“It feels...uneasy,” she whispered. “I am still afraid of being hurt somehow.”
“Let me put those fears to rest.” He took her hips and began to move, smooth, slow thrusts that found her center and then withdrew, leaving her empty. Distasteful as it seemed in theory, there was something about the act that was connective. He was inside her,
there
, and she was aware of every inch of him at every moment, with every small movement he made.
Once he had driven in and out of her several times, he pressed forward so his front rested against her back, and he embraced her. One of his legs wrapped around hers, bringing them even closer. It was the intimacy, she thought. This was a very intimate act, more intimate than any other she could picture.
His agile fingers delved down the front of her and parted the folds of her cleft, searching out the part of her that tingled and ached to be teased. She sucked in a shocked gust of air, hardly believing he could make her feel so divinely aroused when he was inside her there. Five minutes ago, she had been on the verge of tears from the pain of him breaching her, and now she felt scandalously close to being brought off. He caressed her in time with his deep forays inside her, until her hips moved in rhythm and uncivilized panting replaced her breath.
“You like it,” he whispered against her ear. “You naughty, wondrous girl. You like to be fucked in the arse.”
His obscenity ought to have disturbed her. Instead, it brought the lustful arousal inside her to a throbbing peak.
“Say that you like it. Tell me. Say that you will wish me to do this again.”
“I—I like it,” she stammered, not sure if she meant it or if he had only taken over her body and her mind through some unnatural skill.
“Say that you like my cock in your arse. Say it.”
“I like your cock in my arse,” she whispered. “I like it. Please...please don’t stop touching me there. It feels so good.”
“Yes, your pussy is hot and wet with wanting. You shall have your reward.” The fondness in his voice combined with the dancing of his fingertips, and the very firm buggering of her narrow channel, so that she felt quite transported and outside of herself. She was not Aurelia, proper wife and daughter, but a wild thing like the birds and rustling creatures of the woods. She saw his hand grasp the oak bark beside her, and then he reached forward to pinch her nipples, first one and then the other. He pressed his chin against her hair as he plucked the taut, aroused points.
“I love you. My wife. My beautiful, sensual wife.”
She could only sob in surrender as the teasing pain of her nipples released the last of her hold on civility. Her climax built to a roaring peak, and then a shuddering, gasping release. As if from far away, she heard his shout of completion as he drove her hard against the oak trunk, his fingers twisted in her hair. But she was not there beneath him. She was flying free, still shivering in the throes of magnificent bliss.
Slowly, she came back to awareness of the forest. He was stroking her hair and occasionally the crown of her forehead, a steady, soothing touch.
“Do you love me too?” he asked her quietly. “But you must, to surrender to me so completely. Aurelia, how I love you.”
She reached to cradle his head beside hers. “Of course I love you. Well, most of the time,” she joked. When had she ever joked before she met him? Never.
He laughed so that his still-hard cock bucked inside her. Now that the ecstasy had ebbed away, it was back to feeling rather tender and uneasy there. He pulled away from her carefully, then helped her stand upright and rearrange her dress and her curls where he’d mussed them. He tilted her head back and kissed her for long moments while she readjusted to the reality of her world.
She was a fallen sort of woman, surely, but she didn’t think that was so bad anymore. He loved her, and she was very sure she was coming to love him, despite all the reasons she shouldn’t. He kissed her with passionate tenderness, his arms holding her safe, his lips caressing and soothing her misgivings away. She loved him for this, for his tenderness and humor, and his wildness. She loved him for the pleasure he’d brought to her life.
She loved him.
All of a sudden, he broke the kiss and turned toward a group of shrubs.
“Do you hear that?” he asked.
Aurelia tilted her head, listening for what he might hear, then a smile spread across her face. A robust
chirp-chirp
repeated amongst the other sounds of the forest, a few yards away at most.
“I believe our pet grasshopper has been a voyeur to our little scene.”
She narrowed her eyes in confusion. “What does that mean? A voyeur?”
“Voyeurs take pleasure from watching others’ private interactions.”
