Page 72 of My One and Only Duke
While Quinn had traveled, she’d slept late, napped, and eaten regularly and well. She had pondered her situation, and made progress with her in-laws, though she was still angry with Stephen. Mostly, she’d missed her husband.
To see Quinn clearly aroused was reassuring and…stirring. To kiss him was invigorating in a way even sleep and good food could not be. Quinn was hale and whole, wonderfully male, and hers.
“Are we in a hurry?” he asked, drawing back half an inch.
Oh, that smile. “Yes. We are in a tearing hurry to get into the bed and…and…”
“Dance the mattress hornpipe?” he said, shrugging into a dressing gown. “Swive, fornicate, make the beastie with two backs?”
He was teasing her with his naughty talk, and Jane liked it. “Become as one flesh,” she countered, turning and sweeping her hair off her nape. “Enjoy the pleasures of married life. Consummate our vows.”
His fingers whispered across her neck, brushing stray locks of hair free of her hooks. “If you’re sure, Jane, then I’m happy to climb into bed with you, but you’re allowed to miss him, you know—your dashing soldier.” Quinn’s arms came around her from behind. “He was your first love. You needn’t pretend otherwise.”
She turned in Quinn’s embrace, plunged into a depth of emotion she’d been ignoring. “It wasn’t like that.” She’d wanted her marriage to Gordie to be a romantic tale, more fool her.
Quinn put his lips near her ear. “He turned your head, filled your heart with foolish fancies. I envy him that.”
Now was not the time to marvel at Quinn’s perceptivity, or to explain to him that mostly, Gordie had filled Jane’s head with nonsense. For he had, and only his death had allowed her to admit as much.
Lovely nonsense, and all the worse for being lovely. Then he’d been offended by some dandy’s drunken insult, and his manly honor had cost him his life.
“Don’t envy him,” Jane said. “Don’t even speak of him, please. Unlike you, he couldn’t move past a bad moment and get on with life. You are my husband now, and it’s you I’ve been missing.”
Quinn regarded her, not the cold, analytical scrutiny she’d seen from him on other occasions, but an inspection tinged with concern. Then he enfolded her against the warm plane of his naked chest.
“I tried not to miss you,” he said, fingers working at her hooks. “We’ve been married barely a month. I shouldn’t know you well enough to miss you, and yet, I did. I missed the sound of you humming behind the privacy screen. Missed the way you keep the mattress bouncing all night. Missed the pretty, lacy, lady-clothes you leave draped about the bedroom.”
Jane burrowed closer. “I slept in one of your shirts. I wanted your scent on me, and I think it helped settle my stomach.”
“I’m a tisane for a dyspeptic expectant mother,” Quinn said, giving her bum a pat. “My most interesting job yet. Let’s get you out of this dress.”
He was an aggravatingly competent lady’s maid, and Jane could only imagine the coin in which he’d been paid for exercising those skills. He hung her dress in the wardrobe rather than draping it over a chair, her stays presented no challenge to him, and his touch with a hairbrush was gentle and soothing.
She was soon tucked under the covers while Quinn moved around the room blowing out candles.
“You are not to pleasure yourself behind the privacy screen,” she said. “Not on my behalf.” The heat of her blush should have ignited the bed curtains.
Quinn came to stand beside the bed. He hadn’t banked the fire in the hearth, and thus he was illuminated in flickering shadows.
“Pleasure myself?” He opened his dressing gown and grasped himself in his right hand. “Like this, ye mean?” He stroked his arousal in slow, upward caresses, and Jane forgot all about blushes.
“You look wicked when you do that—wicked and luscious.”
He laughed and climbed into the bed so he was crouching over Jane beneath the covers. “I am wicked, and you are wonderfully honest. Shall you be wicked with me, Mrs. Wentworth?”
He took her hand and wrapped it around his cock, which was new territory for Jane. Her knowledge of marital intimacy had been formed with a man who’d had more enthusiasm than self-restraint—or more selfishness than consideration.
“Do you like this?” she asked, sleeving Quinn’s shaft, “or are you humoring me?”
“I’m not humoring you.”
His voice had dropped to a growl, and when Jane would have asked another question—what did it feel like, to be caressed this way?—Quinn kissed her. He took her hands, lacing his fingers with hers and pressing her knuckles to the pillow on either side of her head.
“I want to touch you too,” Jane said. “I need to touch you.”
He trailed his open mouth along her shoulder and freed her hands.
Jane went exploring, down the smooth contours of Quinn’s back, over lean hips and taut buttocks, up the stair-step of his ribs. He was everywhere masculine power, though with her fingertips she also traced the scars he’d collected.
