CHAPTER33
Phoebe led him into her house, asking Nancy to bring tea to the drawing room.
Nancy was quick, and the moment she had delivered it, Phoebe dismissed her, telling her that she and the marquess had some pressing matters to discuss, and they were not to be disturbed until Phoebe called for her. Whether Nancy understood the undertones of the conversation or not, Phoebe wasn’t sure, and Nancy didn’t seem to care.
“I suppose she will likely be outside flirting with your driver anyway,” Phoebe murmured, but then her thoughts of Nancy and the driver fled as Jeffrey stepped up behind her. His body came flush against her back, and he bent his face to her neck as his fingers began to trail up her arms. She shivered, though she was far from cold, and his lips kissed the sensitive skin above her shoulder. She arched back against him, reveling in the fact that this man was hers, that he accepted her for all she was and all she did. There were no secrets now, nothing between them — except, perhaps, a few too many layers of clothes.
“Come,” she said again, this time in near a whisper. She opened the door of the drawing room, taking his hand and leading him down the corridor to her own chamber. She pushed the door open, the crimson and cream room greeting them, and she saw Jeffrey pause momentarily to take in the cascading curtains, the writing table, and the bed, where his focus remained.
“And just where has the redecorating occurred?”
Phoebe flushed and turned to face him as she bit her lip at his question.
“We may have used the redecorating excuse as a ruse to explain my busyness,” she said, looking up at him quickly, hoping he wouldn’t be upset at what had been another lie, although it was connected to the first and had actually been Elizabeth’s quick thinking and not her own.
He shook his head at her as he hid the grin that seemed to be teasing his lips, and Phoebe realized that he had never believed the fib.
She now took both of his hands in hers, looking up at him with a smile, but he intercepted her.
“Should we wait to make love again until after we are married?” he asked, but his voice was gruff, husky, his throat filled with uncontained lust — for her. It made her quiver with anticipation to feel him against her, inside her, once more.
“Perhaps we should,” she responded, keeping her face a mask, and he nodded, though his was in turmoil.
She gave him but one more moment of suffering before she began to laugh at his agony and he looked at her, perplexed.
“I’m sorry, that was evil of me. Perhaps…” she said, her smile fading as she leaned into him once more, “We should live in the moment and succumb to what both of us are currently longing for very, very much.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck then, and he groaned before leaning over her, taking her mouth with his. It was a kiss of desperation, true, but there was more to it. It was also a kiss of promise, one that solidified the love they had spoken to one another, as the pent-up desire and emotion flowed between them.
In one fluid motion, Jeffrey swooped down, a strong arm coming underneath her knees as he lifted her up and carried her to the bed. He laid her down upon it gently, and for a moment she wondered where his passion had gone as he stilled. But then she looked up at him and saw it pooled in his eyes, which were sharper than ever before.
“This time,” he murmured, “I am going to do this right.”
“Was it so wrong the last time?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
“I wouldn’t exactly say there was anything wrong with it — in fact, it wasveryright, for that particular moment,” he confessed, and a lock of his blond hair fell over his brow. “However, today, you will feelloved, Phoebe Winters, soon-to-be Worthington.”
He began by raining tender kisses over face, before repeating the featherlight kisses she loved so much over her neck. He began to inch down the bodice of her dress, his touch driving her mad as he reached behind her and began to unfasten the buttons down the back of her gown. Fortunately it was a simple day dress, not anything complex that would cause him any sort of vexation. He had the dress down around her waist in moments, and with the ease of a magician, he had soon banished it to the floor. He began to work on her undergarments next, and her body tingled with anticipation. When he finally had her lying naked before him, however, Phoebe — who never in her life could recall being shy — had the sudden urge to cover herself. What would he think of her? Before, she had not fully undressed, but today—
“You,” he said, his voice even deeper than it had been before, “are incredibly beautiful.”
She felt a flush covering her body, then, beginning in her cheeks and racing down to her toes, from more than just the fact she was lying here exposed to him.
“Your turn,” she said cheekily, and he grinned and acquiesced. She sat up then, undoing the buttons of his jacket, his waistcoat, and eventually practically ripping off his cravat.
“And they say women wear far too many layers,” she grumbled, and he chuckled.
“This is no laughing matter,” she muttered as she dispensed with her attempts to unbutton his shirt, leaving it to him as she went to work at the fall of his breeches, satisfaction filling her once she finally freed him.
“Well done, love,” he said, before descending upon her once more, scarcely giving her time to take her own fill of him. What she saw, however, made her nearly pant breathlessly. For he was divine. He was all hard muscle, his well-defined chest covered with the slightest sprinkling of blond hair, his torso sculpted all the way down to where the muscles descended into a vee. If she hadn’t known better, she would have wondered how it would be possible for the two of them to fit together.
But her mind cleared of everything except the sensations coursing through her when his hard, hot body came flush against hers, and she moved restlessly against him. He found her lips with his, while his hands held her head, divesting her hair of the pins that had kept the chignon on top. Soon she could feel her hair flowing loosely around her shoulders, as she had come to learn was exactly how he liked it.
His hands seemed to be everywhere at once — in her hair, then skimming down her arms, the gooseflesh rising behind where he touched her. He was slow and gentle, as much as she yearned for him to simply take her, to have her right then and there. This was torture, she thought with a gasp as he circled her nipples with his thumbs, and by the look on his face, it seemed that he felt as she did. So why, oh why, was he not releasing her from this madness, allowing them both to find fulfillment? He bent his head then, his tongue coming so lightly to her breast, circling it, and she cried out his name.
“Jeffrey, will you just … oh, my—”
She had no words as he continued to do delicious, torturous things with his tongue, to first one breast and then the other. His hands began to find their way lower, until they were on her hips, which jerked up toward him in response. He slid his fingers down her legs to her knees, and then ever so slowly they began to find their way back up to the silk of her.