Her Husband’s Lover (23 page)

First fingers and now his tongue spurred her towards some bright pinnacle. Her hands laced in his hair. She held him close, guiding him and mewling over each touch. The expression ‘silver-tongued’ rolled around her mind. She knew no other way of describing him. Perhaps there was a proper word, but if there wasn’t there ought to be, for what he was about was a skill surely worth perfecting. He was pushing her further and further into the light.

She was going to come.

Emma stretched so that her head tilted back against the wall. She let out a groan that seemed to come from her toes. Nay, her peak was already upon her. She came, bucking against him, while his tongue flicked feather-light across her bud.

Darleston blew softly upon her overheated flesh, but even that blessed breeze evoked another tremble. Every part of her seemed jittery and boneless. He enfolded her within his arms and she drooped against him like a wilted flower, no longer concerned about the close contact of their bodies.

Minutes passed. It seemed as if eternity slipped by before her wits returned. She might be sated but the persistent rock of his hips informed her that her lover’s needs remained unsatisfied. Emma stared at him. She would not be accused of leaving him hanging twice. ‘Are you? I mean, do you want to …’ It didn’t matter how she tried to phrase it, the words simply wouldn’t come out.

‘Do I want to?’ He stroked all the escaped hairs back from her face. ‘You have no idea, but I confess that a dovecote is not the best place for a first time.’

‘I want it. I want you to.’

He raised one elegant brow. ‘Aye, maybe you do. The barn would have been perfect, by the way.’

Emma chuckled along with him, a broad smile stretching her lips. ‘I’ll remember that the next time I’ve cause to flee.’

‘But only if you’ve a tupping in mind. Don’t go rushing in there seeking sanctuary.’

Although his humour relieved the awkwardness of their position, there remained obvious hunger in his movements. His breath came in rough bursts and the rock of his loins grew more insistent, despite his hint that penetration was not on the agenda.

‘Surely there’s something …’ Heavens, she wanted to give him something in return. ‘Will it hurt?’ she asked, changing tack suddenly. She didn’t want to delay the moment; it might never arise again. She wanted to know, now, before her nerve faltered.

‘Coitus? It might a little.’

‘I want to feel you.’

He hesitated before shifting his stance so that his cock butted up against her belly. ‘Like this?’

‘Closer.’ Tears prickled the corners of her eyes.

Darleston angled himself downwards and the thick shaft speared between her thighs, where it rubbed up against the still sensitive lips of her puss.

Immediately her slickness coated him, making his glide so impossibly smooth that they both let out sighs. Still, he held back, nudging close but not entering. Emma wriggled, trying to get more of his prick in contact with her clit. ‘Please, I want you to.’

‘You’re crying,’ he observed.

Emma wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. She gave him a smile, even though her vision remained blurry. ‘Please.’ Another tear trickled over her cheek. Darleston caught it with his tongue. ‘I’m a bad man,’ he confessed. ‘And you’re undoing me. Oh, hell, Emma.’ He lapped at her tears, while the tip of his cock pressed home.

Oh, Lord! Was that truly only the head of him? The pressure – the intensity would surely split her in twain. But the moment he drew back and the pressure ceased, she craved it all over again.

Darleston lifted her leg and hooked it around his waist while he pressed himself into place again. He held her there, just the very tip of him inside her, poised, waiting while her muscles fluttered with both urgency and trepidation.

‘You’re sure? Because once it’s done, there’s no going back.’

‘I know it.’ Yes, she knew it. She’d thought of this moment often over the last few days. Wanting it. Being alarmingly afraid of it. Curiously, despite her racing heart, she felt quite calm.

‘Good,’ Darleston sighed. ‘Because I want this too.’ Then he kissed her hard enough to bruise. At the same time he surged forward, trapping her betwixt the wall and his body, so that he drove into her. A sharp splinter of pain fractured the moment of elation, then – oh, my – he was inside her, touching her where no one had touched her before and in a way she’d never thought to experience.

After barely a moment he drew back again, allowing her to breathe and bury her head against his shoulder, before he began to stroke in and out. Her body welcomed him. She was slick and wet from her earlier orgasm. She briefly entertained the thought that he’d planned everything this way, but how could he truly have known she’d surrender?

