No rejoinder, no further interrogation, no further questions. Douglas rolled up against her side and laid his head on the slope of her shoulder. She wrapped an arm around him as he hiked a hairy, muscular thigh across her legs.
His hand drifted over her belly again. “Is this what you wanted?”
“Yes.” What she wanted and what she needed. His eyes drifted shut as her fingers feathered over his features—eyes, eyebrows, lips, the contour of his ears.
Could a man have aristocratic ears?
Gradually, he relaxed against her and the sexual tension abated. His cheek was pillowed on Gwen’s breast, though, and desire would recede only so far.
“David says I have money.” She could discuss this with Douglas, in the dark. “Rose has money, rather, and I am to manage it for her.”
“You sound forlorn, Guinevere, but you are in truth blessed in your family. Rose is blessed.”
He had no family, save for a mother reported to be growing frail and half-daft at the family seat. Gwen cuddled him closer, and his sigh feathered over her chest. Did Douglas ever discuss his family, or his lack of family, with anybody?
“If you’d like to be intimate, Douglas, I think might be able to manage it.”
He nuzzled her breast. Gwen suspected she’d made him smile. “We are intimate now, Guinevere. Or do I mistake the matter?”
“I meant—”
“One grasped your meaning.” He grasped her hand, too, and brought it to his lips to kiss her knuckles. “We can couple throughout your cycle, but the risk of pregnancy exists even if I withdraw.”
Withdraw. From Gwen’s body. Rose’s father had used a Latin term for it, which Gwen could not recall. “You can do that?”
Douglas’s fingers wandered up to her ribs, a strange, ticklish caress. “Of course, though it rather spoils the moment for both of us.”
“Conceiving another child would spoil more than the moment.” And create complications on top of complexities in addition to difficulties. “Did you mean to touch my… to touch me just then?”
“Touch you here?” Douglas let his knuckle brush the underside of her breast again. “Why, no, I didn’t. An accident, I’m sure. Beg pardon.”
“You are distracting me,” she complained, but he no doubt heard the smile he’d caused too. “How do we go about this if I don’t want you to… withdraw?”
“We have at least two choices.” Douglas’s words were businesslike, though his hand now grazed her breast again and again. When she made no protest, he graduated to caressing the soft skin on the underside of her breast. “We can copulate in the next day or two, or wait until you are no longer fertile, which would be in about two weeks.”
“You sound very matter—” Gwen’s mind went blank as Douglas gently lifted her breast in his hand. “You sound very matter-of-fact.”
“The decision,” Douglas said, “is entirely up to you.” Then he shattered her focus beyond recall by slipping his palm over her bare breast.
“Douglas…”
“I’m here.”
“Touch me.” He was a bright man. She was being as specific as she could be.
“I’m touching you.”
“Touch me,” Gwen insisted, arching her back.
He kneaded gently, he stroked, he let her feel, for the first time, the exquisite pleasure of having her bare nipple pleasured by a knowing, firm touch. As her body began to undulate and soften with passion, Gwen closed her eyes lest Douglas see how desperate she was becoming.
Gwen at first did not comprehend the additional sensation. Her left breast was in Douglas’s hand, his touch sending spirals of restless pleasure through her body to her womb. He was taking her beyond the previous night’s inchoate pleasure to something hotter, darker, needier.
And then another heat introduced itself. A subtle wet, sinuous heat near her right nipple. Not his fingers. The heat touched her fleetingly, a flicker of warmth and dampness, too quick for her to sort out.
His mouth. His beautiful mouth was committing such naughty, lovely mischief on her person. “Douglas…” She clasped his wrist then pressed his hand more firmly against her.
“I’m here,” he murmured. For long moments, he explored her responses with his hands and his mouth, sending heat ribboning down into her vitals.
“Douglas…” Gwen’s voice held wanting and bewilderment. She was engulfed in the sensations he created, in the strangeness and intensity of the pleasures he showed her. With her hands and her body, she tried to tell him she wanted more, not less.
