“We both know you didn’t see my ankle. You simply wanted to marry me,” she said wryly, allowing her natural humor to escape.
Frederick looked at her, something like approval and relief crossing his face. What did he have to be relieved about? He was a duke!
“Is that so?” he asked, pulling off her slippers. Her stockinged feet rested on the floor. She thanked her lucky stars and somewhat overawed guardians for the wedding shopping trips that had sent her to Frederick with an array of pristine stockings.
“Yes?”
He pulled off his coat, then waistcoat, leaving himself in shirtsleeves. Thinking better of it, he then removed his necktie, too. His shirt was open at the collar. Blood pulsed in his neck. Marianne felt a jolt of fear when she looked into his eyes. He was so intent on her, so potent. He had the look of a predatory animal.
“Keep playing,” he said.
“Keep—?” she asked.
Then he took her stockinged foot and brought it to his shoulder. He was low to the ground, but all the same, his movements spread her legs beneath her voluminous skirts most obscenely. One foot still rested on the floor, and she struggled to remain upright and playing when he didn’t release her captured limb.
“What are you doing?” she asked faintly.
“What I should have done last night,” he said, turning his head to kiss her arch.
Marianne shuddered. Oh, this wasn’t the least bit good. She was in their family drawing room and growing hot and swollen and wet from a few moments with her husband. If he took her to bed now, what would he think of her?
She felt him run his hand up her calf, past her knees, and to her thigh, where the stocking stopped.
“You’re so smooth, Marianne,” he bit out while slipping his fingers inside the top band and drawing it back down her leg. All the while, he caressed and nipped at her skin.
When the stocking was nearly off, he let the material pool at her ankle, then used his teeth to draw it over her foot. It was strange and reverent, a loving ritual she’d never expected.
Frederick dropped the stocking. She struggled to keep playing while watching her husband, and when he ran both hands up her legs, she jolted in surprise.
One slid over bare skin and the other over her still-stockinged leg. “My lovely wife,” he mumbled, his eyes fixed on the skirts of her dress right above the place she’d touched so pleasurably in the bath. Already, Marianne could feel him there; felt herself expand to receive him. It was a heady feeling, as if she’d jumped down from a hayloft suddenly.
“Before I married you, I was something of a libertine,” he confessed before pressing his face into her gathered dress and inhaling.
“Just before?” asked Marianne, well aware that many powerful, very married men carried on with their raking well after marriage.
“I suppose I still am,” he mused from her lap. Her heart dropped; though it was to be expected that he’d carry on with other women despite their nuptials. They weren’t a love match, after all!
“But now I’m only a libertine with my wife,” he continued, pushing her skirts out of his way to see more and more of her legs.
Her heart shouldn’t have responded like a horse bolting at the sound of a starting gun, but she struggled to catch her breath from the speed at which it raced and how hungrily Frederick was gazing at the place between her thighs.
“The prettiest, silliest little drawers,” he mused, yanking on a decorative bow.
“Yes,” she said, remembering periodically to keep playing despite the awkward angle and her most pleasurable distraction. “Purchased by my guardians, it—”
Frederick rent the drawers between his hands, one bow dropping to the floor. Where there had once been pants, there was now fabric with a tear down the middle. A tear in a very interesting, needy place.
“Apologies, I find I do not like the idea of other men buying your underthings. Set up the accounts with my man of business immediately and replace everything.”
“Everything?” cried Marianne. “My guardians purchased them! I can assure you they were quite delighted to perform the service for the last time!”
“Your husband is a tyrant,” said Frederick with a shrug before continuing to tear the fabric away from her body with care.
“What has come over you?” she asked. Suddenly, everything seemed so funny. Her aristocratic husband was acting most strangely!
He sighed and placed her stockinged thigh upon his shoulder. “I want you, Marianne,” he said, not bothering to disguise his hunger.
“Well, that seems most convenient,” she said. “Since we are, in fact, married.”
