Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) (19 page)

“Fine,” she said, and her eyes twinkled.

“You’ve been trying to distract me,” he accused.

“I succeeded, did I not?”

“You little—”

“Is there something I can stand on?” She went to grab a footstool and drag it over. A turtle could have carried it faster on its back. Leaning his palms against the wall, above where his procrastinating bride had just stood, Ash shook his head.

She placed the stepstool before him, ducked beneath his arms, and climbed atop it. “There, we’ll meet at just the right place now.” But when she stepped close enough to make contact, the stool wobbled, and she toppled into his arms. “Not so good,” she said as he lifted her higher against him.

“Not so exciting, either,” Ash said. “Please, let us get into bed and frolic, as we did in the lavender field the other day, and work our pleasant way into baby-making as we go?”

“Oh, that sounds lovely.”

“Lovely,” Ash repeated, feeling the knot in his stomach ease. “I believe you have it right.”

“You seem tense, Ash. Should we start afresh tomorrow, instead?”

“No, my darling Larkin, we will begin tonight.” He stood her on her feet. “Let us start by sliding that dress off your shoulders.”

For the past few nights Ash had taken to dreaming about making fast impatient love to Lark one minute and slow patient love to her the next, of exploring her to his heart’s content, every delicious milky inch of her, if only she would welcome him.

He’d imagined making her touch the stars in ecstasy, while he watched her eyes close in pleasure and open in shock to renewed arousal.

As her dress slipped to the floor and puddled at her feet, and she stood before him in her shift and stockings, the intensity in her gaze was enough for him to take her hand and lead her to the bed.

“I am afraid,” she said.

“I know, but you need not be.” He urged her into the bed, still half dressed, because he was certain that rushing her into nakedness was unwise. “I promise to be a patient teacher,” he said.

While she settled herself and watched wide-eyed, he removed his waistcoat and shirt studs, his shirt, his shoes and stockings, but nothing more, exactly as he’d planned, and Lark sighed with what he could only imagine was relief.

Lark stopped holding her breath when Ash climbed in beside her and wrapped his arms around her to bring her wonderfully, incredibly, close. She closed her eyes and remembered her dreams of him, years of dreams, where he did exactly this, with no fear on her part, and she let herself slip into the old fantasy. This was Ash. Her Ash.

Her hero. Her husband.

“Now, my wife,” he said, in counterpoint to her dream, as he nibbled her earlobe, which she liked very much. “It is time for a gentle teacher and an eager pupil. These are lessons I have never needed to teach before, you understand. No innocent has ever been allowed to climb into my bed. I am a jaded rogue, a cad, a scoundrel, you see, just so you know, but if you tell me what you want, I will try to comply. And if I go too fast or forget your fear, you must promise to remind me. Will you?”

Lark nodded as he came for her mouth with his, his kiss deep and achingly slow. Gentle. Her heartbeat quickened in a surprising response, sending shafts of soft pleasure to every hidden spot within her.

He touched his bottom lip to her upper, urging her mouth to open against his, his breath warm and teasing. In the same coaxing way, he touched his upper lip to her bottom one, and then back again, as if their lips should not meet precisely, which made her ache for them to do just that. All the while he teased her, spirals of something distant and achy, foreign yet delicious, invaded Lark in odd tingling places.

Then he did something amazing, he pulled away from her, sighed and threw back the covers to reveal his entire breathtaking torso to her view, the tight mound beneath his inexpressibles bringing all manner of imaginings to her mind.

Despite her fears, she could not ignore his manly beauty, even half dressed, like a peacock in his plumes on a silver platter.

“Have your wicked way with me, wife,” he said, presenting her with every power and decision.

Wife. Lark’s heart warmed as she rose over him, incredulous at his offer, grateful. She knelt and looked down upon his beauty. “Does this mean I can do whatever I please? I can touch you wherever I choose?”

Ash shifted and nodded. “I am yours to command. I will dance or lie still, touch you or not, whatever is your desire, with one exception. We will do the deed tonight, if at all possible. No more putting off to another day.”

Lark smiled and placed her palm on his chest. “Tell me then, what is your pleasure?”

Ash groaned as if in anticipation. “I have many pleasures but I am certain that I will like whichever you choose to administer first. If you would rather I guide you than experiment on your own, I shall, or you can explore at your leisure, every mountain and valley upon me, every muscle and furrow. It is entirely up to you. I am at your disposal … exclusively, unequivocally … yours.”

His husky voice licked desire through Lark in warm gentling laps. She combed her fingers through the mahogany waves at his temple, again and again. She had never dared to touch him in so intimate a fashion.

Ash sighed and closed his eyes as if he liked her touch a great deal.

Emboldened by his reaction, she grazed his cheek, thumbed his chin. Then she smoothed her palm down his chest, scratching ever so slightly against the silken mat surrounding his nipple. She knew a sense of power when he shuddered. “I wanted to do that the first time you got into bed beside me,” she confessed.

Ash’s heated gaze held hers captive. “I would have let you.”

“I wasn’t ready.”

“And now, Lark? Are you nearly ready to play the blanket hornpipe?”

