Chapter 59 Stuck between two men (3)
Third person POV:
“My darling girl!” Lady Langley swept in, feathers bobbing, smelling of lavender water and satisfaction. “How is my duchess this morning?”
Arabella rose just long enough for the required curtsey and kiss on the cheek, then sank back into the chair with a hand pressed to her temple.
“Mama, forgive me I have the most dreadful headache. The excitement of yesterday, I think.”
Lady Langley clucked sympathetically and settled herself on the settee opposite.
“Perfectly natural, my love. Wedding nights are trying, even under the best circumstances.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Was His Grace… gentle?”
Arabella felt Edmund shift beneath the desk, the barest brush of his breath against her ankle and nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Y-yes. Quite gentle,” she managed.
Lady Langley beamed. “I knew he would be. Such an elegant man. Now, turn around, dearest let Mama rub your poor head.”
Before Arabella could protest, her mother was behind the chair, hands settling on her shoulders.
Lady Langley’s fingers began a firm, practiced massage at the base of Arabella’s skull.
Beneath the table, Edmund’s warm hands and impossibly bold, slid up her calves.
Arabella’s breath hitched. She disguised it as a wince. “Oh yes, there, Mama.”
Edmund’s palms glided higher, easing her knees apart with exquisite care.
The muslin of her gown and chemise parted like curtains.
Cool air kissed the tender skin of her inner thighs; she was bare beneath as Sebastian had torn her drawers in his haste last night and no replacement had yet been found.
She felt shockingly exposed, wicked beyond redemption.
His mouth found her first a soft, reverent kiss pressed to the crease where thigh met body.
Arabella bit her lip until she tasted blood.
Lady Langley’s thumbs circled the tense muscles of her neck. “Poor darling, you are stiff as a board. You must relax.”
Relax.
When Edmund Vale’s tongue, the tongue that had once traced love letters across her collarbones, now traced a slow, deliberate path along her pussy?
He licked her gently at first, as though relearning her taste, parting her folds with the tip of his tongue.
Arabella’s hips gave an involuntary jerk; she covered it with a soft moan that she prayed sounded like pain.
“Yes, just there,” she gasped. “Lower, Mama please.”
Lady Langley obligingly moved her hands down between Arabella’s shoulder blades, pressing hard.
Edmund chose that moment to close his mouth fully over her, sucking gently at the small, swollen bud that still throbbed from Sebastian’s earlier attentions.
A low, broken sound escaped Arabella’s throat.
Her mother mistook it for relief. “Better already, I see. You must tell me everything, dearest, how do you find married life? Is the duke attentive?”
Edmund’s tongue delved inside her, curling, stroking the sensitive walls with devastating precision.
Arabella’s fingers gripped the arms of the chair until her knuckles whitened.
“He is… very attentive,” she choked out.
Lady Langley laughed delightedly. “I should hope so! A man does not secure a bride like you without effort.”
Edmund’s hands slid beneath her bottom, lifting her slightly so that he could feast more thoroughly.
He alternated long, slow licks with quick flicks against that aching peak until Arabella’s thighs trembled uncontrollably.
She could feel herself growing slicker, shamefully wet; the soft sounds of his mouth on her were muffled beneath layers of skirt but seemed deafening in her ears.
She was going to spend it. Right here, with her mother’s hands on her shoulders and Edmund Vale’s tongue inside her.
Desperate, she reached for any distraction. “Mama do you think…might I have a little laudanum for the pain?”
“Later, darling. Let me work this knot first.”
Edmund sucked hard. Stars burst behind Arabella’s eyes.
She dropped her head forward, letting her hair fall like a curtain to hide her face, and let the moan come low, raw, unstoppable.
Lady Langley hummed approvingly. “There, that’s it. Let it out.”
Another deep, rolling lick, and Arabella shattered.
Pleasure crashed over her in relentless waves, her inner muscles clenching around Edmund’s tongue again and again.
She shuddered silently, biting down on her own wrist to muffle the cries that wanted to tear free.
Her mother’s hands moved soothingly across her back, utterly unaware that her daughter was spending in the most scandalous manner imaginable beneath the breakfast table.
When the last tremor passed, Arabella slumped forward, panting.
Edmund pressed one final, tender kiss to her throbbing flesh and then carefully withdrew, rearranging her skirts with shaking hands.
Lady Langley stepped back, satisfied. “There, you look ever so much better. A good cry and a massage is nothing like it. Shall I ring for tea?”
“No!” Arabella said too quickly. “That is I believe I shall lie down after all. Thank you, Mama.”
Her mother kissed her cheek and swept out, promising to return tomorrow. The door closed.
Silence.
Then Edmund crawled out from beneath the desk, hair dishevelled, lips glistening, eyes wild.
“Arabella,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “Christ, I…”
She launched herself at him, kissing him fiercely, tasting herself on his tongue.
They stumbled together against the wall, her legs wrapping around his waist, his hands already dragging up her skirts again.
The morning was far from over.
And somewhere in the back of her passion-drunk mind, Arabella knew with a thrill of terror and exhilaration that she was no longer simply the Duke of Ashford’s unwilling bride.
She was a woman caught between two men, teetering on the edge of ruin.
And God help her, she had never felt more alive.
Arabella had barely caught her breath.
Edmund’s taste still lingered on her tongue, her thighs still trembled from the way he had lifted her against the morning-room wall and taken her in three frantic thrusts, no finesse, only raw, desperate need.
She had bitten his shoulder to muffle her cries; he had spilled inside her with her name torn from his lips like a prayer.
Then the clock in the hall had struck eleven, and sanity had returned with the sound of carriage wheels on gravel.
Edmund had slipped out through the service door, coat askew, hair wild, promising with his eyes that this was not the end.
Arabella had barely managed to smooth her skirts and splash cold water on her flushed cheeks when the front doors opened with their usual majestic groan.
Sebastian was home.