Page 13 of The Marquess's Final Fling
She put a hand to her lips and chuckled to herself. But then she causally pointed toward the far stack where two other guests, both ladies, were rummaging through the shelves for a selection.
He nodded. After a minute, he approached her. “Find something amusing?”
“I have,” she said, noting in her own voice a hunger for him and what they would share. “And you?”
“Most assuredly.” The need in his turquoise eyes sent a flood of hot need through her veins.
“I count the minutes,” she whispered and knew it was not wise to allow herself that confession.
“As do I.” He swallowed with difficulty and backed away, polite gentleman that he was.
Even the charade they created had been a torment to complete. The touch of his hands as he whirled her into the blanket he substituted for Cleopatra’s rug set her breasts aflame. The humor in his eyes as they motioned to each other set her heart pounding. The way he accepted the guesses of the party with rollicking good cheer made her whole mind roar with the desire to hug him, kiss him and run away with him.
But when she gained her rooms and shut her sitting room door behind her, she grinned. Madness was setting in. Tonight she would experience what she’d never known before.
She’d analyzed it earlier today. Her past. Her experience with men. Her three husbands. And each one’s manner to make love to her.
Sexual intimacy was quite different from passion. Instinct told her this must be true. Of course, she’d not known that as an eighteen-year-old bride. But she’d learned by experience.
Her first husband, many years her senior, took her as his second wife. He had money, title and a male heir. Taking Penn to wife and to bed was more for society’s approval than need for a bed partner. He had—though she did not know it until the night of their wedding—a mistress of long standing. Penn was his wife for appearance’s sake, not for his (or her) actual physical pleasure. He confessed on their wedding night that he had long forgotten how to initiate a virgin to the arts of love, but that he would be gentle.
He was. If he was also perfunctory about the initiation and afterward, frustrated with her shyness, she excused him. After all, she was his wife. Ordered to take him as her husband by her father, she made the most of her situation. What rights, she asked herself, did she have to question her spouse’s actions, his appetites or his mundane view of her as his bed partner.
Her second husband, more interested in men than women, taught her another lesson about sexuality. He could love her in an ethereal way, and not covet her in any physical one. They were, most assuredly, friends. He, unlike her first husband, had wished for an heir. “It would legitimize me,” he’d said, “and remove any questions about my nature.” But try as they might with weekly pre-planned meetings wherein he laid her to his bed, she never conceived.
Lord Henry Goddard, her third husband and her last, had an appetite for sexual congress and for her. Eight years her senior, he was vigorous, handsome and energetic in bed. That he performed his functions down to routine did not, however, fail to interest her. He liked their time in bed, nightly, with a vigor and humor that opened her own appetite and strengthened her desire for his attentions. He taught her that men and women had not one, but two positions which might gratify their needs.
Henry had never pressed her against a wall to kiss her nor stroked her nipples while she was still dressed. He’d never spoken of his desire for her with any charm or heat. Nor had he ever danced with her in the rain. Or invited himself to a party. Or planned any private rendezvous in a garden or a ball or a house party.
So as she took the chair before her sitting room fire, kicked off her shoes and waited for Theo to find his way up the library stairs to her rooms, she quivered with a woman’s raging desire. She’d never had a bed partner with whom she was secure in his acceptance of her. She’d never been encouraged by a man to be confident or free. Certainly, she’d never been tutored in erotic delights. Nor had she ever wanted anyone as much or as dearly as she desired Theo.
Two knocks struck the door and it swung open. Then closed.
He was inside in half a breath. And oh, he looked superb. Her lover.Hers.Attired in a Chinese red silk banyan, he was breathless from his run up the stairs. His magnificent chest bellowed. His nostrils flared. Theodore Alfonse Henley, Marquess of Tain, blond, bold and huge, was the finest specimen of manhood she’d ever seen.
He paused, his hands pressed against the door as he leaned back and admired her, head to toe and back again. “Good evening, Cleo.”
She stood and curtsied. “All hail, Caesar.”
“I nearly swept you up in that damn ugly rug and carried you up here.”
“I could barely keep my hands to my side. I was never so glad when they guessed straight away who we were. I wanted you then and there.”
His eyes danced. “Shall we make you ready for the night?”
Her breasts tingled at the invitation and she pressed her thighs together in an almost painful cry for his attentions. “Please. I see that you are.”
“I want you, Penn. My God, darling. All of you.”
She rushed to him, her palms to the hot silk of his robe. Did he wear nothing beneath? She shivered. “I told my maid I wouldn’t need her. And I ordered up brandy, tea and biscuits.”
“With orange marmalade?”
“What else? Only the best for you.”
He chucked her under her chin. “I could barely eat a thing at dinner, I thought only of nibbling on you.” He brushed his mouth across hers.
And her eyes fell closed in expectation that he’d kiss her.
