Chapter 18
Supper arrived. As Gareth set up their meal on an elegant French table, Juliet retreated behind a corner screen and fed Charlotte. When she emerged, putting the sleepy baby in the cradle, the aroma of hot food assailed her senses. Her stomach rumbled with need. How many hours had it been since they'd eaten a decent meal?
Gareth was standing attentively by her chair, waiting to seat her. Smiling, Juliet sat down, her gaze following her handsome husband as he walked back around the table and took his own chair across from her. Ever the perfect gentleman, he lifted the lids from the covered dishes and tureens, allowing Juliet to inspect each one before serving up her portions himself.
It was a veritable feast. Beneath the glow of the small candelabra there was hare simmered in port wine and stuffed with herbs and cinnamon. Veal pie with plums and sugar. A fluffy white cake filled with butter, sugar, and raspberry jam, an assortment of truffles and sugared pastries, and spicy, moist gingerbread, still hot from the oven. Bottles of sweet, fruity wine, biscuits, and a selection of cheeses — Stilton, Cheshire, and cheddar — completed the meal. As they ate, washing the food down with the wine served in sparkling crystal glasses, they continued the conversation they'd started on the bed. The more they talked, the more they relaxed. And the more Gareth drank, the more amusing he became.
Two glasses of wine and he was making her giggle with his word caricatures of Lord North and the other ministers whose doings had helped plunge America into revolution; three and he was telling her about the wicked scandals, affairs, and personal quirks of politicians whose names she had never heard, and aristocrats she hoped never to meet, until their own troubles seemed far away and she was laughing right along with him.
"No, I'm not joking!" he protested, laughing and waving a bit of cheese as he related a tale about Perry's mother. "The busks in her corsets really did snap after she gorged herself at her daughter's wedding feast, and everyone at the table heard them go!"
"Oh, Gareth — you cannot be serious!"
"Oh, but I am. You see, I charmed her maid into bringing me the corset beforehand."
Juliet clapped a hand to her mouth to hold back her sudden laughter. "You mean you ... sabotaged it?!"
"But of course. It was great fun, I can assure you. You should've heard the things go. Crack! Good thing she was swathed in so much fabric, or they might've shot right out of her garments like arrows and hit someone in the eye."
"Oh, Gareth, that is quite impossible!" she gasped, holding her side with the force of her mirth.
"Ha! But I got you laughing!" He took a swallow of wine. "Another time, Perry's mother had a ball, and the Den members and I sneaked in beforehand, scooped out the inside of the cake, and stuck a dead salmon inside. Perry had caught it two days before, and it was the height of summer, so you can imagine how the thing stank. You should've seen everyone's faces when they started slicing the cake and the fumes burst forth; it was so bad that Hugh's mother passed out and fell face first right into the icing!"
Juliet was laughing so hard, the tears were rolling down her cheeks. "I think I understand why Perry's mother won't let you stay at her house!"
"Perry's mother? Ha! None of my friends' mothers will so much as allow me beyond their gates, never mind over their thresholds! Bunch of sour old gits; you'd think they could forgive me for things that happened four, five years ago." He grinned, all deceptive innocence. "Why, I'd never do such things now!"
She laughed. "Unless you're foxed."
"Unless I'm foxed."
"Perhaps you should stop drinking, then."
"And perhaps you should start eating, my dear wife. I've seen sparrows with bigger appetites. Here, try some of this Cheshire. It is splendid."
He plucked a small bit of cheese from the dish and, leaning across the table, held the morsel to her lips. Juliet hesitated — the gesture seemed uncomfortably intimate — but the wine had relaxed her, taking the edge off her inevitable wedding-night jitters, and she suddenly felt ridiculous for being so skittish. Especially when she looked into those romantic blue eyes across from her and saw shadows of Charles in that familiar de Montforte face, in that lazy de Montforte smile. Currents fluttered out along her nerve endings. Warmth settled in the pit of her belly. Slowly, she opened her mouth and accepted the cheese, trembling at the warm brush of his fingers against her lips.
She chewed and swallowed, her gaze still trapped by his, until she finally blushed and looked away, her face rosy and hot, her hands gripped tightly beneath the tablecloth. When she finally dared to look back up at him, he was gazing at her with an amused little half-smile.
"Well, what do you think of it?" he asked, topping up her wine glass.
"Delicious." Every nerve in her body was thrumming in response to the intimate gesture they'd just shared, her lips tingling where his fingers had brushed them. "But I think I prefer the Cheddar."
"Oh. I haven't tried that one yet."
"You haven't?"
"No." His eyes were teasing, challenging, inviting her to summon her courage and —
Good God, he wants me to feed him!
Heat prickled through her. He was still watching her, little sparkles of laughter dancing in his eyes, his mouth twitching at the corners.
