Authors: Danelle Harmon
"No, I'm not joking!" he protested, laughing
and waving a bit of cheese as he related a tale about Perry's
mother. "The busks in her corsets really did snap after she gorged
herself at her daughter's wedding feast, and everyone at the table
heard them go!"
"Oh, Gareth — you cannot be serious!"
"Oh, but I am. You see, I charmed her maid
into bringing me the corset beforehand."
Juliet clapped a hand to her mouth to hold
back her sudden laughter. "You mean you ... sabotaged it?!"
"But of course. It was great fun, I can
assure you. You should've heard the things go.
Crack
! Good
thing she was swathed in so much fabric, or they might've shot
right out of her garments like arrows and hit someone in the
eye."
"Oh, Gareth, that is quite impossible!" she
gasped, holding her side with the force of her mirth.
"Ha! But I got you laughing!" He took a
swallow of wine. "Another time, Perry's mother had a ball, and the
Den members and I sneaked in beforehand, scooped out the inside of
the cake, and stuck a dead salmon inside. Perry had caught it two
days before, and it was the height of summer, so you can imagine
how the thing stank. You should've seen everyone's faces when they
started slicing the cake and the fumes burst forth; it was so bad
that Hugh's mother passed out and fell face first right into the
icing!"
Juliet was laughing so hard, the tears were
rolling down her cheeks. "I think I understand why Perry's mother
won't let you stay at her house!"
"Perry's mother? Ha!
None
of my
friends' mothers will so much as allow me beyond their gates, never
mind over their thresholds! Bunch of sour old gits; you'd think
they could forgive me for things that happened four, five years
ago." He grinned, all deceptive innocence. "Why, I'd never do such
things now!"
She laughed. "Unless you're foxed."
"Unless I'm foxed."
"Perhaps you should stop drinking,
then."
"And perhaps
you
should start eating,
my dear wife. I've seen sparrows with bigger appetites. Here, try
some of this Cheshire. It is splendid."
He plucked a small bit of cheese from the
dish and, leaning across the table, held the morsel to her lips.
Juliet hesitated — the gesture seemed uncomfortably intimate — but
the wine had relaxed her, taking the edge off her inevitable
wedding-night jitters, and she suddenly felt ridiculous for being
so skittish. Especially when she looked into those romantic blue
eyes across from her and saw shadows of Charles in that familiar de
Montforte face, in that lazy de Montforte smile. Currents fluttered
out along her nerve endings. Warmth settled in the pit of her
belly. Slowly, she opened her mouth and accepted the cheese,
trembling at the warm brush of his fingers against her lips.
She chewed and swallowed, her gaze still
trapped by his, until she finally blushed and looked away, her face
rosy and hot, her hands gripped tightly beneath the tablecloth.
When she finally dared to look back up at him, he was gazing at her
with an amused little half-smile.
"Well, what do you think of it?" he asked,
topping up her wine glass.
"Delicious." Every nerve in her body was
thrumming in response to the intimate gesture they'd just shared,
her lips tingling where his fingers had brushed them. "But I think
I prefer the Cheddar."
"Oh. I haven't tried that one yet."
"You haven't?"
"No." His eyes were teasing, challenging,
inviting her to summon her courage and —
Good God, he wants
me
to feed
him
!
Heat prickled through her. He was still
watching her, little sparkles of laughter dancing in his eyes, his
mouth twitching at the corners.
"You want me to force you to try some,
then," she declared, her bold tone belying her shaky courage.
"My dear Juliet, I shall never force you to
do anything that you do not wish to do."
She looked across the table at him. He gazed
back, calm, relaxed, amused. Dear God, but he looked handsome in
the candlelight. Handsome under
any
light. And now his grin
was spreading, as though he was ready to burst out laughing at her
predicament. What a rogue he was! And what a skittish ninny
she
was. She, who'd once faced Indians and bears in the
wilds of Maine; she, who'd been caught up in revolution in Boston;
she, who'd stood up to murderous highwaymen — she, who was letting
this teasing English aristocrat, who was, after all, her husband,
turn her courage upside down! Determined to prove to herself as
well as to him that she was no coward, she reached down and
selected a wedge of pale yellow Cheddar. Carefully leaning across
the table so the candle would not singe her sleeve, she met that
challenging stare with an equally challenging one of her own and
placed the morsel of cheese against her husband's lips.
