Marry the Man Today Read online

  But the back parlor had never looked quite like this when he’d lived here with Jared and Drew. Opulent drapes against the rear windows, a scattering of thick carpets littered with piles of huge satiny pillows. A steaming tub, a low table laden with cheese and bread and succulent fruits. The whole scene shimmering with a forest of candles.

  And standing in the midst of this breathtaking landscape was his exotic wife, in her exotic trousers and … Lord help him, the only garment between him and her pouting, perfect breasts was that short vest, precariously fastened in the front.

  Those tiny silken tassels dancing where his hands ought to be exploring.

  The full-sleeved, blowsy shirtwaist she’d been wearing beneath the vest had disappeared somewhere along the way. And now all he could do was stammer and stand there aching for her.

  “I understand your journey here has been long and difficult, sirrah.” She came toward him with a delicious glint in her eye, her arm extended as she approached, her fingers beckoning.

  “Grueling, madam. Across arid deserts and raging seas.” Oh, yes, he could play her game, would play it gladly. He could stand here and watch the gentle, purposeful swing of her lithe hips, the shifting, clinging silk against her thighs.

  And the hypnotic bobbing of her breasts beneath that singular vest with all its shadows and snickleways, waiting for one of them to show itself to him.

  “Then settle your thoughts. I’m here to serve you.” She stopped just shy of him to entwine her fingers in the front of his waistcoat. “After all, I’m told that you purchased a night full of scented delights with me.”

  “Indeed. A bought-and-paid-for night in the seraglio, madam.” A night he might never survive, though he would die the happiest man on earth.

  “A night in my seraglio, sir. Designed with you in mind.” She tugged down on his waistcoat, bending his mouth to hers like a willow in the wind. “Hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  “Good.” She produced a succulent blackberry between her fingers, then popped it into his mouth and kissed him lightly, slowly, on his mouth, nibbled along his jaw until she reached his ear, and whispered, “If you’ll follow me, my lord.”

  “Anywhere, anytime.” He was dazzled as she pulled on his cuff, dumbstruck by her scent as she led him toward the low table. “I have since the moment I saw you marching down Whitehall with your outrageous sign.”

  She turned back to him and smiled, quirking her head as though she thought he might be teasing. “You saw me in the street that day?”

  “Watched you from the moment you left Trafalgar Square.” He slipped his hands around her slender waist, finding warm, bare skin beneath his fingers, and suffering a jolt of lust that pulled her forward against his erection and made her eyes flash.

  “You said you hadn’t.”

  “Every blessed step you took, my love.”

  “Why?”

  “Hoping like a fool that you would glance up at me.” He lifted her into his arms, holding her fast against him, length upon length, unable to get enough of her.

  “Where were you, Ross?” She hugged her arms around his neck, clinging to him, scrubbing her fingers through the hair at his nape.

  “In the Admiralty.” He kissed her eyelids, the side of her nose. “At a meeting that held no importance after the moment I saw you.”

  She caught him by the ears and peered into his eyes. “Is that what brought you into Scotland Yard that day? My protest sign?”

  “You did, Elizabeth.” He laughed, slowly lowered her to her feet in front of the table and lifted her hair back off her shoulders. “While you marched past me with such determined pride.”

  “I was terrified,” she whispered, catching her lower lip with her teeth.

  “And I was besotted with the beautiful woman scowling out at the world from the back of that paddy wagon.”

  “That’s not like you, Ross.” She offered another blackberry between her fingers, and he took it eagerly, her fingertips and all, nibbling and licking them until he was holding her hand, kissing her palm.

  “It isn’t at all.” To think, he might have walked away, might never have met her. And he suddenly couldn’t imagine the loss. “But believe me, my love, you’re worth every penny of blackmail you wrung out of me tonight.”

  “So far.” She was now tugging on his sleeve, lifting herself up onto her toes, the tips of her breasts a teasing, white-hot pressure seeping through his waistcoat, the linen of his shirt.

