Her lips trembled under his. “My lack of experience then,” she whispered when he moved his lips down her neck. He parted her modest wrapper and placed a kiss to the swell of her breasts. She moaned.
“Never that. I’d have you innocent and untouched.” He’d have had her any way he could have her, but it would have destroyed part of him to know another had known the perfect contours of her generously curved frame. Auric drew her against the vee of his thighs, bringing her close to his hard, aching flesh. He palmed her breast through the fabric of her nightshift, toying with the nub. It pebbled under his ministrations.
A little, breathless moan slipped past her lips and she layered herself to him. “I-I imagine a man such as you has limitless e-experience.” He nibbled gently at her neck. “W-with…”
She thought wrong. “With?” he breathed against the place where her pulse pounded its awareness of him.
“I-I cannot think when you…” A sound, half-groan, half-moan, killed the remainder of her words. She pressed herself against him as though attempting to meld their flesh together.
Auric swept her into his arms as he’d longed to do but had denied himself. What had once been wrong for who she was and everything between them, became right for every reason that mattered. “I love you,” he whispered as he carried her through the threshold of the door and down the quiet corridors.
She cupped his cheek. “I love you, too.” Daisy captured her lower lip between her teeth. “You really should set me down.” He’d sooner run through the streets of London, bellowing like a madman. She nudged him in the side. “I said—”
He grunted as her sharp elbow collided with his ribs but continued his forward path through the halls. “No.”
As they reached the base of the staircase, she wiggled in his arms until he was forced with either stopping or risk dropping her. Auric stopped, one foot on the bottom of the stairs. “Yes?” he asked with far less patience than he felt.
“You really should set me down.” Wiggling her hips back and forth, she continued to shift in his arms.
He gritted his teeth. “Blast it, I’m trying to be romantic.” And now he’d gone and said blast it. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. And now he’d gone and said bloody hell.
Her lips parted on a moue of surprise.
“Now, if I may continue carrying you up the stairs?” He’d made it no further than three steps.
“No,” she shook her head against his chest. “No, you may not.”
Auric pressed his eyes closed a moment. “For the love of—”
“I’m too plump,” she blurted and then promptly fell silent. Daisy, who was never short of words, who prattled on when she was nervous, was of a sudden quiet. Ah, God. Is that how she saw herself? How could she not realize with her form and freckles she was more captivating than any of those damned statues created for the Greek goddess Athena herself? He caressed her cheek and turned her face up to his. “Daisy?”
She studiously avoided his eyes. “Yes, Auric?”
“You are perfect in every way.” And not for the first time, he wished he was capable of all the words she was deserving of. “You are—”
“Not blonde,” she cut in, tipping her chin up in a bold challenge.
He wrinkled his brow. What was she on about?
“I’m not blonde and I don’t have gold ringlets and I cannot stitch and I’m quite horrid at the pianoforte.”
Ahh. At last, it made sense. Lady Anne Stanhope. How could Daisy not see he wanted her and only her? Auric said nothing for a long while. Instead, he carried her up the remainder of the stairs and down the hall to their rooms. He paused beside his chamber doors and then moved on to her bedroom.
“You really needn’t say anything, you know,” she assured him as he shoved the door open and then pushed it closed with the heel of his boot. He carried her to the bed then let her go, falling onto the plush, feathered mattress. “Oomph.” Another brown curl fell over her eye.
Auric stood over her. “I have never desired another the way I’ve desired you.” And it was true. For his celibacy these many years, not once had he hungered for a woman the way he did Daisy. He claimed a spot beside her and brushed the recalcitrant strand behind her ear. “I never loved Lady Anne,” he said quietly. Nor did he care to discuss a woman who never could, nor ever would, rival Daisy in beauty and courage.
Daisy plucked at the silk coverlet with her fingers. She studied her own distracted movements as though she worked a masterpiece upon the pale blue fabric. “I must confess I am a rather nervous about you…” She colored. “Using some manner of instrument, as the manual mentioned.”
