Page 45 of The Duke’s Second Bride (Regency Second Chances #4)

“ C hristian,” Ava chided him gently. “It is rude to leave Luke all alone outside.”

As soon as they entered the house, Christian made a direct line for his bedroom.

“He is happy with his maid and with Pudding,” Christian replied, carrying her up the stairs as though she weighed nothing at all.

He could not help but stare at her.

He had been so terrified to lose her to death, and then so terrified he had lost her forever due to his own carelessness.

But seeing the light return to her eyes after he had confessed his true feelings—that was a joy better than any he could have dreamed up.

The way she looked at him now was too beautiful to believe. Her eyes glistened with happy tears, her soft lips parted in a gentle smile. Christian couldn’t help but lavish kiss after kiss upon her as he carried her up the stairs and down the hallway to their chambers.

As soon as they got to the room, he was swift to close the door behind them and kiss her properly, their tongues plundering each other’s mouths with eager, hasty greed.

Their mouths met, and every thought he’d clung to dissolved in a rush of heat and need. Her lips were soft, insistent, and every brush of her tongue against his sent a spark through him that set every nerve on fire.

His hands roamed her waist, pulling her flush against him, memorizing the curve of her back, the weight of her pressed into him. He could feel her shivering beneath his touch, hear the ragged catch of her breath, and it only drove him harder, fiercer.

Every second apart from her was unbearable, every second together was a blaze he never wanted to end.

Then, Christian gently lowered her to the bed with a hungry look in his eyes.

It felt like an eternity since he’d felt her touch, rather than one week.

The dress she was wearing today was a lovely light pink silk, which brought out the color in her cheeks—even more now that she was looking at him with that lustful flush across her face.

She looked ravishingly beautiful in the dress, and yet he knew he would not be able to get it off of her soon enough.

“I am, undoubtedly, the least intelligent man alive,” he said, kissing her mouth and then kissing his way down her neck as he worked at her dress and then the laces of her stays beneath. “To have thought I could give you up for a lifetime.”

Simultaneously, she reached to undo his shirt and trousers. “I cannot say I disagree with that,” she breathed.

He laughed at that. “So unkind to your husband,” he teased her.

“You said it first!” she pointed out.

As she said the words, she pushed his shirt off his shoulders, at the very same moment that he lifted her shift over her head, baring their bodies to each other.

She looked somehow even lovelier than he had recalled. Her skin was creamy and smooth. Her curves were full and soft, her breasts two perfect handfuls awaiting his touch.

He gave in to the temptation to touch her, cupping one of her perfect breasts in his hand as his mouth captured hers. She pressed herself up into his touch, eagerly kissing him back, and gasping into his mouth when he brushed a finger over her nipple.

The electric jolt of pleasure seemed to unleash a similar hunger in her. Her hands roamed his body, stroking across the muscled terrain of arms and shoulders and back.

Her hands were so soft against his skin, and so warm. She pulled him down, closer to her, and he was more than happy to oblige.

The feeling of their bare chests pressed together was like lighting sparks, the desire crackling over their skin.

He kissed his way down her body, pausing at each sensitive spot to lavish attention on it with his lips and tongue.

As he reached the softness of her stomach, he looked up at her, maintaining eye contact as he continued his path down towards her hips and thighs.

She was already aroused for him, her core red and aching for him as he brushed his fingers against it.

He stroked two careful fingers up against her entrance, relishing in the way she bucked up against him, and he used his free hand to hold her hip firmly to the bed, so that she couldn’t squirm so much.

“God, I have missed the taste of you,” he growled, before pressing his tongue flat against her.

Ava cried out, her hands reaching down to intertwine in his hair, pushing him closer, even as her hips tried to arch away from the onslaught of pleasure.

“Christian,” she breathed, repeating his name again and again as her climax neared.

As he felt her pleasure mount, he slipped a finger inside of her. He moaned against her, letting the vibrations rock through her for additional pleasure.

Her climax rippled through her with such intensity, as though spending the past week untouched had bottled up her desires.

He could no longer resist her. He pulled away and climbed back up her body. He dragged the back of his arm across his mouth, then leaned in to kiss her.

Ava was still hazy with desire in the aftermath of her climax, but lucid enough to kiss him back, and to wrap her arms around him even tighter.

He reached down and wrapped her legs around him. She acquiesced, her heels digging into his back.

With one hand pressed next to her head, supporting him on the bed, he reached down with his other hand and aligned himself with her entrance.

She was the one who pressed him closer. He sank inside of her with one smooth motion that had both of them gasping. It was the deepest he had ever been inside of her.