  He steadied himself, restrained his urges and took hold of her elbows. But a shudder ripped suddenly through him, a lightning blue thirst for the woman he’d married but had hardly kissed.

  He took her mouth with his, possessed her lips completely, tasting her and teasing. Sending him into an ecstasy when her tongue found his and played and flickered, until he was groaning like a bear and clutching her hips and lifting her into his arms again.

  Mindlessly hungry for her, he carried her to the carpet, as he had imagined so many times, and drove her deeply into the mounds of pillows, deeper and deeper with his kiss against her hair and her eyes, then back to the lushness of her berry-flavored lips.

  She sifted her fingers through his hair and looked up at him, her mouth rosy and moist. “My lord, I’m supposed to be pleasuring you.”

  “Believe me, love, you are.”

  But his little vixen gave a quick twist to her hips and he was suddenly, amazingly, trapped beneath her. Trapped by her devilish grin, by the simmering thrall of sandalwood caught up his nostrils.

  “Now isn’t that better?”

  “God, yes!” She was straddling his hips with her knees, and his shoulders with her arms, settling another kiss on his lips, a long, leisurely kiss, a mad exploration of his mouth, a waltz with his tongue.

  And then she was dangling a deep red cherry above his mouth, dragging it across his lips until he caught it and chewed.

  She crossed her arms over his chest and rested her chin on the back of her hands. “According to Kate, the cherries are from a tree here at the cottage.”

  “I remember.” He sat up slightly and tossed the pit into the fire.

  “So the three of you lived here in the cottage?” She slowly poked a cherry into her own mouth, making him want to follow after it.

  But he’d vowed to pace himself through the night, to restrain himself for the sake of his eager, unbridled wife.

  “Our headquarters for nearly three years, until Jared was twenty and we all went off to sea.”

  “My amazing husband.” She cut off his words with another juicy blackberry then another kiss nuzzled against his mouth, another endless, honey-warm kiss. “And then, Ross?”

  “Canada—” He was breathless for her. “—where we foiled a royal embezzlement plot and gained the queen’s everlasting gratitude.”

  “The queen’s champion, as well as my own.” She was silk and sleekness from head to toe. He could barely think for the need to pull off her clothes, roll her onto her back and plunge inside of her. But that was for later, if he could last.

  And still she nuzzled and squirmed against him until she finally stood up and over him. Her silk trousers shimmering like a warm river, the undersides of her breasts like shadowy crescents beneath her skimpy vest.

  A sultry haven he intended to visit as soon as he could manage to regain his senses.

  “I’ve more for you, my lord.” She held out her hand to him.

  Transfixed, not sure he could take much more, he gathered her soft hand into his and rose up onto one knee. She planted a kiss on his mouth and lifted him the rest of the way to his feet.

  Then she stood back and raked him with her gaze while he waited as silently as he could, breathing like a bull.

  “Your bath awaits, sir.” When he reached for the buttons of his waistcoat, her fingers followed, tangled with his. “Let me do that. You’re to relax here in my harem.”

  He laughed and took her chin between his fingers. “If I let you undress me, I can guaran
tee I’ll not be relaxed in any way.”

  “I can see that already. Felt you as well.” She grinned up at him as she started up the front of his waistcoat, button by button. The backs of her warm fingers sifted heat through the linen of his shirt, taking his breath away.

  “These buttons, Ross.” She peered closely at one of them. “I noticed this very crest carved into the hearth in your rooms at the Huntsman. And tonight on Jared’s and Drew’s buttons. Is it the Huntsman’s official crest?”

  So much more than that. “A symbol of freedom, success, and loyalty.”

  “Ah, the three of you.” She went to work on the rest of the buttons, admiring them.

  “Indeed.” A reminder of how precious life could be.

  “Perhaps the Adams should have a crest of its own.” She opened his waistcoat and toyed with the buttons on his shirt. “Our own symbols.”