“Sexual interactions?”
“Often, yes.” He arched a brow at her. “I am so terribly evil, my dear, that I know all these things, and then teach them to you.”
“Have you been a voyeur to other’s sexual interactions? Perhaps in your previous adventures?”
He gave her one of his piratical looks and then pretended great interest in searching for the grasshopper. But it had gone quiet, unwilling to be found. They went to a nearby brook to wash up, a practical errand that soon degraded into reckless chasing and splashing. It seemed the perfect conclusion to their bawdy afternoon. He pulled on his breeches and his coat, and ran a hand through his hair, straightening it where she’d tugged upon it.
“I suppose we must go back and gather up our tea things, and return to the house before the servants come looking for us.” He turned to her and took her hands in his. “Thank you, my dear, for giving so much to me. It has been a special sort of afternoon.”
She could think of nothing to say to that. In fact, the depth of his gaze made her feel raw and vulnerable. She wished she was upstairs in her rooms, near to the window seat so she might hide. Finally she managed to say, “You’re welcome,” and they set off back down the walk hand in hand, toward servants and manicured lawns and well-appointed rooms, and all the other things that gave a civil veneer to their private depravities.
But when they came out of the wilderness where they had left their blanket and tea, they found three smiling, immaculately attired gentlemen reclining on the lawn, helping themselves, in fact, to some of the cook’s cakes.
“Bother,” he muttered. “Company.”
She looked up at him sharply, but he didn’t really seem displeased, only a bit surprised as the three friends noticed them and got to their feet. He dropped her hand and went ahead of her, calling out in greeting to Lord Augustine, and the Duke of Arlington.
And the Earl of Warren, who looked quite as striking and blond and admirable as he ever had been.
Aurelia walked ahead of him on the way back to the house, having quite properly offered her arm to the most distinguished of their guests. Arlington inclined his head to hers, nodding politely to her comments about this and that. Hunter couldn’t hear their conversation, but he was sure it was starchily polite and appropriate. His wife had been raised, after all, to show respect to dukes.
Hunter showed no such respect to August and Warren. “You might have sent a message first,” he said.
“Sent a message?” August snorted. “Why? Would you have told us not to come?”
No, Hunter wouldn’t have. In truth, he was pleased to see his friends, but he wished they hadn’t shown up this particular afternoon. He had never before felt self-conscious among these men, his closest friends, but now he did. He worried they might somehow divine the way he and his wife had spent the last hour.
“Did you come into the woods in search of us?” Hunter asked with a carefully casual air.
“No, we were too busy ravishing your tea basket.” Warren laughed, then turned a speculative gaze back on him. “Why? What were you getting up to in the woods?”
There was a time in his life when Hunter would have happily related every lurid detail of the past hour’s activity to his friends, from the tenor and duration of his victim’s screams during the switching, to how long it had taken to work his cock into the lady’s arsehole, to the details of how she’d reacted when he did. Warren and August would have had a jolly laugh about it and boasted of their own recent, similar encounters. But now, since the victim in question was his wife, he had absolutely no desire to do so.
“Aurelia and I were taking a walk. We often walk and...and picnic together. She was never allowed to participate in picnics and such when Lansing had a hold of her, so I try to take her on scads of them.” He was babbling like an idiot. Warren and August stared at him. “She likes them,” he persisted. “And it’s good for her to take the fresh air.”
August slid a look at Warren. “I don’t think I want to know what he was doing to her back in those woods, do you, Warren?”
Warren returned a grimace. “It was obviously something really reprehensible.” He turned back to Hunter. “Yes, old chap, it’s very good of you to ‘take her on picnics’ so she can ‘have some fresh air.’”
August erupted into laughter. They were joking, both of them. If they only knew... But he didn’t want them to know.
He was ashamed of the things he did to his wife.
The thought struck him like a punch to the gut. Yes, he was ashamed to admit that he used his wife in such a fashion, that he demanded sordid acts of her nearly every day. He had been so content with the way they were rubbing along in this marriage that he hadn’t even stopped to think about whether he was behaving in a gentlemanly fashion.
