Duchess By Night
“Last time I checked,” Jem said, “it was my favorite body part. Happiest body part. Dare I say it—my best body part.”
“It’s—” She shut her mouth. What she was thinking was disloyal. But still…she peeked again. It had to be twice the size of Benjamin’s. “I’m not sure…”
“It will,” he said. He did a little hip dance that made her gasp. “Please, can we try?”
“Yes,” she said.
There was no dryness, no pinch, no pain.
He came all the way inside her and then stopped.
“We fit,” she said, rather dazed. “We fit like puzzle pieces.”
Jem looked a little agonized. “You’re small,” he said. His voice was hoarse.
“I know. My breasts are small too.” She smoothed her hands over his shoulder muscles.
“Believe me,” he gasped. “It’s not a problem.”
And he thrust deeply. This was Harriet’s favorite part of making love: this part. It made her feel adored. Important. She wiggled a little, getting herself set to be a proper bed for him, a lifting platform for his work. The man’s part seemed like work; Benjamin’s face always turned a light purple color. “I’m ready,” she said.
Jem’s face wasn’t purple. He was looking down at her, eyebrow raised. “I’m getting some very strange ideas about your marriage, Harriet.”
His chest was covered with muscles and just a dusting of hair. He was rubbing his lips against her forehead, which meant his chest kept brushing over her nipples.
Jem paused for a moment the way he used to when he was a young buck who couldn’t always control himself. There was a problem here.
His lovely Harry may be a widow, but she didn’t know how to make love. She looked about as engaged as a mattress, though she was giving him an adorable smile.
It would break his heart if she turned out to be one of the women who couldn’t experience pleasure. Back in his wild days, before he married Sally, he’d found himself in a few beds like that.
He used to do his best—and he knew quite well that his best was about the best there was—and if it didn’t work, he gave up, took his own pleasure, thanked his partner warmly, and walked away.
But he didn’t want to walk away this time. Harriet’s round little body was female in every respect, all cream and silk. He wanted it. He wanted her to writhe in his arms. And damn it, he was going to make sure that happened.
It was painful, but he withdrew from the sweetest, tightest channel he’d had the pleasure to visit.
“What’s the matter?” she said, blinking at him.
She wasn’t nearly where she needed to be. Not nearly.
He gave her a sleepy smile, the kind an alligator gives its victim before he gobbles him up. “I decided I’m hungry.”
Harriet looked totally confused. Her husband must have had a member the size of peapod, and the technique to go along with it.
He reached down and licked her on her cheek, which was as smooth and delicate as the side of a peach. A man! How on earth was he ever so stupid as to think she was a man?
It was shaming. He ran his tongue along the side of her jaw. Harriet had a strong jaw. Maybe that was it. She didn’t have a receding jaw like so many ladies did, the kind who sat around and clucked over their embroideries. She had the jaw of a woman who knew her mind, who fought with a sword and did a damn good job, who—
He forgot where that was going because he had reached her lips. They were lush and rose-colored. He gave himself another two-second lecture about his own stupidity, and then let their kiss turn wild.
Just so she understood from the beginning, he took control of her mouth, and plunged into her, claiming her, naming her, making sure she knew she was a woman. No man. His woman.
The thought was dim in the back of his mind, but he knew it anyway. He hadn’t waited eight years, ever since Sally died, just to find himself another lover.
Whoever Harriet was, his own little widow, she was his now.
He pulled back, propped himself on one elbow, and moved to her breast. Claimed it. Now she was responding. Her hands started moving restlessly over his shoulder, clutching him, sliding over his chest and down his back. She even touched the curve of his arse but pulled back instantly, as if she’d been stung.
In a flash he knew what the problem was. Harry had done a pretty good job of being a man. But she’d been trained to act like a lady and talk like a lady—and make love like a lady.
Though she wasn’t one.
She was an Amazon warrior at the heart, a woman who would meet a man on her own terms and demand what she wanted.
“Touch me,” he commanded.
“Wh-what?”
Those wide pansy-brown eyes of hers were starting to look a little dazed, which was a good thing. His Harriet thought too much. What she needed was to be shocked.
“Now, Harry,” he said, making his voice into a drawl, “you know what sort of man I am, don’t you?” Just so she had a vague idea, he started rubbing her nipple with his thumb. Like the sweet little angel that she was, her back arched a little.
But that annoying brain of hers was obviously still working, because she opened her eyes again, and said, “I know what kind of man you want everyone to think you are, Jem. I’m not so sure about the real you.”
Obviously she wasn’t quite at the mindless stage she needed to be at yet. “I’m a libertine,” he told her, pulling back so that her body was before him like a delicious meal. Then he bent down and kissed her breast until he could hear soft pants. She liked little bites, so he moved to the other breast and gave it some special treatment. She was twisting under him now.
“Debauched. A whoremonger. A voluptuary,” he told her.
But he underestimated her, because those eyes of hers popped open and she said, “Nonsense. You’ve never slept with a whore in your life.”
He opened his mouth and then he realized that given his extreme dislike of exchanges of coin for intimacy, he could hardly win that argument.
Instead he went for the kind of argument he knew best. The kind he knew he could win. “We voluptuaries want everything when we make love,” he said, moving down her body. “Open your legs, sweetheart.”
She was peering down at him, desire warring with alarm. “Do you want to—to look at me?”
“Yup. You’re so pink and soft down there”—he pushed her legs open—“I wish you could see what I’m seeing. Sleek little leaves like rose petals. And the sweetest little door that a man ever saw.” In fact, it was getting hard to speak because his body wasn’t used to all this wanton talk, and thought action would be a good idea.
Instead he pushed her legs wider and went for the kiss that turned every woman into an Amazon.
Naturally, Harriet was more resistant than some. Sally, for example, had just sighed and said, “Thank God,” and laid back.
But Harriet had her legs out of his way and was scrambling to her knees before he managed to catch her. “Now, Harriet,” he said, “you’re simply going to have to go along with my depraved desires. I can’t do this otherwise.”