His sensuous, lazily smiling lips.
His gaze locked on hers, but he did not open
his mouth. He merely gave her a warm, assessing look that melted
every bone in her body.
And then his lips parted, and his tongue
came out to lazily circle the edge of the cheese.
Raw desire shot through Juliet's blood,
centered between her legs. Her hand shook. Her heart pounded. His
lips, soft and warm, feathered against her fingers as he slowly
took the cheese, his gaze still holding hers. He finally began to
chew, and Juliet — trembling — started to pull away, but his hand
came up and closed warmly around her own, trapping her fingers
within his strong, hard grasp. He brought her hand to his lips,
and, watching her from above her knuckles, slowly licked each
fingertip clean.
Juliet gasped and yanked her hand back. "I —
think I've had enough food for tonight," she said shakily, pushing
her chair back.
Laughing, he leaned an elbow against the
table, propped his dimpled chin in his palm, and calmly swallowed
the cheese. "
Coward
."
"I am not! It's just that ... well, this is
—"
"Wicked?"
"Well, yes!"
"Unseemly?"
"It's —"
"
Juliet.
"
She froze. Her insides were hot and shaking,
her throat as dry as cinders. Her bones were suddenly so weak she
didn't know if she could stand up, anyhow. She clenched her hands
to still her wildly pounding heart and forced herself to meet his
amused gaze. "Y-yes?"
"You, my dear, do not know how to have
fun."
"I do, too!"
"You do not. You are as bad as Lucien. And
do you know something? I think it's time someone showed you how to
have fun. Namely,
me
. You can worry all you like about our
situation tomorrow, but tonight ... tonight I'm going to make you
laugh so hard that you'll forget all about how afraid of me you
are."
"I am not afraid of you!"
"You are."
And with that, he pushed his chair back,
stalked around the table, and in a single easy movement, swept her
right out of her chair and into his arms.
"Gareth! Put me down!"
He only laughed, easily carrying her toward
the bed.
"Gareth, I am a grown woman!"
"You are a grown woman who behaves in a
manner far too old for her years," he countered, still striding
toward the bed. "As the wife of a Den member, that just will not
do."
"Gareth, I don't want — I mean, I'm not
ready for
that
!"
"
That
? Who said anything about
that
?" He tossed her lightly onto the bed. "Oh, no, my dear
Juliet. I'm not going to do
that
—"
She tried to scoot away. "Then what
are
you going to do?"
"Why, I'm going to wipe that sadness out of
your eyes if only for tonight. I'm going to make you forget your
troubles, forget your fears, forget everything but me. And you know
how I'm going to do that, O dearest wife?" He grabbed a fistful of
her petticoats as she tried to escape. "I'm going to tickle you
until you giggle ... until you laugh ... until you're hooting so
loudly that all of London hears you!"
He fell upon the bed like a swooping hawk,
and Juliet let out a helpless shriek as his fingers found her ribs
and began tickling her madly.
"Stop! We just ate! You'll make me
sick!"
"What's this? Your husband makes you
sick
?"
"No, it's just that —
aaaoooooo
!"
He tickled her harder. She flailed and
giggled and cried out, embarrassed about each loud shriek but
helpless to prevent them. He was laughing as hard as she. Catching
one thrashing leg, he unlaced her boot and deftly removed it. She
yelped as his fingers found the sensitive instep, and she kicked
out reflexively. He neatly ducked just in time to avoid having his
nose broken, catching her by the ankle and tickling her toes, her
soles, her arch through her stockings.
"Stop, Gareth!" She was laughing so hard,
tears were streaming from her eyes. "
Stop it, damn it!
"
Thank goodness Charlotte, worn out by her
earlier tantrum, was such a sound sleeper!
The tickling continued. Juliet kicked and
fought, her struggles tossing the heavy, ruffled petticoats and
skirts of her lovely blue gown halfway up her thigh to reveal a
long, slender calf sheathed in silk. She saw his gaze taking it all
in, even as he made a grab for her other foot.
