Ever His Bride

by Linda Needham

  “My name is Felicity,” she informed him, pleased to see a leveling blush on Hunter’s face. “If I’m to see that much of you, my dear husband, you’ll have to call me Felicity.”

  She couldn’t help staring at the bulge beneath his towel, and felt a great deal of power: she was quite certain that she had something to do with stirring it, causing it to grow before her eyes.

  “Have you come just to stare, Felicity?” He seemed irritated, and turned away, revealing a godlike backside as he dropped the towel to the hearth.

  “Of course not, Hunter.” She righted her thoughts, but watched him anyway, muscle converging against muscle as he stuck his arms through the sleeves of his silken robe.

  “What brings you across the hall?”

  Felicity felt terribly disappointed when he closed the front of his robe and tied the sash across his waist before he turned. He looked even more irritated with her as he hung the towel in the closet.

  “I’ve been thinking that a wife ought be able to discuss anything with her husband, no matter how temporary the arrangement might be. So I’ve come to tell you …” She felt her face begin to glow from a blaze that had begun in her chest.

  “Tell me what?”

  “There you see, Hunter, I’m blushing just to think of confessing this to you.”

  He threw wood onto the fire and shoved at it with the poker. “Just what are you trying to confess?”

  “Well . . She decided to let the words rush out, and then she would leave quickly. “My last bleeding was a week and a few days ago—whatever that means to you.”

  “Damn…” The poker clattered into the brass bucket. She said nothing as he came to stand at the foot of the bed. “Are you sure?”

  “Very sure.” He was so tall, and his eyes shone so brightly … and she loved him so dearly. He seemed as serious as he had that first day in his office. Their wedding day.

  “Are you sure of your calculations?”

  “I remember such things very well, Hunter. A woman must do so, in order to keep from staining her clothes and to avoid embarrassing accidents.” She felt terribly giddy, felt his gaze rest as hotly on her breasts as his hands had done earlier. “So I’m certain that it started, on schedule, two days before I left you for Northumberland.”

  “Ah,” he whispered through a voice that had a distinct creak in it. “And it happens … how often?”

  “I’ve left you for Northumberland only once … so far.” Felicity smiled because he did, and his was quirky and laced with a humor he turned inward upon himself. And he had shaved. Which seemed altogether odd, considering that he had been about to go to bed.

  “You must tell me how often you bleed.” He stood there like a seething statue, his limbs made of granite, but his chest rising and falling like a bellows. She wanted him to kiss her.

  “Every four weeks, give or take a day, maybe two.”

  “I see.” Her answer hadn’t eased his breathing, it only seemed to draw him closer. And now he stood above her, a dark scowl etched into his handsome features. It took every effort not to touch him.

  “Can I ask why you care, Hunter?”

  “Children,” he answered, his brow now profoundly fretted.

  “Whose?”

  “Ours.”

  “Oh, my God! Children!” She’d thought of children between them only in the abstract—Article Four of the contract. A possible miscalculation. What a dreadful, selfish word! She’d seen too many forgotten children recently, cold and starving, left out on the streets to fend for themselves by mothers who couldn’t afford to feed them. A child conceived tonight, or any other night, wouldn’t be a miscalculation, but a child. And she would have an innocent, month-old babe to protect when her year with Hunter was up, when he set her out on her own. She couldn’t very well travel with an infant, couldn’t possibly afford not to travel. She’d be one of those pitiful creatures forced by the parish governors to abandon her child at the workhouse door. Never!

  “Good night, Hunter,” she said, brushing past him to the door.

  “Good night?”

  She got the door partially open before Hunter closed it again. “Wait, please.”

  “I’ve changed my mind, Mr. Claybourne,” she said, as he guided her gently into the room.

  “We’re in the middle of a discussion.”

  “No. We’re at the end of it. Forever. You were right. This isn’t wise, isn’t fair.” Felicity sat down on the edge of a chair, suddenly terrified. “What if a child comes of tonight?”

