The Virgin Huntress (13 page)

“A circumstance I wish to rectify with all dispatch,” Hew said, sober faced.

“But that’s not what I ask,” she said. “I refer to the poetic ones. You know, like you quoted earlier. Are there others like that? Ones that speak of love?”

“Well, yes...” he said with hesitation. “I know of one other at least.” She noted the high color in his cheeks and at the tips of his ears.

“Might I hear it?”

His color deepened, and the pulse jumped in his neck. “’Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. In his shade, I took great delight and sat down, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.’”

“That’s lovely,” she said. “But I would best describe you as an oak, although oaks don’t have fruit, do they? Might I taste
you
?” she asked, and felt his member surge in her hand. “When you tasted me, it was truly rhapsodic,” she said. “Might a man also receive pleasure thusly?”

He exhaled a long hiss, a reaction that made her stomach flutter. “Immense pleasure...I am given to understand,” he said.

She digested this only for a moment. “Then would you like me to do so?”

“Dear God, what a question.”

***

Hew was incredulous. When he had thought to take a wife, he had hoped to find a woman who would do more than simply tolerate her conjugal duty, but
never
could he have conceived finding one who would embrace the notion of the marital bed, let alone in all its variations, with such fervor. Vesta’s sexual curiosity and boldness excited the hell out of him.

Hew couldn’t suppress his shudder when she circled her index finger around the sensitive head of his cock and then ran her thumb lightly over the surface. “Would you like that, Hew?” she asked again. “I truly wish to please you.”

Her decadent suggestion instantly hardened his bollocks into stone and sent his heart galloping madly in his chest. She regarded him with both hesitation and desire evident in her luminous, green-gold eyes.

“If it is truly your wish, Vesta, I think I would enjoy it excessively.”

She smiled back at him. Her pink tongue darted over her lips, and Hew’s stomach lurched. Although he desperately wanted to watch, Hew knew he couldn’t, for it would just be too much, the surfeit to his senses above and beyond what he could bear. When she lowered her head, he closed his eyes, marshaling all his defenses for her sensual onslaught.

He felt the soft brush of her lush lips and her warm breath caressing his bollocks as she worked her mouth from his base to tip with feathery kisses. The tentative flicks and delicate rasp of her tongue along his length fired a jolt of sensation that tore through his body. He groaned with rapt agony.

With her breast pillowed on his thigh, she kissed his crown and began probing more boldly with her tongue. He tangled his hands in her hair. He ached to feel her lips surround him, yet held back the almost overwhelming urge to prod her mouth.
Dear God, please.

The hot, wet heat that suddenly enveloped him was an answer to his prayer. She took him slowly into her mouth, and he thought he would expire on the spot. She caressed him with her slick, swirling tongue, while her hands stroked his staff. It was exquisite and utterly unbearable. The blood roared in his ears. His breathing became short. He knew he couldn’t hold back much longer. “Enough.” He moaned and withdrew from her mouth.

“But you didn’t—” she protested with a hurt look.

“No, thank God.” He exhaled on a ragged breath.

“Did I not please you?” she asked.

He reached for her then, pulling her against his chest, kissing her long and deep. “Indeed, you did. Immensely. I feared perhaps
too
much.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because men and women are designed differently. A woman may experience her release and still go on, whereas once a man has spent... I did not please you before in our lovemaking as I ought to have,” he finished ruefully.

“That’s not true!” Vesta cried. “It was beautiful!”

“But you did not find your release with me inside you.”

“Was I supposed to have?” she asked with a look of disappointment. “I’m so sorry, Hew. I didn’t know.”

“No, love.” He couldn’t help a chuckle. “It’s for
me
to apologize to
you
. In order to please you as I ought, I must be able to withhold my own release. Yet it is not at all an easy thing for me,” he explained, caressing her cheek. “But I sincerely hope to improve greatly with practice.”

“May we then?” She regarded him with pure devilment. “Practice?”

***

Held against him, Vesta noted Hew’s erection still reared imperious and unsatisfied between them, and she ached to receive it, to feel the slide of it deep inside her, the glorious sensation of being filled by him. The sights and sounds of his pleasure had not only filled her spirit with euphoria but had awakened her own desire with a ferocity.

“Are you not tender from before?” he asked.

“Not unbearably,” she said with another mischievous look. “In fact, I am quite certain I could tolerate much more.”

“Are you now?” His caresses moved to her bare bottom. She winced. “You are still tender there, however?”

“Just a bit,” she replied with a sulky look.

“Oh no! Your breath and pout are wasted if you think to make me feel guilty, for I don’t in the least.” He gave her a look of reproof. “I refuse to apologize, for you thoroughly deserved it, my dear. However, I am quite willing to administer some tender mercy to your injured flesh, if you think it would feel better.”

“I suppose it
might
help,” she agreed.

When he turned her onto her belly and straddled her lower legs, Vesta felt breathless with excitement. Hot, open-mouthed kisses on the back of her neck sent rapturous ripples to her throbbing sex. He worked his way over shoulders and back, sending her pulse skittering wildly out of control at the feel of his mouth and tongue paying homage to her bottom. When his hand slid between her thighs, already slick with arousal, a searing wave of want washed over her. “Can it not be done this way as well?” She looked over her shoulder and saw his blue eyes go black with reciprocal desire. With a taunting look, she raised her hips in invitation.

“More lessons from the breeding sheds?” he asked in a husky voice.

“Well, yes,” she said, breathless and unapologetic. “I thought the stallions seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves.”

