Page 17 of Buon Natale, My Wicked Rogue (Wicked Widows’ League #18)

The following morning, Angela awoke with a stiff back and soreness between her legs. She might have stayed in bed until Evan left the chamber to spare his knowing her state, but she had to pee so badly that she was forced to rise.

Aware that he watched her move gingerly from the bed, she tried to smile.

“Damn,” he said, jumping to his feet and going immediately to the bellpull. Then he looked up and winced. “I am so sorry, my love. I was thoughtless and selfish last night. I shouldn’t have indulged myself so many times.

On her way into her dressing room to seek her chamber pot, she paused with her hand on the doorknob and allowed her gaze to sweep his glorious nakedness. She bit her lip as, despite herself, her sex clenched with hunger.

“I was a willing participant, each and every time,” she said.

A giggle threatened to escape her lips. More than merely a willing participant, she’d been a demanding tyrant.

He had claimed her several times in the night. She couldn’t possibly take any more of his lovemaking today. With a little inward cry of dismay and a sense of loss, she opened the door, slipped into the smaller room, and thus shielded herself from further temptation.

When she returned to their shared chamber, he was relaxing on the chaise longue, reading the papers that Oliver must have brought him.

“I called for a hot bath for you and some tea and toast for both of us.”

“That would be lovely,” she said, a sigh in her voice.

He crooked his finger in a beckoning motion. At the memory of the way he had used that motion so often before, her flesh clenched and, unthinkingly, she pressed her legs together, then the little bite of pain made her shiver.

“Come here and wait with me for the bath. I’ll distract you from your soreness.”

With some misgiving, she walked towards him, aware that she was as naked as he was. Aware that he watched her every move. Aware that his gaze was fixed between her legs.

When she reached him, he stroked her mons. “It’s sore here?”

“Yes,” she said, blushing hotly despite the lustful way that she’d so thoroughly enjoyed his body the night before.

“Don’t blush, my love.” He let his fingers slide between her folds.

His fingers burned on her raw flesh. She bit her lip to hide the fact, partly because she didn’t want to make him feel any worse about her soreness than he already did. And partly because beneath the chafing pain, fiery sparks of pleasure tingled in her pearl, that was already becoming erect.

“You’re so beautiful here.”

Her cheeks burned hotter. It was one thing to talk like this in the night and to go at each other’s bodies like feral cats. But it was another in the morning, with the sunlight filtering through the sheer white curtains and illuminating the room.

“Don’t blush, my love; I am very familiar with this part of you.”

She bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling, her face flaming even hotter. “But you don’t usually stare at me so directly.”

“I do every chance I get. You are usually so aroused that you don’t notice.”

He stopped touching her, and before she could stop it, a moan of loss escaped her.

She kept staring at the ceiling. Hot wetness grazed her pearl, causing fire to spark through her again. She gasped and looked down.

He had bent and leaned forward and put his face right against her sex. He was licking her with quick motions.

She threw a glance at the window, covered by the sheer curtains.

“Someone, maybe the gardeners, will see.”

“They can’t see in here, love.”

“I can see them.” She laughed shakily as she watched them moving about the lawn.

“The glare on the white curtains will keep them from seeing.” He placed his hands on her buttocks. “Move closer.”

“No,” she said, giggling now.

“It will distract you from your soreness until they can bring the bath here.” He grasped her more firmly and put his head back to her flesh, moving his tongue in a circle over her erect nub.

“Oh, oh, oh,” she cried, unable to keep herself from clutching his head. “Oh, oh.” She bit her lip as a pleasurable need surged in her. “Oh, I am going to come. Oh, I am, I am.”

Her teeth sank a little deeper into her lower lip as another, more substantial surge of pleasure centered in that tiny, throbbing part of her. The pleasure was so sweet that she shuddered against her body’s powerful seduction to just let herself come.

He stopped and lifted his head.

She clutched at his coal-black hair. “Oh, please, just a little more.” She heard the desperate neediness in her voice.

“This will be the wreck of my neck.” He stood.

She fell onto the chaise seat he’d vacated and spread her legs wide with her eyes closed. “Please, please, Evan.”

He must have already dropped to his knees in front of her splayed legs, for his tongue returned to make those hot, wet circles over her flesh.

Bliss washed over her, and the pleasurable surging, beguiling tension that would build and build started coming, and she didn’t even try to resist or to stop the soft whimpers that welled up in her throat.

As the last, powerful surge came over her, the overwhelming tension in her flesh drew so tightly that it became painful, and she hissed and thrashed her head and pressed forward to that blade of flame that licked and licked her.

Then the release poured over her, wave after wave, each one sweeter than the last, until it became too sweet to bear, and she screamed softly then went limp.

As the sensations ebbed, followed by a feeling of powerful satisfaction, she sighed with relief and smiled, still too weak to open her eyes.

“You look like a cream-fed cat.”

She laughed weakly, caressing his hair with a hand that still shook. “I can’t move.”

A knock on the door heralded the arrival of the servants with the bathwater. A moment of panic overcame her, sending energy surging through her.

Her husband was a dangerous man, for he made her forget all propriety. He dropped a blanket over her, and she managed to slide her body up the cushion and wrap the blanket over her lascivious daytime nakedness.

She saw that he had donned his dressing gown. He came to her and placed a kiss on her head. “Don’t be dismayed. We’re newlyweds. The servants expect us to be disheveled today of all days.”

“You’re a wicked rogue of a husband,” she whispered. “You tempt and seduce me into wickedness.”

“Hmm,” he replied.

It was quickly becoming a very different marriage from the one she’d shared with Jacob Berry. She could breathe freely now. Nothing could disrupt such domestic happiness.

Susan arrived at the dowager house in midmorning the next day.