Finally, he took her nipple into his mouth and suckled strongly in a rhythm mimicked by his fingers on her other breast.
“Oh God, Douglas,” she hissed. Her hips shifted restlessly, and her hand moved over the smooth muscles of his chest.
Douglas slipped a knee between her legs, and she instinctively clamped her thighs around him. He snugged his thigh against her damp sex and gave her the pressure she craved.
“Ride me,” he whispered. “Ride me hard, Guinevere.”
He applied more pressure to her nipple, pinching and rolling in counterpoint to the strong pressure of his mouth on her other nipple, while Gwen ground her slick flesh against him with desperate strength.
“Harder, love,” Douglas whispered. “You’re almost there.”
He punctuated his words with a particularly sharp tug of his lips and teeth, and Gwen pressed herself all the more firmly against him. The sensations he brought her robbed her of speech, wit, and everything but a sense of driving need, need for him. He repeated the sharper pressure on her nipple, and Gwen moaned with frustration.
“Douglas, merciful… Douglas…” Her voice rose in consternation and then…
Unthinkable, unbearable, unimaginable pleasure, deluging her from within her own body. Her intimate flesh spasmed in a great welter of heat, surprise, and profoundly shocking sensation. Just as she thought the pleasure had crested, Douglas drove her up again by wedging himself more tightly against her.
Through it all, she clutched at him desperately with her thighs and hands. When he sealed her mouth with his, she suckled at his tongue and lifted her shoulders from the mattress in an effort to get closer to him.
To be one with him.
“What on earth did you do to me?” Finding the wit and will to voice a simple question had taken two full minutes of lying in Douglas’s arms, panting in his arms, while the vortex of sensation gradually slowed and Gwen again became capable of thought.
She gave no resistance when Douglas rolled onto his back and wrestled her up to snuggle against him, her head on his shoulder.
“I pleasured you a bit. Or assisted you to pleasure yourself.”
Pleasured her a bit? “A hot cup of tea is a pleasure. That… That was… That was too much.”
“That was just a start.” His voice held no smugness, no humor, no arrogance.
“You are serious.”
“Your breasts, my dear, are exquisitely sensitive to erotic stimulation. With a little practice, you could bring yourself off just by stimulating your own breasts.”
Bring herself off. The phrase needed no explanation. “Are you saying I am wanton?”
His chest moved, as if he might have chuckled. “Of course not. You are the next thing to a virgin, Guinevere, but your body understands sexual pleasure more easily than most. You are to be envied.”
“This is complicated.” Gwen’s wits were resisting every order to reassemble themselves. “Is this the same pleasure a man experiences when he spends?”
“Comparable, I should hope.”
“You were that aroused when you got into this bed tonight?”
“My dear Guinevere,” Douglas said on a patient sigh, “I am nearly that aroused now.”
“I do not comprehend this.” Some sort of upset was trying to coalesce amid all the sensations still burblin
g through her body. “You had me so bothered, so utterly beside myself, I could not have told you my own name. But you are content to lie here, cuddling me, while you… while this…” She reached under the covers, found his erect member, and gave it a little flip against his belly. “While this part of you clamors for attention.”
In the next instant, she had cause to remind herself that Douglas was a bright man. His hand snaked around hers, keeping her fingers clamped on his shaft.
“Some attention would not go amiss.”
Gwen let him caress himself with her hand. “Douglas… I don’t think I’m quite… I still can’t manage…” She fell silent rather than attempt more untruths.
She wanted to. Was dying to.
Douglas used his free hand to toss back the covers. He apparently cared not that he was revealed to her, but instead thrust against the sleeve of her fingers and palm in a languid, unhurried rhythm.
“Only some attention,” he assured her, closing his eyes. His breathing deepened, and his thrusting changed, becoming stronger, even while his pace did not quicken.
