The Study of Seduction: Sinful Suitors 2 (30 page)

“I
told
you it had nothing to do with you,” she said in a small voice.

“Yes, you did. I just didn’t believe you. Forgive me for that. Though if you’d told me in the first place—”

“I couldn’t,” she whispered. “I was afraid you would condemn me, would blame me for . . . for . . .”

“Being raped?” That wounded him to his soul. “I suppose your fear shouldn’t surprise me, given that
Father condemned Mother, but I thought you knew my character better than that. I realize that you and Yvette think me cold and unfeeling—”

“
Not
cold and unfeeling.” She twisted in his arms to face him. “I never thought you that, and she didn’t, either. It’s just that you were always so . . . rigid. So disapproving of my outrageous behavior.”

“Because I worried about you.” He brushed a lock of her hair from her eyes. “I knew what could happen to a woman with high spirits who was so damned appealing and intoxicating . . . and heedless of her own safety.”

“Never that,” she whispered. “Ever since the . . . attack, I always have an eye on who’s behind me and where I am. I always know how many people are within screaming distance, because . . .” She shivered. “No one could hear me cry out in that orangery. It was too far away from the party, and there was too much noise in the house.”

The very idea of her screaming and having no one come to her rescue until it was too late sent a shaft of ice through his heart. And reminded him of her screaming in the woods, and brandishing the hairbrush at the theater. The signs had all been there; if only he hadn’t been dwelling on his own insecurity.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said through a throat tight with sorrow. “I hate that it happens to any woman, but to have it happen to
you
, to think of your being hurt so badly that you still have nightmares about it . . .” He clutched her close. “I can hardly bear the thought.”

That’s when she began to sob. She buried her face in his shoulder and cried, while he could only hold
her, soothe her with nonsensical words of comfort, offer her his handkerchief.

It took her a while to cry it all out. She’d practically soaked his handkerchief through by the time she ventured to speak again. Dabbing at her eyes, she lifted her chin with a hint of the stalwart Clarissa he knew.

“I don’t know why I’m . . . being such a watering pot,” she said. “I’ve worked very hard to stop being afraid. I’d even managed to halt the nightmares. I’ve only had that one in some years—”

“The night we married,” he said hoarsely. “The night I crowded you in the carriage.”

She winced. “Yes, but . . . you were there after the nightmare to make it better.” She flashed him a tremulous smile. “And I haven’t had one since.”

“Still, I wish I’d guessed at your pain years ago. I wouldn’t have been so . . . so . . .”

“Snooty? Arrogant?” she said tartly.

“Disapproving. Without knowing what you were suffering.”

“I’m
glad
you didn’t know.” She tipped up her chin. “It means I succeeded in hiding it from the world.”

“You certainly did.” But now that he knew, he could see her determined cheer and her impudence for what they really were—an attempt to put the past behind her and prove to herself she was no longer afraid, the way a boy whistles in the dark.

She’d been whistling in the dark for years. Until
he’d
come along and forced her to face the monster lurking there.

Her gaze dropped to his waistcoat. “No doubt you regret marrying me, now that you know everything.”

“Not for one minute. Why would I?”

“Because men want chaste wives.”

He chose his words carefully. “Some do, I suppose. Not all. As I said, I don’t care one way or the other. Especially when my wife had no choice in the matter.”

“Then you’re the exception to the rule,” she said acidly.

“Sweetheart, I am the exception to the rule in many things. I don’t see why this should be any different.” He tipped up her chin. “Except for your difficulties in the bedchamber, we’ve had a lovely time so far, have we not?”

Her ghost of a smile cheered him. “We have.” Then her face darkened again, like the sun going behind a cloud. “But I don’t know if I can ever . . . I mean, I had hoped that after all these years, the thought of marital relations wouldn’t panic me so.” She blushed. “I do want to be with you . . . I like all the beginning parts, the kissing and the touching. It’s just later on—”

“It’s all right,” he said, seeing the anxiety come into her face again. “We will take it slow, get through it together.” He refused to believe that his bold and sassy wife couldn’t conquer this with a little help.

He caressed her cheek. “Tell me what to do to make it better.”