"You want me to force you to try some, then," she declared, her bold tone belying her shaky courage.
"My dear Juliet, I shall never force you to do anything that you do not wish to do."
She looked across the table at him. He gazed back, calm, relaxed, amused. Dear God, but he looked handsome in the candlelight. Handsome under any light. And now his grin was spreading, as though he was ready to burst out laughing at her predicament. What a rogue he was! And what a skittish ninny she was. She, who'd once faced Indians and bears in the wilds of Maine; she, who'd been caught up in revolution in Boston; she, who'd stood up to murderous highwaymen — she, who was letting this teasing English aristocrat, who was, after all, her husband, turn her courage upside down! Determined to prove to herself as well as to him that she was no coward, she reached down and selected a wedge of pale yellow Cheddar. Carefully leaning across the table so the candle would not singe her sleeve, she met that challenging stare with an equally challenging one of her own and placed the morsel of cheese against her husband's lips.
His sensuous, lazily smiling lips.
His gaze locked on hers, but he did not open his mouth. He merely gave her a warm, assessing look that melted every bone in her body.
And then his lips parted, and his tongue came out to lazily circle the edge of the cheese.
Raw desire shot through Juliet's blood, centered between her legs. Her hand shook. Her heart pounded. His lips, soft and warm, feathered against her fingers as he slowly took the cheese, his gaze still holding hers. He finally began to chew, and Juliet — trembling — started to pull away, but his hand came up and closed warmly around her own, trapping her fingers within his strong, hard grasp. He brought her hand to his lips, and, watching her from above her knuckles, slowly licked each fingertip clean.
Juliet gasped and yanked her hand back. "I — think I've had enough food for tonight," she said shakily, pushing her chair back.
Laughing, he leaned an elbow against the table, propped his dimpled chin in his palm, and calmly swallowed the cheese. "Coward."
"I am not! It's just that ... well, this is —"
"Wicked?"
"Well, yes!"
"Unseemly?"
"It's —"
"Juliet."
She froze. Her insides were hot and shaking, her throat as dry as cinders. Her bones were suddenly so weak she didn't know if she could stand up, anyhow. She clenched her hands to still her wildly pounding heart and forced herself to meet his amused gaze. "Y-yes?"
"You, my dear, do not know how to have fun."
"I do, too!"
"You do not. You are as bad as Lucien. And do you know something? I think it's time someone showed you how to have fun. Namely, me. You can worry all you l
ike about our situation tomorrow, but tonight ... tonight I'm going to make you laugh so hard that you'll forget all about how afraid of me you are."
"I am not afraid of you!"
"You are."
And with that, he pushed his chair back, stalked around the table, and in a single easy movement, swept her right out of her chair and into his arms.
"Gareth! Put me down!"
He only laughed, easily carrying her toward the bed.
"Gareth, I am a grown woman!"
"You are a grown woman who behaves in a manner far too old for her years," he countered, still striding toward the bed. "As the wife of a Den member, that just will not do."
"Gareth, I don't want — I mean, I'm not ready for that!"
"That? Who said anything about that?" He tossed her lightly onto the bed. "Oh, no, my dear Juliet. I'm not going to do that —"
She tried to scoot away. "Then what are you going to do?"
"Why, I'm going to wipe that sadness out of your eyes if only for tonight. I'm going to make you forget your troubles, forget your fears, forget everything but me. And you know how I'm going to do that, O dearest wife?" He grabbed a fistful of her petticoats as she tried to escape. "I'm going to tickle you until you giggle ... until you laugh ... until you're hooting so loudly that all of London hears you!"
He fell upon the bed like a swooping hawk, and Juliet let out a helpless shriek as his fingers found her ribs and began tickling her madly.
"Stop! We just ate! You'll make me sick!"
"What's this? Your husband makes you sick?"
"No, it's just that — aaaoooooo!"
He tickled her harder. She flailed and giggled and cried out, embarrassed about each loud shriek but helpless to prevent them. He was laughing as hard as she. Catching one thrashing leg, he unlaced her boot and deftly removed it. She yelped as his fingers found the sensitive instep, and she kicked out reflexively. He neatly ducked just in time to avoid having his nose broken, catching her by the ankle and tickling her toes, her soles, her arch through her stockings.
"Stop, Gareth!" She was laughing so hard, tears were streaming from her eyes. "Stop it, damn it!"
Thank goodness Charlotte, worn out by her earlier tantrum, was such a sound sleeper!
The tickling continued. Juliet kicked and fought, her struggles tossing the heavy, ruffled petticoats and skirts of her lovely blue gown halfway up her thigh to reveal a long, slender calf sheathed in silk. She saw his gaze taking it all in, even as he made a grab for her other foot.
"No! Gareth, I shall lose my supper if you keep this up, I swear it I will — oooahhhhh!"