Within a few moments, he lifted her full off the floor. Legs entwined around his waist, hands clasped tight to his shoulders, her back braced against the wall, Emma rode his prick and no longer feared him touching her. For a few peaceful minutes the old ghosts were locked away, or maybe she simply couldn’t hear them over the pounding of her heartbeat. His touch was so very different from their icy grasp that she could not compare them, but then this too was a very different sort of love. It was not built upon blood and filial affection. Rather their two separate souls had somehow found one another and sought a way to entwine.

She wondered if this was what all lovers felt. Was it what Lyle experienced when he and Darleston made love? Could one person truly split their affections between two people? Would one of them end up being hurt?

Did it matter?

If the whole world fell apart tomorrow, then everything was still worth it for this single magical moment.

Dear God, he was going to bring her to another peak.

He held her a long time after she’d come and let her cry into his shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Emma,’ he soothed and she actually believed him. Leastways, she believed in his solidity. ‘No one is going to hurt you.’

Most of the hot colour had faded from Emma’s face by the time they’d left the dovecote, except at the tip of her ears. Darleston helped her to relace her stays and pin her dress, which had been a feat of restraint in several senses. Her bosom protested at the binding, and he – he protested at hiding those luscious curves from view. He might always have liked men but, when his interest was roused by a woman, it wasn’t because she was built like a boy. No, indeed, he’d always preferred his maidens curvy.

‘Will you tell Lyle?’ she asked as they rounded the hollyhock that shadowed the door through which Emma had originally fled. The winds of the previous night had left small branches scattered across the grass and had overturned several potted plants. She righted some containers of spilled begonias as they passed, reinstating them amongst the borders of pinks and vibrant, rather phallic, red hot pokers. Darleston watched her dust the earth from her fingertips. It stung him a little that she did seek his support as another woman might. Sex had not fundamentally changed her. She still stiffened whenever her skirts brushed his legs. Someday soon he’d get to the bottom of why that was. It had, he supposed, been arrogant to think that, whatever ill she’d suffered, he could cure it with one good fuck. No one had ever cured any of his ills in such a way, though there’d certainly been a few who’d tried. Then there’d been others like his mother whose methods had been far less pleasant.

‘Are you asking me to break the news to him?’ He wasn’t certain if that had been her meaning or if she desired him to hold his tongue so that she could tell Lyle. ‘I don’t wish to keep secrets from him, Emma. He won’t be shocked. I think he recognised the inevitability of things, considering what we all shared.’

‘Inevitable …’ She gave an awkward high-pitched laugh, and then tumbled the word over her tongue several times as though she needed to convince herself of that fact. Perhaps she’d believed otherwise. He’d known the first time she’d looked at him with fire in her gaze that they’d share some sort of sexual denouement. The very fact that her desire was so apparent, yet to be avoided at all costs, immediately caught his attention. Likely that made him the appalling roué some society mamas had cursed him as. He didn’t care. He hadn’t bedded Emma for some stupid sense of satisfaction. He’d done it to give her pleasure, and because, along with Lyle, he wanted to share his life with her. He’d been searching for someone to love like that for a long time, with so little hope of ever finding them.

‘Still, what if he thinks that I’m trying to come between you?’ She raised her clenched fist to her mouth as she spoke as if to ward off the possibility of such an event. Troubling worry lines etched her fears upon her brow. It fascinated him that she and Lyle had come to care for one another so devotedly, having built a marriage upon little more than passing friendship. They cared for one another, bore mutual respect, even if neither understood the other terribly well. They didn’t judge or make great shows of one another’s faults. Would that he could have had such a relationship with Lucy. Life might have been different then. But Lucy was just like his mother had been, selfish, full of pride and cruel.

‘Listen, just because Lyle’s not interested in bedding you, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t see sense in the three of us being together. He wants you to be happy, Emma.’ He genuinely believed that and he prayed that belief came through in his words. The years had changed Lyle: where once his lover had been possessive, he now seemed more adaptable. Certainly he better understood the constraints society placed upon them as men whose urges ran outside the norm. Mayhap, too, Lyle understood that their tastes were not identical. They were not cast entirely from the same mould. He would always seek the company of both sexes, while Lyle would never find or even seek contentment with a woman. No other man of his acquaintance had put off matrimonial duty for so long. Emma’s frigidity had played nicely into Lyle’s hand.