Ava cried out in deep, almost rapturous pleasure. So soon after her first climax, the pleasure was intense, almost too much to take, and yet it seemed she could not bear to feel him exit her.

“Christian,” she whispered. She kissed him, then let him pull back to look at her. “I love you,” she simply said.

Looking into her eyes as they moved against each other as one, Christian felt all heaviness leave his body, replaced by a burning wave of affection and overwhelming emotion.

“I love you too, darling,” he said, before crushing his mouth back against hers.

She kissed him back more fiercely still.

They repeated the words back and forth to each other as they made love, truly making love, for the first time in their marriage.

When they had finally finished, Christian rolled over, allowing Ava to collapse on his chest.

“I love you,” she said once more.

“I love you, too,” he replied, kissing her mouth and then the top of her head. He stared into her eyes, feeling so much love he thought he might burst from it. “And I promise never, ever to let you forget it.”

Christian and Ava barely let each other out of bed for the next few days.

However, once the initial fervor of coupling had been somewhat sated and lessened, he knew he had something he needed to do.

He knocked on the unfortunately now-familiar door of the Dunfair townhouse.

When the butler answered the door, Christian didn’t even give him a chance to protest; instead, he muscled past the man.

“I do say, that is not allowed!” the butler protested. “Lord Dunfair is not even at home!”

Christian ignored him, making a beeline for the drawing room.

When Lord Dunfair saw him, he rose to his feet. The man’s face had entirely healed from their last altercation. For some reason, that infuriated Christian all the more.

“Your Grace,” Lord Dunfair sneered, shockingly glib for someone who had had his ears soundly boxed by the other man not too long ago. “To what do I owe the distinct displeasure?”

Christian took several slow, measured steps forward. He relished seeing how, despite the other man’s attempts to appear cool and collected, Brandon still swallowed nervously at Christian’s approach.

“My wife’s maid came to me the other day with the strangest story,” he said.

“Did she, now?” asked Lord Dunfair.

“Indeed,” Christian affirmed. “She said that you accosted my wife by carriage while she and her maid were trying to walk home from her friend’s house, and that you persisted in trying to lure them into your carriage even after my wife had told you no several times in a row.”

Brandon scoffed, but didn’t reply.”

“Now,” Christian continued, “Kate isn’t a liar, so I know she must have been telling me the truth.

But it struck me as, frankly, bizarre, considering I thought I had made myself quite plain the last time we spoke.

I believe I had warned you thoroughly against attempting to make any contact with my wife. ”

“You did,” Lord Dunfair said.

“Well, perhaps I wasn’t clear enough,” Christian said, stepping even closer.

Lord Dunfair clearly wanted to step back, but he resisted the urge. “I think you should worry less about me, and more about hiring staff who aren’t quite so imaginati?—”

Before he could finish the sentence, Christian punched him harder than he had ever punched anyone before in his life.

Lord Dunfair fell to the ground immediately, gasping in pain.

“I would have thought you would have learned to dodge better, since our last encounter,” Christian remarked casually, standing above the man and watching him writhe in fear on the floor.

“Moreover, I hope for your own sake that you have learned to listen better, because I only have one last warning to give you.” He leaned down. “Are you listening?”

Lord Dunfair nodded with a whimper, clearly terrified, though he had nowhere he could even crawl to in an escape, not with the way Christian was looming over him thus.

“Leave England,” Christian said. “For a long, long time. If you ever make the poor decision to return, you will stay away from my wife. You will avoid any room she is in. If you so much as look at her, I will destroy you. If you dare to breathe the same air as her, you will find your breath swiftly leaving your body. Do I make myself clear?”

For once, Lord Dunfair had no clever words or snide expression in reply. Instead, he simply whimpered, shaking and nodding his assent.

“Good,” Christian said lowly, his voice an angry growl. “What’s more, I think you will find that you are the one with the wildly overactive imagination. If you dare to tell anyone you even saw me today, your destruction will be all the greater.” He nodded. “Good day.”

Lord Dunfair was speechless.

Christian straightened back to standing, leaving Lord Dunfair on the ground. Then he smoothed out his coat and walked straight back out the door, leaving the butler flabbergasted.

As he walked out, he felt settled in his belief that he would never see Lord Dunfair again.

And more importantly, Ava would never have to see Lord Dunfair again.

He could not protect her from every one of life’s dangers, but he rested easy in the knowledge that he had at least done all that was in his power to protect her from this one.

Christian smiled. It was time he returned home.