“Aye, husband.” She slid her fingers into the corset’s cups and lifted out her breasts, letting them rest on the edges of the boned fabric.
Nipples of deep, rosy pink were flushed nearly scarlet at the tips. Those sweet buds, he knew, would darken and swell when he tended them properly. For now, they were highly aroused and diamond hard. His mouth watered. His cock thickened. Readied.
He needed her, but not like this.
Within seconds, he reversed their positions, laying her on her back, spreading her hair out upon his pillow, and wrapping her legs around his hips. Then, he settled in.
His wife thoroughly enjoyed his hands, of course, the way he plumped and stroked, pinched and plucked. But she reserved her loudest, most enthusiastic approval for his mouth.
He suckled her for long, luscious minutes while pleasuring her below with slow, deliberate strokes of his cock. With every deep pull of his mouth and stroke of his tongue, he pushed her a bit further, mindful of signs of her nearing peak. When he finally felt sharp nails scoring his shoulders, he increased his rhythm. Took her harder and harder until the ramming strokes shocked even him.
But she loved it. She clawed and growled and demanded more. Her heels dug into his backside and her mouth ate at his. “Sweet Christ and all his unicorns, English,” she rasped, grunting as he thrust deeper. “Ye’re a bluidy magician. Ah, I cannae … I’m about to … Ahh!”
She sounded so astonished when her peak came, that he nearly laughed his triumph. Then his own peak followed hard on its heels, flooding her with his seed as her body wrung his dry.
In the tender moments afterward, she held him and traced tickling patterns on his back. He lay with his ear over her heart, listening to the steady thud. His palm slid from her thigh to her waist. Then, he cupped her soft, velvety belly.
And let himself imagine how beautiful their babes would be.
Chapter Twenty
TlU
Annie’s husband of precisely seven days flexed his jaw and stared out the library window with visible frustration. “I did tell you about my family,” he argued, tossing the letter he’d been holding on his desk. “All the important bits, at any rate.”
Over the past week, she’d softened toward him. How could she not? The man was tireless. She hadn’t laughed so much or floated so much or sighed like a pure dafty so much in all her life. On top of which, he’d moved heaven and earth to help Broderick.
The letter from Dunston was more proof of that.
And John did regret hurting her; that much was clear. He’d demonstrated his remorse over and over, doing everything she’d asked. He’d even promised to name their son Finlay.
He’d also explained his cynicism regarding title-hunting women.
They’d been lying in their bed a day after their wedding, exhausted from lovemaking and enjoying a breeze off the loch. At her insistence, he’d finally confessed how a half-French tart had tried to trap him years earlier.
“I had a London season where it seemed … prudent to seek a wife,” he’d said. “At the time, I didn’t know you existed, or I would have understood how ill-suited she was for me.”
“A milk-skinned beauty, was she?”
“A beauty, yes. Lovely to look at. Her charm lay in coy flirtation. She pretended to be drawn to me against her will.”
“Ah, very seductive.” Annie reckoned setting the woman’s hair on fire would make coy flirtation a wee bit harder. Perhaps one day, she’d have the chance to test her theory.
“This was seven years ago.” He’d quirked a wry half-smile. “I was too eager to have what I’d seen in good marriages. It made me foolish. Blind.”
“Nah,” she’d murmured, tracing the muscular ridges of his belly with her thumb. “Just hopeful, English.”
“I pursued her long enough to begin planning our nursery and imagine spending our winters in Marseille.”
She’d frowned. “Marsae?”
“Marseille. In France. She was half-French.”
“Frenchwomen do seem to light yer wick. Her name didnae happen to be Jacqueline, did it?”
“Perhaps.”
He’d winced as her fingertips dug into his ribs. “Easy, love.”
“Modest French mistress. Half-French tart with badly singed hair. A pattern’s a pattern, John Huxley.”
“For God’s sake, Annie. I found her romping in her uncle’s stable with another man. A Frenchman, by the by. She’d already been impregnated. She planned to wed me for my title, pass the child off as mine, and keep her lover for sport.” Frowning, he’d trapped her hand in his. “Why do you think I named a horse after her?”
Probably an insulting reminder to himself. Still, she didn’t like it. They’d have to change the horse’s name. “So, she cuckolded ye before ye’d married her?”
“Yes.”
“Was her vision very poor, then? Too vain for spectacles, perhaps?”
A frown tugged. “No.”
“Are ye certain? Because the only other explanation is her sufferin’ a head wound as a wee lass. Happens from time to time. Poor weans grow up simple. Cannae make proper judgments. Like when it’s appropriate to chew a bit of rope. Or keepin’ yer legs shut when ye have the bonniest man ever to draw breath offerin’ to make ye the luckiest lass ever to set eyes upon him.”
His eyes had glowed bright as sun-struck amber. “I’m the lucky one, love.”
His recollection had helped her make sense of why he’d lied, why he’d needed Annie to choose him without the title.
But some of the wounds he’d dealt her remained raw. This morning, when he’d reluctantly shared the letter from his brother-in-law, those wounds had opened again.
Now, Annie tossed aside her attempt at embroidery and shoved to her feet, coming to stand beside his chair. She crossed her arms and leaned back against the desk. “Ye told me Jane fancies readin’. Ye didnae tell me she was the Duchess of Blackmore.”
“When you meet her, you’ll understand why it doesn’t matter.”
“Neither did ye say Maureen is wed to the Earl of Dunston.”
He sighed.
She tapped the letter near her hip. “Who happens to work for the bluidy Home Office.”
John’s right leg began twitching, a sure sign of restlessness. “That’s not precisely—”
“Or that Eugenia—the milliner, mind—is actually wife to one of the richest men in England. Another earl, no less.”
“Her marriage was a recent—”
“Or that Robert will soon be a marquis, givin’ ye a matched set. The full assortment of titles perched in yer family tree.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I have already apologized in every way imaginable. I’ve begged your forgiveness, promised to restore the churchyard, bought you a coach”—he gestured to the carriage parked in the drive below—“specifically so you could visit MacPherson House in a godforsaken Scottish deluge.”