She had missed him more.
Vivi kissed him harder. The frenzied rush of longing inside her was the same as it had been in the boathouse, only stronger, fortified by a year of yearning and the memory of how masterfully he had made love to her. She wasn’t certain if she could forgive him yet. Not so easily, nor so quickly. But she did know that her body needed his in an elemental sense.
He broke the kiss to drag his mouth along her jaw, stringing a line of kisses to her ear. “Ah, Vivi. Sweet Vivi. Will you allow me to make amends?”
She didn’t know what his whispered question meant, but his breath was a warm distraction making more desire unfurl inside her, and she was suddenly beyond the ability to concentrate or make sense of anything other than his lips.
His lips and his teeth, which caught her earlobe and tugged. His tongue, too, as he licked that secret hollow behind her ear that drove her to distraction. He’d found it that night in the boathouse, and it made her melt.
She had forgotten, but bittersweet remembrance hit her now. Remembrance of just how inevitable it had felt that night when he had stripped away her gown and chemise. When his head had dipped and he had taken one of her nipples in his mouth, and the most exquisite burst of fiery pleasure had taken her by surprise. It had been nothing compared to when he had parted her folds and found the insistent bud hidden within.
Pleasure coiled inside her as he reverently traced his lips along her throat. She allowed her head to fall back so that he could rake his beard along the sensitive skin, the abrasion making a needy sigh leave her. She clawed at his lapel, wanting the coat off his shoulder. Wanting fewer layers keeping her from his skin. Wanting him and furious with him and so in love with him that it hurt.
“Your answer, Vivi,” he prodded, his teeth grazing the cord of her neck. “Will you?”
The answer for Court wasyes. It always had been. It forever would be yes. He was hers, the man who owned her heart. Her husband, her lover, her everything.
But part of her was coherent enough to sternly cling to her pride.
“You may try,” she said, succeeding in guiding his coat off his shoulder.
He shrugged the tweed away, the garment falling limply to the counterpane, and then she had a shirt and a waistcoat keeping her from what she wanted. He lifted his head, holding her stare, the passion burning hot in his eyes undeniable.
“I’ll try my damnedest,” he promised. “I’ll never stop. I want to be a good husband to you, Vivi. The husband you deserve.”
She wasn’t ready to hear these long-wished-for vows from him just yet. She wanted to feel instead of think. To allow herself to get swept away here with no one else about and the centuries-old ruins of Lynwood Castle towering above them. She wanted what she had been missing these long twelve months without him.
And to prove to herself that she was so very different from the wife who had watched him drive away in his carriage—to prove it to Court as well—she kissed him. Pressed her mouth to his with such aggression that her inner lip cut into her teeth. But she didn’t care. She was taking what she wanted this time.
He issued a guttural groan of pure longing, and she loved it. Loved the hint that he was not nearly as polished and calm as he pretended. That under his signature sangfroid and easy teasing lay a man who burned for her every bit as much as she burned for him. Boldly, she slipped her tongue into his mouth, and he sucked on it. Her nipples were hard, aching points behind the shield of her corset, and her body clamored for his touch, for his possession.
Suddenly, the kiss was no longer sufficient. She wanted, needed,hadto have more. She tore her lips from his and gathered fistfuls of her cumbersome skirts, hefting them up so that she could swing one leg over his and straddle him just as if he were her mount. His hands found her waist and settled there, anchoring her.
Vivi rose on her knees and stared down at him, the man she had adored as a girl and then loved as a woman. The man she had given herself to, the man she had married. In wonder, she touched him, cupping his face in both hands, feeling the new texture of his beard beneath her questing fingertips—springy yet sleek and soft. She found, too, the sharp line of his jaw. His eyes were on hers, holding her as tangibly as any tether. He was so handsome, so beloved. And she had missed him every moment he had been away.
But he was here now. He was firm and solid and muscled, his grasp on her waist tight, as if he feared she might pull away at any second and leave him. And then she said his name.
“Court.”
She whispered it, half prayer, half sigh. For long before he had been the Duke of Bradford, that was how she had known him. It was what Percy had called him, how Vivi had always referred to him. His title felt wrong when they were together, as if he were a stranger.
He turned his head, kissed one palm, then the other. “Yes, sweetheart?”
“I missed you,” she confessed. “I missed us.”
“I missed you too.” One of his hands left her waist to slide under her gown and undergarments, finding the stocking-covered skin of her bent knee. “I missed touching you. I missed your laughter, your smile. I missed looking at you and thinking how beautiful you are.”
Her heart thudded painfully, hope burgeoning like a bud ready to unfurl into a blossom. “Why did you not come back sooner? Why wait so long if you missed me?”
The hand that had been traveling incrementally higher on her leg stilled. “I told myself that I owed him a year. A proper year of mourning.”
Percy.
She had forever regretted the haste with which she and Court had wed— although marrying him was all she had ever wanted—and how close it had been to her brother’s drowning. Gossip had swirled at the shocking haste; speculation over the reason had been rampant.
It occurred to her suddenly that Court had returned within days of the date he had left her one year before. So very close to the anniversary of their wedding. She had spent that particular day throwing herself into the planning for her house party and trying not to allow herself to think of him or long for him, to remember the day they’d wed, when she’d still been foolish enough to hope their marriage could be happy, despite the circumstances under which it had been made.
She traced Court’s lips, her finger lingering on his philtrum. “We did everything wrong, didn’t we?”
