Page 42 of The Rake to Reveal Her

Oh, was she ravenous! And she couldn’t wait to start proving it.

* * *

Less than an hour later, the carriage deposited them a short distance away at Dom’s cousin Alastair’s town house in Upper Brook Street. The travelling case with some of her clothes and toiletries had been sent over earlier, and Susan waited to attend her.

As Dom took her arm and walked her up the entry stairs, she was finally able to cast aside all her fears and embrace the one thing about this marriage she knew would be an unqualified success.

‘You’re trembling,’ Dom murmured as they reached the floor where the bedchambers were located. ‘You’re not afraid, are you?’

Now, when the time had finally come to make all her imaginings real? ‘Oh, no! I’m eager.’

She halted, making him stop beside her in the hallway. She ran a finger over his lips, then slid it down his shirt to draw a line from his waistcoat down his trouser front, increasing the pressure as she descended. She smiled when she felt his member leap under her tracing finger. ‘I think you’re eager, too.’

After an inarticulate response, he kissed her. Joyously she tangled tongues with him, laving and retreating, teasing and withdrawing. Dom fumbled behind him for the door handle, walked them in and banged it closed, and kissing still, wrapped his arm around her and backed her towards the bed. When her legs touched the edge, he finally broke the kiss, panting. ‘Wine, before I snuff out the candles?’ he asked, gesturing towards the decanter on the night stand.

‘You needn’t snuff out the candles. I’d like to see...everything.’

‘Certainly I would,’ he said with a wry grin. ‘I’m not so sure you should, though. Wouldn’t want for my bride to faint with horror before I can even make her mine.’

Her teasing smile fading, she wanted nothing so much as to reassure him. ‘Oh, Dom,’ she said softly, ‘don’t you know I will see nothing but honour in your scars? And be honoured, that you’ve given me the right to touch them?’

He stood beside her, still looking uncertain. ‘If you’re sure.’

Snagging his cravat, she untied it and used the freed lengths to pull him down to the bed. Then, still in hat, gloves, gown and pelisse, she went down on her knees before him and wrenched open the buttons of his trouser flap.

His erection sprang free and he groaned as she took him in her gloved hands, smoothing the soft kidskin up and down his hard length before guiding him into her mouth.

She sampled the smooth slick head, nibbled at the ridge, slid him fully into her mouth.

‘Theo—no—can’t stand much more,’ Dom gasped.

She paused, sliding him slowly, slowly, slowly free. ‘You want me to stop?’ she asked, and drew her tongue by infinitesimal millimetres across the head of his erection. ‘Stop this?’ She took him within and suckled gently. Withdrawing again, she said, ‘Or this?’ before plunging him deep.

Since by then he appeared to be beyond words, she took that as permission to begin a rhythmic pattern of sliding him deep, pulling him free then sliding him deep again.

Writhing against her, he tugged off her hat with one frantic hand, raked the pins from her hair and wrapped his fingers in the curly strands. A short time later, the tension in his body released as he reached his peak.

Afterward, he pulled her head against his torso and leaned over, embracing her, while his gasping breath and thundering heartbeat filled her ears.

A few moments later, when he’d regathered strength enough, he levered her up on the bed beside him. She tilted his head down for a long kiss. ‘Much better than wine.’

He wrapped his arm around her, kissing the top of her head. ‘Theo...merciful heavens...I never dreamed...’

She chuckled. ‘I know. You see, I’m wonderfully inventive—’ he groaned ‘—and I have a vivid imagination. Oh, so vivid! The nights I lay awake, dreaming of doing that...’

He smiled then. ‘I could tell you something about nights and dreaming and imagining. But I’d rather show you.’

Positioning her at the edge of the bed, he knelt before her. He drew her face down for a soft, sweet kiss, and slipped his hand under her skirts to toy with her ankle.

Already thoroughly aroused by her ravishment of his body, she licked at his lips, seeking entry. He refused to open for her, kissing closed-mouthed as she laved and nuzzled.

