Seduce Me, If You Dare by Alyssa Clarke
Chapter Twelve
Later that night, Oscar sat in a comfortable chair at White’s. The club was packed tonight, the supper-room, library, the card and gambling rooms overcrowded. He’d met with a few of his friends earlier to discuss the planned visit of George IV to Scotland, which would be the first appearance of a monarch there since 1651. There were members who thought the visit was a great waste of money and others who believed that it was long overdue that a monarch should visit his Scottish subjects, but now he sat alone nursing a glass of whisky. The large leather armchair creaked slightly as he leant back. His feet resting on the pristine but subtle carpeting. The high ceiling of the room with its elegant plaster molding was illuminated by hundreds of candles in sparkling chandeliers. The sound of clinking glasses and masculine laughter swirled around him, and the scent of cheroot and cigar smoke wafted in the air. Trent and another friend of theirs, Lord Welham, walked over and sat at his table.
“The gambling rooms are rather dull tonight,” Trent said, motioning for a decanter of brandy.
“You look rather preoccupied, Wycliffe. Whatever are you thinking about,” the viscount asked, leaning back in his chair with a sigh.
“Cheroots and brandy.” Oscar took a long swallow of his drink. And my wife. He had learned so much about her in the long conversations they had in the night after loving each other with fierce passion. It was as if he could not get enough of his countess.
“Are you foxed?” Trent demanded.
“I have never been clearer. Tell me, Welham, have you ever shared a glass of port with your wife?”
The man choked on his brandy, his gray eyes widening. “With my wife?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not! Ladies do not drink.”
Amusement rushed through him. “Perhaps they indulge in private.”
“I should be very astonished should they do so. Ladies are delicate creatures who do not own the constitution for strong spirits. Nor do they have the desire at all to sample it.”
“You have confirmed this?”
Trent laughed. “The nature of your question is flummoxing. Only bawdy wenches who hardly understand the finer point of decorum drink like a man.”
Not according to his wife. He thought of the other ladies in his life, his three sisters. Before they got married, their days were filled with calling on other society families accompanied by their mother. When not socializing, they spent their time reading, sewing, and receiving painting lessons, music lessons, and dance lessons. They indulged in long walks in the woods while in the country and attending balls when in town. They had never expressed any desire to him that would have struck him as unconventional. What if they owned those desires in their hearts but simply never spoke of them for fear of being censured?
Was that truly the way of it? Society and gentlemen expected their ladies to act a particular way, but in private, they were vastly different creatures. When he had started to look for a bride, he had found most young ladies uninspiring and now wondered if they became colorless because all rebellion had been squashed by rigid society expectations and enforced by their own mothers. He was not foolish enough to envisage that all ladies might feel like this, but that there was apparently sufficient to fill a club spoke of the painfully restrictive existence few men would comprehend.. The very idea was…fucking appalling. Welham had been married for five years and Oscar knew he had two young children with his viscountess. Did he know anything about the true heart of his wife?
Trent and Welham’s voices droned on in the backdrop of his thoughts. A strange pain rattled around inside Oscar’s heart. He wanted to know Prue. All of her. What else did she do? What else did she hide from the sanctimonious priggish world and from him yet shared with her sisters at their club? Unexpectedly, he was damn glad she had found them, and they had been there for her when he had not. But he did not want to be excluded from her passions and joy. He wanted to be a part of them in every way. He wanted to inspire them and share them with her. He turned over those yearnings in his thoughts, truly amazed that he owned them.
“I am retiring for the night, gentlemen.”
“The night is young,” Trent said with an arched brow and a wolfish grin. “I even thought we could horn in on Lady Durham’s ball. I hear it promises to be salacious.”
“I’m not interested,” Oscar said, standing. An hour later, he walked down his hallway to join his wife in the library. She was curled in her favorite chair with a book in her lap. She appeared flushed and shocked, letting him wonder at her reading material.
He cleared his throat, and she glanced up, hurriedly closing the book and slipping it behind her.
“You are home. I thought you were to spend the night at White’s.”
Shrugging out of his coat, he tossed it onto one of the settees. “That was my initial intention, but somehow I could not stop thinking about cheroots and brandy.”
“Oh, dear.”
He arched a brow. “Is that all you have to say, my lady?”
“It depends entirely on what your thoughts concluded, my lord.”
“Ah, I shall tell you.”
