Page 51 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
“No, I can’t say that I have.” His weight threatened to smother her until he braced himself on one arm, and she had perhaps half his attention, which was split neatly between conversation and his attempts to locate the hem of her gown, and then the hem of each successive layer of petticoats beneath it. The furrow between his brows grew deeper. “Just how many petticoats have you got on, exactly?”
“Enough not to freeze.” She gave a little wiggle to relieve the odd pressure of his hips upon hers. “Our carriage is rather drafty.”
“Mine’snot.” His hand closed over her knee, still at least two layers removed, and he pressed his forehead to hers with a huff of annoyance. “You did this only to torture me, didn’t you? Admit it.”
“Me?” Lizzie cried. “How could I have done? How could I haveknown?”
“A vexatious wench like you? I would not be in the least surprised if you claimedsomemanner of clairvoyance.” His eyes opened, vividly blue and notably determined. “I donotintend to be defeated by a few layers of petticoats. I’d never live it down.”
Incredibly, Lizzie laughed again.Laughed, while a man—herhusband—had his hand upon a rather intimate part of her body. He was up to his elbows in skirts and flounces of linen, and she could onlylaugh.
Luke frowned, offended dignity lending a certain severity to his features. “You aren’t taking this in the least bit seriously, are you?”
Ruefully, Lizzie shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”
“You’re a cruel woman, Lizzie Godwin, and I am going to make you eatthose words.” There was a distinctly roguish tilt to the smile he cast at her; rather as if he had some sort of secret.
Lizzie Godwin. That was hername, now. She had only a moment or so to marvel over the strange and unfamiliar appellation before she became cognizant of the fact that he had pulled back to his knees and gathered up huge handfuls of her skirts, his fingers clenched around bunches of fabric.
“Lizzie,” he said, that wicked dimple shining in his cheek. “It’ssomeday.”
“It’s—what?” she croaked, on a shocked inhale—and then, abruptly, she was drowning beneath an avalanche of the skirts he had cast into her face. Smothered by her own petticoats, as a pair of warm hands wrapped around her ankles and slid slowly up her stockinged legs. She opened her mouth to shout, only to fall victim to a shred of ancient lace, which she sucked into her mouth on a fierce inhale. “Luke,” she managed in something halfway between a wheeze and a screech, “what are youdoing?”
“Hush, now,” he said, his voice lowered to a faintly mocking tone. “You wouldn’t want the coachman to hear, now, would you?” And still his hands crept up, until his fingers toyed with the garters that tied her stockings above her knees.
Oh, God, thecoachman. Mortification boiled her blood in her veins, even as chill bumps raced up her legs alongside his fingertips. And she could not even nip her legs together, for he’d wedged himself between them. What was she meant to do? Her breaths beat against the back of one hand while the other floundered through her tangled skirts, searching for him.
There. Her fingers found the silky threads of his hair, sifted through them, fisted.
“Yes,” he said in a guttural growl. “Just like that.” There was an affectionate—if scratchy—rub of his cheek along her inner thigh, and the shriek she muffled against her hand emerged a whimper instead. Whatever leverage she might have found was lost in the moment of quiescent shock that followed, for he managed to hook one arm beneath her knee and maneuver it over his shoulder. Her breath left her lungs on a whooshas his breath stirred the crisp curls between her thighs.
“Luke,” she managed in a reedy whisper, with the last pittance of breath left to her. “You can’t mean to—” A strange sound burbled from her throat as his fingers touched her there, sliding smoothly across flesh that had grown alarmingly damp and dewy. Her head dropped back upon the seat, the tense muscles of her neck going lax at once. Her hips wanted to cant into those warm, stroking fingers, and she pressed her hand to her eyes, struggling to collect her thoughts despite the surging heat sparking through her veins.
Her other hand was still fisted in his hair, and she couldfeelhis smile when he pressed his lips to the juncture of her thigh. “I’ll flip you for it.”
“No.” Her head thrashed, and she tried to summon a frown—though he would not have seen it from his position. “You always win,” she said. “I don’t knowhow”—she gasped as he wedged his fingers inside her—“but youalwayswin.”
A soft chuckle vibrated against her skin. “Lizzie…I’m going to win this, too.” An approving hum followed. “There’s my girl,” he said, and she realized that her fingers had released their tight clasp and were sliding softly through his hair as if in praise. And then his mouth touched her, and a hoarse cry rattled in her chest. Her heart beat a frantic tattoo against her ribs, her back arched as far as the wooden busk tucked within the confines of stays would allow.
His tongue teased an excruciatingly sensitive place, and her whole body curled into the caress—her heel pressed against the small of his back, and his soft laugh was a lash of flame searing her flesh. She forgot that it was in the middle of the morning. She forgot that the carriage rocked lightly as it rolled down the public country road. She forgot everything but the devastating spiral of pleasure that coiled tighter and tighter, until her private flesh clenched upon his invading fingers, and that unbearable tension snapped like a twig. The force of the release arched her neck and provoked a high, shrill cry that rang in her ears long after it had faded into the breezy silence of the countryside.
She floated, replete and lethargic. Surely the scattered shreds of whatever wits she might once have possessed were strewn about the carriage, but she could not bring herself to care much about the disordered mess of them, nor even stir herself enough to set about collecting them once again.
Distantly she was aware of movement, of Luke crawling out from beneath her skirts and petticoats. Of his weight settling over her once more, though it no longer seemed oppressive. Of fingertips trailing lightly across her jaw, and settling into the hollow of her throat to feel the flutter of her pulse.
Luke’s breath burst against her temple, unsteady and agonized. The hot sweep of his lips burned her skin, and there was the renewed pressure of his hips wedged between her thighs. Naked flesh touched naked flesh. His voice was not the warm, sweet tone of a lover, but a guttural rasp of need. “Lizzie,” he said, “I need you now.”
∞∞∞
Luke hadn’t truly meant to carry things so far. It was one thing to have a bit of sport, and quite another to deflower one’s new bride in a cramped carriage with only the requisite articles of clothing shifted out of the way. But it had not been enough to feel her coming around his fingers, beneath his tongue—he needed to feel those exquisite spasms around his cock.
“Now?” It was a husky, bemused murmur, and she shifted beneath him, her hips brushing torturously against his own.
He bit back a groan and felt a shudder trip down his spine, one hand seizing her hip in a firm grip. “Now,” he managed to say, but the rest of the words tangled in his throat—that she was so soft, so wet and hot; that he would make it good for her; that he would bring her to pleasure all over again.
But she seemed to understand it anyway—one of her arms drifted about his shoulders, while the other hand lifted to slide into his hair, raking through the disheveled locks just as he liked. It felt likepermission, and his hand slid to her knee, tugging until he’d positioned her leg about his hips, opening her to him. His cock slid over delicate damp flesh; a forewarning of what would happen between them as he laved himself in the copious moisture he’d coaxed from her body.
She truly was beautiful like this, with that flush of passion heating her cheeks, the clinging remnants of her prior climax still lingering in the softness of her face. The faint, flickering awareness of something she’d only guessed at in the shimmer of her dark eyes. Luminous and brilliant, they widened when he canted his hips and began to enter her.
