Page 48 of Maid for the Marquess

Slowly, gathering my courage, I tilted my head back to drink in the sight of him, his cheekbones bathed in silver moonlight, his dark hair unbound and falling freely around his face. The light played over his stern nose and compressed lips, lips I had felt against mine and very much wanted to feel again.

“You saved me from him,” I whispered, running my foot along his calf beneath the smooth weight of his banyan.

I heard his sharp inhalation of breath and felt the way his body stiffened against mine. Was it shock? Had I been too forward, touching his limb with my foot? I was yet new to being married. To yearning for a man’s touch, to the marriage bed. I hoped I wasn’t shocking or displeasing my husband.

“I woke you from a bad dream,” he countered softly, still sweeping his palms up and down my spine, from the small of my back to the place between my shoulders where I carried so much tautness from years of laboring. Without saying a word, his knowing fingers found those sore muscles, massaging them and helping to quell the lingering strain. “That was all.”

“My life without you was the true bad dream,” I told him, meaning those words and needing to tell him.

He nuzzled my temple. “We found each other at the right time, Maddie mine.”

I leaned into him like a cat seeking to be petted. “Alexander?”

He stilled, as if he sensed the importance of the words I struggled to find. “Yes, my wife?”

My wife.

Oh, I liked how he called me that. I stroked his calf with my foot again, while my hands remained curled against his chest, the banyan keeping my curiosity contained for now. Who would have thought that a mere foot could be so alive with feeling? Everywhere I touched Alexander, potent desire followed.

I kept my gaze lowered to his throat so that I wouldn’t have to meet his eyes through the shadows if he rejected me. “You said you would teach me, husband.”

“Teach you.” His voice was laden with sensual promise.

But still, he made no move to either accept my invitation or withdraw from me. I held my breath, wondering which one it would be.

“Are you speaking of…”

His words trailed away, his voice thick.

I ventured a glance back up at his face. He watched me with an intensity that threatened to set me aflame.

“The wedding night, husband,” I explained. “The consummation. The mounting⁠—”

“Enough,” he interrupted, pressing a finger to my lips to keep me from saying more. “I’ve already told you, darling, it’s nothing like animals.” His head dipped, and he pressed a kiss to my throat.

I was on fire where his lips touched, my heart pounding faster and harder than a blacksmith on an anvil. Not from fear, but anticipation. I felt as if I were coming to life for the first time, every part of me burning with heightened awareness.

“Then show me,” I begged with great feeling, pressing a kiss of my own to his throat, just above where his pulse pounded. “Please.”

“Maddie.” His groan told me everything I needed to know. He was every bit as moved by our proximity.

Like the gentleman he was, Alexander was trying to go slowly. To grant me the time he believed I required. But I was tired of waiting. All I wanted, all I needed, was him. He had to know it too.

Growing bolder, I kissed a path up his neck to his clenched jaw. The prickle of his neatly shaved whiskers there teased my lips. “Alexander.”

“You are likely half asleep and still unsettled from the dream that was haunting you,” he said gruffly.

But tellingly, he didn’t move away from me. Nor did he protest when I kissed the corner of his mouth. “I’m perfectly awake, I assure you.”

Another groan. “Maddie, what you do to me.”

I liked the helplessness in his baritone, as if he wanted to be noble but was waging an inner war with himself and was in desperate danger of defeat. I wanted that defeat. His surrender. I wanted him to give in.

“What do I do to you?” I asked innocently, fluttering a chaste kiss over his lips, as he had given me so many times. “Tell me, please. I must know.”

He nudged my mouth with his. “You make me want to lose control. To make you mine. To take my cock and fill you with it.”

A gasp left me at the word he had used, one I recognized from overhearing desperately vulgar and crude speech among the grooms and the footmen at Cliffwood. I had been shocked then. But hearing my husband speak such words, knowing the intent behind them, filled me with yearning.