Lady Eve's Indiscretion

She started to smile. He wanted to howl with impatience when he saw caution overtake the curving of her lips. Instead, he palmed her breast through the silk of the dressing gown.

“You’re feeling frisky,” Eve said, watching his hand on her person.

“I’m feeling married.” He levered up by virtue of a dedicated equestrian’s abdominal strength, and continued to fondle her while he reinitiated an openmouthed kiss.

Her control slipped a gratifying degree when Deene applied a gentle pressure to one nipple.

“Husband…” She breathed the word, infused it with a touch of surprise, and graced it with a hint of wonder. He repeated the caress, and she went still, as if her body were listening for the sensations a man intent on pleasuring his lady could create with just his thumb and first finger.

Before she could start thinking about it, Deene rolled with her, so he was above her and she was on her back beneath him.

“Are all husbands as inclined to move their wives about like so much dry goods?”

“Touch me the way I touched you, Evie. We’ll see who’s dry goods.”

She frowned but ran one palm down his chest. “This hair…” She ruffled it, which had Deene’s vitals ruffling as well. He didn’t push his erection any more snugly against her, but neither did he make any effort to disguise it.

“Is it to your liking, Lady Deene?”

“It’s…” She ran her nose through the dusting of hair on his chest, the oddest, most erotic, endearing touch Deene had ever withstood. “It’s peculiar. Soft, but… male. Manly. Even your chest smells good, Deene. I do approve of a fellow who takes his hygiene seriously.”

There followed a bit of torture, while Eve—apparently secure in the notion that marriages could not be consummated on the floor—made a scientific study of Deene’s chest. She listened to his heart. She tentatively, then more firmly, touched his nipples.

The sizzle of pleasure that set off in places low and reproductive had Deene clenching his jaw.

She sniffed at him, and while submitting to all these experiments and investigations, Deene subtly shifted himself above her, until his cock was nestled against the glorious damp heat that was his wife’s sex.

Damp. Thank a merciful God she was damp. Her body was ready for what came next, even if her courage was not. When Eve ran her tongue over Deene’s right nipple, he lowered himself more closely to her and got one arm around her shoulders.

“Evie?”

“Husband.” She blinked up at him. He saw the moment she realized how close their bodies were to joining. As she drew in a breath—no doubt to start another round of prevarications and peregrinations, Deene eased himself forward between her folds.

“Thank Almighty God in a rosy and joyous heaven, that would be me.” He pressed forward one inch, the distance between being a mendicant at the gates of marital bliss and a husband in possession of the key to domestic heaven.

“Lucas?”

He kissed her, a hot, lazy, inflammatory kiss to hide the pleasure and triumph coursing through his blood. “Hmm?”

While Eve fell silent, blinked some more, and lifted a hand only to let it fall beside her head, he eased forward the next blissful inch.

“We are not on the… bed.”

“We’ll get to the bed, Evie. Are you all right?”

God love the woman, she cocked her head as if to consider her answer. Deene started up a slow, shallow rhythm, easing his way to a fuller joining, listening intently for any sign that Eve’s bodily welcome was not as comfortable for her as he’d prayed it would be.

“I am… all right.”

“That is quite too bad.”

She tensed. “I beg your pardon?”

“All right will never suffice. We are consummating our vows. I would have you in transports. Move with me, Evie.”

“Move…?”

He slowed his rhythm more, until she created a sinuous counterpoint to the undulations of his hips, until he was plying her with such focus and purpose it was as if she were inside his body every bit as much as he was inside hers.

“Still all right, Evie?”

“Mmm.” She scooted a little, changing the angle to lock her ankles at the small of his back. The shift was slight and devastating.

“God in heaven, Wife…” His breathing grew harsh, and yet he held off. He did not want her in transports, he needed her in transports—and ecstasies and delights and entire floods of pleasure— before he could think of spending.

Her legs tightened around him, he felt her fingernails gripping his buttocks with a sweet, fierce sting.

And yet for a few more interminable moments, he held off.

“Evie… let go.”

Her breath came harsh against his throat as she started panting. “I can’t get my… I can’t…”

“You shall…” He anchored a hand under her derriere and held her steady for an onslaught of deep, measured thrusts that sent her over the edge. With her mouth open on his neck, he heard and felt the low, keening moan that slipped from her and felt the way her body seized around his cock in glorious, fisting spasms of gratification.

In the middle of it, as her passion was cresting audibly, she found his free hand, laced her fingers with his, and whispered his name.

He could not have held off at that moment to save his soul.

* * *

In the days following her wedding, Eve dwelled in an ever-expanding bubble of emotion characterized predominantly by the joy of one whose hopes and dreams have received not just a stay of execution, but a full, unconditional, royal pardon.

She was married—happily, joyously married—and not to some mincing, left-handed cipher, or a fortune hunter of dubious motives, but to a man whom she liked and esteemed greatly. She had chosen not just well, she had chosen wonderfully and wisely.

Better still, she’d chosen a man who showed her both affection and desire in abundance. That she’d been starving for both was a sobering realization, one that threw into high relief just how contorted she’d allowed her view of herself to become.

Of course she desired her husband—what sane woman would not want Lucas Denning in her bed?

Of course she enjoyed his company. He was charming, devoted, and open with her in a way she hadn’t expected but supposed characterized even her parents’ marriage behind closed doors.

The desire took her breath away, but the affection… Deene stole her heart with the pleasure he seemed to take in simply touching her and being in her company. They ate every meal together unless Deene was off in Town, meeting with his solicitors, and that was just the start of ways he found to share her company.

“You’ll come down to the stables when you’ve met with Mrs. Belt?”

Deene passed three juicy strawberries from his plate to hers. He’d had strawberries delivered to their rooms last night long after dark, and what he’d done with a mere, unprepossessing fruit… and that was before he’d started with the chocolate sauce.

Eve studied the treat on her plate and mentally reviewed what her husband had asked her. “I’ll be down as soon as we’ve established a schedule for the maids and footmen, worked out next week’s menus, arranged for the windows to be cleaned both inside and out, and—”

He put a finger to her lips. “And then you’ll come down to see us turn out your foal with his playmates for the first time.”

“Yes, Husband.” He did not understand that a household would not run itself, and having the maids clean the insides of the windows a month after the footmen cleaned the outsides meant the windows were never truly clean.