Page 13 of Joy to the Earl

“You’ll have to eventually. A bed would be warmer and more comfortable, we need food, and how can I taste you between your legs from this angle?”

“You want to do that?”

His thumb nudged her still-throbbing clitoris, making her gasp. “So bad,” Jack said hoarsely into her ear. “Just put my tongue in you and lick up all your juices. The scent of you is delicious, and I can’t believe how soft and slick and hot your cunt is.”

Vicious arousal surged through Rosalind’s entire body at his blunt, raw speech. Not overused or pretty words coated in practiced charm or sly deceit, but words she’d never known she wanted or needed until he whispered them to her. She sat back, about ready to push him down, tear off his breeches, and ride that huge erection prodding her thigh until they were both too exhausted to move. Perhaps she really could be a wicked widow.

“My cunt?” she said, feigning shock.

Jack’s cheeks went scarlet, and his whole face fell. “Forgive me. I mean…er…that was all wrong. Sorry. I don’t know what else to call…I read it…hell—”

“Stop, I’m just teasing,” she said with a laugh. Then she leaned forward again and nipped the side of his neck, hard enough to leave a mark. “I love it when you talk to me like that. It makes me even wetter. Can you feel with your finger and hand how soaked I am, only for you?”

He groaned, his pulse rapid. “Truly? For me?”

Just three words, and yet her heart clenched. He sounded so unsure. So hopeful. As if they were foreign to him, as if no woman had ever been perched on his lap, desperate for his embraces and reassurance after the kind of orgasm that stripped to the bone and left one feeling terribly vulnerable and exposed.

Sliding one hand down his chest, she went under the hem of his shirt and flattened her palm against the sculpted muscle of his abdomen, brushing the coarser hair trailing down toward his cock.

“Only for you,” Rosalind repeated, as abruptly the most unexpected thought in the world popped into her mind. One that refused to remain unsaid. “Jack, can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” said Jack as he lifted a stray lock of hair with his free hand and twirled it around his finger. “I have no secrets. At least none that I remember.”

“Please don’t be angry with me but…you have been intimate with a lady before, correct? Back in your village? I mean, I know you’ve spoken about your leg and eyes and not going out very much, but surely there were women who saw your hard body and handsome face and lured you into their bedchamber for some stolen hours of pleasure?”

He froze. No incredulous laugh or snort or stinging retort left his lips, just a fierce tension that almost turned his entire body to stone.

“Naturally I have,” he said eventually, in a flat tone. “Lots. In the village, and when I went across to Whitby to trade my woodwork with the merchants and fishermen. One of the many benefits of a seaside port, obliging lasses who understand the desires of unwed men.”

“I…I don’t believe you. I think you might be a delicious, wonderful man who happens to be a virgin because all the ladies around him were horrid featherbrained twits.”

Jack laughed, but it wasn’t a sound of amusement. “I’m twenty-eight years old, Rosalind. Surely you’re not thinking I couldn’t find at least one Yorkshire woman to fuck me in all that time? Perhaps not a wife or mistress, but coin can buy almost anything, and there are plenty of pretty lasses just trying to make a living.”

“Look me in the eye and say that.”

“Fine,” he replied in a brittle tone, his gaze resting on a point just over her shoulder, and his cheeks bright red. “I’m positively legendary in Whitby. Unfortunately I couldn’t travel there very often.”

“You are a virgin,” she breathed in stunned amazement. “Oh my.”

“I bloody well am not,” he snarled, quickly removing his hand from between her legs and wiping it on a corner of his linen shirt before getting to his feet. “You’d better get dressed. I don’t want you to catch a chill after everything.”

Snatching up her chemise, Rosalind pulled it over her head, then reached for her stays. “Lace these for me, please?”

His nod was brusque, but his hands were gentle as he threaded the silken cords through the eyes and tugged them out in a crisscross pattern. “How is that? I regret my calling is not a lady’s maid.”

“Fine,” said Rosalind, and because she always had a spark of the devil in her, as Papa had said, she glanced over her shoulder at Jack. “Tell me a name, then. The name of the most recent lover you had.”

“Rosalind, Lady Nelson.”

“Don’t be obtuse.”

“Very well,” he said slowly, an extra-firm pull on her laces letting her know exactly what he thought of the conversation, but she couldn’t stop herself asking. “Marianne. Lovely lass…very pretty and sings like a nightingale. There, are you happy now?”

Well. That served her right for nagging. Now she wanted to both sink beneath the floorboards, and scratch the eyes out of some poor Yorkshire girl just because she had excellent taste. “Delighted,” Rosalind gritted out, as she righted her gown and allowed him to assist with the buttons. “We should go back to the house for luncheon now.”

“I’ll follow you in shortly after I’ve swept up.”

“You don’t have to do that. We have a stable boy who comes over from the village three times a week no matter what the weather.”