Page 89 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“What, now?”
“I’ll make short work of it, I promise.” He bunched the back of her skirts up to her waist and slid a hand over her bottom, bare beneath the shift. “If you’re willing, I think number four.”
Leda twisted at the waist to kiss him. “I suppose I won’t know if I like it until I try,” she said demurely.
His eyes lit, a gleam of silver. “That’s the spirit.”
He was hard already, and a few tugs opened the fall of his pantaloons. He moved his hands to her breasts and Leda sighed as the arousal washed over her. She was wet and wanton and ready for him.
“Beautiful Leda,” he whispered, his voice hoarse in her ear. She felt his hardness pressing against her backside, the thick length of him. “I would have taken you in my aunt’s library if you had permitted it.”
“Far too forward.” She leaned forward on her knee, shamelessly baring her bottom to him. Her head fell back as he tested her entrance, put his hands on her hips to adjust. “Far too—” She caught her breath as he entered her. “Bold.”
He moved inside her, and the fullness was different, the pressure in new places. She sucked in another breath, light-headed.
“I would have taken you against the door of the pub in Swindon.” His voice, a low growl, spiked her craving for him. “Just like this.”
“I was facing you that time.” She threw back her head and reveled in the new sensations. Jack with her, filling her, the pleasure rising in new ways, that spiral that lifted and carried her. He pushed every fear, every regret out of her head, leaving only him.
“In the carriage on the way to Chippenham. With you on my lap. How I dreamed of moving your skirts aside and having you ride me. Very shocking for the Clutterbucks, I daresay.”
He thrust deeply, and she cried out as he nudged a place of pure sensation inside of her. He clamped one hand on her hip and the other to her breast, and the pleasure spouted like a geyser, drenching everything. Every wisp of her past whisked itself behind a curtain, blotted out.
“The mad baron, indeed. If I’d only known.” She rocked with him, pressing herself into his hand, back against his body,arching her body to take him deeper. Need scattered her senses, but she didn’t fear the surrender. She could set aside her relentless self-control, her constant guard. She could let herself come apart, and Jack would catch her. The tight burn all through her body gathered and grew.
“Having you in my house. If you only knew. Every dinner, I imagined spreading you across the table and dining on you. I imagined coming to your chair and lifting your skirts.”
“Oh. Only think what Mrs. Leech would say.” She keened softly with pleasure as he pinched her nipple. She writhed against him, then, wanting to be closer still, slipped her hand between their legs. He groaned as she cradled his bollocks. There was something wild about connecting this way, feral. He was not simply a pleasure but a need, a necessity.
“I thought I couldn’t please a woman,” he whispered. “I thought I had failed my wife. And then…you…” He surged inside her, and Leda cried out. “I didn’t know pleasure like this existed.”
“I didn’t either, my love.” She hung her head, panting, straining toward that peak. She wanted this never to end, to live in this rapture always. Be joined with him, swimming this sea with him, always.
“Touch yourself, my Leda. Take your pleasure from me. With me.”
She was wanton and without shame. And she wanted to seal him to her. Here in this house where she’d been Bertram’s rug, she wanted to be Jack’s woman. She wanted every other memory blotted out.
Unsure at first, she touched that quivering nub, and gasped as the pleasure deepened, soared. He filled her like the tide, riding them both to that delirious height, and she let herself be lifted and flung past the edges of the known world. She cried out as the rising tide slammed her, towering through her, and felt histrembling as he joined her on the edge of madness. They hung in a world suspended, composed of only the two of them, and stardust.
He dropped his head to her shoulder and held her close as they rocked together on the waves of bliss, their breath slowing as the waves receded, until they were finally quiet and still, joined in completion. The pulse rolled through them both, fastening them together.
“Leda,” he whispered. “You are the dream I never knew was possible.”
She blinked back tears and twisted to kiss him. Then she disengaged herself to embrace him firmly, her bare breasts against his chest, her naked legs twined with his. “You are for me as well, dear.”
She kissed him long and hard, cradled in his arms, in the satisfaction of desire, in the fulfillment of a promise. He had given her a new name, and he had given her new life. In his arms, she was remade.
“And now you are going to make me face my parents knowing I just didthiswith you,” she added.
“We can try the others whenever you wish.” He rubbed his face in her hair.
“We will have it all, my love. Everything. In good time.”
“In the most sensible, rational, conventional manner. No more madness for either of us.”
“Not a whit,” she agreed, and kissed him again.
She felt it, that bright spot in her chest, only it wasn’t a floating bead any longer. It was a bloom, and the stem of it ran all through her, down into the ground, like a root. She had to search far back in her memory for the last time she had felt this blithe sense of being tethered to something, firmly attached, and deserving of it. She knew it then for what it was.