Lark giggled at his choice of description and surprised herself with a laugh. “Soon,” she said, shivering, as he took her hand and slid it down his chest and along his belly. She pulled away from his hold to dip her finger into his chicken-peck, and giggled.

Then, when she’d distracted him sufficiently, his brow raised to regard her, she let him begin to guide her hand again, until he slid it toward the placket on his inexpressibles. There he placed it, palm down to cup his sex.

Heat flowing through her, Lark turned toward the erect parsnip she had left on her dresser as a reminder of her duty. She looked back at his trousers, the parsnip, and shook her head at the disparity. Nevertheless, his sounds of appreciation urging her on, her fingertips skimming the fabric of his trousers, she examined, at her leisure, what seemed for all the world like a living, pulsing entity unto itself.

When Ash’s gaze upon her became hot and intense, and when his appreciation turned guttural, and he became harder even than she expected, Lark slipped her hand beneath his trouser flap to cup him and learn his manly secrets.

Knowing full well that she must be prepared to gaze upon her husband’s “hornpipe” for the first time, she hesitated even as she held it pulsing in her hand, as if clamoring to be free. With a sense of power, she kneaded it and brought it to larger life. “It is bigger than you led me to believe,” she said, her accusation laced with wonder.

Ash chuckled. “I promise you, it is exactly the right size for our purpose.”

Lark did not know if she believed him or not, she knew only that she could not for the life of her let him go. She unfastened his trouser flap one-handed, despite the barrage of fearful reservations warring with dreadful anticipation inside her, and lowered the flap to reveal … not his hornpipe, but his snowy under linen, with a similar flap that she had breached.

With a sigh, as much relief as regret, she pulled the drawstring to free him into her waiting hands. As fast as a wind-up toy, he rose to the occasion and she squeaked in surprise.

Ash arched, groaned, and chuckled all at once, even as he made to reach for her, but Lark reared away from his greedy grasp. “Not yet,” she said, and so he grabbed the bedclothes instead, as if he must hold on, or fall off the edge of sanity.

“You
will
have your wicked way with me,” he said, through clenched teeth, as if she were paining him as she pleasured him. “I spoke true and did not realize.”

Lark raised her chin. “I will not be denied. I must have as much time as I require to become acquainted with the hornpipe.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ash barked an involuntary laugh. He gasped. He arched and groaned, caught in the wave of bliss Lark wrought with word and action. She cupped his ballocks in one hand—gently, praise be, fear and joy riding him—while she slid her thumb—he thought before closing his eyes and giving himself up to sensuality—upward along his shaft. As if that were not enough, she completed her first amazing foray with small wet titillating circles at his crown, about raising him off the bed.

“Not yet,” Ash said, swollen to painful proportions, repeating her order as if to himself, bridling his lust and testing his sanity. And while he prayed her investigation would never end, he teetered so close to the sharp-edged brink of release, he thought he’d go mad from the pleasure-laced torment.

“Was that a good groan or a bad groan?” she asked upon his involuntary emission of frustration.

“Better than good,” he said.

His teasing bride tilted her head in consideration. “Better than good would be famous.”

“Redoubtable.”

“Is that bad?”

“Excellent. Please don’t stop.”

“Do you think that’s about as big as it will get?” she asked stroking him as if testing and considering him from every angle. “It’s thicker than you led me to believe, you know.”

Ash thought he would weep. “Let us not talk,” he said, as tactfully as he could manage, given the nature of his duress. “Touch me again as you did before, Lark. I beg you. Please.”

His wife pursed her lips, a sure sign of trouble, then she further unnerved him by raising a brow, and just when panic was about to set in, she jumped from the bed.

Ash cried out at her abandonment, rose on his elbows, aghast, and got a good look at the size and rigidity of his hornpipe. No wonder she’d run—

She was back so fast, he damned near wept with thankfulness.

She took him in her hand again and he fell back to the bed, more grateful than the boy that day in the hayloft.

“You lied to me,” she said, and Ash opened his eyes, his appreciation waning.

She held her parsnip against his manhood, root to head, as if to compare them, and the parsnip came off looking enfeebled.

Ash regarded the foolish pair of unmistakably distinct rods, and then he regarded his bloody daft bride. That’s what you got with a consolation prize of a bride, he supposed—idiocy. Yet her hand closing around his shaft made him feel as if he’d won, not lost the game, as did the expression on her incredibly endearing face, half sad, half dismayed, with a slight tinge of excitement in the deepest depths of her wide burnished eyes.

“Ashford Blackburne, you’re too long and too thick for my peace of mind. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Ash shrugged and tried to look repentant inasmuch as he could, head resting in his hand, both balanced on an elbow, his naked hornpipe being played a lusty tune. “I gave you an approximation,” he said in his own defense. “I was never called upon to measure it before, and never thought to do so.”

One would think he’d wither at this turn of events, except that she had a talent with a circling thumb, did Larkin Rose, that could make a man her slave. And the angrier she got, the better she played him. “Unfair,” she stated even as she shot pleasure through him in waves, increasing the very length and width of which she complained.