The Reluctant Suitor

  Reaching out, he took his bride’s fingers within his clasp and, with his free hand, drew her head down to his for a long, gentle kiss. When they finally parted, Riordan was no longer in the room.

  Colton bestowed a grin on the physician. The strong brew of which he had liberally partaken had done much to dull his pain, but not the desires that had inflamed his mind and body for the last few months. “I shall try not to stress myself unduly, Dr. Croft, but I won’t promise anything more than that.”

  The physician flicked his brows briefly upward, sensing it would do him little good to reason with his lordship. But then, it was much as Percy had said. The pulchritude of the maid would have made it difficult for any man to ignore her. “Nevertheless, I ask you to be careful. I understand that you were a hero in our confrontation with France. However, consider yourself for the time being as delicate as a newborn. You’re not to move around needlessly, so I suggest that you let your bride coddle you for several days. I’ll leave a supply of powder and instructions with Hodges on how to mix it and treat the wound after it has been cleansed or should the pain become too intense. I recommend that it be applied four times a day to prevent the flesh from becoming tainted. Tomorrow I shall return to make my own assessment, and if you’re worse off, I’ll have to send your wife far from here to give you time to heal.”

  “I shall carefully adhere to your instructions, sir,” Colton avouched with a grin. “I’d certainly hate to be separated from her after I’ve finally taken her to wife.”

  At last, the couple were alone, but Adriana took the doctor’s advice to heart and offered a solution. “I’ll sleep downstairs so you won’t be tempted to move about.”

  Colton shook his head resolutely as a slow, meaningful grin curved his lips. “Nay, madam, you’ll sleep with me here in this bed, and if I can’t find a way to make love to you without opening up my back, then at least I can hold you within my arms. And please don’t bother undressing anywhere else or putting on a nightgown. If you do, I’ll just have to come searching for you or be forced to remove the gown from you myself. Either way, I could injure myself, and of course you wouldn’t want that. So I urge you, Wife, to consider the mayhem you’ll cause if you fail to heed my entreaty. I’ve been waiting too long to find out whether the vision I saw in my old bathing chamber is actually real or merely a figment of my imagination. If the latter, then I should be praised for the degree of perfection I created in my mind. If genuine, then I want to hold that vision within my arms and to savor it thoroughly just as I’ve been yearning to do since I returned home.”

  “If that is your desire, my lord,” Adriana murmured, her lips curving in a fetching smile. After their troubled separation, she was relieved that she could be with him.

  Those warmly glowing eyes seemed to brand her as she lifted her hands behind her neck, but freeing the catch on the gold and sapphire choker caused her difficulty and sent her to her knees beside the bed. “I need your help unfastening my necklace.”

  When she sought to lower her cheek on the mattress to give him access to the tiny latch, Colton halted her with a finger beneath her chin. Lifting her face, his eyes probed the darkly shining orbs. “Leave the necklace for the moment, my pet, and kiss me instead. For too long now, I’ve been trying to avoid kissing you the way I’ve been yearning to do for fear of where it would lead us, but I needn’t worry anymore about getting you with child. Simply put, madam, I’m nearly starved for the taste of your sweet lips and all the other temptations I found myself facing whenever I was near you.”

  Adriana recalled his kiss on the night of Roger’s attack and grew heady with anticipation. Only the one he had bestowed on her at the onset of their courtship had come close to equaling that singular exchange. Nothing since then, certainly not his gentlemanly pecks upon her brow or the swift brush of his lips upon hers, had even hinted of his desires.

  Pushing herself to her feet, she leaned over him to deliver his request, but his right arm came around her hips as he silently urged her to lie alongside him. As she kicked off her slippers, he tossed aside the quilt that had been spread over his lower half and then patted the narrow space beside him. Willingly complying with his silent urging, she lifted the silken skirt to climb atop the mattress, but was forced to raise it far above her knees to accomplish that task. Had she issued an invitation for her husband to peruse the sights, he couldn’t have been more eager to respond. Ensnaring his gaze, those long, sleek limbs sheathed in dark silk stockings enticingly secured above her knees by beribboned, black lace garters did much to shatter the notion that nothing would ever transcend the spiraling heights to which his admiration had soared when he had perused her naked form in the bathtub. Already he had stored within his memory diverse views of her; this one would be lodged in a niche among the most tempting.

