Her husband shrugged from his clothes impatiently, while she observed the revelation of his wonderful body with a hammering heart. With a dazed sense of shock, Phoebe watched as he dropped to his knees before her, splayed her legs wide, and lowered his head.
“Hugh?” she cried, terribly alarmed at this unexpected move.
All that faded as he lasciviously kissed her sex. Phoebe gasped then screamed when his tongue did something that had her hips arching off the cushion. Soon her stocking-clad legs were hung wantonly over each of her husband’s shoulders, her slippers glinting under the firelight. With each lick and nibble her sex pulsed urgently, and hunger clawed at her. She felt empty and desperately needed to be filled. Phoebe pulled at his head frantically, and he nipped sharply at her inner thighs before kissing her again…carnally devastating her with pleasure.
His teeth raked against her nub of pleasure, and she convulsed, pleasure splintering through her body. While still on his knees, he grabbed her hips and tugged her down so that she slid off the sofa. Penetration was immediate, and she cried out wildly at the almost painful stretch. He took her mouth in a raw, domineering kiss, swallowing her cry at his invasion.
Phoebe felt delirious with arousal. Her skin burned, and she wanted to get even closer to him. Wrapping her hands around his shoulder like a vine, her feet now braced on the carpet, Phoebe started an instinctive ride. Or was he using his hands to lift her up and then urged her down onto his manhood? She could not tell; Phoebe was lost in the provocative position and the lush eroticism of how they came together.
He hugged her to him, twisted, and tumbled them onto the carpet. He slipped his hands beneath her buttocks, lifting her to meet his thrusts, filling her repeatedly in heavy surges. There was a hint of urgency, or desperation, almost a savagery to his movements as he plunged inside her over and over. A stunning pleasure and pressure built inside her, clawing to be free. Each thrust held her poised on the brink, and her body raced to reach a pinnacle it was familiar with. Except each plunge seemed to push her beyond a point she had never been taken before, and Phoebe screamed into the crook of his need, frantic pleadings and then demands falling from her lips as unbearable heat twisted low in her belly.
Somehow, while he still rode her to bliss, he reached between them, took her nub between his fingers, and pinched. Phoebe’s mind blew apart as ecstasy writhed through her. She slid her hands over the arch of his back, caressing and urging.
“I love you,” she cried against his lips as he claimed another kiss. That soft cry had tumbled from her before she could catch it.
He froze, and his eyes fluttered open to stare at her as if arrested.
With trembling fingers, she traced his lower lip. She had not meant to admit her feeling, not when things felt so odd between them. “I love you,” Phoebe breathed shakily, testing the weight and truth of those words.
Something raw flashed in his eyes before his lashes swooped down, concealing the brilliance of his gaze from hers. Do not hide from me, she silently demanded. Then it did not matter, for his hands tightened around her, and with a few ravaging thrusts, he, too, found his pleasure. Stroking his back, she held him to her until his shaking had subsided.
I love you.
That cry of adoration lingered in Phoebe’s thoughts. She felt stupid and hopeful, as she waited, her heart beating for him to sign something…anything. Silence lingered, and his fingers did not move to caress, reassure, or return any sort of sentiments. Her belly went hollow, and the fact she told him she loved him felt unforgivable. It made no sense to lay her heart bare to a man who would never return her love. If only she did not desperately wish he would love her in return. When had she started to dream of that again? Of a man who would love her with every emotion in his heart and soul? Phoebe suspected that dream had started the very first time he kissed her.
He pulled from her, and she whimpered at the ache between her legs. Gently, he helped her to stand, her legs wobbled, and she laughed.
“I think, my lord, we almost killed each other,” she said softly, peering up at him.
Phoebe’s heart squeezed at the frightful look of indifference in his gaze, as if what they had just shared was ordinary. She reached up to cup his jaw, and he caught her hand and slowly lowered it to her side. A cold knot formed in Phoebe’s stomach. He padded away to the wash basin and returned with a washcloth to tenderly clean her. She watched him in silence as he removed her stockings, garters, and slippers. When he was finished, he went over to the washbasin and started to tidy himself. Padding over to the armoire, she took out a nightgown and slipped it on then made her way over to the bed, climbed up, and sat in the center.
Soon, he outed the lamp and slid into the bed. He did not take her into his arms as he usually did, and Phoebe sat there in the dark, her heart jerking. Something had changed. She fought hard against the tears she refused to let fall.
“I did not betray you,” she said softly into the darkness. “Never once did I think of leaving, and if the viscount had not drugged and taken me away, I would still be in Scotland with you and Franny.”
Silence lingered, and her breath rose and fell unevenly.
“I would never leave because you are my family…and I…I love you…so very much.”
More silence. Of course, she would not see if he signed in the dark. Though she suspected he had not shifted at all, she could feel the potency of his stare on her, as if he could see her clearly. She was bewildered by his demeanor and could not understand why he had retreated to the aloof gentleman he had appeared to be when they had just met. When he made no move, she shimmied down and lay on her side, unable to understand the raw ache that was suffusing her heart.
He moved, and she closed her eyes as he slid his arm around her shoulder and drew her into the curve of his arms. A soft breath caressed her forehead, and she sensed he lowered to kiss her there, as he did each night before they slept. Phoebe held her breath waiting for that kiss, but then his breath vanished. He had changed his mind.
There was a rustle as he drew the thick coverlet over their bodies. They lay in the darkness, each unable to sleep. Though his chest rose and fell evenly, she knew he was awake. So many questions swirled in her mind; so many anxieties burrowed in her heart.
“Why does it feel different between us?” she whispered.
Nothing indicated that he heard her soft entreaty. She recalled the old earl warning that Hugh was not a man given to sentimentality. Yet before this trip to London, she had felt certain he held great affection for her in his heart, and she was so certain they had been fated to meet and have a grand love despite their rocky beginning. Am I just a naïve, silly girl? Her throat burned with supressed tears at the notion of losing a love she had felt blooming between them.
Do not be silly, she warned herself fiercely. You knew from the beginning he did not believe in love and that you should have no expectation of it in this marriage of convenience. A stubborn tear leaked from her eyes, and she gently wiped it away. Oh, but I want it so very much. And when something was worth fighting for, she would not shy away from doing so. Her reckless, impetuous spirit surged, and she twisted in the cage of his arms, to encounter a gleam of brilliant blue in the darkness.