Page 51 of The Rebellious Countess
She was supposed to be knee deep in her own ablution, but that was the trouble. While she washed the dirt away from her person in one stall, she had noticed the knot hole in the wood panel and Elias’s masculine form move in the other. What red-blooded English or French woman wouldn’t watch a display like that?
And so, she had watched him through the cracks. It was naughty and sinful, but oh, so delightful as her own hand brought the wet cloth down her arms, and across her torso. She had been transfixed when his own hand trailed across the dips and swells of the waves of muscle on his abdomen. None of the sketches in the books she had seen depicting the acts of sex had come close to displaying a male form like his. Looking at the books, she’d found the male body curious and interesting, not arousing. No wonder they didn’t display the image of a man like Elias. Every man of thetonwould think himself unworthy, every woman would be greatly disappointed in her husband if they came across one of those books in her husband’s library and it contained one of Michelangelo’s male models pleasuring a woman.
The barn had become almost too warm to bear. She had seen nude sculptures on her one trip to London, had been fascinated by the art and the reaction of the women to the art. She’d thought it odd how the ladies found the sculptures to represent commoners. They had made the sculptures seem vulgar when they exclaimed for all to hear, “Nogentlemanwould ever look like that!”
No gentleman, indeed. Elias was more than a gentleman. He was her husband, and like the ladies of theton, Máira could not stop looking at the muscled form created by God. What an awfulexistence she would have led had she never known a man such as Elias.
“Are you cold?”
She froze at the sound of his voice, then jumped back from the wall, her heart pounding. “No. I’m fine.”
“Very well,” he said, and Máira sighed with relief.
A shuffling sound, however, brought her attention back to Elias.
Máira bent over and watched once more through the cracks of the wood as her husband took off his shoes and then pulled his trousers down in one fell swoop. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen his manhood, but it was the first time she had seen it in the light. Long and thick with veining traveling its length, Elias’s cock was another aspect of the male anatomy she suspected to be uncommon.
There was no gratuitous slant that made him look ill-proportioned or false as the drawings in the books had been. Elias’s manhood was just as long, if not longer than those depicted in the books her sister had shared. The difference was how well the power of his cock seemed to match the power of his body as he fisted its length and slowly stroked it up and down.
And so she watched him as she washed her breasts, her nipples distending with the desire to be touched. It was the first time she’d indulged in that craving only he had stirred. She caressed her flesh until she was nearly moaning with fantasies of what Elias would do to her if she were truly his bride.
She dreamed of Elias pulling her into his arms, reveling in the strength of his embrace as he enfolded her into his heat. There was no other place she’d rather be than in that stable with him, naked and unafraid of what tomorrow would bring.
Her body came alive. It sparked and tingled as if a fire were springing to life in her core as she watched the color of his green eyes darken to a color deeper than any forest in Scotland. Theyglittered with what she had come to recognize as his desire, as his hand stroked his shaft.
There was no denying it. She loved this man with her entire being. From their first meeting, she’d known he was the one. She’d set her sights on him just as much as he had her. He may not have wanted to marry her for the same reasons, but he had chosen her over her sisters. He’d chosen her over Mary Wimberly. She knew he had married her out of a pretext to save Simon, but the spark between them was real; it was lasting. It wouldn’t go away if he was rescuing a strange duchess from the wilds of India. It wouldn’t disappear if he were ploughing through the rough and tumbled plains of the Americas.
Elias Allistair Drake was her husband. He wasn’t just a chapter in her life. He owned her, heart, body, and soul. Nothing could change that.
She didn’t care what society thought. She didn’t care that she was ruined, but if she was going to be ruined in the eyes of theton, then she would make certain she was thoroughly ruined.
She may have been daring before, but this need to be his in the one way she was not, made her heart choose for her. If they lay together as man and wife, perhaps he wouldn’t take back his name. Maybe she could remain his wife, even if he left her behind while he traveled the world, fulfilling his need to rescue abandoned souls. She had no doubt one way or the other, he would leave her on English soil and continue his work. That’s where his heart lay, but if she could own his body for one glorious night…
Máira let her dress fall to the ground. Her drawers and shift soon followed. Then she asked, “Elias, could you help me?”
She waited for what seemed like a lifetime, but was probably mere seconds, and then she heard the hay crunch under his bare feet. She tracked that sound as he walked to the stall gate, andthe iron creaked and groaned as he opened and closed one stall, then approached the one she occupied.
A lump formed in her throat, and she swallowed it down before the gate shielding her naked form from his eyes scraped open and he was there.
She had expected an expression of surprise on his face as he stopped to stare. That, however, wasn’t what she saw as his gaze slowly perused her nakedness like a visual caress. He’d looked at her face that same way on so many occasions, but the intensity of this moment was almost too much to bear. She wanted to run to him, wrap her arms around him and have his hands skim across her body the same way his gaze did. Instead, she stood there, absorbing his admiration one step at a time as he circled her, the fresh hay crinkling under his weight.
Elias had buttoned the falls of his trousers, but his shoes were gone, his chest was bare, and his cock strained against the fabric of his trousers. He circled, admiring her body without touching her. She couldn’t calm the thundering of her heart or the rapid rise and fall of her chest. She could feel color flood her chest, neck, and face. Not from embarrassment, as one would think of a virgin standing naked before her bridegroom. It was desire flowing through her body in a heated rush demanding to be quenched.
“Please,” she whispered.
His eyes slowly rose to her face, and she couldn’t stop her tongue from wetting suddenly parched lips. His nostrils flared, his hands curled into fists, yet still he held back. Not coming within her reach, and denying her of his touch.
“What do you want, Máira?” His words caressed the air around her as he continued his perusal, and she shivered with anticipation.
She looked over her shoulder, her gaze skimming down the length of his body and holding where she wanted him most. Agrowl rose from his chest as he continued to stalk around his prey, driving her dizzy with desire. Finally, he stopped in front of her, one finger lifting her chin so that her gaze would meet his.
“I need your words,” he demanded. “Not your looks of desire.”
She didn’t hesitate. “I want you to fuck me.”
He flinched with her base words, and for a moment, she thought she’d offended the gentleman within him. Until his thumbed brushed her bottom lip and forced her mouth open. “You want me to fuck this sweet mouth of yours?”
“Yes, and more.”
