“Show me,” she whispered.
His eyes went wide and the laughter left his face. His expression went hard and hot and heavy. In that moment, he looked every inch the rogue, the rake, the man of his reputation, but not any action he’d ever brought to her doorstep. She shivered at this part of him that was a stranger to her. This part that would bring her to shattering pleasure all over again, that was clear by his expression.
He shoved to his feet and stared down at her for a long moment. Then he moved to the chair across from the settee. He removed his boots and unfastened the fall front of his trousers. When he stood, it dropped away, and she caught her breath.
It had been a very long time since she saw a man unclothed, let alone a man at attention for her. She’d forgotten how compelling a hard cock was. She crooked her finger to bring him closer. When he was within arm’s length, she reached for him, tracing just a fingertip along the hardness of him.
It was impossible not to compare him to Andrew, and she hated herself for thinking of her husband when she was about to bed another. But Andrew was her point of reference, her only lover until tonight. Cav was thicker, if Andrew had been longer, and as she closed her hand around his girth, she let out an involuntary sigh. God, she wanted this, wanted him deep inside of her. She stroked him and he staggered slightly as his fingers came down to dig into her hair. Pins pulled free as he clenched her hair, tilting her face up to look at him while she fisted him.
“Get up,” he said, soft but firm. “Please.”
She laughed at the added please, because this was an order. One she wished to follow. She released him and got to her feet, trembling with certainty of what she desired, but uncertainty at what would actually happen now.
He pushed his trousers away before he caught her in his arms, dragging her flush with his bare chest as he kissed her. Skin touched skin, so much skin, and she let out a little groan at how delicious the slide was. Her hands began to rove, smoothing over his back, his sides, his chest as he kissed her. She felt a wild desire to memorize his body, so she could recreate this in her dreams and fantasies. There would certainly be many of those once this stolen moment ended.
Perhaps she should have felt guilty about that truth, but she didn’t. Not yet, anyway.
As she touched him, he was doing the same. His rough palm slid beneath one breast, lifting it as he stroked his thumb over her nipple. She broke from the kiss with a gasp and dipped her head back as pleasure ricocheted through her.
“You are magical,” she murmured.
He chuckled. “Not quite.”
She would beg to differ, but words were so hard to find as their bodies moved against each other, their hands explored with increasing urgency. The hardness of his cock pressed firmly into her belly, and she pushed against it, desperate for that moment when she would have more of him. All of him.
That seemed to tip the scales. He cursed beneath his breath and then pulled her back toward the settee. Only this time he didn’t rest her against the pillows—instead he took a seat, sprawling out as he tugged her down to his lap. He cocked her leg over his and she straddled him, her sex stroking his cock as she ground down hopelessly.
“I would love to take a lifetime to just pleasure you and ready you,” he said, his breathing sharp. “But I’m so bloody out of control, Emily, and our time is so short.”
She nodded, for she felt the same way. She caught him, stroking his length once more before she aligned his body with hers. When she wiggled down, he entered her an inch, and she gasped with a pleasure-pain combination.
“It hurts?” he asked, his brow furrowing with concern the way it sometimes did.
Seeing that familiar expression centered her in this wild moment, and she nodded. “It’s just been a very long time.”
“We’ll go slowly,” he assured her as he caught her hips and pulsed up gently, claiming the next inch. “Even though it may kill me.”
She laughed at his strangled voice and his focused expression. The ripple of her giggle made her grip him harder, and both of them caught their breath together. He surged up again, taking a little more.
The stretching pain had faded now, replaced by slick, welcoming pleasure. She squeezed his length with her inner muscles, reveling at this familiar, long-missed sensation of a man’s body joined with hers.
This man’s body. He was not a replacement. He was specifically what she wanted more than anything else in the world in that moment. When he fully seated himself deep inside of her, she jolted with renewed pleasure.
He held still, though, not thrusting, not encouraging her to do the same. He massaged her backside as he caught one breast and latched his mouth around her already hard nipple.
“Oh God,” she gasped, clutching him closer as she began to grind down. She couldn’t resist. She needed what he could provide. She would take it.
He met her strokes, lifting his hips as she lowered her own and they fell into a natural, gentle rhythm that built her pleasure back up to even higher heights than she had experienced with his mouth. She lost herself in it, riding him, focusing in turn on each part of her that sang beneath his touch.
This time when she came he had to catch her cries with his mouth, sucking hard on her tongue as she rode him out of control. His fingers pressed hard into her hips, hard enough to bruise, and she didn’t care. She wanted those marks that would remind her this had been real when it felt like a dream later.
Only when she drooped against him, weak from release, did he carefully shift her onto her back on the pillows. He pulled from her kiss, watching her face as he increased the pace of his strokes. She stared, mesmerized by his focus, by the way his jaw tightened and his shoulders shook as he took what he needed. Took what only she could provide. He let out a gasping cry in the quiet and pulled from her body. She caught his spurting cock, stroking him through the pleasure as he writhed above her.