He seized her other ankle, yanked off the remaining boot, and began torturing that foot as well, until Juliet was writhing and shrieking on the bed in a fit of laughter. The tears streamed down her cheeks, and her stomach ached with the force of her mirth. And when, at last, he let up and she lay exhausted across the bed in a twisted tangle of skirts, petticoats, and chemise, her chest heaving and her hair in a hopeless tumbled-down flood of silken mahogany beneath her head, she looked up to see him grinning down at her, his own hair hanging over his brow in tousled, seductive disarray. He had one knee on the bed beside her — and one hand resting on her rib cage, just beneath her right breast.
Their gazes met. The room went still. Then, out came his dimpled grin, wicked, playful, seductive — and up moved his hand, now cupping her breast, his thumb roving slowly over the cloth-clad nipple in a silent question.
Juliet tensed. Gareth paused. And neither moved a muscle as they stared at each other like two fencing opponents waiting for the other to make the first move, their eyes conveying a silent invitation, a desire, that neither dared to voice.
Finally, he said, "Does this tickle?"
She swallowed, hard. "No. It does not."
"Hmmmmm ..." He cocked his head as though in rapt observation, watching as his thumb began tracing a little circle around her nipple where the perimeter of her areola would be. "Does this tickle?"
She felt her heart starting to pound, her blood growing hot as her body fired in response to his playful seduction, and in a hoarse little whisper she managed, "Not yet."
His hand moved higher, his thumb anchoring itself against her nipple while his fingers crept up, hooking themselves over the top of her bodice, lingering there for a moment. His knuckles were warm against the soft swell of her breast, and everything inside her went still as he began to pull both bodice and chemise down, exposing her breast to his gaze inch by slow, torturous inch. The room grew hot, the only movement that of the flickering candlelight against the distant wall. Juliet, beginning to find the mere act of breathing difficult, stared up into her husband's face, her skin breaking out in damp heat as his hand moved lower and lower.
"And does this tickle, Juliet?"
Slowly, shyly, Juliet raised her hand to touch his cheek. Her fingertips drifted down the side of his face ... curved around his jaw ... feathered to his lips. "No. I think — that you're going to have to try a little harder if you want it to tickle."
His eyes darkened, almost to azure. And it was then that she realized that he, too, was breathing hard, his body quivering with barely-leashed desire.
He took hold of both chemise and bodice ... pulled them all the way down past the erect, swollen nipple ... and freed her breast to his gaze. Juliet swallowed hard, saw the appreciation and desire there before he lowered his lashes over suddenly hungry eyes, banishing his earlier playfulness and replacing it with raw, naked desire. He cupped her breast with his hand, feeling its heft, its shape, its satiny texture, its warmth. And then, with a groan, he moved fully up onto the bed, making the mattress sink beside her as it took his weight. Her heart pounded in expectation. She felt the singeing heat of his body, so much bigger, longer, stronger, than her own, as he moved up beside her, one hand still shaping her breast, his hair falling around his face, tumbling over his brow. His knee was against her ribs. His thumb was stroking her swollen nipple. And then he moved over her, sliding his big warm hands up to cradle her flushed cheeks, his fingers plunging into her hair. He gazed down at her, his eyes just inches from her own. Unbidden, Juliet's tongue came out to moisten her suddenly-dry lips.
"I think I ... like being tickled," she whispered.
He smiled. His lashes lowered even more and his breath — so sweet, so warm, still fruity with wine — was suddenly upon her face as he slowly bent his head to hers. Her eyes slipped shut ... and then there was nothing but that first, feathery touch of his lips against hers, of two hearts coming together for the first time. Juliet sighed, her arm curving around his back, her fingers exploring the hard muscles beneath his waistcoat and shirt before threading their way up his nape, up the back of his skull, tunneling through tawny hair that was heavy, silky and lustrous. Desire washed through her, and, melting against him, she lost herself in the kiss.
After a time, he broke the contact and gazed down at her, breathing hard, his brow nearly touching hers.
"I can stop this if you wish, Juliet," he said hoarsely. "I told you I shall not force you; I swear to God I shall not —"
But she shook her head, not wanting to disturb this brief escape from her sorrows, this floating, wine-lulled dreaminess of the moment. She drew his head back down to hers, and their mouths met once again — hers, soft and moist and pliant against his harder, increasingly demanding one. The point of his tongue traced the shape of her lips, then teased them apart. With a soft moan she pulled him closer, her other hand flat against his waistcoat, finding the buttons, slipping them through their holes until the garment fell open, one silken edge just brushing her exposed breast. She plunged her fingers into the folds of his shirt, thrilling to the feel of hard muscle and sinew just behind the fabric and a heart that beat as fast and frantically as her own.
