“Then, I should eat it.”
He dropped his hands from her hips, and she clasped him all the more tightly. “No! Please, give me?—”
Lewis brought his hand up to the back of her neck, fingers curling into her hair. He pulled her head back and kissed her hard. Bridget groaned into his mouth, their teeth colliding. He nibbled on her bottom lip, conscious of Bridget’s wildly bucking hips against his waist.
His other hand slipped down and beneath her gathered skirts. With ease, he found her folds again. Wetness coated his finger, as he pressed it inside her. Bridget gasped and jolted, writhing against him. Her whole body quivered, and she groaned against his mouth. Each high-pitched sound struck his own body. He inhaled deeply in an attempt to maintain control, but that was a mistake. Lewis smelled onlyher—lavender and roses and freshly made bread and sugar—and his cock ached for her warmth and softness. He could take her right there. He could.
She needed tolearnher place.
She was driving him mad.
“Oh!” she gasped. “Oh, I am almost?—”
Lewis pumped his finger in and out, wet and lewd sounds mingling together with Bridget’s shattered cries. Her inner walls clenched tightly around his finger, her body nearly at her release.
He withdrew his finger and squeezed her thigh. Bridget’s thighs still shook. “No!” she cried.
Bridget released his shoulders, hands going to her core, but he caught her wrists and held them fast.
“I was almost there!” she cried.
Unable to use her hands, Bridget rocked furiously against him. Lewis forced down the lump that rose in his throat. It was apparent from her frustrated cries that Bridget was incapable of finding release on her own, but every brush of her warm sex against his trousers threatened to undo him.
“Please!” she cried. “Oh, you wretched man!”
“Well, that is hardly going to persuade me,” he said, forcing his voice to be very calm. “You wretched woman.”
“Please, I was so close to it!”
“So you were,” he confirmed. “But you will not have pleasure until you have earned it. I know you were hoping to goad me into giving into your feminine wiles, but you have failed.”
Bridget sobbed deep in her throat. “I apologize,” she said desperately. “I do. I am so very sorry for what I have done.”
“No,” he said. “You are sorry that you are being asked to bear the consequences for what you have done.”
She shifted in his lap for a moment longer before growing still. Bridget’s breath still came in hot pants, and the color on her cheeks made it all too apparent that she had been nearly close, indeed.
“I will be your duchess if you will just give in to me,” she whispered.
“No,” he replied. “You will be my proper duchess, and after that, I might deign to give you the pleasure that you so desperately desire. Until that day, I fear you will simply have to remain unsatisfied, my love.”
With a disappointed look, Bridget clambered from his lap and hurried away. Lewis remained where he was for a moment longer, sighing deeply. He resisted the impulse to stroke himself through his trousers. Bridget might be suffering from her punishment, but he was, too.
Perhaps more so. Lewis knew that some men might be inclined to take a mistress, but he had never been like that. Bridget was his one and only wife, the only woman with whom he wished to be intimate. He would simply have to wait, though.
Wait and suffer. Lewis stood and left the kitchens, his blood roaring in his ears. He had an appreciation for the joys of prolonged pleasure, but this situation was simply ridiculous. Even if Lewis had bested Bridget twice in quick succession, hedoubted that this would be the time when she realized just how well he could outplay her.
And that was rather disappointing.
CHAPTER 23
“Do you ever find your husband to be just infuriating?” Bridget asked.
Dorothy laughed.
The two of them were in Hyde Park, resting beneath the sweeping limbs of a marvelously large and ancient oak tree. At first, the outing had been entirely pleasant. Bridget had laid back on the grass, and with the cool wind sweeping across her body, she had felt as though she was at peace with the world.
It was a good place for one to lay and waste away the day, or it had been. Inevitably, her thoughts turned to Lewis and the pleasure he had denied her only the day before.
