Page 58 of His Lordship's True Lady
He positioned himself intimately, and as the kissing resumed, the joining began.
Lily was snug and ready andheavenly. “Tell me if—”
She moved, and heaven became an understatement. All the hesitation and doubts fell away, all the questions. This was right. This was perfect. This was what every man hoped to find waiting for him at the end of every journey.
“When you do that,” she whispered as Hessian found a slow, deep rhythm. “It’s exquisite. It’s good. I feel….”
“As do I.” Glorious, grateful, aroused as hell.
A bird fluttered in through the window and back out, and that was right too. Hessian found the self-restraint to love Lily gently, but another time—many other times—he’d let passion soar and show her more dramatic pleasures.
Lily’s hands moved on his back, until she pushed her palm beneath the waistband of his breeches and anchored herself with a firm grip on his backside. Her breathing changed, and Hessian dared hope he might satisfy her, even their first time. He forced himself not to speed up, not to let go, not to allow passion to overtake self-restraint.
And his virtue was rewarded.
Lily fetched up hard against him, then harder still, and Hessian didn’t breathe lest her pleasure steal his last ounce of self-discipline. She thrashed, she bucked, she likely pinched him black and blue, and then she sighed against his neck and subsided onto the pillow.
He freed his hand from her hair and found the handkerchief in his breeches pocket.Thank God for tidy habits.
In one move, he withdrew and sat back. Completion roared through him the instant he wrapped the linen around his cock, and the pleasure nearly rendered him unconscious.
He leaned forward enough to crouch over Lily, whose breathing was still rapid. They remained like that, body heat and breath mingling, while streams of glory faded through Hessian’s soul.
Ye gods, ye thundering, happy gods.If he’d had any doubts before, he was certain now: He was meant to be Lily Ferguson’s lover, and she was meant to be his lady.
He should say something romantic, something witty, but the only words that came to him were honest. “I find myself transcendently fascinated with the prospect of our wedding night.”
After uttering that profundity, Hessian became fascinated with the prospect of a nap. He dozed off to the steady beat of his lover’s heart, his cheek pillowed on her breast, her fingers playing with his hair.
Hessian would undertake the wedding night with a good deal more forethought than he had this tryst. Nonetheless, he conceded that yielding to passion, however untidy on a first attempt, had unforeseen and lovely charms.
* * *
Outside the window of Walter Leggett’s office, Lily stepped down from the Earl of Grampion’s phaeton, and by a trick of the afternoon sunshine, she appeared for one moment to resemble her late mother. Nadine had been blond, while her daughters had turned out red-haired, but the angle of the jaw, the figure, the way of moving had bred true.
Walter let the curtain fall and stepped away from the window, though he wasn’t likely to be detected. Lord Grampion was playing the perfect gentleman, all courtesy and consideration.
Lily was playing the role Walter had spent two years and a goodly sum training her to play. The investment had paid off handsomely, though not handsomely enough.
By the time Lily joined Walter in his office, she’d dropped the smiling, friendly façade she’d shown the earl. She wore instead the demure expression and watchful gaze Walter had first seen on her more than a decade ago. Unlike her mother, Lily had good instincts.
Nadine, God rest her wanton soul, had been a featherbrain, albeit a pretty one.
“You wanted to see me, Uncle?”
In truth, every time Walter laid eyes on his younger niece, he felt an echo of uncomfortable questions:Is there a better way to proceed than as I am doing? What does Oscar know or suspect, and would he understand my motives? Had I any choice but to do as I did?
Of course, Walter had had no choice. None at all. “How was your outing with Grampion?”
Lily no longer cowered by the door when Walter summoned her. The expensive finishing school in Switzerland, along with Ephrata Tipton’s tireless lecturing, had given Lily the poise of a well-bred heiress who knew her own worth.
“The earl is good company,” Lily said, drawing open the curtains. “He isn’t vain and silly, like most men of his station, and his manners are faultless.”
Walter yanked the curtain closed. “You’ll fade the carpets and the wallpaper with the damned sunshine.”
Lily stepped back, her expression cool. If Walter hadn’t known better, he’d have thought the true Ferguson heiress gazed at him with faint reproach.
“Have you a megrim, Uncle? I can have Cook brew you a tisane.”
