The Bridgertons Happily Ever After - By Julia Quinn Page 0,60
skirt until he could tickle her senseless. “Such token resistance,” he murmured. “Admit it. You always want me.”
“Twenty years of marriage isn’t admission enough?”
“Twenty-two years, and I want to hear it from your lips.”
She moaned when he slipped a finger inside of her. “Almost always,” she conceded. “I almost always want you.”
He sighed for dramatic effect, even as he smiled into her neck. “I shall have to work harder, then.”
He looked up at her. She was gazing down at him with an arch expression, clearly over her fleeting attempt at uprightness and respectability.
“Much harder,” she agreed. “And a bit faster, too, while you’re at it.”
He laughed out loud at that.
“Gareth!” Hyacinth might be a wanton in private, but she was always aware of the servants.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a smile. “I’ll be quiet. I’ll be very, very quiet.” With one easy movement, he bunched her skirts well above her waist and slid down until his head was between her legs. “It’s you, my darling, who will have to control your volume.”
“Oh. Oh. Oh . . .”
“More?”
“Definitely more.”
He licked her then. She tasted like heaven. And when she squirmed, it was always a treat.
“Oh my heavens. Oh my . . . Oh my . . .”
He smiled against her, then swirled a circle on her until she let out a quiet little shriek. He loved doing this to her, loved bringing her, his capable and articulate wife, to senseless abandon.
Twenty-two years. Who would have thought that after twenty-two years he’d still want this one woman, this one woman only, and this one woman so intensely?
“Oh, Gareth,” she was panting. “Oh, Gareth . . . More, Gareth . . .”
He redoubled his efforts. She was close. He knew her so well, knew the curve and shape of her body, the way she moved when she was aroused, the way she breathed when she wanted him. She was close.
And then she was gone, arching and gasping until her body went limp.
He chuckled to himself as she batted him away. She always did that when she was done, saying she couldn’t bear one more touch, that she’d surely die if she wasn’t given the chance to float down to normalcy.
He moved, curling against her body until he could see her face. “That was nice,” she said.
He lifted a brow. “Nice?”
“Very nice.”
“Nice enough to reciprocate?”
Her lips curved. “Oh, I don’t know if it was that nice.”
His hand went to his trousers. “I shall have to offer a repeat engagement, then.”
Her lips parted in surprise.
“A variation on a theme, if you will.”
She twisted her neck to look down. “What are you doing?”
He grinned lasciviously. “Enjoying the fruits of my labors.” And then she gasped as he slid inside of her, and he gasped from the sheer pleasure of it all, and then he thought how very much he loved her.
And then he thought nothing much at all.
The following day. We didn’t really think that Hyacinth would give up, did we?
Late afternoon found Hyacinth back at her second favorite pastime. Although favorite didn’t seem quite the right adjective, nor was pastime the correct noun. Compulsion probably fit the description better, as did miserable, or perhaps unrelenting. Wretched?
Inevitable.
She sighed. Definitely inevitable. An inevitable compulsion.
How long had she lived in this house? Fifteen years?
Fifteen years. Fifteen years and a few months atop that, and she was still searching for those bloody jewels.
One would think she’d have given up by now. Certainly, anyone else would have given up by now. She was, she had to admit, the most ridiculously stubborn person of her own acquaintance.
Except, perhaps, her own daughter. Hyacinth had never told Isabella about the jewels, if only because she knew that Isabella would join in the search with an unhealthy fervor to rival her own. She hadn’t told her son, George, either, because he would tell Isabella. And Hyacinth would never get that girl married off if she thought there was a fortune in jewels to be found in her home.
Not that Isabella would want the jewels for fortune’s sake. Hyacinth knew her daughter well enough to realize that in some matters—possibly most—Isabella was exactly like her. And Hyacinth’s search for the jewels had never been about the money they might bring. Oh, she freely admitted that she and Gareth could use the money (and could have done with it even more so a few years back). But it wasn’t about that. It was the principle. It was the glory.