Her eyes sparkled with a challenge. “Please hurry. My nerves are not stiff enough to withstand rife anticipation.”
Oscar removed his boots, jacket, and waistcoat before padding over to the mantle and poured brandy into two glasses. “I wondered at your brazenness in smoking, wife. I wondered if I should come home, turn you over my knees and spank you.”
She made a choking sound low in her throat. A glance showed she stared at him with widened eyes and a mystified expression.
A faint wash of pink spread across her cheek. “Spank me!”
“Yes, though after I would kiss it better.”
His countess appeared fit to faint. “My heart is pattering with such a delightful warning.”
Such a quick and provocative wit. Oscar chuckled. How worldly she tried to appear, but her blush burned even redder. “I thought that as your husband, I should know the things you like and indulge them. Within reason, of course.”
She stood and smoothed the front of her nightgown. “I do like the idea of being spoilt. Why should there be a reasonable boundary? I urge you to indulge to your heart's pleasure. Your lady is a willing participant.”
He padded over to her and held out a glass. She stared at him with a frown.
“Oscar?”
“I think it is a damn shame that if my wife desires to drink, she cannot do this in the comfort of her own home. I thought, my lady, tonight you could share a drink and a cheroot with me.”
Prue stilled, and in her eyes, he spied an emotion that he could not decipher. When those lovely green eyes filled with tears, he walked over to her side, setting the glasses down on the small table to her left.
“What is wrong, Prue?”
She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ears. “I…there is nothing wrong. Everything is perfect.”
“You are fighting tears,” he said gruffly, slipping his hand around her waist and pulling her closer to him.
“They are happy tears,” she said with a smile that wobbled. “Three weeks ago, we were barely speaking, and now we are going to share a cheroot together.”
“Perhaps I should admit I only intended to allow you two draws.”
Predictably she laughed, the sound enchanting him.
He picked up the glasses and handed her one. She took a sip, licking the droplets from her lip, tempting him to ravish those lush curves. There was a look in her eyes that had him raising a brow in question.
“What is it?”
“There is something I have been thinking about. I was not certain how to broach the topic.”
“Simply tell me.”
She took a healthy gulp of her drink before resting it on the table. Prue went over to the chair she’d occupied and plucked up the book thumbing through the pages. Her face lit up when she found what she sought. Hurrying over to him, she tapped the page. “This…I want to try this with you.”
The damn minx had not prepared him. Every nerve in his body burned with instant lust.
“Where did you get this book?”
“From the club. I have been…perusing the pictures. It was my guide in seducing you.”
Bloody hell. The woman in the picture kneeled before a gentleman, and she held half of his cock in her hand and the other half in her mouth. “Prue…”
Fuck. His thoughts simply vanished as she dropped to her knees and peeked provocatively up at him from beneath her lashes.
“Yes, husband?”
A dark, wicked lust rushed through him. Gathering her hair in his hands, he twined the tresses in his fingers. “Suck me into that sweet, pretty mouth of yours,” he murmured.
A fine trembling cascade through her body, but her eyes were bright with desire and excitement. His wife was an adventuress. A damn sensual, beautiful one. She opened the flap of his trousers, and his cock sprung out, already hard and aching.
When her lips touched him, he groaned, his fingers tightening in her hair. Another slow glide of her tongue from the tip of his cock to the root. His damn knees trembled. Her mouth swallowed the flared head of his cock, her tongue stroking and caressing as her mouth suckled at the engorged head, piercing him with exquisite pleasure. Oh, that was delicious, he was fighting the sensual reactions that shot through him.
Sweet mercy.
Oscar pulled from his wife’s mouth, hauled her up and lifted her into his arms.
“I need you,” he said tightly, already desperate to be in her body. Tumbling with her to the chaise, he widened her legs and came down between them. Penetration was immediate. And Prue was ready for him and was wet and so damn tight she almost choked his release from him.
He paused and stared down into her face. An alien tenderness scraped at his insides, and his heart started to jerk an erratic beat. “Prue…” His damn throat closed. Oscar didn’t know what he wanted to say. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he understood what he felt at this moment.
Belonging.
That was it. Dipping his head, he claimed her mouth in a kiss and started to move within her. He loved the moans that poured from her and how she wrapped her body around him, offering herself to him so completely. He speared his fingers into her hair, clenching into the silky strands as he took her mouth and body. Showing her with passion what he was not able to express in words.