Emma continued to walk alongside him, her hands clasped before her, which lent an air of uneasiness to her gait.

‘And you?’ she asked, stopping momentarily to face him. ‘What is it that you want? Do you wish us to all be together?’

‘Oh, God!’ he cried. The approach to the house was visible over the top of her head. Always, always the tide of fortune turned so fast. Oxbury’s landau stood before the main entrance and the man himself was upon the steps, with Edward Littleton at his flank. But neither of those foxes was the reason for his outburst. The problem came in the shape of his wife, framed perfectly by the carriage doorway, her hand pensively extended towards the waiting footman. She’d dressed in a gown of ivory taffeta, overlaid with yards of burgundy Chantilly lace. A feathered cap perched jauntily atop an abundance of corkscrew ringlets. It’d had been months since he’d set eyes upon her. The last time, she’d been bound to the foot of their marital bed with silken cords, dressed in stockings, shoes and nothing else. He couldn’t even claim she’d been posed there for him. He’d caught her with another man, one whose fetish complemented hers. Lucy did so like to have her backside reddened. Maybe if she’d enjoyed it a little less he’d have had less trouble controlling her.

‘What is it?’ Emma tugged upon his sleeve.

He faced her, surprised by the contact. His own horror was duplicated in her expression. Her eyes were open wide, the sheen of tears glazing their surface, while her lips were drawn into a tight grimace.

‘You have to get indoors. We can’t be seen.’

He wanted to explain, but it was more important to ensure that Lucy didn’t spot them. It was imperative that his wife had no opportunity to make a connection between them. He’d have to find a way to silence Hill’s chit. Her babbling could prove particularly damning now. What a vile mess. In trying to protect himself, he’d played into Lucy’s hands. Her jealousy knew no bounds. The merest hint that he held Emma in any regard and Lucy would use a full-on broadside to destroy her. He had to protect Emma from that, regardless of what it cost him. He would not make her the subject of Lucy’s vile tattle.

‘Go into the house.’ He opened the French door into the study.

‘Aren’t you coming?’ Emma asked when he made to fasten the casement behind her.

‘I can’t. We mustn’t be seen together. Do whatever it takes, but silence your sister. Find Lyle, too. Tell him that my wife is here.’

She seemed determined to speak, so he pulled the door to. Whatever questions she had would have to wait until Lucy had been dealt with.

* * *

Darleston hung back. He allowed the new arrivals to settle in the parlour before he sauntered in behind Mr Hill. Littleton, sporting newly grown side-whiskers, sprawled across the love seat in his customary corduroy tail coat. Meanwhile, Oxbury, clean-shaven and bewigged, stood by the fireside with Lucy next to him. She had her back to the door, for she was stooping to warm her hands. Why in heaven’s name could he not be rid of her? What was it that she found so marvellous about their marriage that made her cling to the remnants of it? They had never been compatible. Surely she realised that the differences the last few months had wrought were irrevocable.

She lifted her head and met his gaze in the huge gilt mirror that sat above the mantel. Malicious delight scored deeper creases into the lines of paint she used to disguise her complexion. Beneath the layers of porcelain white and her rouge blush her skin had always been rather sallow. The patches she wore covered pockmarks left behind from her childhood. She turned an exquisite pirouette to face him, and then stepped forward in greeting with her arms extended.

‘Husband.’

If she thought to trick him into an embrace, she’d seriously miscalculated. The possibility of causing embarrassment or offending some other party no longer swayed him at all. From the mild animosity they’d borne from the moment of marriage they had moved to outright loathing.

‘Why are you here?’ he asked, folding his arms across his chest.

Lucy stilled immediately and pressed one gloved hand to her mouth as if in shock. ‘Such a delightful greeting. How foolish of me to presume you’d pay me at least passing respect. You always did have the most appalling manners.’