Desired by a Lord (Regency Unlaced 5) (8 page)

The truth of the matter was, everything about this woman aroused him.

She was not as beautiful as many of the women he had bedded in the past. Her contrariness in arguing with him on almost every subject was also at odds with the obliging eagerness of those other women. Her determination to keep the mystery of her past to herself was decidedly irritating.

But her conversation was not only interesting but stimulating.

Those womanly curves even more so.

The huskiness of her laugh sent pleasure rushing straight to his cock.

Xander could not remember the last time he had wanted a woman as much as he wanted Emily. If he ever had…

His lips continued to explore the silk of her skin as his hands moved beneath her gown and then forward until they cupped her chemise-covered breasts. So soft and yielding, at the same time allowing him to feel the hard and turgid nipples pressing against his palms.

Further indication, despite her earlier protests, that Emily was as aroused as he was.

She gave a soft whimper as Xander took those protruding nipples between a finger and thumb, rolling that swollen flesh before squeezing gently.

Her head fell back against his shoulder, arching her spine, and lifting and pushing the fullness of her breasts more firmly into the caress of Xander’s hands.

Her groans grew deeper still as Xander continued to pull and squeeze her nipples, lengthening those engorged nubbins. Saliva flooded Xander’s mouth in anticipation of sucking on those ripe and swollen berries.

Emily made a sound of protest as Xander removed his hands from her breasts and then from her gown altogether. There had been something…erotic, in having those disembodied hands and lips caressing and tasting her body. Almost as if she were alone again, as she had been last night, giving herself pleasure.

That protest turned to a gasp of surprise as her gown was pushed down the length of her arms and allowed to fall to her waist. The straps of her chemise quickly followed, exposing the heat of her breasts to the cooler air.

Emily glanced down self-consciously at her breasts now spilling over the top of her corset. She had never seen her nipples so red and swollen, and surely they were grown to twice their normal size and length?

She glanced up uncertainly at Whitney as he moved from the back of the chair to stand in front of her, leaving her in no doubt as to whom those disembodied hands and lips belonged. He gently nudged her legs apart, pushing the skirt of her gown up to her thighs as he knelt between them. Emily could only watch in fascination as he held her gaze with his, then leaned forward to slowly rasp the moistness of his tongue across one of those protruding nipples.

Pleasure
.

He continued to hold her gaze as he rasped that moist tongue over her other nipple.

More pleasure
.

Hot waves of it, flooding from her breasts down to between her parted thighs in a hot gush of fluid that moistened her swollen nether lips.

She cried out with the intensity of that pleasure as she watched Whitney’s parted lips take the whole of her nipple into his mouth and begin to suckle. Softly at first, and then harder, deeper. His other hand captured its twin, rolling and squeezing the turgid and aroused flesh.

Emily could no longer look at him, her eyelids fluttering closed as she surrendered completely to that pleasure.

She gave a quiver of excitement as she felt Whitney’s other hand traveling the length of her calf, over her knee, along the length of her inner thigh, before his fingers parted and then entered the slit in her drawers. Those fingers sought out, found, and then caressed and stroked her throbbing nubbin.

Emily had imagined it was Whitney last night when she touched and caressed herself to completion. Had longed for those same caresses from him.

From Xander.

She could no longer think of him as Whitney. Any more than he was any longer those disembodied lips and hands.

It was Xander who knelt before her. One of her nipples was being suckled into the heat of Xander’s mouth, the other squeezed and caressed by Xander’s fingers and thumb. Xander’s other hand was between her thighs, touching her intimately, stroking and then gently pumping the erect nubbin nestled amid the dampness of her curls.

The pleasure was unimaginable.

Immeasurable.

Overwhelming.

Building higher, and then higher still.

Emily began to tremble and quake from the intensity of pleasure that held her firmly in its grip, her hips undulating up and into those caresses.

