and silky perfumed hair. The room was very dim, one lone candle flickering on the dresser. Their shadows merged as they kissed, looming beast-like on the opposite wall.
God, he loved kissing his wife. He kissed her lazily at first, teasing her berry-red lips apart and gently touching his tongue to hers. But soon his kisses grew more urgent and he shifted his right hand to palm her breast, adoring the moan of pleasure the movement elicited from her, the sinuous arch of body that pushed her stiff little nipple into the very center of his hand.
“I wager your beaux would love to see you now,” he murmured against her mouth. “With your hair down and your clothes off.” He lifted her off his lap and laid her down. She cried his name out as he came over her, pushing her down into the mattress with the weight of his body. Capturing her wrists, he raised them over her head, imprisoning her.
He rubbed his strong, hard body against her softer, weaker one and she moaned delightedly, her hips shifting restlessly beneath him.
“Charles,” she breathed. “Please.”
“I was so hard for you tonight,” he murmured, nipping her lower lip. “I could hardly move, never mind dance. I’ve been wanting you underneath me like this all night.”
She arched against him powerfully. “Oh God, Charles, please.” she pleaded. “You’ve made me wait and wait tonight. Don’t make me wait any longer!”
He smiled against her throat. “Be patient, Immy.”
She struggled against the firm grasp in which he held her wrists over her head, her back arching, breasts quivering. Dipping his head, he lapped at her small pointed nipples, strong wet strokes with his tongue. She writhed underneath him, pleading prettily for his cock. He felt his balls tighten and shift.
“Not yet,” he said softly, biting back a groan. “You knew you were making me hard tonight. You were being a wicked girl, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” she said hoarsely. “I was being a bad little slut, Charles. Now fuck me, please.”
“So now you want your husband?” he asked, his voice light and questioning, as though he could deny her. But they both knew he was faking control. His cock throbbed painfully between them, and when she stretched her legs wide, angling her quim so that the tip of him slipped between her moist folds, he gave a hoarse cry and plunged all the way in.
“God, Immy, you’re so beautiful,” he groaned as he began to piston his hips. He felt her cunt fluttering around his prick. She was already close.
“Did you like letting those men touch you tonight?” he muttered in her ear as he screwed deeply into her. “I saw Radleigh holding you a little too close when he waltzed with you. And Fenton kissed the inside of your wrist.”
She gripped him tightly with her thighs, angling her cunt sharply upwards, mashing herself against his groin as her internal muscles sucked his shaft powerfully.
“Did you like it?” she whispered.
“I bloody well loved it,” he snarled, and increased his pace, beginning to pound her in earnest. He could tell how close she was. She was warmly, wetly rippling around him, clutching at him.
“Charles, I’m coming,” she gasped unnecessarily. She pulled him even closer, her mouth at his throat, her legs tight about his waist, her heels pressing into his buttocks. And then she was coming. Hard. Crying out, clenching him. Gushing.
As the ripples of her orgasm died away, he let himself go, closing his eyes and driving into her. An image came to him; Immy being fucked from behind by Lord Radleigh while he looked on. She was loving it, her face transported as the other man grasped her hips and ground himself into her. Half ashamed, half aroused, Charles felt the draw of his own orgasm. And it was then, in the moment of his climax, that Radleigh’s face shimmered away and another took its place.
The louche, beautiful face of Alex Lambert.
Chapter Two
Imogen dreamed she was back at Harford House. She walked down the gloomy corridor, worriedly looking in room after room, thinking, Where is Edward?
When she first started having the dream, not along after his death, she would eventually find him—only to discover he wasn’t the same Edward she’d married. She would open a door and there he would be, levering himself off the bed, physically moving the stump that had once been his right leg with his hands, his ruined face thrown into cruel relief by a nearby branch of candles. And then he’d turn, and scream at her, Get out!
The dream had changed since she’d married Charles. Now she went from room to room and never found Edward. When she reached the last room, she would suddenly remember that he was dead, and would wake with the tears still wet on her face.
She woke both to the certain knowledge that Edward was dead and to the realisation that she had a new husband, one who was making her present wildly happy. It provoked a strange mixture of emotions: old grief, happiness, guilt and excitement.
It was how she woke this morning.
She choked her way into the new day through her own gasping sobs, bleak misery suffusing her. The feelings were so strong it took a full minute for her to recognise where she was.
She sat up in bed, shivering at the chill in the room. The bed was empty; Charles was gone. She glanced at the clock and realised he must have gone riding. She was glad. She didn’t want to wake beside him drenched with grief and guilt over her first husband. The strength of those emotions had faded in the four years since his death, but when the dream came, it felt like the day he had died.
Was it wrong to dream of Edward still? Wrong to keep his miniature in her drawer? She had loved Edward very dearly when she’d married him but that truth didn’t diminish her love for Charles.
Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to tell her new husband why she woke several nights each week like this. Nor could she stop herself hiding Edward’s likeness away, worried Charles would ask her to put it away forever. She had so many conflicting feelings about her first husband. Sometimes she needed to look at the miniature and remember him as he’d once been.
Gradually Imogen became aware of the rhythmic ticking of the clock on the mantel, and then the sounds of the household: a door opening and closing, footsteps, the rumble of voices. Outside on the square, a carriage rumbled past. The familiar sounds brought her fully to the present, and the stranglehold of grief and guilt that she began her days with slowly ebbed. She took a deep breath and wiped her tears away. Despite continuing to dream of Edward at night, her waking hours were happy. In fact, she was amazed by just how happy she felt with Charles. After the bleak years she had experienced before and after Edward’s death, she didn’t take any of her newfound joy for granted.
She had never been a melancholy sort—her father used to say she had a talent for happiness—but after Edward had come back from the war, and so damaged, all the happiness and joy in her soul had slowly been leeched out of her. They had shared three more years until his death. The last of them was utterly miserable, almost as bad as the long, gray year of hell that had followed his passing. Immediately after his death she had been hit by a melancholy so deep she had wondered if she would ever be able to rise from it.
And then, slowly, she had begun to live again. She had sold their house in Norfolk and come to London. She had put off her widow’s weeds and gone to balls and parties.
