To Wed a Wicked Earl (29 page)

He bent his head to suckle one of her breasts again. For long moments, he held her poised above him as he toyed with her nipples, flicking, lapping, and gently running the bottom row of his teeth against them.

When she startled to wriggle, he impaled her in one smooth, swift motion.

She cried out, nearly surging off of him.

“Shh. Shh.” He kissed her eyelids, the apples of her cheeks. “Only this time, my angel. Only this time it hurts.”

He kept very still, waiting for some sort of response from her, she imagined.

Where there was once only pleasure, she now felt a stabbing pain. It seemed to radiate around his arousal. Her breathing slowed. This couldn’t be it. There had to be more…

And then she felt a sort of tickling. She looked down at their joined bodies to find Rothbury using his thumb to flick quickly against a tiny nubbin of flesh hidden in her folds. It felt…wonderful.

Like magic, her hips began to move of their own accord. Her breathing increased and the throbbing, damp pleasure returned. She rocked against him.

“There you are, Charlotte,” he murmured against her throat. “Better?”

She nodded shakily, tiny shivers shimmering down her upper body as he nipped at her earlobe.

His large hands held her backside tightly against him, controlling, rolling her with him in a primal rhythm. He rubbed his slightly bristled jaw between her breasts, nipping at the sides and tips playfully as they bobbed from their movements and those of the carriage.

Charlotte groaned feverishly, a tension building within her core that begged for release.

Grunting, he lifted his hips slightly, expertly angling his body so that part of him pressed against the nubbin of flesh.

She called out his name, clasping his shoulders. Her hips pumped furiously now, a building, pulsing ache growing and growing, winding tighter and tighter still. Until it exploded.

And then they both cried out, surging upward and down, upward and down, their bodies shaking with pleasure.

Holding her to him, his face buried in her shoulder, they remained joined until their breathing returned to normal.

“That was…my goodness,” she said, breathlessly. “Is it always like that?”

“Charlotte,” he said, pressing a small kiss on the swell of one breast, “it was never like that.”

The carriage lurched to the side, making their last turn. Soon they would be pulling up to the front of her family’s town house.

He helped her right her appearance as best he could, then grimaced when he saw some chafing from his bristles where he had rubbed his chin between her breasts.

She waved away his concern, curling up next to him on the seat. He held her so tight and secure. She sighed.

A few minutes later the carriage pulled to the corner.

“Stay,” he whispered, his lips at her temple. “Come home with me.”

“I can’t”

“But you’re my wife.”

He had a point. But her parents didn’t know that little secret, so she couldn’t very well move in to his residence overnight.

Before alighting from the carriage, she turned to kiss him, hoping there was more than simple lust hiding behind the glint in his ever-jaded gaze.

Chapter 19

A Wise Gentleman knows the appropriate time to lay his heart down at his Lady’s feet.

T
ick…tick…tick-tack…

Charlotte rolled over, punched her pillow into a more comfortable lump, then sank back into the comfy warmth.

Tick…

Winking open an eye, she did a quick scan of her room, deemed it looked quite as it always had, then returned to her blissful slumber.

She had to be imagining the noise; there was no other explanation.

After sneaking into the house by way of the kitchen entrance, Charlotte had crept past a dozing Nelly, who slept in a chair before the kitchen hearth with a wooden club in her arms as she often did ever since the incident several months ago with the intruder.

Then Charlotte had tiptoed upstairs, careful not to step on the second stair from the top as it creaked miserably and would most likely awaken her parents, especially her father.

She had then padded into the sanctuary of her room. After her maid helped her unbutton the back, she had dismissed her. Back in the carriage, Charlotte had spied a bit of blood on the hem of her chemise and didn’t want the maid babbling to all in creation what she had seen.

She washed, changed into her nightdress, brushed out her hair, and then crawled into bed to relive making love to Rothbury over and over while she stared at the ceiling.

However, the events and news of the day left her mind muddled and her muscles heavy and tired. And as she crawled into her bed and slid under the coverlet, her languorous body quickly succumbed to a deep, restful slumber. She had never felt so relaxed in her life.

Tick…tick…

With an annoyed groan, she flipped over to her back.

Tick…tick…tick-tack
…

Sighing loudly, she tossed back the covers and swung her legs to the side of the bed. Lifting heavy arms, she pulled on her robe.

The ticking sound came from the balcony doors.

Lighting a candle, she padded toward the sound, approaching the French doors cautiously. Maybe she should call for Nelly?

She jumped with a start as a tiny crumb of a pebble nicked the windowpane.

“What in the world?”

Someone outside and below her balcony whistled low.

Setting the candle down behind her, Charlotte pushed open the curtain, unlocked the handle, and pushed open the doors.

Pulling her night rail more snuggly under her chin, she stepped onto the small balcony and looked down into the kitchen garden below.

A tall, achingly handsome, tawny-haired scoundrel stood grinning up at her, one hand behind his back.

Rothbury.

It was in that very moment that she realized she loved him. With all her heart. He was her friend, recently her lover, and now and forever, her husband. It was all quite remarkable. She could only hope someday he might come to love her half as much. Physical love, he was an expert at, but real love? How could a man raised by a band of rapscallions know anything about love?

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“Looking for a way up.”

A sneaking suspicion nagged at her. “Have you been friendly with the whiskey bottle again?”

His laugh was low, sultry. “No. I’ve only had a splash of brandy.”

“What? No Shakespeare for me?”

His grin turned wry. “No. No Shakespeare. But I do have these.” From behind his back, he brought out a fist full of pink tulips, their blooms closed against the night.

