Chapter Nine

The marquess shut the door. They were in a grand bedroom with narrow leaded windows overlooking a wild expanse of countryside. The room had clearly been refurbished since Castle Glenrose’s original construction, and no expense had been spared. Indeed, a few expenses might have been added simply for the pleasure of spending the money.

The enormous fireplace was carved of a marble veined with an unusual blue, the color of tarnished copper. The postered bed, hung with lavish curtains dyed exactly to match the blue tones in the fireplace stone, could have fit the entire royal family.

Ashcroft caught her staring at the bed. His expression didn’t change. It didn’t need to. He looked at her like a libertine demanding submission to his debauchery…

Her heart beat like a caged sparrow desperate for freedom. Freedom to do exactly as he wished. To give herself wholly over. To lose herself in a world where nothing existed but the pleasure they created.

A wicked smile slowly crossed his face. “We’re alone.”

“Yes.” In a castle where everyone thought they were newly wed, doing exactly what it was that those fresh from the altar most wanted to do.

“I need my tongue in your quim.”

Thank heaven. She’d waited long enough. She deserved this.

Patience drew in a shaky breath, arousal making her hot and needy. “If you talk like that, I’m going to come before you even touch me.”

Still standing in front of the closed door, he pulled away his jacket.

“You’re going to come when I’m good and ready for you to come.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Ashcroft stalked close. “Are you challenging me, my beauty?”

Her internal landscape crackling with sparks of heady defiance, she raised her chin at him. “Daring you, I’d say. But why scruple over words when we both want the same thing?”

He began to strip. “You want to know all the things I’ve been dreaming of doing to you?”

The question had an instant effect. She went from warm to hot. From swollen between her legs to damn near clenching. “What?”

“Running my tongue over your skin. Exploring you inch by heavenly inch.”

There was no doubt she’d give him every opportunity to do exactly that—and the sooner, the better. “What else?”

He smiled that cocksure smile of his, pleased as a well-fed tiger and just as certain of his beauty. His waistcoat went, button by button, and the neck cloth fell next. “I’ve been dreaming of sinking my fingers knuckles-deep so I can stroke you from the inside.” The white linen shirt followed. After untying the tapes about his neck, he swept it over his head in one smooth movement, leaving his upper torso bare.

Patience had never needed to touch or be touched so desperately in all her life.

He raised his brows at her and held out his arms. “Well?”

The firelight made his smooth skin glow. His body was lean and muscled, with a dusting of hair over the defined planes of his broad chest.

She barely trusted herself to speak. Her mind was a haze of desire. “You…need compliments, my lord?”

“I need to know…” He paused and flicked hair out of his eyes. His voice plummeted to velvety depths. “…that I please you.”

His head dipped. Their lips came dangerously close. The scent of him deepened her anticipation and widened the breadth of her eagerness.

Patience skimmed her fingers down the front of him. Bare skin to bare skin. His muscles were harder than she’d expected. A stark contrast to her fleshiness. “You do things to me that I didn’t know could be done.”

She explored him, roaming her hands over skin warmer than she’d have guessed. He was a study in textures. Smooth in the curves under his biceps. But another kind of soft entirely where the hair dusted the hard definition of his upper torso.

“A lusty woman like you, Miss Emery? I imagine you expect quite a lot.”

“I do.” The fearful part of her heart, where a voice resided forever cautioning against none but the lowest expectations, had thought she could only hope for a grope in the dark. “But you exceed all expectations.”

The marquess made a growl of pleasure. Their mouths collided. He reached up his hands to cup her cheeks so he could kiss her more deeply, parting her lips and caressing her tongue with his own.

A wild pulse beat between her thighs. Her legs went numb, her knees weak. Her head was light, as if she couldn’t take in enough air.

“Time to remove your gown, I think.”

He treated each pin and tape with reverence normally witnessed in papist priests handling the relics of their holy men. Her gown fell in a heap.

“Sit on the edge of the bed.” He beckoned her.

Heart pumping, she did. The marquess knelt by her feet and gently lifted her chemise. He plucked one garter ribbon free and then the other. The backs of his hands followed her rounding calves upward. Patience shivered. To be touched as if venerated—it was nothing she’d ever expected, or even dreamed possible.

One at a time, the marquess found the tops of her stockings and rolled them down her legs. He took her hands and helped her to stand again, tugged the laces of her stays free, stripped away the garment, and bent to grab the hem of her chemise and lifted it over her head.

There was nothing on her but firelight and his heated gaze.

“See this?” He unbuttoned his falls and withdrew an erection that would have put a stallion to shame. “It’s all for you. You did this to me. This is how much I want you.”

“And this…” Head spinning with her unbelievable boldness, she took his hand and guided it between her legs. She needed him to know how wet she was. “Is how much I want you.”

…

One look at her nude form and Giles was lost. Miss Emery was an allegory for lovemaking. Her body went on and on, each bountiful part more beautiful than the last. She was nothing but curve after curve of ripe feminine flesh. Huge breasts with large areolae of dusky pink. A rounded stomach and enormous rippling thighs.

The flickering candlelight around them made her hair gleam and the depths of her eyes all but fathomless.

She was all his dreams come alive before him. Proof that there was a God and he was not only good, but generous even to the lowliest of his creatures.

Giles studied her, the hues and textures, cataloging the way he would mix paints to capture the color of her hair and the shimmer it caught by candlelight…the undertones of her skin and the exact shade of her nipples.

Oils and pigments and canvas would do this woman no true justice. No artist in the world could hope to replicate the glory of the creation before him. “You are the perfect muse. All the beauty under the sun.”

Miss Emery scoffed. “What nonsense.”

Giles caught her by the wrist. “Look at me.” Their gazes met. He held the stare and spoke with ferocity. “I don’t speak in untruths. I don’t—”

“Stop talking and fuck me. And don’t say the word ‘patience’ to me as if you’re making a clever pun about my name, for I won’t find it amusing.”

Alluring, strong, and feisty. It was an intoxicating combination in a woman.

“Put your claws away, my lovely.” He helped her onto the bed, positioning her so she would see the surprise he’d installed to delight her. He flashed a grin and lowered his voice. “We’ll save those for later.”

“Save what?”

“Your claws, of course. We’ll save them for rougher play.” Giles settled on the mattress sideways beside her and ran his fingers of his free hand through the loose waves of her lustrous hair, bringing her head closer to kiss her again. “And I do hope I wouldn’t be so dreadfully dull.”

“Dreadfully dull?”

“As to make a pun of your beautiful name.” His tongue found hers. Silk slid around silk. He inhaled. She smelled as good as she looked. Sweet. Womanly.

He moved his hand over her skin. She broke the kiss and pulled back a trifle to run her gaze down his body. “I always thought people did this in the dark.”

“In the dark? With you? Send me to the gallows if I tried.”

“I’m ever so glad we’re not.” A shy smile touched her lips—ridiculously endearing considering the circumstances.

Taking her hand, he led it downward. She needed no coaxing, wrapping her hand around him without hesitation. Her pressure was firm. Confident, too, as she began stroking. “Oh, Miss Emery, what a sweet death you’re leading me to.”

“Good.”