Cocky Baron: Regency Cocky Gents (Book 2) Read online

  Chase stepped back and circled around her, making no attempt to hide his appraisal of her figure.

  “What?” Insecurity gripped her when he didn’t say anything.

  He shook his head and then met her gaze, his eyes burning the color of blue flames. “I hope you don’t plan on sleeping much tonight.”

  Bethany’s breath hitched.

  Sleep was the last thing on her mind. The look he sent her elicited arousal—arousal and a sensual fear—that fear that was also excitement. She welcomed it.

  His hands gripped her waist and he walked her backward to the raised bed, pushing her back until her elbows rested on the mattress.

  Then he guided one of her hands to the bedposts and wrapped her fingers around it. “Hold on.” He nudged the toe of his boot between her feet and pushed them apart.

  Her breath hitched again, her heart racing.

  She wanted all of this but… “You remember I’m a virgin.” Not that she wanted him to stop, but there was that potentially painful prospect of losing her intact maidenhead. She’d always heard it was painful when it tore, anyhow.

  He stared into her eyes, no less intently, but then rubbed his thumb at the corner of her mouth. “Trust me?”

  He’d never given her any reason not to trust him. He’d spanked her in public but that had been her own fault, and then he’d apologized profusely, married her, and done everything in his power to restore her reputation.

  She nodded; her mouth too dry to speak.

  “Good girl.” His voice was approving. “Hold on tightly.” He checked her hand on the post and then dropped to his knees.

  His position placed his face level with the intimate triangle of hair between her legs. She tilted her head back, staring up at the ceiling with closed eyes.

  “Can you hear that?” she managed.

  “Hear what?”

  “My heart. It’s pounding.” She tried to make light of her sudden onslaught of anxiety.

  His hands settled on the fabric of her corset, and he squeezed her waist. She liked his hands on her. She liked being at his mercy.

  Bethany’s knees nearly buckled again when his mouth landed on the bared skin of her thigh, just above the garter bow.

  “Do you want me to stop?” The heat of his mouth trailed closer to her center, and she gripped the poster tightly.

  “No.” Every fiber of her being trembled… her anticipation spiking. “Keep going.”

  Chase forced himself to go slowly with her, aware that her bravado could flee at any moment.

  He drew in a deep breath. His needs were secondary. Careful. Not too much. Not too soon.

  He ignored his own urgency, despite the raging erection in his trousers and despite knowing she already glistened for him.

  She’s a virgin!

  A virgin who invited me to spank her earlier today, a devilish voice reminded him.

  He reprimanded the voice because Bethany was a people pleaser—she had no idea what she’d been talking about.

  Tonight he would exercise patience and the utmost care. He’d never bedded a virgin before, and although he wasn’t the rogue society believed, he sure as hell knew his way around the female form.

  The topography changed up from woman to woman, but they essentially all had the same landmarks.

  Some more scenic than others but all beautiful in their own way.

  But tonight, the blood in his veins flowed like lava. Because…

  This was Bethany. This woman was his wife.

  He lifted his gaze and relished every inch of her exposed creamy skin. He soothed his hands around her hips, appreciating her ripe curves.

  By God, she was a revelation of womanhood. She’d been right before his eyes for much of his life, and he’d had no idea who she was.

  Until she became my wife!

  Chase leaned forward and inhaled her scent.

  Wife. He turned the word over in his mind, grazing his hands down the backs of her thighs, kneading the muscles beneath soft, feminine flesh.

  “This has served its purpose well.” He plucked at a fringed ribbon holding her stocking up. As pretty as they were, he wanted access to her skin.

  Shadows flickered over the trimming as it fluttered to the floor. Aroused as hell but cherishing this gift, he eased the stocking down her leg, inch by inch. Her knees trembled, and he steadied her.

  “Hold tight, sweetheart. This is only the beginning.”

  Her keening sound was one of anticipation.

