Page 28 of A Deal with the Rebellious Marquess
Fleur finished her unbuttoning and pushed the shirt from his shoulders. She’d not been wrong. He was spectacular. ‘You look even better than you felt,’ she breathed. It was a bold comment, but it pleased him. She watched his eyes darken, his desire growing. He reached for her, but she staved him off with a shake of her head. ‘I am not done. You are not free yet. Almost.’ She promised, ‘Soon.’
‘Hurry,’ he said in a husky whisper.
Her hands dropped to his waistband. ‘Do you think that is how your sculptures felt? Hurry. Free us.’ She pushed his trousers over lean hips, her sense of anticipation growing, heightening at the sight of his arousal. He kicked his trousers away and she stared in awe at what she’d unveiled. Such masculine beauty had lain beneath those clothes, a beauty that was at once both rough-hewn and smooth-carved, a body that fulfilled the contradictions she’d perceived in him that first day. She could not help herself. Fleur reached a hand to trace the musculature at his hip where the sinews tapered down towards his groin. She’d not seen such definition before.
‘That’s the iliac girdle.’ He gave a juddering breath as her fingers feathered over his abdomen.
‘And this?’ She closed her hand over the length of him, feeling the hot pulse of him, his member hard and solid within her touch even as his breath came in shaky gasps. ‘I believe we’ve not been formally introduced.’ She loved that this was driving him wild, testing his restraint.
‘Phallus.’ He murmured the word against her mouth. She could feel him smile as he kissed her.
‘You’re free now.’ She let him dance her back towards the big bed with its inviting turned-down covers. They were both free. The newspaperwoman and the Marquess had been left on the floor, discarded shells from which Jasper and Fleur emerged. She laid back on the bed and pulled him to her, cradling him between her legs. Her body was wet and hot and wanting and his answered. There would be time later for exploration, for lounging in one another’s arms. This was not Harefield’s garden. There’d been no time then, no unveiling. There’d been only sensation, combustible and bright like a firework and just as fleeting.
He came into her and she let the feel of him fill her, let it purl through her as she gave a slow arch of her back in response, savouring him, welcoming him. The old urge came to close her eyes, to fall into the sensation, but he would not have it. ‘Stay with me, watch me as I watch you,’ he murmured the instruction, his hips moving against her, setting an easy rhythm. ‘Don’t leave me. Tonight we are together.’ Yes, and for now that was enough. For now that was everything.
She fastened her gaze on his topaz eyes, locked her legs about his hips and took up the rhythm with him. There was wildfire in his gaze, encouragement in his words, adoration in them as his body worshipped hers until restraint broke and they were lost together, gasping and crying, desperately seeking the culmination that waited just beyond them. Then she was there,theywere there, on the shores of ecstasy, and she was coming apart, eyes wide open as a climax rippled through her body, gaze transfixed on him in his most vulnerable, most complete moments.
Watching him was a mesmerising experience. It left her breathless to see this powerful man wild and undonewithher,becauseof her, his pleasure a mirror of her own, as was his satisfaction and completion. Yes, despite the undone, deconstructed, bone-shattering quality of their lovemaking, there was also a sense of wholeness, rightness. She wanted to drift in that rightness for ever. Rightness was rare. Nothing had been right or whole for her for a very long time.
She curled into him, fitting her body against the curve of his, her head at his shoulder, her hand at his abdomen. She could feel peace come to him as his breathing settled and slowed. There was a sheen to his skin, testament to their efforts. Their bodies told the truth better than words in those moments and she was content to be quiet, content to let her hands wander idly over his body.
‘Clavicle,’ he murmured, half asleep.
‘And this?’
‘Trapezoid.’ His body became a litany of words. Pectoralis major, the ticklish spot beneath his arm. Serratus anterior. Rectus abdominus.
‘That’s amazing.’ Her hand came to rest low on his hip on the so-named inguinal ligament. ‘How do you know so much anatomy?’
He chuckled, lacing his fingers through hers. ‘If I could have been anything I’d have been a scientist.’
