Page 43 of A Duke to Undo her (The Husband Hunt #1)

“Your new brother Benedict told me exactly the same thing,” she remarked.

“A small, swift wedding in Ashbourne is indeed preferable to a hole in corner affair on the Scottish border. He also noted that there was the advantage here in the countryside of fewer society gossips and professional scandal sheet writers in attendance.”

“Good old Benedict!” laughed Josephine. “Cassius and I really have been the talk of the town since he proposed like that, haven’t we?”

Constance shuddered slightly even recollecting some of the accounts of the Duke of Ashbourne’s proposal that had appeared in both the society press and certain publications of lower standing.

“I trust that you have not read the worst of the speculation, Josephine. It is not fit for your eyes. I only hope that your first child is in no hurry to arrive…”

On this point, her older sister caught herself circumspectly and changed course.

“But enough now, I see the Duke of Ashbourne is speaking to your carriage driver. He is eager to be off, I think. Oh, maybe not, the driver is getting down…”

“Oh, I must throw my bouquet, before we leave,” Josephine remembered.

Smiling, the new duchess held up the bouquet before the crowd and saw the alertness suddenly descending onto the faces of many young women. Turning about, she threw the flowers back over her shoulder and heard a cheer that told her it had been suitably caught.

After brief embraces from Ophelia and Vera, Josephine joined the Duke of Ashbourne beside the small open-top carriage.

To her surprise, the duke helped her up into the driver's seat and then jumped up beside her, taking up the reigns to the vehicle in his own hands with one arm around her.

“If I’m going to carry off a goddess, I can’t have someone else driving the chariot, can I?” he teased in response to Josephine’s quizzical expression.

As they drove off, leaving the wedding party far behind them, Josephine began to laugh. This was hardly the proper manner for the Duke and Duchess of Ashbourne to leave the church but she would not have it any other way.

Cassius took them to the Ashbourne estate woodland, just as Josephine was expecting. His body was solid and warm beside her as they drove, and his mouth gentle but persistent both in stealing frequent kisses and making playful promises of where she might later find his lips and tongue.

Made languorous and excited by these attentions in equal measure, Josephine soon could not bear to think of the good-willed reception of friends, relatives and neighbors awaiting them at the end of this drive.

The last two weeks had been a special kind of torture, permitted to see Cassius each day but barely to touch him, under the eagle-eyed gaze of her older sisters.

She considered asking Cassius to slow the horses so that they might have more time. Then, rather than continuing towards Ashbourne Castle, the duke suddenly stopped in the middle of the woods and pulled over the carriage to the side of the path.

“Where are we?” Josephine asked with a yawn, stretching and looking around at the trees and sun-dappled moss of the forest floor as Cassius jumped down from his seat, and held out his arms.

“In the right setting for the goddess Flora to be stolen away and ravished by her husband,” the duke teased, making Josephine’s belly contract and her blood rush in her veins.

As Josephine stood, she seemed to see the him once more as he had been that day in the woods a few weeks earlier when she had been lost with a lame horse and Cassius had found her.

Again, his hair was disheveled from riding in the open air, his jacket was unfastened and his stock awry.

The worry of that day was gone from his face now, but a certain tension was still present, and Josephine could still detect the same hunger in his eyes.

With a delicious shiver, she remembered how desperately his hands had sought her body under that unyielding riding habit.

“Are you coming down to join me? Or are you inviting me to really carry you off?” the duke prompted with a raised eyebrow.

“Both,” Josephine answered very honestly, desiring nothing more than to be in her husband’s arms. “As long as we stay in the woods. I don’t want to go back yet.”

After a short laugh, Cassius reached up and pulled her down into his arms as Josephine’s arms twined around his neck for a long and loving kiss.

“Your wish is my command, and my desire, Duchess Josephine,” he told her with a grin. “They made us wait and now we make them wait. Let us find a comfortable spot.”

“Shall I walk?” Josephine offered, not yet entirely sure what Cassius was planning or how far he could reasonably carry her.

“No, I can’t have you escaping me again,” her new husband announced and tossed her easily but carefully over one of his shoulders so that she squealed with surprised laughter and lost all concern over his ability to bear her weight. “This time, you will be mine, Josephine.”

In a small grove a little way from the path, Cassius set Josephine back down on her feet again, laughing and breathless with her dress off one shoulder and little doubt left in her mind now as to his intention.

The duke lost no time in kissing her bared shoulder as he shrugged off his jacket. When he looked up again, Josephine covered his face with light kisses, hearing and feeling the sound of his breath beginning to strain with desire and wanting him to know how much she returned his longing.

“Promise me you won’t stop this time,” Josephine blurted as his hand settled over one of her breasts and his mouth sought hers. “I couldn’t bear it, not now. I want you to show me everything that men and women do. Promise me, Cassius.”

Josephine’s sudden anxiety was real. She had been intimate with Cassius before, but had been pushed away each time before either of their hunger was completely assuaged. The idea of melting into his touch and being abandoned yet again felt too cruel.

“Even if you get with child?” he asked her tenderly, stroking her face. “You know that is a consequence of our fullest pleasure?”

Josephine nodded, meeting the questioning gaze of Cassius’ dark blue eyes.

“I’m aware of that, although I do not understand entirely how it happens,” she confessed to him. “You will have to show me.”

“I swear I will give you all that you desire today, Josephine,” he told her, moving now as though to draw her down with him onto the mossy ground. “Do not fear.”

