Her lips parted and the thoughts of desire fled. “I—what?”
“The earl,” he clarified. “Your latest husband, did you love him?”
She shifted. Most would never think to ask such a thing. Loveless marriages were the norm in the kind of Society she kept, that this man kept. The few exceptions were seen as irregularities. Whispered about like they were on display at a museum.
She cleared her throat. “No. I married him to get away from a bad situation.”
“Which was?” he asked.
She bit her lip. “My brother…my stepbrother, Thaddeus. He has always been protective of me. He demanded I live in his home after my second husband’s death, and I could hardly refuse when my own home was ripped away from me by my late husband’s family. Thaddeus’s wife is difficult. She runs hot and cold. They argue. It was unpleasant.”
“So you married the earl,” Everett said softly.
“It sounds mercenary, I suppose.”
“No, it sounds reasonable,” he said with a shrug. “It’s the way of our world, after all.”
She nodded. “I regretted it soon after. I didn’t want him dead, of course, what happened is horrible. That he could have been killed because of me is even worse. But I quickly realized that I was not going to be happy in such a loveless, odd arrangement.”
He said nothing about that. But he leaned closer. “And what about what you went through yesterday? Being shot at. It was a shock, yes?”
She caught her breath as those moments flooded her senses just as they had the previous night. She steadied herself and whispered, “Yes.”
“So after a loveless marriage and a terrible upset, you just wanted to feel good. Isn’t that what Marcus said to you? He asked if you wanted to feel good.”
She blushed as she remembered those words, said so softly, so seductively. Remembered the warmth of Marcus’s breath on her neck, on her mouth.
“Yes,” she gasped.
“And did it work?” He reached out and skimmed his fingertips along her arm. Even through her light spencer, she felt the electric current of his touch. “When he took you, when I watched you, did it make you feel good?”
Her legs shook, her sex quaked and she could hardly form the word. “Yes,” she croaked.
He dropped to his knees before her and leaned up so that his mouth was a breath from hers. “And now, if I touched you now. Would that make you feel good?”
She gasped and looked at the window. Through the gap in the thin curtain, she could see Marcus riding outside. She glanced back at Everett with what she knew were questions in her eyes.
“He wanted me to watch you,” he explained softly. “He knows what I want. We share, Naomi. Would you like us to share you?”
Her body twitched, a flicker that was so close to orgasm that she let out a low moan. She had been thinking about last night since she woke. Not just of Marcus touching her, but of Everett. Both men, mixed together in her mind.
And in that moment, she wanted him so badly that she couldn’t stop herself from nodding, wordless.
That was enough for him. He palmed the back of her neck and drew her forward. Then his mouth was on hers.
When Marcus kissed her last night he had been hungry, desperate. Everett was something else. Gentle but insistent, his full lips gliding over hers and coaxing a response rather than demanding it. He cupped her hip with his free hand and dragged her to the edge of the carriage seat, then he wedged himself between her legs, bunching her skirt against the exquisitely sensitive space there.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, moaning as he deepened the kiss, tasting her like she was a fine wine and he a thirsty man. Meanwhile he massaged her hip, then glided the same hand over to rest on her upper thigh. Her legs opened farther, a wanton invitation that he smiled at as he broke the kiss.
“Lean back,” he ordered.
There was no way to refuse when he spoke like that. Something about the way he said it made her jump to obey, and she settled back in a slouched position on the carriage seat. He met her eyes, just as he had the night before, as he lifted her skirts. She shook as he piled it all on her stomach and there she was, bared to him.
He said nothing, but bent his head and pressed his mouth to her. She jolted as he licked her, pressing hard against the folds with the flat of his tongue. She dug her fingers into his hair as he lavished her flesh with wet pleasure, and she lifted to meet him in a rhythm meant to bring her to climax.
She was lost as he focused the swirl of his tongue on one place, her clitoris, circling there, ever increasing the pressure. She moaned as everything in her world narrowed to just that one bundle of nerves and the powerful pleasure she found there.
At last, the dam broke and she keened, arching up as wave after wave of sensation crashed through her body. She gripped his hair tighter, tugging him closer, pushing him away. The pleasure was almost too intense, and he looked up and smiled against her flesh as he dragged her through it.
