She slid his cock down her cleft, bringing the head of him to her center. Warm wetness bathed the tip, making him clench his jaw. Then she lowered herself onto him, taking all of him at once, and he was deep inside her again, surrounded by her heat and her tight channel, and he nearly shouted out victoriously to the rafters.
At the last moment, he recalled himself, settling for sucking her other nipple into his mouth instead. Her hands landed on his shoulders for purchase, and he kept his grip on her hips, guiding her into a pace that she quickly made her own. He couldn’t keep himself from moving with her, meeting her thrust for thrust ashe suckled both breasts, her hair fanning over them like a silken curtain.
Her pinnacle caught him by surprise, swift and sudden, her inner muscles clenching so tightly she nearly squeezed him from her. Holding her still, he rocked upward, into her, absorbing every ripple of her release, the slickness of her cunny taking him to the verge as well. She felt like heaven on earth, and he never wanted this to end.
She cried out more loudly than was safe, but he was too far gone to care if anyone overheard. Let the whole damned household come down upon them. He would declare himself to all the servants. To everyone who cared to listen. Because this woman—Joceline Yorke—was meant to be his.
Another thrust, and he lost himself inside her, the rush up his spine intense as fireworks unleashed across a dark sky. The pleasure was so exquisite that stars speckled his vision. Holding her tightly to him, Quint filled her with his spend, gasping her name into the night.
CHAPTER 9
It was Christmas Eve morning, and a thin coating of snow had painted the landscape an ethereal silver-white overnight. The reflection of the sun off the icy coating was almost unnatural as Quint descended the grand staircase to the great hall, where a large bank of windows overlooked the rolling parkland beyond.
The world was a new place. Quint was a new man. The future was suddenly filled with possibilities. And he was counting the minutes until he could have Joceline back in his arms where she belonged. All he had to do was navigate these rather unusual circumstances with prudence and a mind to avoid causing scandal.
He would not have Joceline hurt, nor would he allow any hint of gossip to spread about her. He was more than aware of the unusual nature of an aristocrat taking his housekeeper as his wife—in his set, such things simply were not done. Or, at least, they hadn’t been until now. Which meant he needed to proceed with the plan he had begun to make as he had slipped from her room in the bowels of the night like a thief afraid of being caught and sent to the gallows.
“Sedgewick!”
Startled from his thoughts, he glanced up to find his mother storming toward him in a flurry of navy silk, her countenance hard as marble.
“Good morning, Mother,” he greeted, smiling.
“Sedgewick,” she bit out again, looking pale and quite as if she had just learned of a death. “I must speak with you in private at once.”
It wasn’t like his mother to make demands of him. Mostly because she knew they would be ignored. But he needed to speak with her anyway concerning his plans to wed Joceline, so he allowed it.
Quint inclined his head. “Of course, madam. The drawing room should do.”
It was one of the few rooms on this floor in which he hadn’t kissed Joceline, and while he intended to fully rectify that matter, it would have to wait until after they were husband and wife. If he wanted to shield her from gossip, he was going to have to keep his desire firmly in check, as impossible a feat as that seemed.
He escorted his mother to the chamber in question, a thorny silence between them, the taut line of her jaw telling him that he was in for a tongue-lashing. When they reached the drawing room, the door had barely closed behind them before she confirmed his suspicion, rounding on him in high dudgeon.
“Sedgewick, I have been beset by the most egregious accusation this morning,” she began, “the very scandalous nature of which I can scarcely fathom. It is, without a doubt, the most dreadful, egregious, unbelievable, preposterous outrage I have ever, in all my years on this earth, been forced to confront.”
Quint tensed, dread coiling in his stomach. Not from his mother’s words, but rather because he feared there was only one thing that would cause such an unprecedented, melodramatic reaction from her.
But he maintained his sangfroid just the same. “I do believe you said egregious twice, Mother.”
“It bore repeating. I could have said it thrice.” She pressed a bejeweled hand over her heart. “Truly, Sedgewick, I am deeply embarrassed to have to come to you with this, but Lady Diana is positively stricken, and if what she implied is true, then it must be answered for. The poor dear girl was so pale, and she has been weeping uncontrollably all morning.”
“I am sorry to hear Lady Diana has been distressed,” he said, though, in truth, it hardly concerned him.
He had never harbored any intention of offering for her. He hadn’t invited her to Blackwell Abbey. That had all been his mother’s manipulations at work.
“As well you should be,” his mother said, her voice trembling beneath the force of her upset. “For you are the source of her discontent.”
He clenched his jaw and raked a hand through his hair, realizing as he felt the long strands slide against his fingertips that he’d forgotten to don his gloves this morning. “I fail to see how I can be the lady’s source of discontent. I have not seen her since last evening at dinner, and I do believe we all parted ways on excellent terms.”
His mother’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment, as if she were summoning up her strength. She swayed, and he feared she was going to swoon.
“Mother.” He caught her elbow in a gentle hold, steadying her as her eyes opened again. “Shall I ring for some hartshorn?”
“No servants, if you please,” she clipped, her tone steeped in disapproval. “That is the reason I wished to speak with you, Sedgewick. Lady Diana’s lady’s maid brought some troubling concerns to her from belowstairs about the nature of your relationship with yourhousekeeper.”
Ah, so there it was.
She said the last word as if it were an epithet, and indeed, to Quint, it rather had become one. He disliked thinking of Joceline by that impersonal term. She was so much more to him than a servant. So much more than he could have ever imagined possible.
