Sin tossed her lightly. Manhandling her was pathetically easy—she was so damned small compared to his hulking frame. She landed in the center of the bed with a feminine squeak.
“I am not…giving you husbandly rights this evening,” she protested, scrambling to her knees.
She intended to put up a fight. He was not surprised. Anticipation jolted through him. The hem of her night rail was trapped around her thighs, baring her knees. She was creamy perfection. Not helping his cockstand to abate at all, that sight. Her hair was a wild, dark halo of riotous curls around her face, streaming down her shoulders and back.
He remembered how it had felt in his fingers, silken and cool. How it had felt wrapped around his fingers, too.
“Calm yourself, Callie,” he told her with a composure that belied the fire coursing through his veins. He began slipping the buttons on his shirt free, one by one. “I have no intention of bedding you tonight. You are likely sore, are you not? Do you think me an unfeeling cad?”
Her cheeks darkened to a pretty shade of pink. “My lord!”
He grinned. Her embarrassment was strangely endearing.
“Sin,” he reminded her as he shed his shirt.
Stripping it off was likely unfair, he knew. He had not failed to note the manner in which her brown-gold gaze had lingered previously upon his chest. He could not deny he found her interest pleasing.
“Sin, I must insist you not speak of such personal matters aloud,” she said, her prim governess voice returning.
The dichotomy of proper Callie with the flushed cheeks and the wild woman who kissed him with such skilled ferocity intrigued him. He had supposed their union would be bloodless and cold and marked with their mutual hatred.
But their hatred had sparked flames of a different sort.
And this was one particular inferno he did not mind being scorched by.
He unbuttoned the fall of his trousers next. “There is my prudish governess once more. Will you not undo a few buttons, love? I fear your night rail will choke you in your sleep, that endless line all the way up your throat.”
“There is nothing wrong with my nightdress,” she argued, fingering the lacey frills at her throat. “Aunt Fanchette said husbands prefer their wives to be clothed modestly when they sleep. She chose this herself.”
He could not stifle his laugh. “How the devil does Aunt Feather-wit know what husbands prefer from their wives when she has never had a husband herself?”
Her little white teeth emerged yet again, nibbling at her lip. “You must not call her that dreadful name. It is disrespectful. Aunt Fanchette is the only female relative I have to guide me, with my brother and his wife still on their honeymoon.”
True. But he would be damned if he would allow himself to entertain even a drop of remorse for denying her the chance to receive wifely guidance from her new sister-in-law. Had they tarried, Westmorland would have done something to interfere with the wedding. Of that, Sin had no doubt.
He removed his trousers in one swift move, and then bent to pull off his stockings as well. “Do me a favor, wife? Cease relying upon the advice of Aunt Featherbrains, will you?”
“Aunt Fanchette,” she snapped, her gaze traveling down his chest to his torso.
When it dipped lower still, his cock twitched. His erection was tenting his bloody smalls, and he knew it. If he were a gentleman, he would turn away or adjust himself. Do something to ease her discomfit. Think about kittens and puppies and elderly dowagers to kill his cockstand.
Instead, he whipped his smalls away as well, standing before her nude, his prick at attention. He ached to stroke himself. To take himself in hand while she watched. To do everything wicked with her. But this was only their second night as husband and wife. No need to debauch her entirely just yet.
They had time.
The rest of their lives.
“Do you truly want to talk about Aunt Fanchette at the moment?” he asked politely as he turned down the gas lamps.
“What are you doing?” she sputtered.
So full of objection and shocked outrage this evening, his little wife. Last night, she had been naked and wanton in his bed, wet and sweet beneath his tongue.
Bathed in darkness, he settled into the bed.
“Going to sleep,” he told her. “The hour is late.”
“Oh.”