He most certainly was not.
It wasn’t only his shame that kept his lips pressed in a thin line. There was his wife’s honor to protect. He hadn’t cared before he’d come to love her, but oh, he cared now. He stared at her back as she walked on the Duke of Arlington’s arm, the perfect, proper lady in her perfect, fashionable gown. She would suffer utter annihilation, not to mention public repulsion, if anyone were to discover the nature of their marital dealings. Even his friends, if they knew, would think less of her. They might even believe her a fair target for their amorous wiles.
No, not his friends. They would never disrespect his wife or betray him...would they?
He wondered if these uncomfortable misgivings were related to his newfound feelings of love for Aurelia. All at once there were three more gentlemen in her vicinity, one of whom escorted her upon his arm. Of course, it was Arlington, who was a stick of a stickler when it came to manners around respectable ladies. He wondered how Aurelia felt, if she was fighting the same nervous anxieties he was. He didn’t doubt she was, doubly so. He tried to put such troubling thoughts away and exchange pleasantries with Warren and August so they didn’t become any more suspicious than they already were.
“How long will you stay?” he asked them.
“As long as you’ll have us,” said August. “But not so long that we wear out our welcome.”
Warren glanced at Aurelia. “We’ll try to behave, Towns. We know you’re a married chap now, and newly fond of picnics and sitting home by the fire. Lady Townsend looks well.”
“She is well. We’ve both adjusted to our new life, and become close to one another.”
There, that was as much as he need say. His friends would take away from it that any disparaging language or behavior toward her would be out of bounds.
“I’m happy to hear you are both happy,” said August with typical amiability.
“I’m happy to hear it too,” echoed Warren in an even tone that nonetheless pricked him. Hunter pursed his lips. Why did it feel like, in a mere three months’ time, a vast chasm had opened between him and his unmarried friends?
“Anyway, I’m not the only one fond of picnics,” he said, falling back on the comfortable act of mockery. “I noticed the three of you ate every one of my wife’s favorite cakes.”
*** *** ***
Aurelia sat to her husband’s right at dinner, with Lord Augustine at her right side, and Arlington and Warren across from her. His friends were the most congenial sort, well-spoken and polite to a fault. They smiled at her often and went to great lengths to include her in sundry conversation, and never made her feel the least bit uncomfortable.
But she felt uncomfortable all the same. She couldn’t shake her memories of that afternoon in the forest, when she’d abandoned all sense of decorum and coupled with her husband in a coarsely animalistic way. Even after a long soak in the bath and some quiet time stitching at linens in her sheltered window seat, she felt sullied and not like a lady at all.
She feared Hunter’s friends would realize this about her, that she was not a respectable lady. Now and again her husband caught her gaze, even touching her hand beneath the table, as if to reassure her, but he couldn’t really understand. Here she was, seated directly across from Lord Warren, a man she once idolized, feeling like the cheapest, most whorish woman in the world.
Did she still idolize Lord Warren? She was afraid to ask herself that question. She tried to behave naturally toward him, as if his comments and questions were no more clever than those of the other men, but she thought perhaps her smiles at him were too wide, her replies to him a touch too high pitched.
She tried not looking at him at all, but then some implacable impulse would draw her gaze his way and she would remember why she had loved him so, why she had called so often on her friend Minette in hopes of catching a glimpse of her brother. He was incredibly handsome.
So is your husband
, she reminded herself sternly. She looked over to find Hunter staring back at her with a darkly assessing expression. An unwelcome flush heated her cheeks and spread down the front of her neck. She placed a hand there, as if that might hide her disgrace. Hunter knew she used to have a
tendre
for Lord Warren. She had flung the fact in his face on more than one occasion, and wished now that she hadn’t.
“Lady Townsend, have you met many of the neighboring families?” asked Lord Augustine beside her.
“Yes, I have. They came to call soon after we arrived. They don’t live nearby so we don’t often have callers, but when we do, it’s a very pleasant experience. All of them have been particularly welcoming.”