Watching his face, seeing his naked body gilded by firelight and passion, Gwen’s arousal stirred again. But something else was at work as well. Something to do with trust, and protectiveness toward the man in her bed.
The notion was as novel as the pleasure Douglas had just shown her.
“Hold me tighter,” Douglas whispered. He used his hand to show her how much tighter, and the muscles in his neck corded with tension. This was pleasure for him, though he looked to be in pain. His jaw clenched, his neck arched, his breathing became labored.
Gwen didn’t want to touch him with only her hand. She wanted to be with him in this experience as he had been with her moments ago. On impulse, she leaned over and took his earlobe in her mouth.
“Dear God…” he rasped, arching his back in pleasure. Gwen buried her face against his shoulder as his free arm came snugly around her.
“Ah, Guinevere,” he breathed. His hips jerked as he thrust hard against her hand. He did not sigh or moan or make any of the sounds Gwen had, but she could not doubt he was experiencing profound pleasure. The tension in him eased and he cupped the back of her head with his palm, maneuvering her face to rest against his chest. He lay with her thus, gently stroking her hair, her back, her face, until Gwen felt herself slipping toward sleep.
“You have unmanned me,” he said, not sounding the least perturbed.
Gwen roused herself, leaned over him, and retrieved a handkerchief from her nightstand. She mopped at him gently, but was surprised when Douglas took over the task from her.
“Immediately after I’ve come,” he said, swabbing at himself briskly, “I can be quite sensitive, but thereafter”—he balled up the linen and tossed it on the nightstand—“you needn’t handle me so delicately.”
He was so matter-of-fact, even about this—maybe especially about this. “Come?”
“Spent my seed, taken my pleasure.” He lifted the covers over them both and settled back against the pillows. “Now, I really must hold you.”
“Must you?” Gwen subsided against him, wondering if he’d use the same tone of voice to state a need for eggs with his toast. “Why must you hold me?”
“I cannot precisely say.” He rearranged her in his arms, gathering her closer. “Usually, after I’ve tended to myself sexually, I am quite happy to move on to the next task. You provoke me to gratuitous displays of affection.”
“Douglas?” Gwen wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. “Are you teasing me?”
“Whyever would I do that?”
“To distract me from all that has occurred,” she said, flicking her tongue across his nipple.
“Hush,” he admonished her sternly, “and behave yourself. I really do need to hold you.”
Her lover was a bright man, but he was also—wonder of wonders—a shy man. Gwen wanted to interrogate him about these gratuitous displays of affection, but—in deference to Douglas’s tender sensibilities—decided she really did need to be held, too.
Seven
The first thing Gwen saw in the morning was the handkerchief Douglas had used the night before. She eyed it curiously, glad for some proof she hadn’t dreamed his presence in her bed but not wanting to touch it, so different had the experience been from all she’d known.
Different, but precious. For whatever else was true, the experience had been shared with a man who would protect Gwen’s dignity, protect her person in every regard. The relief of this realization was… astounding.
She snuggled down into her covers, content for once to drowse a bit longer in bed, when memory rose up to assail her.
“You knew it would come to this,” Rose’s father had hissed as he’d fumbled with Gwen’s skirts. He had never used that tone of voice on her before, and the shock of it had rendered her silent. “You’ll soon crave it, you’ll crave me. Hold still, goddamn it—”
And then, humiliation and bewilderment, and discomfort just shy of pain. Oh, he’d been different when they’d first met: coaxing, reassuring, dashing… But in the end, he’d been brusque and inconsiderate in his lust.
Her disappointment—in him and in herself—had far eclipsed any fleeting physical hurt.
Gwen need not dwell on the memory. Then, as now, nobody could divine her experiences simply by looking at her.
So she went down to breakfast, head held high, determined to carry on as if…
As if the mere sight of Douglas at the breakfast table, in tidy, conservative riding attire, didn’t melt her insides and provoke those damnable yearnings in the vicinity of her privy parts.