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that you’re not supposed to stare?” Adriana teased, seeing where his gaze was fastened.

  Grinning, Colton swept his hand along her thigh as she pressed alongside him and nestled her head within the crook of his arm. “I can’t help it. The sights enslave me.” He dragged his gaze away from her shapely legs long enough to give her a grin. “Truly, my love, I’ve never seen the equal of your perfection.”

  Smiling, Adriana ran her fingers through the fascinating feathering of dark hair covering his chest. “Believe me, sir, you’re far from imperfect yourself.”

  At the insistent urging of his knee, she lifted a slender limb and laid it over his hip, allowing his thigh to encroach between hers. Her heel found a comfortable niche beneath his firmly muscled buttocks as her eyes delved with glowing warmth in his. His face slowly lowered to hers, and soon his lips and tongue took possession of hers, searching, demanding, consuming the delectable sweetness until his delicious assault left her feeling faint, and yet he would not relent. He drew her tongue into the warm cavern of his mouth where a flaming torch stroked over it with a slow, evocative rhythm that suggested something more erotic.

  Drawing back with a trembling sigh, Adriana whispered, “The way you kiss leaves my head whirling in an eddy. Soon, I fear, my racing heart will take flight.”

  His hand slid over her breast, causing Adriana to catch her breath at the scintillating shock of pleasure he elicited as the tips of his lean fingers teasingly scrubbed across a nipple. She arched her back, thrusting the soft mound upward to reap the full measure of his attention. He bestowed it in a way that made her tremble as his thumb strummed with slow deliberation across the sensitive peak.

  “You’re beautiful, my love,” Colton murmured huskily, leaving a trail of kisses down her throat, “but you have too many damned clothes on.”

  “You don’t,” she stated with a teasing grin as she drew back to savor the sights. Somewhat in awe of her handsome husband, she swept a hand over the steely bulges of his shoulders and traced slender fingers downward along the bandages crisscrossing his chest. With almost adoring reverence, she stroked the rippling thews, the taut ribs, the manly nipples, and began to brush kisses over the ridges and hollows. Colton watched her, amazed by her gentle passion.

  Rising up on an elbow, Adriana stared into his eyes with all the ardent emotions she had kept tightly reined for some weeks. “I love you, Colton Wyndham. I always have . . . and always will. When I was a little girl, you were my idol. Now that you’re my husband, I want to be made complete by you, to become part of you, to know you as I’ve never known you before.”

  The gray orbs shone with unmistakable ardor as Colton slipped a hand behind her head and pulled her face down to his. Their mouths were soon forged in another rapacious devourment of lips and tongues that blended the honeyed sweetness of her mouth with the brandy flavored taste of his.

  Increasingly beset by his desires, Colton swept a hand downward to her thigh, above the place where a frilly garter secured her stocking, and slid it upward beneath her gown. It was not long before he drew back and stared at her in some astonishment. “Madam, you’re not wearing any
pantaloons.”

  Adriana blushed, wondering if he’d think her forward. “The skirt of my gown was so narrow, the pantaloons caused unsightly bulges, so I decided not to wear them. I never once imagined anyone would find out. Do you think me lewd, sir?”

  Colton chuckled. “Banish the thought, madam. I approve of your decision. It certainly makes it easier for what I have in mind.”

  Coyly smiling into his shining gray eyes, she inquired, “What is that, my lord?”

  “Need you ask?” He grinned into her shining eyes. “Undressing you is the first order of business, madam. After that, copulation, of course. The sooner we get to the latter, the sooner I’ll be satisfied.”

  His fingers plucked at the placket running down her back as their kisses grew wilder and more frenzied. When the garment loosened, allowing him to drag it down in front, she quickly wiggled free of its silky confines and tossed it behind her into a nearby chair. When she faced her husband again, he was leisurely devouring the sights. The white satin chemise clung to the ripe orbs as if reluctant to be parted, while the delicate netting of the lace teased him with minute glimpses of the pale pink it swathed.