‘Hmm.’ She gave a drowsy, considering sigh. ‘That makes sense, I suppose. It explains why you knew about the stars tonight and the anatomy. Why? What do you love about science?’
‘Science is precise, dependable. The same efforts get the same results. There are guarantees. Hypotheses are testable. Results can be confirmed. There are sureties not found elsewhere. What about you? If you weren’t a journalist, what would you be?’
‘I’ve never given it much thought,’ Fleur confessed. ‘Perhaps because being a journalist isn’t too far from what I might have been. I’ve always liked writing. I may have fancied being a novelist like Mrs Radcliffe at one time, but writing for the newspaper is close enough and it gave me a chance to...’ She didn’t finish her sentence, didn’t let the wordsbe with Adamslip out. She didn’t want Adam here tonight in this bed with them, between them. Tonight they were free. Just the two of them.
‘To use my writing for good,’ she amended hastily. ‘News promotes literacy both through reading and information. It also promotes social access, a gateway to participating in the world instead of letting the world happen to you. Wherever there is a newspaper, people have access to information, to reading.’
She gave a little laugh. ‘I don’t mean to pontificate. The news is off limits tonight.’
Sweet heavens, there were so many things they shouldn’t talk about here in bed and she’d nearly broken all those rules. Perhaps it would be best if she stopped talking and turned the conversation back to him.
‘How interesting that you are a mar—err...uhm...manwho likes science. What else do you like? I want to know everything about you.’ She snuggled back down beside him, aware that she’d almost made another conversational mistake. He did not want to be the Marquess tonight any more than she wanted to be Adam’s widow or a newspaperwoman. Yet for those rules to hold, there were limits to their conversation. It was a sobering reminder amid the pleasure that tonight was a fantasy. They weren’t as free as they thought.
He’d been free with her last night, at liberty to be himself and she with him. But now that night was ending. The first tentative fingers of morning were stretching across the floor while Fleur slept in his arms, exhausted at last. Such nights didn’t happen often for him. Even with the occasional mistress, he must always be the Marquess, sex was more of a performance than a pleasure. But not last night. Last night with her, he’d been himself. He did not want to waste a moment drowsing even if it was only to stay awake to watch her sleep and to remember, to savour.
It had been exquisite to hold her in his arms, to know that she was with him when they’d found completion. He’d lost himself in the emerald depths of her eyes as assuredly as he’d lost himself in the pleasure of a jointly achieved climax. Even so, lost as he was, he’d been conscious enough to protect her from any repercussions—both times—because talk had led to more lovemaking and then more stories.
He’d told her stories of his boyhood growing up here at Rosefields, stories of his father and the adventures they’d had, fishing in Rosefields’s streams, hunting grouse—which he far preferred to hunting elk—in the dales, hiking the hills amid the brilliance of autumn foliage and in the spring amid the purple heather. ‘I wish you could see Rosefields in the autumn,’ he whispered, knowing she would not hear.
‘And at Christmas,’ he added, thinking of the evergreen boughs that would drape the mantels and lintels and the Yule log that would crackle in the hearth, the house crowded with villagers and tables groaning beneath Christmas delicacies. She would like that, all the children running around. Fleur was a caretaker. It was what she did with her news stories. She used news as a means of caring for people, of connecting them to their world, of broadening their horizons, and she used it as a tool by which she could advocate for them. He’d rather loved her impassioned impromptu speech earlier about what a newspaper could do. Weren’t those the very reasons he championed a free press? It was something they had in common in the real world.
He stretched with a groan, aware that the morning was full upon them. It would be a difficult day for her. They were going into Holmfirth to speak with some people about the dam. It would take her back to the scene of the crime, so to speak, to a place that held only sadness for her. He’d rather stay here at Meltham where there was happiness, where there was this bed and where obligations and memories did not intrude.
She stirred in his arms, her hair a tumbled auburn cloud against the pillow. He thought she was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen. ‘Is it morning already?’ She groaned and opened one eye. ‘How long have you been awake?’
‘A while, sleepyhead.’ He gave a lazy smile.