“Guinevere.” He rose and studied her, his eyes unreadable as he held her chair. “You look well this morning. May I take it you slept well?”
She’d never slept better, which notion provoked a blush, though fortunately, no footman stood ready to serve her, no maid brought up fresh tea from the kitchen.
Which was very likely Douglas’s doing. “I did, and you?”
Douglas poured her a cup of tea, a small, thoughtful gesture. He added cream and sugar, and when he passed it to her, he wrapped her fingers around the warmth of the cup.
“I slept better than usual, in truth, but then, I was tired.” There was nothing—nothing—in his expression, voice, or gaze to indicate he’d been naked in Gwen’s bed the previous night and shown her more pleasure than she’d known a female body could experience.
And this morning, he’d touched her. He’d touched her hand. He’d offered her a perfect cup of tea.
“Guinevere?” He set the rack of toast beside her plate. “Fairly was stirring in his room, so I expect he will join us shortly, but you must tell me”—he paused while he set the jam and butter by her plate—“how you fare.”
She could meet his gaze only fleetingly, but that much she managed.
“I am well,” she said, feeling he’d coaxed the words from her, for all their honesty. “What have we planned for the day?”
“First,” he said, pouring himself a cup of tea, “we must see Fairly safely on his way. Cook said you asked her to pack him some victuals, and it seems the weather will hold dry for the next few days. Will you miss him?”
God bless Douglas, he was going to carry her into a normal conversation despite all odds to the contrary. “David is a good friend but he can be… trying. His mind is restless, and he is not particularly respectful of one’s privacy. Inquisitiveness is how he befriends one, in part, but also a natural curiosity in him. With all of his quiet and reserve, it’s rather disconcerting to find he is so intensely attentive to his surroundings and so audacious in his exploration of them.”
“That is Fairly to the teeth, and I will miss him.” Douglas looked puzzled to reach that conclusion. “Rose, I think, will miss him most of all.”
“I’ll fetch her down when I’ve finished
breaking my fast.” And why did the cup of tea Douglas had prepared taste particularly lovely? Gwen appropriated a section of the newspaper folded at Douglas’s elbow. “She’s been skipping her naps lately because Hester’s sisters don’t nap. Bedtime is earlier as a consequence.”
The tea tasted lovely, the scent of bacon and toast was lovely, and this day—another wonder—also held the potential for loveliness.
“Would you like to ride out with Fairly? We could accompany him as far as the village if you like.”
Out of habit, she’d appropriated the society pages, though Gwen had never been one for reading at the table.
Douglas was offering her the chance to climb on a horse, to make pleasant conversation with Douglas under David’s watchful eye for two interminable miles over rutted roads on a cold day.
Gwen wrinkled her nose at that less than appealing prospect.
“I see.” Douglas tapped his teaspoon twice against his saucer. “Perhaps today is a bit chilly for riding, and we were on horseback for most of the day yesterday. Ledgers, then, I suppose, and a long epistle to Greymoor, regarding our findings thus far.”
“That would be agreeable.” Gwen gave up on the paper and focused her attention on her toast, which was in want of sufficient butter and jam. “How much longer are you willing to wait here for the steward to return from Brighton?”
“I can wait several weeks at least, but what of you and Rose? How long can you spare for this errand of ours?”
Was that a double meaning? Lovely feelings faded as Gwen silently lamented a lack of facility with innuendo and subtle flirtation. She could deal instead in plain meanings and direct answers—also more butter.
“I was prepared to remain here at least a month,” she said, making sure the butter covered one entire side of the toast. “But the whole journey will have been for naught if we don’t get some answers from Mr. Tanner regarding his deplorable accounting.”
“Will it truly have been for naught, Guinevere?” Douglas asked softly.
Oh, drat him, bless him, and drat him all over again. “That remains to be seen.” Because there was no telling what comment Douglas might make next, Gwen pushed her chair back. “I’ll fetch Rose.”
Douglas: Lord of Heartache (The Lonely Lords) Page 12