  “Has anyone ever told you how utterly beautiful you are without your clothes, madam?”

  A smile curved Adriana’s soft lips as she pressed her brow against a lean cheek. “Only you, my lord.”

  “Believe me, my dear wife, since my return home, I have become your most ardent admirer.”

  Eager to view her beautiful body unfettered, Colton dragged the lace straps from her silken shoulders, encouraging her to slip her arms free. Soon he was perusing those luscious mounds as he tugged the garment down nigh her waist. She hastened its removal with a wiggle and slid it past her hips, drawing his eyes downward as she kicked free of it.

  Adriana hardly knew the moment it slid to the floor, for her husband promptly lifted her up higher against him. His mouth was there waiting to devour the luscious orbs, quickening fires in the depth of her being. In a moment of pure bliss, Colton pressed his face between the creamy fullness and closed his eyes, savoring the silkiness of her skin and the delicate scent of roses. He was very, very thankful to be alive and to be married at last to this woman who had held his mind ensnared for the last several months.

  “I’m glad you never offered me a demonstration of how pleasurable it is to be naked in your arms before now,” Adriana whispered tremblingly. “Otherwise, I’d have likely yielded to your invitation to pleasure me long ago.”

  “The best is yet to come, my beauty, and now that you’re my wife, ‘twill be even more pleasurable,” he breathed as his hand slid down over her smooth, creamy belly. His lean fingers encroached into the moist, womanly softness and, ever so gently, plied their magic, snatching her breath and making her writhe with the ecstasy he evoked. As if with a will of their own, her thighs slowly parted, welcoming his deftly voyaging caresses. Waves of heightening bliss began to wash through her, thoroughly amazing Adriana at the sensations she was experiencing, yet as much as her cheeks flamed at the boldness of his caresses, she could not bring herself to turn aside and halt the fires that had begun flaring upward from her loins. Indeed, his evocative titillation set her whole being aflame.

  “What you’re doing feels too marvelous to be proper,” she whispered shakily. “If you do not desist, I will likely dissolve.”

  “Perfectly suitable for a husband to search out all the secret places his wife has managed to withhold from him ere they wed, my sweet. Is it not to your liking, too?”

  Her voice was faint, breathless. “Very much so.”

  The fact that she was garbed in nothing more than stockings seemed rather ridiculous considering all the other vulnerable womanly areas were fully in view. Yet when she sat up to loosen her garters, Colton’s hand closed around her wrist, gently halting her. “Leave the stockings, my love,” he rasped. “I want to feel you against me.”

  He lifted the sheet aside, inviting her to press close against his naked body, in so doing, causing Adriana to stare at his blatant maleness. Though it was a bold reminder of what she had seen in the bathing chamber, it seemed immensely threatening of a sudden. Lifting her gaze, she stared into those smiling gray orbs.

  “I can’t be around you without being effected, my love,” Colton murmured huskily. “It’s what I’ve been battling ever since the Autumn Ball. If not for the constant presence of our chaperones, I would have had my way with you every time we were alone in my coach . . . or anyplace else that proved private.”

  Adriana stared at him in astonishment. “But I thought you merely wanted Samantha and Percy along to provide proof of your gentlemanly comportment so you could break away cleanly after our courtship.”

  Colton softly hooted at such a notion. “It was difficult enough keeping my hands off you when others were around. Getting you entirely alone would have been certain disaster. I had visions of us standing before the rector after your belly had grown heavy with child.”

  Throwing back her head, Adriana relented to her overwhelming joy and laughter. “I thought you didn’t want me!”

  Colton took her hand and closed it around the throbbing hardness, drawing a shocked gasp from her. “Is this not proof of my desire for you, madam? It’s what has beset me throughout the whole of courtship. Even now, I can hardly endure the pain after my lengthy abstinence. Indeed, I had begun to fear I’d become a damned eunuch, wanting you as I did, and not being able to appease that longing.”

  “But your wound. Won’t you find it hard to . . . ?”

