The Lady's Command

He heard the footman drop down from the rear of the carriage, and with a sigh, he straightened. “I believe, my lady, that we’ve reached our home.”

“Indeed.” Even through the dimness, he saw desire gleam in her eyes. As the footman opened the door, she murmured, “I suggest, dear husband, that we go inside.”

Anticipation flared between them, tangible and hot. With one last wanton look, she turned to the door. He rose and descended to the pavement, then handed her down.

Retaining his hold on her fingers, he escorted her up the town house steps.

The door opened before they reached it. Humphrey, their new butler, bowed them inside. “Welcome home, my lady. Sir.”

“Thank you, Humphrey.” Edwina slipped her fingers from Declan’s clasp and headed straight for the stairs.

He prowled in her wake.

Humphrey closed the door. “Will there be anything else, sir? Ma’am?”

“I think not.” Declan didn’t shift his gaze from his wife’s curvaceous hips, sleekly cloaked in pale blue satin. “You may lock up. Her ladyship and I are retiring.”

Without glancing back from her steady ascent, Edwina said, “Oh, and please tell Wilmot I won’t need her tonight.”

Wilmot was her lady’s maid. Declan smiled.

Edwina reached the door to the bedroom they had elected to share, opened it, and sailed through. On her heels, he crossed the threshold, paused to shut the door, then, his gaze locked on his prize, continued his pursuit.

Before she reached the foot of their bed—a large four-poster draped in blue silks—she abruptly swung around. One step from her, one stride from him, and they met.

Her head barely reached his shoulder; coming up on her toes, she wound her arms about his neck, pressed close as his hands fastened about her tiny waist, and raised her lips as he bent his head.

Their lips touched, brushed, then settled.

The kiss deepened, their lips effortlessly melding. She parted hers in wanton invitation, and he sent his tongue questing. Conquering and commanding.

She’d been a virgin on their wedding night, yet she’d been anything but reticent; she’d plunged into the whirlpool generated by their avid, greedy, too-long-denied senses with an eager enthusiasm that had stunned him. Her open and ardent desire to learn everything about passion had claimed him. Her utterly fearless adventurousness in this sphere continued to captivate him.

Comprehensively enslaving him.

He didn’t mind, not in the least. As he steered her back toward the bed, the sole remaining thought in his head was how to most effectively enjoy the fruits of his surrender.

Edwina felt awash on a sea of triumph. She wanted to celebrate what ranked as a minor victory—successfully establishing their union as entirely acceptable and, more, as distinctly desirable in the eyes of the ton.

Joy and delight bubbled and fizzed inside her. Effervescent excitement gripped her as she felt the bed at her back, then Declan’s fingers found her laces, and she sent her own hands seeking, nimble fingers deftly dealing with the large buttons of his waistcoat. He paused only to shrug off both coat and waistcoat, letting them fall where they would, and she eagerly set her fingers to the small, flat buttons closing his shirt.

This was one arena within their marriage in which she’d felt utterly confident from the first, and she knew she had his passion, his understanding, his honesty, and his expertise to thank for that. His own inner confidence in his manly attributes, too. He’d been so focused on her, so openly desirous, and so unwaveringly intent on claiming her—so committed and caught up in the moment—that he’d shown her all.

All he felt for her.

All she meant to him.

She’d sailed into passion with a questing heart, buoyed by confidence in her own desirability.

No woman could have asked for more on her wedding night.

And from that night on, they’d embarked on a joint exploration of what engagements such as this could bring them.

She’d devoted herself to learning all he would teach her and all she might of her own volition learn. And every night, although the destination remained blessedly the same, the journey was different, the road subtly altered, the revelations along it fresh and absorbing.

His lips supped from hers, his tongue teasing hers. She responded, using all she’d learned to tempt and lure. She hauled his shirt from his waistband and freed the last button closing it. Anchored in the kiss, in the heat and the passion that rose so strongly—with such reassuring hunger—between them, she blessed him for his innate elegance, which ensured he used a neat, simple knot in his cravat. The instant she unraveled it, she drew the long strip of linen free. With gay abandon, she flung it away.

Finally clear of obstacles, she pulled his shirt wide, set her hands to the sculpted planes of his chest and joyfully—greedily—claimed, then she pushed the garment up and over his shoulders. He refused to release her lips but broke from the embrace enough to shrug off his coat and waistcoat. Then he opened the shirt’s cuffs, stripped the garment off, and let it fall to the floor, and she fell on him, fell into his embrace, and gave herself up, heart and soul, to learning what tonight would bring.

Shivery sensation. Heat.

Knowing touches that claimed and incited, that excited and lured and drew them both along tonight’s path.

The whisper of silk. The rustle of the bedclothes.

Fingertips trailing over excruciatingly sensitive skin.

Muscles bunching and rippling, then turning as hard as steel.

Incoherent murmuring.

Naked skin to naked skin, body to body, they merged and, together, fingers linked and gripping, lips brushing, heated breaths mingling, followed the path on.

Journeyed on through the enthrallments of desire, through passion’s licking flames, faster and faster they rode and plunged, then surged toward the glorious end.

To where a cataclysm of feeling ripped through reality and sensation consumed them.

Then ecstasy erupted and fractured them, flinging them into oblivion’s void…

Until, at the last, spent, hearts racing, blinded by glory, they sank back to earth, to the pleasure of each other’s embrace, to the wonder of their discovery.

When her wits finally re-engaged and she could again think, she found she was still too buoyed on triumph—on multiple counts—to, as she usually did, slide into pleasured slumber. She wasn’t sure Declan was sleeping, either; wrapped in his arms, her head pillowed on his shoulder, she couldn’t see his face—couldn’t be sure if he was sleeping or not without lifting her head and disturbing them both.

In that moment, she was at peace, sated and safe, and felt no need to converse. And, it seemed, neither did he; the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek soothed and reassured.

Her mind wandered, instinctively cataloguing—where they now were, where she wished them to go.

The path she wanted them to follow—the marriage she was determined they would have.

Her assumption that it was up to her, her responsibility to steer them in the right direction, wasn’t one she questioned. She had her parents’ marriage and that of her late brother as vivid examples of how terribly wrong things could go if a lady didn’t institute and insist on the correct framework. And putting that correct framework in place was much easier if one acted from the first, before any unhelpful habits became ingrained.

She knew what she wanted; she had several shining examples to guide her—her sisters’ marriages, Julian and Miranda’s marriage, and, more recently, what she’d seen of the relationship between Declan’s parents, Fergus and Elaine.

That from his earliest years Declan had been exposed to such a marriage, one that was founded on a working personal partnership—that he would have absorbed the concept, seen its inherent strengths, and, she hoped, would now expect to find the same support in his own marriage—was infinitely encouraging.

Throughout their teens, she and her sisters had spent hours in their parlor at Ridgware discussing the elements of an acceptable-in-their-eyes marriage. Both Millie and Cassie, each in their own way, had set out to achieve that ideal in their marriages and had succeeded. Both Catervale and Elsbury openly doted on their wives, were strong and engaged fathers to their children, and shared everything; they included their wives in all areas of their lives.

Edwina was determined to have nothing less. Indeed, with Declan, she suspected she wanted more. Compared to Millie and Cassie, she was more outgoing, more curious and eager to engage with life and actively explore the full gamut of its possibilities.