Chapter 30

Thirty

THE BED

I gauged it was time to emerge out of the closet (literally) after I gave it some time when I heard the shower turn off.

I was in there when it went on, struggling with my dress in an effort to get ready for dinner, and I didn’t think it was prudent to walk through the bathroom with the possibility of seeing a naked Ian in it. If the rest of him was as good as his chest, I’d jump him for certain, and we’d never make cocktails in time.

I’d come up earlier to prepare for dinner to find to my surprise that Ian was not in the room, but even if I was surprised, I took advantage.

So now I was fully dressed, rather than slipping my black Louboutin pumps on and putting on my jewelry in the sitting room as I’d planned to do, and he’d had plenty of time to get decent, I walked into the bathroom.

And stopped dead.

Ian was bent over the basin, finishing shaving, hair wet and combed back, wearing nothing but a towel.

I started salivating immediately, and it got worse when he turned his head to look at me, razor suspended, and he froze, the look in his eyes driving so deep somewhere pleasant, I grew wet just staring at him.

I was in a strapless black shift. Simple but form fitting, with cleavage at the top that I considered not too much, not too little, just right.

Ian apparently agreed.

I paired this with my ruby pendant, earrings and bracelet, and the pumps. I’d left my hair down but curled it so it was big and bouncy, and the deep part I put into it, I thought, made it a sexy sweep across my forehead, serving double duty to hide my wound.

And I’d gone full smoke with the makeup.

I’d done all of this as kind of a joke, considering our banter, but also because it made me feel wanted and pretty, how Ian reacted when I decked myself out.

It appeared my efforts worked.

Too much.

We both stood immobile, staring at each other, the steam in the room seeming steamier at what was passing between us.

An undeniable pull. A need.

The wave of an obsession neither of us quite realized we were riding until we found ourselves at the crest of it breaking, in that very moment, right there.

“If you take one step toward me,” Ian said in a rough voice that was like a physical touch, “we’re going to be late for cocktails.”

I knew with all that was happening with the people in that house, I should head to the sitting room. We needed to be at cocktails.

I didn’t head to the sitting room.

I took one step to Ian.

He snatched up a towel, wiped the remaining lines of shaving cream off his face, and then he was on me.

We were kissing, lots of tongues, lots of hands, while Ian backed me out of the bathroom.

He had the zip down on my dress in the doorway and we paused just long enough for Ian to shove it over my hips. It fell to my feet, and I stepped out of it, still kissing him as he guided me to the bed.

I tripped over the lip to the dais, and with an arm around my waist, he lifted me up, then I was on my back in the bed with Ian on top of me.

Oh boy, that felt good.

Heaven.

He went up on a straight arm, angling away from me, his eyes devouring my body in my strapless, black lace bra and matching cheeky panties.

His gaze came to mine, dark and hungry.

So fucking hungry.

At the same time, we attacked.

And then it was an out-of-control tussle. I wanted to touch every inch of him. Taste it. He wanted the same. It was consuming. It was beyond anything I’d ever experienced. The bed didn’t exist. His room. The house. The planet.

It was just him and me.

Planting my pump in the duvet and bucking, I managed to turn him to his back, then I straddled him. He tried to push up, but I shoved him back down then went at him with my mouth. His strong jaw that smelled deliciously fresh from his shave. His throat. Collarbone. Down to his nipples.

I’d made it to trace my tongue along the groove of his hip muscle and was tugging at the towel when I cried out because he yanked me up.

I landed in my hands and on my knees over his head.

His hands were on my hips, yanking me down on his mouth.

He sucked on me over my panties then shoved the gusset aside and there was no barrier between his lips and tongue and me.

Oh God.

Oh yes.

I straightened, arched back and rode his mouth, and Lord God, what he could do with it should be illegal.

I was close, dear God, I was right there, when he pulled me off, tossing me to my back beside him.

“Fuck,” he clipped. “Be right back.”

He kissed my rounded belly and left the bed, leaving me muddled and desperate, but he was Ian. He did as he promised. He came right back.

He pulled a condom out of his wallet, tossed the wallet on his nightstand and then yanked off the towel.

I whimpered and squirmed at the sight of his big, beautiful dick standing proudly from a thick nest of dark hair and then squirmed more as I watched Ian expertly roll the condom on.

Finished, he reached in and ripped my panties down my legs. It was a smooth move, forceful and expert, and it left me with my heels still on and the area between my legs quivering.

I opened for him, even as he shoved my legs apart, and in one elegant, powerful surge, he was there, and he was inside.

I let out a big gust of air at the heady feel of my body accommodating the size of him, never having taken so much, never having a connection feel so right, and I was concentrating on that before I realized he wasn’t moving.

I focused on his face to see he was smiling down at me.

A beautiful smile.

Exquisite.

This man, I was correct.

He was perfect.

I melted underneath him as I rounded him with all my limbs, because I’d never had that either, that smile and what it communicated in a time like we were sharing.

We were here. We were as together as two people could be.

And he was happy.

I moved a hand to rest it on the side of his face.

“Make love to me,” I whispered.

His eyes gentled and his hips moved, and it started in that vein with kissing and touching and gazing lingeringly into each other’s eyes.

