My lord husband pulled me even closer, and I gasped as his thigh pushed harder between my legs. No other man had ever touched me there. I’d hardly touched myself, since a little bit of pleasure might result, but mostly only futility and frustration. Parts of me I hadn’t even known were sensitive, my inner thighs and the crease of my ass, tingled with the pressure.
Lord Stefan’s lips curved in a sour smile.
“Flushed, yes, and a bit disheveled, but not nearly enough to carry out your plan to its fullest,” he went on. “Luckily for you, I’m willing to be generous enough to assist you more than is strictly necessary for legal consummation. Only this once, you understand, because my preference for a snake stands.”
Generous enough to assist—oh, gods. But before I could do anything more than open my mouth to protest, Lord Stefan wrapped one of his arms all the way around my waist, slid theother hand up to catch a fistful of my hair, and yanked my head back.
His hard, brutal kiss captured my cry of surprise.
Lord Stefan’s tongue swept inside my mouth with far more force and purpose than I’d had when I tentatively tasted him, tangling with mine and thrusting into me, the way I imagined a man might drive his cock into another’s body.
The hand in my hair massaged and tugged, tangling my curls and holding me at an angle where I couldn’t even struggle.
If I’d even tried.
My eyes closed of their own accord, and the world vanished, narrowed down to my body wrapped in his powerful embrace and the hot, slick penetration of his tongue and the bruising force of his lips on mine. I wanted—I didn’t know what I wanted, straining against him, spreading my legs as much as the constricting cassock would allow to try to press his muscular thigh more firmly between them, letting my own fingers shyly caress his silky hair—
For the second time in ten minutes, I was flung across the carriage to fetch up against the wall, only this time with my mouth swollen and throbbing and my cassock rucked up almost to my hips.
I blinked at him in dismay, the return of the real world—the cool leather seat sticking to my legs, the demoralizing sight of him straightening his own clothing and frowning without any sign that he’d felt anything whatsoever as he kissed me, the sudden awareness of my burning cheeks and sweaty torso—coming as a complete shock.
My breath came in thick pants, and I stared at him, too overwhelmed to move yet, as he fluffed the lace at his breast and cuffs and flicked lint from his sleeves.
He looked up at me at last. “That ought to do for your purposes,” he said, for all the world as if commenting on theweather. “You look very thoroughly debauched. Except for that disgusting garment, of course. Not sure how you intend to explain that away. But I do look forward to finding out.”
Without further ado, and certainly without offering me his assistance, he unlatched the door and stepped out, turning away too quickly to see my open-mouthed indignation. He’d been the one to leave me without any other, better garments, damn him! On purpose! For lack of any other options, I climbed awkwardly after him, tugging my cassock down ungracefully as I did.
The carriage had stopped in front of a grand mansion, all inlaid with dark blue stone in a complex geometric pattern, the windows ablaze with light. Four servants, including Lord Stefan’s footman, stood by the open double doors at the top of the broad marble steps.
I’d been born in a house much like this one. Our villa on the hill on the other side of the palace had been three stories high, with a half-acre courtyard planted with lemons and roses and tall cypress trees, where I’d played all the year round.
A shake of my head cleared the fresh onslaught of memories, but it left me as bewildered and off-balance as before. I scurried up the steps after Lord Stefan, reaching the door right as he did. The servants bowed us through together.
What seemed like a thousand candles in the hall’s chandelier and an array of mirrored lamps all around the sides of the room left me blinded and blinking.
Two people emerged from the glare of the ostentatious lighting: the Lord Chancellor, in a black silk suit with silver lace trim that would’ve fed a whole family for a year, and a lady whose gray-kissed golden hair and lovely dark eyes marked her as my husband’s mother, Lady Estella. Her diamond parure and brooch would’ve fed every villager on my abbey’s island for the rest of their lives.
We all stopped in the middle of the hall. Lord Stefan bowed graciously to his parents with a flourish of his coattails. “Mother,” he said, “please allow me to present my consort, Lord Remigius. Remigius, my mother, Lady Estella. Father, you of course know dear Remigius already.”
Lady Estella personified courtly elegance and breeding. Watching her attempt, and largely fail, to conceal her shock and dismay would’ve been fascinating, if I hadn’t been the object of it.
“Rem…igius,” she said, and swallowed, her eyes widening as they flickered up and down my cassocked, rumpled person. “I have so looked forward to meeting you. Stefan’s return home has been long awaited, and as the cause of it, you are most welcome.”
She stepped forward, offering me her hand, and I took it in mine, bending over it without touching it to my lips. “I thank you, madam,” I murmured. “I am honored.”
And slightly enlightened, too. Lord Ettori had mentioned his wife, and I’d assumed she’d been an afterthought. But now I wondered if she hadn’t been a large part of his motivation for bringing me here. If she wanted Stefan home enough to make her husband’s life uncomfortable—or, though I had trouble imagining it, if he loved her enough to want to make her happy—then he might have felt compelled to take some action, such as compelling Lord Stefan in his turn.
When I stood up straight I found Lord Stefan eyeing me sideways, one eyebrow raised as if he couldn’t quite believe I’d executed the bow correctly.
I hoped he choked on his surprise and died from it. Like him, I’d be willing to be a happy widower, even if my body and my magic both still quivered from the way he’d manhandled me in the carriage. Particularly because of that, in fact.
“Have you not had an opportunity to visit Stefan’s tailor, Remigius?” Lady Estella asked. “It is only the family heretonight, but when you go out in society this is, ah, you will be much more comfortable dressed for the occasion, I am sure?” I translated that as a deep and fervent gratitude that she had no other guests here to witness the abomination that was her son-in-law. “Stefan, it is most remiss of you.”
The Lord Chancellor’s eyes had narrowed, an ominous aura growing around him almost palpably, like the nimbus of a thunderstorm. Yes, Lady Estella’s disapproval obviously mattered to him in a way that no one else’s did. My confinement in the palace before the wedding, and her absence from the ceremony, suddenly made sense. I’d speculated wildly about what subtle political aim that could’ve served, when really, it’d been as simple as a man not wanting to anger his wife by bringing home an unsuitable consort for her son before the marriage had been consummated and couldn’t be easily undone. She wanted Stefan home and married, but she might have protested at his being married to me in particular, which might have raised the question of why he’d chosen me over others. “Because I can threaten his little sister with execution and bend him to my will” might not have been an answer he felt prepared to offer her.
“We’ve been otherwise occupied, Mother,” Lord Stefan said, but without specifying how. His cool nonchalance didn’t suggest that he’d been too overwhelmed with passion for his new consort to remember his tailor. In fact, if his mother knew him at all, she’d be well aware that his passion for his tailor outstripped anything he could possibly feel for me.
Gods, he meant to leave me completely on my own in this farrago of an introduction. Didn’t he have his own reasons for wanting his parents to be pacified? But apparently that didn’t outweigh his desire to make me suffer the consequences of my own actions, as he saw it. Pettybastard.