"Oh, Juliet ... by God, you taste so good ... you are so very, very beautiful ... you don't know how much I've wished for, waited for, this very moment ..."
His mouth
slanted across hers, his kiss more forceful now, his tongue driving deeeper against her own and his breath hot against her cheek. Her fingers caught in his hair, raking through the heavy mass of it to loosen the ribbon that held his queue until the silken, golden-brown waves lay in loose disarray across his shoulders. Fleetingly, unbidden, her mind took her to another place, another time, when she had lain beneath another man not so very different in shape and appearance from this one — but the image faded, banished by the new memory she was creating with this man who was her husband. She felt his fingers brushing her breasts, one still clad in fabric, the other bare to his touch; she felt his palm curving around each swelling crest, grazing each taut nipple until she was arching up against him, moaning softly and pushing herself into his willing hand. Bursts of pleasure radiated from every place he touched, and her mind was a spinning, whirling place of delight.
She explored him, as well. Her hand roved over the rocky ridge of his shoulders, down the valley of his spine, up over his bottom to one solidly muscled thigh. His breathing quickened, growing hoarse and ragged at her touch. He tore his lips from hers and buried his face in the hot curve of her neck, his hand kneading, squeezing her bare, thrusting breast. Engulfed in rising flames, she moaned and flung her head back, feeling his breath hot against her collarbone, his kisses simmering down the side of her neck, the base of her throat, the crest of her breast — there to be replaced by the slick and raspy warmth of his tongue. While he kissed the soft flesh, nibbled the sugary-white skin, his fingers stoked and fired the nipple just beneath, and Juliet felt her senses careening toward a violent explosion.
"Oh — oh, Gareth ..." She made a sound that was half moan, half sob.
He laughed against her breast. "Ah, Juliet ... I have sorely underestimated you! You do know how to have fun, after all."
He heard her beginning to whimper with pleasure, making keening noises in her throat as he traced the perimeter of her areola with his tongue, and his hand began to move over the flat expanse of her stomach out over the prominent bones of her pelvis evident beneath the shimmering satin — down, down, down, toward her thighs. How sweet it was to hear his name on her lips, to know her wonderful, wanton response to his touch! He buried his face in her breast, his body quivering and his cock aching with a need so fierce, he could barely think.
He felt her fingers threading into his hair and clasping his head to her breast, urging him to continue, silently conveying her need. Her other breast was already half-exposed; freeing it, he kissed its milky curve, nipped and licked and gently nibbled it until she was thrashing and making little inarticulate sounds of desperation beneath him. She was driving him mad. Wild. Insane. His hand moved back down her thigh, and the long, silk-clad legs beneath their frothy tangle of skirts and petticoat. She moaned and shuddered violently, and his own hand was shaking as he pulled the heavy skirts up to the level of her knee, his fingers drifting over that smoothly stockinged leg, up the trembling inside of her calf, her thigh, moving closer and closer toward the blushing center of her passion ...
She was slick and hot and wet, as he'd known she would be. Still suckling her breast, he parted the rosy petals and rubbed his thumb over her swollen bud, pushing down on it, kneading it, flicking it back and forth until her head thrashed on the bed and her heels drove into the mattress and frenzied little moans burst from her lips.
"Oh, Gareth!" she panted, "Gareth ... please ... oh, sweet Lord above ... oh —"
He twirled his finger around her for a moment longer until she was nearly over the edge. Then, drawing back, he grasped the heavy, frilly layers of skirts and petticoats, pulled them up and over her stomach, and let out a sigh of appreciation at sight of the long, sinfully luscious legs laid bare to his gaze. At the pale, lean thighs, the silken mound of dark hair, the lush, sweet pink center of her. He could not help himself. His thumb and fingers stroking her once more, he leaned down, wanting only to taste her, to lick her, to tongue her until she blew apart ... wanting only to plunge his throbbing rod all the way to the hilt inside that deliciously swollen pink cradle.
He bent his head, parted her with his thumbs, and touched the tip of his tongue to the quivering bud ... and as he kissed and slowly licked her with long, torturous tongue strokes in that most intimate of places, and she began to sob and spasm, his gaze lifted, drifting over her stomach, her rising and falling breasts and toward the door, where the subtlest of movements had caught his eye.
It was nothing more than the light glowing from behind the door's small, petal-shaped keyhole ... being cut off ... being suddenly restored.
A fiery red haze blinded him. Fury seethed in his temples, made every inch of him begin to shake, but he found enough control to cover her with his body as her climax came, clamping his mouth over hers and kissing her to muffle her impassioned cries. Then, pulling her skirts back down over her legs and swearing violently under his breath, he rose from the bed, grabbed his sword, and stalked toward the door, his waistcoat flapping open and his face thunderous.
"Gareth?" she breathed from somewhere behind him.
But Gareth saw only the doorlatch.
I'll kill them.