  “A book, madam, a protest sign, and—”

  “And Turkish trousers?” She slipped her hands inside his open shirt and slid them across his bare chest. “Oh, my, you’re warm here.”

  He caught her face between his palms and kissed her upturned mouth. “Actually, wife, I had been thinking of a heart.”

  She put her ear to his chest. “Yours is beating just fine.”

  And Lord, his pulse was thundering through his veins, churning against his sinew, battering his resolve.

  “But your shirt has to go, my lord.” A moment later she had shucked him of his waistcoat and shirt, and his braces were hanging at his sides.

  And she was appraising him again, the tip of her finger tucked beneath her chin, as though she were considering the purchase of a new vase.

  “Heavens, Ross, Aunt Tibbs and Aunt Clarice would think you a marvel of manhood.”

  Now there were two women who had left their mark on his wife. “They’d approve of me?” That seemed important.

  “In her younger days Aunt Tibbs would have thrown herself at you headlong.”

  “A woman who knew her mind.”

  “And her manflesh.”

  A surge of molten heat shot through him. Sweet-hot anticipation. “Indeed.”

  “You’re also recklessly handsome, husband, and Tibbs admired that in a man.”

  “And in a husband?”

  Aunt Tibbs would have thought I was a damned fool for marrying you, Ross.

  But with any luck and a lot of work, her remarkable husband would prove that jail hadn’t been the better alternative to marriage.

  He was certainly the most amazing man to look at. His shoulders wide, his arms powerfully muscled as he ran his fingers through his hair, his chest bare and bronze and corded like a Greek god’s. With a dark swath of hair plunging to well below his narrow waist, like a fine, sleek arrow.

  And below all that dizzying maleness, his wonderfully bulging trousers.

  “Time for those,” she said, pointing to the bulge, still amazed at the size of him, everywhere she looked, everywhere she touched.

  But when she reached for the top of his trousers, he grabbed her hands and put them around his neck, then pulled her against him, which only made his rock hard penis more prominent.

  More thrilling.

  “You’d best let me do that, wife.”

  “Why? Yours aren’t the first set of men’s trouser buttons I’ve encountered.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Well, there wasn’t a man in the trousers at the time, but I figured it out on my own.” And so she went to work on the topmost button, hampered somewhat by the fact that she couldn’t see what she was doing because the man was kissing her fiercely.

  “Have you figured out that I’m bursting for you?”

  “Definitely.” He groaned against her mouth as she brushed up against his arousal, nibbled at her lips as she slipped the top button through its hole.

  Then, curious beyond measure, Elizabeth dropped to her knees in front of him and reached for the next button. But Ross caught her hand and drew her to her feet.

  “No, Elizabeth.”

  “Then how am I going to get your trousers off?”

  “You’re not.”

  “You simply can’t take a bath in your clothes, sir. And your paid-for night in my harem includes a personal bath.”

  “Personal bath?” He raised his brows, smiled broadly, then, without losing a beat, hauled off his trousers and his drawers, his shoes and socks, all at the same time.

  And when he was finished, he stood naked in front of her. Gloriously naked.

  “Much better, husband.” Though her cheeks were afire and her pulse was thumping against her ears. “Much bigger.” Thicker.

  Grand!

  And waiting for her.

  Chapter 18

  And on her lover’s arm she leant,

  And round her waist she felt it fold,

  And far across the hills they went

  In that new world which is the old.

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  The DayDream, 1842

  And she really ought to encourage him to get into the tub, but she hadn’t any words at the moment. They were stuck in her belly, like a whirlwind of embers.

  But he was already making his way there, the muscles of his backside flexing as he moved, as he stepped into the water like a beast out of legend.

  And groaning all the way down, until he ducked under the water, stayed overlong, then came up scrubbing at his hair, shaking his head like a water dog.

  His skin gleamed gold in the light of the candles, inviting her touch, but sending her heart into a plummeting spin when she noticed a thick, uneven scar running at a downward angle across his left shoulder, from the ridge line well into the muscle of his upper arm.