Then he collapsed down, his breath hot on her neck. His hands shaking as he smoothed them over her sweat-dampened skin. It was quiet for a long time before he lifted his head.
“Are you…well?” he asked.
She stared at him. Even in this moment, he wanted to take care of her, just as he always took care of her. How lucky she was to have a person like him in her life. And how lost she would be if he weren’t there anymore.
That thought sobered her, but she managed to keep a smile on her face. “I am very well, Cav,” she whispered. “I promise you.”
That seemed to appease him, for he lifted himself off of her and got up. He began searching out their tangled clothing, handing over item by item to her first. He helped her smooth and button, putting her back together. Only when she moved to her mirror to tend to her hair did he put his own clothing back on. She watched him in the reflection as he fixed himself. Wished in that unguarded moment that she could just keep him undone and wild in her bed. That she could forget the world outside for a little longer. Perhaps never let it and all its uncertainty back in.
But she couldn’t. This had been a moment. The moment had passed. What would happen next…well, she couldn’t lose him as a friend. That was all that mattered now.
She smiled as she faced him. “Do I look presentable?”
His gaze flickered over her and he shifted. “Always,” he said, his voice low and rough.
She started as she realized that was desire in his tone. And that she’d heard that same thing from him many times over the years. But that wasn’t possible. She pushed it aside.
“They’ll begin gathering for pre-supper drinks in an hour,” she said, glancing at the clock on the mantel and wondering at how the time had flown while he pleasured her.
“Yes,” he said softly. “And you will need to ready yourself. As will I. So I’ll go.” He took her hand and squeezed it, then moved to the door. There he stopped and looked back at her. “I hope you will never have occasion to regret this, Emily.”
She shook her head. “I never will.”
She said
it with strength and it appeased him, for he smiled before he stepped out of her chamber. When he was gone, though, the uncertainty took over. Everything in her life was about to change. She’d known that before she came to the country, before she concocted this wild idea for a party. Cav was her constant…though she hoped what she said was true. She hoped she’d never regret this surrender, and she also knew she would if it meant things with him would change.
He was all she had, in the end. She couldn’t lose him for something so foolish as desire. She wouldn’t.
* * *
Cav sat at the end of the long table, far from Emily’s side, and watched her. She was observing the room, and he could see that she was…troubled.
The worry was partly because of him. He knew that. When she looked at him, she blushed every time. She worried her hands before her. She fidgeted as she was sometimes wont to do because she was nervous or uncertain.
He’d wanted her forever, and having her had been more powerful, more wonderful, more satisfying than he’d pictured in even his most heated and hedonistic dreams. Even now as he imagined the squeeze of her sex around his, the soft surrender of her gasps of pleasure, his body reacted.
He knew she’d been happy while they were in each other’s arms. But now she was thinking. Always thinking. One of her best qualities, until it spiraled her into a dozen worst-case futures. He could see her doing that now when she looked at him. See her writing a tale where their friendship ended because she’d let him lick her until she cried out his name in the quiet.
“Bollocks,” he grunted beneath his breath. He was going to have to tread lightly now. Be careful in how he approached her while she stewed.
He couldn’t lose her. He wouldn’t.
He took a sip of wine and watched as her gaze flitted over the table. If she was troubled when she looked at him, she was equally so as she surveyed her matchmaking kingdom. In the last five days, he’d watched her move her pieces around the chessboard, placing ladies with gentlemen, forcing them into positions where they would talk or play together. But her matchmaking was failing.
Tonight the table was listless. Conversations were subdued if they happened at all. The gentlemen talked to each other, the ladies amongst themselves and with their chaperones.
Emily’s experiment seemed to be a failure. And from the frown on her face, that troubled her deeply. She had always been the type to think of something wild and wonderful and play it out. She’d taken to new hobbies easily and enjoyed all types of pastimes. Sometimes they didn’t work, but she’d also taken her losses with a laugh. She’d always been able to see them as a way to learn, rather than something darker or more desperate.
But this…this was different. She looked truly troubled by the fact her matchmaking wasn’t going as planned. Her nostrils flared slightly, her hands shook as she lifted her wineglass to her lips, she was distracted when a servant came to take her plate.
Why, he couldn’t understand. But he needed to. He needed to reach out and offer her the help and comfort she had asked him here to provide. The friendship he’d been providing for a decade.
But not tonight. Tonight she was too fraught when she looked at him. It was best to leave her be. Let her settle and see that he wouldn’t push her into something she needed more time to allow.
But tomorrow, he was going to talk to her. About the party. About them. About everything.
Chapter 8
Six Geese A-Laying
The next morning dawned cold and crisp, and Cav could see his breath as he swung down from his horse, Hank, patting the animal’s flank gently. Once again he’d been unable to sleep, and this time he’d risen early for a ride through the estate on this, the last day of the year.
Crossfox was beautiful, with rolling hills, a small lake and enough woods to lose oneself in. Close enough to London to make the half-day’s journey easy, but far enough out that it was quiet. Peaceful.