She gasped, her eyes closing again, as Xander’s fingers now stroked and swirled about the entrance of her channel, crying out as she felt one of those long fingers breach and slowly slide inside the contracting walls of her sheath. That cry became a loud and ecstatic moan as that first finger was joined by a second, stretching her as the soft pad of his thumb now pressed against the throbbing and exposed nubbin above. Moving to the same rhythm as he suckled and bit her nipples, and his fingers thrust in and out of her grasping channel.

“Come for me, Emily,” Xander encouraged gruffly, eyes navy blue as he looked at her.

Did he mean that blinding pleasure she had experienced last night? Was that called
coming
—

Those thrusting fingers curled inside her, stroking some hitherto unknown cluster of nerve endings and causing the pleasure to rush and then explode inside her. Fiercer, stronger than the release she had experienced the previous night, her juices flowing copiously over Xander’s fingers, the walls of her channel contracted about them.

Xander watched Emily in the throes of her release, her head thrown back, lids closed, lips slightly parted, throat arched. Her breasts were thrust forward over her corset, nipples red and swollen from the ministrations of his lips, tongue, and teeth.

He continued to look at her as he lifted his other hand, squeezing and pinching one elongated nipple and then the other, prolonging her release as her pussy grasped and squeezed his fingers. He could feel the hot gush of her juices coating his digits as they continued to press that knot of nerves deep inside her.

“No more, Xander. Please, no more,” she finally groaned weakly, having slumped down in the chair, eyes dark, her cheeks flushed.

His cock strained against his pantaloons as he gently withdrew his fingers before placing both hands on her thighs and slowly pushing her gown up even farther to fully reveal her white drawers. The slit up the middle gaped open from the invasion of his fingers, revealing the dampness of her auburn curls. Her nether lips were plump and red, and slick with her juices. The fully exposed nubbin above still pulsed from her orgasm.

Xander licked his lips. “I have to taste you.”

“I do not— Oh God…!”

Xander felt intoxicated by her aroma as he ran his tongue along the seam of her pussy, licking up all the sweet-tasting juices before turning his attention to the nubbin above, moistening and stroking that hard nub until it once again stood as erect and throbbing as his cock.

“Xander…?” Her cry was only half in protest, and she fell silent again, hands tightly gripping the arms of the chair as her hips rose and fell to meet the strokes of his tongue against that hardened and sensitized bud.

He slid his fingers inside her pussy again, two and then three, pumping them inside her while his tongue lashed that pulsing bud. The nubbin swelled against his tongue seconds before he felt, and then tasted, her second release.

Which was the moment Xander realized Emily was sobbing. Deep, racking sobs that shook her whole body, the tears streaming down her cheeks.

He frowned his concern as he sat back on his heels. “Did I hurt you?”

She gave a wordless shake of her head. But the tears continuing to fall down her cheeks indicated otherwise, as did her white-knuckled grip on the chair.

Xander pulled her gown down her thighs before rising to his feet. “Please believe I meant only to give you pleasure.”

“You did not hurt me.” She pulled her chemise and the top of her gown back into place between sobs. “It is only… I had not realized…” She buried her face in her hands.

Xander was at a loss to understand the reason for her tears. If he had not hurt her, and Emily claimed he had not, then what… “This is the first time you have experienced physical pleasure,” he realized with a frown.

“Yes! No! Well…not quite.” Heat now suffused her cheeks with color.

He studied her closely, noting that color, the way she chewed on her bottom lip, and the manner in which her gaze avoided meeting his. “You have given yourself physical pleasure in the past,” he finally guessed.

“Only the once,” she quickly defended. “Last night. I did not know… I had no idea before…”

“Before I kissed and aroused you, and you felt compelled to touch yourself to find some relief for the aches and needs of your body?”

The color blazed even more hotly in her cheeks at his frankness. “Yes. But this…this was so much more…intense, even than…than that.”

Xander did not know what to say in answer to Emily’s admission.

He felt angry with whoever or whatever had taught her
maintaining control is everything
. It was an impossibility to remain completely in control and still take full enjoyment from lovemaking.