Her breath hitched in her throat. “I don’t know. Everything is fine until you get on top of me, and I remember the orangery and the Vile Seducer and I . . . go a little mad.”

Thinking of how well she’d reacted when he’d been behind her, and below her, he said, “What if I don’t get on top of you?”

She blinked. “What do you mean? How else can you . . . can we . . .”

A rueful smile escaped him. “I forget that you can still be as naïve and innocent as any virgin.”

“That’s not true,” she said mutinously. “I know things.”

Her taking umbrage amused him. He would never figure Clarissa out, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “You know some things, yes. Clearly not others. Like the fact that a man doesn’t
have
to be on top of a woman to bed her.”

The hint of hope in her gaze struck him to the heart. “He doesn’t?”

“No, minx, he doesn’t. The woman can be on top, can make love to the man, just as easily as he can make love to her.”

Her brow knitted as if she were trying to work it out. “I can’t see . . . I don’t understand—”

“Shall I show you?”

He regretted the words when she tensed up and glanced away. “I—I don’t know . . .”

“Clarissa,” he said, catching her head in his hands and drawing her gaze back to his. “We won’t ever do anything you don’t want to. We can stop in the middle as often as you want, as many times as you want—”

She raised an eyebrow at that.

“I’m not saying it won’t frustrate me, because it will. But I imagine it’s just as frustrating for a woman not to have a whole and fulfilling life with her husband because she’s afraid of the past.”

“Yes.” She squared her shoulders. “I think you’re right. And I do want children, after all.”

She would do this to have children. Somehow that
made him sad. He wanted her to do it for herself. For him.

But no matter; he would work with what he had. “My point is, we have plenty of time to do this however we want. For tonight, all I ask is if you’ll let me demonstrate how it works. Nothing more. We don’t have to actually
do
what I show you. Or we can, and the minute you balk, we’ll stop. The minute you’re frightened, we’ll stop.”

Her gaze turned hard. “I once heard that a man can’t stop. That it’s almost impossible to stop.”

He snorted. “That’s a lie men tell women to get under their skirts. Have I not stopped more than once? Was I not fully aroused this afternoon?”

She sucked in a ragged breath. “Yes. But you said you couldn’t keep going through that.”

“I was wrong.” He buried his fingers in her loosely pinned hair. “I can go through that as many times as it takes to make you comfortable. I only ask that you talk to me. To tell me what you’re feeling, what you want, what you—”

“Kiss me, Edwin. Just stop talking and kiss me.”

He didn’t need another invitation. He took her mouth, feeling all at sea. While he was glad he now knew why she’d shied from him, it was hard to realize she both wanted and feared him. He hated having her fear him.

So when her lips parted to let him in, it touched him deeply. His determined wife was always willing to “try”—and now that he realized how difficult even
that
was for her, he couldn’t be insulted by it.

They kissed, his heart thundering in his chest, her breath stuttering against his. She tugged at his coat,
so he shrugged it off and let her unbutton his waistcoat while he spread openmouthed kisses down her cheek and jaw and throat. He pulled off
her
coat and waistcoat—odd to be doing that—and then tugged her shirt out of her breeches so he could slip his hands beneath the linen to fondle her breasts.

“Yes,” she murmured. “I like that. It feels wonderful when
you
do it.” She pulled
his
shirt out, and ran her hands beneath the fabric and all over his bare chest. “You’re so hard, so strong. It thrills me. And scares me.”

“Your softness does the same thing to me. I don’t want to do anything to hurt you.”

“You won’t. In my head, I know that.” She stretched up to brush a kiss to his lips. “It’s only my body that doesn’t know it.”

“Perhaps you should show your body that there’s nothing to fear.” Taking her by the hand, he drew her over to the window seat that overlooked the garden. He shucked off his trousers and his drawers and sat down, letting his shirt cover his erection. “When
I’m
afraid of something, it always helps me to get a good look at it. So perhaps if you get a good look at my . . . er . . .”

“Cock?”

He blinked. “You know that word?”

“I learned it from Yvette’s slang dictionaries. That’s what men call their . . . their things, isn’t it? Cocks?”

“Vulgarly, yes.”