How many wonderful times had he shared with Andrew here? And later with Andrew and Emily. They’d always included him in their fun. Of course, Andrew had never suspected Cav’s feelings for his wife. He had to assume that would have altered their friendship. Ended it.
He looked up on the hill. What was up there…that was really why he’d taken his ride out here this morning, no matter what other excuses he’d made about wanting to exercise his horse or needing the bracing enjoyment of a ride to clear his head.
No, he hadn’t come for those things. He’d come for this.
He climbed up the rise to the flat on top and caught his breath. This was the family plot, where the Rutledge line had planted their dead for decades, centuries even. He moved through the lines of well-tended headstones until he came to the most recent of their ranks.
“Andrew Rutledge, Tenth Viscount. Husband, Son, Friend,” he read out loud, and his stomach ached with every word.
Five years his friend had been in this hallowed ground, and sometimes it still felt like yesterday. The hole left in his heart was not one that would ever truly be filled. He’d accepted that a long time ago.
“I did something,” he said to the stone. His voice was shaky, as if he were admitting this to his friend in life, not death. “I knew you better than anyone, and you me, but I have no idea if you would accept it or rise from that grave to punch me in the face.”
The only sound was the distant rustle of leaves in the brisk breeze. “I hope you would consent.”
He shook his head and looked down toward the manor house in the distance. He found Emily’s window because he knew exactly which one it was, even from so far away. He let out his breath in a ragged sigh.
“I never made a move while you lived, you know. I loved her as you loved her, and I never would have said a thing. I would have watched you two be happy together until the end of time, and I would have smiled about it because you both deserved the devotion you found in each other.”
He rested a hand on the curve of the stone and clenched his fingers as intense grief washed through him. “But you’re not here now, mate. It’s the worst thing in the world, the greatest pain of my life and of hers, but it’s true. I love her and I know this is my last chance to have a future with her. So I have to take it. I need to take it. But I wanted to tell you…man to man.”
He shook his head. “Friend to friend. I just wish I could know if you approved it.”
As he said the last, there was a great rush of sound behind him. He turned to watch as at least twenty pheasants rose from the heavy brush in the wooded area below the burial plot. Nothing that he could see would have spooked them, and his heart ached as he glanced back at Andrew’s grave.
They had hunted pheasant on this property dozens of times over the years. It was one of their favorite pastimes when they came here. He smiled.
“I will take that as a yes,” he said with a chuckle. “And I’d best take that yes and go back before you send me some other sign and confuse me.” He rested his hand on the gravestone again. “You cannot fully grasp how much you are missed, my dearest friend. You cannot understand how deeply you are still loved.”
Tears stung his eyes, and he blinked them away as he headed back down the hill and gathered up his horse. He took one last glance up the hill and then swung up and headed back toward the estate house, his mind telling him a hundred tales of good times with his old friend.
He was still lost in memory as he rode into the stable and dismounted, handing off the reins to a stable hand. The young man looked a bit flustered as he took the horse, glancing off behind him every few seconds.
“What is it?” Cav asked, confused by the young man’s distraction.
Before the boy could answer, Cav heard the sound. A loud squawking followed by a woman’s voice, cursing a streak that would have made the most hardened sailor blush.
“Is that…Lady Rutledge?” he asked, meeting the boy’s eyes.
He shifted. “Yes, sir. It is, sir.”
Cav let his eyes come shut a moment and shook his h
ead. “I told her the troubles she would find with birds. Where is she then? Behind the stables?”
“Yes, sir. In the horse paddock,” the young man said.
Cav was already heading out the door and waved his thanks as he did so. He didn’t really need the direction. As he stepped out, Emily’s shouts grew louder, and then she cried out, “Ouch!”
He ran then, racing around the stable, but when he reached the paddock, he came to a halt. Emily was standing in the middle of the training field, blonde hair tangled around her face, dress dirty, up to her ankles in mud as she swooped her hands at a half a dozen geese.
“Six geese a-laying,” he muttered to himself with a half-smile. “Oh, Em.”
“No wonder you are eaten!” she shouted at the birds. “You are the worst things with feathers God ever put on this earth. Go this way!”
She waved her hands again, and Cav chuckled as he vaulted over the paddock fence and into the field to join her. “Do you need help?”
He expected her to laugh as she realized he had joined her, to respond to this moment with her usual good-natured aplomb. But instead she pivoted, and he saw that her face was red, tears brightening her eyes, and she scowled at him.
“Go away, Cav,” she grunted. “I’ve already made a mess of myself—I won’t see anyone else do the same for my foolishness.”
He took a step toward her despite her admonishment, and caught a glimpse of three footmen standing outside the fence, watching the entire exchange with worried expressions.
“You there, why are you not helping your lady?” Cav barked.
Emily staggered in the mud toward him and the cadre of geese hissed in unison. “Because I told them not to once I fell the third time. My boots may be filled with mud, but theirs ought not to be. Now go away.”
He shook his head. “I am not going away, not when you are obviously upset. Not to mention surrounded by angry geese.”
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