Much Ado About You

Page 61

Lucius put her hand down and strolled over to her sister and Draven. Tess leaned her head back against the wall and tried to think clearly. Without seeming to lift a finger, her husband was able to turn her—to entice her—
Suddenly she realized that Imogen was calling a cheerful good-bye, and Draven was ushering his wife out of the box, and Lucius was closing the door behind them. And locking it.
“You can’t!” she whispered frantically. “You mustn’t even think such a thing!”
“Think what?” Lucius said. His eyes were lit with laughter as he strolled toward her. As she watched, he began deliberately pulling off his right glove, one finger at a time. She watched in fascinated horror as he tossed it onto the chair. It was followed by his left glove.
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” Tess said with a gasp. But she knew perfectly well what he was doing. Her sensible, expressionless husband was removing his greatcoat, and there was an expression on his face that even a virgin wouldn’t have mistaken. Her knees were trembling.
“This box is open,” she pointed out. “Open to the public!”
“The windows look directly onto the track,” he said agreeably. His voice had darkened to a timbre that she recognized. “The only people who might see us would have to be on the track itself.”
What sounded like a herd of elephants thundered by on that track. “There are many people out there!” she whispered. He was unbuttoning his waistcoat. As she watched, he slipped free one button, and another, and another.
“Jockeys,” he said. “Jockeys have better things to do than peer into windows. You wanted me to be more impetuous,” he reminded her.
“I didn’t mean this!” she gasped.
The waistcoat flew to the side in a flash of dark green. Despite herself, Tess’s heart was beginning to pound.
A referee trotted past. He didn’t look in their direction, but his striped shirt and small cap were as close to her as—“Don’t you dare take your shirt off!” she cried.
Lucius started walking toward her now, his eyes gleaming. Tess felt like sinking back against the wall like a fainting heroine in a melodrama, but she forced herself to give him a minatory frown instead. “Anyone on a horse can see directly into this room,” she pointed out.
“Mmmmm,” he said, in an extremely unsatisfactory fashion. He tossed his hat onto the couch. Then all of a sudden, he was just in front of her, so close that his body breathed warmth against her and she suddenly smelled a spicy, out-of-door smell that was his alone. Her husband’s.
“Oh, Lucius,” she whispered, looking up at him. She knew her heart was in her eyes.
“Tess,” he growled back. She was standing in the corner, his large body blocking her from anyone’s view.
“They can’t see you here,” he said.
He was right. She could feel a smile forming on her lips, even as she tried to look stern and not—surely not—eager.
“That’s irrelevant,” she managed to say around the pounding in her throat. But he was pulling up her skirts
“I have—to—touch—you,” he said fiercely. “Do you hear me, Tess? I haven’t been able to—”
But that large hand thrust between her legs before she could formulate an answer, and then she did act like a fainting heroine, melting toward him with a gasp. But he was there, a strong arm cradling her against his chest, his fingers sliding into her curls, into her warmth, and then, when she opened her mouth to protest, his mouth closed over hers. He held her against him, captive in his arms.
For a moment she struggled, but his mouth was hot on hers and his hand…his hand moved fluidly, made the blood course through her body and his lips were persuasive on hers, tender, asking, begging…Abruptly Tess stopped struggling and curled against him, curled into his kiss.
He said something, a hoarse word that she couldn’t hear over the blood pounding in her ears. So he said it again: “Please…Tess?”
She gasped and looked at him, and the smile in her heart must have been in her eyes. Because his hands took up a different rhythm, stroking her more roughly now, and all she could do was cling to him, keeping her lips on his so that she couldn’t possibly say no, as she ought to do.
Lucius looked down at her, and the stray thought came into his mind that he was not doing his best to demonstrate to his wife that she was no more than a fixture in his life, to be enjoyed at appropriate times and in appropriate places.
But there was no time for that. Tess was panting, little urgent pants that made him long to sweep her over to York’s sofa and thrust into her warmth. But he couldn’t do that. Someone might see us, he told himself. Her nails were biting into his shoulder.
“We really shouldn’t do this,” she panted.
“We’re not doing anything,” he soothed, but his hand never stopped stroking her. “Tip up your face, Tess.” He was crooning it now, deep in his throat. “You’re mine, my wife, my Tess, my wife.”
He tucked her head against his shoulder and kissed her with all the possession in his soul, with all the deep sense of gladness and rightness that came over him every time he looked at her, every time he thought those words, my wife.
She was shuddering against him; he kissed her harder, let his hand take a deeper stroke. She shook and cried out something, her fingers clutching his shirt convulsively.
He would have said it again, but there wasn’t any need. She was his, she was his, and she was shuddering in his arms, and gulping air in the most endearing way he had ever seen. He clenched his teeth and held her against him, forcing away the desperate wish to rip open his trouser buttons, and—
This evening. That’s what matrimonial beds were for. Rational activity. This wasn’t rational.
She looked up at him, her eyes soft and unfocused, and her lips swollen from his kisses, and Lucius nearly threw rational thought to the winds. But instead he bent his head and kissed her gently, taking her cry into his heart. She slumped against him, as warm and boneless as a kitten. After a while, he said “Tess?”
“Hmmm,” she said dreamily.
“I should probably put my waistcoat back on.”
“Waistcoat,” she said, rubbing her cheek against his chest.
“Exactly.” He picked her up and put her on the couch, backing away quickly before he could give in to his baser urges. Particularly because Tess seemed to have thrown her scruples to the winds and was looking at him with an expression that invited him to join her.
He picked up his waistcoat and put it on, still looking at her, glorying, really, in the boneless way she lay against the back of the seat looking—looking—carnal. His wife. Desirous.
“Didn’t you—don’t you—” she said, her voice still as soft as melted butter.
“No!” he said sharply. He ran a hand through his hair. Miraculously, if you didn’t look into her eyes, Tess looked as ladylike as she had in the beginning. It was enough to drive a man to distraction, thinking—
He stopped thinking about it and unbolted the door instead. One never knew when Tess’s sister and her husband might return, although he’d given the bounder a thousand pounds and told him to put it on three races in a row. Maitland would undoubtedly have lost every penny.