“Oh, my dress!” Josephine suddenly exclaimed in vexation, causing the duke to yelp with laughter, despite the intensity of the moment. “It will get marked, won’t it?”

“I never thought I would see the day when Lady Josephine worried overmuch about the condition of her dress, especially not at a moment such as this.”

“Constance gave it to me,” Josephine tried to explain. “I would not want to ruin it, especially since we must see her back at Ashbourne Castle.”

“Well, then,” answered Cassius with twinkling eyes as he unfastened the button at the back of her dress and slipped it from both shoulders along with the fine petticoat beneath. “The solution is obvious, is it not?”

Moaning lightly, Josephine pressed herself into the stroking of his hands on her bare back, her arms and then her breasts.

It took only a moment more for Cassius to unfasten her sash and then let fall the white silk skirts and cotton petticoat entirely.

It was a warm late summer’s day and she wore nothing else beneath the dress except for her stockings and garters.

“That is better,” Cassius pronounced, his voice deepened now with his lust as his hand slid over Josephine’s rounded bottom and then drew up one of her legs to stroke as he kissed her mouth. “Much better…”

“You must be naked too,” she gasped, her hands urgently working at his buttons and collar fastenings. “Both of us.”

“Yes,” the duke agreed, his own hands already helping her, almost ripping off his collar in his eagerness.

As soon as his waistcoat and shirt were pulled away Josephine covered his dark-haired chest with kisses, just as she had covered his face a few minutes earlier. This man was hers now and she was his.

“God, yes…” Cassius groaned his enjoyment as Josephine deepened her kisses on his torso, feeling the powerful beating of his heart beneath her lips and tongue. “Your mouth, Josephine, yes…”

Despite the distraction of these kisses, few seconds later, the duke had discarded trousers and socks too. When they embraced again, it was skin against skin, hot, damp and urgent in a way that made Josephine’s most intimate parts throb almost painfully.

Dazed and panting, Josephine pulled back for a brief moment to look on her husband with eyes that were both lustful and curious.

Tall and well-built, Cassius Emerton’s body was as handsome as his face, its shape and form at once both unfamiliar and dear to her.

She wanted all of him, including the thick male shaft protruding so proudly at his groin.

His manhood pressed against her as they kissed again, sending hot waves of need through Josephine’s belly. Cassius did not not now stop her from touching him and learning the shape of his male parts with her hand, only groaning his appreciation between kisses.

“Is that good?” Josephine asked him, conscious of his own skill in touching her compared to her lack of experience.

“More than good,” the duke assured her in a strained voice, “but today we must seek other pleasures too.”

When her drew her down to the ground with him this time, Josephine made no protest, offering up her breasts, her thighs and her wet, throbbing folds to her husband’s hands and mouth with eager pleasure.

Even knowing now where the pleasure of his intimate kisses was leading, Josephine still thrilled as Cassius’ head settled between her thighs.

With no one to hear them, she cried out loudly as her pleasure mounted and he made no move to stop her, only holding her bucking body firmly to his pressing tongue at the end until she was done.

This time, he lay beside her and took her in his arms again after that wondrous peak, his kisses soft and touches featherlight, despite the throbbing urgency of his shaft that could not be ignored much longer.

In such proximity to her husband’s naked body, Josephine found that her desire was burning again almost straight away.

“You are ready for me now,” Cassius said as Josephine’s hand touched him again and their eyes met. “Do not be afraid.”

He knelt now between Josephine’s thighs and placed his shaft within her soft, slippery folds, rubbing it there for a few moments in a way that made her tense and moan and long for something more. Then, a first small thrust lodged the head within her.

“Ah!”

Josephine gasped and gripped Cassius’ forearms, wondering blindly if what came next would hurt, which seemed likely given the size of the organ now pushing into a slit she kew to be relatively small. She need not have worried however.

As Cassius kissed her deeply and reassuringly with his salty tongue, his manhood slid into her to the hilt without any real discomfort.

There were only the strange sensations of stretching and fullness she had never felt before and the same desperate longing that accompanied the touch of his tongue or fingers between her thighs.

“There, you have all of me now,” he whispered to her and swirled his hips as she whimpered and clung tightly to him.

Withdrawing partway, Cassius thrust in again, to Josephine’s surprise and delight at the movement, and then again.

Soon she was gasping helplessly in the throes of his rhythmic working.

Josephine wanted nothing more in the world right now than that her husband should fill her tingling body as deeply as possible.

Cassius drove her again over the peak of her pleasure again but this time he was was there with her too, his own deeper groans mingling with her cries. When they came to rest, they lay there on the forest floor for long moments in a tangle of damp limbs and racing hearts, neither desiring to move.

The Duke of Ashbourne raised a damp head and grinned at his wife with a touch of chagrin, coming up on his forearms and noticing now the sorry state of the flowers in her hair after so much tossing and turning on the mossy ground.

“I have really and truly deflowered you, Josephine,” he jested, touching the remains of the circlet and making her giggle gleefully. “There is no going back this time.”

“Must we really go back this morning, Cassius?” Josephine sighed when her laughter had subsided, kissing his shoulder and wriggling with contentment.

Polite conversation, music and champagne seemed alien and incomprehensible in the daze of this fuller introduction to lovemaking. Josephine did not know how she could even begin to converse with Rose after such an experience…

The Duke of Ashbourne looked down thoughtfully and then brushed further light kisses across her face and neck.

“Yes, we must go back, but not just yet,” Cassius told her. “Not until we’ve done that at least one more time…”

The End?