  “It won’t.”

  She snorted and jammed her fists between her knees. “Are you God? Do you know this for certain?”

  “As certain as God’s science allows. I’ve been consulting this book on the human fertility cycle.” Hunter pointed to a thin volume on the table beside her.

  “Never heard of such a thing.” But the book was opened to a chart with ascending and descending lines and the words barren and procreative written in various places on the grid.

  “I recalled that I had it in my library. And wanted to be sure I was correct.”

  “The only way we will know for certain is if we don’t do this at all. Ever.” She left him to his book and went to the door. “I won’t bring a child into the world if I can’t provide a home and blankets and enough food to keep its little tummy from aching—”

  “Damn it, Felicity! No child of mine will ever starve.”

  “But if our marriage … when our marriage ends, the child wouldn’t be yours, Hunter. It would be mine. Like our contract says.”

  “Well, damn the contract. The child would be mine.”

  “Well, that’s it, then!” The wicked man intended to steal her child right out of her arms. She made a grab for the latch, but he stepped between her and the door and held her away from him.

  “Felicity, what’s gotten into you?”

  “Your deception, sir!” She twisted away, but he followed on her heels and turned her.

  “I’m speaking as truthfully as I can.” His look of injured innocence didn’t sway her.

  “And you’ve proved that, Mr. Claybourne. You would keep my child for yourself! Even after you signed your name, even after your promise to—”

  “Good God, Felicity, I wouldn’t desert you. I’d never leave you or my child to starve!” Hunter heard himself say the words, felt them swirling around in his chest, and knew that he had never spoken a more certain truth.

  “I don’t even know what that means, Hunter.” She planted her hands firmly on her hips. He hadn’t seen that pose coupled with that particular look of defiance since the night he’d first seen her, at the Cobsons.

  “Felicity, I am perfectly willing and quite capable of providing anything you and our child might possibly need, should the situation ever arise. Which it won’t. But, in point of fact, I would insist upon supporting you both. Comfortable beds, warm clothing, shoes, the best schools, bountiful meals—”

  “And would you visit him—or her? Regularly?”

  “Visit?” Somehow this picture in his mind had included Felicity and himself and their handsome family all seated happily around the dining-room table, sharing stories of their day and contentedly planning their tomorrows. The image made his eyes sting. “I would be present for the most important events.”

  “And for walks in the park?”

  Proudly pushing a pram, Felicity at his side; he was staggered by the idea. “Of course.”

  “And you would love this child?”

  She waited relentlessly for his answer, with her hands clasped behind her, her bare toes flexing against the carpet. A mother bear without a cub, a steadfast heart too grand for her own good, too ready to welcome unworthy strays.

  “I would hope to love my child unreservedly, madam,” he said through the tightening of his throat. “How could I not?”

  She didn’t move, and he was afraid to spook her; huge tears welled in her exquisitely green eyes. Her earnestly straight shoulders finally slackened fr
om a weight he must have placed there in his carelessness. Her arms hung limply at her sides, and her tears streaked like rain down the front of her nightgown.

  She finally snuffled. “Well, then,” she said, wiping her sleeve across her eyes. “That’s decided.”

  He couldn’t help but smile, yet couldn’t help wondering who had won, or if it mattered. He was just two paces from her, but couldn’t move for the tilting of the room. He’d have thought the earth was sliding about, but for her graceful steps toward him. She took his hand and his world righted.

  His skin ached and his heart too; he brought her palm to his mouth, and then to his kiss. The fire from the hearth danced in her eyes; it shaded and shaped her nightgown, draped her like the finest silk, made tight, tawny shadows of her nipples.

  “May I?” he asked as politely as he could manage, though he’d already slipped his fingers through her hair and now cradled her head softly, wondering if she could feel the racing of his pulse in the heels of his hands.

  “You may do anything you like, Hunter.” Her eyes were misted, and tracked his own like a blazing lighthouse.