  God, her skin was soft. He skimmed his fingers to the remaining silk tie and glancing up, catching her watching him, was inspired. His gaze locked with hers, he leaned forward and clamped down on the loose end of the second garter. With his teeth.

  Her pupils were large, her lids half closed. She licked her lips.

  Dear God in heaven.

  Chase closed his own eyes to keep from losing it right there.

  Clenching the ribbon in his mouth, he dragged the stocking down her leg, rubbing his jaw along the inside of her knee and calf and ankle.

  She’d spread her legs wider for him, and he doubted she even realized she’d done so.

  “Untied.” Her voice trembled through the air, and he noticed her counting the letters with her free hand.

  U-n-t-i-e-d. Only six letters. She was so damned precious.

  “P.” Chase whispered, pinning her gaze with his. Knowing she was ready, he raised his hand and stroked the tip of his thumb along her center. Her thighs quivered.

  “E.” Taking his time, he slicked her juices over plump, intimate flesh.

  “R.” He located her entrance with his finger.

  “F.” He pushed it up, and her muscles convulsed around him. She was tight and wet and soft. He couldn’t wait to be inside her.

  “E-C.” He added a second finger and then slowly drew both out. And then…

  “T.” He curled them just so and pushed inside again.

  He couldn’t help himself. Leaning forward, he flicked his tongue over her clit.

  “Oh, argh. Um.” Her voice shook but one hand landed on his head, urging him to keep going.

  He answered with a low moan.

  It was all the encouragement she needed and just like that, a violent trembling took hold of her. She cried out, shivering, keening, chanting his name.

  Chase continued stroking and sucking until she’d fallen backward on the bed, marveling at her uninhibited completion. She’d be on the floor if he wasn’t holding her up.

  Flickering candles illuminated a sight he would never forget—one bare foot on his shoulder, her skin flushed, and her lips swollen and glistening where he’d kissed her.

  His banquet.

  This wanton enchantress was the same woman who’d tried to lead him in the waltz earlier that night—and then danced so prettily in his arms. She was the same woman who’d put his somewhat difficult mother at ease upon meeting her—without complaint. He had compromised her beyond comprehension—and she’d gone on to face the judgement of the ton with poise and dignity.

  She was extraordinary.

  The realization humbled him.

  “That was unexpected,” she managed while he half assisted, half dragged her all the way onto the bed.

  “Turn over, love. I did promise to unlace you, didn’t I?”

  Utterly spent and apparently at his mercy, she lazily rolled onto her stomach.

  “Extraordinary. But I knew you would be,” she mumbled, her face adorably buried in a pillow.

  Chase tugged at the string, working his way down the corset past each grommet. He could either unloose every damn one of them, one by one, or he could make an attempt to slide it past her hips and down her legs.

  Bethany’s breathing was deep and even. Had she fallen asleep?

  “Why did you think I wouldn’t be ordinary?” He succeeded to free the bottom lace… oh, hell, another layer of strings crisscrossed beneath where the first had been. Who the hell made this garment? Some masochistic fashionista? Or
perhaps it had been designed for nuns by the pope himself.

  He reached across the bed to a side table drawer and located precisely what he was after.

  One. Two. Three. Four. He sliced through the notches decisively.

  “I just knew.” She sighed. “Ah. That feels wonderful.”

  But the garment didn’t fall away until he’d cut through the last lace at the top.

  “How would you know?” He tugged it out from beneath her. She wasn’t asleep anymore and yet she kept almost perfectly still, on her stomach—looking far more modest than the situation warranted.

  “Because you’ve always been extraordinary.”

  Chase frowned at the same time his heart waged with his head. He’d never been extraordinary in any way. He was simply one of many titled gentlemen doing his best to keep his estates and the people who depended on him out of harm’s way.

  She didn’t mean it, he reasoned. The euphoria from her release had her talking nonsense.

  Resting on his haunches on the bed beside her, Chase smoothed his hand over the ridges left in her skin from the tight stays. “Do they hurt?”

