddling him, her skirt hiked up to her waist, her soft lily-white body pulsing to receive him. He tried to raise himself to cast a seeking hand for the receptacle which contained the French letter, but Cressida was now nuzzling his neck, kissing his throat. It was thrilling to be the object of her desire like this, but it was certainly no way to ensure they did not to add a sixth little angel to the nursery.

  No, tonight he’d imagined a far more cautious return to sexual intimacy. With perhaps a great deal of talking and a revealing of identities to precede a gentle, pleasurable exploration of each other’s bodies.

  Cressida had chosen to retain the secrecy. He could not reveal that he knew her, call her by name. Yet what should he do when she was hell-bent on satisfying her extraordinary desire? She must have forgotten herself. And her fears—though if Justin wanted to reclaim such exquisite carnal pastimes on a regular basis, he could not forget himself under the onslaught of her unbridled enthusiasm.

  “Wait,” he ground out as he gently but firmly pushed her hand away and rose to his feet, his eyes scanning the mantelpiece. To his horror, the book in which he’d secreted the French letter he’d initially doubted he’d need tonight wasn’t there. He cast around the gloom, but could not see where it had fallen. It must have happened when Cressida had been gripping the mantelpiece just seconds before.

  Cressida froze, her fingers still beneath his hand as his protest reverberated round her fevered brain.

  Uncertainty replaced desire like an arctic wind through an open doorway.

  She’d come here in disguise, fully believing Justin knew exactly who she was. She had the Queen Anne’s Lace seeds and had douched herself with vinegar to afford her some protection against conception. It was by no means as effective in preventing conception as a French letter, but she was prepared to take the chance, intending this moment to be the greatest gift she could give her darling husband after ten months of silent resistance to his loving overtures.

  Now his words tore asunder her confident assumptions.

  Justin’s reluctance to consummate their sexual congress suggested he really did not recognize her or that he was in the habit of receiving strange women in Mrs. Plumb’s private sitting room.

  She shrank back from him. He did not want her? No, it could not be that. In which case, it could only mean that he did not know it was her. But Justin would never involve himself so wantonly with a stranger. She was too confused and uncertain to know what to say. Could he really kiss and fondle and suckle a desirable, unknown woman as long as he virtuously refrained from penetrating her so he could still guiltlessly smile at his wife over breakfast the next morning?

  She could not see his face beneath his mask in the dim light, but she sensed he knew something was amiss.

  “Please! Just wait a moment. I…I’m looking for something. We mustn’t get carried away.”

  Carried away? Not wanting her reaction to strike a discordant note, she smoothed her skirts and rose with dignity while she re-buttoned the front of her dress, saying in a strained attempt at sounding jaunty, “We did get carried away but…it’s late and time I left.”

  “Don’t leave. Wait. I must find something and then we can—”

  But Cressida wasn’t waiting to hear more. The roar in her ears drowned out his protests as she hurried to the door, fumbling with the key in an attempt to put this, her greatest humiliation, behind her.

  “Please, stop… We need to talk about this.”

  She ignored him, still too confused to know what to say. She’d exposed herself in a way she’d never believed possible, and he’d egged her on all the way, only to reject her at the end. Revenge? Tit for tat? He really didn’t know it was her?

  Oh God, she should remove her mask this minute. Reveal her identity and uncover the truth, except that Justin’s reaction had been so unexpected she couldn’t help but think she’d missed something gravely important and had just made of herself the biggest fool ever.

  “Please wait!”Still she ignored him, blinded by hot, mortified tears as she finally turned the key.His hand grazed her arm but she knocked it aside as he cried out, “Why come here if not to torment me? I have precautions, but we cannot proceed without them.”Dear God, so he was prepared to make love to a stranger, she thought wildly, pulling open the door then slamming it upon his hand so that the last sound she heard was his cry of pain.At least that might act as a dampener in case the next available widow was only five minutes away, she thought bitterly, as she ran down the passage.

  “Cressida!”

  The sound of her name stopped her mid-flight, and she sagged against the wall. Squeezing shut her eyes, she dragged in a deep breath and forced reason to the fore. She looked down at her hands, balled fists, and tried to control her trembling. Justin had just called her by name. What a fool she was. Her brain had been trying to assimilate the worst-case scenario, when of course she should have known that Justin had everything under control.

  He knew exactly who she was and why she was here. Somehow he’d cleverly guessed, without her telling him, that her greatest fear of intimacy was conceiving again. He’d merely wanted to halt proceedings to protect her.

  Joy surged through her. She nearly wept with relief.

  Of course Justin knew who she was, just as he’d known last Wednesday. He’d allowed her to proceed with her outrageous seduction at her own pace, hinting though never alluding directly to it in his loving letters of this past week to her in Bath.

  Still mortified but quickly filling with hope and excitement, she waited for him to come to her, reflecting with shame upon her cool response to Justin’s flood of correspondence while she’d been tending impossible Great-Aunt Jane. She’d been too blinded by her own fears and lack of self-confidence to read between the lines and properly interpret his letters as an attempt to reason out her confusion.

  Raising her head, she smiled at him, happiness radiating through her like treacle through her veins.

  “Oh, Justin, I’m so sorry—” she began as her wonderful, beloved husband strode up the passage toward her, his masquerade mask now discarded, raking his hands through his disheveled brown hair.

 
; She put her hands up to untie her own mask, excitement mounting at the thought that in seconds, their stupid charade would be at an end and she’d be where she should have been for the past ten months—in her husband’s arms. They’d waited far too long. Now, within minutes, they could be right back in that room, or, better still, in their own bed, finishing off the wonderful business that had brought them here.

  As she clutched at her wildly beating heart, Cressida saw her own hopes mirrored in the expression on his face, and her heart surged with love and longing.

  “Justin!”

  They both turned at the cry, checked by its note of desperation, and Cressida felt her joy turn to confusion as the figure at the end of the passage ran toward her husband and Miss Mariah threw herself into Justin’s arms.

  “Oh, Justin!” Just two simple words but uttered in such heartfelt tones that Cressida needed to be a fool not to understand that some deep emotion bonded the two of them.

  Justin did not push the woman away. He did not unclasp her fingers, which gripped him behind his neck. He did not step politely away. No, his expression changed from passion to something curiously deeper in a response that quite clearly conveyed to Cressida how much this woman meant to him. Miss Mariah. Madame Zirelli. The woman who had been Justin’s mistress before he’d married Cressida.

  In the moment that the truth revealed itself, Cressida traded hope and happiness for the sorrow of all the world’s betrayed women. She would have preferred anger to the heartbreak that consumed every hope for their shared future she’d ever allowed herself. What a fool she’d been to have missed the truth that had been staring her in the face. The woman to whom Justin had turned during these long months when Cressida had not wanted him had indeed been his old mistress, as Catherine had insisted.

  “I always knew I could rely on you!” Miss Mariah wept. Cressida’s stomach roiled and she felt the bile, excoriating and bitter, burn her throat.