"No! Gareth, I shall lose my supper if you
keep this up, I swear it I will —
oooahhhhh
!"
He seized her other ankle, yanked off the
remaining boot, and began torturing that foot as well, until Juliet
was writhing and shrieking on the bed in a fit of laughter. The
tears streamed down her cheeks, and her stomach ached with the
force of her mirth. And when, at last, he let up and she lay
exhausted across the bed in a twisted tangle of skirts, petticoats,
and chemise, her chest heaving and her hair in a hopeless
tumbled-down flood of silken mahogany beneath her head, she looked
up to see him grinning down at her, his own hair hanging over his
brow in tousled, seductive disarray. He had one knee on the bed
beside her — and one hand resting on her rib cage, just beneath her
right breast.
Their gazes met. The room went still. Then,
out came his dimpled grin, wicked, playful, seductive — and up
moved his hand, now cupping her breast, his thumb roving slowly
over the cloth-clad nipple in a silent question.
Juliet tensed. Gareth paused. And neither
moved a muscle as they stared at each other like two fencing
opponents waiting for the other to make the first move, their eyes
conveying a silent invitation, a desire, that neither dared to
voice.
Finally, he said, "Does this tickle?"
She swallowed, hard. "No. It does not."
"Hmmmmm ..." He cocked his head as though in
rapt observation, watching as his thumb began tracing a little
circle around her nipple where the perimeter of her areola would
be. "Does
this
tickle?"
She felt her heart starting to pound, her
blood growing hot as her body fired in response to his playful
seduction, and in a hoarse little whisper she managed, "Not
yet."
His hand moved higher, his thumb anchoring
itself against her nipple while his fingers crept up, hooking
themselves over the top of her bodice, lingering there for a
moment. His knuckles were warm against the soft swell of her
breast, and everything inside her went still as he began to pull
both bodice and chemise down, exposing her breast to his gaze inch
by slow, torturous inch. The room grew hot, the only movement that
of the flickering candlelight against the distant wall. Juliet,
beginning to find the mere act of breathing difficult, stared up
into her husband's face, her skin breaking out in damp heat as his
hand moved lower and lower.
"And does
this
tickle, Juliet?"
Slowly, shyly, Juliet raised her hand to
touch his cheek. Her fingertips drifted down the side of his face
... curved around his jaw ... feathered to his lips. "No. I think —
that you're going to have to try a little harder if you want it to
tickle."
His eyes darkened, almost to azure. And it
was then that she realized that he, too, was breathing hard, his
body quivering with barely-leashed desire.
He took hold of both chemise and bodice ...
pulled them all the way down past the erect, swollen nipple ... and
freed her breast to his gaze. Juliet swallowed hard, saw the
appreciation and desire there before he lowered his lashes over
suddenly hungry eyes, banishing his earlier playfulness and
replacing it with raw, naked desire. He cupped her breast with his
hand, feeling its heft, its shape, its satiny texture, its warmth.
And then, with a groan, he moved fully up onto the bed, making the
mattress sink beside her as it took his weight. Her heart pounded
in expectation. She felt the singeing heat of his body, so much
bigger, longer, stronger, than her own, as he moved up beside her,
one hand still shaping her breast, his hair falling around his
face, tumbling over his brow. His knee was against her ribs. His
thumb was stroking her swollen nipple. And then he moved over her,
sliding his big warm hands up to cradle her flushed cheeks, his
fingers plunging into her hair. He gazed down at her, his eyes just
inches from her own. Unbidden, Juliet's tongue came out to moisten
her suddenly-dry lips.
"I think I ... like being tickled," she
whispered.
He smiled. His lashes lowered even more and
his breath — so sweet, so warm, still fruity with wine — was
suddenly upon her face as he slowly bent his head to hers. Her eyes
slipped shut ... and then there was nothing but that first,
feathery touch of his lips against hers, of two hearts coming
together for the first time. Juliet sighed, her arm curving around
his back, her fingers exploring the hard muscles beneath his
waistcoat and shirt before threading their way up his nape, up the
back of his skull, tunneling through tawny hair that was heavy,
silky and lustrous. Desire washed through her, and, melting against
him, she lost herself in the kiss.