  “That’s not a wise invitation, sweet.” He grazed her mouth with a drift of kisses, nothing more—not yet, though desire surged through him like the highest tide.

  “Oh, but I like this, Hunter. Like kissing you, and tasting you.” She caught his nape with her hand and drew him closer, to chart a course down his throat with her gentle kiss.

  “If I did as I liked, it would be over before it began.”

  “But you said this took hours… .” Her every breath was excruciatingly warm, spent through the silk of his robe and broadcast like a storm.

  “It will. I promise you.” He closed his eyes and imagined peonies falling from the clouds, alighting on his chest, leaving their cool kiss in the fashion of her mouth—he imagined melodies … He caressed her mouth with his, then fit his palm to the warm underside of her breast, cupped the sweetness through the linen.

  “Ah, yessss.” It was just as he had dared to remember: a small but weighty handful, a perfect fit for his hand and no other’s.

  And he prayed for strength and guidance.

  “Hunter!” Felicity caught a little sob in her throat as she watched her husband rub his thumb across the peak, an elemental sensation that bored to the center of her. It rose against the fabric, and she gasped when he bent his head and kissed the new rising.

  “Sweet perfection,” he whispered against her gown, leaving the impression of his kiss, and the steamy dampness.

  His hands were heavenly, slow and wondrous, spreading his fingers like a meadow fire across the flimsy linen. She strained toward him, toward his mouth as it trailed the aching rise of her breasts, toward an unknown ecstasy.

  He tugged with his mouth, and heated the linen with his guttural growls, and then he tugged deliciously harder, and wet her through with his febrile tongue.

  And then she wanted his mouth fully against her skin. But he was taunting her other breast, twirling her nipple between his fingers, and she could hardly stand for the reeling sensations. How could she explain what he was doing to her, that he was handsome and hers, and made her heart sing? His smile was sumptuous as he kissed her, a sweep-away-the-stars kind of kiss, which she prayed had come from somewhere near his heart.

  A tight, tugging fever was building in her secret place, and she wished he had another hand, or that his manhood was freed of his robe and—

  “Let me.” He knelt on the carpet, bronze and dark, his eyes glinting like diamonds. The first button of her nightgown fell to his touch, and he kissed her there, slipped his hand inside and lifted her breast slightly, gave a swipe with his tongue at the underslope.

  “So lovely, warm.” He spoke around his kiss, making her feel lazy and light of limb, spread his broad hands across her belly and around her waist and worked the next pearly button free of its fastening with his teeth and his tongue, all the while shooting fire from his fingertips, clutching her backside and lifting her so close that her hips were tucked up against his chin—and, oh, the impossible sensations that image summoned.

  “Hunter!” Bursts of lightning and blazing bedwarmers, thoughts of him doing amazing things to her. She felt more than a little dizzy, and held tightly to his shoulders for fear of pitching backward.

  He released her and sat back on his heels. She felt roundly deserted. The last button dangled in the folds of her gown, just above the patch of curls that craved his hand and wanted to be pressed against his mouth.

  And he was looking just there.

  “Hunter…”

  Hunter heard her breathy little sigh, saw the shadowy triangle, dark blond and level with his mouth, scented for him. Her gown cleaved her in two across her shoulders, exquisite skin set off by linen and the rise of her breathing. It would fall from her shoulders at the slightest tug.

  But he reveled in the anticipation; wanted her to bloom and cry out his name into his ear. If he could last that long.

  She shrugged, and the gown fell like a shroud dropped from a stained-glass window. She was lit by flames that could never hope to match the wild colors of her hair, nor the sleek sheen of her skin. He stood up and bent his head to kiss her.

  “Dear God, Felicity, you are a wonder.”

  Her eyes were glazed emerald and fixed on him like a brand. And she was fiddling with the front of his robe.

  “Felicity, what are you doing?”