But then Ian slid his hand between us to work between my legs, and things changed. In the end we panted in each other’s mouths, his strokes bold and aggressive, my touch frantic and demanding.

My orgasm was crashing toward me. I raked my nails down his back, he groaned, his head angling back, and I cried out as I exploded.

My world blanked in a bright light that rushed out, placing me in a cocooning dark, experiencing nothing but Ian’s cock moving inside me.

I felt him unleash then, thrusting powerfully, and with an animal sound that rolled from deep in his throat that I felt driving up my sex, he followed me.

His lips worked my neck as we both came down, and finally, he lifted his head.

“Alas, my love, that was my only condom,” he announced.

Happy, outrageously, unencumbered and completely happy, I clutched him to me and let out a giggle.

“Well, someone is going to the chemist first thing in the morning,” I replied, still chortling.

He grinned and then lingered over kissing me, doing it until he naturally slid out of me.

“Don’t move,” he whispered, exiting the bed.

He went to the bathroom to deal with the condom and came back out, still naked, to find I’d moved. I was sitting at the edge of his bed, the pumps I was still wearing spiking into his duvet, holding my legs to my chest.

For a moment, he did nothing but stand there in all his naked, powerfully masculine glory.

When he moved, he unfolded me deftly by putting his hands to my waist and tugging me deeper into the bed, then falling on me so I wrapped him up in me again.

“Did you not hear the part about one condom, darling?” he asked drolly.

“We’ll see if Daniel has any.”

“We won’t right now, and you in nothing but a bra and spike heels, with just-been-fucked hair and a bruised mouth waiting for me like that in my bed means I need inside you again.”

“Really?”

He shifted.

I felt him semi-hard.

My eyes got big. “I’m impressed.”

“You need to be good, at least until I can raid Danny’s stash.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have one.”

“I don’t usually go out on the pull in Dunmorton.”

Yes, but he’d had girlfriends.

“If I brought a woman here, I’d come with provisions,” he explained, again reading my thoughts. “I don’t fancy going into the local chemist in the village to buy prophylactics. It’d be news that reached the coast in an hour. And it’s rare I bring women here.”

I didn’t want to talk about his women. I didn’t want to do anything but cuddle and then fuck again.

However…

“We need to get dressed. I need to make sure Portia is all right,” I stated glumly.

Ian looked about as happy as I was about that, but he knew the veracity of it. That was why he kissed me, then pulled me with him off the bed.

He zipped me up this time, which was good. Getting that zipper done the first go was a contortionist’s nightmare. He put on a gray suit. We both fixed our hair.

And then we went to dinner.

* * *

We were back in Ian’s room, against the wall right beside the door, we hadn’t even made it fully into the room.

And he was fucking me.

My skirt was bunched at my waist, the bodice of the dress pulled down, and he was driving inside me, slamming me into the wall, with his eyes tipped down, watching my breasts bounce in my bra to his thrusts.

“Ian,” I moaned.

His gaze shot to mine and darkened in a way I spasmed around his driving cock.

He wrapped his fingers around my jaw and dragged his thumb hard across my lips before he forced it between them.

I sucked.

Hard.

He watched, eyes heated, and growled, his other hand clenching my ass and lifting up so I was no longer standing with a leg wrapped around his thigh. He was holding me up with the aid of the wall and my arms around his shoulders, pounding inside, his gaze not leaving my mouth.

He slid his thumb out, swiped it across my cheek, drove his fingers into my hair and clenched so it tugged at my scalp.

I whimpered.

“You were goddamn made to be fucked by me,” he announced, his voice thick, gruff, amazing.

“Yes,” I breathed, holding tighter with my legs wrapped around his ass, tensing and relaxing the walls of my sex to his rhythm.

He dropped his forehead to mine and groaned, “Christ, your cunt, darling. Bloody beautiful.”

“Keep fucking me, Ian,” I begged.

His eyes so close, we could give butterfly kisses, he said low, “Never going to stop.”

“Never,” I whispered.

“Never,” he vowed.

We stared into each other’s eyes, feeling those words, both of us. I knew it. Feeling it deep into our hearts and guts and the marrow of our bones.

We did this until, abruptly, he ordered a commanding, “Come.”

To my shock, instantly, I came, pushing my face in his throat and gasping.

He sunk his teeth into my shoulder, causing a further ripple in my climax as he snarled his own.

Needless to say, it was after dinner.

Everyone loved my orange cake, even Richard, who took his first bite and couldn’t hide his pleasure.

Naturally, Daniel had a hefty stock of condoms, and both brothers slipping out while we had after dinner drinks in the Wine Room, he gave Ian and I a full box.

And dinner had been a disaster, but we all pretended it wasn’t.

Ian waited until our breathing had slowed before he lifted me off his dick and set me to the floor, but still kept me pressed into the wall, which was good. My legs were happy stands of jelly.

I still had my arms around him, and I slid one hand into his thick, soft, luscious hair and said, “I must say, milord, you’re one seriously great fuck.”

His head twitched, and then he pressed me into the wall and roared with laughter.

* * *

I lay on his bed on my belly, naked.