  “No.” She turned her head and met his gaze. “I’m used to it.”

  “What else are you used to?”

  “Mmm. Wearing my hair in a knot. Shoes that sometimes pinch. Sitting through boring teas with my mother. Oh, that feels so good.”

  “Is that when you started counting letters? When you had to take tea with your mother?” The marks from the stays faded as he rubbed his hand along her back, but he had no inclination to stop. He found the little sounds of pleasure she made inherently satisfying.

  “No. Two or three years ago. I have difficulties sleeping sometimes. I realized I was doing it while lying in bed.”

  “What keeps you awake?”

  She opened her eyes again and shrugged a little. There was something, he realized, but she didn’t want to tell him. “I worry about stupid things. Were my stockings put away properly, both of them? Did I lose any hairpins? Is my hairbrush on the right side of the vanity? Silly things.”

  “And these details keep you awake.”

  “If I have to check on them.”

  He remembered in February when he’d caught her straightening things in one of the drawing rooms at Westerley Crossings. She’d been rearranging seemingly insignificant items.

  “Sometimes I don’t fall asleep until dawn. I hardly ever wake early.”

  Chase realized this was the most she’d ever talked about herself. None of those barriers she’d erected remained in place.

  “I tried sipping some sherry before bed but all that succeeded in doing was making my bed spin.”

  Ah, yes. She’d mentioned that she didn’t do well with spirits. “So you count.”

  “I count,” she agreed.

  Chase stared at his hands resting on her shoulders. They were much darker than her skin. He smoothed them down the small of her back and then out, to the indent of her waist, the flare of her hips, and the rise of her bottom.

  Damned if he hadn’t craved her this way since he inadvertently had his hand up her dress in the Willoughbys’ bottom.

  The Willoughbys’ garden. He shook his head.

  And then a wiggle on her part provided all the encouragement he needed.

  Chapter 21

  Not How Mother Described It

  “Ouch!” Bethany arched her back, jolted into wakefulness by the stinging sensation on her bottom.

  She ought to have been prepared... In all fairness, she had told him she wouldn’t be opposed to it. Before she could utter a word, she was smashed into the mattress beneath him. The weight and friction of his body pressing down on hers ought to have been an unpleasant one, but it wasn’t.

  It was tantalizing.

  “Perhaps we ought not to do that after all.” Doubts collided with her inexplicable longings. Lady Starling had been a mistress. Such a thing wasn’t something wives were supposed to allow.

  She wriggled beneath him.

  “Not do what, after all?” His voice lilted, giving her the distinct impression that he was smiling behind her.

  “You know.” She should not encourage him.

  “I’m not a mind reader.”

  “The spanking thing. I’ve changed my mind.”

  This time he shook silently. Yes, he was laughing. “You’ve changed your mind, eh?”

  How was it that she was fully awake again, when two minutes ago, she would have dreamily fallen right to sleep?

  Warm hands smoothed along her sides and that, too, ought to have been soothing. Until one arm looped around her abdomen.

  “What are you—?”

  He’d slid a pillow beneath her. “That should be high enough.” He was sitting up behind her now, straddling the back of her calves and rubbing those same hands over her bum. The position ought to have been embarrassing and felt ridiculous, but in the soft light of the glowing candles, Bethany could only sigh.

  Warm fingers kneading her flesh stoked the sensation of delicious decadence.

  “Apparently, I’m an arse man.” He wasn’t laughing now. She supposed she could twist around to try to get a look at his expression, but the hitch in his voice incentivized her to remain precisely where he’d put her: bum in the air and the side of her face smashed into the pillows.

  “Did I hear you correctly?” She couldn’t help herself. A-r-s-e-m-a-n. She’d never heard of such a thing.

  “I’ve always been partial to legs. And then I was thinking breasts. But upon further inspection...”

