Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

I t was her wedding night.

Her second wedding night, so different from her first.

This time, Lottie was not na?ve and eighteen, inexperienced and woefully unprepared for the future looming before her. Instead, she was thirty, experienced, and more than that, she was prepared for the life awaiting her with a husband she loved and who loved her in return, along with their sweet, silly daughter and her furniture-nibbling spaniel.

“Will you be needing anything else this evening, Your Grace?” Jenkinson asked politely.

Your Grace.

A reminder that she was married now. A duchess. Brandon’s wife.

She smiled at her lady’s maid. “That will be all, thank you.”

Jenkinson quietly exited the chamber, leaving Lottie alone to anticipate her new husband. She wore a wrapper over a gold silk nightgown that had been designed by the famed Mrs. Loveton specifically for the occasion. It was wispy and transparent, and she had no doubt that Brandon was going to love her in it. Her hair was unbound, trailing over her shoulders and all the way down her back. And she couldn’t lie—she felt just a bit like the goddess her husband insisted she was.

A tap sounded at the door separating their chambers, and she called for him to enter. They had spent the day in a flurry of activity. First, the wedding with hundreds of guests, the church festooned in flowers of her choosing. Next, the wedding breakfast with all their friends and family, including a beaming Mrs. Carrington-Smythe. Cat had managed to find her way into the celebration, stealing nearly a plateful of Bayonne ham until a footman had caught her and sent her off to the nursery. Pandy had been on her best behavior, and there hadn’t even been a hint of a rotten pig trotter.

The day had been wondrous and exhausting, but now it was time for Lottie and Brandon to be blissfully alone at last.

The door opened to reveal him, handsome in bare feet and a black silk dressing gown, a swath of his chest visible beneath, his wavy, dark hair tousled rakishly over his brow. She took one look at him, and her heart thudded, a rush of heat flooding her.

“Alone at last,” he said, a sensual smile curving his lips.

“And not a moment too soon.” Returning his smile, she reached for the belt on her wrapper, shrugging it to the floor.

His smoldering stare devoured her as his long strides ate up the distance separating them. “I thought you were beautiful in your wedding gown earlier, but my God, Lottie. You’re perfection.”

He pulled her into his tall, hard form, and she felt the rigid thickness of his cock prodding her belly as she looped her arms around his waist. “Do you like my nightgown? I had it made just for you and this evening.”

“Like it? I love it. I want to tear it off you with my teeth.”

She chuckled at his vehemence. “No tearing it, if you please. It was far too dear for that.”

He pressed a kiss to her throat. “Mmm, you smell so bloody good.”

She had applied some of her scent there and to her inner wrists, knowing too well the effect it had on him.

Lottie inhaled deeply, rubbing her breasts against his chest subtly as she did so. “You smell good too.”

“No thanks to Cat,” he grumbled. “The imp leapt on me and licked my face and neck while I was taking off my boots.”

She laughed, envisioning the spaniel attacking him with her lolling tongue, and brushed her lips over his temple. “I hope you rinsed off her slobber.”

He kissed his way to her ear. “Of course I did. Which reminds me, I discovered a frog in my wash basin. I suspect Pandy found him in the gardens. I’ll need to have a word with her about bringing creatures into the house again.” He caught her earlobe in his teeth and tugged. “I did warn you that you were joining a menagerie.”

“And I told you there was nowhere else I would rather be,” she reminded him, finding the buttons on his dressing gown and plucking them free, one by one.

He cupped her breast through the fine fabric of her nightgown, swirling his thumb over her hard nipple. “I love that you’re here.” He caught her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, pinching it lightly and sending a rush of molten desire through her. “I love that you’re my wife.” His mouth trailed a path of hot kisses along her collarbone. “I love you .”

“And I love you.” She opened the last button of his dressing gown, leaving it parted, and stepped back to admire him.

His cock protruded thickly from between the parted ends of fabric, calling for her attention. She wanted to lavish pleasure upon him. To show him with deeds rather than words how much he had come to mean to her. Against her will, she had fallen beneath this beautiful rake’s spell, and she wouldn’t change a moment of it. Not one single second. Because he was hers, she was his, and their love had proven stronger than the obstacles between them.

She lowered herself to her knees.

“Lottie,” he protested.

“My love,” she countered and grasped the base of his shaft, his skin hot and smooth and soft, stretched taut.

She brought the tip of him past her lips. Her tongue lashed over the crown, teasing him, taunting him, tasting the salty essence of him. He made a low sound of suppressed need, one of his hands landing on the back of her head, lightly cradling. And she was already wet between her legs, her own sex heavy and pulsing with uncontrollable need.

Because she wanted to watch, she tilted her head back slightly, looking up the muscular angles and planes of his body to meet his burning emerald gaze.

Still holding his stare, she took his cock deeper.