She smiled, almost laughed even. It was difficult, but she forced a note of disapproval into her tone. “Those aren’t from my mother’s garden, are they? She’ll throttle you.”

“No,” he said, making a grand show of looking insulted. “I would never.”

“Sorry,” she said with a cringe.

“They’re from your neighbor’s garden, actually.”

She did laugh then, smothering it with the sleeve of her nightrail. “Come up before someone sees you.”

Putting the small bouquet in the band of his breeches, Rothbury began to scale the maple tree, which was actually a clump of four smaller maples sharing the same main trunk, next to her balcony.

The upper branches shuddered and the leaves shook as he climbed up. And then silence.

Dear Lord, had he fallen? She hadn’t heard anything.

A second later, Rothbury’s hands grasped the banister. Charlotte offered him a hand, but he declined, swinging his long legs over in one quick move.

As he stood before her, she just couldn’t fathom that this was now her husband. But what 
was
 he doing here?

“What are you doing here?” she asked, taking the flowers from him. Some of their petals had fallen off from the bumpy climb. “I mean, I’m happy to see you, but why aren’t you home?”

“Wherever my wife sleeps is my home.”

“You can’t sleep here,” she said gently, stepping back into her room. She yawned. “Do you know what time it is? It must be near dawn, I imagine.”

Yawning himself, he followed her in. “It’s half past four.”

Taking long, leisurely strides, he slowly walked the perimeter of her room, stopping every so often to pick up some bauble or knickknack and examine it.

Closing the curtains, she shut the French doors and locked the handle.

“I will not stay,” he said, picking up a small container on her dressing table. He unscrewed the lid and waved it under his nose. “Lemons.” He smiled. “Is this why you always smell like lemons?”

“I-I suppose.” She sat on a blue-striped bench at the foot of her bed. “It’s a concoction my mother and I made. It keeps freckles at bay. I didn’t know you noticed how I smelled.”

He turned, his steady gaze on her. “I wager there are a lot of things you didn’t know I noticed about you.”

A shiver shot through her. Gazing down to her lap, she realized she had forgotten about the tulips.

She rose. “Excuse me.” Walking to a row of bookshelves in the corner, she took her time in choosing the perfect vase from a selection of four. Finally, she decided upon a white vase with pink stripes, which would match pink tulips to perfection. Then she poured water into it from the pitcher on her washstand, and placed the flowers in their vase upon her writing desk near a window.

After admiring it for a spell, she turned…and found Rothbury sound asleep on her bed.

Maybe he was faking?

She crept closer.

His chest rose and fell evenly, his head turned into the softness of her pillow that, up until his arrival, she had been enjoying as well.

He looked…younger. All traces of his cynical smile had vanished. He also looked…comfortable and warm. She yawned.

She supposed it wouldn’t hurt if she were to curl up beside him for just a little while.

Feigning sleep, Rothbury barely moved when he felt Charlotte climb into bed with him.

He kept his breathing slow and steady, which was a remarkable feat considering his senses came alive whenever she walked into a room, let alone rested her fair head on his chest, yawned into his shirt, and snuggled against his side.

Her body heat radiated alongside him. She smelled simply wonderful. Lightly like lemons and…he inhaled deeply…jasmine.

A soft moan came from her, not unlike the sounds she had made in his carriage not more than two hours ago. She had been exquisite. He felt so undeserving of her and yet yearned to hear the words tumble from her lips. How absurdly happy he’d be even if for the whole of one day she could look at him the way she looked at Tristan.

For so damn long he had taken the role of a seducer, a manipulator. A role he fell easily into under the old earl’s guidance—though “guidance” didn’t quite fit his less-than-noble father.

But the lifestyle that was so much a part of his father’s and his father’s brothers’ lives had no place in Rothbury’s heart.

When he was a boy, he would rather have hunted, ridden, been of help on the horse farm, gone fishing, or even played card games with his grandmother (unsurprisingly, she was a horrid cheat) than be anywhere near his bawdy, drunk, and sometimes violent father.

In fact, should Rothbury have shown, either with his words or with his facial expressions, that he was unhappy spending time with his father, that’s when the old earl would become especially violent. Perhaps that’s why Adam had become so accustomed to hiding his true feelings.

And the older he got, the more his mother pushed him away—assuming that it was inevitable that he’d join right in with the Faramond males’ manner of living. It was in his blood, so therefore he would be like them and all the Faramond men before him. Carousers, gamblers, debauchers; lazy, heartless spendthrifts.

Adam couldn’t fathom what had lured Josephine Aubry into the arms of a man like his father. Considerable charm, perhaps? Maybe it was an arranged marriage? He didn’t know, but then he’d never had the opportunity to ask.

Charlotte stirred beside him.

Opening one eye a slit, he peeked at her slumbering form. She looked exactly like he had imagined she would, down to the white cotton night rail.

No. He was wrong. She was even more beautiful than he could have ever imagined.

He smiled, sure she was sleeping deeply now. Part of him wanted to kiss her, part of him couldn’t wait until he could make love to her again, and still part of him was content to simply rest here with his wife.

His wife.

There were so many things he wanted to tell her. And he would, eventually, in his own time, but right now as she cuddled so trustingly up to his side, he allowed himself to admit everything.

In low tones so as not to wake her, he spoke, in his mother’s language, of all the things he wouldn’t say if she understood. He wasn’t ready to bare his heart, not when he wasn’t sure if her affections still resided with his friend.