“Then far be it for me to question them.” He placed a supportive hand under her pelvis and guided himself into position. He poised thus for an endless heartbeat and plunged into her with a soft moan of pleasure. She met his second heavenly thrust with one of her own, and they soon found a mutual cadence, settling into a languorous tempo, each repetition of plunge and drag heating her body and intensifying the throbbing tension. It was too much but still not enough. She arched her back, offering more of herself, and their tempo and urgency increased. Sweat slickened, they filled the air with the sultry sounds of slapping flesh punctuated by ragged gasps.

Her orgasm came upon her stealthily, the heat smoldering and flickering deep in her belly, curling and flaring into passionate flames that suddenly erupted into a full conflagration that ripped over her with a violence.

***

When she bucked under him in the first throes of orgasm, Hew threw his head back and drove into her with a wild abandon. When she exploded, her climax tore through him with an unholy vengeance, her sweet sheath squeezing and milking his manhood, reducing him body, mind, and soul to total depletion.

With every remaining ounce of fortitude spent with his climax, Hew collapsed, rolling her into his arms and nuzzling her neck. “I once wondered, Vesta, if you would be the death of me. Now I know it for a certainty. Truly a sad end, after having charged into battle, roaring ‘death or glory.’ But then again...” He paused with a grin. “I can’t imagine a more glorious way to go.”

“Nor, I.” She sighed. “Hew, that was...that was...I can find no words.”

Neither could he, he realized. He felt an unfamiliar and otherworldly sense of well-being, a contentment he’d never dared hope for. And he had found it in the most unlikely of places—with a tiny hellion named Vesta. She had awakened passions he hadn’t known existed, and now he never wanted to let go.

“Hew,” she asked. “There is something I must know.”

“What is that?” He was growing drowsier by the moment.

“Why did you wait? I mean, it’s not customary for a man, is it?”

“No, it is not,” he replied. “And I suffered greatly as a youth for my puritanical ideals.”

“But your brother—”

Hew laughed. “My brother is an unquestionable reprobate, but even he has his idiosyncratic code when it comes to physical relationships. We are both the victim of our upbringing in that respect, and it is a very ugly thing.”

“In what way?”

“Not unlike many aristocratic marriages, our parents were notoriously unfaithful to one another. Our mother ran off with her lover when I was five. I was really too young to understand, but Ludovic took it very badly and developed a deep distrust of women. It’s why he refuses ever to wed. Our father threw himself deep into a life of dissipation after that, but his sins caught up with him.”

“How so?”

“He went mad from the pox.”

“Smallpox causes madness?”

“No, love, the French pox. Syphilis.”

“Syphilis?” She frowned. “I don’t know of this.”

“Nor should you. It’s a horrid disease, afflicting body and mind, causing a slow, lingering death. Vic has always been protective of me and isn’t aware that I know the true condition of our father. So you see, my brother has dealt with the past in his way and I in mine, by vowing to abstain until I found the woman I would spend my life with.”

“And you would have chosen Diana, had I not abducted you,” she said sadly.

He lifted her chin and kissed her softly. “And I would have made a grave mistake. You, indeed, saved me from my folly.”

“Do you truly believe that?” Her eyes glittered with emotion.

“Yes. Although I still respect and admire Diana, she did not incite the deeper feelings I have experienced with you, Vesta, feelings I would not have known existed had you not intervened.” He gave her a rueful smile. “To my chagrin, I think that grizzled, old jockey was right all along.”

“What are you saying, Captain Hewett DeVere?” Vesta asked.

“That although you are maddeningly infuriating...” He kissed her eyelid.

“You called me conniving—”

“Undoubtedly, you are.” He kissed the other eyelid. “But also exceedingly clever.”

“Imperious?” Her mouth formed a delectable moue.

“Delightfully impetuous,” he amended, plying another kiss to the hollow behind her ear.

“What about spoiled and petulant?”

“Inarguably so,” he murmured. “But also remarkably sensuous and passionate.” He twined a curl around his finger and kissed it. “Taken as a whole, my love, you are infinitely greater than the sum of your parts—and everything I
didn’t
know I needed.” He claimed her mouth now, deeply, passionately.

“Oh, Hew!” Vesta cried, tears streaming down her face. “I just knew you would come to your senses.”

He laughed and enfolded her in his arms. “I have, indeed, and I vow to cherish you all my life.”

E
PILOGUE

DeVere House, Bloomsbury, 1783

“I’m sorry, madam, but his lordship is much occupied at the moment,” said the stony-faced butler barring Diana’s entrance.

“But I sent word to Lord DeVere hours ago!” she protested. “He was to have taken his goddaughter to the theater earlier this evening, but she has not returned and her maid has no recollection of anything! I
insist
on speaking with him immediately.” She folded her arms across her chest with a militant look. “I shan’t depart until I have.”

“If you will just permit me to deliver your message, I will be certain to convey the urgency of it.” The servant looked apologetic, but Diana wasn’t having it.

“I’m afraid the only
message
I have for his lordship must be delivered personally.” Seething with anger, fear, and frustration, Diana stormed past the stunned retainer. “Well,” she demanded, “will you conduct me, or must I search every chamber myself?”

The butler looked apoplectic. “Madam, Lord DeVere is in the midst of entertaining guests. It is a very
private
affair.”

She halted to turn blazing eyes upon the harried retainer. “And this is an urgent matter! Were it not so, I promise you, I would never have set foot in this disreputable abode.”

“Very well, madam.” He gave a resigned sigh. “May I please have your name, and I will inquire if Lord DeVere will receive you.”