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“Yes, I have already. But perhaps you would wish to experience oral pleasuring as well?”
“I don’t.”
“Well, I wish it,” he said, steering her firmly toward the bed. He pushed her back, pinning her hands over her head. Her curls lay spread out upon his pillow. Ah, she was lovely. He thought it fifty times a day.
“Leave your hands here,” he said, staring at her very intently. “Do not move them or I shall go for the birch and we’ll begin our entire evening’s activities over again from the start. Would you like that?”
She shook her head violently.
“I didn’t think so.” Slowly, he released her hands. She shivered atop his thick linen counterpane as he knelt over her to give her a kiss. When her shivers turned to shudders, he drew away.
“Why are you so afraid?” he asked. “I promise this won’t hurt.”
“But what are you going to do to me?”
“Copulate with you. Orally. Perhaps that sounds too clinical. I am going to kiss and caress your quim and make you feel so good that your hips buck against my mouth.”
“But you...you can’t,” she said, clearly scandalized.
“Can’t I?” He arrested her hands before they could push him away, and placed them back over her head.
She swallowed hard, resisting just a little. “I don’t think it’s at all proper, what you intend to do.”
He snorted under his breath. “Nothing proper is any fun. I assure you this is wildly improper, and I shall enjoy every moment of it. So will you.”
He began at her shoulders, kissing, licking, tasting, following the alluring path of her curves. With infinite patience he worked his way down to her full, feminine bosom. He drank in her sighs and the soft catches of breath as he toyed with her nipples and the delicate undersides of her breasts. He used his tongue to delineate the majesty of her hips, and then kissed lower as she pleaded no, no, no.
He thought to himself, yes, yes, yes. He held her gaze as he spread her legs wider with gentle but inexorable pressure, then he kissed the inside of each trembling thigh. Her feminine scent excited him beyond measure. He’d memorized every note of it by now, knew it as well as he knew his own face. He had made it his business to learn the sophisticated pleasuring of women over countless experiences of his youth, and now Aurelia would benefit...if only she would relax. When she tried to close her legs, he pinned them open with his shoulders, then slid his arms beneath her hips to draw her closer to his mouth.
The silly woman actually braced as he pressed his lips to her wet, silken folds—but he knew how to deal with resistance in this quarter. He swirled his tongue around her silken center, teasing and exploring until he found the thrusting bit of flesh that made her moan. He worried the nubbin between his teeth and paid it devoted attention. He opened her with his fingers, probing inside her with infinite patience when she whined and pulled away.
This didn’t hurt her. It only hurt her sensibilities, her prim self-identification. “Let go,” he whispered. “Think only of pleasure, and your animal needs.”
“I’m not an animal,” she said.
Yes, he knew that. Not a mouse or a grasshopper, but a woman overwrought with need. He would do this for an hour if that’s what it took to fight through her defenses and reduce her to the delectably wanton creature he wished her to be.
But in the end, it took much less time. He didn’t scold her when her hands left their ordered place above her head and curled into his hair, and pulled it in an urgent signal of need. He hummed against her heated flesh, spreading her wider, and then lapped delicately at her quim. He learned what made her shudder and what made her groan, and what made her buck against his mouth as he’d told her she would do.
“Please, please,” she begged. “Please.”
“Yes,” was his only reply. Yes, yes, yes. When he felt her come off, he slipped his fingers deep inside her to feel her inner muscles contract. He was hard again, hard as steel, hard as granite, and he might have pushed his cock inside instead, but he decided not to. This had been about her pleasure, not his. This had been a lesson in gratitude for them both.
Her fingers loosened in his hair, coming to rest weakly on his shoulders. He kissed back up her belly to the enticing pillow of her breasts, then laid his head there to listen to her wildly beating heart. He lay back and pulled her close, enfolding her in his arms so her head ended up on his shoulder. It was a comfortably pleasing weight.
“Sleep here tonight,” he said, nuzzling her shoulder. “There’s plenty of room here for the both of us.”
She didn’t answer for long moments, and he realized his exhausted wife had fallen fast asleep.
Chapter Eleven: Transcendent
Aurelia loved the library at Somerton. Her husband had outfitted a long, soaring room filled with books and huge leather chairs that somehow managed to feel cozy. Thick, deep brown carpets softened the floors. Three great branches of candles lit the space, since dinner had come and gone, and the day’s light with it. Townsend sat near the fireplace in a great wingback chair, leafing through some of the London papers as he sipped his port.
Aurelia had staked out a corner of his grand desk for her writing materials and correspondence, and worked now on a letter to her parents. She was careful not to disturb his papers, as she had come to know him as a fastidious landowner who took great care in all his interests.
She understood now that she was one of his interests, and that he was doggedly developing her into what he would like, while looking after her with close supervision. As day followed day, she noticed the little things he did to try to make her happy, even as he demanded his own happiness by requiring her to do all manner of licentious things.
Each day, honestly, she minded it a little less.
Oh, she didn’t enjoy the spankings. Not the pain part of them, anyway. But there was something in the way he touched her and smiled at her afterward that made the pain and embarrassment seem worth it. His dark looks, which used to repel her, came to seem rather handsome and dashing. His smiles, which used to terrify her, now set up a clamor in her heart. Sometimes she even wondered if he loved her.
But it could not be so. They’d been married less than a month, and they were so very different in manner and temperament. But if love was caring for someone and making them smile ten times a day... She stared across the room at her husband, at his fine long legs, at his strong shoulders, at the faint frown lines between his brows as he concentrated on his papers and occasionally turned a page. His lips arrested her attention, pursed as they were. She noticed them relax into a faint smile, and then realized he was looking back at her.
She glanced quickly down at her letter, as if she hadn’t been staring at him, but her pen had long since been put down on the table. She pasted on a thoughtful look as if she had only been considering what to write.
“How is your letter coming?” her husband asked. She could hear the teasing beneath his tone.
“I am nearly finished.” She looked down at the rather scattered niceties she’d composed so far.
“I would like to read it before you post it, as usual.”
She lost herself a moment in the da
rk depths of his gaze. “If you wish. But, as usual, I have not written anything negative about you.”
His smiled widened. “A difficult task indeed.”
She laughed at his teasing expression. Had she ever laughed so much in her life? She was coming to appreciate his dry, often ridiculous humor and enjoy his many jokes.
“Well, there are certain matters I cannot discuss with them,” she said, attempting her own joke. “And those would be the matters where I could righteously complain of your faults.”
He rewarded her with a great burst of mirth. The sound rang from the high ceilings and she grinned so wide she covered her mouth in a wave of shyness. She didn’t know if he really found her jokes funny, or only laughed at them because she’d grown brave enough to make the clumsy attempts.
He looked back at his papers and she bent back over her letter, checking it to be sure she hadn’t said anything remiss about Lord Townsend. From the start he had forbidden her to send any letters without his permission, and without them being read first by him. She supposed it was because she had threatened to tell her father and brother what a monster he was, but she’d never do that now.
After composing a few more lines of daughterly news and affection, Aurelia put the last flourishing touches to her signature, then sanded the paper dry.
He looked up as she approached him with the letter, and opened his arms.
She allowed herself to be drawn into his lap. They used to spend this time after dinner in their separate places, in entirely different areas of the house. She used to hide away from him like the mouse everyone assumed her to be, but she enjoyed this better, being close to him. She leaned back against his chest and nestled her head beneath his chin. He assisted in arranging her skirts, murmuring in a gentlemanly fashion about the prettiness of her gown, and then held up the letter before him.