Ian slid a hand up the back of my thigh to my ass as he slid his lips up my spine.

Then at my ear, he noted, “You’re upset she forgave him.”

Earlier, when Ian and I left our room to belatedly go to cocktails, we ran into Portia and Daniel coming out onto the landing from the northeast hall.

Portia looked like me, swollen lips, hazy gaze, in happy la-la land of a recent orgasm.

Daniel looked relieved and chuffed with himself.

I’d claimed my sister by hooking my arm in hers and walking down the stairs with her in front of Ian and Daniel.

“All right?” I whispered.

“We talked it out,” she whispered back and then gave me a radiant smile.

Daniel might be an idiot, but he was good at one thing, I could see.

But…damn.

We hit the Wine Room to Richard’s hypercritical glance that we were all twenty minutes late.

And one could say that Portia and Daniel might be over it, but I wasn’t, nor were Richard and especially Lady Jane. She was so cool to her youngest son, it could have frosted the windows. And Daniel might not be the brightest bulb in the box, but it was so obvious, even in his bad-boy-forgiven mood, he didn’t miss it.

The night went to shit from there, alternating between awkward silence, stilted conversation, and Lady Jane doting (in her own inimitable way) on Ian, me as well as Portia, to the obvious exclusion of Daniel.

But at least we’d scored a box of condoms from the affair, of which we’d already used two.

I turned my head to look at him. “I don’t want to talk about Portia and Daniel.”

“Just assure me you’re okay and I’ll drop it.”

God, I liked this guy.

“I’m okay, baby,” I told him softly.

He kissed me.

I turned so he could do it pressed up against me.

When he released my mouth, he said, “So about these dreams,” while skimming his hand down my side, then up, and curling it to trail his knuckles along the side of my breast.

I shivered and replied, “Well, Augustus might have been frolicking with his children, but Adelaide was reminiscing about him going down on her that morning, fucking her on the dining table, eating her out in a dark parlor at some ball, and fucking her ass bent over his desk in the study in their room.”

He grinned and rubbed his thumb over my nipple.

I trembled and pressed tighter to him.

“You have quite the imagination,” he remarked. “But I can confirm he went there. How he referenced it was ‘your darkest secret, my dearest, that I treasure and only I can invade.’”

Sounded like it.

“Have you memorized their letters?”

“Pretty much. I discovered them when I was fifteen.”

“Randy, teenage soon-to-be earl, I can see it,” I quipped.

He smoothed his hand down my belly and curled it in at his destination.

I gasped.

“Randy, indeed,” he murmured.

I rocked into his fingers.

“Leg over my hip, sweetheart,” he ordered.

I did as told.

“I want you in my mouth,” I requested.

He put his lips to mine and said, “Later.”

“You can do this while I do that.”

“I wouldn’t be able to concentrate.”

“Ian—”

He kissed me, effectively silencing me.

He then concentrated.

And I was glad.

* * *

With a low grunt, Ian came in my mouth.

I swallowed it down.

I licked and sucked him until the tension left his body, and I looked up at him sprawled on his bed, head and shoulders to the headboard, gaze hooded and on me.

Lord of his manor.

Lord of me.

I was powerless to his pull, and I didn’t care.

I went up, kissed his furry belly, then he moved down as I kept crawling up.

He wrapped an arm around my waist, rolled us both to turn off the only light we’d turned on, then he yanked the covers over us.

I snuggled into him, half on, half off, cheek to his pec.

“If you dream, I want you to wake me, sweetheart,” he murmured.

“Okay,” I mumbled in return, kinda hoping to go back to Augustus and Adelaide, if only for ideas.

He gathered my hair and started twisting it in a coil between my shoulder blades.

“You give great head,” he noted.

I smiled a sleepy smile into his shadowed chest. “Every girl’s dream compliment.”

“Every guy’s dream girl.”

He didn’t just mean enjoying me going down on him.

Again with saying the right thing.

“I want you again,” he said quietly. “Does that frighten you?”

I tipped my head back even if I couldn’t see his face in the extreme dark of the room.

“Are you up for that?” I asked with no small surprise.

Truth, I didn’t know if I was. I was fucked out.

But with how Ian fucked, I could find it in myself to rally.

“No. I just think it interesting I’ve come four times tonight, I’m no longer eighteen, I’m shattered, but I still want more.”

“You like me,” I reminded him.

“I do. I already did. Though, I had no idea how talented you were with your mouth and pussy, so one could say I like you quite a bit more now.”

I laughed softly, righted my head on his chest and hugged him closer.

His hand tightened in my hair, and I tensed.

“You’re extraordinary, Daphne.”

The words were low and fierce, and I felt them in my womb and heart.

“Ian—”

“If you didn’t know that, you do now. And it’s my job to make sure you never forget.”

Oh my God. He was killing me.

“Shut up,” I demanded, voice husky with feeling.

“All right, darling. Sleep.”

I turned my head to kiss his chest and closed my eyes.

But I could feel my lips were smiling.

Though I didn’t see, as both Ian and I drifted into sleep cuddled together under his duvet in his bed, the time on his tablet said it was three oh three.