Page 49 of The Love Interest
It has been two long hours since you stormed out of my study. Two unbearable hours since you fled our home, leaving me alone to inhale the infuriating, divine lingering scent of you. Two infernal hours in which to live with the chilling memory of my treacherous words.
Yes, I admit, my words were treacherous. Yes, I realize you are not a child who must be scolded. Yes, I meant what I said. Yes, the things you said before you left shook me to my core.
But you must understand this—you are now my wife and a viscountess. You are married to the heir to the Earl of Camden. Members of the British aristocracy do not publish novels of a romantic and immodest nature. They do not publish novels at all. Use of anom de plumewould still carry a risk—your identity could be uncovered. I require you to put this stubborn, foolish notion out of your head. I demand it.
But I also regret it. Because, despite all evidence to the contrary, and much to my dismay, I desire your happiness. I am thrilled by your mind and all thoughts that emerge from it. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that your mind (or your heart or some other rather unladylike part of you) must spew forth such literary nonsense. But, despite all that, I must admit that what I read was engaging.
I must admit, everything about you engages me.
Everything about you engages and torments me.
Body and soul.
I have been bred to resist my baser instincts, but you know precisely what my instincts are when it comes to you. You know precisely what you do to me. You know what you make me want to do with you.
I should not have let you flee to your parents’ house.
I should have done the very thing I wanted to do—all the things I wanted to do with you.
Do you wish to know what I wanted to do with you, dear wife?
Please read on if you do…
I wanted to grab you by your rigid, slender, lily-white shoulders and press you up against the door. I wanted to pin you there with my heated gaze so I could revel in your magnificent flaring nostrils and defiant chin and flinty stare. I would have watched with pleasure as your eyes became glazed and hooded, your lips parting as you writhed around beneath my grip. I’d keep you at arm’s length while you struggled to kiss me because, my darling, you are dazzling when you are aroused and enraged all at once. Those trembling hands, those flushed cheeks, the alarming words muttered under your ragged breath.
Once I had deemed you suitably frustrated by your inability to kiss your devilishly handsome husband, my lips would have covered yours—possessively, fiendishly. You would have grasped at my waistcoat, moaned into my mouth, tried to bite my lower lip because you instantly regretted revealing your desire for me. Then you would remember just how easy it is to determine how much your dashing husband desires you.
You would have slid your trembling hand down to my groin, and your confidence would have grown, along with the prominent bulge beneath your palm. I’d have seized the soft curves of your buttocks, still devouring your mouth while you tore at the flaps of my trousers. When you drew your head back to catch your breath, that is when I would have lowered mine to kiss your swelling bosom, and you would have cried out in ecstasy. Frantic and desperate to devour you in all ways. I always melt into you there, at the heart of you. So dizzy for you, and yet you steady and nurture me when I kiss you there.
You would have hiked up your skirts and jumped up to wrap your legs tight around me, begging me to take you. I would have obliged. How could I say no to you? My quivering, eager wife. Soft and warm and wet as you welcomed my hot, stiff, throbbing member inside. Swift and vigorous, that’s how my lady would require it. My throaty groan, my shuddering limbs and feverish, determined thrusts. This physical evidence of my adoration for you, that’s what would have excited you. Knowing that you owned me so completely in that moment. After all I’d said, here was the true meaning of every word I could ever say to you.
I need you.
I want you.
Every part of me loves every part of you.
After we’d both screamed out, after I’d emptied myself into you and disappeared from the world for a blinding moment, I would have held you close and let you down easy. I would have aided you in tidying yourself up because, after all is said and done, I am a gentleman.
Silent for several minutes, you would have avoided my gaze for as long as possible, but you would not have been able to resist a glance up at me. Soon as you caught sight of my grin, we would have erupted in laughter. Because there’s nothing else to do but laugh in the face of such a terrible, unavoidable truth—we are married to each other. It will always come down to this.
And so, I suppose I can see the appeal of these books you’re writing.
I am well aware that I share neither your fine penmanship nor your talent, but you must admit that was rather…moving.
Whether I possess any talent beyond loving you or not, Lucy, you do inspire me.
Come home.
You are the feminine embodiment of a wish and a dream, a dare and a fear that I had never acknowledged out loud, and yet somehow you heard me. You came to me, and you ruined my life in the most perfect, dreadful way. Come back to me now. Do not make me spend one night here without you.
You need to write. I understand that. I respect it. I can acknowledge that you have given up the life of an unfettered commoner to join me in a life of esteemed peerage and suffocating manners. I don’t apologize for wanting to share this life with you. I would die if I thought you regretted marrying me. But I would also die if I knew you were forced to be any lessyoufor me.
In my body, I am enslaved by my unbridled lust for you.
In my mind, I know I must claim your needs as my own.
In my heart, I already know what I must do.
