Page 37 of To Love and to Loathe
“You are quite insufferable—you are aware of that?” she said conversationally.
“So I’ve been told, many times,” he said, unruffled. “Most of them by you, though, so perhaps I should seek a wider sample of opinions.”
“You do that,” she said placidly. “I’ll just wait right here.”
“On second thought,” he said, shifting with a slight wince—his current seating position could not be terribly comfortable—“I’m not sure I trust my knees to hold my weight at the moment, so perhaps I won’t.”
Diana didn’t know what it was that possessed her in that moment—some madness inspired, no doubt, by the slight dimple in his right cheek, or the way, in his current position, his jacket stretched very appealingly over his broad shoulders. Or perhaps, most likely of all, it had been that faint crease between his eyebrows that she had never noticed before, and the ragged note in his voice when he spoke of his brother. Regardless of what caused it, the fact was that Diana took momentary leave of her senses and said, “You can make yourself more comfortable, you know.”
He quirked a brow at her yet again, all seductive innuendo. “Is that so?”
She rolled her eyes. “Not likethat. But if you should like to use my lap so that you might stretch out more comfortably, you are welcome to.” When she issued this invitation, she had a mental image of him toeing off his boots and resting his feet in her lap, which, while certainly inappropriate, was rather lacking in romantic charm.
He, however, had other ideas. “Better yet,” he said, and there was a light gleaming in his eyes that she didn’t like one bit, “why don’t we usemylap?”
Diana opened her mouth—to issue some cutting set-down, she assured herself—but before she could speak, in a sudden flurry of movement, Jeremy dropped his knees, seized her waist, and lifted her bodily onto his lap.
There were a few moments of adjustment as Jeremy got all of his limbs comfortably situated—he turned his back to rest against the curve of the window and stretched his legs out fully on the seat before him—as, all the while, Diana trembled with indignation atop him.
Onlywith indignation, she reminded herself firmly, though she was not certain she had been entirely convincing.
“That was not precisely what I had in mind,” she said stiffly, alarmed to discover that the most comfortable posture in this new seating arrangement involved her reclining against his chest. She fought the temptation, keeping her spine uncomfortably straight, even as something deep within her urged her to sink back against him.
“And yet look how nicely it serves us,” he said, his voice lazy and seductive and amused. An arm snaked around her waist, and she stiffened further. “Relax,” he murmured in her ear. “You’re supposed toenjoymy touch, remember?”
“I believe thatthatis entirely up to you,” she replied, but she abandoned her resistance and sank back against him. The solid warmth of his chest against her back was surprisingly comforting, and she racked her brain for a moment, trying to think if a man had ever held her so. She thought not.
“How right you are,” he said, his mouth still perilously close to her ear, and a moment later she felt the warmth of his lips against the side of her neck, tracing a path from the underside of her jaw down to her collarbone. Her traitorous body responded immediately, of course; her breath quickened as her heart began to pound more rapidly in her chest, and she hoped that he was too occupied with the task at hand—which currently involved placing a lingering kiss at the spot where her neck met her shoulder—to notice. His hands were tucked snugly around her waist, keeping her pressed tight against him, and his hair tickled under her chin where his head was bent. She used her last passing moment of lucidity to wonder if he was going to get a crick in his neck from keeping it at such an angle for so long. At that moment, however, one of his hands slid upward to cup the heavy weight of her breast, and all intelligent thought abandoned her.
She reached her hand up to cradle the back of his head, twistingher head and drawing his mouth up to meet hers in a hot, openmouthed kiss. His tongue twined with hers, and suddenly her body was awash in sensation from the base of her stomach, where a fire was slowly building, to the delicate place between her legs, where her pulse was pounding. She broke away with a gasp, attempting to turn so that she could kiss him properly, but he pressed her back against him more firmly, preventing her from moving.
“Willingham—” she said breathlessly.
“What did we discuss about your use of my name?” There was a teasing note in his voice, as ever, but she was pleased to hear the ragged edge of his breathing.
“Jeremy,” she said from between gritted teeth, but he silenced her with another kiss. She was so consumed by the heat of his mouth and the warmth of his hand at her breast that at first she didn’t notice the downward progress his free hand was making as it inched south, working its way between the layers of skirt and petticoat that shielded her skin from view. She closed her eyes again with a moan at the first kiss of cool air upon her ankle, then moaned again as his warm hand slid up, up along her thigh, growing closer to where she needed him so desperately.
She drew his tongue into her mouth and sucked just as his hand slid between her thighs—
And then, suddenly, everything ceased to be quite so lovely.
It wasn’t that Jeremy was doing anything preciselywrong, of course—he had his hand in the right general area, and even seemed to know which specific portion of her anatomy was most desirous of his attention. Diana had limited experience in this regard, but she understood from other ladies that even this was something of an achievement. His technique, unfortunately, left something to bedesired. He was simultaneously moving too fast with one finger and too slowly with another, leaving nothing in his wake so much as a general feeling of frustration.
And while some frustration, of course, heightened the anticipation in these circumstances, Diana thought she had had quite enough anticipation. She was ready for—well, for something she had never experienced with a man before, given that her late husband had been a rather unenthusiastic lover.
Men were confused creatures, and they undoubtedly lacked the capacity to think clearly in these circumstances. Perhaps Jeremy simply needed a bit of silent encouragement.
She tilted her hips upward, trying to force him into a rhythm that was more comfortable for her. He, however, seemed to take her motion as endorsement of his efforts, with the effect being his redoubling of them, to her continued dissatisfaction.
Drat. She was starting to lose some of the lovely, lust-induced fuzziness in her mind. Even his kisses—distracting as they were—were losing their power, as her attention focused on a more southern part of her anatomy.
At last, deciding that the time had really come for action, she broke the kiss, raising her hand to forestall another. She panted for a moment, and felt him breathing heavily behind her. His hand below had, mercifully, stilled, and she decided that this was a perfect opportunity for an instructive moment. Because while Diana might not have had as much practical experience as she might have wished by this point in her life, she had done her best to make up for it with avid—perhaps excessive—reading.
About this topic alone, of course. Heaven forbid anyone ever accuse her of being a bluestocking.
“Something wrong?” Jeremy asked as she pondered how precisely to begin. The lazy, seductive note in his voice was a clear indication that he expected a reply in the negative.
He therefore immediately stiffened when she said, “Since you mention it, yes.”
