Page 35 of Lord Carlisle's Enticing Lure
His eyes blazed with triumph. “Neither have I.”
“Your wife did not like…?”
“The marriage bed?” He shook his head. “No.”
“Were you good together? Otherwise?”
He ran his hand down her arm to her waist to rest on her belly. “She didn’t like disarray. The muddle. The mess, she called it. She feared for pregnancy and complained. She would come to me and offer herself up like a sacrifice, claiming her duty was to give me an heir. We…learned to go about this mating thing as an event. She did get pregnant just once. The result is the delightful Bella.”
He was so distressed, his brows knitted together, his magnificent mouth strained, and she could not see him so sorrowful. She put her hand atop his and led him to cup her. There, she led his fingers inside her. “I love you inside me. Have me again.”
He dropped a quick kiss to the tip of her breast. “I would not want to make you hate me.”
“You could never.”
“Or make you sore and uncomfortable.”
“Well,” she said with a wide-eyed laugh, “you must make love to me again to learn if that is true.”
“An invitation I cannot refuse,” he said against her lips as he opened her to his hardened cock. “You are my ecstasy.”
“And you are mine.”
*
He rose upon one arm and stared at the naked beauty beside him. He’d slept, exhausted. They’d had each other three times, and he could not recall if he’d been responsible that first time and left her before he had his climax. The irresponsibility of that tore at his good spirits. He would not shame her.
He remembered she had come fully to her own completion each time they had loved. Pride blossomed in his heart at that. She was as irresistible now that they’d united as when he first saw her, truly saw her, on the beach.
He smiled to himself. Was that only days ago?
She sighed in her sleep and snuggled against him. Her midnight hair curled around him like silken threads. Her complexion was pure, her cheeks—dare he say?—darker, rosier since they’d found delight together.
He wrapped his arm around her waist and pressed himself along the elegant lines of her body. Her throat, her pointed breasts—her large, luscious nipples, soft belly, and shapely legs were perfection.
How had he won this lady to her bed?
From the intrigue of spying her on the shore to her rescue of Bella, he could not seem to see enough of her. She filled his sight with her uniqueness, her frankness. Her odd venture that first night when she waited for someone who did not appear mystified him. With that, he sought to find in her the reasons for such an event. Yet his view of her colored more brightly each time they met. His perspective of hernature widened as he saw she had facets to her nature that raised more questions. Who was she that she took such risks?
Then in the ballroom, he’d seen her in that gown of ethereal purple and nearly lost his footing. His head had spun. She was beautiful to him before the ball, but in that crowded hall, she was an angelic vision—and he had to have her.
Have her in his arms. To dance, yes. But more, more. And he had forgotten how to properly court a lady.
A widower of two years now, he was a respected single man. Many young ladies and their eager mothers had set their sights on him. Still he had not found any who interested him. But he was a man who had viewed a woman whom he desired only once before. A man who had rushed to judgment and asked her to marry him. A man who’d regretted the proposal and spent years lost to his wife’s indifference to his infatuation, his seduction, and any charms he assumed he naturally possessed.
Loath as he was to leave Giselle, he should. Hotel staff would be up and circulating the halls before dawn. He would not wish to have gossip spread among them of his night here with her.
“You think of leaving,” she whispered in husky, sleep-filled distress.
He pulled this darling lady against him. Craving her luscious body and priding himself on her desire for him, he dropped a kiss to the crown of her hair.
She stretched her long legs, then looped one over his. Her head turned up toward his, and her dreamy eyes held longing.
“I did not mean to wake you,” he whispered.
But she kissed him. “I felt you watching me.”
“Wanting you,” he corrected her, and took her lips again. “I must go.”