A wave of tenderness slammed into him. God, how he loved her. Auric drew her stiff form against him and then gently guided her upon the bed. He rolled onto his side and brushed his knuckles along the satiny soft skin of her cheek. She leaned into his touch like a kitten seeking warmth from its master. “We shall learn together, Daisy,” he said, in quiet hushed tones.
His words brought her lashes drifting open. She looked up at him, a thousand questions in her brown eyes. Auric dropped a kiss atop her brow, drawing in the hint of lavender water that clung to her, the scent intoxicating. Holding her gaze, he tugged off his cravat and then removed his waistcoat. Through his disrobing, in all her boldness, Daisy took in his every movement. Desire coursed through him. A hungering need to make her his, now. He leaned up and shrugged out of his jacket, and then tossed it aside. His shirt followed suit. With a slow breath, he lowered himself above her, effectively framing her between his arms. “I,” he cleared his throat. “I’ve been with but one other woman.” He braced for the shock in her eyes.
Instead, she tipped her head at an endearing angle and looked at him. A smile quivered on her lips. She opened her mouth to speak and then her contented grin dipped. “Did you love her?” Her question emerged on a hesitant whisper.
Her words had the same effect as though he’d been doused in a bucket of freezing water from the Thames. The innocent question, the most likely supposition from his wife. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the mural of a bucolic country setting painted in pale blues, greens, and pinks at the center of the ceiling. Auric fixed on the patch of white. How could he speak to Daisy of any part of that night? A woman he’d paid coins to for the opportunity to lie in her arms and lose himself in the pleasures of her body. He flung an arm over his eyes. How very much that entire night had cost him…and so many others.
The sheets rustled as she moved closer to him. Her feather soft touch landed upon him. “Auric?” He stiffened at the gentleness of her touch, undeserving of that warming caress.
He lowered his arm to his side. “She was a light of love,” he said at last. A dull flush climbed from his chest, up his neck, and then his face. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes. Surely, they were the only wedded couple in the entire bloody kingdom to be speaking of lightskirts on their wedding night.
“I see.” But her tone and the manner in which she scrunched her mouth up contemplatively indicated she did not at all see.
Knowing he’d not squelch the remainder of her questions unless he was forthright, Auric said, “Daisy, I’ve known but one woman before you. If I’d known there would be you, and,” he motioned between them, “this. Us,” he corrected. “I would have never sought her out. But I cannot undo that night.” A swell of emotion lodged in his throat and he coughed in a bid to drive back the guilt and pain and instead focus on the rightness of him and Daisy. The mattress dipped as she came up on her knees beside him and then she slipped her hand into his. He stared at their interlocked fingers, her smaller, delicate palm against his larger one. So very different and yet perfectly paired. “All I know is that I love you and want you and I’d not spend the night speaking of other w—”
Daisy leaned down and kissed him.
Chapter 19
As Daisy kissed Auric, an airy lightness filled her chest. There had only been one other woman before her. And though she abhorred the fac
eless, nameless stranger, she reveled in the knowledge that but for that one other, he would belong to her in this most intimate of ways.
He wrapped his arms about her and as he drew her close to his chest, he slipped his tongue inside and mated with hers in a sweetly erotic rhythm. Daisy boldly met his movements. A moan worked up her throat and he took that desperate sound of desire into his mouth.
Daisy reached between them and fumbled about for his hand, and finding his fingers, she raised them to her breast as she’d longed for him to touch her since the library only moments ago. With a little moan, she let her head fell back as the heavy warmth of his palm radiated through the thin slip of fabric.
He stilled. His blue eyes clouded and he peered at her with an inscrutable expression.
Daisy burned red with sudden embarrassment at her boldness. “Should I not? I should not—?”
