Elizabeth winced and ate with greater haste.
“Surely your wife mentioned her near faint this morn?” Elaine shot a questioning glance down the table.
“As a matter of fact, she did not.” Setting his knife and fork down with unnatural care, he offered a grim smile and asked, “Did you say St. John?”
Elaine blinked in obvious confusion.
Elizabeth’s stomach clenched in apprehension. She should say something, she knew, but her throat was so tight she couldn’t manage even one word.
The sudden pounding of Marcus’s fist on the table startled everyone. Only the plates rattling sharply together broke the ensuing stunned silence. He slid his chair back and stood, placing his palms flat on the table. His glowering face had Elizabeth quaking in her chair. She held her breath.
“At what point did you intend to share this with me?” he roared.
The Ashfords sat with mouths agape, utensils paused in mid-air.
Galvanized by their horror, Elizabeth pushed back from the table and stood. Paul and Robert leapt to their feet.
“My lord,” she began. “If you would prefer to—”
“Do not try to sway me with sudden docility, Lady Westfield.” He walked around the table. “What did he want? By God, I’ll kill him!”
She tried again. “Might I suggest the study?”
Paul sidestepped neatly into his path. Marcus glared, then moved to the sideboard and poured a hefty ration of brandy.
“I didn’t mention it directly, because I knew it would upset you.”
Marcus stared at her as if she’d grown two heads, then he downed his drink in one gulp and left the room, his handsome face set in harsh, unyielding lines. She heard the front door slam behind him.
Paul whistled softly.
“Good heavens,” gasped Elaine, collapsing backwards in her chair. “He was angry.”
Robert shook his head. “I would not believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Can hardly believe it now.”
All eyes turned, awestruck, to look at Elizabeth who stood trembling. She inhaled a shaky breath. “I apologize. I realize you are unaccustomed to seeing him in such a state. I regret you had to witness it today.”
Robert frowned. “St. John. The name sounds familiar.”
“I should explain.” She sighed. “Marcus suspects St. John is responsible for the attacks on vessels belonging to Ashford Shipping, but there is no evidence to support that.”
“Was it simply unfortunate that he happened to be in such close proximity to you?” asked Elaine. “I thought it odd for him to be perusing soaps and bath oils.”
Elizabeth searched for an explanation. “He was a close friend of Hawthorne’s. When our paths cross, he pays his respects.”
Robert removed his spectacles and began to polish the lenses. “Is St. John aware of Marcus’s suspicions about him?”
“Yes.”
“Then he should bloody well stay away from you and keep his respects to himself,” Paul growled.
Elaine tapped her fingers against her water glass. “You did not appear to care much for him yourself, Elizabeth.”
“He is a stranger to me.”
“And for Marcus to be goaded into such a temper over the whole affair,” Elaine continued, “well, I’ve never seen the like.”
“He was very angry,” Elizabeth agreed, crestfallen. She’d never seen him so furious. That his fury had driven him to leave the house made her sick to her stomach. Certainly she was angry at him as well, but this gulf between them seemed as wide as when she’d been married to Hawthorne. She stepped away from the table. “I pray you will excuse me.”
Climbing the stairs, Elizabeth considered the events of the day with a heavy heart. Marcus was important to her. She’d known that when she chose to marry him, and though she’d tried to discount it when he’d treated her so coldly, it remained immutable. Now that their bond, as tentative as it was, was threatened, she understood the depth of her attachment.
This morning the distance between them had been entirely her husband’s doing. Now she too contributed to their estrangement. Perhaps if he cared for her they could meet in the middle, but she’d destroyed whatever tenderness he’d felt for her four years ago.
And she finally understood just how much she had lost.
Chapter 18
Elizabeth woke to damp skin at her back and warm hands on her body, one wrapped in her hair and the other stroking her thigh. Her toes were curled, her nipples hard, her body already aware, even though her mind was not.
She whimpered. Marcus had been gone for hours, all through the afternoon and late into the night. She had cried herself to sleep again, after she’d sworn she wouldn’t, and the feel and smell of him against her was both a balm and a barb. His cock, hard and hot, snuggled in the valley between her buttocks, a silent promise of his amorous intent.
