Wayward One (26 page)

She was a wave, and he was the implacable rock she crashed upon.

Until she broke in a white plume of release. Remorseless gratification stole her senses. Nothing but him and her and the sea they floated on.

His lips pulled back from his teeth in a satisfied grin. He stroked into her no faster, but with harder slams into her body. For her, it drew out the pleasure into streaking waves of
more
. Almost too much. For him, it seemed the fraction he needed. He shuddered as he sealed his body to hers for a last push. His head finally fell to hers, tucking into the curve of her neck and sending hot breaths over her skin in a ticklish wash.

Her arms were simply stretches of India rubber, but she managed to hold them around him. Her fingers touched his hairline, which was damp at the edges with sweat. From his exertion. For her.

She sighed, swept over with a lassitude that threatened every semblance of thought. They’d moved together in a synchronicity more perfect than clockwork. Born for each other, not crafted.

Already she wanted nothing more than to repeat the whole process.

A terrifying, dazzling thought.

Chapter Nineteen

The next morning, Fletcher woke with a sense of wellbeing and satisfaction so permeating that he smiled before he opened his eyes. Stretched out on his stomach and face buried in the pillow, he had not a second of confusion as to his surroundings. His arm sprawled across a veritable mountain of pillows that was most certainly absent in his own bed. His body was entirely too satiated for him to doubt anything about his recollections of the night before.

He was a married man. With a beautiful wife who was a brilliant organizer of the home. Plus a positive minx in the bedroom.

Sure, he’d have preferred the lights be up. Or for her to take her time exploring his body. The intent way she’d run her fingers over his back made him think she wouldn’t mind. If she could have caught her voice more too, expressing exactly what she wanted and when, he’d have liked that as well.

The beauty of it was, they had years upon years to explore together. Time enough and more for discovering the myriad possibilities.

He’d never had that with another woman, and more than that he’d never wanted it. He’d been satisfied to get what he needed and be on his way.

He could joyfully anticipate years spent exploring Sera. Exploring
with
her. Every option and possibility spun out before them, confirming the validity of his path. He’d crafted them for each other so carefully, it was only right that his ideas be borne out.

Eyes still closed, he stretched out across the sleep-crumpled linens of the bed sheets and found…nothing. A hint of warmth where she must have lain until recently, but nothing more. No smooth curve of her hip, no cool fall of her silken hair.

Suddenly faintly grumpy, he rolled to his back and forced his eyes to crack open. At least bright sunshine wasn’t trying to assault his retinas, as the diffuse light in the room said it was early indeed. Maybe barely past dawn.

He threw one arm over his head and scrubbed across his face with his other hand. Then he looked around for his wife. Even the phrase sent another rush of enjoyment through him.

But his wife seemed poised on the verge of escape. Her hand was reaching for the doorknob.

She was fully dressed in another of those proper bosom-covering, serviceable gowns. This one was a dark blue that would have been perfectly at home teaching the overprivileged pupils of her academy but was utterly unacceptable for his wife. He’d have to get her to the dressmaker promptly. A soft green would look enticing against her creamy skin.

The knob turned silently, and he shook himself out of his reverie long enough to realize if he didn’t speak quickly, she’d slip away.

“Going somewhere?”

Sera jumped as high as a dipper caught with fingers in someone’s pocket. She spun. Her eyes cranked wide, lips open on a silent gasp.

“Good morning,” he purred. The sheet barely covered him, and when he stretched his arms over his head, he enjoyed her hungry gaze over his torso. He wasn’t above a little preening.

“Good morning,” she echoed in return.

“Where are you off to?”

Hot red flushed across her round cheeks. “Lady Victoria said last night that her mother would like to sponsor a ball for us. A sort of announcement of our marriage. In order to assure our place in society so that Victoria may continue to associate with me. Lady Honoria indulges her daughter too much, but I’m not going to complain if I benefit from such. I need to formally reply to her correspondence. One must especially maintain the strictures when dealing with a duchess. Lady Honoria has every consideration of her statue.”

How adorable. She babbled when extremely nervous. He’d have never expected it out of his cool, collected wife. “I’m sure that can wait until the sun comes up.”

“If we’re still to have that dinner for the earl, I’ve much to do on that score as well.”

Fletcher scratched idly across his chest. She watched that too. Her tongue poked into the corner of her mouth. Such a sweet little tongue it was. Someday he’d like to feel it licking over the head of his cock, but he’d have to wait for that.

“Are the servants up?” he asked.

She nodded. Her hands were folded behind her back. Holding on to the doorknob as a lifeline to escape? Something uncomfortable shifted inside him, the sudden awareness that perhaps they maintained different expectations from this marriage.

He put out a hand. “Come back to bed.”

White teeth flashed as she nibbled on her top lip. “I—I can’t.”

He sat up. The sheet pooled in his lap, barely hiding the evidence of his morning arousal. Of course, it was rapidly fading in the sight of her conflicted interests. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

Despite the avid way she ate him with her eyes, his words had the opposite reaction he’d hoped for. She shook her head frantically. “It’s daylight. We can’t.
I
can’t.”

He rubbed at his bristly jawline. This certainly hadn’t been a problem he’d anticipated. “Come to bed. What do you think people do on their wedding trips?”

“We’re not on a wedding trip. Besides, they likely see the sights during the day. Surely—” here she waved a hand to encompass both him and the bed, “—all that is done at night.”

He couldn’t help the smile. “I assure you, not entirely.”

She drew in a deep breath, which lifted her bosom against the material of her bodice. To strip her slowly out of her daily costume would be a small gift. He’d unbutton the tiny buttons that marched up her front, then have her turn a time or two so he saw her breasts pushed up over her corset.