Meanwhile, his stroking fingers slowly ascended her leg, kneading and caressing the muscle of her calf, then cupping and fondling her knee. She gasped when he broke the kiss for a moment to lick his finger and apply its soft wet pressure to the sensitive skin behind her knee.

As he slowly worked his hand higher, her knees fell apart, her legs a boneless conduit of sensation from his stroking fingers down to her toes, up to where her centre throbbed. When he reached the velvety skin of her inner thighs, he finally, finally opened his mouth to her, and she surged within in a frantic slash of tongue and teeth.

By the time his fingers reached the crease where her thigh joined the soft curls of her mound, she was beyond kissing, her breath in gasps, her hands clutching his shoulders. She cried out when at last, at last, he glided one probing finger up and across the flesh of her centre, and moaned when he slid the finger within.

But before she could move her hips against it, desperate to reach completion, he pulled the hand away. She’d barely gasped out an inarticulate protest when he swept her skirts back and let his tongue take the path his fingers had just traced.

A few quick strokes of his tongue, and the tension that had been building through her peaked in an eruption of such intensity that for a moment, there was nothing but blinding light and heat and sensation.

When the cataclysm receded, she sagged and would have fallen flat back on to the bed, had Dom not supported her. Gently he held her up and eased her back against the pillows, then seated himself beside her. ‘You’re right. Much better than wine. But if we’re going to talk about dreams and imaginings...’ He grinned at her. ‘I haven’t yet begun.’

Theo lay her limp head upon his shoulder. ‘This has already been the most erotic night of my life—and I’m not even undressed yet.’

With a tender look, Dom pressed a kiss in the centre of her forehead. ‘Fear not, dear wife. The night has only begun.’

* * *

Some time in the early dawn hours, Dom awoke. In the moonlight drifting in from the window, he looked down at Theo, snuggled by his side, her hair a tangle of curls on the pillow, her bare shoulders showing above the bed linen she’d pulled up over her breasts.

Ah, her glorious breasts! Tasting and nibbling and teasing them had been one fantasy he’d been able to turn into reality this night. Also, the one of slowly undressing her, one piece of clothing at a time—and for this game, ladies had such a delightfully large number of garments to remove—tasting each bit of skin as he revealed it. Then another, of having them both naked and slick, kissing slowly as they explored each other with hands and mouths before she pulled him over her and urged him within and wrapped her legs around him to draw him deeper as he thrust again and again.

He’d expected Theo to be passionate, and the reality more than lived up to the dream.

Thank heavens for Jemmie! He must hire the best trainer in England to school the lad. But for the sergeant-major’s son, he might have been halfway across England when Theo had been driven to marry in haste to secure her son and her orphans. Some other gentleman might have seen her, appreciated her, felt called to save and protect her.

The very idea of any other man marrying her, holding her, touching any bit of her, even to solve her problems, brought a fierce indignation welling up.

Theo was his.

He must be the luckiest man in England.

How wise he’d been on that journey to London, deciding to marry her straight away, with no delays for courting or manoeuvring around other gentlemen or second and third thinking. Marrying her felt right then, and felt even more absolutely right now.

The realisation settled over him then, not in a coup de foudre or a lightning strike, but with a calm sense of absolutely certainty.

He was in love with Theo Branwell. That was why deciding to marry her had been so easy and done with such confidence in its absolute rightness.

He looked down at her, shaken by the revelation, but filled with the sweetest sense of peace and delight. He wasn’t sure when love had begun to curl its tendrils around his heart, growing so quietly he hadn’t noticed, until now, when the mature length and strength of it covered his heart and soul completely.

He only knew, with same certainty he’d felt when he decided to marry her, that he loved her, and always would.

And she...liked him?

He frowned and shook his head. No, that would never do. He was almost certain she felt more strongly than that. But for some reason, she was afraid. He’d seen that nervous anxiety on her face a number of times since she accepted his proposal.

Why? Surely she knew he’d never hurt her, that he meant to cherish her. She’d several times affirmed that she trusted him.

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