Thank you for coming to attention the moment she appeared, old chap.
How mortifying.
He stood, clasping his handkerchief over the cream ice-covered fall of his trousers.
Well, if this was not bloody ballocks, he did not know what was.
Her giggle had him raising his head. Her laughter was, as always, infectious. He found himself grinning at her, his levity joining in with hers. She closed the door behind her and moved toward him, infallibly elegant. She wore a gold silk gown embellished with embroidered scarlet leaves and lace sleeves. The line of abalone buttons running from her neckline to her hem was particularly inviting.
He wanted to pluck them open, one by one.
“Were you eating cream ice without me?” she asked as she approached, bringing with her the luscious scent of orange blossom and jasmine.
“Yes,” he admitted.
Her smile did nothing to make his rampant erection abate. Her hands settled on his shoulders. “How could you?”
Before he could answer, her lips were on his. Lush, full, tender. Kissing him. He opened beneath the tentative thrust of her tongue.Damnation, she had learned a great deal since that first kiss they had shared in his carriage. He ought to know a surge of pride at having been the only man to tutor her. Instead, he resented himself. For he had been the architect of his own demise.
Falling deeper beneath her spell. Venturing into hazardous territory indeed. The sort from which there was no return.
But it was a hell of a thing to stand in his study, kissing his wife, whilst clutching a sticky, cream ice-laden handkerchief over the cockstand tenting his trousers. He cupped her face with his free hand, his mouth responding to hers, scarcely able to stifle his groan of raw need.
Would he ever get enough of her?
Unlikely.
She was the first to break the kiss, tipping her head back, her honey-brown gaze searching his. “Strawberry from Claremont’s?”
Her question wrung another surprised laugh from him. “You could taste it?”
“I could.” Her lips twitched. “But also, Rhees told me I would find you here, and that you had a bucket from Claremont’s accompanying you.”
To the devil with the butler for tattling on him. He ought to give him the sack. Decker would if he did not like him so damned much.
“I am afraid I made a mess of myself,” he said wryly. “Eating cream ice without you is not the same,bijou.”
“You did indeed make a mess,” she agreed, her gaze lowering to his besmirched trousers and the handkerchief covering the stain. “Let me see the damage, if you please.”
He swallowed. Now was not the time for his wife to see the effect she had upon him at all times of the day. There was something about his cockstand hiding behind a strawberry cream ice stain that felt ridiculously puerile.
“There is no need for that,” he reassured her. “I will go and have a change of trousers. I have already decided I shan’t be returning to my offices today. There is hardly any sense in strutting about in my businessman’s weeds, is there?”
But his minx of a wife had knelt on the carpets before him, her gaze scorching him as if it were a touch. “I insist, Decker. Do not be silly. What will the servants think if you are to go strutting about the household with a stain in such a place? At least allow me to help you blot it dry.”
Hell.She could not possibly know what the sight of her on her knees before him did to him. Nor how badly he wanted her to tend to first his trousers and then his aching prick. How much he wanted to slide between her supple lips, to watch his cock disappear in her dainty mouth.
He was a filthy, bawdy man.
But his wife did not appear to mind. She was preoccupied with taking up his handkerchief and shooing away his hand.
“Josie,” he protested, prompted by the faintest stirrings of whatever shreds of honor he possessed.
For there was no disguising what had been going on beneath that cursed scrap of linen. Her eyes darkened, her sooty lashes lowering. Her lips parted. Above the modest neckline of her gown, he saw her swallow.
“Oh dear,” she said, her voice a low, throaty rasp. “You are dreadfully messy, are you not, sir?”
How was it that the mere act of her calling himsirwas enough to make his ballocks draw tight? He would have spoken, answered her. Mayhap, he would have heeded his honor and stepped away. But she began moving the ruined handkerchief over his equally ruined trousers.
