Heiress in Red Silk, Hunter, Madeline [good beach reads TXT] 📗

or so.” He stood and examined the library. Most of the books had been removed to the house Chase now shared with Minerva. It reminded him of the empty shelves that so distressed Rosamund when she bought her house. That library now overflowed with Kevin’s books. Maybe he would move some here, so she could continue buying the ones she preferred.

He had come upon her yesterday, reading one of the custom-bound volumes she had bought. The pages turned slowly, but she had kept at it. Twice while he was in the library she rose and went to the dictionary she had left open on a writing table.

“Does domestic life suit you?” Chase asked.

“Very much.” Kevin continued his perusal of the chamber.

“Your deciding to take separate chambers within a month of marriage implied otherwise.”

“They are not separate. They are extra. There is a difference.”

“If you say so.”

Kevin knew that tone of voice. It was Chase’s it-is-not-for-me-to-question tone that had ten questions waiting behind it.

“I’m not regretting my marriage, if that is what you think.”

“I don’t think anything except that this is odd.” Chase gestured with his glass around the library.

“If you think so, why did you offer this apartment?”

“You said you were going to do it, and this was available and well situated. It isn’t for me to make your decisions.”

“Yet it is for you to question them, it seems.”

“I only have one question. Does Rosamund know about this?”

“She does. She is in complete agreement that we needed these extra chambers.”

Chase raised his eyebrows, just enough to be irritating.

“What?”

“Nothing. Except—”

There was always an except in conversations like this.

“If I did not know you better, I would say it looks like you are setting yourself up for liaisons within a month of taking your vows,” Chase finished. “But, of course, you don’t have liaisons. Until the one with Miss Jameson.”

“If you must know, this place is for the enterprise. We both wanted an address other than our home. Also an office other than in our home. A place reserved for those matters, so they don’t intrude where they shouldn’t.”

Those eyebrows went up again, for a longer spell. “Ah.”

“That was an extremely annoying ‘Ah.’ It sounded as if the expert at discreet inquiries had concluded he had his answers.”

“All I have concluded is that you have decided that a business partnership and a domestic one don’t sit together well in one place.”

That was an understatement. Since their marriage, Kevin had several times cursed the agreement he had signed about leaving Rosamund’s share in her hands.

“We had a row,” he said. “It was small, but it became a poison affecting everything. I had already proposed that I needed a place to pursue my interests, and we agreed to separate those two parts of our lives.”

“So whenever the two of you discuss the enterprise, you will do it here?”

“That is the thinking.”

“And you believe that if you argue, you can leave the argument here?”

“Of course. Why not?”

“It is unlike any marriage I know, but you are unlike any man I know, so perhaps you have found a perfect solution. Now, I have to go to the City. I’ll leave you and Brigsby to settle in.”

The notion of being settled in by Brigsby had Kevin striding to the door in Chase’s wake. “I’ll ride part way with you.”

* * *

Rosamund wound her hands around the silken tie that bound her wrists to the bedpost above her head. Her vulnerability excited her more than she expected. Kevin had aroused her perfectly, masterfully. Now he sat back on her legs and watched her, making her wait while she trembled with desire.

Lessons like this had progressed in fits and starts. A week might pass before a new one. A pattern had emerged. He would tell her, in that quiet, clear voice of his, what he was going to do. One time she had recoiled at his words. He had discarded the idea and never presented it again.

This reminded her of their first time together, when he held her hands together above her head. Nothing else was similar, however. She was not lying but sitting, for one thing.

He spread her legs and kissed up the length of one. The higher those kisses went, the shorter her breaths came. His mouth turned toward the dampness down there. His fingers stroked and his tongue flicked. She closed her eyes and rode the intensity of pleasure that he created.

She was almost there, almost breaking apart, when he moved again, leaving her need bereft of completion. He knelt close to her, rising above. He untied her hands.

He had not described this part, but she knew what to do. She caressed him, her hands rising up his torso, then down to his hips and thighs. She took his cock in her hands and pleasured him the way he liked.

His position and hers allowed her to caress him fully. It also allowed something else. She had heard the women talk about it and thought it among the worst of their duties. Now the notion did not shock her. On impulse, she leaned in and flicked her tongue up his cock’s shaft. She sensed a new tension in him and looked up.

“Do you want this?” She flicked her tongue again.

“Yes.”

His ragged voice, his tight jaw, the way he watched her—all of it said he wanted this more than that “yes” admitted.

She grazed him with lips and fingertips, teasing him the way he often did her. Torturing him and making his hunger increase. “I wonder if I can make you beg,” she said, before circling her tongue around the tip.

“Never.”

“No? I have all night to find out.”

He braced against the headboard with one arm. “Do your worst.”

* * *

Kevin woke to find Rosamund looking right at him. She rested on her side, her head propped on her upright hand, while she regarded him.

He must have fallen asleep after collapsing. She had exhausted him. She lacked experience, but her curiosity alone aroused him. And charmed him. Feeling her explore