  “Banish the thought, my love. I could have one foot in the grave and still desire to make love to you.”

  “You should follow the doctor’s advice,” she cautioned as he pulled her full length against him.

  “You could do all the work and let me reap the pleasure,” he cajoled with a wayward grin as his eyes glowed into hers.

  Smiling, she traced a finger over his lips. “You’ll have to show me what to do.”

  His hand swept down to her thigh and dragged a stocking and garter free as she lifted a sleek limb to accommodate him. “I will, my love, but first, I must make you ready for me.”

  Would you like me to take the other stocking off?”

  “Um-hmm,” he murmured, slipping his hands behind her nape and unfastening the choker. “And your earrings. I may want to chew on your ears a bit, considering it has been a craving of mine for the last several months.”

  Giggling, Adriana unfastened the costly jewelry from her earlobes as his hand once again claimed a ripe, creamy breast. “You have the strangest quirks, Colton Wyndham.”

  “You’ll have a lifetime to become familiar with them, Wife, but I would be about more serious pleasures now.”

  “Such as?” She twisted away slightly to lift her right leg into the air. Stripping off the last silk stocking, she sent it fluttering to the floor beside the other.

  “Crossing the last bridge before we become one, my love.”

  Adriana lay in quiescent stillness, indulging in every blissful thrill, every delectable delight he stirred within her as he worked his magic upon her womanly softness, but when his open mouth claimed her breasts once again and began to suckle her, she felt almost consumed by the pleasure he wrought. Driven by the intensifying pleasure, she reached out and laid claim upon the manly hardness, drawing a sharp gasp from him as the hot blood surged through him.

  “Please, Colton . . . I can bear no more. Whatever you’re waiting for, wait no longer, I beg you.”

  “I needn’t, my love. You’re now ready for me,” he whispered. The dewy moistness readily affirmed that she was eager for what was coming.

  Lying back upon the pillows, he met her questioning gaze as she rose up to peer down into his face. He smiled with a devilish gleam in his eyes. “I hear you ride Ulysses without a saddle at times, my dear. I have a horn but no saddle. Are you brave enough to try? ‘Twill be painful at first.”

  “You’ve made it impossible for me to refuse. I?
??ve never felt so . . . so . . . wanton before.”

  “Making love is not wantonness when it’s between a couple who has been bound in marriage, love. ‘Tis an honest desire, and right now, I want you more than anything in the world.”

  Rising to her knees, she moved astride him as their gazes melded. Her voice was barely a sigh as she softly whispered, “With my body, I thee worship.”

  His hungering eyes swept over her alluring form in one long, lingering caress as he pressed himself into the narrow niche, evoking a shiver from her as she felt his heat. With one swift, descending movement, she took him into her, snatching gasps from both of them. Nearly consumed by her womanly warmth, Colton closed his eyes, luxuriating in the joy of being one with her. He sought to bide his time to let the shock of his intrusion ease, but as she had ridden Ulysses, so his young wife rode him until he could not hold back. Waves of rapturous bliss washed over them again and again until they were being swept toward the pinnacle of ecstasy. Myriad bubbles, as finite as the air they breathed, seemed to course over, around, and through their bodies as the heightening swells surged through them, sweeping them aloft with ever-strengthening billows until they were soaring on towering waves that carried them to the outer regions of the universe, seemingly among the very stars.

  Much later, Adriana was just dozing off, nestled spoon-fashion within the protective curve of her husband’s body, when he whispered near her ear, “Still sore, madam?”

  She giggled, wiggling back until she came up in contact with the manly firmness pressing beneath her buttocks. “Do you have a reason for asking?”

  He nibbled at a dainty ear as his fingers brushed over a pliant peak. “Aye, I’m a lecher in want of more of the same, and you are the only morsel I crave.”

  “That’s good enough reason for me,” Adriana replied with smiling eagerness. Turning to face him, she snuggled alongside her naked husband as her fingers swept over his broad chest and slid lower still, causing him to catch his breath. Finding him ready for her, she rose above him, and their fevered kisses led them on and on and on . . .