Auric touched a finger to her lips, silencing her words. “You should.” Then, with swift, sure movements, he divested her of her night wrapper. He tossed it aside where it landed in a fluttery wave of white atop his pile of garments. “Anything between us is right, Daisy.” His deep, mellifluous baritone cascaded over her and all earlier vestiges of fleeting embarrassment lifted. He slowly drew her nightshift overhead, but the row of buttons along the back of the modest garment snagged in her hair.
Daisy’s gasp was swallowed by Auric’s curse. A smile tickled her lips as he set to work disentangling her loose curls from the buttons. She winced as he tugged a bit too hard. “Allow me,” she said and reached up. Their fingers brushed.
“I have it,” he murmured, and then a moment later the pressure eased as he freed the strands. With more precise movements, he carefully undid the endless row of buttons. His long fingers trembled along her skin hinting at his nervousness, and all of her heart fell into his hands. “I am making a rather pathetic show of this,” he whispered against her lips as he claimed her mouth in another kiss.
Daisy angled her head to better receive him. “You’re…” He lowered his lips to her neck. “N-not.”
“I wish I came to you with the grace and assurance you deserve, Daisy,” he said softly, lowering her onto the mattress. He shifted over her once more.
She preferred he came to her as he was. “I love you as you are,” she mewed. Her fingers twitched with an urge to touch his powerfully muscular chest, grazed with a dusting of tightly coiled curls. Daisy stroked the flat disc of his nipple. “How very different,” she marveled. Where he was hard, she was soft.
Auric lowered his head and captured the tip of her breast between his lips. Daisy gasped. She fisted her hands in his chestnut locks and held him close to her chest so he’d not stop worshiping her as he did. Desire licked at her senses, driving back logical thought, so all she was capable of was feeling. Her body burned from the inside out in a scorching heat. He teased at the nub until the warmth settled, hot and heavy, between her legs.
“Au-Auric,” she moaned as he shifted his attention to her other breast, laving the neglected tip with his tender attention. Daisy thrashed her head upon the mattress, hopelessly wrinkling the fabric of the coverlet, and uncaring about anything and everything but her body’s hungering for him.
He shifted away from her and she cried out, scraping her fingers along his back in an attempt to draw him close, but he resisted. Except, he only yanked off his boots and threw them to the floor where they landed with a loud thump. Daisy shoved herself up onto her elbows and watched him with wide eyes when his fingers went to his breeches. Their gazes caught and held as he shoved them down.
Her mouth went dry as some of her earlier desire was replaced by a sudden nervousness. She stole a peek down for a hint of his instrument…and promptly choked. He was enormous. The angry, red flesh sprang proudly from a thatch of chestnut curls. And he was also not at all what Mr. Fenerson’s manual had suggested. “You’re going to do what with that?” Her question emerged garbled. It would seem livestock and men were different—very, very different. Blasted Mr. Fenerson and his quite misleading manual.
Auric crawled over to her on the bed. “All will be well,” he murmured, and kissed the corner of her lips. “Trust that I won’t hurt you.” He lowered his head to her breast once more and then tugged at the swollen tip until some of the anxiety seeped from her frame. Then he palmed the curls that concealed her womanhood and her hips shot off the bed. The air left her on a hiss as he slipped a finger into her moist heat. She splayed her legs open, allowing him better access to her throbbing center.
He slipped another inside, and a hot, heavy need burned at her core, a desire to know the feel of him. She bit down hard on her lower lip, her lashes fluttering closed as he worked her with his sure fingers. Pleasure built from that intimate part of her he now caressed, except like a conflagration, the ache of desire so intense that pleasure blurred with pain, spread throughout every corner of her being until she feared she’d splinter into a million tiny pieces that would never be able to be put back together.
Daisy dimly registered him shifting his tall, powerful frame over her. He removed his fingers. She moaned at the loss, her body crying out for a surcease that had felt so very close. He settled himself between her legs and rested his large shaft against the moist curls that concealed her womanhood. She expected she should feel some maidenly modesty or shame at her body’s unabashed response to him. For ladies surely did not cry out and moan with this wanton desire, and yet she could no sooner cease responding to his touch than she could stop breathing.