A strangled growl fled him, his fingers sifting through her hair. She concentrated on him, his eyes, his length, the taste of him, struggling to keep from reflexively gagging as his crown found the back of her throat. And then she withdrew, allowing him to glide past her wet lips, almost releasing him before taking him again. More and more, slowly at first, but then with increased speed as his hips chased her mouth and his fingers wrapped in her hair. She inhaled through her nose, loving the scent of him—male, musky, heady.

He was hers, and she reveled in it. In the taste of him, the feeling of him.

“Venus,” he said raggedly. “My Venus. If you don’t stop, I’ll come in your mouth, and that isn’t how I intended for this night to proceed.”

His warning made her wetter still and more determined to bring him to release. She wanted him to lose control. Wanted his seed on her tongue, wanted to swallow him down, to take this part of him, wanted his helpless pleasure.

He moaned again as she continued, lavishing long sucks and slow, teasing licks on the vein at the underside of his shaft when she needed a breath. And still, she held his gaze all the while. Held his gaze until his long, dark lashes fanned over those brilliant green orbs and his head fell back, his lips parting, his Adam’s apple on prominent display, his chest heaving with the force of his need.

“God, Lottie. Your mouth. I’m going to spill. Final warning.”

His voice was low and decadent like his French wine and soft as velvet. She loved the helpless need lacing it, loved knowing she was responsible for his loss of control. That she was the one who was about to bring him to completion, the one to force his surrender.

She withdrew, stroking over his slick cock with her hand to keep him primed, and said, “I want you to come in my mouth. On my tongue. I want to swallow your seed.”

Filthy words. These were not the words a sweet, virginal debutante would ever give the man she married. But she was neither sweet, nor virginal. She had embraced her sensual nature, her needs and desires. And she had learned not to be ashamed but to be proud of who she was, the goddess he imagined her. The woman he had chosen.

She took his beautiful cock back into her mouth, giving him what they both wanted.

“Fuck,” he groaned, his hips pumping wildly now, his cock hitting the back of her throat again.

And then there was the hot flood of him down her throat, over her tongue. So much that her mouth was filled with him, and she swallowed and swallowed, taking every last drop of him as hers.

“My turn,” Brandon told Lottie when he had caught his breath and regained his wits after she had drained him dry.

He had her on the bed in an instant, her gossamer nightgown stripped away. For a moment, he admired her, naked and glorious, all creamy skin and coppery flecks, her hair a fiery ripple on the pillow, her blue eyes dark with desire, her mouth glistening and swollen from taking his cock between her lips.

But he was voracious, so he didn’t look long before he settled between her thighs. “Open for me, Venus.”

And she did, spreading her legs, cupping her bare breasts as she watched, toying with her pert pink nipples. The sight was enough to have his limp prick filling again, the rush of need returning with a vengeance. Her cunny beckoned, glistening and pretty as a blossoming flower.

He bent, licking her seam, savoring the taste of her on his tongue, pleased to find she was already wet from sucking him. He licked into her then, filling her as he would soon with his cock, stroking her pearl lightly as he did so. Her hips danced beneath him. She was all he could breathe, all he could feel, his tongue darting in and out of her hot cunny, fucking her, driving them both wild. And then he pulled back her folds, revealing the swollen, sleek nub of her sex, before he latched on to it, sucking hard as he sank a finger deep inside her tight, wet depths.

She came apart in his hands, against his lips, her cunny clenching hard on him. And he stayed there with her, licking and sucking, devouring her, worshiping her as she had him, until he could not withstand another moment. His cock was hard again, ready for more.

At last, he tore his mouth away, lips wet with her dew, and rose, taking himself in hand and rubbing the head of his cock along her slippery pussy.

“More,” she commanded.

And he gave her more. With one thrust, he filled her, her sheath contracting deliciously around him as the pulses of her release fluttered through her. He glanced down to where they were joined, watching as he fucked her, his ruddy cock sinking into the hot, velvet depths of her cunny, then gliding out and in again.

“I love you,” he told her, bending to take the peak of one breast in his mouth and suckling as he continued his pace.

“And I love you,” she gasped, her fingernails raking down his shoulders, her hips undulating to meet him thrust for thrust.

She was his wife.

Almost impossible to believe that this woman was his forever.

They moved together, their rhythm faster, harder. He took her lips with his, kissing her deeply, giving her his tongue. She sucked on it, threading her fingers through his hair, and then she came again, her cunny pulsing around him deliciously as she moaned into his mouth. Another pump of his hips, and he followed her, the hot rush of his spend jetting from him and into her.

She held him to her, their hearts hammering like a blacksmith on an anvil, and he buried his face in her throat, breathing deeply of Lottie, of the scent of the two of them intertwined. For the first time, neither of them would leave at dawn, and the knowledge that he would fall asleep with her and wake alongside her filled him with a deep, sweet contentment.

In two days’ time, they would be leaving for France with Pandy on their honeymoon. Brandon intended to show Lottie the wineries she had dreamt of seeing. Their life together was just beginning.