“Hush,” he said softly, his mouth nuzzling her throat, his wet hair cooling her suddenly feverish skin. Gripping her inner thigh, he lifted her leg and anchored it on his own, his fingers drifting to the curls between her legs. His touch was gentle, coaxing, once again the lover she craved and not the fiercely possessive husband who’d claimed her the night before.
With skill born of much practice and intimate knowledge, Marcus parted the lips of her sex with reverent fingers and dipped inside, swirling around her clitoris and the opening to her body with a callused fingertip, the roughness of which heightened her pleasure almost unbearably. Desperate, she undulated helplessly against his hard body. “Please . . .”
“My wife,” he exclaimed, his tongue swirling around the shell of her ear, his breath hot against the newly damp flesh. “Always on fire. Naked in her bed, and waiting for my attentions.”
He stroked through her cream and then slipped inside her, thrusting into the drenched walls of her sex with maddening leisure. In and out. Just that one digit, not nearly enough to satisfy, but enough to make her beg for more.
“Marcus!” She struggled to turn, to move, to take what she wanted, but his arm tightened and pinned her still.
“Relax, and I’ll let you come.”
Elizabeth stilled a tremor shaking her body as his single finger was joined by another, the deep plunge and withdrawal sounding wetly over her panting breaths. She hitched her leg higher, opening herself wider, and he fisted his hand in her hair and arched her neck back.
Turning her head, she met his avid mouth with her own, her tongue thrusting along his in a frenzy of desire. Her eagerness goaded him, broke his rigid control. The shift was tangible, his frame tensing behind her, his cock swelling even further between them, his hips grinding forward.
She gasped as his thumb rubbed her clitoris, the barely-there pressure increasing her thrashing. At her back she felt the rapid rise and fall of his chest, in her mouth she caught his harsh exhalation. Her skin was coated with a fine sheen of sweat and she rode his thrusting fingers with greater and greater urgency.
“Please!” she cried, clenching around his fingers in her quest to orgasm. “I need you.”
Marcus shifted, his fingers sliding free to reach for his cock. Then he was there, the wide flared head breaching her and pushing inside. His hand, drenched in her cream, cupped her breast, pinched her nipple. And dee
per he slid, a thick pulsing possession.
“Yes,” she hissed struggling to meet him, to hurry him, to take the long length of him.
His groan in her ear enflamed her. That she could bring him such pleasure while lost in her own was an intoxicating power.
And still he pressed into her.
But it was not enough. The curve of her buttocks kept him from the full depths she craved, and she wanted him, all of him. Not just his cock and his hand at her breast, but his body over hers, his eyes locked on hers. The gulf between them was there, widened by the hours he’d spent away from her today, but in this there was no division. In this, they could be one.
“You’re not deep enough,” she complained, wiggling her bottom against his pelvis, crushing the curls at the base of his shaft.
He growled. “Greedy vixen.”
“You made me this way.” She cupped her hand over his, kneading her breast with his hand, bearing down on his rigid cock with her hips. “Roll me over,” she urged, her voice husky with want. “Fuck me deeply. Let me hold you.”
It was the last that moved him. He yanked free of her with a curse, pulling her onto her back so he could loom over her. Elizabeth spread her legs wide in welcome and moaned aloud when he sank to the hilt inside of her.
He stilled then, staring down at her in the faint light from the banked fire. Backlit as he was, she couldn’t see his features, but his eyes glittered with an unmistakable hunger.
Her heart ached with longing. Marcus Ashford belonged to her, and yet he would never truly be hers.
At least she had this. His passion, his desire. It would have to be enough since it was all he would give her. The feeling of his cock stroking in deep inner caresses, the clenching of his hard, muscular buttocks as he propelled himself into her, the scent of his skin, heated and damp with sweat, the sound of his guttural cries of pleasure.
She wrapped her arms around him and held him as if she would never let go, absorbing what she could of him, until finally, with silent tears, she sank into blissful relief with him.