“Then I shall call it that, too.” She edged close to pull his shirt up, and her throat worked convulsively as she saw him fully erect. But at least she wasn’t
turning away. “And now that I get a good look at it, I’m not surprised. It’s rather impudent. And big. It’s no wonder that dealing with that . . . that monstrous thing hurts. I don’t know how other women stand it going in.”

“You suffered more pain than you should have.” His throat tightened. “It hurt because Whiting took you even though he knew you weren’t ready.”

“Ready?”

Reaching up to undo her breeches, he exulted when she didn’t shy away as he pushed them down. She even stepped out of them.

As he’d suspected, she wore no drawers underneath, but her long shirt covered her privates from his sight. Perhaps being covered would ease her fears a bit.

Like a gamekeeper approaching a wild deer, he inched his hand beneath her shirt to the juncture of her thighs, where he stroked her with slow, careful caresses. “This wetness? It’s to make it easier for you to let a man in.” He dipped his finger inside, relishing her soft sigh. “I daresay Whiting frightened you so much that whatever might have been there in reaction to his kisses dried right up.”

“I
was
very . . . upset.”

What an understatement. It took all his will to keep his expression calm and even, instead of black with the rage he felt every time he thought of Whiting ravaging her. “But the bastard didn’t care and entered you anyway. It’s rather like when I try to fit two pieces of an automaton together. If they’re not properly oiled, the friction of the movements can damage the metal. You weren’t ‘oiled.’ That’s why it hurt so much.”

She blinked. “Oh. That makes sense. But women are always talking about the pain—”

“The first time can hurt for some, I’m told, but that’s mostly because a virgin goes into the experience nervous and afraid. That doesn’t help.” Continuing to caress her, he glanced up into her wary face. “Nature created men and women to fit together, sweetheart. But we have to
want
to fit together. Whiting didn’t wait for you to want him.
I
will.”

“I know. I trust you.”

The words were a balm to his aching heart. “Then may I lift your shirt?”

“I’ll do you one better,” she said, her voice a little shaky. Then she pulled it off over her head and dropped it to the floor.

He dragged in a hot breath. She was naked except for her stockings and garters. And he’d never seen anything lovelier in his life—skin smooth as alabaster, plump breasts with rosy little nipples, and a curly thatch a hand’s width below her saucily crooked navel.

“Whiting was a fool,” he said as he drank his fill. “To trample over all this glorious beauty without even taking his time to explore.”

A faint smile curved up her lips. “Which means you’ll be the first to explore. If you like.”

His pulse tripled. “I like,” he rasped. “I like very much.”

“Then go to it,” she whispered. “Because I like very much having your hands and mouth on me.”

When he reached for Clarissa, the look in his eyes heated her blood. How strange that it seemed natural to be naked before him, to be wrapped in his arms as his mouth kissed and laved and licked her breasts, her belly, her . . . tender parts. Which felt hot and aching for him. And wet. Very, very wet.

You weren’t “oiled.” That’s why it hurt so much.

Oh, how she prayed he was right. But Edwin never lied. He was very matter-of-fact, even about her being unchaste.

I understood you. I simply don’t give a damn.

He didn’t, did he? He only cared about how she’d been hurt, and he showed it now by being so tender, it made tears well in her throat all over again. “Oh, Edwin . . . I wish I’d told you long ago . . .”

Pausing to gaze up her, he said, “You weren’t ready to tell me. I understand that.” He bent to lick her down there, sending her up on her toes with excitement. Eyes gleaming at her, he murmured, “Shall I do what I did in the carriage?”

“Later,” she breathed. “I haven’t yet had a chance to explore
you
.”

He gave her a blank look.

“I want to see
you
naked, too. I want to caress all the parts of you.” She reached forward to drag his shirt off over his head, then pulled away to look at him, but it was hard to see him properly when he was seated. “Lean back a bit.”

With a lift of one imperious brow, he did, letting his legs fall open with a certain insolence that should have alarmed her.

It did not. Because he was down there, and she was up here.

And my oh my, how fascinating this was. She could look at him as much as she pleased without being afraid he might leap on her. Surprisingly excited, she swept her gaze over the muscular shoulders, chest, and lean waist she’d already seen but hadn’t touched, for fear of sparking his lust.