He knew a deeper anger with the man who had married her but not cared enough for her, in the five years of their marriage, to help her overcome her inhibitions. To secure his young wife’s satisfaction, as well as his own.

Marsden was not unique in that selfishness, of course. Many men in Society believed a lady must always remain a lady, even in bed. Obviously, Marsden was one of that ilk.

Was it any wonder Emily had responded so deeply to Xander’s kisses and caresses, and that once in the privacy of her bedchamber, she had felt compelled to give herself the pleasure no man had ever bothered to gift her with?

His expression softened. “Did you enjoy it?”

She smiled tremulously. “Very much.”

“There is more, you know.”

She swallowed. “I had a feeling there might be.”

Xander nodded. “Would you like to explore further during your stay here?”

Would she?

Emily’s immediate answer was
yes
.
Oh God, yes.

Her second and cautionary one was
is it possible to find sexual gratification with someone without falling in love with them?
Because she could not allow herself to fall in love with Xander. He was a lord, a member of the
ton
,
who socialized with dukes and marquises. A world in which she would never be welcome.

But she did not need to be
in
Xander’s world to enjoy his lovemaking.

Only for the duration of her stay here at Whitney Park, of course.

The temptation to say yes was overwhelming.

Chapter 9

“A picnic luncheon?” Emily repeated Xander’s suggestion uncertainly late the following morning. “Outside?”

His lips twitched. “That is where one usually enjoys a picnic. We should make the most of this continued hot weather.”

She glanced out the window. There was no doubting it was an unseasonably warm and sunny day. Perhaps the last of such clement days before the winter set in.

She was not concerned with the weather. It was the look of wicked intent in Xander’s gleaming blue eyes that was making her nervous.

She had woken alone in her bedchamber this morning, absolutely sure she must have imagined the events of last night. That she could not really have allowed Xander to make love to her so shamelessly in the study. That he had not really suggested, and she had accepted, she become his mistress for the time of her stay here. That the two of them would explore sexual pleasure together in more depth.

She had been disabused of that certainty the moment she closed the study door behind her this morning, dressed and prepared for working on the farming journals, and instead been swept up into Xander’s arms and very thoroughly kissed.

As if he was fully aware of her thoughts, uncertainty and denial, and intended to stake his claim at the earliest opportunity.

Emily had felt thoroughly claimed by the time that heated kiss came to an end, Xander having removed the pins from her hair at some point, those red tresses cascading down her back. He had refused to allow her to pin them back in so severe a style too, by pocketing half her hairpins so that she could only secure the curls upon her crown, leaving several tendrils loose at her temples and nape.

She had no idea how she had struggled through the rest of the morning. Although she had very much enjoyed having Xander show her round his precious library. There were so many rare and wonderful books there, Emily’s fingers had itched to be allowed to touch them.

Returning to the study and attempting to catalog and alphabetize books on farming, with Xander once again seated behind his desk and watching every move she made, had been less calming.

He looked so haughty and aristocratically handsome in his dark blue superfine and fine white linen, his dark hair fashionably disheveled, it was difficult for Emily to concentrate on anything but his overwhelming presence.

The morning’s work—torture?—finally over, he was now suggesting the two of them should share a picnic luncheon together. That wicked glint in his eyes indicated it would not consist of the two of them sitting innocently together on a blanket beneath one of the huge oak trees in the garden.

Her gaze shyly met his as she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I would very much enjoy sharing a picnic with you. Thank you.”

Xander’s lips twitched again at the formal manner in which Emily accepted his invitation. He had no intention of allowing that formality to continue once they were alone together in the garden.

Yesterday evening had been a revelation, a discovery of the sensuality that ran deep within Emily. He had gone to bed with the taste of her juices upon his lips, and, more importantly, her agreement to allow him to explore the depths of her sensuality further. Those things had been enough for him to ignore the throbbing need of his cock as he lay alone in his bed, knowing that his release would be all the more pleasurable when given to him by Emily.