He removed himself from the bed since he did not trust himself. She lay, beautiful and unashamed and bold, naked on the coverlets, her eyes dancing with defiant fire. She looked thoroughly fucked, and it made him long to fuck her again. To come on her porcelain skin this time, mark her with his seed. Christ, he was an animal.
“Spencer,” he rasped. “We are beyond the point of titles now, princess. Put on your robe and return to your chamber before…”
She raised a brow, and her knowing look had him ready to pounce upon her again. “Before what, Spencer?”
He made a choked sound. In the span of all but a week, she had gone from being an abstract irritant to being the woman he deflowered in the emerald chamber. The woman he could not seem to resist, regardless of how hard his rational mind worked to force him to realize she was wrong for him in every way.
She was too bold, too lovely, too sensual, too rebellious, far too outspoken. If he had to describe her in a simple phrase, it would be this:too much. And yet, the crux of it was that he could never have enough of her. She was opium and he was the addict, always chasing her, ready to lose himself in her. She had damn well beguiled him.
“Spencer?” Those big, vibrant eyes sparked with laughter. Her full lips, lush and deep-red with kisses, tipped into a smile that took his breath. “You did not seem to finish your command, and I do so wish to heed it.”
Her insincerity was transparent. The witch. He would not admit it. “Have you no shame? Cover yourself,” he growled, for his cock was painfully hard already, and he had to avert himself from her gaze in an effort to maintain the last remaining shred of his dignity.
With the grace of a feline, she rolled from the bed and stood facing him, raising her arms high over her head to stretch. His besotted gaze tracked the movement of her breasts rising and falling. Her nipples remained pebbled and hungry, pointing to him as if in invitation. He rather thought he would accept the devil’s invitation to hell in that moment if it meant he could suck those sweet, peach buds one more time.
“Since we are to be husband and wife,” she said, dragging his eyes back to hers at last, “there is one fact with which you ought to acquaint yourself. I do not—nor have I ever—possessed the capacity for shame. I am me, and I like me.”
She liked herself. What a strange creature she was. Here she stood, naked, ruined, debauched, and she remained as bold and unrepentant as ever. She wore nothing but the evidence of their lovemaking, and she made no effort to cover herself. She cried no maidenly tears at having lost her innocence.
The first time he had taken Millicent—the only other virgin he had ever bedded—she had sobbed uncontrollably in the aftermath. He had been far gentler, he thought, far less demanding on that long-ago occasion. But Boadicea was not anything like Millicent, and he was heartily grateful for that, at least.
I like me.Who thought such nonsense, let alone spoke it to one’s future husband while standing naked in a strange chamber without the benefit of marriage vows? She was so bloody ridiculous and yet so bloody captivating, and it was rending him apart from the inside out, rearranging everything he’d thought he had known about himself. He had gone three years without giving in to temptation. He had never wanted to take another wife. The notion of bedding another woman had filled him with nothing but cold dread. Yet, he just had, and he had relished every fucking moment of making her his. Could not wait to do it again.
And again.
He did not know what to say to her. They were two naked strangers who had just shared the most intimate act a man and woman could share, at a standoff. She confounded him. “Do you intend to walk back to the duchess’s chamber in the nude?” he bit out.
She gave him a regal shrug, another smile playing at her lips. “If it pleases me, I will.”
Damn her. She was goading him, and he knew it, but the thought of Boadicea strolling down the hall on full display to anyone who passed by made him feel positively vicious. “Your body is mine, for my eyes only.”
“And is yours mine alone as well?” she asked.
Yes, utterly.
He stiffened. “I will not have this discussion with you now, when it is imperative that you return to your chamber, clothed, before what we have done here has even greater ramifications.”
“When would you prefer to have it, Your Grace?” She tilted her head, her expression faintly mocking, as was her tone.
Bleeding hell, he could not think properly when she stood before him like a pagan sacrifice. Every part of him roared to take her in his arms, throw her on the bed, and fuck her until she spent so hard on his cock and his tongue that she forgot how to be impertinent.
“Cover yourself,” he demanded, forcing a coolness into his voice that he did not feel. Indeed, he was a raging inferno, about to combust and do something even more foolish than bedding his betrothed in the midst of the morning beneath the noses of their family members and a belowstairs full of gossip-loving domestics.
“I will not be bellowed at, Spencer.”
While he was gratified that she was calling him by his Christian name at long last, he was still staring at a naked goddess, doing his damnedest not to drag her back to the bed. Or fall on his knees before her and worship her with his eager mouth. He could still taste her, and it was better than the finest delicacy he had ever consumed.
She stared at him, pursing her lips. Her breasts rose and fell. Even the indentation of her navel bewitched him, and he longed to dip his tongue there, kiss a path over the slight curve of her belly to the juncture of her thighs.
Damn it all. “Please. Cover yourself.”
Apparently, he had appeased her, for she bent and scooped up her dressing gown in one elegant motion, shrugging it on and belting it at the waist, putting an end to his unabashed ogling but not his arousal, which refused to abate. Stifling a curse, he found his breeches and slid them on, fastening them and hissing out a breath at the friction of the fabric over his sensitive cock.
“I meant what I said,” she said, and now that she was ensconced in the robe, she looked less like a siren and more like the young, lovely innocent that she was. Or rather, that she had been prior to his unfettered lust. “I do not need you to like me to accept myself. But if we are bound together, you could try not to look upon me with such distaste any time you are not running your hands or mouth all over my body. You are marrying a woman who reads bawdy books, who is not afraid to say and do things that are inappropriate, who feels strongly about her beliefs, and who will not bend to any man’s whim. Who will not bend to your whims, specifically.”
She thought he looked upon her with distaste? He had to admit that his reaction to her had initially been both visceral and unkind, borne as much from the way she drew him to her as from her rebellious nature. He could hardly fault her for her poor opinion of him, as he’d earned it. But in truth, his opinion ofherhad slowly changed.
Now, if there was distaste, it was only for himself, for how little control he possessed over his reaction to her. Once again, he did not know what to say. She stared at him, defiant as ever, and he wished she had not done as he’d asked and donned her robe. He missed her skin, the curves of her waist and hips, those luscious breasts.