  Graphic proof of her husband’s vulnerability in his work, as well as his courage.

  She went to his side and pulled a candle closer for a better look. “No wonder your shoulder gets sore now and then.”

  “If it’s sore at the moment, wife, I can’t feel it.” His smile was wolfish as he leaned back against the tub. But as she began massaging the thick muscles, his head fell back and his mouth dropped open with a moan. “That’s just… oh, you’re so fine.”

  She worked on his shoulder, kissing his ear and his neck, cupping his jaw for a better purchase for her kiss against his mouth.

  “I like this, wife. Being here in your harem.” He held her face with his wet hands, held her mouth against his, romped there. “Pampered and massaged.”

  Fondled, my lord. But that was to be a surprise for later.

  “A wife’s responsibility,” she said, her hands soaped now and scented with lemon.

  “To create a harem for her husband in their bedchamber?” He sighed even more deeply as she worked the slickness of the soap into his shoulders and along his arm.

  “A one-woman harem, sir, though she would, of course, soon come to expect the same intimate treatment from her husband.”

  “Wise woman.”

  That’s when the soap slipped out of her hands, landed on his chest, then slid downward into the soapy darkness between his widely spread legs, where it hit the bottom of the metal tub with a clunk.

  “Oops,” was all she could manage.

  He looked up into her eyes as though challenging her courage to go after it.

  She not only had the courage, but a burning, deeply abiding curiosity.

  “I’ll get that, Ross.” Hoping for the best, yet not quite knowing what that would be, she judged his position under the water then stuck her bare arm between his legs.

  “Careful.” He was gripping the edge of the tub as though he feared she would pull him under.

  She found the soap immediately, but, like the shameless hussy she was, pretended she hadn’t while she gathered her courage and kept her hand down there, having to lean her breasts against his knee.

  He focused a narrowed, suspicious eye on her. “What are you doing, wife?”

  “I’m trying to remember the suggestions from my booklet.”
r />   “Which suggestions would that—oh, God! What are you—oh, Elizabeth!” He bucked.

  “Oh, Ross!” Oh, my, his erection was splendid! Hot and thick and stiff beyond her imagination. And his scrotum was a marvelous wonder, along with all the other shapes of him.

  “Careful where you—ahhhhh!” He was sitting bolt upright, breathing hard and fast, like a tethered beast, holding onto the rim of the tub with a white-knuckled grip.

  “Now I remember! ‘Tend to his every part in the bath, fondle his manly shapes, linger where he seems to most enjoy your touch.’”

  “And that’s enough fondling, for now, sweet!”

  “So soon?” Disappointment deflated her. But only until Ross grabbed her upper arms and rose out of the tub, drawing her upward with him.

  “Barely soon enough!” He stepped out of the water and snagged the nearest towel.

  “I should be the one to dry you off, my lord. After all—”

  “Not this time. Can’t risk it.”

  “Then you owe me.”

  “And I always pay my debts.” Elizabeth loved to see him in such a tempest of passion, striding toward her in full rut, the towel tossed aside, his nostrils flaring.

  “But, good sir, I haven’t given you anywhere near your donations’s worth tonight.”

  “You will, my love, you will.”

  A thrilling threat, a breathtaking promise from a man who was huge and stark naked and looking too pleased with himself as he engulfed her with his embrace.

  The steaming heat of him seeped through the silk of her trousers, his penis a rod of fire, rolling against her belly, making her want to reach down for him, to touch him again.

  But when she tried, he growled and dipped her backward over his arm, exposing her neck to his mouth, to his trailing kisses, her name whispered again and again.

  “Oh, Ross … that’s, oh!” Her skin was alive and on fire for him, his hands skimming everywhere along her silky trousers, shaping her bottom and against her belly, cupping her between her legs, a touch that drove the air from her lungs and dizzied her.

  Just when she was about to beg him to … to do something more intimate, faster or slower, he hooked his deft fingers through the loop holding her vest together between her breasts and popped the button right off.