  She held up his sash, yanked loose from his robe and displayed like a prize for a foot race. She was a wanton, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

  “Hunter, you—!” She was staring gape-mouthed at his risen flesh. “You’re so different from the marble kind.”

  He’d married a lunatic. “The marble kind?” He suddenly feared to ask what the hell she was talking about.

  “And the painted kind.”

  “Painted?” Just where the hell had her travels taken her?

  “And an oversized one enameled onto a Chinese vase. You are nothing like them!”

  “All right, woman.” He took a step forward, ready to sit her down and discuss the matter. “Where exactly did you see these?”

  “In the British Museum.”

  He was stunned. “In the museum? I thought you went there to read. Not to look at naked men.”

  “I don’t go there to look at naked men—not specifically. But one can’t help but notice them when they’re fourteen feet tall and standing in a hallway.”

  He laughed, could see her in her skewed bonnet, a notepad in hand, and her mouth agape in curiosity. If he’d come upon her like that, he’d have probably kissed her. Any man would have dreamed of doing the same. Any man would want to keep her.

  “I had always wondered what one might look like in the flesh.” Now she was grinning boldly, staring at him and leaning back against the bedpost.

  “Well, you needn’t wonder any longer, wife.”

  If Hunter hadn’t been so wildly inflamed by her, the object of her interest would have shrunk away for all her questions. But that was his wife’s charm, the very part of her he found irreplaceable—and he burned for her. He dropped his robe off his shoulders and pulled her against him, pressed himself into her belly, and covered her mouth with his own.

  He ached to plunge inside her, would take his time, let her encounter the coiling ecstasy. She sighed as he slid his palm down her belly, watched him and crooned as he spread his fingers through her curls and played there.

  “Oh, Hunter, my knees …”

  He left a kiss beneath her ear, tucked another beneath her chin, and then took her mouth in a raging kiss as he skimmed his fingertips along the splendid curve of her waist and across her hips and ever downward.

  Felicity could hardly stand for the dreamlike pleasure of it all. Her knees were bent and slightly parted, and she clung to the bedpost. And all the while Hunter guided his fingers closer to that throbbing knot of expectation. Her blood pulsed; her skin ached for him. He was kissing h
er, filling her mouth with his tongue, and her thoughts with his intentions.

  And then he slipped past the curls and into the sweltering dampness that had gathered to a fever between her legs, and made her bend to his caress.

  “Felicity, I’ve dreamed of this. Of you.” His words were a prayer against her ear. His eyes found hers in the midst of a smile. He played across her breasts with his erotic tongue, and at the joining of her legs with his fingers, until she was clutching the bed post and begging for his flame.

  His mouth made a pilgrimage down her belly. He murmured sweet words against her skin, still plucking and playing his fingers through her damp curls, until he was kneeling between her knees and she was nearly swooning.

  She wondered if a person could die of pleasure. He slid his hands down her thighs, spreading them further, and held fast to her bent and trembling knees. He rubbed his cheek against her wool, and her legs lost more of their underpinnings.

  She ought to be hiding herself from his eyes, not unveiling her secret place for him to see and to fondle. But he was a pressure and a deeper presence than she had ever known in her life. He was fullness and he was everything.

  And she loved him for this, too.

  And then he kissed her there. “Oh, Hunter!”

  She would have called out his name again, but her throat had stopped working. His tongue was so sweetly seductive, and now he was whispering against her.

  “Sweet woman!” Tremors shook Hunter to the core. She was damp with the scent of lavender and salt and her own beguiling fragrance that he would carry in his nostrils forever. She would never be another man’s wife. Not ever! She was his completely and for all time.

  She called his name as he lifted her into his arms; she clung to him and kissed him. “Where are you taking me, Hunter?”

  He settled her back against the pillows, and knelt in the joining of her legs. “Where would you like to go?”

  “Anywhere with you, Hunter. Anywhere.”

  He groaned and made love to her mouth. “Then I know just the place.” She sighed as he dipped his fingers into her honey, and pressed herself into the heel of his hand.