The muscles of his throat moved, that subtle up and down movement hinted at the thin thread of control he retained. She raised her hooded gaze higher and took in the rugged planes of his hard, chiseled cheeks. Beads of perspiration dotted his brow. Auric clenched his eyes so tight, a muscle ticked in the corner of his right eye. His taut face etched in that same blend of pleasure-pain, she herself knew. Daisy stiffened as he pressed into her, reflexively tightening.
His eyes flew open. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion as he continued moving deeper.
Her body took him slowly into her tight channel. “Th-that is good,” she managed a smile. “Because I d-don’t want you to h-hurt me, either.”
A grin tugged at one corner of his lips and just then he was transformed into the easy, carefree, young man she’d once known, and she turned over nervousness and simply felt.
She closed her eyes as he reached between them and found the slick nub at her center, toying with it. The room resonated with their rapid breaths joined in a loud, harsh rhythm. Daisy moved against his hand, desperate to be closer, which sent him deeper.
“Stop,” he ordered gruffly. A single bead of sweat ran down his cheek.
Except, her body ached with a throbbing awareness of his hardness, inside her tight heat, and she continued undulating against him. She soared higher and higher, nearing a dangerous crest that she both feared and hungered for—
Auric flexed his hips.
A cry tore from her lips at the sudden, unexpectedness of him completely filling her. She pressed her eyes closed, fixing on the lingering remnants of that near glory she’d been so very close to.
“I’m so sorry, Daisy.” That hoarse apology came as though ripped from somewhere deep inside.
“It is all right,” she assured him, lying through her gritted teeth. He was hard and throbbing and too enormous for her. She’d known Mr. Fenerson had been incorrect. None of those instruments he’d written of could possibly fit in the manner in which he’d suggested. Now she knew.
Auric captured her lips under his and she kissed him back. He slid his tongue in and the tendrils of warmth unfurled in her belly once more. All the while he continued to work her with his hand as he’d done earlier, when she’d been so very close to some kind of masterful explosion she’d not understood. Then he began to move. She braced, but some of the discomfort receded, and a growing ache of desire fanned out, filling her once again. Daisy arched her hips, but this t
ime there was no pain, just a hint of discomfort that was rapidly replaced by the pleasurable sensation of him moving inside her. She looked up at him. His eyes were tightly clenched as though in concentration. Sweat beaded his brow. At the evidence of his tightly restrained control, a quivering smile turned her lips up. Auric, with his title, power, and wealth could have chosen any lady in the whole of the kingdom and yet he’d chosen her. He belonged to her. And she him. At last. In every way, in all ways—forever. Her heart swelled with love and she stroked his tense jaw.
Her gentle caress brought his eyes open. “I love you,” he said hoarsely.
He gave her the words she’d longed to hear from him, for the past ten years. For a moment, a wave of emotion rolled through her, consuming in its intensity. “I love you, too,” she whispered and then matched his slow, deep thrusts, and everything fell away but the sensation of them united as one in ways she’d never imagined two souls could be joined. He closed his mouth over the peak of her breast and a whimpering cry slipped past her lips.
She was close. So close. And then she shattered into a million tiny shards and ecstasy swept through her as she rode crest after crest of a mind-numbing explosion of sensation and feeling. Auric stiffened above her and then with a final flex of his hips, he spilled himself, filling her with his seed.
With a groan, he collapsed atop her. She brought her arms about him and stroked her fingers up and down the broad expanse of his back. A contented little smile played on her lips. Auric shoved himself off her and then rolled onto his side. She mourned the loss of his body’s nearness, but he pulled her into the curve of his arm. He passed a concerned gaze over her face. “Did I hurt you?”
“Just a bit, and not at all anymore,” she rushed to assure him.
He hesitated, and she looked at him searchingly, knowing the subtle nuances of his body enough to know there was more he wished to say. “Were you…did you…?” A dull flush marked his cheeks.
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