  Eyes closed, she felt his hands draw a symmetrical circle from the small of her back around her bottom where he halted at the apex of her thighs. Up again, and then back down and around. “Yours makes a perfect heart.”

  “Ridiculous.” But it wasn’t. Although unexpected, and positively shocking, the compliment sent warmth spreading through her chest.

  It was oddly empowering.

  “Stay put.” He swatted her lightly. This time the stinging was mild.

  The mattress lifted.

  Although she was again tempted to turn and see what he was doing now, he had told her not to move and she wanted to please him. So far, he’d done all of the pleasing.

  Sounds of rustling heightened her excitement. He was shedding his clothing now. She imagined him wrestling out of his jacket, unbuttoning his waistcoat and the fasteners at his trousers. Curious to see him nude, she squeezed her eyes together instead.

  The mattress groaned when he joined her on the bed again.

  Oh, yes. He was naked now. He gripped her hips and tugged them higher. Muscled thighs lined up alongside hers. Soft hairs brushed her sensitive skin.

  “This isn’t how Mother described it.” Her voice was partly muffled by the bedding.

  “I hope not.” How was it possible that his voice had her yearning for more of what he was doing behind her—which was decidedly depraved and nothing she’d ever dared imagine.

  He dropped on top of her again and this time, his smooth chest pressed all along her back.

  “Tell me to stop at any time and I will.”

  She nodded.

  This was it. The moment she’d wondered about for most of her adult life and also a moment most ladies feared.

  Quite helpless, and having nothing to do with her hands, Bethany clutched at the counterpane the precise moment his member pushed between her legs. So very different than what he’d done before. His instrument was soft and hard and hot as it slid inside of her. It ought to have felt invasive, and yet she arched her back, wanting him deeper.

  “So good. So perfect.” His voice floated from behind her even as his hands gripped her hips. “God, Bethany.” He withdrew some and then moved forward again.

  The sharp thrust happened quickly and was followed by a flash of pain, but she didn’t cry out. It wasn’t acute, and she didn’t want him to stop.

  He was gone, for the pulse of a second, leaving her empty and wanting, and then he pushed ins
ide again. A slapping sound as he buried himself, deeper and harder than before; touching and stroking something inside of her that had white lights flashing behind her eyes.

  She pushed her bottom up to meet his thrusts.

  “Just like that.” He increased his pace, his hands practically lifting her off the pillow. This felt hot and tasteless and unbecoming, and she wanted to give herself over to it completely—over to him.

  “Please, Triston!” His name escaped without conscious thought. Was that her, begging? “Please!”

  “Take it, sweetheart. Take it. So damn good.” Frenzied ramming. Slapping sounds. Pain from where he grasped her hips increased until, with one last thrust, he lifted her up and off the pillow, holding her against him, groaning.

  Barely aware of liquid heat from his seed, and then pulsing, Bethany’s own epic pleasure sent her spiraling into the stars and then landing again on the soft mattress.

  All of his weight settled atop her, but she didn’t care. If she died right now, she would know at least that she’d experienced the best life had to offer.

  Chapter 22

  Your What?

  Bethany turned her head, eyes closed, and burrowed deeper into the pillow. Every muscle in her body ached but in a pleasant way. When Triston had tucked himself against the back of her and they’d both fallen asleep, it was almost as though she’d been reborn. At the very least, she’d discovered a person inside of her she’d never known existed.

  She reached out but her hand met only empty bedding. She was alone now. She’d awoken the moment he moved away from her to climb out of bed but had feigned sleep.

  Because allowing him such liberties in the dark of the night was one thing, facing him afterward in the light of day, quite another.

  Where had he gone at the break of dawn?

  “Are you awake, My Lady?”

  Bethany opened her eyes. The room was mostly darkened but only because the drapes were heavy and pulled closed.

  “Polly?” Bethany stretched but then quickly covered herself with a sheet.

  “His Lordship ordered a hot bath drawn for when you wake.”