As if she could forget. She gasped, back arching.
“This is what we are to each other,” he murmured coolly, his head dipping so close to her that his hot breath fell across her tender flesh. “Two bodies seeking mindless pleasure. Fucking and nothing more.” His lips closed around her pearl, sucking hard as he began to pump in and out of her, a second finger joining the first.
Sybil was helpless. She knew what he was doing—deliberately demeaning what they had shared. Creating distance between them. Making a point of proving that there was naught between them but the physical. And yet, he was also pleasuring her. The steady rhythm of his fingers and the suction of his mouth on her swollen bud were too much.
Desire coiled within her, the wet sounds of him sucking and thrusting in her echoing in the stillness of the chamber along with her panting breaths. An exquisite tension overtook her, as if at any second, she would fly apart. She couldn’t look away from his head between her thighs, and when he found a particularly sensitive part of her bud and worried it with his teeth, she lost all control.
Everything came apart.
Or exploded like fireworks against a night sky.
Or mayhap she died.
The bliss was almost excruciating, racing through her in a potent frenzy. She clamped down on his fingers, the flood of desire so intense that she cried out, back bowing from the bed, eyes sliding closed as she rode out her pleasure, so drained when it was done that she could scarcely think.
He calmly withdrew and slipped from her bed, returning to his bedroom without uttering another word.
Everett was becoming dangerously obsessedwith his wife.
At first, he had told himself that he could control the reckless, impulsive need to be near her. That he could relegate such yearnings to the bedroom each night, when marital obligation and the bargain he’d struck with her at Wingfield Hall could be his excuse. Several weeks into their arrangement, he had persuaded himself that it was his need to secure an heir that had him visiting her bedroom every night, as if bedding her was the air he required to breathe.
But as he sought Sybil out that afternoon for no reason other than that he had missed her—Christ’s sake— he was willing to acknowledge that he had a problem. She was alone in the sitting room that she preferred for the number of windows it possessed along with its blue damask walls. She was seated on a gilt-framed settee, a pile of something in her lap atop icy blue silk skirts that complemented the walls.
Blue was her favorite color.
Yet another fact he knew about his wife. Like the sounds she made when she came, the way her body felt beneath his, the sweetness of her scent, and the fact that children adored her. She disliked ham. She adored blueberries. She couldn’t resist a good cream ice. And she was perpetually surrounded by books that she didn’t read.
So many facets of her, small pieces that he had gathered like a bloody bird to twine through a nest. He couldn’t help but wonder, as he leaned against the doorjamb at the threshold to the sitting room and watched her sew with rapt concentration, ifheknew any of these things about her. The footman. The man she loved. The man she missed.
Everett preferred to believe that he alone knew all Sybil’s secrets. That he alone had tasted her lips. That he alone was the man in her heart. Stupid illusion, that. He had no notion of whether he was in her heart at all. She certainly hadn’t made any confessions. Even in the throes of passion, not a tender word for him passed her lips.
“Oh!”
Her sudden exclamation dragged him from his ruminations. He blinked and realized she was sucking on her forefinger. She must have pricked herself with the needle. Everett strode forward at once.
“How badly did you stick yourself?”
Her face turned up, surprise on her countenance. “Your Grace. I hadn’t realized that I had an audience.”
She was always ever so proper during the daylight hours, when anyone could happen upon them. This Sybil, with her ramrod spine and her afternoon gown practically buttoned to her nose, her glorious chestnut mane captured in an almost severe chignon, bore scarcely any resemblance to the wanton who had ridden him until they had both come.
He didn’t bother to bow, not wanting formality between them just now, even if he inwardly chastised himself for allowing his mind to yet again wander to the indecent. Instead, he strode across the chamber and seated himself at her side, holding out a hand expectantly.
“Let me see the injury you’ve done yourself.”
Her eyebrows rose. “It is naught but a sting, and an embarrassing one at that. I had believed my skill with the needle eclipsed my ability to wound myself with one. Apparently, I was mistaken.”
He was not dissuaded, keeping his hand extended, palm up. “Show me.”
Wordlessly, she offered him her hand, apparently thinking better of arguing. Which was most unlike Sybil. Ordinarily, she was all fiery bluster, defying him at every turn when they weren’t alone in her bedroom.
Her hand was smooth and soft, and he hated himself for the way his body reacted to the simple touch. It couldn’t be helped, however. He was simply incredibly aware of her in a way he had never experienced with another woman.
Love?
Bloody hell.
He didn’t know. Apparently, that tender emotion had a most adverse effect upon a man.