A tinge of sadness darkened her eyes. “I thank you kindly for your invitation, but I must decline.”

She fled more quickly than he could respond. He jerked half out of bed, throwing his legs over the side, but what was he supposed to do? Run down the hallway after her naked? What a sight that would be for the maids.

His fists curled around the edge of the bed, but the down-filled mattress was entirely too soft. It gave him no biting resistance to fight against.

After the long hours last night, he’d assumed her frozen chill would be gone. She wanted him. He read it in her shallow breaths and the darkness that spread in her eyes. She’d shoved it all away, the better to do whatever she thought of as her duties.

He’d be damned if he knew what she could do at dawn. As far as he knew, the servants hadn’t lit the fires.

She’d run about as fast as she humanly could.

He’d wanted a lady wife, hadn’t he? Now he’d have to deal with the results.

Chapter Twenty

In more than three weeks of marriage, Sera hadn’t been able to take a breath without smelling Fletcher’s lemon-spice scent. When he was miles away, tending to business, he haunted her. Her skin tingled with remembered touches. The flesh between her legs was often swollen and needy, as if he’d awoken some beast within her that wouldn’t be satiated.

Couldn’t
be satiated.

Sitting in the quiet of her favorite parlor, Sera let her thoughts center on Fletcher. Wondering where he was. What he was doing.

More specifically, what he’d do to her that night.

Every evening, she prepared for bed while she lied to herself. She didn’t care if he visited. She wasn’t watching the connecting door while her breath stuttered in her lungs and her body rose out of her skin.

Every evening when he politely knocked on the door, she was shown as the baseborn liar she’d always been.

She threw down her embroidery hoop and pushed out of her chair. Stalking across the room and back, she eventually settled by the front window. Her spine curved as she pressed her feverish forehead to the cool glass.

Out there, things were different.

How, she didn’t know. All she knew was that surely not everyone else felt like two beings inside one body. The sensual nighttime lover that Fletcher aroused and the daytime model of propriety. Dawn was the hardest time of all, when the two sides went to war.

Though Fletcher had his own room and, one could assume, his own bed within it, he never slept there. He always pulled her into his arms against her halfhearted protest and pushed her head down to his chest. There she breathed in the solid warmth of him as she drifted off to sleep. It was all well and good, anyway, since they often turned to each other in the middle of the night to begin the process anew. Just the night before, she’d woken to the dead still of her room and crawled under the covers to run her fingertips over every inch of his skin.

The hair that dusted his thighs had been crisp under her palms. The vee of muscles from his waist to his groin, the ones she’d never seen in light since that morning she’d burst in on him dressing, had leapt to her touch.

And in the morning, she’d slipped away.

It was easier to do when he slept on and she could sneak out the door on half-held breath.

He’d given up on trying to talk her into staying. He watched her with something shadowed in those pale blue eyes. The weight of them bore into her back as she opened the door and left.

“Mrs. Thomas.”

Her spine jerked straight, away from the window. She knew before she turned around who stood in the parlor doorway. No one had the same deep, rumbling quality to their voice. No one else made her scalp tingle with their nearness.

“Mr. Thomas,” she greeted him. Somehow they’d drifted into cool formality during the daytime hours. She mourned the loss of his teasing, but she didn’t know how to get it back.

Or if she should try. The walls she bricked thick every morning would become more and more difficult to shore up. They didn’t eat meals together, as she was off to give lessons at Lottie’s school most evenings. The nights she stayed home he departed earlier for his clubs and haunts and dirty business. As if he were complicit in her attempts to keep their lives separate.

Sera could so easily hand over her soul to his keeping. Except she still didn’t trust him—or anyone else—to keep it safe.

Sometimes she wasn’t sure she trusted herself.

She laced her fingers together before her belly in an attempt to hold herself back from reaching out. She wouldn’t know what she was reaching for, anyway. “Was your day a pleasant one?”

He strolled into the room. On the surface, he looked every inch the gentleman about town. His coat was precisely cut to his wide shoulders, and the waistcoat on display was a tasteful dove gray. A gold watch chain draped from a button to dip into his pocket.

She saw the reddening of his knuckles.

“Pleasant enough, I suppose.” He watched her out of the side of his eyes as he walked to the sideboard.

“Did you spend it in business pursuits or something more enjoyable?”

For long seconds the only sound in the room was the quiet gurgle of liquid into his glass. He was turned away from her, head bent over his task. A minute sliver of skin flaunted itself between his neckcloth and golden hair.

Last night, she’d put her mouth over that skin as she’d stretched out naked across his back. He’d shuddered, then thrown her over and covered her. Entered her.

He turned, then leaned against the hip-high table. His eyes gleamed as he watched her over the raised glass, but if he actually took a sip, it was miniscule.

“Do you care?” he asked in a deadly soft voice.

Pain lanced under her ribs. She winced. Unbidden, her hand rose to rub her palm across the top of her chest.

She’d thought that getting married would ease the day-to-day tension between them. Instead, the ceremony had made their lives both more terrible and wonderful.

“I do.” She lifted her chin and forced her hands to her side. “I’d be a poor helpmeet if I don’t know your daily tasks.”

His gaze dropped to the liquid he swirled. “If I want something more than a helpmeet?”

She shook her head. She didn’t understand him. What more could there be than what she gave him? In less than two months she’d reorganized his entire household to meet the most exacting standards. At night, she became a wanton cipher of herself.

“Never mind,” he growled. He tossed back the remains of his drink and made as if to leave. She wouldn’t see him again until night, if today followed the pattern of the rest.