rumpled and tossed about, and a pillow lay on the floor near a chintz armchair, but Vivi was not in the room. The door leading out to her portico was cracked open. Perhaps she had stepped outside for a bit of air. Well, that gave him yet another interesting manner in which he could surprise her.
Tiptoeing across the floor so as not to alert her to his presence, Tucker carefully made his way to the cracked doorway.
Then he stopped cold. His pulse roared to life, pounding through his veins faster than he had ever experienced before.
The unmistakable sounds of a couple in the midst of a passionate encounter came into the room. He’d be damned if anyone was going to make a cuckold of him. But who here would, other than perhaps Holbrook? He’d left the earl down in the undercroft.
Whoever the bastard was, Tucker would rip him limb from limb.
Tucker peeked through the crack in the doorway, searching for Vivian. Finally, he found her, tucked neatly behind a potted fern. His jaw dropped open when he saw her though-she had one hand on her breast while the other had her nightrail lifted to her waist as she desperately frigged away at her mound. Her cheeks looked flushed in the moonlight and her breaths came heavy and shallow, but there was no one with her.
Instantly, Tucker’s rod was hard as granite from the view before him. He adjusted his breeches. Then he adjusted his positioning so he could determine where the couple in heat might be. There were most decidedly male grunts mixed in with the feminine sounds.
Finally, he spotted them. Lipscombe and his wife were out on their portico, naked as jaybirds, straight in the line of Vivi’s eyes. Tucker stood there for several long moments, thunderstruck. His sweet, little wife, still so very innocent and shy in their lovemaking, was covertly spying on a peer as he did an upright with his lady.
He’d never have imagined it of her. Perhaps his hopes for this fortnight were not in vain.
Lipscombe increased the pace of his thrusts and Vivi’s hand kept time with him. When the viscount pinched his wife’s teats, Vivi followed suit with her own breasts.
Tucker couldn’t take just watching any more. He undid the flap of his breeches and pulled out his painfully hard shaft, then stroked himself while he watched the scandalous scene before him.
Lady Lipscombe let out a scream of pleasure. Moments later, her husband followed her into bliss with his own shout of release. Vivi had yet to find hers, however. When the viscount carried his little wife back into their suite, Tucker’s wife still stood on the portico, frenziedly rubbing against her nubbin with a tortured look on her face.
Could she not achieve her petite mort on her own? Then again, now that Tucker thought about it, he wasn’t entirely certain she’d ever experienced such pleasure. Not really. She always smiled afterward and told him how lovely it had been, but was she ever in rapture from his touches? Not that he could recall. This was a lapse he’d have to rectify. Soon. Not to mention often.
Yet here, standing out in the open air where anyone might chance upon her from down in the gardens or standing out on their own porticos, she was attempting to bring herself to a pleasure she’d never known before. Tucker stood back and watched, careful not to disturb her studied efforts as he wanked his yard.
Then finally, her breath came out in wild little gusts and soft, high-pitched sounds came from her throat. Vivi’s eyes rolled back in her head and she closed them, then leaned back against the wall as her hands came to rest by her sides.
Magnificent. Tucker couldn’t wait to see her spend like that when he’d brought her to it.
He wouldn’t have to wait long.
THREE
Goodness. How had she been married to Tucker for as long as she had been without realizing such sensations were possible? Her husband must not be as experienced in the art of intimacy as Lord Lipscombe.
Too bad for Vivi. Oh, what she wouldn’t give for a night with a man who could teach her such manners of release.
Blast, she shouldn’t allow herself to think like that. She loved Tucker. Dearly. And she wouldn’t ever want another man’s touch. Vivi closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, trying to regain her composure. In a moment, she’d go back inside. Now that she’d found some relief for the ache in her sex, perhaps she’d be able to sleep.
At least she would if the Lipscombes had finished with their nighttime adventures.
Something hot grabbed her hand and Vivi’s eyes flew open. Tucker? Somehow, she contained her cry of surprise. Heat raced to her face. Had he been watching her? Had he seen her unthinkable behavior?
He pressed a finger from his other hand to her lips. “Shh, sweetheart.” Vivi nodded her agreement and he drew her fingers to his lips, drawing them inside his mouth.
Gracious heavens, those fingers had just been inside her sex, a place where nothing but his member had been before. He licked and suckled, with each draw acting as a pull to her core. Somehow, a new flood coated her private area, reaching to her curls. She couldn’t take her eyes from him if she tried.
Not that she tried.
Then he leaned against her, pressing her back against the wall. Tucker’s hot staff pressed hard into her belly. The flap of his breeches was down, so nothing stood between them but her paper-thin nightrail. He leaned his head down until his steamy breath tickled over her ear. “Such sweetness from your garden,” he murmured. “I’ll have to drink from the source tonight.”
Vivi shivered at his words, and her heart took up an unnatural rhythm. Could he do that?
Did she want him to?
Before she could make up her mind, Tucker took hold of her hands and pulled her back inside her chamber, shutting the door behind him. When the darkness of the room engulfed them, he cupped her face and brought her lips up to meet his. This was far from his usual sweet and tender kiss. It was hard and hot, and his tongue sought entrance to her mouth almost immediately. Vivi stood on her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around his neck to steady herself from the shock of his behavior.
As his tongue ravished her mouth, Tucker moved his hands down her arms, over her back, and down to squeeze her bottom. He pressed her closer against him, settling her against the saddle of his hips and the pulsating heat of his loins. Then the moist warmth of his mouth moved down her neck, trailing a path of open- mouthed kisses over her collarbone and breasts. He nipped ever-so-gently against the side of her breast through her thin nightrail and Vivi jumped with a thrill.
Never before had she imagined Tucker, her gentle lover, would bite her. Never before had she imagined she would want him to.
“ You enjoyed that display, did you?” he growled, picking her up and carrying her to the large four-poster bed. Tucker parted her legs with his knee when he came down over her. “You liked watching him fuck his wife?”
Heat burned her cheeks, but not as much heat as pooled at the apex of her thighs. But what use was there in denying it? “Yes,” Vivi said on a shaky breath.
Pulling the nightrail over her head, Tucker dragged the palms of his hands over her swollen, aching nipples and she cried out.
“ I watched you touching yourself. Pinching here.” He closed his lips over one painfully sensitive nub and scratched it with his teeth, and Vivi arched her back into him while biting down on her lower lip. “And pulling here.” His tongue shot out and wet her other teat, then he blew on it with cool air, and she moaned-one of those deep, throaty moans from next door she’d been so intrigued by in the first place. “And rubbing hard down here.”
Tucker moved down her body. Without even knowing what she was doing, she squirmed away from the intimate touch she knew was coming. But he took hold of her hips and held her in place, then delved his tongue where no tongue had gone before. It was the most exquisite sensation Vivi had ever known. He swirled and sucked, nipped and prodded, licked and scraped-and she, all the while, could do nothing but writhe and grasp and moan.
