Not a fucking chance.
He found a rhythm that began as tender before he swiftly lost control and became relentless. They met each other thrust for thrust, faster and faster, both of them moving together as if they had been made for lovemaking. She was making soft, needy sounds of surrender that were driving him to the brink, her hands on him everywhere. He kissed her hard, feeding her the taste of herself on his tongue. His fingers slipped between them, to where their bodies joined, and he rubbed her pearl until she stiffened and cried out, her orgasm thundering through her. She tightened on his cock, and he plunged faster, fucking her up the mattress in his frenzy, until he couldn’t avoid his release for another second. He sank his cock deep one last time, and pleasure rolled up his spine as he came, filling her with his seed just as he had spent the last year dreaming of.
Only this time, it was real, and as he collapsed to the bed at Vivi’s side, he threw an arm around her waist, pulling her close to him. Burying his face in the damp cloud of her golden hair, he fell into the soundest sleep he’d had in just as long.
CHAPTER10
“Ido believe I’ve never seen you looking so content,” Clementine told Vivi as they strolled along the gravel pathway in the gardens, late-afternoon sunlight streaming around them.
“I’m sure I don’t look like anything but a woman about to be inundated with houseguests,” she demurred.
Content.
Was that the word for what she was feeling inside, the warm glow that suffused her whenever Court was near or merely in her thoughts?
Part of her hated to think it was, because contentedness terrified Vivi where he was concerned. The past fortnight had been a blur of preparations for the house party and getting reacquainted with her husband.
In every sense.
Most particularly, the sense involving a bed. And sometimes, a door. And other times, a chaise longue. Once, on a blanket spread out in the abandoned castle bailey where they’d had their picnic. But enough of that. Vivi’s cheeks were growing hot beneath her friend’s knowing scrutiny.
“And now, you’re blushing,” Clementine added, grinning.
She was, and she hated it.
“I’m not,” she lied archly. “You are simply hoping to have another matchmaking victory, my dear.”
“Can I be the matchmaker when the two of you are already married, however?” her friend asked with feigned innocence.
Vivi knew quite well that Clementine had been throwing Court and Vivi together at every opportunity. A group walk to the river when she pleaded a headache at the last moment, leaving Court and Vivi to go alone. An offer to aid with the final details of lawn chess, only to be conspicuously absent, Court there in her place. Taking dinners in her room. Disappearing from the breakfast table. Clementine had any number of matchmaking tricks at her disposal, and she had no qualms about employing them all.
Vivi didn’t entirely mind. Being alone with Court was no hardship, even if every moment that passed in his presence left her falling even more deeply in love with him. In some ways, it was as if no time had passed at all and they had simply taken up where they had left off in the boathouse. And yet, in other ways, it was as if they were discovering each other anew. It was terrifying and exhilarating, all at once. Rather like climbing a tree—triumph from the boughs even as she feared a fatal slip would send her crashing down.
“If not matchmaking, what would you call your invitation to examine the constellations in the night sky and subsequent failure to appear, leaving Court and me alone to view the stars?” Vivi asked her friend pointedly.
“I would call it falling asleep before I was able to meet you both.” Clementine defended herself airily. “Preparing for a country house party is terribly tiring.”
“Ha,” Vivi scoffed, not believing her friend’s denial for a moment. “You forget how well I know you. You’re never abed before half past one in the morning.”
“The Venus fountain is looking decidedly lovely,” Clementine said, neatly changing the subject as they rounded a bend and the repaired fountain came into view, water gurgling cheerfully from the lion heads and cherubs decorating its base.
Originally commissioned in the late seventeenth century, the fountain had been in a terrible state of disrepair, with pipes broken in the ground that had required replacing. A statue of Venus emerging from her bath, a towel draped before her, towered from above. It was, undeniably, magnificent. Shipley had painstakingly organized the repairs and had resodded the lawn around the sunken fountain, leaving the observer none the wiser that it had once sat mildewed and empty and sad.
“Yes, it is,” Vivi agreed, proud of the fountain’s new life but still not willing to be derailed, “and you are also abysmal at attempting to redirect the conversation.”
“I was hardly redirecting,” Clementine said with a sniff. “I was merely observing and admiring. Just as you do with your husband.”
Her cheeks went hotter still, and she couldn’t deny her friend’s observation, for it was true. If Court was in a room, her eyes inevitably landed on him. The more time she spent with him, the more he charmed her, the more he touched and kissed and made love to her, the less she could resist him. But then, she had always worn her heart on her sleeve where Court was concerned. Time had carried on, but her feelings for him had never altered.
“Do take care, or I’ll set Lady Featherstone upon you when she arrives,” Vivi cautioned lightly.
There was no sting in her voice, nor did she have any intention of following through on her threat. She wouldn’t set the marchioness on her greatest enemy, let alone her dearest friend.
Clementine held a hand over her heart in dramatic fashion. “Perish the thought. I can still scarcely believe you invited the wretched woman.”
“She isn’t always wretched,” Vivi said, grinning. “When she is sleeping, for instance, the marchioness is perfectly pleasant.”
Clementine chortled. “And even in her slumber, she is likely haranguing some poor, unsuspecting person. I would wager she dreams of issuing setdowns.”
